One Good Wand

by Grace McGuiness

  I was early, and the only car in the lot, which was fine by me. Mueller wouldn’t be in for at least an hour and I had important things to do without being disturbed.

  First thing I did was double check that the explosive-carrying “receptionist” wasn’t on the job yet. Then I hacked his computer— where “hacked” meant “turned on,” since it didn’t even have a log-in password requirement. I left a time-off request in the appropriate time log, dating it a week previous, and then okayed it by entering it in the schedule. Somehow, I doubted anyone would notice one way or the other. With my butt covered - it wasn’t like Maysie was around to call me a liar - I opened up the address book. Empty. A frantic search of the desk found that empty, too. Apparently, the new receptionist wasn’t just low-tech, he was no-tech. Minus the explosives…

  Feeling defeated in my quest for something as simple as an address, I retreated to my file room where I located the post-2000 pile. When I found the one I wanted, I performed a minor breach of privacy and added a couple numbers to my phone. Then I headed down to Mueller’s office and waited. And waited. And waited. I waited so long, I started digging through the tool cabinet just to give myself something to do. Screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, everything I expected to find, including a heavy film of grime and oil that now covered my hands. I was practically buried to my elbows in the bottom drawer when he walked in.

  “Lose something?” he asked, not looking at me. He set a heavy tool belt on the desk. Only then did I realize the steady thrum of the machines had been playing their usual background song since I walked in. My brain was clearly not out of post-drunk-fog yet. Considering my head still pounded, I felt comfortable blaming it on the sweaty, flannel-clad man before me.

  “You keep all your broken tools?” I asked, pushing the mess of pointy objects back into their pen. One of them gleamed silver against the grime, but it was just a handle. Whatever tool it had been, the business end was long gone.

  He shrugged without turning around. “Broken and useless aren’t the same thing.” His words sent a shiver down my arms. Was Mueller some sort of philosophical genius in dude-bro clothes? “Speaking of which, did you hear the one about the priest, the prostitute, and the lumberjack?”

  Ignoring the question, I shifted the conversation back around to him. “Your car wasn’t in the lot.”

  “Parked in the back lot,” he said as he switched out a few tools from the belt.

  I leaned against the desk beside him, arms crossed. “Avoiding me?”

  “Giving you space.” The readiness of his answer told me he’d practiced. “In case you were embarrassed.”

  Uh oh. “Why would I be embarrassed?”

  “Most girls tend to be when they do what you did.”

  I had the distinct feeling I was walking into a trap, so I did the best thing I could think of. I mimicked him, shrugging and pretending I didn’t care. “Whatever I did, I blame you. You were the one who kidnapped me and took me to the bar. It’s on your head, not mine.” I winced, realizing I had used one of my off-limits-for-Mueller-conversation words, and braced for pervy impact.

  He ignored it. Mimicking me back, maybe. Or maybe to keep me on my toes, never sure where the gutter-brain would or wouldn’t go. Either way, he asked, “What is it with you and suits, anyway?”

  My brain filled with images of ripping off the poor ballroom dancer’s clothes with my teeth. I searched Mueller’s face for signs of actual bad behavior. Was he just being his usual self, or had I done something to regret? This close up, he looked worse than I felt. Dark circles huddled beneath his eyes, enhancing his natural menacing scowl as he stared at the floor. The wildness in his beard seemed more unruly than usual.

  Wait.

  I reached out and tugged on the coarse hairs to make sure. “How the hell did you grow that?”

  “Well, see, all boys go through this awkward time when they become men…”

  I smacked him. “Seriously. That wasn’t there at the bar last night.”

  “As awesome as it would be to be able to grow such a kick-ass beard overnight, I’m not quite that good. With growing hair, at least.” He grinned, but he still wouldn’t look at me. What the hell happened last night?

