She dismissed my apology with a motion of her fingers. “Hardly important. This,” she pressed one ink-smudged finger to the file on her desk, “is much more pertinent than what was or was not on your resume.” Something about the way she said it, or the intensity in her expression, made the hairs on my neck and arms stand on end. “Tell me, Tessa. Have you noticed an uptick in unfortunate circumstances lately? Since you’ve gotten divorced, perhaps?”
I thought about all the kids’ parties I had worked that summer; the vomit, the pony poop; my mom and Bob; the accident my first day on the job. No wonder I felt overwhelmed. “Now that you mention it, yes. It’s like I pissed off…um, angered…some god of mischief or brownie or something.”
A smile flitted across Maysie’s face before she dipped her head to hide it. “Please, sit,” she said. “You’re making me nervous standing there. It’s been a long time since I heard anyone mention a brownie. Are you interested in folklore?”
I sat in the same ‘70s eggshell chair as before. Was it my imagination, or did it smell like mint and autumn rain? “I wouldn’t say ‘interested’ so much as ‘exposed to a lot as a kid.’” I smiled, remembering. “My mom used to drag us outside every spring to dance circles in the yard and every summer she helped us build a new fairy garden. She’s always loved the idea of magic.” Sadness covered me as surely as if it were a blanket on a cold day. “Probably because it helped her cope with a life she shouldn’t have been living.”
“What life should she have been living?” Her tone warmed, but I still detected that hint of calculation hidden inside.
I picked at a stray thread in my shirt. “She gave up playing Carnegie Hall for my dad. And all they did was fight.” Just like that, I was fifteen-year-old me, hearing the door slam as my dad left for the last time.
She handed me a tissue I didn’t even realize I needed. “And your stepfather?”
I dabbed at my eyes even as I rolled them. “He’s kind of awful. I have no idea what she sees in him.”
“But does your mother keep her fairy garden still?”
I thought about it, mentally poring over the yard, and frowned. “I don’t know. Guess I haven’t been outside much. Or paid attention.”
“And what about you? Did you keep one when you left home?”
My mind’s eye flashed on my little bonsai, the Japanese teapot house that went with it. I shook my head. “Not…no.” Hindsight was a real jerk sometimes.
Silence fell almost amiably between us, though I felt heavy with shame. After a minute or two, Maysie pushed back from her desk. “Well, life is often in the perspective. We see what we want to see.” I was getting the uncanny feeling that she could read me like a book. “Have there been random happenstances that could be called, mm, not lucky, perhaps, but not unpleasant?”
I immediately thought of Nicky and our impending date, and blushed. “Well, there’s this.” I gestured to the office around me, meaning the whole building and my job status. “And Mueller is surprisingly…” I searched for the right word.
“Not entirely unpleasant?” Her eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Yeah. He should be, and yet…” My brow furrowed as I considered my unlikely, burgeoning friendship with the somewhat pervy tech. I’d only been here four days, counting today, and it felt like I had known him for years.
“Anything else? Not related to the factory?”
There was the little old man and his rose, but after my mom’s reaction and having Cindy’s file sitting on the desk between us, I didn’t want to mention him to Maysie. “I ran into my high school crush a week ago. We’re getting coffee tomorrow.”
She fiddled with a thin gold chain that had been hiding under the pearls. “Would you say that’s enough to counterbalance all the misfortune?”
I flashed on my friends. The gossips in the grocery store. The magazines filled with Kyle’s laughing face. Cinnamon-rub hand prints on my mom’s butt. “Nope. But it’s a start.” Stay positive, that’s what my mom always said.
Maysie watched me for a long moment, a strange expression settling into the matronly wrinkles of her face. Finally, she pulled a key from the end of the tiny chain and used it to open a drawer in her desk. “I leave on a trip tonight. It’s supposed to be quick, but I may not return for quite some time. In that event, I want you to have free rein to do as needed.” She rifled through folders and papers, searching for something specific. “Chain of command being what it is here, Robin will be in charge of executive decisions as well as directly overseeing you. She gets a bit, we’ll say, excitable in those instances, and I want you to be able to use your own judgement for the best way to handle things.”
