by Emma Savant
Elle took it in stride. “I don’t like all your choices,” she said, managing to make it sound like a fact instead of an accusation. “But it’s not my business who you marry. It’s not my decision. I’m with you till I’m eighteen. She’s who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.”
“You’re still in that picture, Elle,” Greg said. He put a hand out on the table.
“I know,” Elle said. She squeezed her frosted glass. “We’re still family. I just mean I’m not going to live with you forever. We don’t even belong in the same world, Dad.”
Greg watched her for a long moment, pursing his lips and debating whether to argue. Then he sighed and said, “You belong in your mother’s world.”
“Makes a lot of things make sense, doesn’t it?” Elle said. She was smiling a little, the way people did when they were finally distant enough from something to laugh at it. “No wonder I never fit in.” She fingered the crystal necklace, still the only ornament she wore. She glanced across the room and her gaze met Kyle’s. Warmth and happiness rolled off both of them, and it made me smile, too. The Oracle’s confusing approval aside, I’d done a good thing there.
“It’s a good plan,” Greg said. He picked up one of the papers, scanned a few lines, then looked over it at Elle. “Marketing this place to your community. It’s a great idea.”
“Kyle says there aren’t enough hangouts for people our age,” she said. “A few nightclubs, but that’s it. This will be a place people can get together to hang out and study during the day, and we’ll be doing everything right. I got a quote on coffee beans and we’ll come in under budget.” She gestured at the paper, but he was too busy looking at her now.
“I’m really proud of you, Elle,” Greg said. He was such a soft dad type that hearing it from him seemed normal to me, but Elle’s eyes immediately filled with tears.
“Thanks,” she muttered. She blinked and became suddenly interested in shuffling the papers around to find the budget.
For the first time since I’d seen their relationship, he seemed to notice how she was feeling and do something about it. He put a hand over hers. “One year,” he said.
That was the deal she’d proposed: One year to run Pumpkin Spice and show she could handle it, and then she’d be able to buy the business from him. She’d promised to pay for the whole thing just like anyone else would, but he’d insisted on giving it to her at a steep discount, saying he’d make enough from the deal to focus on his side businesses. It turned out he ran a food cart and a hair salon on top of the café. For such a quiet, laid-back guy, he ended up being pretty savvy. And if she couldn’t keep the business on its feet, she’d promised to stop sabotaging the place, which was the reason he’d come to Wishes Fulfilled with his ridiculous prom night request in the first place. It was a good deal for everyone.
“One year,” Elle agreed. She rubbed the back of her neck, restless. I could tell she was itching to get started.
Kyle drummed the table with his fingers. “I think that’s my cue,” he said. He gave me a dorky high-five before heading across the room. He’d made sure this deal would go down on paper, and he was signing as Elle’s co-investor. Normally I would have warned a new couple against going into business together first thing, but I wasn’t worried. They’d be fine.
I was still watching them all talk together half an hour later, with their heads bent over the table, when Imogen tapped me on the shoulder and slid into Kyle’s vacated seat. She had the vibrant smile of someone whose month had gone off without a hitch.
“It’s my anniversary!” she announced. “Prom was a month ago today and we’re better than ever.”
This wouldn’t have been an accomplishment for most people. For Imogen, it kind of was. Her relationships tended to last two weeks if they ever earned the title of “relationship” at all, and then it was on to the next boy who fell under her charms.
I was glad I was a girl. We never would have been able to be friends otherwise.
She looked across the room at Elle and tilted her head. “They worked it out, huh?” she said.
“I think so,” I said.
“I still can’t believe you and Kyle didn’t hook up. Leave it to you to use prom to conduct business.”
“I’m a faerie godmother, Gen,” I said. “Proms and balls are our trading floor.”
Her eyes flashed with something that looked suspiciously like victory.
“What?” I said.
“You just called yourself a faerie godmother,” she said. “With no hint of irony.”
She was right. I had. I frowned, trying to digest that.
But it was okay. It still wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, but looking across the room at the way Elle explained her plans for creating study tables and a free lending library while Greg nodded and Kyle gazed at her in pure admiration, I realized granting wishes wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple years before college. I’d rather be somewhere studying flowers and conservation management, of course, but that could come later. For now, it was kind of amazing to have a job where “success” meant actually making people’s dreams come true.
Who knew? Maybe I was even good at it.
Tabitha returned to work on the last day of July. By that time, Elle’s case was all wrapped up and things were back to normal at Wishes Fulfilled. The Oracle hadn’t demanded the gold back, and it rested in a comfortable pile in the enchanted safe hidden under my bed. Dad had blustered a little about how I needed to keep up the good work, and Mom had slipped me a gift card to a local plant nursery, which was the closest to a good job I’d gotten from them in a long time.
