Fairy Godmothers, Inc.

by Jenniffer Wardell

  Jon dropped his head back to stare up at the ceiling, drained of all the energy necessary to keep it upright. Just when he thought he knew how to anticipate anything that could possibly go wrong. “Seriously, Rupert, I couldn’t tell you.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “You’ll have to find someone else to ask.”

  Tomorrow night was definitely too far away.

  At the sound of the door creaking open Jon dragged himself upright, just in time to see a thin, graying head with a casual-wear crown perched rather haphazardly on top. The man tensed when he saw how occupied the room was.

  “Welcome, Your Majesty,” Lawton said casually, moving aside a little in case he had to make room for the king. “Apparently, we’re throwing a party.”

  The king surveyed the three of them with weary resignation, then eyed his elder son as if afraid the prince was going to suddenly leap up and bite somebody. Instead, Rupert merely lifted his chin and scooted around so he faced as far away from his father as he could possibly get, the exact same way he’d pouted when he was eight and the cook had refused to allow him to recreate a jousting match in the kitchen.

  The king looked like he wanted to bolt. When he turned to look at his youngest son, the question clear in his eyes, Jon sighed. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you try to sort any of it out.” When the king sagged a little, relieved, Jon pointed behind him. “If I remember correctly, Father, your current study is downstairs. Three wings over and two doors to the right.”

  The king nodded, clearly ready to slip out much more quietly than he’d slipped in. Before he could completely escape, however, Jon lifted a hand to show he wasn’t quite finished. “And I promise not to give Mother the same set of directions . . .”

  The king froze.

  “. . . if you convince Madame Stewart to throw one more fancy dress ball within the next two weeks.” Jon recognized he was being cruel—there had been plenty of times when he’d been tempted to spend the day hiding from his mother—but it was clear Rupert wasn’t going to be much help.

  The king hesitated a moment, horrified, then gave a single resigned sigh. A second later, he nodded.

  Jon pushed himself to his feet. “You should probably change studies again, though, within the next week or so. I think she’s started bribing the maids.”

  The king nodded again, mouthing a silent “thank you” to Jon. Then, after a long hesitation, he glanced back down at Rupert. “He hasn’t said anything about a ‘happy place’ yet, has he?”

  Jon shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Good.” Then he was gone.

  After the king left, Rupert scooted back around to face Jon. “We’re really not very good at opening the lines of communication in this family, are we?”

  Lawton, showing unusual sensitivity to Jon’s needs, walked over and smacked Rupert upside the head.

  SEVEN

  Impossibilities

  “Of all the ridiculous . . .” Making a frustrated noise at the transparent, squishy sock-thing that now covered her foot, Kate waved her wand and turned it back into the sensible slip-on she’d worn into work this morning. Turning back to her magic mirror, she double-checked that, yes, she had followed the spell as it was written. Either the original Fairy Godmother had mistyped when she’d added it to the system, or Research and Development was thinking of extremely strange things to do with their days off.

  Moving on to the next spell, Kate glared, as if she could intimidate it into doing what she wanted. Then, preparing herself for the worst, she carefully rotated the wand three times counterclockwise before bouncing it twice. The magic swirled, starting the transformation.

  “Hey, wha—”

  Kate flipped the mirror facedown as she shoved both wand and transforming shoe under the conference table. She looked up, however, only to see Ned’s sheepish expression as he held up his brown lunch bag.

  “Sorry,” he said, adjusting the very large Fairy Godmothers, Inc. manual he’d tucked under his other arm. There was no need for the apology, as she’d been the one to tell him about the room in the first place, but over the last several months she’d realized that it was his default reaction. “It’s the only place I can eat where Bubbles never seems to find me.”

  Kate sighed, pulling her wand out from under the table and setting it beside the mirror. “Why do you think I’m here?” Turning the mirror upright again, she gestured for Ned to sit down. “Office rumor has it that one of the managers before Bubbles used to meet the secretaries back here, and hired someone to put a spell on the room so his wife wouldn’t catch them. About half the staff know the secret by now, but we all have a vested interest in making sure none of the current management team find out.”

