by Emma Savant
“And yet so far from being the best,” she said. Kyle pointed at her and gave me an expression that said, clearly, See? What did I tell you?
He was crazy for her.
I was at work, I reminded myself. I wasn’t here to start daydreaming about how to set Elle up with Kyle. I was supposed to set Elle up with Tyler. And it was probably going to take years, so I’d better start now.
“I’m surprised Tyler isn’t here, too,” I said. “He was totally checking you out today.”
“Who’s Tyler?” she said.
At least my instincts were good. I was right: She wouldn’t have known him from a lima bean.
“Tyler Breckenridge,” I said. “Guy on the basketball team. He was staring at you outside of World History this morning.”
She scoffed. “Tyler Breckenridge?” she said. She seemed to speak around his name, as though the words tasted bad and she didn’t actually want them in her mouth. “That guy is a douche.”
I shrugged. “Apparently the douche wants to take you to prom,” I said, then, quickly backtracking as I realized exactly how too-much-too-soon this comment was, added, “Or something like that, because he was definitely staring.”
“Ew,” she said, and didn’t even seem to think the conversation was worth pursuing, let alone the guy. “Whatever. I’m not going to prom anyway.”
Of course she wasn’t.
“Why not?” I said. I hoped she’d take my panicked tone as shock that anyone could miss their prom.
She grinned and elbowed Kyle in the shoulder. “Because this dork and I are going to NebulaCon,” she said. “Remember? I told you about it. The Starship Mine costumes?”
Dread filled my stomach. I tried to cover it up with a big fake smile.
“Oh, yeah!” I said. “That sounds totally awesome.”
“Ah, NebulaCon,” Kyle said. “Where we weirdos get to feel normal for a night.”
“Living the dream,” I said.
I suddenly felt somewhere between disillusioned and downright sick.
Who had I been kidding, thinking I was going to pull off something like this? Getting Elle interested in Tyler Breckenridge would have been complicated enough. Convincing Elle to skip what was apparently the geek event of the season on top of that?
I looked between her smiling face and sparkling eyes and Kyle’s excited expression. Giant waves of lovesickness kept rolling off him like puffy clouds coming in from the ocean, and while I didn’t think Elle was exactly puffy-clouding back, she wasn’t battening down the hatches, either.
I was screwed.
Chapter 9
Ten minutes after stepping into Lorinda’s office, I stepped back out again with a signed slip of paper confirming her agreement: Getting Elle and Tyler together organically was going to be impossible, and I had official approval to use a short-term attraction spell on him.
“Start there,” Lorinda had said. “If she isn’t won over when he starts standing under her window playing mediocre guitar, come back and we’ll dope her up, too.”
Godmothering was such an ethically sticky field. Elle would be horrified.
Fortunately for us all, Elle would never know. I was almost glad she had no idea of her mom’s Glimmering background, or her own probable abilities. At least this way she wouldn’t be involved in what was shaping up to be a definite miscarriage of justice, and wouldn’t be able to fight me about wrapping it up to its inevitable and ludicrous Greg-wished conclusion.
Someone should really put a ban on people making wishes for other people, I thought. Witches were great about that. Some would help people meddle with other people’s lives, but most of them—and all the really good ones—were big on personal accountability and only screwing around with your own side of the street. We could stand to take a lesson out of their spellbooks.
I slumped into my chair. I worked in a small cubicle opposite the large window overlooking the Oracle’s Fountain. It wasn’t the most glamorous space in the world, but it was relatively private, so I rested my head in my hands and looked down at the slip of paper adorned with Lorinda’s heavy swooping signature. This was what my life had come to: getting permission from people to mess with other people’s lives, just so I could get a few pieces of gold from the Oracle and avoid my dad yelling at me for quitting the job he’d so generously arranged.
I wished I could be more like Elle. She didn’t care what her dad thought, knew exactly what she wanted, and was moving full steam ahead and damn the consequences. I, on the other hand, hadn’t gone hiking in weeks, and had barely even paid attention this morning when I’d passed a downtown supermarket selling exotic flowers. That wasn’t normal.
I blew out a long sigh and the slip of paper on my desk ruffled and flew a few inches across the polished wood.
A frazzled presence loomed in my cubicle doorway. I didn’t have to turn to know that it was Imogen, and she was in high dudgeon.
“Maia is getting married,” she hissed, her voice pitched just so I could hear but no one else could. “Married. Who does that?”
I sat up straight and spun around to face her. The chair squeaked. “I thought she was being stalked by some bird watcher.”
“Right?” Imogen said, her eyes wide. She was a few steps beyond irritated. She shoved my pen holder aside and sat on my desk so she could lean down and talk to me from way too close. “You would think. You would think she wouldn’t spend six months whining about this ‘stalker’ and acting like she’s desperate to date other guys, only to turn around and announce she’s marrying him. You would think that wouldn’t be an option and that she was, you know, just slightly smarter than the average village idiot. But nope. My sister’s marrying the ornithologist stalker, and guess who gets to be a goddamned bridesmaid?”
“And I’m going to guess the first two guesses don’t count,” I said.