Imogen and I spent the first Saturday in August at the Saturday Market. It was strange to think that it had only been a few months since I’d made the colossal misstep of introducing Elle to the charms booth, but I couldn’t regret anything that had happened in those months. I had done an okay job on a case, made a few new friends, set Elle up with the guy of her nerdy dreams, and gotten to know a guy of my own, even if he wasn’t exactly available.
“My dad’s barely yelled at us since Elle’s case wrapped,” I said, gently squeezing some tomatoes in a vegetable stall to see if they were ripe. I could practically live on raw, fresh tomatoes in the summer. “I even told him Daniel’s taken an interest in godparenting. Dad thinks he’s shadowing me. He’s in a performance every other week now.
“Aw,” Imogen said, putting her hand on her heart and making a syrupy sweet face at me. “Lying for your little brother! Presh.”
It was kind of sweet, Imogen’s sarcasm aside. He’d actually invited me to one of his performances at a park and made eye contact with me after.
Imogen updated me on the latest from her sister’s wedding while I paid for the tomatoes and followed her out from under the tent and back into the blazing sunlight. Sun felt weird on my shoulders after so many months of drizzly cold. My skin soaked it up, throwing an all-you-can-eat Vitamin D party like it would never get another chance.
“Apparently she has to move locations because she was supposed to have her wedding at some bird enclosure—I am not even kidding you right now—but they had to close it down because a bunch of weird accidents kept happening,” Imogen said. She turned the simple gesture of rolling her eyes into an extravagant performance. “Some idiot kids were probably sneaking in at night but then a couple employees started saying it was ‘haunted.’ And then one of them got hit in the head by a shovel or something, and so now they’ve closed the whole thing down for ‘Safety First Training,’ which means Maia and the ornithologist stalker are having a cow trying to find a new place that ‘represents them as a couple.’” I didn’t think it was possible for more sarcasm to drip off someone’s words.
But the sarcasm didn’t hold my attention for more than a second.
“Haunted?” I said.
I’d forgotten in the thrill of Elle’s Story and the relief that had come with Tabitha’s return and summer, but now it all flooded back: Someone had
been messing with Humdrum places all around town, making them seem haunted. Someone was trying to scare the Humdrums, and the Faerie Queen and my dad combined hadn’t been able to figure out how to stop them.
I couldn’t imagine who would want to attack Humdrums in a place like this. They provided us with cover, and—much as some Glimmers didn’t want to admit it—they also provided us with all kinds of services. They flipped our burgers, fixed our computers, unclogged our toilets, and got food from farms to our tables, just like they did for everyone else. Without Humdrums, the city wouldn’t be half of what it was. We wouldn’t be able to keep up the veneer of normal, and then it would be the disaster my dad always warned us about: a world of us versus them, scientists experimenting on us, Glimmers being forced to use their gifts on behalf of the military in all the wars we tried to avoid.
I was about to explain all of this to Imogen when I was distracted by the weirdest thing I’d seen all summer. Lorinda from Wishes Fulfilled was walking toward us, wearing faded blue jeans and carrying a bag of green onions and kale over her arm. I grabbed Imogen’s arm.
“That is not even right,” Imogen had time to say before Lorinda reached us.
“Hello, ladies!” she said. Her voice was friendly, but it took me a second to process that she was talking to us. Seeing her outside of Wishes Fulfilled was weirder than seeing a teacher outside of school.
After taking a second to collect myself, I echoed Imogen’s overly bright “Hi!”
“Isn’t it a gorgeous day?” Lorinda said.
Imogen shot me a nanosecond-long look that said, Really? We’re going to do small talk? before answering, “Yeah, the weather’s been great this last week.”
The weather had been great all month. It was always great in July and August. But what else were we supposed to talk to Lorinda about? I’d never spoken with her about anything but work, and I had no idea where to start now.
I was trying to come up with something to say when she turned to me and said, “Olivia, I’m so glad I ran into you. Tabitha’s obviously doing great, but she’s going to stay off cases that involve a lot of field work for the next little while.” She shifted the bag of veggies to her other arm. “We just got another case that’s going to require a lot of legwork, though,” Lorinda said. “The Processing Department thinks it’s going to bring in some considerable gold for the godmother and the agency, but we don’t have anyone experienced who has room to take it on right now.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. I glanced past her shoulder at a stall selling butter toffee mixed nuts. It was the weekend. This was my time. I didn’t want to spend it talking about work.
I was looking for a graceful exit from the conversation when Lorinda took me completely off-guard. “The case is yours if you want it.”
Imogen stiffened next to me, and I did a double take to make sure Lorinda was serious. She seemed to be. Despite the blue jeans and fresh produce, there wasn’t anything especially casual about her expression. She looked exactly like she did at work whenever she asked if I had time to run a dozen extra copies for a presentation.
