For now, though, all he could do was watch her and brush against her fingers when she reached up to hang the ornaments. Their ornaments, from their shared tree, even if it was only a dream tree.
At least Holly had been happy last night, so excited about Christmas and the decorating party at Divine's. She had only mentioned once that she wished he could come to the party and they could decorate together. Maurice thought maybe there had been a tear in one eye, but she had brushed it away, and they had laughed and sung songs. He told her about his cousin Angeloria, who was allergic to holly and mistletoe, thanks to being present when Charles Dickens wrote his infamous line, where Scrooge hoped Christmas well-wishers died with a stake of holly through their hearts.
Maurice didn't visit Holly as often as he would have liked. At fall equinox, he had managed to spend three hours in the library, talking with her, and then he went to a movie with her, Meggie, Diane and Troy. Ever since then, Holly hadn't been as happy in her dreams. It hurt her that she couldn't remember him during the day.
Sometimes he thought about going away, leaving her dreams alone from now on, but he admitted he was too selfish to make that kind of sacrifice. The problem was that he had no idea how much longer he could go on, showing up at equinox and solstice and Christmas Eve, tormenting himself with the hope that this time, when he had a body and he could hold her hand and look into her eyes and she could see him, that she would remember him from her dreams.
"Maurice." Angela stepped up behind the counter and lightly brushed a fingertip along the top of his folded wings.
"Huh? Oh." Maurice blushed hotly, despite knowing only a few people could see him, sitting and moping on the bent leg of the dragon stand that held the Wishing Ball. "Sorry. Wishing time already?" He leaped up into the air and gained enough altitude for a good view as the members of the decorating party took their turns picking up an ornament and making their wishes.
When Jo stepped up to take her ornament, Ken offered her a slightly larger ball, crystal and gold instead of the dark, metallic rainbow swirls. Maurice saw the seam and the hinge on the ball, and turned a triple somersault in mid-air when he realized something had to be inside the ornament.
"It's about time, you big goof!" he crowed, and earned some soft laughter from Diane, Troy, and Lanie, who were close enough to hear him.
"You're breaking tradition," Jo said, laughing, as she took the ornament from Ken.
"This is a new tradition." He bent to kiss her softly and quickly on the lips. "Just open it, okay?"
Jo blushed, and her hands shook as she turned the ornament to open it. Maurice noticed she didn't even have the guts to look at anyone. She opened the ornament and saw the diamond ring nestled among glittery silver and white cotton. She went pale, her eyes went wide, and she dropped the ornament and ring, but Ken caught them. He was on one knee in front of her.
"Ken--" Jo choked, and pressed trembling hands to her face as it flushed cherry red.
"Say yes?" He took the ring from the ornament and held out his hand.
Everyone cheered as Jo held out her hand, and he slipped the ring on her finger.
Maurice cheered with the rest of them, but it was an effort. The sound caught in his throat and he wilted a little, inside and out. He retreated to the edge of the counter, to sit and kick his legs and watch everyone as the decorating party turned into an engagement party.
"Maurice." Lanie wheeled over and pivoted her chair so she could watch everyone else gathered around Jo and Ken. With all the noise of talk and laughter, it was a given no one could hear her talking to him. "Tell me something."
"Sure." He could barely tear his gaze away from Holly, who had her arm around Jo and nearly bounced up and down with excitement, chattering away.
"Are you sweet on Holly?"
He thought about denying it for about half a second, then he nodded and wilted a little more. "Yeah, but fat lot of good it'll do us."
"I think you're just what Holly needs."
"Hah! Five inches tall, invisible and impossible to hear, and we can only talk four times a year, if we're lucky. Yeah, she needs me like a..." He couldn't think of something miserable enough to compare himself to.
"Holly needs an enchanted prince, and you're pretty close. The question is if you'll stick around after you get your size and your magic back. I don't want you hurting her."
"Never!"
Lanie studied him solemnly for several long moments, then a slow smile graced her face. She nodded. "That's good enough for me. Let's see what we can do to get the two of you together."
"It's gonna take a miracle, that's all I can say. "
"Maurice..." Mischief lit her dark eyes. "It's Christmas. It's the season of miracles."
Sunday, December 2
They--whoever "they" were--lied.
It was not lonely at the top.
Bethany Miller found it danged crowded, to be honest. If she wanted to be brutally honest, the number of people who gathered around her newfound stardom made her feel downright claustrophobic. What ever made her think she wanted this?
Oh, yeah. To show those jerks who ignored her at the high school dances, who left her sitting or standing against the wall when it was time to pick teammates for kickball and baseball and basketball. Which honestly didn't make any sense, because she was an outstanding athlete.
Sometimes Bethany had wondered if she was invisible, the way people passed her over. She had taken speech and acting classes and auditioned for commercials and community theater from the time she wore braces--someone had to help her widowed father pay for them, after all--and after ten years of bit parts and struggling for a talent scout to notice her, she got a small part in a Hollywood blockbuster. That small part turned into a large part when the female lead eloped two days before filming was to start. Bethany was an "overnight" success, and it only took ten years.
