Wishes

by Molly Cochran

  “There’s nothing more I can do,” the queen said. “But I’ve granted your other demands. And you’ve given your word.”

  She pulled herself to her full height, restoring some of her dignity. “I won’t stop you from leaving,” she said. “You have my word.”

  We looked at one another for a moment. Both of us had lost what was most important to us. In that way, we weren’t so different. “Okay,” I said.

  Artie and I linked arms to make a kind of cradle for Peter, and we carried him between us. At the entrance to what had once been a gorgeous chamber of golden light, I threw out five fingers, and the cage of bones around the powerless hag who had once been Queen of the Fairies fell to pieces around her.

  On the way out, there was no stardust waterfall, no glamours to impede us. But I could hear Peter’s breathing becoming more and more labored. Finally, when we got outside, his eyes fluttered open and he asked us to set him down.

  “In the sunlight,” he said. “I’m awfully cold.”

  I could barely see for the tears in my eyes as we propped him against a rock. I thought the pain from the wound in his back would be excruciating, but Peter didn’t seem to feel anything.

  “I’ll go get help,” Artie said.

  “Go to Hattie’s,” I said. “The restaurant in the Meadow. Peter’s brother—”

  Peter waved me down. “Don’t,” he said. “Just let me rest.”

  Artie stifled a sob. I nodded to her. “Go,” I whispered.

  She nodded back. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.” Then she was gone.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I told Peter, though I knew that probably wasn’t in the stars.

  “Put your head on my shoulder,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “Because—”

  “Shh.” He touched my cheek.

  “I love you, Peter,” I said.

  “I love you, too.” His eyes struggled to focus. “That’s why I came after you.”

  “I know,” I said, ashamed. “I know it now. I only wish—”

  “Hey,” he said, smiling. “No more of that.”

  “No. No more.” I kissed his lips. They were warm and soft. A sob seemed to leap out of me then, and I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Katy,” he said, so softly that I could barely hear him. “Katy . . .”

  Just then Dingo jumped on my lap, covering me with filthy paw prints, and started licking Peter’s face.

  I tried to push him off, cursing him through my tears and snot. “Get away!” I squealed, but my efforts did no good. Dingo just kept lapping at Peter’s face like he was made of ice cream and beef sticks.

  Finally I stood up. “Stop it!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Get out of here, you . . . you . . .” My words dried up in my mouth.

  Peter was smiling and rubbing Dingo behind his ears. The color had come back into his face. He moved away from the rock he’d been leaning against.

  There was no blood.

  “Peter,” I breathed, moving slowly toward him. “Your wound . . .”

  “Huh?” He pulled up the back of his shirt and craned his neck to see behind him. “Man, for a second there, I was afraid—”

  “Oh, my God.” My hands flew to my mouth.

  There was no wound. There wasn’t even a mark.

  He yawned. “How long have we been here?” Peter asked.

  “Just a few minutes.”

  He stood up with a groan. “I must have been really tired. I had this weird dream about you and fairies and a flying dragon I was riding on, and I don’t know what else.” He laughed. “Crazy.”

  “But . . .”

  A thousand things were going through my head. Had Peter’s wound only existed in the plane of existence we’d occupied inside the cave? Had Peter forgotten what had gone on there, or had he really been dreaming, as he seemed to believe? Come to think of it, had I been dreaming too? Since when? Did the queen even exist? Did Artie? Or was it . . .

  Dingo, who had run away, came bounding back, covered with a new layer of mud, which he immediately smeared all over my jeans.

  “Get down, boy!” Mr. Haversall said. “Sorry, Miss Katy.” He tipped his cap. “Dingo sometimes gets a little frisky.”

  I smiled woodenly as the old man nodded to me and then to Peter. “We’ll be seeing you,” he said.

  “Woof!” Dingo agreed.

  After a long moment I felt Peter tugging on my arm. “Katy?” He waved his hand in front of my face. “Katy, are you okay?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. I’m fine.”

