by Gina LaManna
I ignored him and eased onto the bench next to the room’s center table. “Sit down and tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened.” Zin’s slight figure shifted as she dropped onto the bench. Her eyes, flecked with gold ever since her first shift into a jaguar, found my face. “Nothing important, anyway. It’s stupid.”
“Well, I am really good at listening, and my offer still stands. You can always come stay here if you aren’t getting along with your mom, and you want a change of scenery. We have plenty of space.”
Zin glanced over her shoulder, first at me, then to Gus. “I don’t think so. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“Zin, wait!” Before I could stop her, however, she jumped up and hurried out the front door, slamming it behind her. I whirled to face Gus. “Look what you did!”
“What?” He looked genuinely confused.
“You stomp around here, frowning all the time. My own cousin doesn’t even want to talk to m-e-ee…”
Before I could finish the word, my mind began to swirl, spiral out of control as I tumbled forward and fell into the table. My hands collapsed onto the wood as I attempted to ease myself into the seat. I missed, unable to control my limbs. My insides felt like they were melting, turning to liquid. A sharp pop sounded between my ears, and I remembered nothing more.
Chapter 3
“GET HER UP HERE.”
“She’s not going to be happy.”
“Well, she’s waking up, so we can’t wait any longer.”
“I told you not to take her. There are specific procedures we’re supposed to use with residents from The Isle—”
“—too late for procedures now, isn’t it? Get the boss in here. She’ll want to see this.”
The voices sounded too efficient to be malicious, but my brain struggled to piece the puzzle together. One male voice and one female, and then the boss. Three people at least, one of them not yet here.
I kept my eyes shut tight as my brain, fuzzy at best, struggled for clarity. One of the two people in the room hovered over me. Judging by the faint floral scent of perfume, it was the female.
“I didn’t think we hit her so hard,” the woman’s voice said next to my ear, confirming my theory. “Do you think she’s never been Zapped before?”
“I’m sure she has. She’s the Mixologist.”
I couldn’t bear to keep my eyes shut any longer. If these people had taken me for harm, I’d rather find out and figure out a plan. As the female pressed a finger against my throat, possibly checking my pulse, my eyes flashed open.
The woman leapt back, a shriek of surprise flying from her lips as she landed on the other side of the office. “Jiminy Crickets,” she said, masking a few obscene words as she recovered. “You scared me, Mixologist. How long have you been awake?”
I eased myself into a sitting position, surprised to find I’d been lying on something that resembled a conference room table. For some reason, I’d expected to find myself in a doctor’s office, or a cell. Instead, I was sitting in an office building not unlike the one I’d been fired from at my last marketing job on the mainland.
“How long have I been awake?” I rubbed my neck, discovering my muscles were a bit sore. “I want to know how long I’ve been out!”
The woman cast a guilty look at her male counterpart. They wore almost matching ensembles of black pants and white blouses—hers slightly more feminine than the male’s.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “We were just wondering if you’d ever been Zapped before?”
“I don’t know what that means. And I have no clue where I am.”
“See?! I told you to wait for permission before you Zapped her!” The woman snapped at her partner. “Why don’t you ever listen to me? Ainsley is going to be royally pissed you dragged her here with no prior knowledge.”
“Ainsley?” I latched on to the one familiar thread in this web of confusion. “What does Ainsley have to do with any of this?”
“She’s currently heading up our cross-functional team,” the woman said. “Sorry, but I should introduce myself. I’m Lizzie Beacher, and this here is Zane Donovan.”
I glanced between the two, both looking like a mid-level executives in a high-security technology company. “And we are located…where?”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Lizzie apologized. “You are at—”
“What were you thinking?” Ainsley stormed into the conference room, took one glance at the situation, and shuddered. “Why is she here already, Lizzie? Zane? You’d better have some answers for me!”
I gave a feeble wave at her. “Hello.”
“Hi, Lily. By the way, I’m thrilled to see you, despite the frustration in my voice. That’s aimed at these two knuckleheads.”
“Great to see you, too.”
“Go get her some water at least, will you Zane?” Ainsley gestured with a clipboard under her arm. “Move it! The woman’s been Zapped.”
“Sorry, but I’m super confused.” I raised a finger. “Where are we?”
