"Maurice."
"Angela." He gestured at his angel outfit. "Mercy? Haven't I been a good boy most of the day?"
"Most of it," she said, her lips twitching as she fought a smile.
His gold and white robes changed to the camouflage clothes he had stolen from the G.I. Joe in the toy room. Maurice sighed in relief, then glanced sideways at her.
"You know what I'm like. You read that report Asmondius sent you. You asked for it when you sentenced me to the top of the tree in that ridiculous get-up." He crossed his arms and returned her glare for five seconds. Then they both grinned. "Come on, Angie-baby. If I have to spend a couple years in exile, helping Humans, I can have a little fun, can't I?"
"A 'little fun' is what got you sent here." She rested her elbows on the counter and looked him over. "People see more when they're at Divine's. I know Ken noticed something, even if he isn't sure what. You don't want to get off to a bad start. It'll affect your whole year."
"I think I'm off to a great start. Helping two lonely hearts has to make big points with the Fae Council, don't you think?"
"Did you make Ken--"
"Nah, he thought of that all by himself. Guys like that need full-time keepers. Heck, I'm all for the good guy coming out on top once in a while, but not once every century, know what I mean?" His frustrated look faded into sympathy. "They look good together, don't they?"
"I think those two would be very good together, yes." Angela tugged Maurice's outfit straight. "And I think they will do just fine without any interference from you. A few nudges, fine. A few whispers in their ears. Clearing a few obstacles out of their path. That sort of thing. No drastic interference, nothing that will catch the attention of Humans, and no strong use of magic."
"What strong magic?" he snarled. "When the Council pasted these stupid butterfly wings on my back and shrank me, they shrank everything."
"If you don't fix that attitude, you can spend the entire Christmas season on that tree." She fought not to burst out laughing when terror blanched his ruddy complexion.
"It's kind of hard not to have an attitude when you're used to being over six feet tall and you're condemned to five inches for two Human years," he moaned He glanced over her shoulder toward the doorway, inhaled sharply, and leaped into the air, before vanishing in a shower of purple sparks.
Jo came back into the room. She wore a royal blue calf-length knit shirt-dress that hugged her slim frame and yet left much to the imagination. Her face was scrubbed clean and she'd found a matching scarf to pull her hair back from her face. "What do you think?" She turned around once, making the skirt flare out.
"Jo, you are going to knock them dead. They'll have to make you executive secretary to the president, when you show up for that interview," Angela said.
"I'll just be glad to have a job with regular hours, indoors, and no newsprint or diesel fumes or engine pieces sitting all over the floor."
"Go on back into that room," she made a twirling motion with her hand, "and don't come out until you have at least one outfit for each day of the week. That's an order."
After Jo had paid for three new dresses, two skirts, two pairs of dress pants, and an assortment of sweaters and blouses, she scurried out of the shop, glowing with anticipation.
Angela curved her hands around the Wishing Ball. The dragon's ruby eyes glowed softly in the dim afternoon light. "I wish for you a happily ever after," she whispered. Sparks spun up out of the Wishing Ball and swirled around her for seven orbits. They shot out across the shop, through the front door, and split into two streams when it got outside, following the paths Jo and Ken had taken.
* * * *
Monday morning, Jo arrived at the Myerhausen front office half an hour after she'd calculated the office staff would show up. After working so many jobs in the last few years, she had a good idea of how things were run in the administrative end of a business, even if she hadn't actually sat at a desk. If she wanted the human resources manager to be in a good mood when she applied for work, she would let that manager get his or her coffee and sit down and gear up for the day. Then she could attack, beg, grovel, whatever it took to get that job.
The head of human resources turned out to be a comfortable-looking woman named Connie, who wore sensible shoes and very little jewelry. She smiled when she saw Jo sitting in the reception area, filling out the requisite application form. Jo said a prayer of thanks yet again for Angela bullying her into buying new clothes. The blue knit dress made her feel elegant and sensible at the same time as she followed Connie into the HR offices for her interview.