“Handle things?” I asked, trying to imagine any situation so complicated or troubling that Robin and I would butt heads over it.
“Oh, you know. Things like this.” She wiggled her fingers over the file on her desk without sitting up. “Plus, it will give you security access in case of emergency.”
“Access to what?” Rising panic even drowned out my stomach gremlin.
“Whatever might need to be accessed in an emergency.” She withdrew a piece of paper with a flourish and laid it on her desk. The print on it was so tiny, I couldn’t read any of it at a glance. “We call it emergency preparedness because we want to be prepared for the unforeseen.” She smiled at me, returning the kindly grandmother in place of the businesswoman. “Mostly, I just need to have someone who can keep Robin in check.”
“But I haven’t even been here a whole week. There has to be someone more qualified. Someone who knows the factory.” My scalp prickled with the force of my anxiety, flaming my cheeks and making my hands tremble. All I wanted was a nice, quiet job that paid the bills, not responsibility. Certainly not a week after starting!
Maysie pulled a long, pink quill from a different drawer, popped the top on an ink well, and began to fill out the blanks on the paper. “Don’t worry, Tessa. I’m not leaving you in charge. And even were I, you would have a highly skilled team at your disposal.” She glanced at me over her glasses with a smile. “But I’m not. This is simply a contract identifying you as a free agent, outside the, eh, company hierarchy. It will give you the freedom to work without Robin constantly giving you orders that make about as much sense as a mouse in a bathing suit. And if, in the course of your regular duties, you happen to hear her stepping on toes or perhaps sounding a little dictatorial, you can offer her gentle advice on how she might better handle the situation. I believe I mentioned most of the girls here are young. Youth sometimes has difficulty with perspective. That’s all.” She signed her name at the bottom of the document like a slow dance across the page, then spun it toward me and held out the quill. “Sign on the empty line. Full birth name, please.”
The quill felt cool in my fingers and light as…well, as the feather it was. When I hesitantly dipped it into the ink, a shock of warmth spread up my hand. I almost dropped it, fumbling and splattering ink over the paper. “Sorry…” I said, dabbing at it with the tissue in my hand. The tissue came away blue. Not the usual blue of pen ink, but a pale shade of periwinkle.
“It’ll dry,” Maysie reassured me, then waggled a finger at the line. “Go ahead and sign.”
I looked over the long lines of tiny print. “Shouldn’t I read…?” Except without a magnifying glass, I didn’t know how that was going to happen.
“It’s a standard contract. This section describes your relationship to the company. This one describes your duties in vague terms, mostly a statement that you are an independent contractor performing a task described in your original paperwork. This is the at-will clause, stating that you have the right to terminate your contract so long as you follow the protocol outlined here, and that I may end our relationship for a list of specific reasons. I will provide you a copy that you can peruse at your leisure, in case such a circumstance ever arises. I don’t want you signing under duress.” Her laughter was a gentle thing, chimes in a summer breeze.
I let
out an uncomfortable laugh in return, mostly not to seem rude, then took a deep breath and set the tip of the quill to the page. A warning bell went off in my brain. Intuition again, insisting I get more information before I signed anything. Again, I ignored it.
As soon as the scritch of the quill against the heavy paper fell silent and I lifted my hand away, my ink signature flared a vibrant silver bright enough to make me blink. When it faded, my name seemed to glow a faint purple.
“Fairy ink,” Maysie said, taking the quill and paper back from my slack hands. “One of our best sellers.” She smiled reassuringly as she rolled the paper into a scroll and tied it off with a bit of ribbon from a throw pillow on the couch behind her. Then she dropped the scroll into a drawer in a cabinet I hadn’t noticed before. Which seemed pretty weird, because it wasn’t exactly small, and it was bright orange.
