Enchanted, Inc.

by Shanna Swendson

  “Not right now. Thanks.”

  “Great. Then I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You’re going out with the girls, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah, that. You’re coming, too?”

  “Sure thing. It’ll be fun. Welcome to R and D.”

  As she fluttered away I pondered the idea of a girls’ night out that included a winged fairy. It looked like this would be an interesting evening, to say the least.

  I’d just wrapped up my work for the day when Ari appeared at my door. “You ready to hit the town?” she asked.

  “Sure, just give me a second to shut down.”

  “Grab me across the hall when you’re ready to go and we can head to Isabel’s office together.”

  I shut down my newly arrived computer and packed my things, then made a quick dash to the bathroom to freshen up before stepping into Ari’s lab. It was all chrome and white surfaces, with several large computers. “There you are,” Ari said as I arrived. “Welcome to my domain, the last step in Practical Magic.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “Final testing before a spell is released—make sure there aren’t any typos, make sure it works as advertised, any necessary editing to get it down to the tightest, most concise spell you can get. Some of those theoretical guys get a little wordy. They read too many old books. Archaic language may make a spell look impressive, but it doesn’t make it work any better.” She picked up her purse and said, “Looks like it’s the weekend.”

  Isabel greeted us in her usual effusive manner when we got to her office. “Trix just called down and said she’d be a few more minutes,” she said.

  “So it’s just the four of us?” Ari asked.

  “Yeah, some of the others had dates.”

  “Traitors!” Isabel laughed at Ari’s outburst, but I wasn’t sure if Ari was serious or not. She wasn’t laughing, but maybe she had a dry sense of humor.

  “How was your first week on the job, Katie?” Isabel asked.

  “It was interesting, to put it mildly.”

  “You’re coping very well with all the excitement, though. We lose more verifiers the first week than you’d imagine.”

  Actually, I didn’t find that hard to imagine. Either the depressing working conditions or the craziness and fear that maybe all of this was the result of a total psychotic breakdown would get to you. Then again, I’d managed to get myself into more than my fair share of trouble. I doubted most verifiers had first weeks like mine.

  I looked up to see a man coming into the office. “He in?” he asked Isabel, who nodded. She looked like she was having a hard time forming words. Then I looked at him again and found myself more than a little stunned. It was Owen, but I’d never have recognized him at first glance. Instead of his usual business suits or lab coats, he wore jeans, a baseball jersey, and a Yankees cap. He looked entirely different, and utterly adorable.

  He saw me, blinked, blushed, and said, “Hi, Katie. What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  He turned even pinker. “Playoff game. Rod thinks he has a spell to get us in.”

  Isabel groaned. “He’s not trying that again, is he? Didn’t you two almost get in trouble last year?”

  Rod’s office door opened and he stuck his head out into Isabel’s office. “I’ve got it figured out now, though,” he said. Then he got a good look at Owen and frowned. “Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked. Owen did look pretty much like Death with a hangover, even with the baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He must have spent the day testing that horrible spell.

  “I could use a night out,” Owen said. “I’ll be fine.” I thought he’d be better off home in bed, but a night at a baseball game might be good for him.

  Just then another fairy, whom I recognized as Merlin’s receptionist, showed up. That had to be Trix. “You girls ready to par-tay?” she whooped.

  “Girls’ night out?” Rod asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes, and you two are not invited,” Isabel said.

  Owen narrowed his eyes. He didn’t exactly frown, but he didn’t look happy, either. I glanced at the other women and saw that Ari was giving him a look of raw, undisguised hunger. That must have made him uncomfortable.

  Isabel took her purse out of her desk drawer. “Well, you boys be good, and don’t call me if you need someone to bail you out.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Rod said with a laugh. “Owen can get us out of any tricky situation. You girls have fun, and be careful.”

  “Don’t get Katie into any trouble,” Owen added softly. The two fairies laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like little bells. The four of us headed out, leaving the men behind.

  Isabel was apparently our cruise director for the evening. “I thought we’d warm up by hitting happy hour near here—all those cute Wall Street guys getting off work. Then who knows?”

  We settled into a dark, noisy downtown bar and ordered a round of cosmopolitans. If I hadn’t been with two women who had wings on their backs and hovered slightly above their chairs, I’d have felt like I was back in my old life, on one of the rare occasions when my coworkers convinced me to join them for a drink-and-bitch session after work.

  As soon as we had our drinks, Isabel said, “Okay, first item on the agenda is Trix’s breakup.”

  “I am never dating an elf again,” Trix muttered.

  “This may be a stupid question, but are there guy fairies?” I asked.

  “Sure there are,” Ari said. “They just don’t like to be called that.”

  “They prefer the term ‘sprite,’” Isabel said, putting air quotes around the word “sprite.”

  Ari snorted. “Yeah, like that sounds any less gay.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen any of them around the company.”

  “There aren’t too many who work at MSI,” Isabel explained. “They prefer outdoor jobs. You’ll find a lot of sprites working as messengers or as gardeners. Anyway, back to the agenda. What does the dirty, cheating elf deserve?”

  “Cheating?” I asked.