* * * * *
Maurice sat on the bookshelf behind Connie's desk, smugly satisfied, as Jo answered all the questions and offered some details on the various jobs she had held since moving to Neighborlee to take care of Aunt Myrtle.
"Keep it up, babe," he muttered, even though it wasn't necessary to keep his voice down. Neither Human woman could hear him. "I won't have to use any magic to help you get this job. You're good. You sure deserve a lot better than you've had lately. Just like good old Ken--you're a good kid who helps everybody else out and never gets a break of your own."
* * * * *
While Jo filled out the Meyers-Briggs test, Connie stepped across the hall to refill her coffee cup.
Mrs. Myerhausen was toddling down the hall, shaking a few loose snowflakes from her crimson coat and matching scarf. She let out a little yelp when she nearly ran into Connie, who was busy watching Jo and sipping her coffee as she crossed the hall.
"Oh, Mrs. M. Sorry!"
"Not at problem, dear." She chuckled and gestured at her round figure. "No harm, nothing spilled." With her dark green skirts and her red boots and hat, rosy cheeks and white curls, she looked like a modern Mrs. Claus. "You looked pre-occupied." She glanced into the office and saw Jo bent over the third page of the test. Her smile widened as she looked her over. "Please tell me that lovely young lady is applying for the secretary position," she said just above a whisper.
"Well... She's just applying in general, but from the results of the tests she's taken so far and all her experience, I'm tempted to offer her the job."
"Good. She looks like someone with a sense of balance. All those girls who coat their faces in makeup and starve themselves to look fashionable, they're just poisoning their brains. I like the look of her."
"Ken must have, too."
"Ken?" Mrs. Myerhausen's gaze sharpened and she looked over at Jo again. "Mr. Jenkins?"
"He sent her over to apply--gave her his card."
"That's a boy with a good head on his shoulders." Mrs. Myerhausen nodded sharply. "If he recommended her, that's good enough for me."
"Me, too," Maurice chirped from his post leaning against Connie's pencil holder, watching Jo fill in the little boxes on the test score sheet. "Quit fussing around and hire the poor kid already, would you?"
"I'm going to Arthur's office and have a little talk with him, just to make sure he doesn't mess this up." She tugged her scarf off her neck and folded it as she resumed her trip down the hall.
"Mrs. M..." Connie didn't look afraid or worried, but thoughtful.
"That old bear might know how to run the company, and he might know his executives, but when it comes to the backbone of the company, the young women who run the office... He's hopeless. He hired Felicia, didn't he? And look what a mess she made of things."
* * * *
Jo got on her bus two hours later, looking slightly dazed, but triumphant.
Maurice rode her shoulder, keeping watch, just in case someone tried to take advantage of her when she was so distracted. He couldn't wait to report to Angela how things had turned out. She would be pleased--even if he hadn't had to do a single thing to help Jo's luck.
* * * *
Eight more days until the company Christmas party.
Friday afternoon, Ken marked another day off his desk calendar and closed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. He let out a long sigh of exhaustion. Du
ring the holidays, a majority of Myerhausen's customers slowed down and even shut down. That meant less work for his division, less stress, fewer crises. The entire month of December, he could usually be out of the office by five, instead of working until six.
When he and Brittney were first married, he had looked forward to going home at a decent hour and taking her Christmas shopping, decorating their apartment together, maybe hitting the toboggan chutes in the Metroparks, and a dozen other festive, couples-oriented activities. Spots on his calendar that he had filled out months ago, marked "pick up Brittney's present" and "first Christmas portrait sitting" had Xs through them. Instead, other notes had been scribbled in among his regular office routine reminders, notes such as "take back Brittney's present," and "return Florida vacation tickets."