  I focused on the less embarrassing puzzle in front of me. “You had stubble before. It was scruffy but not this I-sit-in-my-cabin-making-letter-bombs thing.” I ran my hands through my hair before using them as a forehead perch and sitting back onto his desk. “What the hell is happening to me?” Because I could remember scruffy Mueller driving down that deserted rural road. But I also had vague memories of bearded Mueller sipping his beer at the bar, his eyes more than a little haunted as he watched the dancers glide across the stage.

  “Hey, hangovers suck.” He took up the spot next to me, mirroring me except with his arms crossed over his chest. “And booze can mess with your head.”

  I peered at him from behind my hair, and with that screen between us, he finally looked back. It wasn’t my embarrassment that was the problem, I realized, and that was so much worse. I turned out the light on my stomach gremlin and let it burrow as deeply into its mountain of blankets as it could go. What had I told him? The source of my greatest shame? That thing I was perpetually afraid would steal my ability to ever be in a healthy relationship ever again? Or something simpler but no less mortifying, like how many years it had been since I’d bought new underwear? Some men, I might have been able to tell. Mueller was enigmatic enough normally that I had no way to gauge just how far down his discomfort went. It wasn’t super heartening that he couldn’t look at me straight on, though.

  “The magic!” I blurted as the answer hit me.

  “I said ‘booze,’ not ‘boobs.’”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Magic. As nice as booze is, it’s got nothing on the magic of boobs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Your beard, you overgrown teenager. Whatever spell changed the factory, it must be starting to affect me, too. That’s why I remember you without a beard, but with a beard, too.”

  “Somebody cast a spell to make my beard grow? Handy. Think they’d go for mutton chops next time?”

  “I’m serious, Mueller. This is a problem. If I forget the way things were, there won’t be anyone who can put them back.” I felt the truth of that statement like a comforting shroud settling around my chilled body.

  “You’re talking magic, Tessa. Spells and two realities. Od is pretty weird, but he’s hardly a flying monkey. A flying monkey would be better.”

  “Who said anything about the Wicked Witch of the West?”

  He tipped his head back to eyeball the ceiling as if he could see our boss through it. “I mean, don’t you think?”

  “Just because she’s scary and dresses in black doesn’t mean she cast the spell.”

  “Maybe not, but if what you said last night is true, the spell gave her the factory and a cushy new job. Sounds like a damn good motive to me. And that roster of people we found on her computer weren’t exactly starry-eyed philanthropists. Who else would have cast it?”

  He had a point. “So you believe me?”

  “That you’re a fairy godmother and our boss cast a spell that staged some kind of magical hostile takeover, made all the old employees vanish without a trace, and left me with luscious facial foliage?” His tone answered for him.

  I didn’t blame him. Hearing it out loud didn’t make it any crazier; it was already scraping the bottom of the sanity barrel. Still, I found myself unnervingly close to tears in response. “You’re right,” I croaked with the frog in my throat. “How pathetic is my life if this is what my brain considers plausible?” I buried my face in my hands, determined not to cry.

  “Hey,” he said, knocking my knee with his. “It doesn’t matter if I believe or not, right? Because I’m under the spell? So let’s figure out how to break the spell. And then one way or the other, you’ll know. Right?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s not like anyone handed me an instruction
manual or anything.”

  “Kiss.”

  “No thanks,” I answered automatically.

  Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “All the big fairy tales, they break spells with a kiss.”

  I eyed him from between my fingers. “Read a lot of fairy tales, do you?”

  “No. But I watch a lot of movies with hot chicks in them. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. They broke the spell with a prince’s kiss, right?” Somehow, the idea of Mueller having a quick-access brain bank of fairy tales seemed weirder than anything else he’d ever said. It must have shown on my face because he added, “I work at a frickin’ toy factory where we make fairy tale crap, for frick’s sake. Do you know how many women don’t want to date a guy who makes fairy dust and pink tiaras for a living? All of them. Believe me, if I could forget this shit, I would.”

  My hands rose in defense, palms out. “Woah there, big fella. I get it. Ix-nay on the easing-tay. Check.” I tapped my fingers on my thighs and tried hard not to see him as his dates must. I ended up with a mental picture of Mueller in a pink tutu with a wand in one hand and tossing fairy dust with the other. Despite my hangover and self-pitying angst, I laughed.