  “Feel like a slice? I hear Pizza World calling.”

  Eating was the last thing I felt like doing, but I walked with him anyway. There was time to sort everything out, I supposed.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. There, at the bottom, was the little alabaster box. So that much had been real, anyway. I pulled it out to look at it.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Just something I found in the woods.”

  “Can I see?”

  I handed it to him. He opened the lid. “Nice,” he said. “Look, there’s even something inside.” He pulled out a tiny scrap of paper. “Looks like what you’d find in a fortune cookie.”

  My breath caught. “What’s it say?” I asked, feeling my heart pounding.

  He squinted. “I can’t make it out.” He handed it to me. The writing was really tiny. “Can you read it?”

  I could.

  Magic is everywhere.

  “It says you’re buying the pizza,” I said, tucking the paper back into the box.

  Dingo barked in the distance. “Woof!”

  Everywhere.

  Katy’s adventures continue in Paris,

  where a mansion inhabited by beautiful people is more than it seems.

  For fans of romance and magic,

  Seduction will not disappoint.

  Coming December 2014.

  You and a guest are cordially invited

  to an end-of-term party for

  Peter Henry Shaw

  Saturday, June fifteenth

  Eight o’clock p.m.

  2409 Belmont Boulevard

  Whitfield, Massachusetts

  R.S.V.P. Black Tie

  Graduation was still a year away, but Peter’s great-uncle Jeremiah gave him a couple of presents anyway: a red Lexus SC10 convertible and a party that would make My Super Sweet 16 look like an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

  Don’t get me wrong. This is not sour grapes talking. In fact, if any seventeen-year-old could be said to be deserving of a new Lexus, it would be Peter Shaw. He is humble and hardworking and respectful of his elders and conscientious about the environment. Also generous, modest, levelheaded, kind, sensitive, spiritual, and deep, not to mention extremely good-looking. He smells good too.

  So no, it’s not that he’s a wiener with a car. It’s just that it all came as such a shock. Peter’s great-uncle, Jeremiah Shaw, had never spoken to him before last year. Nor had any of his other relatives. A birthday card from the old man would have been a surprise, let alone a Lexus. Or this amazing party at the biggest house in town.

  The Shaw mansion had fifty rooms on four floors, plus five or six outbuildings, an Olympic-size pool, tennis court, and a number of gardens, including one with a waterfall. Double stairways led to a huge balcony at the front entrance to the house, and there were several patios and balconies in the back, where gigantic party tents outlined in lights had been erected.

  On the lawn, an army of waiters carried trays of canapés and soft drinks in crystal champagne glasses. SOMA, a nine-piece band that won a bunch of Grammy awards last year, was playing in a specially built amphitheater.

  The guests were sharply divided by dress. The townies—meaning my
friends—wore the same clothes they’d worn to junior prom or Winter Frolic. But the Muffies—that was my term for the rich girls who boarded at my school—all seemed to be in new gowns.

  Actually, I got a new dress too, but it wasn’t my idea. As Peter’s “official” girlfriend, I guess I was expected to look as if I lived up to the Shaw standard. So one of Jeremiah’s assistants brought over a Vera Wang dress the color of glacial ice that must have cost a fortune, plus a lot of blue jewelry that I thought were rhinestones but that turned out to be sapphires rented from Tiffany in New York.

  I looked good, I admit, but I felt ridiculous. For one thing, it must have seemed as if I was trying to show off, which offended my friends while at the same time eliciting the contempt of the Muffies, who thought I was trying to be one of them. For another—and this was much worse—some guy was assigned to follow me wherever I went to make sure I didn’t lose or steal any of the jewelry.

  “Well, so what?” Peter said when I complained about the security guy. “It’s not like you have to talk to him or anything.”

  “That’s not the point,” I insisted as I wobbled on my Jimmy Choo sandals with five-inch heels. “I feel like I’m being stalked.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter said. “You’re practically the guest of honor.”