  Ned’s eyes circled the room, a dreamy expression on his face. “Now that’s some magic I’d like to get my hands on,” he said, dropping into a chair and setting both his sack and book on the table in front of him. He gestured toward the laptop as he pulled out a sandwich. “Doing some research for an assignment?”

  “Yeah, I—” Jerking upright as she realized she’d never checked on her latest attempt at an artificial glass slipper, Kate stuck her head under the table. Confirming that the spell had, indeed, gone wrong once again, she straightened with a muttered insult about systems administrators. Ned, thankfully, never minded when she said things she shouldn’t. “Wouldn’t know a glass slipper if they fell down a set of stairs in one . . .”

  Eyes wide, Ned stared at Kate and then ducked his head under the table to look at Kate’s shoe. When he lifted his head again, there was a confused expression on his face. “When did the company get a spell for furry slippers? Are they a new part of the Sleeping Beauty Special or something?”

  “No—they’re stuck in the middle of the glass slipper section of the spell database.” She shook her head. “Though how someone could get fur and glass confused is completely beyond me.”

  “You have to work with glass slippers on this one? Ouch.” Ned took a bite of his sandwich, discreetly elbowing the manual a little further out of the way from himself. “The rest of it’s got to be going better, though. Right?”

  Kate rubbed a hand across her eyes, attention fleeing a million miles away. Jon . . . there was no way he was going to be there tomorrow night. He’d forget, or he’d get too busy, which meant there was absolutely no reason for her to be suddenly thinking about his smile. Or his deep, steady gray eyes. Or working out what she might possibly say on the off chance that he was standing there.

  “Kate?”

  Yanking her brain back to reality, she looked up and shot Ned a tired smile. “Sorry—I was up kind of late last night. As for the rest of the case . . .” She smiled a little more at the sympathetic expression on Ned’s face. “Let’s just say it’s been interesting.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Interesting as in ‘steam would come out of Bubbles’ ears if she ever found out about it’?”

  That was as good a way as any to describe it. “Oh, once I got past the man-eating dog it was really more strange than bad. As long as I keep Rellie away from the sparkles and don’t try to follow her logic too closely, she’s actually an okay person to be around.” Kate paused as a thought hit her. “Actually, she’d probably really like it if she could wear furry slippers to the ball.”

  Ned’s eyebrows raised a little in interest. “Really?”

  “Really.” Kate eyed the younger man’s sandwich, realizing absently that she hadn’t eaten lunch herself yet. Hopefully, the vending machines were slightly less scary than they had been last week. “Very fond of rabbits, that girl.”

  Ned thought about it for a moment. “I like rabbits.”

  Hearing something dangerous in the younger man’s voice, Kate turned her attention back to Ned. “Ned,” she said carefully. “It’s really not a good idea to go there.”

  Ned looked up quickly, appearing defensive enough for Kate to know she hadn’t totally missed the target. She knew he sometimes snuck a peek at her files, and Rellie’s had
been sitting out on her desk this morning. “I didn’t say anything!”

  “I know,” Kate said kindly. “I’m just reminding you that there’s still a Prince Charming in her immediate future.”

  “I know, I know,” Ned muttered, slouching a little in his chair as he took another bite of his sandwich. “It’s not like I can dance, anyway.”

  Dancing was another thing Kate was having a hard time not thinking about. There was the chance, of course, that Jon could miraculously produce the palace ball that she so desperately needed, but it seemed far more likely that she and Rellie would end up having to crash one of those fancy dress dinners. Maybe Rellie could make her entrance about the same time as the flaming dessert.

  Kate shook her head, cutting the picture off. She’d come up with something, then rewrite it into a much more approved version when it came time to put the report together. After this long as a Fairy Godmother, she’d gotten pretty good at it.

