One Good Wand

by Grace McGuiness

  And then, with a twinkle of tiny bells and a flash of golden and bronze light, they flared out of existence.

  “I really need to learn how to do that,” I muttered.

  “Since you can’t,” Ms. Zent said, back to the cold, professional tone I was more familiar with, “I suggest you buckle yourself into this sorry excuse for a vehicle and head straight for the factory.”

  I stared at her, my adrenaline still too heavy to really allow for abstract thought. “Um…why?” Did she expect me to work after all this?

  Superiority and why-am-I-cursed-to-suffer-fools—those were the expressions her face was made for. “Because, you silly girl, as Odmenticus proved for us, your file room is protected from magical incursion. My apologies for that, incidentally. He’s a minion cursed with curiosity. Although I daresay you returned the slight by stealing his leg…”

  My eyes widened. With everything that had happened this week, I had completely forgotten our thievery. “Uh, yeah, about that…”

  She flicked my comment away like it was a servant who didn’t know when to disappear. “You only have three hours before they escalate. I suggest you don’t waste it.”

  Panic surged back into my chest. “Wait, escalate? What? And what do I do after that? It’s not like I can live in the file room forever!”

  “Calm your breathing, Ms. Hargitay.” It was an order, not a gentle suggestion. “There are rules for this sort of thing. You get to the file room and I will take care of the rest.”

  My stomach gremlin fought through my fear to gnash its teeth. “Why? Why would you do that for me? You don’t even like me.”

  “My opinion has nothing to do with it. If you haven’t noticed, we Folk are rather rule-bound. As an employer, there are rules for me, too.”

  When I laughed, it sounded more than a little burdened with spite. “You’d think at this point, I’d stop assuming any of this has anything to do with me.”

  She watched me with those dark, intelligent eyes for a moment before her brows arched in an almost friendly manner. “That’s the other thing about our world, I’m afraid. Any creature, no matter how insignificant, can alter the course of life.” She lifted a hand and proceeded to dance a ball of green light over and around it. “That’s what magic does. Evens the playing field, so to speak.” The light winked out, making the parking garage feel even darker than it had before. “Now go. I don’t want to see that…” She searched for an obviously distasteful word if the wrinkle in her nose was any indication, but apparently came up empty. “I don’t want the wand squad getting their hands on you.”

  As I watched her disappear around the corner, it occurred to me that this new magical world was way more complicated than I might ever understand. If a witch who played for the dark side was willing to help me when all the light players made it feel like pulling teeth to get any answers…exactly what did that mean?

  I would have plenty of time to think about it while holed up in the file room. For now, I sent Amy a quick text. Sorry I disappeared. Emergency. You okay?

  Her reply came back almost instantly. No prob. Mueller explained everything. I’m good! This place is amazing. BTW, your brother is *hot.*

  I ignored the last part, choosing instead to worry about exactly what Mueller had explained. To him, I sent, Taking your car to the factory.

  His response growled low and rumbly across the parking garage. “Like hell you are. I’m the only one who drives her.” He stepped out from behind an enormous Denali taking up two parking spaces a few paces away, his Wolverine costume making the move look oddly natural.

  The warm, bubbly feeling in my belly and its resulting grin were due to my relief at seeing a somewhat friendly face…or so I told myself. “Saying that pretty much guarantees old you will come from the future to steal it, you know. How long were you hiding there?”

  “Covering you,” he corrected. “I don’t hide.” He removed his claws and chucked them into the black hole that was his backseat.

  “Fine. How long were you covering me with your plastic Wolverine claws, ready to pounce on seven people with magic at their disposal?”

  “Since about the time the boss showed up. I figured she had it taken care of, but I wanted to maintain the element of surprise, just in case.” He nudged me out of the way so he could take the driver’s seat. “I could have taken at least three of them.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. Then, on pure impulse, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. All that stress and fear and everything needed a release. “Thanks for having my back.”

  He hesitated long enough I started to worry I was an even bigger idiot than I imagined, but finally returned the hug. His arms felt warm around me. Almost safe. “What are friends for?”

  When I pulled back, he was all blurry and wavery. I ducked my head to hide my tears and ran around the car to the passenger seat. “To the factory, Logan,” I instructed, tossing my purple-streaked hair over my shoulders.

  “On it, Betsy,” he said. “But can we stop for a bite on the way? All this superhero work really works up an appetite.”

  Chapter 32

  Mueller filled me in on his side of the last hour (half hour? My sense of time was really screwed up). He and Amy had waited until they opened the doors for Danny’s presentation. She wanted to wait for me, but as soon as he saw the troll swinging under the bridge like a monkey on the warpath, he knew something was up.

  “My hero,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes and making a kissy face at him.

  He grunted around his lunch and, when he had room in his mouth, rebuffed me. “I know you want me as bad as I want this burger inside me, but keep it in your pants, Hargitay.”

  And like that, the awfulness of that night at his place was gone and I had my friend back. Maybe I didn’t trust him like I had before, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. If marriage had taught me anything, it was that boundaries matter. Now we had ours, I hoped we could avoid all future knives in the back and awkward near-make-out sessions. I needed a friend way more than I needed to get laid. Mueller would probably disagree with that statement, so I kept it to myself.

