by Emma Savant
Imagining her as our queen made my ears feel hot. I felt my magic fizz around my fingertips. A world where she was in charge would be a disaster, and if that happened, it would be all my fault.
Elle snapped her fingers.
“Yo,” she said. “You’re not listening.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I started thinking about Imogen.”
She pursed her lips. “Guys aren’t everything,” she said. “You changed my life. I’d like to see Imogen do that.”
I glanced up to see a new customer coming through the door. It wasn’t about changing lives or even guys. It was about so much more than that: lying and honesty and what it meant to be friends and the way I’d always let Imogen walk all over me.
Silently, I promised myself I would do my best on this Lily case, if only to prove to Amani and myself that I could take life by the reins just as much as Imogen did. I could have even been queen if I’d wanted to. Imogen wasn’t that great by comparison. After all, she wasn’t the youngest godmother in a hundred years. And she was, apparently, a pathological liar.
I’d have to find a way to bring that up to Queen Amani next time we spoke.
I didn’t want to be queen. I just didn’t want her to have a shot.
Chapter Ten
It was six in the morning and already the sun burned through my thin T-shirt as I knelt on the banks of the river. It was secluded here, but I’d still thrown a Humdrum shield up. Anyone who wandered by my pocket of the waterfront would think the high grasses that surrounded my little patch of sand were too tall and itchy, or they’d suddenly remember they forgot to grab a bag to clean up after their dog.
Lily and I had finally found a time that worked for both of us. I’d called her through a seashell a few days ago and sent a message in a bottle last night to confirm our appointment. Now, I sat cross-legged on the banks of the river and waited. The water rippled, each wave a dark steely blue and crowned with pale light.
The Oracle’s comments still didn’t make sense, I thought as I watched the river flow past. Her advice to turn around and betray Imogen, on the other hand, kind of did. That was what balance looked like, and balance was important. The words had still seemed strange coming from someone as wise and good as the Oracle, but maybe that just suggested I didn’t quite understand what “wise” included.
At any rate, I couldn’t deny the temptation. I couldn’t think about Imogen without my stomach flipping over and twisting into knots.
I picked a fat blade of grass and slowly tore it into long strips.
Maybe Imogen did deserve to have her secrets spilled. She hadn’t just hurt me—she’d done real wrong. She had cheated on her Proctor Exam.
I didn’t want to believe Imogen would do that, but I couldn’t lie to myself. She’d always cheated at cards. Even when she’d winked to let me know she was cheating, I could always see the faint glamour that meant she was trying to trick me into thinking her devious behavior was charming, and I’d always played along because she was my best friend and best friends let each other get away with stuff.
I threw the ruined blade of grass into the water. The green strands clung to the surface like it was sticky, and then they were caught in a slow eddy and carried away.
Maybe it was time to stop letting Imogen get away with stuff. Maybe our friendship was nothing but a series of bad habits, and she’d only been my friend all these years because she knew I’d put up with anything.
Maybe none of it had been real.
The water ten feet in front of me rippled and the auburn crown of a head drifted toward me like a bubble on the river’s surface. Lily breached a moment later, her white skin glowing in the new morning light.
Her pearly smile dazzled me.
“You must be Olivia,” she said.
She swam forward to take my outstretched hand. The water here dropped off abruptly, which was why I’d chosen this site. If she propped her elbows on the ground to face me, the water was still deep enough that her tail could stay submerged as it stretched out behind her. Her hand felt small, with delicate bones that could have belonged to a fish or a bird or some other flighty creature.
I bowed my head low over her hand, the closest thing to a curtsy I could approximate from a seating position. “Your Royal Highness,” I said.
She smiled at me and twitched an iridescent green fin.
“You can call me Lily,” she said.
I’d met more than a few princesses in my day who bristled at anything less than the full pomp and circumstance their—usually outdated—titles afforded them. But Lily didn’t carry herself like other princesses did. She gazed at me, eyes rapt and alert. Her red hair cascaded down her shoulders and into the water. It was streaked with green seaweed and knotted with seashells and bits of sea glass.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” I said.
“Good excuse to come up to the city,” she said. She put her chin in her hands. “Father is not fond of me spending time in town.”
“I heard,” I said. “So, you’re in love with someone named Evan.”
Much as I wanted to sit and chat with her, it was daylight in the middle of the city and I was in conversation with a mermaid. We didn’t have time for niceties.
Lily sighed, her gaze growing soft and dreamy.
“Yes, Evan,” she said. “He is magnificent.”
“About that,” I said. “He’s engaged.”
I waited for her eyes to sharpen and her strangely wild face to broadcast dismay, but it didn’t happen. Instead, she pursed her lips a little and nodded, as though the presence of another woman’s prior claim was nothing more than a sad inconvenience.
“He has a fiancée,” I said.
She shifted, moving her chin from one cupped hand to the other.
“It’s very unfortunate,” she said. “I wish things were easier. I know this will make your job more challenging.”