Next to the calendar, the engraved invitation for the Myerhausen Company Christmas party waited for Ken to fill out the RSVP. It caught his attention, as it had for more than a week now. Today was the deadline for responding. If he didn't answer, Connie in HR would hunt him down and ask for an answer--most likely in front of several of his co-workers. Admitting aloud that he wasn't coming to the Christmas party would be bad enough, but everyone would know that he wasn't attending because Brittney would be there as Allistair's date.
They would pity him. A few would call him smart. Allistair's friends and supporters would call him a coward and wimp.
Sighing, he picked up the invitation and paused, with his pen poised over the "not attending" box. He couldn't do it. A tiny scrap of something like faith inside him still believed in wishes coming true. He was still holding out for that miracle, to find that gorgeous girl who would make Brittney go green and make Allistair's eyes pop out of his teeny tiny skull. He tossed the pen down and shoved the RSVP back where it had been sitting. He still had another hour before Connie would come looking for it.
"Oh, straighten up, you whiny sap," he muttered and opened his eyes.
The new girl paused in his open office doorway and looked in with a smile that said she knew him. Beyond knowing that Arthur Myerhausen had snatched her up as his new executive secretary on Monday and she had started work on Tuesday, he didn't know anything about her. Felicia, the previous secretary, had left the company under a black cloud, and according to the secretarial pool, she had sabotaged the files in retribution. The same sources in the secretarial pool said the new girl had been scrambling since she stepped into the job, trying to straighten out the mess.
Felicia had been Allistair's office paramour. Everyone had known, but couldn't prove that she delayed the requests and reports of other up-and-coming executives to make them look bad and help Allistair look good. Rumors were she had suffered a nervous breakdown from the strain of that task. She hadn't been happy when Allistair had snagged Brittney and dumped her.
When Ken had refused to help her sabotage Allistair's career, Felicia lost her slippery grasp on sanity and decorum, to put it delicately. Mr. Myerhausen had terminated her employment immediately, and had security escort her from the building.
The mess she left behind had driven away the last two replacements, and the tangle had only grown worse. Ken hadn't bothered learning the new girl's name because he thought she would only last two weeks, at the most, before she gave up.
However, today was Friday and she was leaning against the doorframe, smiling, and didn't look either frazzled or exhausted. In fact, she looked great in her long, sleek blue dress. Her toffee-colored hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail and her blue eyes sparkled without the help of layers of makeup. She was a refreshing change from Felicia, who claimed her bulging figure was voluptuous, not fat. And from toothpick slim--and just as embraceable as one, too--Brittney, come to think of it.
"Sorry," he said, offering a smile that he hoped would assure her she wasn't staring at a lunatic. "I wasn't talking to you. Honest."
"That's okay. It's the end of a really long week."
"You're Mr. M's new secretary, aren't you? Yeah, I can imagine it's been a trial by fire, with the big mess left after-- Sorry, shouldn't talk badly about the departed." He was pretty sure that rule applied more to the dead than the vindictive-witch-dragged-out-screaming type of departed, but like his mother always said, "Never say behind someone's back what you wouldn't say to his face."
"Then you're the only one who won't," she responded with a slight widening of her tired smile. "I've heard about the late, unlamented Felicia from everybody. Mr. M, the girls in the secretarial pool. I really wondered what I was getting myself into."
"Will I scare you away if I tell you that it's slow right now, because of the holidays?" At the back of his mind, Ken heard a little voice that sounded like him, telling him to shut up, that he was only making things worse. The thing was, though, he wanted to keep the new girl standing there in the doorway, talking to him, for as long as possible. Even if he sounded like an idiot or a pessimist. "Most of our clients are shutting down until after New Year's. Usually I'm here until after six, but all of December, I usually get out around five, sometimes four."
"Then this is late for you," she said, gesturing at the clock that read just after five. "Why are you working so late?"
"No reason to go home, I guess." He tried to smile. There was no way he was going to confess to her that he hated going to his dark, un-decorated, wifeless apartment. Then she would know for certain he was a loser, not just suspect it.
"Come on, I refuse to let my Santa Claus be depressed. Especially on a Friday, with a whole weekend ahead of you."
