Damsel Under Stress by Shanna Swendson

Author:Shanna Swendson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345500113
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

I had to juggle for a few seconds to keep from dropping my take-out bags. Only when I was absolutely certain Gemma’s roast beef and brie sandwich wasn’t going to go splat on the pavement did I look up and recognize Ethelinda. “Would you stop that?” I shouted. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Sorry,” she said with a giggle. She still wore that hideous reject prom dress, with bits of the fur from her Mrs. Claus outfit peeking out around the neckline. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“When you don’t mean to startle someone, you don’t appear out of thin air right in front of them. And what did you think was so exciting? I was just getting sandwiches.”

She waved her wand in a dismissive gesture. “I wasn’t referring to the sandwiches. I was talking about the dragons.”

“You knew about the dragons?”

“I hear about things. There’s very little that happens to you that I don’t find out about.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I was crazy about that idea. There were reasons why I’d never auditioned to be on reality TV. I didn’t like the idea of being watched. “Well, ‘exciting’ isn’t quite the word I’d use to describe the dragons.”

“Yes, but surviving an encounter with dragons and being rescued by such a brave young man must have been exciting.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But trust me, it doesn’t work out that way in real life.” It occurred to me then that Owen might have been right about the dragons being a trap. Ethelinda herself might have set it, not to put us in danger but because a hero rescuing a damsel in distress from a dragon was such a staple of romantic fantasy sagas. But surely she couldn’t be that stupid. If she knew my entire relationship history and all that stuff about our destiny, she had to know what our work entailed and that dragons were pretty darn dangerous. It would be awfully hard to play matchmaker to a couple of piles of cinders. “You wouldn’t have happened to arrange our meeting with the dragons, would you?” I asked.

“Moi?” She batted her eyelashes vigorously, as though she was both hurt and offended by my accusation, but she didn’t exactly deny it. “Rescuing a maiden from a dragon is a sure way to generate romance. It’s in all the stories. I can’t begin to count the number of couples I’ve known who met that way. But that doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.”

“You were there. I saw you.”

“I was merely keeping an eye on my client. You were hard to keep up with when you were chasing your friend that way.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced of her innocence, but I could tell arguing would do no good. “Well, for the record, there’s nothing romantic about dragons. They’re ugly, loud, and smelly. And Owen thought someone was trying to lead us into a trap to kill us, so he spent the rest of the day wondering what our enemies might be up to.

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