  “I swear she’s fine,” he said in exasperation the fourth time I brought up how badly I had screwed up Amy’s fairytale ending. “Last I saw her, she was bouncing on her chair and squealing with a big blue giant from that one MMO.”

  “Yeah, but I promised her I wouldn’t leave her. What if she runs into Tyler, the jerk who led her on and then laughed at her?”

  “Hopefully she kicks him in the nuts.”

  “But I’m her godmother. I’m supposed to help her find her fairytale.” I was whining. I knew it, and I wasn’t ashamed.

  “Did Cinderella’s godmother go to the ball with her?”

  His question brought my self-pity to an abrupt halt, forcing me to actually think about the story. “No. But she’s not a cinderella. That was why it didn’t work with the jerk. I thought it was about the party and the dress and the boy, but it’s not. She’s a sleeping beauty. She won’t be happy until she finds a way to live in the real world.”

  “Whatever. Sleeping Beauty’s godmothers didn’t wake her up, either. Her prince did.”

  I brushed that off. “I never liked that part. So I decided she can wake herself up. She just has to gain confidence in the real world so it’s nicer than the dream. Which, in my opinion, is what that kiss really was. I mean, if I had lived my whole life in a cottage in the middle of the woods with three fairies providing everything for me and nobody to hang out with but owls and deer, I don’t think I’d want to come back to my life, either.” The metaphoric parallel to my own life had my stomach gremlin sulking in a corner.

  “So let her.”

  Again, his comment knocked aside my negative navel-gazing. “What?”

  He turned us into the Fairytale Endings parking lot, now completely deserted. Gone was the billowing, sparkling smoke that made the off-red building seem so magical. Now it looked like an abandoned industry as muc
h as the crumbling buildings downtown that hadn’t been used in decades. “Let her wake herself up. You did your part, now let her do hers.”

  He parked, got out of the car, and was five steps away before he realized I was still in the car. It took me a few extra seconds to follow, my mind was so burdened with thoughts.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when I stumbled out of the car.

  “You’re absolutely right. That’s what the magic is for—it sets the stage. It makes the right circumstances, but the girl has to be the one to make it work for her.” My brain was working so hard through so many thoughts, we were upstairs in front of the file room door before I knew it.

  “You don’t happen to have your card key tucked somewhere in that outfit, do you?”

  I frowned at him as I realized I left my backpack and purse in the car. “Where, exactly, would I keep it?”

  He shrugged. “The boots?”

  “Sounds super comfy.” I stepped closer to the door with a growl. “This is perfect. Safety is right there, right on the other side of this door, and I don’t have the key.” I lifted my hands to bang on the white-painted wood and fell through as the door opened all by itself. My thigh-high boots tangled on each other as I tripped and landed on the floor I had thankfully swept not so long ago.

  “Good thing you’re not the princess,” Mueller said as he sat down beside me, toeing the door closed with his Wolverine boots. “You’d never make it past the first dance.”

  After elbowing him in the ribs, I adjusted my boobs in my costume and pulled the leotard back over my left butt cheek. “No superhero in her right mind would wear crap like this for real. Way too uncomfortable.”

  He wore that chuffed look, like a terribly content teenager, as he leaned his head back against the file cabinet behind us. “I don’t think the artists were concerned about how Psylocke felt. Except maybe under someone.”

  “Gross.” I shoved at him.

  “Watch that dagger. I don’t want to be skewered.”

  “Actually…” I pulled the wand from inside the dagger and waved it over myself. It still felt awkward, like I was a giraffe trying to do ballet, but the magic worked. With that same golden magic with the flowy purple undercurrent, I transformed my costume back into jeans and a plain t-shirt. My legs breathed a sigh of relief. I kicked off my ratty sneakers and socks and let out a soft, “Ahh.”

  “That better be all you take off,” Mueller warned.

  “Shut up.”

  “There’s that quick wit I’ve come to know.”

  I glared at him, but there was no anger in it. “Want me to turn yours back?”

  “I’m good.”

  “It’s because your mutton chops have never been so lush, isn’t it?”

  “It’s because my sleeves are back in the car.”

  “Sure it is.” I grinned.

  “My muttons are always lush.”

  I snickered. “Not when we first met. Back then - you know, two weeks ago - you had no beard. It was just a scraggly, teenaged-looking thing.”

  “I still don’t get that. Why would a spell that changed the factory and made all the employees but us disappear also change my beard? Seems kind of random.”

  “Maybe you’re Evil, Mirror-Universe Mueller,” I suggested.

  The humor fell away from him like a storm cloud had opened up inside the file room and washed it away. “About the other night…”

  I wanted to tell him it didn’t matter, that it was water under the bridge. But that’s what Old Tessa would have done. What she had always done when Kyle messed up. She never let him apologize because she knew how hard it was on him. He had always had that fragile kind of ego that drove a lot of artists into deep depressions and drug overdoses. I had always been careful not to push him too far. But Mueller wasn’t Kyle. No artistic personality here. So I stayed silent, hoping this would be a new leaf. A new Tessa. Stronger, more confident.