“I’m not really worried about my job,” I said.
“You’re worried about the other girl,” Lily said. “Yes. I’m trying not to feel too bad for her. She’ll be happier in the long run, you know. Evan can’t possibly be her true love. He’s mine, and we each only get one. But of course you know that.”
Her voice lilted, each word falling on a new note like every sentence was a song.
As far as I was concerned, “true love” was mostly a figment of imagination, hormones, and choice. Anyone who thought differently had turned their brains over to cartoon fairy tales. But no self-respecting godmother could say that.
Especially not a godmother who’d stopped talking to her best friend over a guy.
“How sure are you that he’s your ‘true love?’” I said instead.
She sighed. A mosquito hummed around her face and she waved it dreamily off like it was a butterfly.
“Completely sure. I just know,” she said. “I looked into his eyes and I saw forever in them, laid out like a path designed for two people to walk side by side.”
A gagging noise made its way out of my throat and I turned it into a cough. Her face was so earnest that I wanted to laugh just to dissipate the uncomfortable itch that had taken root in my stomach.
“No kidding,” I said.
“It’s the most remarkable thing,” she said. “And once you’ve seen it, you know. There will never be another choice for you.”
She sighed and her arm dropped to the sandy ground, her head falling with it to rest as though her arm were a pillow.
“He’s so beautiful, faerie godmother.”
“Olivia,” I said.
“And you’re going to make him mine,” she said, jumping back up.
Her eyes glittered. I couldn’t tell if it was enthusiasm or insanity looking out.
I held up a hand.
“I can’t actually make anyone yours,” I said. “I’m forbidden from using love potions or manipulating people like that.”
This was a flat-out lie. Love potions just took a lot of paperwork, and I wasn’t about to w
aste them on a girl whose “true love” already had a fiancée—and whose dad would make my life a living hell if I let his daughter throw her life away on some tailless dude.
Lily reached out and touched my wrist. Her skin was wet and cool.
“Evan and I don’t need anything like that,” she said. “All I need is legs. He thinks I’m training for a swimming contest, but even love can’t blind him forever to the fact that he only sees me in the water. Oh, and I need a phone number. He keeps asking for my number so he can ‘text’ me, but I don’t know what that means.”
And this was supposed to be the foundation for a healthy relationship.
“You have to help me,” Lily said.
She squeezed my arm, and her green eyes were wide and earnest.
“I can’t let him marry her,” she said. “I can’t let him marry another woman. He doesn’t realize what we could have. He doesn’t understand how much I care about him. If he marries her, I’ve lost him forever.”
Tears rose up and pooled in the corners of her wide eyes, hovering at the edges and threatening to fall. She looked so much sadder than anyone should have been able to look over something so unreasonable.
“I can’t think about them together,” she said.
With no warning, my throat closed up. I swallowed, hard, and pushed back the thought of Imogen and Lucas.
I saw them together every time I closed my eyes. I kept picturing her holding his hand, talking about his day, kissing him—doing all the things I’d meant to do. I’d been assuming Lily was just a melodramatic mermaid. But maybe she was just another girl whose guy didn’t realize she existed.
Maybe the Oracle was right. Was it so impossible that Lily and Evan were meant to be together? It wasn’t like I knew enough about godparenting to say. After all, the success of my last case had been a fluke.
“I’m not really a fairy godmother,” I said. It seemed important that she knew this. “I’m just working this job so I can pay for college.”
Her confused frown shouldn’t have surprised me. Mermaids didn’t age the way the rest of us did. They looked perpetually seventeen for most of their adult lives, and “higher education” was mostly theoretical down where kelp farming, sea witchery, singing sailors to their deaths, and floating around aimlessly were the major occupations.
“Are you filling in for someone?” she said finally. “I was told you were my godmother.”
“I am your godmother,” I said. “But I’m an intern.”
She didn’t seem to know what this meant, either. Getting her on land was going to be more than a matter of legs. She needed a full crash course in humanity.
“An intern is someone who works to get experience,” I said. “It means I don’t have a lot of experience yet. To be honest, I probably never will. I’m not making this a career or anything.”
Her shimmering tail spasmed like she was trying to decide whether to swim away or not.
“I’m going to try to help you,” I said.
I looked past her at the water glittering in the morning light.
“Can I be honest with you?”
“Please do,” Lily said. “Honesty is a good foundation for a partnership like ours.”
“I think this is a bad idea,” I said. “Like, a really bad idea. It’s wrong to try to steal someone away when they’re already with someone who cares about them.”
Imogen flitted across my thoughts and the back of my neck flushed hot.
“But I’ve been told by someone who knows about these things that you’re supposed to have this chance,” I said. “And in my last case, my client knew what was best for her, so maybe that’s true for you.”
“It is,” Lily said.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I think you’re doing the wrong thing. But I also think it’s your right to try. So I’m going to do my best to give you and Evan a chance, and what you guys do with that chance is up to you.”