“Is that new?” I asked, my brain growing fuzzier.
She didn’t look at me as she said, “It’s a new world, Tereza Gabriella Hargitay MacPherson. You just need to open your eyes.”
I got the impression of movement, but I didn’t see what it was because the floor lamps suddenly blazed blindingly. All I could see were the sparkles and stars swimming in front of my eyes in a variety of exciting colors. I didn’t even have names for a few of them. And then the whole world seemed to turn to gold and a sensation of warmth swept over me, like sinking into a hot bath or being enveloped in a loving parent’s arms. A single chime sounded, sending shivers of cool delight rippling outward from my chest. The sound rang out loud, clear, and unwavering for what felt like an hour before it broke into a million pieces, each piece a softer, quieter chime that seemed to cascade around me.
It must have lulled me to sleep, because the next thing I knew I was waking up in the cool, dark interior of the file room, a post-it note from one of the files stuck to my cheek. One week in, and I’d fallen asleep on the job. Great going, me.
I finished up the work day as if in a dream, floating instead of walking, and saw no one else before I got in my car and drove home. I slept the sleep of the dead that night, and dreamed of vivid colors and beautiful musical notes and dancing, twirling slippers.
I awoke to my mom shouting, “Tessa! Are you up? You’re going to be late for your date!”
My date.
It took a second to sink in, and then I bolted out of bed and flew through the motions of date prep—shower, hair, makeup. My dress felt light and pretty in a way I’d forgotten they could as I skipped out the door. I felt the pressure of the gas pedal beneath my cute wedge sandals with a strange keenness as I drove. Same with the smoothness of the steering wheel under my fingertips.
And then an animal darted in front of me on the road and my body flipped into autopilot, slamming on the brakes as hard as I could. I felt the SUV rock around me, the tires squealing as I lost control of the vehicle’s bulk.
Please don’t roll. Please don’t roll…
Chapter 11
I stared at the enormous trunk of an ancient pine tree looming a mere inch in front of my mom’s car, gasping for breath. Part of my brain - the part that talked with my dad’s voice - insisted I get out and check for damage. That was the responsible thing to do. The rest of me, though, couldn’t even conceive of opening the car door. Partially because I still felt like I was dreaming, and partially because I didn’t want to leave myself open to attack.
No dog was as big as that animal had been. I didn’t think even wolves grew to that size. Its head had been well above the hood, its body longer than the car was wide. That last part might have been an illusion, as fast it was moving and with its tail blurring with its body. Still, anything that big could take me down and eat me before I could even brace for attack. Since I was pretty sure there were no lanky bears dashing across the road in Trapperstown, I closed my eyes and forced myself to finish waking up.
Hands shaking - hell, whole body shaking like my own, personal earthquake - I maneuvered back onto the road and finished the short drive to town. In the parking lot, I rested my head on the steering wheel for a few moments while my heart and breathing slowed, and until the desperate urge to sob dissipated. Then I got out on wobbly legs and did what any self-respecting woman would do: I went on my date as if nothing had happened, so matter how insecure I felt.
Of course, that facade crumbled the second Nicky saw me. His bright smile faded instantly and he stood up from the table he had claimed in a quiet back corner of Peppy Poppy’s. “Tessa,” he said, his voice full of concern as he took my hands. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, grimacing at the mild hysteria tainting my voice. “I almost hit a dog and then almost hit a tree. I’m fine, though. Car’s fine, too. I’m just shaky.”
“Of course you are.” He peered into my eyes, felt my pulse. “Though it feels like you’re surprisingly calm about it.” He smiled as he said it, teasing me.
I couldn’t find the calm to tease him back. Truth found its way to the surface, instead. “I’ve been sitting in the parking lot for ten minutes to calm down.”
He pulled a chair out and waited for me to drop into it gracelessly before he sat in his own. “You could’ve called and canceled. I would have understood. In fact, if you want to go home now, I won’t be offended.”