  Or maybe I was just desperate to know that not everything was my fault.

  Mueller searched the floorboards for words. “I…was a real asshole. Forester just…you saw the dude. He’s wanted to pound my face into pulp since we met. I didn’t want him to be pissed at you, too.”

  “Or to think you were cheating on his sister.”

  He glared at the wall like it was Forester for a few seconds, then propped his arms on his knees and bowed his head. “I don’t know what happened to Val. I need to know.”

  “She’s your girlfriend, Mueller. You don’t have to apologize for worrying about her. I’d be completely freaked if someone I loved disappeared without a trace.”

  “My point is, as much as I want to find her, that wasn’t the only reason I’ve been helping. I…”

  I glanced sideways at him, wondering if this grunting, pervy, real-life kind of Wolverine was about to become one of the most honest and emotionally open men I had ever met.

  “…I want you to know that. That’s all,” he finished.

  I mirrored his posture to bury my smile in my arms. “Thanks,” I said, the word muffled by my arms. When I had my amusement under control, I turned my face to rest my cheek on my arm. “I want to help you find her. And not just because I’m a godmother.”

  “So you’re accepting it now?”

  My sigh was heavy enough to shift some of the papers I’d left out on the table. One of them drifted to the floor in front of Mueller. “I have no idea. Maysie left me a letter with the wand. It told me very clearly that I wasn’t supposed to let anyone have it, but Ms. Zent made it sound like the wand squad was going to do something to me that I don’t even want to think about. I don’t want to be locked in a dungeon for the rest of my life, but I also don’t want to leave my mom in a coma. And there’s just…there’s something off about Maysie leaving. Not just the factory changing hands and everyone disappearing, though that’s bad enough.”

  “You think something happened to her?”

  “Or someone. I just…I have this feeling…” I tried to dig into it, but it danced away like a dream so I shook my head.

  “That guy in charge of the squad said it sounded like foul play, too. Like it’s not supposed to happen that way, her giving you her wand.”

  “Exactly! But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it, either. I don’t think I’m exactly super qualified to be a fairy godmother, but at this point I don’t really feel like I have a choice, you know? I mean, what if giving up the wand makes whatever happened here, all the disappearances and changes, even your beard…what if it makes them all permanent? What if I have a chance to put everything back the way it was, but only if I keep the wand? Or maybe I’m just being stupid and self-centered. Maybe I can’t control any of it.”

  “It’s not self-centered. Maysie picked you, Tessa. That makes it about you whether you want it to be or not.”

  That made me feel simultaneously emboldened and disheartened. Should I smile or frown? “Right. So all of this is riding on me whether I like it or not. No pressure.”

  Silence fell between us. With the factory machines turned off, it was well and truly silence. The better to hear the wand squad’s approach, right? Unless they flew. My heart rate climbed at that notion. Having felt the explosion that Ms. Zent’s assistant—uh, minion—had set off to test it, I knew the door would hold against a significant onslaught. What I didn’t know was what sort of ‘escalation’ was coming my way when they found out the wand I had given them was a big, fat, battery-powered fake.

  “Who’s Cindy Clark?”

  I forced my attention away from my thoughts. “What?”

  Mueller picked up the paper that had fallen off the table and showed it to me. “What’s ‘envigorated’ mean?”

  “No idea,” I said, taking the paper from him. “She worked in the bakery. At least according to her file. I can’t find a record of her anywhere else.”

  “You mean like she disappeared?” Mueller stared at me. I stared at him.

  I hopped to my feet and started flipping
through the current files in the front corner of the room. “Forester?”

  “Yeah. Valeria.”

  “Here she is.” I pulled the file out of the stack and opened it. When Mueller tried to read over my shoulder, I pushed him back. “Nuh-uh. Confidentiality. Want me to get fired?”

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “All women have secrets.” I smiled at him over the top of the folder and started reading. It was all pretty standard. Valeria had been a machine operator for a year, which probably meant she and Mueller hadn’t been dating as long as I had imagined. Not that that changed anything. Just…interesting. “Where’s Rosewood?”

  “No clue.”

  I glanced at him. “You’re sure?”

  “Stop being so damn cryptic.”

  “Where did Val live?”

  His eyes closed to slits. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to remember, or if he was getting ready to bark at me. “I never actually went to her house.”

  “How long were you dating?” I asked, skepticism dripping from my arched eyebrows.

  “Nine months. Stop looking at me like that. She lives with her brother, and, like I said, he’s an asshole.”

  “So, apparently she lives in Rosewood, except neither of us have ever heard of it. Her brother is her only emergency contact, and there’s no record of her past. No past employment or school or anything.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, as if I were threatening his girl and he was prepping to protect her. “You think she made it all up?”

  “I think your girlfriend is magical.”

  “You say that like it’s a surprise. But then, you never went to bed with her, so I understand the mistake.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean she’s one of the Folk. A magic-type person.”

  “Okay. What does that change?”

  “It doesn’t. Just…” My eyes wandered to the next page, where my brain couldn’t believe what it was seeing. That was happening a lot lately.