“I thought you wanted someone experienced,” I said.
“That is always the ideal,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time to wait around for ideals right now. I think you’ll find the case to be educational, if nothing else. It’s for a mermaid living in the Willamette.”
I glanced toward the riverfront, which lay placid and dark in the summer sun. Boats lined its banks, but I knew there was a whole world underneath its calm surface most people knew nothing about. “What’s the wish?” I said.
“It’s about a boy, of course,” Lorinda said. “But I think there’s some flexibility in how she gets the wish. We can’t turn it down. Her father is the king of this region of the Pacific.”
Princes were a dime a dozen in our world, but most of their titles didn’t count for anything. But the daughter of a reigning Pacific king? That was another game entirely. I glanced over to Imogen, who looked as taken aback as I was.
“The odds of her wish coming true are a little slim,” Lorinda said. “She’s a Little Mermaid archetype, and Titania knows how those end up.”
We all knew. Little Mermaid Stories ended in a kiss or a death. There wasn’t much in between.
“On top of that, he’s a Humdrum,” Lorinda continued. “So it’s just never going to happen. I thought someone with your talent for bending the rules might be able to bring the case to a happy compromise.” She eyed me, gaze suddenly sharp.
Here it finally was, the chastisement for slipping Elle’s Story past the Oracle. I couldn’t tell Lorinda that I’d done the whole thing on the expectation I’d be fired. Did anyone really want me to go into another case with that attitude?
“There will be a substantial bonus,” she said.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. I knew I was supposed to say “yes,” but how could I possibly agree to something like this?
She hadn’t given up. She pasted on a smile that looked only a little forced and said, “How about you let me know in the next week or two?”
With business conducted, she asked how my parents were doing—they were fine—and whether Imogen had been able to get her personal statement written for her early application to Institut Glänzen—she had, and I was pleasantly surprised that Lorinda knew about it or cared. These duties done, she wished us an “excellent weekend” and left. Imogen and I flooded with relief that I hoped Lorinda couldn’t feel as she walked away.
“Too weird,” Imogen said, stating the obvious like a pro. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the backlit screen. “You’d better get going, Liv,” she said. “Almost eleven.”
My phone said 10:53. I was supposed to meet Lucas at Elle’s new gourmet coffee bean stall in seven minutes.
Aubrey hadn’t dumped him over prom like I’d secretly hoped. Instead, she’d apologized and said she was being unfair. This step, being noble and mature, made me dislike her even more. But I didn’t mention that to Lucas, so we kept hanging out like we always had.
A tiny, tantalizing current of tension hung between us whenever we were together, but he was too much of a gentleman and a good boyfriend to notice it, and I was trying to, as Imogen said, “not be one of those faeries.” She didn’t have much room to talk, seeing as how she’d stolen at least two girls’ boyfriends since we’d started high school, but I was determined to take the high road. I would be Lucas’ friend—and only his friend—until he had another slot open.
Imogen gave me a quick hug and then took off for a mandatory “bridesmaids’ bonding lunch!” I made my way alone across the market, trying to admire the items for sale in the stalls I passed but not seeing anything but Lucas’ face in my mind.
I saw him outside the coffee bean stall before he saw me. He was talking to Elle, who almost glowed as she rearranged bags of coffee beans and handed out tiny cups of espresso to potential customers. My heart skipped a beat. I was about to take another step toward him when something light but sharp hit my forehead and tumbled to the ground.
I put a hand to my head before I realized whatever had hit me hadn’t hurt. I looked down to see a paper airplane struggling on the ground like a bird with a broken wing. I bent and grabbed it before any of the Humdrums noticed it was moving.
The moment I touched the distantly familiar paper, everything fled my mind, even Lucas. I unfolded it so quickly the edge tore a little where it had been folded. I smoothed it out and forced myself to breathe like a calm person.
The handwriting was Queen Amani’s, and the message was urgent.
Meet me underneath the Chinatown archway in half an hour. I need you.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I couldn’t tell Lucas in person; my face felt flushed enough that he’d think something was wrong. Something probably was, for the Faerie Queen to show up again after months of normal, blessed silence. I pulled out my phone, my hands trembling.
Olivia: I’m so sorry. I ca
n’t make it. Family emergency.
I’d make the emergency up later. I waited long enough to see him pull his phone from his pocket, read the message, and frown. And then I was gone, headed north as fast as my legs would take me.
The Faerie Queen was calling. And somehow, even with Lucas pulling me in the other direction, I couldn’t say no.
About the Author
Emma Savant lives with her gorgeous husband and adorable cat in a small town in Oregon, where she spends way too much time watching Star Trek and eating nachos.
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