What would have happened if Lucas and I had tried? If I’d been the one to thoughtlessly invite him over right off instead of being a real friend and respecting his space, would I be exploring the city with him right now instead of sitting on the banks of a river, talking to a lovesick mermaid?
“A chance is all we need,” Lily said.
She pressed her hands firmly on the ground and pressed herself up, scooting until she sat in the shallows with her tail twitching in the water like an anxious cat’s.
“He’s my soulmate. I know he’ll choose me.”
This mermaid was willing to grow legs and leave her whole world behind for her human—maybe that was a better love than the one he had now. The thought still made my stomach churn.
I drew my knees to my chin and watched her. “You’re going to have to give me a while to figure this out,” I said. “There are some people who really don’t want me to make you human.”
“My father,” she said. “He’s objected since the beginning.”
“And my boss,” I said. “Who your dad’s been talking to.”
“So the world is against me,” she said.
I couldn’t tell whether she thought of this as a hardship or an interesting challenge. I sighed.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Everyone except the Oracle. She’s in charge of Stories around here, and that’s why I’m still talking to you.”
“Then please move as quickly as you can,” Lily said. “Every day away from him is a day closer to losing him. That can’t happen.”
Unfortunately, it could. It was one of the main ways a Little Mermaid trope ended. But I wrapped my arms around my knees and clutched them to me, thinking hard.
The legs were the problem.
“How much money do you have?”
She tucked a tiny shell-studded braid behind her ear. “Not much,” she said. “I had to use my own coins for this, you understand. I’ve already given Wishes Fulfilled almost everything I had.” Her delicate eyebrows drew together. “There aren’t extra fees, are there?”
“The problem is, you need legs,” I said. “And legs are going to be expensive. We have to hire consultants for transformations this major, and transformation specialists can pretty much charge whatever they want.”
Her face fell. Her bottom lip trembled, and I held out a hand, trying to will her tears to stay in her eyes.
Lorinda would never sign off on using company funds. And King Pacifica would never hand over the kind of gold we needed.
“I think I have an idea,” I said. “It has to wait till this weekend, though. Can you meet me in Newport on Saturday?”
She leaned forward. “I can do anything.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, making me jump. I shifted to get it out.
“Sorry—this might be my boss,” I said.
Tabitha had hinted she might need me to run some errands in town before I came into the office later this morning. But it wasn’t Tabitha.
Imogen: Can we talk?
I took a long, steadying breath before replying.
Olivia: Are you still with Lucas?
Only a few seconds passed while I watched the darkened screen of my phone. And then the light went on and the phone buzzed again.
Imogen: I’m really stressed right now and he helps me. Can we please talk in person?
That was a yes. And, once again, it was all about her.
I stared at the phone until the words swam in front of my eyes before clicking the screen off.
I didn’t want to talk to her.
I wanted to swear at her.
I wanted to scream at her.
I wanted to say every horrible thing I could think of, and then I wanted to repeat each of them slowly, just so I could be sure she got the message.
Cruel words should have come easily. I’d lived with my dad long enough to learn them all. But Imogen had already screwed me over enough this week. She didn’t get to turn me into Reginald Feye, too.
I turned back to Lily, who stared at me with breathless anticipation. I swall
owed hard. My eyes prickled again, but I blinked the feeling back before Lily could notice anything was wrong.
"Good,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Because this could get a little tricky.”
Chapter Eleven
A few years back, my parents had noticed I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the Glimmering world as they thought I should be, and had enrolled me in a Magical Enrichment Program for Sublunary Youth. The whole thing had been a summer-long headache, and I’d been convinced I’d never get anything out of it.
It was nice to be proved wrong.
Daniel and I flew to Newport on an old magic carpet that had spent the last few years rolled up in the corner of our attic. I didn’t mention the carpet or the destination to either of my parents. They still didn’t dare let me take the car to the other side of Portland without a responsible adult in the passenger seat. There was no way they’d be okay with my flying a magic carpet to the coast, and they’d be doubly not okay with my taking Daniel as my co-pilot.
Mom had threatened Daniel this morning with a whole list of chores if he didn’t stop “moping around the house like a ghost off its Prozac.” He’d decided helping me out was better than changing out of his black turtleneck and putting on a smile. And that was lucky, because the huge carpet steered a lot better with two people enchanting the way.
Now that we were safe inside the colorful coastal aquarium, he rocked back on his heels with his hands in his pockets.
“I’m headed to the octopus,” he said.
I waved, though he’d already darted off, a slim shadow ducking between happy tourist families. I turned back to the displays. I vaguely remembered the woman I needed to see from a Magical Enrichment Program field trip, but I had no idea how to reach her. I wasn’t sure where I’d find what I was looking for, only that I’d know it if I saw it.
That was the idea, anyway. That was the idea with a lot of things in our world, usually because the person giving directions was under the impression that everything Glimmering was somehow better and more thrilling if it was a surprise.