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“I’d better track down Owen,” I said to Earl, fighting to keep my voice from squeaking with tension. “You go see to any people you have around here.”
“You don’t want me to come with you?”
“Not now. I’m sure everything’s fine. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
Forcing down a rising tide of panic, I headed to Owen’s office. He wasn’t there. He also wasn’t at the checkout or at any of the other places I could usually find him. I ran up the stairs to the coffee shop, in case he’d gone looking for me while Earl and I were hiding in the stockroom, but I didn’t see him there. Oh no, what if they’d taken him prisoner? They might have assumed he was the resistance leader, based on his notoriety in the real world.
Florence was at the counter, and she still looked a little tense, though not as jittery as before. “How’d the meeting go?” she asked.
“I didn’t find him. He hasn’t come up here looking for me, has he?”
“Nope. Are you sure he’s in yet?”
I went over to the windows and saw him playing chess with Mac. My sigh of relief was probably audible on the store’s lower level. “I bet he lost the last game and couldn’t leave before a rematch,” I said. Forcing a smile, I added, “One of the benefits of being the boss is that no one can yell at you for being late to work.”
“Maybe you’d better go remind him that he has a store to run,” Florence said. Although she seemed to be trying to smile, her voice sounded quite stern. I felt certain now that even if she was working for Sylvester, she was secretly on my side. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have all but suggested that I go break the spell on Owen.
Forcing myself to sound like I didn’t have anything bigger to deal with than an errant boss, I said, “If you’re okay up here, I’ll go drag him back to the store and see what he wants us to do to get started for the day.”
“I’m fine,” she said with a careless flap of her hand. “Business is really slow today. Makes you wonder what’s going on, huh?”
I was afraid I knew all too well what was going on—and she did, too. But all I said was, “Be back in a sec.”
I collected Earl on my way out, in case I needed backup. I checked my pockets for my written memories, then, in a moment of paranoia, before I left the store I got out a ballpoint pen and wrote on my palm, “Check your pockets.”
“You’re worried,” Earl noted.
“I’m not taking any chances.”
When we reached the park, I paused to observe for a moment. There was none of the understated tension I was used to seeing between Owen and the Council men. Even though Mac was generally more reasonable, he had a way of keeping a constant eye on Owen. All of that was gone now. They just seemed like a group of men hanging out together in the park on a nice fall day. Owen looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in months. I almost hated to ruin it, but I knew that if he looked that relaxed, something was very wrong. I couldn’t imagine what spell would make Owen want to sit in a park and play chess all day. What if they’d wiped him completely and given him a different identity for this world, not just reset him to the guy who’d bought a bookstore to make bookstores cool again? I might not be able to break that spell with a memory or a kiss.
Gesturing for Earl to stay back, I approached their table. “Oh, there you are!” I said. I was aiming for casual, but my voice sounded high and strained. “I know they say that when the cat’s away, the mice will play, but what happens when the cat is the one away playing?”
Owen looked up at me, and for a moment I could barely breathe when his face seemed strangely blank, like he didn’t even know me. Then he smiled and blushed guiltily as his eyes focused on me. “Oh, I guess it is late. The store’s not burning down, or anything like that?”
“No, but people are wondering where you are.”
“I somehow doubt you’re running rudderless without me.”
“We might survive for a few more minutes, but after that, anarchy is a real possibility.”
He grinned. “Okay, I’ll finish this game if you’ll keep the masses from rioting in my absence.” He sounded like Owen, but then he’d sounded like Owen when he was under the spell before, only I didn’t know it then because I didn’t know who I really was. Now, though, I couldn’t be sure. He seemed to recognize me, and there’d been enough familiarity in his tone to indicate that there was some personal relationship there. But was he putting on an act for anyone who might be watching, or had he forgotten who he really was?
Whatever his status was, I wasn’t about to leave him alone. “Mind if I watch?” I asked, not waiting for his response to sit next to him on the bench.
“You might be terribly distracting,” he teased. That was a good sign. If they’d reset him, they’d kept his relationship with me.
“Then maybe I should flutter my eyelashes at Mac,” I said. Mac gave a slight smile but kept his attention focused on the game. I thought Owen might have pulled off the acting job, since we’d been pretending we were under the spell whenever we were in public, but this Mac was way too different from the way he was with self-awareness. They’d definitely zapped him.
It may have been the longest chess game ever played—at least, it felt like it. All the while, I searched for signs of who Owen might be right now. Was he my Owen, doing an excellent job of playing along, or was he the romantic comedy world’s Owen, who had no idea he was a wizard trapped in an elven prison?
Finally, Owen won, and the easy laughter from McClusky and Mac at his victory proved to me that they weren’t themselves. I wondered if I should try to revive them, too, but decided to save it for later. We were probably safest if the elves thought their reset had worked, and undoing it immediately would be a dead giveaway.
Owen said his good-byes to his chess buddies and cheerfully came with me toward the store. Earl stayed just out of sight, so it wasn’t obvious that he was with me. We were just about to cross the street when I looked both ways, as I’d been taught in kindergarten, and I found myself looking one of the gray guys right in the eye.
There was no doubt that he knew I’d seen him. He reacted, then he moved toward me. I grabbed Owen’s hand and dashed across the street, dodging traffic. When Earl turned to see what was wrong, he, too, couldn’t help but react to the gray guy chasing us.
They knew we knew, and they weren’t going to stop until they’d made sure we were back under their thrall. I wasn’t about to stand for that. “Run!” I shouted to Earl as I took off, dragging a protesting Owen behind me.