  Trix rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it seems like he had a weakness for anything in wings.”

  “Then hit him with a love spell that makes him fall desperately for a butterfly,” Ari suggested. We all laughed at that. I might not be magical, but I had to appreciate the mental image of a man in love with a butterfly.

  “Are you really going to do that?” I asked, suddenly wondering if this was just girls’ night out talk or if it was more literal in the magical world. My friends and I had wished all sorts of horrible things on men who’d done us wrong, but we didn’t have the power to actually do anything about it.

  “Of course not,” Isabel said.

  “But it would be funny,” Ari added.

  “It would serve him right,” Trix said, “but it falls into a gray area. It’s not outright harm, but it’s also not a good idea to manipulate another person’s free will. No, I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the knowledge that I’m better off without him. I guess I’ll have to hang out in the park more often, since I’m off elves and humans don’t do much for me.”

  “I like human men,” Ari said with a lascivious smile.

  “But what’s the point? You can’t have children with them.”

  “Who says I want children? I just want fun, and human men are a lot more substantial than sprites. I like a guy I’m not worried about breaking. Besides, if I had kids, I’d just piss off my parents by not giving my kids some sappy fairy name.”

  “You have a perfectly nice name,” Isabel said.

  “Yeah, until they came out with The Little Mermaid, and suddenly every human girl is naming her cat Ariel.” She turned to me. “It totally ruined the name.”

  “You shouldn’t complain,” Trix said. “I have a cousin who got stuck with the name Tinker Bell because her parents thought it was cute. She goes by Belle. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you ca
n do with Trixie. Half the Westies in New York are named Trixie. It’s embarrassing when you hear your name, turn around, and then find out they’re talking to their dog.”

  “Looks like we’ve wrapped up that agenda item,” Isabel said, signaling to the waiter for another round. “Item two: surveying and possibly selecting male companionship.”

  I took a sip of my new drink as I took in my surroundings. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone out on the prowl with friends. With Gemma’s unofficial dating service, that usually wasn’t necessary. The bar was full of suited Financial District types. Some of them were quite attractive, but they were all a little too intense for me.

  “What do you think, Katie?” Isabel asked. “Anything that isn’t what it appears to be?”

  “I don’t know. Remember, I don’t see what you see. Point someone out to me, and I’ll tell you what I see.”

  Ari pointed to someone who looked like a taller, slightly older, much slicker version of Owen. She definitely had a type. “What about him?”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome. No pointed ears, horns, fangs, or wings.”

  “Hmmm.” She cast her eyes in his direction, caught his eye, then glanced away. Gemma had tried to teach me that game, but I was hopeless at it. I either stared too long and made my target uncomfortable or not long enough and never caught his attention.

  As I watched the flirting I asked, “What do others see when they look at you guys?”

  “You mean fairies?” Trix asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Basically, just us with no wings and no hovering. Human men find us incredibly cute. Personally, I’m not so thrilled with human men.”

  “All men are trouble, whether or not they have wings, or how their ears are shaped, or how tall they are,” Isabel said. She sounded like what Gemma called the Bitter Single Woman—the kind who pretends to hate men to cover up her hurt about men not being interested in her. Isabel was attractive enough, in a striking Amazonian way. I wondered if she was fully human or if there was something else in there, like maybe a trace of giant blood. Still, it would take either a very large or a very confident man to cope with her. We needed to find a professional football player, maybe an offensive lineman. I considered putting Gemma on the job.

  “Men are okay,” I said. “I like them well enough.” I hated to dampen a good bitch session, but I’d never had a guy really screw me over. They had to be interested enough in me to give me any hope in order to cause much damage, and I hadn’t had many get that close. Gemma was right, I needed a boyfriend.

  “You’re single, though, aren’t you?” Trix asked.

  “Yeah. But my roommate’s working to fix that. She’s set me up with half of Manhattan.”

  “And nothing right for you yet?” Isabel asked.

  “Not yet. But if you kiss enough frogs, you’re bound to stumble upon a prince.”

  Trix slammed her palm against the tabletop. “Brilliant idea, Katie. Isabel, I propose a change of agenda. Let’s find ourselves some princes.”

  “Where? The pond in Central Park?”

  “That’s where I have the best luck.”

  I had to interrupt. “Whoa, you mean there really are men who’ve been turned into frogs?”

  Isabel shrugged. “Sure. But what they don’t tell you in the storybooks is that only the real assholes get punished that way, and being a frog doesn’t have quite the personality reforming effect you’d expect.”

  “But they do tend to be very, very grateful about being rescued, and that’s good for at least one night of fun,” Ari argued.

  “I was being figurative about kissing frogs, in case you were wondering,” I said, wondering if this conversation was really taking place or if I was drunker than I realized. “In my world, that just means you go out with a lot of people, even if they don’t seem to meet your criteria on the surface, because you never know which one might be right for you.”

  “That’s boring. Wise, but boring. Our way’s more fun,” Trix said.

  “And I bet our chances of finding someone are better than they are in here,” Ari added.