“No!” I blurted, the fight-or-flight response still prickling my system making my voice louder than intended.
He lifted his hands in a defensive gesture and grinned. “Hey now, just trying to help.”
“Sorry.” I made myself laugh, more as a way to release tension than anything. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week and I’d hate to skip it just because I wasn’t paying enough attention to the road.”
Nicky quirked that half-smile that made my heart quicken. “Me, too.”
Delight chased the cold threat of death out of my insides. I got lost in it, forgetting it was my turn to talk.
After a minute, he said, “So, coffee is probably not a good idea. How about some iced tea? Poppy’s trying out this blackberry version that’s seriously good.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling. He could have suggested the real-world equivalent of a Nuka-Cola Quantum from my favorite video game and I wouldn’t have objected. I made a mental note to keep the geek references to a minimum, at least for the first few dates. Dates. I was on a date! With Nicky. I bowed my head to hide the ridiculous, gleeful smile I was sure was ready to break out across my face. Or the song possibly about to erupt from me. It felt that flamboyant.
“Be right back.” He got up again to fetch our drinks. “And don’t even think you’re gonna pay.” He grinned, and I watched the way his muscles moved beneath his polo shirt as he walked away.
And then my eye caught sight of a baby at the to-go end of the counter. Not just any baby. Ally’s daughter. On Ally’s hip. My ex-best-friend and I made eye contact across the cafe, much to what appeared to be both of our dismay. She frowned, glanced at Nicky down the counter from her, and then seemed to come to a decision. That familiar softening of her face as she prepared for battle masked her emotions after that. I threw my own walls up as she abandoned her place in line to confront me.
Her voice cold, she whispered, “You’re here with Nicky?”
“Obviously,” I snarked, layering on the condescension. An instant of guilt flashed through me but I shoved it aside. I was in the right this time; she was the one who had been gossiping behind my back.
I watched with satisfaction as her sleek nose flared with irritation. “You aren’t what he’s looking for, Tess. Nicky’s…” Her lips pressed together, as if she were really trying not to let the words out. I knew her better than to believe it. “You both have a lot of badness in your pasts. Do you really want to make his worse with, you know, everything?” She waved at a People magazine someone had left at the next table over, where my ex was kissing the most beautiful woman in the world.
“That has nothing to do with me,” I said, my stomach gremlin searing any remaining butterflies
to dust with its stoking wrath.
She dropped her voice to an unconvincing whisper. “But all the things you did to Kyle, the way you treated him. Nicky deserves better than that. He needs better than that.”
Shock slammed through me for the second time today, this time feeling like I’d actually hit the tree. Somehow, I still expected better from her. “Look, whatever you’ve read—”
“Nicky has a lot of secrets, too. He’s a very closed person. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Either of you.” She tacked the last part on as if I was supposed to believe she cared about my feelings at all.
Nicky came back to the table before I had a chance to respond. “Alyssa,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“I was just saying hi to Tessa. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. Anyway, it’s good to see you, Tess. Call me sometime and we can finally get that manicure.” She was gone before I had a chance to claw my way through the magma flow of my anger to respond.
After a minute or two of arranging the cups and the sugar packets and the table, Nicky asked, “You okay?”
I forced myself to smile. “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that. Doesn’t bode well for us.”
“You look like she punched you in the gut,” he said, concern furrowing his handsome brow. “She likes stirring up trouble, you know. She always did. I think it makes her feel important.” When I didn’t respond, he leaned into the table, shortening the distance between us. “Let me guess, she told you we’re all wrong for each other? That we’ll, what, crash and burn together?”
“She’s done this before? Shown up out unexpectedly to dump weird warnings on you?” I wasn’t sure if I was incredulous or just really pissed off.
“Exes.” He shrugged. “What’re you gonna do?”
That was as much of a sucker punch as Ally had given me. “Wait, you guys dated?”
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