  “Yeah, yeah. Yuck it up.”

  I buried my amusement and got back to the more important problem. “So…a kiss. True love’s kiss, to be exact.”

  “Who’s your true love?”

  “Not mine. I’m not under the spell, remember?” Much better than the alternative answer: I don’t have one. “But you are…” I glanced up at him with a grin. Only a scowl greeted me.

  “Fairy dust. For a living.”

  “Right. So, who else is here that isn’t us or the person who cast the spell? Bakery ladies?”

  “All married. Though I suppose maybe not to their true loves…”

  I snorted. “Somehow, I doubt they’d appreciate being told that.”

  “Security goons?”

  I shook my head. “They’re new. Like, arrived with the spell. It probably needs to be someone who was here already.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes as we considered possibilities. I arrived at the only possible solution and dug my phone out of my pocket. Waggling it at him, I said, “If you’re not going to tell me, I’ll have to call your mom and ask.”

  “You don’t have my mom’s number.”

  I read it off before adding, “Where do you think I work?”

  “That’s misappropriation of information,” he growled, then made a lunge for the phone.

  I squirmed into the corner before he could get close. “Is that better or worse than getting a girl drunk so she’ll pour out all her secrets, and then stealing her stuff and dumping her at home?”

  “You were carried gently. I even made sure O’Toole kept his eyes to himself.”

  “O’Toole? You had the bar owner take me home?” Hello, mortification!

  “It was a two man job.”

  I flat-looked him. “Thanks a lot. I went through a lot this year. A few extra pounds is hardly—”

  “To get your car home. You’re light.” He got that evil twinkle in his eye that I was coming to dislike a lot.

  My fist clocked his shoulder before I could stop myself. “Whatever,” I said, deflecting. “My mom thought you were ‘lovely.’”

  He sat back, rubbing his shoulder. “She must be a terrible judge of character.”

  “You have no idea. Or did you meet Bob?”

  “Just your mom. You look like her. She’s kind of hot for an older lady.”

  “Shut up or I’ll hit you again.”

  He rubbed his shoulder again. “You know, that might be the reason you don’t have a true love. The rough stuff has its place, but…” He made another lunge for the phone, this time landing practically on top of me and making it hard for me to breathe. Just as his grimy fingers touched the purple plastic, the phone rang.

  “It’s my mom,” I said, shoving him off. “You find any more reasons to land on top of me, and I’m going to think you took me to that bar to get me drunk for a different reason.” I leveled a finger at him and narrowed my eyes in mock menace as I hit the talk button. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  Except it wasn’t my mom on the other side.

  “Wait, Bob, slow down. What happened?”

  I felt the color drain from my face. My sense of feeling went with it. “Where are you? Okay. I’ll be there. Thanks for calling, Bob. Really.”

  “What’s up?” Mueller asked, the concern in his beard-framed face not even coming close to touching the fear in my heart.

  I swallowed hard to keep my voice from cracking. “Can you take me to the hospital? My mom…she collapsed and they can’t wake her up.”

  “Shit. Let me call my emergency back-up guy. Then I’ll call upstairs—”

  “Already taken care of,” I said, waving off that action step. “I took the day off to convince you to help me.”

  “Good coincidence,” he said as he called his guy.

  Emptiness filled my brain while he talked. When he hung up, I said, “Maybe it’s him.”

  “What’s him?”

  “Maybe it’s your back-up guy’s true love we need to break the spell and put the factory back to normal.”

  He maneuvered me out of his office, one hand on my arm. “He’s gay.”

  “Gay guys get happily-ever-afters too, you know.”

  “I just meant it’s not the way the stories go.”

