I squeezed his shoulder and gave him something else to focus on. “Can you find anything about Maysie? Where she went? Contact info? Maybe she knows what’s going on.”
“I’ll look. Unless you want to make out, since you’re, you know. Leaning.”
I made a face of disgust and him and stepped back, giving him room to work.
For a woman of Ms. Zent’s business stature, there was a strange lack of corporate paraphernalia in the office. No nameplate on the desk. No motivational pictures on the walls. Not even a degree. Didn’t people above a certain pay grade like to display their accomplishments for all the world to see? The only thing that could be considered decoration in this room was a little bowl of glass spheres on a side table. Black as night, they seemed to have no purpose other than to take up space. Except maybe to enhance the sinister atmosphere.
I was just turning away when a faint sound issued from the bowl. Frowning, I picked up one of the balls and turned it over in my hand. No markings, no evidence of speakers. And yet as I held it, I could swear it said my name.
With a yelp, I dropped it on the wood floor. It landed with a thud and rolled away.
“Shh!” Mueller hissed at me. “Do you hear that?”
Over my own pulse, I heard a faint tap-thud, tap-thud. “What is that?”
“Od. They must be back from lunch early.”
“Crap. There’s only one way out of here!”
He thumbed off the monitor, presumably leaving it the way it had been when we entered. “I always thought there was a secret passage in here. Maysie used it sneak up on me…” He started tapping lightly on the walls, listening.
“Mueller!” Panic raced through me. We were about to get caught in the boss’s office, courtesy of my all-access pass. I was so going to get fired.
The tap-thud grew closer and I could hear the little man muttering to himself as he walked. And there, buried in all his noises, the stiletto tap of a pair of cherry red mankillers.
I was about to go completely off my rocker when Mueller grabbed me by the upper arms and pushed me against a wall. “Follow my lead,” he growled into my ear. He puckered and leaned in to kiss me.
“Gross!” I spluttered, a little too loudly. “Not in a million years, Mueller.” I shoved his face away from mine.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “I have no intention of getting caught.” He drew my hair back and started kissing my neck.
My body couldn’t decide whether it was weirded out or enjoying the moment. My fingers curled into his flannel overshirt and one leg hooked around his. Good thing, too, because a second later, the little man in the olive green suit burst into the room.
“Intruders, Mistress!” he slathered.
I opened my eyes to find Mallora Zent staring at me with thinly veiled thunder in her gaze. “What is this?” she asked, all calm before the storm.
“I am so sorry,” I spluttered, shoving Mueller off me. His pants thunked to the floor in a jangle of keys and spare parts. I found myself staring at his hairy legs and playing-card boxers, my cheeks flaming. “How the hell did you do that so fast? Both of your hands were on my—”
“Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Isn’t that right, Od?” He smacked the man in the chest with one hand. He gave me a half-lidded smile of pride as he stepped back.
“Cover yourself, Mister Mueller,” Ms. Zent said, keeping her eyes averted. Mostly on me. “Miss…”
“Hargitay,” I answered sheepishly. “Tessa Hargitay.”
“Miss Hargitay, I don’t accept this kind of behavior from my employees. If it happens again, you will lose your position here.”
“Yes, Ms. Zent,” I said, swallowing hard and glancing at the floor. My embarrassment was genuine, as was my agreement that finding myself in such a position with Mueller would never happen again.
She used two fingers to smooth her already perfect hair. “Now, both of you get out of my office before I change my mind.”
I darted around her as fast as I could. She caught my wrist in an ice-cold grip as she added, “And Miss Hargitay?” She held a small bag of cosmetics out to me with her free hand. Had she been holding that the whole time? I couldn’t remember. “Put on some makeup. Your charms might be enough to overwhelm a troglodyte like this, but we have an image to maintain. Clear?”
Anger seeped through my fear like underwater lava. I nodded because I didn’t trust what might come out of my mouth. When she released me, I made a clean shot for the stairs, not waiting for Mueller to catch up.
