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Gemma and Nita helped me out of the dress, and while they put it back in its bag and hung it in the closet, I hurried to put on jeans and a sweater. By the time my friends had buzzed Owen through the front door and he’d made it up the stairs to our place, all signs of wedding gown shopping were gone, and I thought I looked reasonably nice—ordinary nice, not princess in a white dress nice.
I greeted him at the door with a kiss. “I’m assuming things went well, if you had to stall me,” he said.
“We’re not telling,” Gemma said firmly.
“I don’t think you’d have made me wait to come up if you didn’t have something to hide,” he said, grinning.
“Yes, the expedition was a success, and no, I’m not giving you any hints,” I said.
“Buying it was a bit of an adventure,” Nita said.
Owen flinched ever so slightly before saying, “Oh, really?” and I realized why he’d chosen now to drop by. He wasn’t curious about the dress. He was making sure we were okay. I wondered which of my winged colleagues had tipped him off.
“You know, New York sample sales,” Gemma said with a shrug. “Anyone want coffee? I’m starting to feel like I got up before four, so I
think I’ll make a pot.”
“Whose idea was it to get up that early?” I teased. “And, yeah, I could do with a cup.”
“As long as you’re making it . . .” Owen said.
Nita yawned. “Me, too.”
“I think I’ll just head home and get a nap,” Connie said. “My husband made plans for the evening.”
Trix, Isabel, and Marcia chimed in for coffee, and Gemma went to work in the kitchen. Nita picked up the TV remote and began flipping through channels. “I wish I had time for a nap,” she said, “but the coffee is going to have to do. I have the day shift today, so it may be a struggle if it’s boring.”
I didn’t pay much attention to her channel surfing until she shouted, “Hey, this is where we were!”
I turned to see a breaking news report about what they were calling a riot at a wedding dress sample sale. “It really wasn’t that bad,” I said. “More of a scuffle than a riot.”
“It’s crazier than anything I’ve ever seen,” Nita said, turning up the volume.
On the screen, a reporter stood in front of the warehouse, describing the event witnesses reported. She turned to interview a woman standing next to her—the woman who’d been in line with me.
“I’d say they were definitely using magic,” the woman said.
2
Owen and I glanced at each other, and he winced. On the television, the reporter said, “Magic?” Her tone made it clear she thought the woman was a crackpot.
“Yes, magic,” the woman said firmly. “I can’t think of any other explanation, and I’ve tried. Dresses were disappearing out of people’s hands and appearing in other people’s hands. You can do sleight of hand with a coin, but with a wedding dress? You can’t exactly stick one of those up your sleeve. I also saw dresses being levitated, and once people were fighting over the dresses, they started throwing fireballs and what seemed to be spells at each other.”
“Interesting,” the reporter said with a nod, but with an expression that said, “Get me away from this lunatic.”
“Yes, and then they suppressed the whole thing, like it never happened.”
“Okay, someone is off her meds,” Nita said. “I didn’t notice any of that stuff. There was just some really rapid tug-of-war going on. I mean, yeah, it was crazy, but hocus-pocus? Really?”
Marcia developed a coughing fit, and Trix bit her lip while turning red, so I got the impression she was stifling giggles. “Well, it is New York,” Isabel said with a shrug. “It takes all kinds, and that’s not the craziest thing that reporter will hear all day.”
“I don’t know, maybe there was some magic involved,” I said. “That’s the only explanation for the price I got.”
“Katie!” Gemma said. “I thought we agreed.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t expect me to get that kind of deal and not talk about it. Owen will be impressed that I got a bargain, right?”
“It was a good bargain?” he asked.