Now, with shooting wrapped on her third project, she looked back on those days of invisibility and anonymity with nostalgia. What insanity had made her want to lose that blissful solitude? She could be perfectly happy right now, flipping burgers at her father's diner in Neighborlee, taking correspondence courses, maybe signing up for online dating. But no, she couldn't even walk down the street to get the paper without being recognized and mobbed.
"I don't suppose you two could help me go invisible for a few weeks?" she said, half-joking, to Alexi and Megan Ambrosius.
Her Las Vegas magician friends were real friends, met and made in her days of living from commercial to commercial. They had taken a nervous, first-time-away-from-home seventeen-year-old under their wing and had remained friends ever since.
What better place to get lost than Las Vegas? Bethany didn't really want to spend Christmas in Las Vegas, but if she wanted to spend the holidays with her father, chances were better here for some solitude. She could only go home to Neighborlee if she could find a way to lose the press and scandalmongers who chased her. At least her father's diner was still getting enough business that he could afford to hire a full-time manager and a second cook, and that would let him get away to visit her for the holidays. If no one found out he had bought plane tickets to Vegas and followed him, of course.
"And invisibility for my dad, too," Bethany added on a sigh.
"Sweetheart, you know that our magic is little more than illusions," Megan began. She squeaked and turned red when Alexi nudged her hard enough she nearly fell out of the booth in the dark corner of the casino where they were currently working.
"I don't know any such thing." Bethany pulled out her ace card. She had held it to herself, a secret treasure, for the past five years. "I know you can do real magic. I saw you."
"Real magic?" Alexi gave her a convincing frown of confusion.
"Just as real as your pointed ears." Bethany smirked when he reached up to yank his tangled mane of silky blond hair down around his ears, only catching himself at the last minute. "I saw you two working real magic, that first time we worked together. I've caught
you doing magic since. Of course, I've been looking for it." She played all her cards. "So, are you like witches or wizards? Is there a real Hogwarts?"
"Actually--" Alexi jerked, having received a hard nudge from Megan now. He grinned at his wife. "Whether there is or isn't, that doesn't matter. What makes you want an invisibility spell, in particular?"
"Besides the way you two seem to have some kind of force field or invisibility spell, so nobody ever mobs you?" Bethany sat back in her booth and crossed her arms. "I've seen the groupies come after you, when you finish a show. It's like a switch is flipped or something. One minute they see you and home in on you like vultures. The next, they just don't see you, and they go wandering off. And when we're out like this?" She gestured around the room. "When I'm with you, nobody sees me, either. Why do you think I asked you to come up to my suite, instead of meeting somewhere? If someone sees me out on the street before I meet you, it's a lost cause."
"She's good," Megan murmured.
"We're magicians. Illusion is what we do," Alexi said with another grin.
"You're more than magicians. So, what are you?" Bethany sat forward, elbows planted on the table, projecting belligerence and determination as hard as she could.
"Faeries." He jumped this time from the force of the elbow in his side, but laughed, totally destroying the scowl he directed at Megan.
"No, you're not. There's no way anybody can convince me either one of you is a trans."
"Not that kind of faeries," Megan said with a snort. "Faire folk. Magic. Lords and ladies. Tam Lin. Any of that ring a bell?"
"Are we talking Lord of the Rings stuff?"
"A little more... Well, that's a good analogy. But instead of going into the West, our ancestors created the Enclaves, where time passes differently and you can cram a whole lot into what seems like a crack in the sidewalk." She shrugged. "That's the simplified explanation."
"Then why are you out here?"
"It's not really that much better in there." Alexi linked hands with Megan, intertwining their fingers. "We like it out here. We have jobs out here, things to do. And believe it or not, sometimes it's more fun to do things the non-magical way."
"What Alexi is being so delicate about saying is that I'm a Halfling. That means my father is Fae, but my mother was Human. My Fae relatives like me a whole lot more, now that I'm married to Alexi--"
"My family has a lot of clout," he muttered.
"But they weren't so welcoming for the last two centuries. Old habits die hard."
"Two centuries." Bethany goggled at them both. It took a few seconds to get her breath back, but she was relatively talented at thinking on her feet. That gift had gotten her through some really wretched dialog in her first few scripts, improvising herself up to better roles and directors.
"Okay, so you make like the Cheshire Cat and vanish when things get heavy. I envy you." She chewed on that idea for a few moments. "So, how can I get some of that without making you hang with me when I'm not working? I thought about hiring a bodyguard," she continued, before either one could respond. "I really just want my freedom of movement during the holidays. The studio wouldn't be very happy with me if I went underground full-time, anyway." She sighed. "Am I whining too much?"
"It all happened way too fast," Megan said, and reached across the booth to catch hold of Bethany's hand. "Like you pointed out, we automatically go into invisible mode when we're away from the stage."
"A bodyguard might be a good idea," Alexi said slowly. He leaned back in the booth and slouched, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes going cloudy and distant.
"You can't just zap me, give me some sort of bracelet or necklace or anything to wear, when I want to vanish?" Bethany said, feeling a little queasy all of a sudden. She honestly hadn't expected to get answers so quickly. She hadn't expected the answers Megan and Alexi had given her, because she had been mostly joking when she asked about magic and Hogwarts.