  Still, it was probably a good idea to move on to a safer topic. “So,” she said deliberately, waiting until Ned looked up again. “How has your morning been?”

  Ned sighed, but at least the moroseness had left his face. “The employee complaints folder is crammed full again, mostly with stuff about company uniforms, but the black hole Bubbles usually dumps them into has broken down for the second time this week. Which means, of course, that she made me sort through them while I was waiting for the repairman.” He made a face. “Then, after it was fixed, she just dumped them into the black hole anyway.”

  Kate was sympathetic. She remembered her own early days at the company and wished she could do more to help him out. As it was, a sympathetic ear and a few tricks like the secret conference room were all she had to offer. “It’ll be easier when things aren’t quite so busy. Then I, or one of the other Fairy Godmothers, will have enough time to let you actually come out and shadow us like you’re supposed to, and you’ll be far enough away from Bubbles she won’t be able to give you quite so much busy work.”

  “That would be nice.” Still, Ned sighed again. “At least she hasn’t hunted down some talking mice for me to babys—”

  Before he could finish the sentence the conference room door swung open, making them both jump and Kate grab for her mirror. When the Fairy Godmother on the other side turned out to be Chloe rather than Bubbles, both Kate and Ned relaxed a little.

  Until, of course, they heard what she had to say. “They’ve finally brought Thea in,” she whispered, looking slightly nauseated. “She’s . . . It’s . . .” She stopped, shaking her head. “I can’t say it. You just have to come see.” Then she ducked out of the room.

  Ned’s eyes widened as he and Kate quickly gathered their things and stood. “What happened to Thea?”

  Kate tried to deny the dread that was already working its way down to the pit of her stomach. “Word is that she had her client’s final ball scheduled for last night, but she didn’t show up to work this morning,” she said quietly. “Her client called the office to complain about an hour ago.”

  Ned hesitated, eyes absolutely huge by this point. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  Kate’s brow lowered. “I have no idea.” She started to lead the way out, when Ned stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Uh, Kate?”

  She glanced back at him, half an ear listening for anything she could hear from the main office. “What?”

  He pointed down, a mildly apologetic expression on his face. “Your shoe.”

  “My . . . Oh, no.” Muttering insults at herself for not taking care of it earlier, Kate stepped back and let Ned go ahead of her before pointing her wand at the offending fur slipper. The right wave started its transformation back to her own, much more familiar shoe, and she stayed behind a few seconds to let it finish before pushing the door open and stepping into the hallway.

  Of course, inappropriate footwear was clearly going to be the least of her worries over the next few minutes.

  When Kate caught sight of the crowd forming around the tightly closed doorway to Bubbles’ office, her mind immediately started coming up with worst-case scenarios. Everyone was utterly silent; the crowd’s attention focused on one of the Fairy Godmother desks. Thea was short enough that several rows of heads blocked whatever she was doing, but Kate could hear her singing softly to herself.

  After a moment, Kate realized she was hearing a love song.

  Horrified, she tapped Glenda on the shoulder. One of the most experienced Fairy Godmothers in the office, Glenda had taken Kate under her wing when she was first starting out. “What happened to her?” Kate whispered, terribly afraid she already knew. They all made macabre jokes about the variety of disasters that could happen if something went wrong with the True Love, and Kate knew that one or two of the other Fairy Godmothers disliked it enough to lie about it on their reports the same way she did. But this . . .

  When Glenda turned to look at Kate, the shock and pity were evident in her eyes. “The poor girl,” she whispered, helplessly shaking her head. “The poor, poor girl.”

  Kate’s heart sank. “Oh, no.”

  Glenda nodded. “Her client insisted that her skirt be even wider than the princess’s, then promptly proceeded to knock over the prince and practically everyone else at the ball with it. At one point Thea didn’t get out of the way fast enough, and when she fell against the chair her True Love vial must have cracked and spilled onto the seat. She didn’t notice, and when she set her hand down in the same spot while trying to get up . . .”