Ainsley tried to stay calm, but I could see her blood pressure rising from across the room. Her cheeks turned pink as she focused on Lizzie, and her fingers clinched tight. “You haven’t even told her where she is?! The poor woman is probably thinking she’s kidnapped! I swear, this place is going to hell in a handbasket.”
“It’s okay, really,” I said. “I’m just curious.”
“Naturally!” Muttering under her breath, Ainsley wound her way to me, a bright smile on her face as she approached. “Sorry about that. We’re in crisis mode around here, but I didn’t know that meant people lost their common sense!” Then she hesitated and threw her arms wide. “Can I get a hug, boss?”
I grinned and leaned into the embrace. “It’s really good to see you again. I’d have shown my excitement better if I wasn’t—”
“—confused, I know. Zane was so anxious to get you here he acted without approval. I wanted to come talk to you in person first, like normal people do, so you’d know what to expect.”
“So, Zapping is…”
“A legal way for law enforcement to bring outsiders onto the MAGIC, Inc. properties.”
“Does that mean I’m at MAGIC, Inc.?”
Ainsley flexed her fingers, casting a scathing glance at Zane, who’d just returned with water. “Yes. They should’ve informed you that you are safe, you are a guest of the agency’s, and we really appreciate your appearance.”
“It’s not like I had a choice,” I said, accepting the glass of water and taking a sip. “Kidding,” I added quickly, before she could fire Zane. Thanks to my friendship with Ainsley, I’d heard of MAGIC, Inc before: Magic and Guardian Investigative Committee. Located on the mainland, it was the central governing body for paranormals. “What do you need help with?”
“Lizzie,” Ainsley, my former Guardian, instructed. “Start from the beginning.”
Lizzie nodded, clearly anxious to redeem herself. “I’m Lizzie Beacher, as I mentioned. I’m head of the Wishery Department at MAGIC, Inc.”
“Wishery?” I looked to Ainsley. “Never heard of it.”
“That’s to be expected,” Lizzie said, consulting her notes. “We received your wish at approximately 11:32 yesterday evening.”
“What are you talking about?” I thought back to the previous night, but my only memories those of Ranger X. Memories I didn’t exactly feel like sharing with strangers. “I’m sorry, I was on a date. I wasn’t working on magic, or spells, or—”
“Star light, star bright,” Lizzie began. “The first star I see tonight…ringing any bells?”
“That’s not a spell,” I argued. “It’s a nursery rhyme.”
“Nope,” Ainsley said. “It’s actually a spell. And you activated it successfully, which means Lizzie received your wish. Lizzie, care to explain?”
“Right!” Lizzie jumped to attention. “This is an instance where a genuine magical spell somehow worked its way into popular culture as a fair
y tale. As you know, most fairy tales have their basis in reality.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true,” Ainsley said. “But humans never figure out that Sleeping Beauty was actually a real person who’d been put under a poisonous spell for years. Cinderella was a ditz who lost her shoe—the story doesn’t go on to explain that she’d had one too many cocktails at the party. No, the humans focus on the shoe.”
“Are you telling me that wishes are made real?”
Lizzie nodded. “At the moment, I’m the managing director for Wishery, the wish department of MAGIC, Inc.”
“You’re going to have to clarify. Do you guys actually grant wishes?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” Lizzie rolled up the sleeves to her blouse and moved toward the other end of the conference room. She murmured a spell under her breath, and the end of her finger turned into a piece of chalk. Immediately, she started writing on the board. “There are three pieces to a wish. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”
“Uh, nope,” I said. “Clueless.”
“Great. The first is that the wish must be selfless, or mostly selfless. Wishing for a million bucks for no reason except greed will get you diddly squat.”
“Diddly squat,” I repeated. “Okay.”
“Number two is that your wish can’t harm anyone. Wishing for anyone to fall ill will get you…?”
“Diddly squat,” I finished. “I had no idea there were stipulations on wishes.”
“We don’t make it public. If we did, people would manipulate the rules and make our jobs much, much harder. This way, only the purest of wishes land on our desk.”
“You said there’s a third thing?”
“Ah, yes. My favorite.” Lizzie dropped her hand from the board, turned to me, and smiled. “A sense of wonder.”
As I sat there watching her, the word WONDER appeared behind her on the chalkboard. The chalk disintegrated from her finger and the word grew and grew until it took up the entire board.