  “No, Peter,” I answered hotly. “You’re the guest of honor. I’m just one of the locals that thug over there’s been asked to keep an eye on in case I walk out with the family silver.”

  That was the extent of our conversation, because a second later Peter was pulled away by someone wearing a Rolex and a toupee.

  I turned around to face the lurking security guy and gave him the stink eye. His face never changed expression.

  I sighed. He had already creeped out everyone I knew there. Whenever I tried to make conversation with the few people I’d made friends with since I came to Ainsworth in my sophomore year, they fled as soon as the beefy guy with the earpiece lumbered into view. I couldn’t blame them. This was supposed to be Peter’s party, but none of us saw much of Peter. Well, we saw him, looking like a movie star in an Armani tuxedo, but he spent almost every minute with Jeremiah and the old people.

  Oh, and yes, also a cluster of fashion model types who seemed to be there for the sole purpose of having their pictures taken with Peter. They spoke only French. That is to say, they were French. And did I say gorgeous? Grr.

  The only one I knew was a girl named Fabienne de la Soubise. Yes, that was really her name. She’d spent her freshman year at Ainsworth School, where Peter and I both had scholarships. I hadn’t seen much of her since Winter Frolic, which she’d attended as Peter’s date. That hadn’t been her idea—or Peter’s—so I’d let it go, but I hadn’t been really chummy with her afterward. Not that she needed any attention from me. Everyone noticed Fabienne.

  She was beautiful. I mean really, deeply beautiful. Pale, blond, willowy, and tall—all the things I’d always wished I was, instead of being short, dark-haired, and with green eyes that most people described as “strange” or “supernatural.” Whatever. I don’t remember ever seeing Fabienne when she wasn’t surrounded by guys. She never went out with them, though. At least that was the gossip circulating: The fabulously attractive Miss de la Soubise wouldn’t even think of dating anyone from Ainsworth, merci beaucoup.

  The Muffies had taken her under their wing at first, but I guess she was too good-looking even for them. So most of the time it was just Fabienne in the middle of a bunch of drooling guys. Served her right, I thought. Outdo the Muffies and you walk alone.

  So anyway, here was this huge party filled with beautiful people in gorgeous clothes, with great music and terrific food, so you’d think everyone would be having a great time.

  Everyone except me.

  It wasn’t just that Peter wasn’t paying any attention to me. I didn’t love that, but I’m not really so insecure that not spending every minute in Peter’s arms was going to ruin the party for me. I knew that Jeremiah Shaw’s influence was going to make a big difference in Peter’s life.

  I just didn’t understand why the old man had chosen Peter in the first place. The Shaws were one of the oldest families in Whitfield. There were hundreds of them who lived right in town, and most of them worked for Jeremiah. So if he was looking for an heir or whatever, it seemed weird that he would seek out someone he’d ignored for the past eleven years. That, incidentally, had been when Jeremiah Shaw disinherited Peter as payback for his father’s unpardonable offense: The man had appointed Hattie Scott, a restaurant cook, as Peter’s guardian in the event of his death, instead of Jeremiah. And then he had died.

  So Peter had grown up totally outside the patrician family he’d been born into. That had been fine with him, though. Peter didn’t need a pedigree to prove his value, and Hattie had been a better mother to him than anyone else on earth could have been. But then one day last fall Jeremiah—who is the Shaw, by the way, the big Kahuna of Shaw Enterprises—phoned Hattie’s Kitchen and said he wanted to get to know Peter better.

  At first neither of us took the invitation very seriously. It wasn’t much of an invitation in the first place, and this codger who’d hardly made an appearance in Peter’s life until that day wasn’t exactly on either of our buddy lists.

  Except that he’d been serious. He started sending limos to the dorm to pick Peter up on Saturday mornings, and they didn’t bring him back until after nightfall.

