by Emma Savant
I was an idiot.
And I was even more of an idiot for caring.
“Not just friends, then,” Kyle said, following my gaze. I reddened and shook my head quickly at him, hoping he’d take the hint and not say anything like that again. “Hey,” he said, lowering his voice. “Your friend’s dating someone you can’t stand, right? I know how you feel.”
I couldn’t help a laugh. “You feel way more than I do,” I said. “Pretty sure.”
“Elle is a disaster,” he said. He didn’t even try to be coy about it. He looked toward the makeshift stage and scowled. “She’s pissing me off.”
“Love will do that,” I said.
“Who said anything about love?” he said. “My best friend has turned into a manic-depressive Barbie doll. I don’t have to love her to know she’s a moron.”
“But you do,” I said.
Something about tonight had my guard down. Lucas was taken. I was still in the middle of this case. My parents were still probably at home screaming at each other. I’d been acting the same way every day for the past few months and nothing had changed. Maybe it was time to step outside my box a little.
We both fell silent, watching the little group. Aubrey had apparently decided Imogen wasn’t a problem. They chattered about some new dress store that had opened downtown. Before I could intervene, Imogen invited Aubrey along to go prom dress shopping with us.
I hadn’t been asked to prom, of course. But I had to go chaperone Elle and make sure she had the spectacular rose-tinted 80s rom-com night her dad had paid for. But I’d be damned if I was going to show up in some sparkly pink storybook confection. I was wearing something black and sophisticated and the Grimm Brothers could bite me.
“You’re in love with Elle,” I said, after the silence had become too much. “You’re crazy about her. And I screwed things up for you, didn’t I? I threw her at that Tyler idiot and now your life sucks.” I sighed. “I have a gift for that sort of thing.”
Maybe that was why the Faerie Queen had landed on me as her improbable successor. I’d screw things up so much in the first year that everyone would panic and put all their energy into finally figuring out that Elixir of Immortality thing so she could be their queen forever. I’d be first in line to help. But then, I’d probably screw that up, too.
“I wasn’t your client,” Kyle said mildly. “You’ve done a good job of your actual case. It’s not your fault Elle made bad decisions.”
This comment struck me as unexpectedly sweet. I fought off the warm fuzzies and reminded myself again to not go out in public after emotional upheaval. “Thanks,” I said, trying to be cool. I bit my lip. “I just…”
What the hell. I was going outside my comfort zone—why not unload on a casual acquaintance?
I flicked my hand to throw up a one-way sound bubble to protect us from Lucas, Aubrey, and anyone else who might be listening in. Imogen shot me a quick, confused look before she spotted Kyle. She quickly turned Lucas and Aubrey’s attention to a boat on the river.
“I’m just so grossed out by this entire industry,” I said, turning to face him. “It involves way too much interfering. I’ve messed things up for you and Tyler’s wannabe-girlfriend, and I’ve probably messed with Elle and Tyler, too. And why? Because Elle’s dad made a wish and the Oracle signed off on it.”
That was going a little far, and I quickly added, “Not that I’m saying the Oracle is wrong or anything, because maybe there’s a point to all this… But you know, maybe the Oracle just gets busy, too.”
Amani had seemed almost too normal when I’d met her, like sometimes she holed up in her palace and watched movies just like I did at home. Maybe the Oracle was the same way.
“Maybe the Oracle had just had a long day and signed off on this case without thinking it through,” I said. “It’s possible, right?”
Kyle looked uncomfortable. There was a long silence, during which I heard Aubrey tell Imogen that her best friend’s apartment building was haunted. I glanced over to see her cling to Lucas for protection. The drum circle changed its pace, the steady rhythm picking up speed.
“So anyway, I barge in and I interfere with all kinds of stuff,” I said, turning back to Kyle. “But they’re going to break up eventually. And it’s going to be a mess. It would have been a mess if I’d just put one love spell on them like I planned, but everyone would have gotten over it. But the kind of crap she’s pulling? I don’t even know what’s going to happen when that implodes.”
“Again,” Kyle said, taking a sort of firm, reasoned voice I suspected he used a lot with Elle. “Not your fault.”
“I introduced her to the charm seller.”
“You don’t make her decisions for her.”
“You should be a shrink,” I said. He raised an eyebrow at me and I plowed ahead. “The point is, she’s going to be miserable and he’s going to have a hangover he can’t explain, and his girlfriend will have probably moved on by then. And for what? So Elle can have one night she’s not even going to remember in ten years? Seriously?”
Kyle shrugged. “That’s the game,” he said. “But you godmothers have been doing this for thousands of years. The system’s got to work most of the time, right?”
I thought about it, but I couldn’t tell anymore. All the Cinderella tropes and Snow White Archetypes all blended together in my head, each tied neatly with a happy ending like a bow. But whose happy endings were these, exactly? This Story was leading to a happy ending for Elle’s dad—and even then only if he kept refusing to pay attention—and nothing but confusion and frustration for everyone else.
What was the point?