“Tessa, wait,” he called as I descended the steps. “Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom. To wash. For an hour.” And possibly to gouge out my eyes and burn my clothing. Except that would leave me blind and naked…
“Coulda been a lot worse.”
I paused with the women’s door partway open and glared up the hallway at him. “Worse than being told I’m ugly by my boss while you’re trying not to trip over your pants?”
“She called me dumb. You don’t see me all upset.”
“Yeah, well…” I didn’t want to be an insecure baby, not ever, and certainly not right at that moment after a metaphoric dressing down beside Mueller’s literal one. I’d already shown Mueller enough of that side of me, the pieces I was most ashamed of. But words came tumbling out, even as I tried to scoop them back in. “That’s because in your case, it’s not true. I’ll see ya later.”
And then I closed the door and locked it, since I didn’t think Mueller would have any qualms about following me into the lady’s room. I ran the water until it was pleasantly warm and rinsed my face, mostly trying to get rid of the heat that still pinked my cheeks. Also, maybe to keep the tears from leaking out of my eyes.
I was sorting through the boxes and tubes in the cosmetics bag - all manufactured by W-International, even though I had never heard of them before today - holding back my sniffles when the normally chilly room grew suddenly and unbearably warm. For a second, I thought I was having a seriously premature hot flash. But then the tile walls resounded with a high-pitched whine and pressure built all around me like a storm moving fast over the mountains…straight into the bathroom.
And then, in a brilliant flash of gold shot through with orange and pink, a blonde woman popped into existence behind me. She wore a tan pantsuit with a pale pink blouse and matching heels. A string of perfect pearls circled her long, elegant neck and rattled a little as she shook out her hair. Or went through the motions, rather, as she wore her hair in a perfect, low beehive from the ‘50s.
She blinked at our surroundings and noticed the mirror first. “Don’t mind if I do,” she lilted, her voice sounding like honey decorated in pink sprinkles. “Re-entry can be so jostling.” She patted her hair, fixed her blouse, and powdered her nose, all while I stood at the next sink over, staring at her with my mouth open.
“Re-entry…?” I asked, shock clearly holding off my screaming fit until a more awkward and embarrassing moment.
“From the Agency, of course,” she said with a little giggle. Then she turned and held her hand out to me. “Agent Shinewell, WHIRA Representative.”
“‘Scuse me?”
“My name is Sabine Rutherford Shinewell. I’m here to collect Godmother Maysie’s personal magic amplifier on behalf of the Wand, Haberdashery, and Implement Regulatory Agency. There are papers to sign, of course, but if you’ll just hand it over we can be done in a wiggle of a bunny’s nose.”
I did the one thing I really should have done a long time ago, when all this insanity started.
I fainted.
Chapter 14
Once upon a time, there was this thing I called a normal life. It was simple and it sucked, but I never had to worry it was going to take a left turn into Oz. Or Wonderland. Or wherever it was that allowed people to pop in and out of thin air at will, rearrange memories, and—crap. I really was in Harry Potter’s world, wasn’t I?
“What did you call her?” I asked, as if no fainting had
caused me to drop to the cool tiles of the bathroom floor like a cement brick. I even managed to sit up and fix my hair like a completely together person.
“My dear, are you quite well?” Sabine asked, bending over me.
“Fine,” I said, waving her hand away from my head. “Maysie—what did you say she was?”
Bright blue eyes peered down at me like quizzical sapphires. No one’s eyes had any business being that sparkly. “Retired? Except I don’t remember saying that.”
“You said she’s a…she’s a godmother?” I didn’t trust my legs yet, so I settled for staying on the floor. “Did you mean like a…like a fairy godmother? As in Cinderella?”
“Oh, my, yes. We do get a lot of flight time out of that one, don’t we? Although I believe Miss Maysie specialized in the more, mm, unusual destinies. But no doubt you would know more about that than I.”
I stared up at her smiling face and felt the sudden need to strangle the sweet out of her. “Why would I know anything about it?”
