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“It’s hard to tell. Maybe he detected the difference between wizard magic and elf magic. Or maybe he knows the illusions that are supposed to be in that area and we didn’t fit.”
“If he can see us, how do we get out of here?”
“Let’s wait a while. Maybe he’ll go away.”
We waited half an hour before we dared peek out the window. There were two of the gray guys on the street below. They seemed to be looking for something, and it was easy—and probably safest—to assume it was us.
We kept going until we reached the end of the block, where we could see out of two sides of the building. The corner building wasn’t a brownstone. It was a regular apartment building with shops on the ground level. “I think we might be over Perdita’s café,” I said when I had my bearings from the view. “All we need to do is find a way out of here without getting caught.”
There was a door that opened onto an interior hallway. The nearest “exit” sign indicated a stairwell that went all the way down. The bottom level was empty, and Owen had to use magic to light our way. We found a door that came out into the basement supply room of a restaurant. “Is this the right place?” Owen whispered.
“How am I supposed to know?” I replied. “I eat here. I don’t lurk in the basement.” I was about to say something else, but then I thought I heard a sound from the other side of the room. I gestured to Owen, and both of us ducked behind shelves as Owen doused his magical light.
There was definitely someone else in the basement, but he seemed to be trying to stay as hidden as we were. A restaurant employee would have called out to ask who was there. Instead, it was as though the other person was holding his breath and staying as still as possible.
I glanced back at the door where we’d entered and was just about to tug Owen toward it when a voice from the darkness on the other side of the basement said, “Katie, Owen, is that you?”
“Earl?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” came the response. “So it is you?”
We met in the middle of the room. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “We were worried when you didn’t show up.” I didn’t ask the obvious question. If he was under the spell, he wouldn’t be hiding in a basement.
“I was pretty sure I had a tail, and I didn’t want to lead them anywhere near you. I decided it would be safer to lose them and hide out for a while, and I was close enough for Perdita to help me.”
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“They didn’t come anywhere near her.”
I turned to Owen. “That’s weird. If they managed to get to us through the spy, surely they’d have eventually tracked back to Perdita.”
“Maybe their precautions weren’t about what we’ve done here, but about what we do back home,” Owen suggested. “The Council guys are essentially magical cops, we foiled Sylvester’s last scheme, and Earl is a known rebel. Perdita may have been under their radar.”
“What happened to you two?” Earl asked.
“When you didn’t come back, we figured Perdita would be a contact point,” I said. “How did things go for you?”
“They got to Brad, and I was able to snap him out of it,” Earl said. “We’re on for tonight. We figured sundown in what passes for Central Park, at the spot just before it loops back to Riverside—it’s a lot like Cherry Hill, but not quite. There has to be a lot of magic in that area to form that kind of boundary loop, so maybe our portal won’t be quite so obvious.”
Owen checked his watch. “We’ve got a few more hours to kill, and if the vultures aren’t circling us, we may as well wait here until then.”
We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on the floor behind some shelves, where we weren’t visible from the stairs. I wasn’t aware of drifting off to sleep, but the next thing I was conscious of was feeling a little stiff from sleeping on Owen’s shoulder. I kept my eyes shut, hoping desperately that this whole thing about living in an alternate reality straight out of a bad romantic comedy was nothing more than a dream.
Even Owen nudging me gently didn’t have to ruin things. That could happen if I’d fallen asleep during a movie. “Katie, wake up,” he whispered. “We need to go.”
Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and had to accept that my predicament was very real. Nearby noises told me that Earl was also stirring. In the very faint light, I saw Owen crawl to the hatch that led to the sidewalk. He peered out, then said, “I don’t see any gray guys.”
“We should probably split up, so if they catch one group of us, they won’t catch all of us,” I suggested. “Earl, you go with Perdita. We’ll meet you there.”
We climbed the steps and emerged on the sidewalk. It was the evening rush hour, so the sidewalk was busy and crowded, and we didn’t stand out too badly. We melted into the crowd and made our way toward the park.
We’d gone a few blocks when I noticed one of the gray guys on the opposite side of the street. I nudged Owen, but he didn’t seem to respond at all—until we reached the next intersection and he casually turned us down the side street heading toward the park, as though that was where we’d been going all along. I couldn’t tell if the gray guy had seen us, and looking back over my shoulder to see if he’d followed us would be a dead giveaway.
“What do we do?” I whispered to Owen.
“Just keep going.” In the middle of the block, he stopped and knelt to tie his shoe, then stood and reported, “He didn’t follow us.”
“Then let’s go before another one shows up,” I urged.