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt completely defeated, the weight of my own failure and the system’s failure settling on my shoulders. The only consolation was time. “At least everyone will go away to college eventually and we can pretend none of this ever happened.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kyle said, frowning at me with a little crease between his sandy eyebrows, which were just a shade or two darker than his hair. “I’m not giving up on her.”
I checked to make sure he was serious. I’d given up on Elle twenty times in the past week, each time pulled forward by the sparkling heap of gold that was going to be my ticket out of this world and into one that made sense.
“There’s no telling how long she’s going to stay addicted to that crap,” I said.
“She hates it,” he said. He had more conviction in his voice than I’d felt for anything in a while. Something in me perked up to listen.
Something perked up in Imogen, too. She twitched in the corner of my eye, and I saw her staring at Kyle and me like she’d just seen the answer to a problem. Her pupils darted between us, her mouth drawn into a subtle O, and then she pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes for a second before her face relaxed into an approving smile. I had no idea what was going on, but I didn’t have time to worry about it right now. Kyle was talking. His hands flew through the air in front of him, gestures carrying the intensity in his voice forward with extra weight. The drummers stopped playing and started talking about their next piece, but he barely glanced at them.
“Elle doesn’t want to be doing all this,” he said. “Not anymore. She discovered a cool new thing and got sucked into it, but now she’s in over her head.”
“How do you know?” I said. She seemed pretty confident to me.
“Because she’s Elle,” he said, like this was the simplest thing in the world. “She couldn’t stop being herself for two seconds even if she tried. She’s going to want to come back to herself sooner or later, even with all those charms messing with her head. She just doesn’t know how.”
“It’s not hard,” I said. “Leave the jewelry on the damn dresser.”
“And try to break up with Tyler on her own?” he said. “Or worse, have Tyler see her for who she really is and not for the airhead she’s glamoured him into seeing? Elle’s strong, but she doesn’t handle rejection super
well. I mean, look at her family. She doesn’t trust people not to ditch her.”
He was even more perceptive than I’d given him credit for. “Maybe you’re right,” I said. I turned to watch the drummers, who’d started up again. One of them, a slender faerie with long black braids, vibrated over her drum, her hands rattling over its surface.
“I wish I could have just told her,” he said, mouth drawn down. “I could have eased her in.”
“Just like I didn’t,” I said, feeling the familiar wave of guilt and inadequacy. Why hadn’t I thought it through?
He frowned at me. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Pity parties suck. Let’s fix this.”
I groaned and turned away from him. One of the five drummers had just lit the ends of his drumsticks on fire and threw them up into the air between beats. “How are we going to fix this?” I said. “Elle’s going to the ball with her Prince Charming. That was what I got thrown in here to do. So technically it’s already fixed. It’s just horrible.”
“That’s not a fix, that’s just your dumb job,” Kyle said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward him. “Elle doesn’t need a party with her ‘one true love.’” He let go of me to make quotation marks in the air. His fingertips bounced up and down on either side of his disgusted expression. “She needs to get back to her loves, period. Elle lights up like a firework when she’s involved in something she cares about. And for all the love spells and glamours and tricks, I haven’t seen that look on her face once since she got involved in all this. Not once. So maybe you’re doing your job, but you’re not helping her.”
I held my hands up. “What do you want me to do?” I said.
The drumming picked up its rhythmic pace, and Kyle raised his voice to be heard over the steady thumping. “I have an idea,” he said, eyes flickering with intensity in the glow from the Tiki torches. He took a deep breath, suddenly sending scattered waves of nervous energy toward me. He took another deep breath, and, just as the drummers finished their song, blurted, “Will you go to prom with me?”
Chapter 27
By the time I stepped out of Clarise’s Formal Wear, I was ready to snap. Aubrey had spent the entire four hours alternately complaining about how fat she was—the only fat on her that I could see was located in her breasts and butt, exactly where it should be—and talking about how great Lucas was. Every so often, she’d take a break in this schedule to frown at me as I tried on a prom dress and say things like “Well, at least an empire waist is flattering on everyone” and “The ruffle down the side is nice. It makes you look not quite so short.” She, of course, looked spectacular in everything, as did Imogen.
And Imogen had been no help. I’d made the enormous mistake of telling her I was going to prom with Kyle the night he’d asked me. Four days later and she still hadn’t let it go. No matter how many times I explained to her that I was still only going because of work and that he hadn’t been harboring “secret feelings” for me, Imogen insisted that he’d had his eye on me from the start.
“I felt his emotions when he was talking to you!” she’d said, pinning a dark purple dress against my shoulders with steely fingers and staring at me with her I’m not even kidding right now face. “He likes you, Olivia. Why is it so hard to believe that a guy might like you? You need to relax and live a little.”
Imogen could talk. Her supervisor had gone on vacation, and her only jobs were to hold down the fort, answer emails, and occasionally go downtown and Proctor as a girl with a twisted ankle to see who would stop and help. If anyone did, she’d reward the good Samaritan with the ability to always find their lost car keys. She didn’t have to deal with running her own full case, or with Lorinda breathing down her neck for updates every time she showed up at the office.
Imogen walked me to the door of Pumpkin Spice before taking off for her Saturday yoga class. She got in one last parting shot. “I read his emotions, Olivia,” she said. “You know how good I am at that.”
