“I’ve never seen anything like that, myself, and I know attraction charms,” Rod said.
It was only then that I realized that Rod must have stopped using his attraction charm. Ever since I’d known him, he’d maintained a charm that made every woman around find him terribly attractive. It didn’t work on me, of course, but I had felt its effects when I’d temporarily lost my magical immunity. This had been the first subway trip I’d ever taken with Rod when he hadn’t had women eyeing him.
“Speaking of attraction charms…” I said to him.
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I gave them up entirely. I’m a new man. Turned over a new leaf, and all that.”
“And you’re afraid of Marcia,” I teased. Rod was dating one of my roommates, and I couldn’t imagine Marcia putting up with every woman around drooling over her boyfriend.
“Yes, I am afraid of Marcia. Besides, when you’ve got the best woman in Manhattan—present company excluded, of course—at your side, why bother setting all the other women up for disappointment?”
I wondered if he’d also dropped the handsome illusion he usually wore. He’d certainly continued the self-improvement program he’d started before I left town. Now he had a good haircut, his skin looked better, and his teeth had been whitened.
“Do you think this is another setup for selling protective charms, demonstrating the product in a real-world setting?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” Rod replied. “I don’t see much of a market for something that keeps hot women from throwing themselves at you. Now, if they were using hags to demonstrate the potential dangers, then you might be on to something.”
“Maybe they’re marketing a charm to women to help them keep their men from being snared by these spells,” I suggested.
Our banter had given Owen a chance to recover, and now he looked more like himself. His eyes were still a little glassy, but from what I knew of Owen, that meant he was mentally analyzing the spell he’d just encountered and was thinking of ways to fight it.
The two of them walked me to the front door of my apartment building, then Rod said, “I’ll make sure Romeo here gets home safely without running off with any loose women. Say hi to Marcia and tell her I’ll call later.”
“Will do. And I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
I unlocked the front door, checked the mail in the entryway, then headed upstairs to my apartment. I’d missed this dingy old building while I was in Texas, but more for what it represented than for what it really was. Our apartment was far too small for three people, and there was no such thing as personal space. I was relieved to get home and find that my roommates were still out. That gave me a moment of privacy and quiet.
Well, maybe not that much quiet, I thought, wincing at the sound of an argument coming from upstairs. I turned the television on to drown out the noise while I changed out of my work clothes. When I came back to the living room, the TV was showing a live news report from an attempted bank robbery. The cameras zoomed in on a man being arrested while the reporter said, “The suspect, who was identified by patrons in the bank as the robber, surrendered to police, but claimed to have no memory of robbing the bank. Police still have not recovered the stolen money.”
I groaned and sank onto the sofa as the newscast returned to the anchorman, who began talking about an unusual crime wave in the city. New York may have the reputation of being a dangerous place, but it’s really not that bad except in certain areas. This type of crime wave was definitely unusual.
In a burst of panic, I switched to the national news to see if this was showing up anywhere else. The last thing I needed was my parents knowing about a crime wave in New York when their little girl had just returned to the big, bad city. We needed to put a stop to this as soon as possible before someone really got hurt—and before my parents came to drag me home. It was bad enough that people’s lives could be ruined by crimes they hadn’t been aware of committing. What would happen if one of these people under influence spells hurt or killed someone and then had to live with that? The magical people could buy the Spellworks charms to protect themselves, but what about ordinary people?
Nothing about a major New York crime wave appeared in the five minutes I had the national news on, and then my roommate Gemma came home. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes right inside the front door, then limped to the bedroom without a word.
“Rough day?” I called after her.
Mumbled cursing came from the bedroom. A moment later, she reemerged, wearing yoga pants and a tank top. “What is it with people these days?” she asked.