“Take it to Hades!” Imogen said. “I thought I had a while. I thought some mother-fracking faerie prince was going to show up. But nope. Guess which of Portland’s most famous bird stalkers is also a prince from an established Glimmer family? No,” she said, leaning in even closer to me. “Just guess.”
She was toeing the line between being annoyed and actually hysterical. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Breathe,” I ordered.
“Who can breathe at a time like this?” she said. “Who has time for breathing? Not me! Because I have to somehow manage to fit in wedding dress shopping and bridesmaid dress shopping and cake testing and doing whatever else I’m going to be dragged into on top of work and school and my own freaking life.”
I’d sat through too many of these pseudo-panic attacks to take them seriously. “Breathe,” I ordered again.
She took a deep breath, then let it all out with a frustrated growl. “She wants her colors to be yellow and blue, because ‘those are the colors of canaries and bluebirds! They’re Andrew’s favorite birds, because they’re symbols of happiness!’” Her voice went high-pitched and simpering. I knew for a fact Maia did not talk like a Disney princess on helium, but decided this was a good time to keep my mouth shut. “And guess which color she chose for the bridesmaids’ dresses?”
“I’m going to guess not blue,” I said.
“Nope!” Imogen shouted, like I’d won the grand prize. “She chose yellow. Do you know what I look like in yellow?”
“A washed-out spaghetti noodle,” I said. “I say this with love.”
Imogen looked good in almost anything. Yellow was one of the few colors that escaped the “almost.” It made her skin and normally radiant hair seem to turn the same sallow colorless shade of overcooked pasta.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking her hands. She seemed two steps away from the edge of a nervous breakdown. “You just have to show up and let her see you in it, and then you can glamour the thing to look however you want.”
“‘No glamours!’” she said, back in the chirpy Maia voice. “Because ‘no one’s allowed to look prettier than the bride!’ She literally said that.�
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“I am so sorry,” I said.
It was Imogen’s turn to grab my shoulders. She shook me gently. “Help me. Promise you’ll come to this stupid wedding and keep me sane!”
“I’ve been to all your sisters’ weddings,” I said. “I’m not going to skip out on this one.”
Finally, Imogen deflated. All the frustration and irritation and rage seemed to seep out of her, and she slouched down with her arms dangling between her knees.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
I felt sorry for her, and would have even without the feelings of despair and annoyance that were rolling off her and crashing over me like waves. I offered what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
“How about I take you out for dessert later and we can come up with coping strategies for the next few months?” I said.
She looked deflated and defeated. I knew chocolate and some scheming would cheer her right back up, but right now, my feeble empathetic gifts were on such high alert that it was almost painful to look at her. But she perked up a little.
“Okay,” she said. “Liv, you have no idea how good it feels have someone in my corner.”
“I do know, actually,” I said.
She glanced up from her misery just long enough to sneak a smile at me.
When my dad signed me up for faerie therapy to try to overcome my apparently “deviant” interest in attending a Humdrum university, Imogen had come with me to every useless appointment and spent the whole time in the waiting room, magicking discreet messages onto the pad of paper the therapist insisted I hold in case any insights “confirming the nobility of my magical heritage” came to me. It was stuff like You got through that stupid “Menstruation and Me” class when we were 12. You can get through this and Take the first letter of every sentence she says and try to come up with a plant name for it. She’d also tagged along to more uptight government functions than I could count, gotten me out of the house and to more Glim parties than I would have thought existed, and introduced me to my favorite herb stall at the Portland Saturday Market.
Going to her sisters’ weddings was the least I could do.
A soft noise rustled above our heads. I looked up and saw a small white paper airplane, flapping its wings and clumsily trying to stay in place in midair. My name was written on the underside of a wing in fluid silver letters. I reached up and plucked it from the air.
“Probably a memo from Lorinda,” I said. “I got permission to use a heavy-duty attraction spell on Elle’s guy. It’s never going to happen otherwise.”
Imogen pressed her lips together and nodded, like I’d just made the understatement of the year. I unfolded the airplane. It wasn’t a typed memo from Lorinda, or anything else from inside the office. Instead, I saw a short handwritten note:
Olivia,
It was fantastic to meet you the other day. Could you come to the Waterfall Palace for supper next Monday at 6 p.m.? Just answer on here and send her back.
Thanks!
-Amani
The stationary was soft and feather-light, with a pretty gold signature up top saying Amani Zarina and, underneath that, in official-looking silver block letters, FAERIE QUEEN, GUARDIAN OF THE FORESTS, MISTRESS OF THE GREATER PACIFIC NORTHWEST MAGICAL ALLIANCE. I blinked at the page a few times, sighed, blinked again, and finally looked up at Imogen, who was staring at me.
“What?” she said. “What is that? You feel weird.”
Silently, I handed the paper to her. She read it in a flat two seconds, then looked up. If she’d been staring before, it was nothing to the look on her face now.
“What?” she said. “What?”
Quickly and apologetically, I explained how I’d met the queen of all the realms in the bathroom the other night.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I said, trying to soothe Imogen’s inevitable offense before it had a chance to develop. “I kept thinking I’d dreamed it or made it up or something. It was so weird.”