  Before the sentence was finished Kate started pushing her way through the crowd, needing to see the full extent of the damage for herself. True Love was supposed to be used only in the tiniest amounts, small enough that the bottles came equipped with spray nozzles to minimize the dosage. The moment the victims’ hands touched and their eyes got soft and dreamy, the lid went back on and the potion wasn’t used again.

  Here, though . . .

  Thea was huddled on the edge of one of the desks, tears streaming down her cheeks and arms wrapped tightly around an elaborately coiled metal chair. The song, thankfully, had faded into humming, wavering and weak like someone trying desperately to comfort herself. Her wings, which were office-issued since she hadn’t been born with a set of her own, tilted awkwardly as if she’d slept in them the night before.

  In her eyes, total panic glinted just beneath the swamp of romantic fog.

  Kate closed her eyes, feeling the anger she usually tried so hard to hold back rise up in her throat. The True Love hanging on the company-issued chain around her neck burned like a tiny brand—employees always had to have theirs on, in case a manager noticed—and for a moment she hated herself and everyone around her for being helpless . She moved forward again, determined to do what little she could and at least get the girl someplace more private.

  The sudden sound of a door slamming open cut through the crowd, and heads turned to see Bubbles grimly stalking out of her office. As she stormed by, Kate caught sight of a fabric star pinched between two of her fingers. Bubbles peeled off the paper backing and jammed the star onto the end of her wand, all the while continuing to walk through the crush of people as if none of them were there. Obligingly, they stepped aside to let her through, and within moments Bubbles was standing in front of the huddled Thea. She grabbed the girl by the chin, jerking her head up and over so the side of her neck was exposed. With her other hand, Bubbles shook the wand until a fine pink mist formed around the star, then slapped it against the bare skin on the side of Thea’s neck.

  For a small eternity, nothing happened.

  Then, finally, the clarity returned to Thea’s eyes. She flung the chair as far away from her as she could, smashing it into a desk and sending several folders and a stack of paperwork flying. She proceeded to drop to her knees on the floor and burst into tears. One or two of the other Fairy Godmothers tensed, warily eyeing Bubbles as they tried to decide whether or not to rush to Thea’s side to offer comfort.


  Bubbles, for her part, simply looked down at Thea with a stony expression. “You’re fired,” she said flatly, then lifted her head to lock gazes, one by one, with each and every Fairy Godmother she could see. “If you people aren’t competent enough to do the job that the company has put so much time and money into training you to do, leave now. I will not tolerate any more embarrassment.”

  She turned on her heel and stalked back to her office, yanking the star off her wand and crumpling it into a ball on the way. Only when the door slammed shut did everyone finally start to move, heading either toward the still-crying Thea or far enough away to discuss the episode in peace.

  Before Kate could go anywhere, she felt a hand grab her arm. She turned around to find Ned’s panicked eyes staring back into hers, his grip tightening just a little more than was comfortable. “Kate?” he asked hesitantly, a single word that Kate knew contained several remarkably hard-to-answer questions.

  She gently put her other hand on top of his, searching for something comforting to say that wouldn’t sound like a complete lie. Nothing came, however, and all she could do was wish there was a big enough difference in their ages to make it safe for her to hug him. “Try not to think about it,” she told Ned quietly, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “Most of the time people are so cheerfully dazed they don’t even notice that something made them that way.”

  “I would notice.” Desperation gave Ned’s words a surprising amount of volume, and Kate looked around to make sure they hadn’t caught anyone’s attention before pulling him into a relatively private corner.

  “Take a deep breath,” Kate ordered, waiting until he had done so before continuing. “I didn’t bring it up before now because you haven’t even been assigned any cases yet, but you can do your job as a Fairy Godmother without ever having to use it.” Her voice was low enough no one else could overhear, and she kept a steadying grip on the hand that was holding her arm. “All you have to do is doctor your reports and make sure you get rid of the True Love you’re supposed to have used, and neither Bubbles nor anyone else will ever know that you’re not continuing on exactly like you were trained to do.”