by Lily Webb
She gasped and fluttered her wings nervously. “Oh, Miss Clarke. I didn’t know you were here. I just came up to get something from my desk.” She stared at my bulging bag and pockets. “It looks like you found everything you needed.”
“Yeah, basically. Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
Rose chewed on her lower lip and fretted. “I’d love to, but I don’t have a lot of time. The rest of the team is expecting me back downstairs.”
“This won’t take long. Just a few minutes, I promise.”
She looked like she would rather have jumped out the window than speak with me. “Okay, but we really have to hurry. I’m already in trouble downstairs. I don’t want to stir up any more problems for myself.”
“I understand, so I’ll get right to the point. I assume you’ve heard about what happened to Olivia?”
Rose’s eyes snapped to mine and her pupils dilated. She nodded hesitantly. “I did. It’s terrible. I’m starting to believe I really am bad luck because wherever I go, trouble follows,” she said and sank down on the corner of her desk.
I didn’t think bad luck had anything to do with it, but I knew better than to accuse her outright. She didn’t seem like the type to respond well to pressure.
“I heard Katelyn reassigned you to work with Olivia. How’s that going?”
Rose looked at me with watery eyes, and for a second I feared she might melt down. “Awful. Just dreadful.”
“How so? I know Katelyn and Olivia have a reputation for being hard to work with, but is it really all that bad?”
“Whatever you’ve heard, I can promise you it’s worse. Or at least it is for me, anyway. I try so hard to get everything right, but it seems like no matter what I do, no one’s satisfied — especially not Olivia. I’m convinced she hates me. I just don’t know why.”
“You don’t have a single clue?”
“No, I really don’t! Everything she’s asked me to do, I’ve done, and in less time than she wanted. My work can’t have anything to do with it. I mean, I know I’m clumsy and, well, more than a little awkward, but I get things done. I’m dependable.”
I didn’t disagree with her assessment of herself, but I sympathized. Olivia seemed quick to write Rose off as some deranged nerd who couldn’t string a sentence together, and though Rose marched to the beat of her own drum, she didn’t seem like a bad person. Far from it.
“Some people are just like that. They’ll never accept you into their circle, no matter how hard you try. It’s probably better if you don’t,” I said, hoping my encouragement would put her at ease enough to open up more.
She smiled at me and her wings twitched. “Thank you, Miss Clarke. That means a lot to me coming from you.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, I know you don’t have a lot of time left, so I’ll try to make this quick. The reason I wanted to talk to you was because of the circumstances.”
The smile fell off her face like a brick from a construction site. “When Katelyn and I found Olivia trapped in her animal form in her office, it looked like one of the last things she’d been doing was drinking coffee.”
Rose eyed me. “Really? I–I didn’t know that. I haven’t asked a lot of questions because I didn’t really want to know. It was bad enough to go through with Beau. I didn’t think I could handle it again.”
“I understand, but the thing is, I talked to Katelyn and she told me it was you who brought coffee back to the office for the entire team.”
Rose jumped off the corner of the desk and stood tall. It was the most assertive I’d ever seen her. “Miss Clarke, with all due respect, I don’t like where this conversation is going. I’m not fond of Olivia, and everyone knows that, but I would never put my job in jeopardy because of it.”
“Fair enough. But you have to admit it looks suspicious.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem. Olivia doesn’t like me either, so she sent me to get coffee for everyone. She does things like that all the time to keep me away from her. But I promise you, that cup of coffee went directly from the café to her. I never touched it, not even to hand it to her. She took it herself.”
“And you’re sure no one else touched it between the time when you ordered it and when Olivia took the cup? Did it spend any time alone sitting on the counter or anything like that?”
Rose shook her head vigorously. “I never set it down. I carried the two trays with me all the way from the café to the elevator and up to the twentieth floor. For what it’s worth, Olivia didn’t even thank me.”
“What happened to the rest of the coffees?”
“I don’t know. I sat them down on the staff table for whoever wanted them.”
“And where did Olivia go after that?”
“She went back to her office. I think she was still going over the scripts for both shows, and she was under a lot of pressure. That’s part of the reason I didn’t make a big deal out of her bullying me. I couldn’t tell if it was personal.”
“What did you do after you dropped off the coffee?”
“Katelyn asked me to make several dozen copies of a document, so I did. I think it took me around an hour.”
“What’s your relationship with Katelyn like?”
Rose sighed and shook her head. “Not much better than with Olivia, honestly. The only one around here who doesn’t treat me like an accident waiting to happen is Beau. Anyway, I really need to get back downstairs. I’m sorry to run out on you, Miss Clarke, but maybe we can talk again later when I have more time?”
“Yeah, sure, I understand,” I said. She nodded, flashed a smile, and went to her desk to retrieve something from a drawer. It was a purse of sorts, small enough that she could carry it in one hand if she needed to, and suddenly I understood why she didn’t want anyone to know she was coming upstairs.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you figure this out. I’m looking forward to Beau coming back to work as much as everyone else is.”
“Hopefully, it won’t be much longer. Good luck down there, Rose.”