“Always tell me things like that,” she said, emphasizing every word. She looked back down at the paper, read it again, and said, “What does she want to talk to you about? No offense or anything, but what does the Faerie Queen want with you? You don’t even like being a Glim.”
“That’s not true!” I said reflexively.
She raised an eyebrow, and I paused to consider. I did like being a Glimmer, I decided. I just wished I could do it quietly, away from the tedious functions and photo ops and assumptions that I would do great things for the magical world whether I liked it or not.
Imogen handed the paper back, her hands lingering on it like she was reluctant to let go. “So write her back,” she said.
The thought of actually going to the Waterfall Palace and trying to keep my composure through a whole evening with Queen Amani was enough to make my knees knock together and my stomach fall through my body to the floor.
Could I just refuse an invitation from the Faerie Queen?
Lorinda poked her head into the cubicle door. She raised an eyebrow and looked down her nose at us.
“And are you ladies working?” she asked, like we obviously couldn’t be because we were idiot teenagers. I took a deep breath to distract myself from the sudden and overwhelming urge to roll my eyes.
Imogen didn’t share my self-control.
“Sorry,” she said. “We got a little distracted looking at the note Olivia just got from the Faerie Queen.”
She got the whole sentence out before she noticed my wide eyes and the no, no, no! emotion I was mentally throwing at her head. She bit her lip and shrugged one shoulder. Sorry, she mouthed.
I rubbed my forehead as Lorinda swooped in and grabbed the paper from me without asking. She read it through quickly, her pale blue eyes ticking rapidly back and forth across the page like paper in her antique enchanted typewriter. She looked up at me, eyes alight.
“This is magnificent!” she said.
I could think of so many words besides “magnificent.” But she wasn’t interested in my opinion. She was already talking again.
“My word, Olivia. This is spectacular. She must have heard about you being our youngest godmother to single-handedly manage a case and wants to meet you. You know, I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about it. I know you’ll do your best and I expect nothing less, but I think you’ll agree that it’s better to wait for success before turning the city’s eyes on us. But of course Her Ladyship knows everything, and must see that you are destined for success! Well, what are you waiting for? Write her back at once and tell her that of course you’ll come.”
She held the paper out to me. Two pairs of expectant eyes rested on me and my stomach churned.
I hoped they were both too excited about the letter to be able to feel my dread.
Slowly, I took the paper from her, then set it on the desk before I could change my mind. My stomach flipped over as I wrote. I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or flattered or just sick.
I folded the paper back into an airplane before Lorinda or Imogen could see what I had written, and launched it into the air.
It soared up and over the cubicle wall. Lorinda watched it go from the doorway, and, when it must have disappeared out the corner window we kept propped open for messages like this, turned back to me and rubbed her hands together.
“This is splendid, Olivia, just fantastic!”
She bustled back to her own office, too wrapped up in her own satisfaction to notice my nausea.
Chapter 10
My to-do list for the day was the stupidest thing I’d read in a while.
Finish English lit essay.
Math pgs. 192-198.
Return mushrooms book to library.
Figure out what the $@&! I’m supposed to wear to Waterfall Palace.
Seduce Tyler enough to get him to Pumpkin Spice. Do not lose all self-respect in the process.
Congratulate self on thinking that last thing is an option.
The Oracle couldn’t pay me enough for
this.
I couldn’t count the number of times in the last day and a half I’d considered just walking out. I had elaborate visions of packing up my measly belongings, telling Lorinda I was done with the whole creepy industry, and then somehow avoiding telling my parents what I’d done, exactly like I’d avoided telling them about my Monday evening appointment at the Palace.
But even if the Oracle couldn’t pay me enough, I would be paid something, and I needed every last gold coin to get me into college. My dad’s manufactured Humdrum records showed he made way too much for me to expect any kind of financial aid. I had to hold onto every gold piece I could and hope that in the end I’d have what I needed.
I was already sacrificing by attending an Oregon school where I could get in-state tuition, even though that meant being closer to my family and the local Glimmering community than I liked. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if I couldn’t even afford that. Four years at a Humdrum school would give me the skills I needed to make a botany career for myself in a world free of my parents’ suffocating influence. Without those four years, I might as well kiss my dreams goodbye.
With that in mind, I gritted my teeth, pulled my wand out of my hair, and steeled myself to become drop-dead gorgeous.
You wouldn’t think it would take a whole lot of preparation, but this kind of enchantment was a head trip. If I glamoured myself to appear fat in someone’s eyes, they treated me differently, even if I forgot about the glamour and behaved exactly the same as I always did. They treated me differently if I looked Asian, or gay, or nerdy, or male, or exceptionally beautiful. Anything could be a target for coldness, or a sudden willingness to agree with everything I said, or derision. I could never predict what the weird behavior would be, but it was always obvious when it showed up.
Imogen loved this about glamours. She had a grasp on the psychology of the whole thing and claimed she could get anything she wanted from anyone just by subtly shifting her appearance. I had never grasped the skill, and didn’t really want to.