  We paid our tab, then stumbled out of the bar. I’d lost track of time while we were in there, and now it was dark. I wasn’t sure wandering around Central Park at night in the condition we were in was a great idea. Maybe they didn’t metabolize alcohol the same way normal-sized humans did, but I was only just sober enough to be aware of how drunk I was. Unfortunately, I was drunk enough to let myself get swept along with the group.

  Isabel hailed a cab—she had a rather effective method that involved blocking the street with her body. If a cab wanted to avoid serious damage, it stopped. We piled inside, Isabel in the front passenger seat and the rest of us in back. This wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I agreed to an evening out with the girls, and the cab ride up to Central Park was long enough for me to sober up enough to be self-conscious about doing something so crazy. As often as I’d used the expression about kissing frogs, I’d never had any desire to carry it out literally.

  We all fumbled for purses as the cab came to a stop near the Plaza Hotel, but Isabel said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” Then we piled out, crossed Fifty-ninth Street, and followed the path down to the pond.

  “You’re really going to kiss frogs?” I asked as we made our way down to the edge of the water. “This time of year, you may not see many. It’s getting too chilly for amphibians.”

  “That actually makes our chances better,” Trix said. “It’s the enchanted frogs that’ll still be around. They don’t want to give up on the hope that someone will break the spell until they can’t tolerate the cold anymore.”

  “How many of these are there? We don’t have a lot of princes in this part of the world, you know.”

  “Prince is a figure of speech,” Isabel said. “It can apply to anyone in a position of power or wealth who needs to be taken down a peg. Oh, look, here’s one!” She lunged at a little tree frog sitting on a rock. It took her a couple of tries to grab it, then she held it trapped in her hands and brought it up to her face. I wanted to look away as she puckered up and kissed it, but morbid fascination made me stare. Nothing happened. She sighed and released the frog, which hopped away with an affronted-sounding “ribbit.”

  I heard sirens on the street above. “We’re gonna get arrested for molesting frogs,” I moaned. I could imagine explaining that to my folks.

  “Don’t worry so much,” Ari scolded as she lunged for a frog. Her fairy grace and speed gave her an advantage, so she caught it on the first try. Or maybe the frog just thought she was a giant fly and it had scored a super-size meal. “Nobody can see us, even if they look right at us. We’re safe.” Then she addressed her frog. “Now, handsome, make my dreams come true.” She kissed it, and then I almost fell over in my hurry to step backward.

  The frog glowed. The glowing aura around it grew bigger and bigger, until Ari released the frog. Instead of falling to the ground, it hung at eye level. Soon, the aura spread into the rough outline of a human form. When the glow faded, what remained was a handsome young man in an old-fashioned suit. Men’s dress clothing hasn’t changed much over the past hundred or so years, so it was hard to date his outfit, but he wore his hair in a flowing, Byronic style. He also looked utterly terrified. I put myself in his shoes—coming out of a froglike state to find himself facing a giantess and a couple of chicks with wings—and had to sympathize.

  “Wow,” I said. “So it’s real?”

  Ari shot me a glare. “You doubted us?”

  “Not really, but you have to admit, it is weird, especially for someone like me.”

  “Who are you?” the man asked. “You have no right!”

  “Get over yourself,” Ari snapped. “I broke the spell that made you a frog for God knows how long, so the least you could do is show me some gratitude.”

  He jolted, looking almost like he’d been shot, then gave Ari a courtly little bow. “I sincerely apologize. I beg you to forgive
my poor behavior. I am most grateful, in spite of my churlishness.” When he rose from his bow, the panicked look returned to his eyes. “Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I must be leaving. Terribly busy. Somewhere else I must be. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  He then took off in an all-out run. I could have tripped him as he passed me, but I felt sorry for the guy. Besides, Ari had wings. If she wanted to catch him, she probably could.

  But she didn’t. She just folded her arms across her chest and said, “You’re welcome.”

  Isabel patted her on the shoulder. “Like I said, it’s the assholes who get that done to them. Not to mention out-of-date assholes. Casting frogging spells was outlawed decades ago. He’d want you to do his laundry and cook for him.”

  “You could try another one,” Trix suggested.

  “No, it’s Katie’s turn. An old-fashioned guy would be just right for her.”

  I had no intention of actually kissing a frog, but I didn’t want them to think I was a stick-in-the-mud. It could just take me all night to catch a frog, if I worked hard enough at it. They didn’t have to know I was a country girl who knew all about catching frogs, bugs, and other critters. With my brothers, I either had to learn to get used to them or spend my life screaming. “I want to look for a good one,” I said as I headed toward a stand of bushes on the other end of the pond. I could hide in there, pretending to look for frogs, until they sobered up or got bored.

  I parted the bushes, stuck my head inside, and then shrieked at what I saw.

  There was a naked man crouching on a rock behind the bushes. Fortunately, the way he crouched kept me from seeing more of him than was really appropriate on such short acquaintance. He looked up at me and said, “Ribbit.”

  “Um, news flash, but you aren’t a frog,” I told him.

  The others then reached me. Ari and Trix got there first, their wings flying them over any obstacles. A crashing sound behind them told me that Isabel was on her way, flattening anything in her path. “What is it, Katie?” Trix asked.