“Thanks, I need it,” she said with a wave and disappeared into the elevator.
I deflated as soon as I was alone. Despite Rose’s rocky relationship with Olivia, she didn’t seem capable of spiking anyone’s coffee. She was far too sweet and meek to have done something so brazen, and as a fairy she was incapable of lying to me about it. Besides, I wasn’t even sure that was what happened; it was just a guess.
So, I set her aside to focus on the leads I had left, starting with the note I’d taken from Katelyn’s office and the letters to Beau that filled my pockets. While I waited for the elevator to come back up, I pulled my phone out of my bag, careful not to drop any of the letters, and sent a message to Mallory.
Me: Hey, I got the letters from Beau’s office — and something else you really need to see. Are you free today?
She didn’t answer immediately, which was unusual, but when I checked my phone again as the elevator plummeted past the twentieth floor, I found a response.
Mallory: Not today. I’m swamped with school stuff, but I’m supposed to meet with Estelle and Raina at the Veilside library tomorrow to go over everything. Want to meet us there?
I tapped out a response as quickly as I could with one hand.
Me: What time?
Mallory: Around two. Does that work?
Me: I’ll be there, come spell or high water.
The elevator dinged at the ground floor, so I dropped my phone back in my bag and tried to flatten it as much as possible before heading for the entrance with my pockets bulging.
Chapter Thirteen
Mallory met me outside the entrance to Veilside’s library the next afternoon. Together, we carried the cardboard boxes full of the letters I’d taken from Beau’s office. A wary gargoyle guard stationed outside watched us suspiciously, but didn’t object. Maybe he knew better than to doubt the Head Witch.
Inside, we wound our way through do
zens of tables and shelves full of the history of Moon Grove and magic at large. True to her nature, Mallory had set up a nest in the back of the library, a table lined with arcane books on ancient magic and the study of handwriting.
“Estelle is already here, but Raina’s gonna be busy for a bit,” she said over her shoulder as she struggled to keep from dropping the box of letters. It probably would’ve been easier to use magic to transport our cargo, but for whatever reason, we’d done things the hard way instead.
When we reached the table, I peeked past a mountain of books and found a woman Grandma Elle’s age hunched over a book. She looked up over the rim of her oversized glasses at me and smiled. She had snow white hair, which she styled in large, swooping curls up and away from her face, and wore flowing light pink robes. A button penned to the left side of her chest depicted an open book and marked her as a member of the Moon Grove Historical Society.
“My, what a pleasure to meet the Head Witch,” she said as she extended a hand for me to shake. I dropped the box of letters down on the table, perhaps a little too hard judging from the cloud of dust that surged up from underneath it, and took her hand in mine.
“Oh, little old me? I’m nothing but a pretender in a sea of professionals,” I said and Estelle chuckled.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she said as she stuck her hand in a box to fish out a letter. She tore it open and read it absently.
“Well, I hope all you’ve heard has been good. Anyway, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you for your help and for meeting us here today. The good news is I’ve got more new material for you.”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s get to the juicy stuff. What’s this new thing you said I had to see?” Mallory interrupted as she dropped into the chair nearest her.
“Oh, it’s a long story, but the short version is that I went to see Katelyn Anderson yesterday, Beau’s producer. While I was in her office chatting, I noticed some, well, interesting similarities in her handwriting.”
Mallory’s eyes shot open behind her glasses, which amplified them to look three times bigger than they were. “Wait, are you saying what I think you are?”
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but yeah, the handwriting is eerily similar. Here, I snatched this note from her office when she wasn’t paying attention, and I know it’s her writing it because I watched her write it,” I said and reached inside my robes for the crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it out on the table and Mallory’s eyes tore over it like it was the latest piece of magical pop culture.
“The L’s and O’s. There’s so much space between the strokes, just like—”
“The letters in the anonymous notes, yeah, exactly,” I interrupted.
“Let me see, dear,” Estelle said, one hand extended. Mallory passed it to her and turned back to me.
“Estelle has been going over the letters we already had, but she’s not sure about the link. The handwriting is very similar, almost convincing, but there are some weird irregularities.”
I stood silently and waited for Estelle to finish examining Katelyn’s scribbles, my heart rate picking up speed with each passing second. Estelle scrunched her face and frowned at me over the top of the paper.
“What? What is it?”
Estelle reached for the letter she’d opened and held up the two pieces of paper side-by-side. “If you just glanced at these, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking the same person wrote them, but if you look with an eye for the details, it’s clear they aren’t the same person’s handwriting.”
“How can you tell?”
She pointed one of her pink fingernails at Katelyn’s note. “The strokes here are light and jagged, suggesting that whoever wrote it did so in a hurry. It’s very similar in the other poems and letters you’ve provided me, but what stands out on first glance is the space Katelyn’s writing takes from left to right. Her words all start and end at approximately the same place on each line,” she said, then pointed to the letter she’d just opened. “But if you compare the placement of the words from Katelyn’s note to those on these other letters, it’s a dead giveaway that they’re a forgery.”