She laughed, filling the bathroom with the twinkle of tiny bells. Not unlike the chimes I thought I heard whenever Maysie laughed. “Why, because you’re her apprentice, of course! There is no closer relationship for us godmothers than that of mentor and apprentice. I completely understand your reaction to my arrival. Why, when my mentor retired, I refused to come out of my bedroom for a week! I don’t think I even ran a comb through my hair for a whole day.”
“That sounds terrible,” I mumbled. My shoulder was beginning to throb, probably from falling on it. “But I’m not Maysie’s apprentice. I’m not anyone’s apprentice.”
Sabine giggled, a sound that should have seemed ridiculous coming out of a woman older than I was by at least ten years, and yet it made her even sweeter. “Don’t be silly.”
With a full-on-serious monotone, I said, “I’m not being silly.”
The sweetness vanished from her face for about ten seconds, long enough for her to stand straight again and evaluate me. Then it snapped back into place as she gave me a big smile. “Of course not. You are your own godmother now that she’s retired. Passed the wand, and all that. My apologies, Miss Tessa. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t. And I have no wand. You know why I have no wand?” I struggled to my feet, leaning on the counter for support. “Because I’m not her apprentice. Until you showed up here like somebody blew up Tinkerbell, I had no idea magic existed.” As my head whirled, I leaned over the sink and added, “In fact, I’m still pretty sure I’m hallucinating you. Extreme stress reaction, or something. Do concussions get worse over time?”
The WHIRA rep twittered delicately. “Hallucinating me.” She swatted my arm playfully. “I’m as real as you are, si--sweetie.”
“You’re not old enough to be my mother. Don’t call me sweetie.”
She huffed and stamped her pink heel on the tile. “Fine. I won’t call you anything. Just give me the wand and I’ll leave you to your dreary—” Her hand danced in front of her, apparently to indicate me. “—Whatever this is. Now, hand it over.” That same hand snapped open, palm up.
“For the third time, I don’t have it.” I patted my jeans and shook out my Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt with dramatic flair. “No wand.”
That perfectly sculpted jaw worked from side to side as fire snapped in those sparkly eyes of hers. “Per the Wand Return and Dissolution Act, a wand caretaker must relinquish any wand not crafted of their own power to the Wand, Haberdashery, and Implement Regulation Agency within seventy-two hours of receipt.”
I stood up to my full height, which brought me a couple inches taller than she was, even in heels. Over-emphasizing my syllables, I said again, “No wand.”
She closed her eyes. “Article six, paragraph three, ‘No apprentice shall retain her mentor’s wand in case of death, disappearance, or retirement.’”
“How many times do I have to say it?” I was shouting now, at a loss to understand how she could not get what I was saying. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
The glittery blonde just kept on going, raising her voice to rival mine. “Article nine, section 2! ‘As stated in the Godmother Rules of Retirement, a godmother shall, upon reaching her final stage of luster, commit her wand to her apprentice for caretaking until such a time as a representative of WHIRA can collect it.’” She dropped her hand as if reaching into a purse and drew it upward, pulling a black and white photograph out of thin air. “That is your signature on the Free Agent’s Contract, is it not?”
I took the photograph from her with the tips of two fingers, waiting for it to burn me. When it didn’t, I peered more closely. That was the contract I had signed in Maysie’s office on Friday, sure enough. “She said it was just supposed to keep me from being part of the official factory hierarchy.” My voice sounded weirdly hollow as it reverberated around the bathroom.
“Well it wasn’t. Your signature there and hers below it officially declare the pair of you to be bonded godmothers, apprentice and mentor, and to register you as a free agent.” Her anger faded to irritation. “She didn’t tell you that?”
I swallowed hard. “I only met her a week ago. And then this morning, I showed up to work and she was gone.”
A lace hanky appeared below my nose. I wasn’t sure if it was going to automatically wipe my nose for me, but I didn’t want to risk it. I grabbed it and dabbed at my eyes. “I am so crazy. Full-on straight jacket. This can’t be real.”