“They weren’t for me,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.
“Needy love,” she said. “That’s what that was. He was all need and love, and he was looking right at you.”
“We were talking about Elle,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Elle wasn’t there with us,” she said. “He wasn’t looking at Elle. Liv, I know you like Lucas. But he’s obviously taken, and that girl doesn’t seem like she’s about to give him up anytime soon.” She raised her eyebrows, suggesting she had opinions on Aubrey she hadn’t shared yet. “You may as well go with the guy who’s interested and available.”
She walked me in as far as the entrance, then stuck her head back in through the door before it closed and said loudly, “I’m telling you, Olivia. Kyle is in love with you.” She pointed a finger at me, looking like an Uncle Sam Wants You poster. “Also,” she added, “don’t forget your mom’s necklace for me for prom, okay? And I’ll totally do your makeup.”
And then she was gone, flouncing past the Pumpkin Spice-emblazoned windows and down the street in the full confidence that she knew everything. It must be a nice feeling.
I had to figure out whether Kyle was right, before the ball. If Elle really was sick of the whole thing, maybe she’d be ready to give this all up for the chance to go back to her geeky, free-trade-caffeinated version of normal.
She sat on the brown couches in a group of Tyler’s friends. I met her eyes; she’d been staring at me. Her eyebrows were drawn together in an expression somewhere between confused and hurt. I frowned toward her, shrugging slightly to ask, What’s wrong?, but she snapped away from me as if embarrassed to be caught looking and went back to the group conversation.
I ordered a raspberry steamer from Cortney and drummed my fingers on the counter while Noah mixed it up. He seemed confident today. Maybe Elle’s personality transplant had given him permission to be the competent one, or maybe working with Cortney was just a lower-pressure environment. Whatever the reason, he threw together the steamer like a pro, talking to Cortney the whole time about some gang that had started tagging in his neighborhood.
“But get this,” he said, not looking as intimidated as I would have expected someone like Noah to look while talking about gangs. “The paint they used? It was full of glitter.” He looked gleeful at their ineptitude. “Purple glitter. I guess we’re all supposed to be afraid of unicorns now.” He handed the steamer across the counter to me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I checked it for sparkles.” He chuckled and went to the next customer’s iced Americano.
I found a table along the wall where I could watch the group without being in Elle’s line of sight. I fished a tattered copy of The Great Gatsby out of my purse. Finals were coming up along with prom and I had to finish it; as an added bonus, it made me look like I was here to do something other than spy on Elle like a creeper. She looked up and over at me several times, but I kept a tab on her emotions and anticipated her glances. After the fourth time, she relaxed.
I tugged on my ear and turned up the volume. One of Tyler’s friends from some athletic team said, “I mean, I’ve got no problem with people making out in the hallways if they’re hot. But this chick? She should not have been kissing anybody in public.”
“Or at all,” Brittney said, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
Elle folded her arms but didn’t say anything.
“Exactly,” Tyler said, slinging his arm around Elle. Apparently he thought she was hot enough to make out in the hallways with. My fingers twitched. I wanted to glamour every unattractive person in the room and fling love spells around like parade candy, just so I could watch Tyler’s douchey friends fall in love with the unwashed masses. “It’s basic courtesy.”
“I think—” Elle said, then fell silent.
“What’s that, babe?” Tyler said, leaning down to her.
She was quiet, then shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
Maybe Kyle was onto something.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see Da
niel’s picture and name floating above his text.
Daniel: Did they say anything?
I smiled, just a little. It may have been four days late, but at least he was initiating some kind of contact.
Olivia: Nope. I don’t think they even noticed you were gone, lol.
There was nothing terribly “lol” about it, but I figured a lighthearted approach couldn’t hurt. God knew no one else in the family was attempting one. Mom and Dad had barely spoken to each other since the night of their fight, and their conversations with me so far had been polite, just going through the motions.
Elle pushed her hair behind her ear and sank back into the couch and Tyler’s arm like she wanted to be small or maybe curl up somewhere and sleep. My phone buzzed again.
Daniel: K. Thx.
I’d been distracted by the time we’d finally made it to his tent, but his performance had been weird but great.
Olivia: You did great. I didn’t know you could dance.
I waited for some response while I sipped my drink and felt out toward Elle. But he didn’t reply.
Someone else was keeping an eye on Elle, too. I felt a new, attentive energy enter the room—this case was sharpening my sensing skills, if nothing else—and saw Elle’s dad behind the counter, taking checks and large bills out of the bottom of the till and watching his daughter. A pleased little smile played on his mouth. He felt like such a success.
If he paid half as much attention to what was actually going on with Elle instead of to what he hoped was going on with Elle, everyone else involved in this mess would be a lot happier.
But I couldn’t blame him too harshly. The smile on his face was real, and so was the contentment rolling off him. Elle was wrong, I realized suddenly. Her dad wasn’t trying to distract her from the café at all. I hadn’t seen her circulating petitions or trying to get Tyler’s friends to picket the place in weeks, but that was a side effect.
Greg honestly just wanted to see her happy.