"Santa Claus?" He shook his head, not sure he had heard right.
"Oops. Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Honestly, I've been so busy trying to sort things out--and Mr. M is a sweetheart, trying to help me land on my feet--but I've been trying all week to catch up with you."
"Excuse me? Am I in trouble? Whatever nasty notes Felicia left behind, they're a pack of lies. I swear." Ken fought down that shiver of panic that regularly sifted through him since Allistair had snagged a job at Myerhausen two months after he had graduated from warehouse supervisor to the executive ranks.
"From what I've heard about Felicia, if she left notes calling you Jack the Ripper, then I'd know you were a saint. Which I already thought before I even got the job."
"Sorry," he shook his head, "I must be even more tired than I thought. I'm totally lost."
"I wanted to thank you." She stepped into the office and held out her hand.
"For what?" Ken stood and shook hands without thinking.
"I wouldn't be here, if it wasn't for you." Her smile went a little stiff.
"Oh, please, don't blame me for that!" Ken wanted to keep her standing close enough to smell her vanilla perfume and retain his grip on her elegant, long-fingered, warm hand.
"Blame?" Two tiny frown lines appeared between her eyes.
"You have the toughest job in the whole company, untangling that mess left for you, and standing guard at Mr. Myerhausen's door."
Then she laughed and blushed a little as she looked down at her hand, still caught in his grip. She didn't pull her hand free, and Ken took that as a major victory.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
"Sorry. I wish I did." He wished he knew something suave to say.
"You gave me your business card at Divine's last weekend, and told me to apply for a job here. I'm sure it was because you sent me, specifically, that they hired me so quickly."
"I gave--no, that was a kid--Jo? You're Jo?" Ken gaped and nearly forgot to let go of her hand as he sat down again. The shape of her face, the sound of her voice, her eyes, her smile, the feel of her hand. She was definitely the kid he had met and tried to help, but vastly improved. "I thought you were a boy in junior high, and you'd get an after-school job in the mailroom," he confessed.
"I was aiming for a job in the warehouse," Jo said, with a delightful little chuckle.
It took his breath away, how relieved he was that she laughed instead of getting offended.
"An
gela lectured me to aim higher and invest in a new wardrobe. And here I am. And I've been trying to get in here all week to thank you."
"I'm glad I could help." Ken really wished he knew the suave lines now.
"Well, no matter who you thought you were helping, I want to thank you. If there's anything I can do to repay you..." A sighing laugh escaped her. "Within reason, of course."
"Without getting tangled in office politics?" Ken hazarded. That got a nod and a sparkle of mischief in those gorgeous eyes. "Actually--" He swallowed hard and scolded himself not to be such a coward. "How about going to the company Christmas party with me?"
"Really?" She blushed.
"You act like nobody ever asks you out," he said, laughing.
"Well, no, they don't." Jo laughed again before he could even think to feel sorry for her. "Probably because most of the time they think I'm a skinny high school kid." She gestured down at her dress. "I've been working night shift jobs and delivering papers and such for years, and my wardrobe hasn't gone beyond jeans and sweats."
"Then they were blind." Ken stood again and held out his hand. To his relief and delight, Jo put hers into his grasp again. "I was blind last week. And I'd be grateful if you'd go to the party with me, Jo. It'd be nice to go with a friend."
"A friend." She blushed a shade darker. "I'd like that very much."
* * * *
Hanging outside Ken's window on a rope of braided dental floss, Maurice goggled at the scene that had just played out. How had that happened? He had come to Ken's office with a great plan: knock Jo's next load of papers out of her arms right in front of Ken, have him stop to help her and sprinkle them with some glamour dust to jump-start an infatuation.
How had they jumped ahead of him in the program?
How was he going to get any points for helping Humans if he didn't do something to feed the romance? Both Jo and Ken had their wishes now, and he hadn't been involved at all.
Divine's Emporium Page 4