Note to self: Don't joke about things you don't understand, in case they turn out to be real.
Her mind slipped back to Megan's comment about two centuries. How could she be that old? Was there any way Bethany could get hold of something to turn into a Fae and live that long, and look that good?
What am I thinking? She almost laughed aloud. Do I really want to be recognizable for decades? Do I really want to look this way for hundreds of years? And put up with the jerks and the lechers and the morons who try to run my life because I look like I'm in my teens, so they assume I don't know what's going on in the world?
Bodyguard, Alexi had said. Something made Bethany think there were other kinds of bodyguards than the ones in dark suits with radio plugs in their ears, shoulder harnesses, and James Bond gizmos. Besides, did she really want one? The studio had hired a bodyguard for her when she went to Greece for some location shooting, and the jerk decided he needed to guard her body full-time, day and night, with as much physical contact as possible.
Bethany wondered if he was still singing soprano, or if he had recovered.
"My cousin, Hargrove." Alexi startled both women so they jerked a little and flashed each other grins.
"Hargrove?" Megan shook her head. "I don't remember him."
"He has a medical condition." He winked at Bethany and leaned closer to her across the table as he lowered his voice. "He can't seem to permanently turn off an invisibility spell that he triggered when he was a kid."
"And that helps me how?" Bethany said slowly, while her mind raced through dozens of implausible scenarios. "Can he, like, infect me with it? But how do I turn it off so I can work? And how does that help me spend free time with my Dad? That's all I really want--some invisibility for the holidays."
"He can wrap the invisibility field around you, enough to just blur you so you can still talk to people but nobody recognizes you. Or he can turn you... Well, the field is so strong, if he let it go full force, people could walk through you."
"That's more like phased out into another dimension," she murmured.
"Almost. Harry has a lot of control, except for turning the whole thing off. If he wants to be seen, he can be. And he can do the same for you."
"Sounds like a good idea." She swallowed the next few questions that came to mind: Was he cute? Did he like to read? Would he mind spending the holidays with strangers?
Most important: Did Harry know who she was, and would he turn into an irritating fan?
Monday, December 3
"Hargrove? Hargrove! Wake up, boy!"
The admonishment, in a tired, worried voice, was punctuated with a slap that did serve quite adequately to bring Harry back to consciousness.
He lay still, trying to remember what had knocked him unconscious in the first place. A few cautious sniffs answered him. Along with the stink of Human gunpowder and several sophisticated Fae explosives that filled his sinuses, memory streamed back into his head. He had been playing with a new kind of controlled explosive device, to help in archaeological excavations. Obviously, the charm controlling the direction of the explosion had malfunctioned.
Why were people hitting him?
"He must be conscious now. He's fading out," another voice said, sounding like his sister, Hera-Jane.
That yanked his attention back from trying to figure out what he did wrong. "Fading out?"
"You were visible, the entire time you were unconscious," Hera-Jane said, and fumbled across his chest until she found his shoulders. She shook him. "Come on, Harry, rise and shine."
"I'm always invisible when I sleep. I have to concentrate to be seen." He opened his eyes, relieved to see that he could still see. That explosion had felt uncomfortably close to his face.
Uncle Mortimer patted his cheek. "I wish gunpowder had been around when I was your age. It's quite the thing to make messes when you're only a hundred years old. When you're pushing nine centuries, well, you have to pretend to have some dignity."
"Especially when your cloaking spells aren't what they used to be and you can't h
ide the evidence," Hera-Jane added. "Uncle Morty...the Chinese had gunpowder back when you were a child."
"Hmm, yes, but the Asian Fae Enclaves were quite as isolationist as Japan back then. They wouldn't share anything, least of all such clever Human toys." Their wild-haired uncle nodded once more for punctuation. "Quite all right now, lad? Back to normal?"
"Close enough. How much can you see me?" Harry asked.
"Not a speck. We can smell you, though." His sister sat back and wrinkled up her nose. "Well, are you any closer to success?"
"I think so. Not much, but at least I didn't trip any of the fire suppression and reconstruction spells." Harry allowed himself a few flickers of triumph over that, before diving back into the new puzzle laid out for him. "You say I was visible when I was unconscious?"
"Something broke through the invisibility spell, or at least disrupted it for a little while. It just proves my theory that the malfunction lies in the Ether connection that powers this particular invisibility spell."
"That'll teach you to do more research, lad." Uncle Mortimer slapped in the general direction of Harry's invisible shoulder and heaved himself to his feet. Chuckling, he tottered out of the laboratory. Standard housecleaning spells had reconstructed it and cleared the damage while they talked.
"He's right, you know. I'd much rather you concentrated on doing new things, rather than fiddling with spells that are nearly as old as time itself. Less chance of something semi-sentient deciding to punish you. The really old spells have a life of their own. They don't like being tweaked." She reached out with her unerring sisterly sense, caught the sides of his face in her hands, and bent down to kiss his forehead. "Please wash up and come to breakfast visible." As she got to her feet, she made a face. "Bleah. Gunpowder. It tastes even worse than it smells."
Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas Page 2