  “What’d he want?” I asked after one of Peter’s all-day sessions with his great-uncle.

  Peter shook his head slowly, incredulously. “He wants to teach me the family business.”

  “Which is what?”

  He shrugged. “Shipping. Import-export. International labor. It’s Shaw Enterprises, Katy. You know what Shaw does.”

  I blinked. “I guess,” I said.

  Shaw Enterprises was a vast multinational conglomerate, the umbrella for a host of businesses from parking garages to African banks. “It’s just strange that he’d suddenly want you in his life, that’s all.”

  “Maybe,” he said. That was the sort of noncommittal answer Peter liked and that drove me crazy. “Just trust me, okay?” He spoke close to my face. I could feel the stubble of his beard against my cheek. His hair, silky waves of it, fell over my eyes. “It’s going to be okay, Katy,” he whispered, and kissed me, making me shudder all over. “Better than okay. He’s going to send me to college. Maybe I could even go to Harvard, like you.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll go to Harvard,” I said, although that prospect had pretty much been a given, at least as far as my dad was concerned.

  “Of course you will. And now I will too. I’ll be able to make a life for us.”

  “We have a life,” I said. “Two lives.”

  “Not like what Shaw Enterprises can give us.”

  I backed away. I wasn’t part of this deal. “Don’t say us.”

  He looked annoyed. “All right. Me. I’m getting a big break, bigger than I can even explain to you right now. You just have to trust me.”

  “You already said that,” I said.

  But I did. I would trust Peter with my life. I have trusted him with my life, more than once. Peter wasn’t the problem.

  Jeremiah Shaw was.

  Everything changed after that. A tailor came up from Boston to make clothes for Peter, and just about every day some fabulous electronic gizmo would show up in the mail. One of Jeremiah’s assistants took Peter into New York every two weeks just to get his hair cut. He had a standing meeting with Aldritch, the Shaw butler, who gave him etiquette lessons. For a while, he even moved into the Shaw mansion.

  It was all pretty disgusting, and didn’t accomplish much except to estrange Peter from the townies. The Muffies, of course, loved it. They judged everyone on things like clothes and hair and which generation smartphone they owned.

  But the
n, they’d liked Peter even before his two-hundred-dollar haircuts and True Religion jeans. And who wouldn’t? He was six feet tall, with honey-blond hair and gray eyes, and long legs and a thin but muscular body, and soft lips and skin that blushed easily, and big hands and a kind of sexy-without-meaning-to-be walk, and a soft voice, and thick dark eyelashes. Did I mention that he always smelled good? Really, really good.

  And, hard as it was for me to believe, he loved me.

  To give him credit, Peter had used the technology available to him through the Shaw laboratories to do a lot of good in our community. There were quite a few people in Whitfield who owed Peter their lives after he’d quelled the kind of crisis that could only happen in a town like Whitfield—but more about that later.

  Back at Peter’s megabuck non-graduation party, the grounds were lit by thousands of twinkling lights. At around ten, the band changed and the music turned into old people’s dance tunes. That was when most of my friends left—I guess they were afraid the musicians were going to swing into a rendition of the Hokey Pokey—and the waiters brought out the hard liquor. I wandered over to where Peter had spent most of the evening, to see if he would dance with me. The French girls, I noticed, were clustered around him.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked as we walked toward the dance floor.

  “I think they went for pizza,” I said.

  “Chicken hearts,” Peter said as he twirled me decisively. Jeremiah had made him take dancing lessons in preparation for the party, along with the tutoring in etiquette.

  I guessed Peter could be a wiener, after all.

  “We’d have had a lot more fun at Hattie’s Kitchen,” I said. He only smiled. I tried to make the best of things. “At least we didn’t have to work tonight.” As after-school employees, Peter and I had to serve and clean up at every party at Hattie’s. At least this one was labor-free.

  “My uncle wanted to introduce me to the people he works with,” he said.

  “Who work for him, you mean.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”