Sabine tipped her head back and said to the ceiling light, “I got out of the godmother business for a reason!” She growled out her frustration, then adjusted her shoulder pads, tucked a loose strand of hair back into her coiffure, and smiled at me. With a carefully measured tone, she said, “Maysie Browning Fife was a fairy godmother, a real, live fairy godmother. Godmothers are one type of magic Folk, who exist in all parts of the mundane world, even though most mundanes can’t see us for what we are. By signing that contract, you are now also a fairy godmother.”
“Like, making dreams come true, wishing on stars, happily ever after crap?” I felt sick. When she nodded, I croaked, “But I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
Sabine smiled at me with pity. “You grew up a female mundane in America. Believe me, you know all about it.”
“Theoretically, maybe. But…” How to explain my situation quickly and simply? “My life sucks. My dreams fizzled. My happily ever after was a happily-for-six-months. I can’t be a godmother.”
She sighed. “Do this.” She lifted one manicured finger toward the ceiling and spun it quickly, like a hyper teenager saying “big whoop.” Was that a thing anymore?
“What, this?” I asked, mimicking her. Star-and-bubble-shaped sparks leapt from my finger like ant-sized fireworks. I fell back against the wall, holding my finger as far from myself as I could without detaching it. “What the hell was that?”
“Magic.” She perched her hands on her hips. “Your magic. The magic inherently in you, now that you’re a godmother. I don’t know what Maysie thought she was doing, but I’m sorry to say that she’s gone - retired - and you’re supposed to fill her rebellious shoes.”
“Rebellious? Maysie?”
“You have no idea.” She pushed my hand back to my side. “You are now Miss Tessa, a free agent godmother.”
“What does that mean, ‘a free agent’ godmother?” I could play along with my hallucination, no problem.
“It means you are unbound by union laws, free to choose whatever girl you wish to help whenever you wish to do so.”
“That sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming…”
Her fingers worked at the top button of her jacket. “But it also means you can’t benefit from their assistance. Since your mentor retired before your training was complete—”
“Complete? Try never started…”
“—I’m afraid you’re going to have to self-educate.”
“Okay,” I said, my brain too much of a jumble to really call what I was doin
g thinking, but processing through things, at least. “So, is there a textbook or class I can take or something?”
Sabine shook her head.
“Someone I can shadow or observe? Ask questions?”
“I suppose you could find another free agent and request she take you on, but they’re a very picky lot. And in general, they don’t play well with others. Hence the free agency.”
My body—did I still have a body? I couldn’t feel it. “So you’re saying I’m screwed?”
She opened her mouth to answer in the affirmative, I could tell. Before she said anything, though, the factory shook with the force of an explosion. Only one thought entered my brain, and one thought only: Mueller!
I wasn’t sure if I was worried for him or already pissed off at whatever stupid thing he was trying to do. The lock on the door gave me a little trouble before I could throw the thing open. Smoke was pouring down the stairs, glittering green on the inside. I skidded to a halt. That…was not Mueller’s fault. Up the stairs three at a time I went, following the smoke to its source. That source happened to be my file room door. Except my door was fine, completely untouched. The smoke emanated from the ground in a horseshoe around it.
“Backfired, did it?” Sabine asked having reached the second floor before me. She sounded like a school marm chastising a pupil.
Od, that’s what Mueller had called him. The little man in the icky olive green suit was looking even more creepy, with his wispy hair blown straight up and smudges of what looked like green ink across his face. His buggy green eyes were wide in surprise and darting this way and that with worry. Anywhere but at the golden woman. Or at me, which didn’t bother me in the slightest.
“Unstable compounds,” he muttered. “Tripped. Dropped ‘em.”
“You should be more careful in the future,” Sabine said. “You could have hurt someone very badly.”
I wasn’t entirely certain that wasn’t the purpose of the explosion, a fact that made me more than a little uneasy, given that he was trying to blow up my file room. Unlike Sabine, I didn’t believe for one second that it was an accident. In fact, I was starting to think nothing that had happened since I got back to Colorado had been random. Either someone was trying to drive me crazy - and had succeeded - or someone was out to do far worse.
One Good Wand Page 14