  My feet seemed strangely heavy as we crossed the parking lot. He put me in his beat-up Blazer with greater gentleness than he had the night before, careful not to slam the door on me. As he roared us out of the parking lot at a speed significantly higher than the old rust-bucket looked like it could do, I said quietly, “Maybe it’s time we made new fairy tales…”

  Something sparked at my feet. Maysie’s wand rolled against my shoe as we turned onto the main state road back to town.

  Without my brain getting in the way, I felt my body fill with the rightness of reality. Not a new reality. Not a virtual reality overlaying the old. Not some giant, delusional fantasy world I had constructed to help me get over my life falling apart and losing my hope that it would ever be better. When my fingers closed around the spiraling wood, I knew immediately that this had always been my reality. My destiny. Not the kind that slobbered on my shoes, but the real thing. As if everything else I had lived through so far had been window dressing, or busy-work until I reached my real calling. In that moment, with my heart full of worry and my brain full of silence, I felt my soul spark with recognition.

  I shoved the wand under the seat. Out of sight, out of mind. Whatever my soul might think it knew, it had to be wrong. Magic was reserved for special people, for moments of perfect joy, perfect clarity, perfect love. The exact opposite of everything I had always been and always had.

  Besides, I knew enough psychology to know that even so much as hoping magic might save my mom could send me to some dark place from which I might never return. After all, I’d seen it happen. I’d lived it before, from the outside, and I refused to let that be my life, too.

  “Drive faster,” I whispered.

  But no matter how far above the speed limit Mueller pushed us, I couldn’t escape the pulse of something changing inside me.

  Chapter 17

  The hospital was busier than it had been the last time, filled with concerned family members waiting to hear on injured or ill loved ones. Somehow, it felt stifling in a way it hadn’t when I had been in to check on my possible concussion. Maybe that’s what my problem was—I’d hit my head during that accident when the machine exploded, and everything since had been an elaborate dream. I wasn’t really a fairy godmother. My mother wasn’t really in a coma. Any minute now, I might wake up and discover life was as simple and depressing as ever.

  One glimpse of my mom all pale and unconscious in a sterile hospital room was enough to convince me otherwise. Dreams didn’t hurt this badly.

  Bob got up from the chair beside the
bed, letting go of my mom’s hand for a second in order to hug me. For the first time ever, I let him.

  “How is she?” I asked as I took his vacated spot. Her hand was cold in mine, her fingers limp.

  “The doctors said it’s this sleeping sickness, so there’s no way—” Bob’s voice cracked. “No way to know. So far, no one’s woken up. But no one’s d-died, either.”

  Tears spilled over as I nodded. “There’s nothing they can do?”

  A familiar voice answered from the doorway, jolting me. “It’s like no illness we’ve ever seen,” Nicky said.

  “Inexplicable,” the short woman in a lab coat beside him agreed.

  “This is Dr. Sascha Russe,” Nicky said, gesturing to her. “She’s with the Center for Disease Control. Do you mind if we ask a few questions?”

  Bob came around my mom’s bed protectively. “And you are?”

  I cleared my throat. “This is Nicky Mikkelson. We went to school together.” Was he a doctor after all?

  Nicky extended his hand. “Nick, actually. I’m with a special task force assigned to the situation.”

  Bob shook his hand, but warily. “That sounds military.”

  “Not exactly,” Nicky said, but didn’t elaborate. He glanced at Mueller hanging just inside the door. “And you are?” Was it my imagination, or was the question a little more demanding than necessary?

  “Just the chauffeur. And errand boy. Coffee, Tessa?”

  “Hot chocolate,” Bob and I said at the same time. I glanced at my hairy step-father.

  He shrugged. “It’s what your mom makes when stuff hits the fan.”

  I nodded, squeezing Mom’s hand.

  “Coming right up,” Mueller said, then slipped out on Dr. Russe’s side of the doorway.

  To Nicky, I said, “He’s a coworker. He drove so I didn’t have to.” Why did I feel like I needed to explain? Nicky was the one with the undefined job and ability to dance around questions aimed at uncovering it. I was the one whose mother lay unmoving in a flimsy hospital gown, covered in an equally thin blanket.