“How do you know that just from looking at it?”
“Regardless of their flavor of paranormal backgrounds, people are remarkably predictable and they follow habits, even when they don’t realize they’re doing it. For example, if you were to examine your own writing, you’d see patterns there too. We set up a system, a shortcut for our brains, and we rarely, if ever, deviate from it.”
I stared at Estelle, trying to put all the pieces together as my brain raced away from me like a runaway car. “So you’re saying that someone was trying to impersonate Katelyn’s handwriting?”
Estelle nodded. “Yes, though to what end, I couldn’t say.”
“It’s hard to wrap my head around, but I think you’re right. If it was really Katelyn sending these letters, she wouldn’t have let me see her handwriting, much less let me walk out of her office with one of her notes.”
“Exactly,” Mallory said. “I mean, if it hadn’t been for Estelle’s analysis, we might’ve made the mistake of believing it was Katelyn who wrote these. The handwriting is that similar. I would never have noticed the spacing on the lines like that.”
“That doesn’t put all the pieces together, though. Who would want to impersonate Katelyn’s handwriting, and why?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Mallory asked, but no great revelations dawned on me. “They did it to cover their tracks, and to frame somebody else. The forgery is so good that it would be next to impossible to prove anyone other than Katelyn wrote these letters.”
“Okay, but who would want to frame Katelyn for this? Marissa seemed not to like her, and she’s definitely the type for vengeance, but there’s not enough of a connection for her to want to pin all this on Katelyn.”
“Right, and it probably wasn’t Olivia, unless she was doing something she shouldn’t have been and it backfired on her.”
“Yeah, which doesn’t seem likely. Olivia is a lot of things, but careless isn’t one of them.”
“So who does that leave?”
“Just Rose, Beau’s intern, but I’m not convinced she had anything to do with it either. I know from living with Flora that fairies can’t lie, so that takes Rose out of the equation, even though she was the one who brought the coffee to Olivia.”
“Hm, yeah, the fairy lie detector thing is foolproof.”
“Or is it?” Raina’s voice boomed from the library entrance. She strolled toward us carrying a vial of something sparkly and sand like.
“What’s that?”
“The key to everything, or so I suspect,” Raina said as she shook the vial’s contents. They shimmered and shifted in the light, ethereal. “This, ladies, is pixie dust.”
“I don’t understand. Where did you get this, and what does it have to do with Beau and Olivia’s conditions?”
“Pixie dust is crazy stuff,” Mallory said, her brows furrowed as she tried to work through everything.
Raina nodded. “Correct. It’s undetectable in its taste and smell, and it’s typically used by mischievous pixies in their various pranks.”
“Pranks?” I asked, and Mallory chuckled.
“Pixies are infamous for the games and gags they pull, sometimes seemingly at random.”
“Yes, exactly,” Raina agreed. “It’s a multipurpose substance. It can heal, it can harm, or anything between. The good news is that its effects typically wear off after a few days.”
“But wait a minute, we don’t know any pixies, number one, and number two, there aren’t any working at Channel 666 as far as I’m aware,” I said as I racked my brain to recall if I’d ever seen one of the microscopic winged creatures at the office. None came to mind.
“Yes, I suppose you would’ve noticed a pixie if you’d seen one. They’re impossible to miss,” Raina said.
“So what makes you so sure that pixie dust is what’s behind this?”
&nb
sp; “I ran several tests on the chocolate and the coffee cup you gave me, and they all came back positive for traces of pixie magic. Further, when I isolated the pixie magic particles and exposed them to the revealing spell, the same golden light that radiated from Olivia appeared.”
My mouth fell open. “Which means it must be pixie dust that trapped Beau and Olivia in their animal forms.”
Raina nodded. “Yes, and a prank like that is consistent with the behavior of a pixie. Pixies don’t pick people at random for pranks. They shower those who treat them well with affection and punish those who treat them poorly.”
Silence fell over the room as we all contemplated what that might mean.
Raina’s face lit up with realization, and her eyes snapped to mine. “There’s another thing pixies are famous for. They can change their size and shape at will.”
All at once, everything slipped into place in my brain. Rose had said things weren’t always what they seemed, and the more I turned all this new information over my brain, the more I realized what she meant. She wasn’t what she seemed, either.
“I think Rose is a pixie,” I gasped. “She’s always had nothing but good things to say about Beau and the way he spared her from losing her job, so maybe his rebuffing rubbed her the wrong way, and she’s never hidden her distaste for Olivia. Which means—”
“Katelyn’s probably next,” Mallory interrupted.
“Right, and Rose, if that’s even her real name — she could’ve been lying about all kinds of stuff if she’s not really a fairy — will have the perfect opportunity to put something in Katelyn’s food during the banquet.”
“Especially if she can make herself so small no one will see her.”
“Exactly. It must have been Rose who wrote all these letters. She had every reason in the world to pass her writing off as Katelyn’s, and she would have had easy access to anything in her office. For all we know, she could’ve been stealing notes from Katelyn for months to learn her handwriting.”