“A sense of wonder?”
“A person must believe with the utmost certainty in the power of wishes. They must absolutely, wonderfully let go of everything in this world that tells them wishes are a load of crap and believe that it can come true. If all three things are present, a wish is put in our queue to examine for granting.”
“How long is your queue?”
“Let’s just say we’re working a lot of overtime these days.” Lizzie sounded a bit cross. “It’s a very complicated procedure that we’ve been perfecting for—”
Ainsley cleared her throat.
“Right,” Lizzie corrected. “High level overview—sorry.”
“I’m interested!” I said. “Keep going.”
“It’s not about you,” Ainsley said. “If you get Lizzie going, she’ll talk about it for days. And I mean that. She’s three hundred years old and has been working at Wishery for two hundred and eight of those years.”
I gawked at the woman who didn’t appear to be a day older than me. “Three hundred years?”
“I have some strong Elfin blood,” she said with a shrug. “Anyway, back to the details. There’s a queue of wishes, and once they’re sorted into different departments, we set to addressing them.”
“What do you mean you address them? You grant them? Make them come true?”
Lizzie’s fingers flinched again, struggling to keep her responses concise. “Not exactly. It’s more complica—”
“More complicated than that, we know,” Ainsley said. “Keep moving, Liz.”
“Sorry,” she huffed again. “Wishes are not always granted for various reasons. Sometimes people wish for one thing, but it’s not their true desire. One person might wish to be happier, but what they need isn’t to be happier—it’s to find a better job. Reconnect with an old friend. Overturn a bit of money to get them through a tight spot. Things like that. It’s nearly impossible for me to grant even the purest of wishes if it’s too big—”
“Like happiness?”
“Yes,” Lizzie said. “Which is why, oftentimes our job is just to point people in the right direction. The answer is almost always right before their eyes.”
I waited for more, fascinated. I almost wished Ainsley hadn’t arrived right away so I could’ve sat and listened to Lizzie talk uninterrupted.
A clap of the hands from Ainsley, however, signaled our time to chat was nearly up. “I really hate to be the bad cop here,” Ainsley said. “But we do have a serious problem.”
“Yes,” Lizzie resumed, the look in her eyes morphing from passion into something darker. Frustration maybe, or anger. “We have a problem, and we need your help.”
“I recommended you for the job,” Ainsley said. “If anyone can solve our little issue, it’s you.”
“Gee, no pressure.”
“We’re severely limited in who we ask for help; the whole beauty of the Wishery program is that it’s never been confirmed to exist—you know, nobody knows about it outside of these offices except for you,” Lizzie said. “Which reminds me, I’m going to need you to sign some confidentiality papers.”
“Sorry,” Ainsley agreed, pushing her clipboard toward me. “I told them you were the Mixologist and could be trusted, but it’s the standard procedure.”
“What is this?” I took the proffered pen in my hand and glanced over the document.
“Standard NDA,” Ainsley said. “Basically, it says that you won’t tell anybody else about Wishery’s existence.”
“Not even Gus? Or my cousins?”
“Sorry,” Ainsley said. “MAGIC, Inc. is quite clear on it. The whole reason Wishery isn’t overloaded with wishes is that most people don’t believe it’s true. If it was confirmed to exist…all the real wishes would get lost in the noise.”
I frowned, reviewed the document and found nothing suspicious, and signed my name. As I swirled the final ‘e’ in Locke, I felt the familiar zing of magic as it ran up my arm, tingled around my elbow, and then warmed me fingers to shoulder.
“A magical contract,” I said. “Impossible to break.”
“Near impossible,” Ainsley corrected. “But yes, of course. This is MAGIC, Inc. What’d you expect, a spell-less sheet of paper?”
“Now that you’ve signed the document, we must show you the rest,” Lizzie said. “Have you ridden before?”
“Ridden?” My face probably looked blank. “In a car? A horse? A train?”
“A broomstick, of course,” Lizzie said. “We’re going to Wishery.”
“Uh, no. Broomsticks aren’t allowed on The Isle.”
Lizzie stiffened. “I’ve never understood that rule.”
“Come on,” Ainsley said. “We’ll check one out from the Transportation Department. It’s easy.”
“It takes weeks to check one out,” Lizzie said. “She can ride on mine.”
“Nah, Stan owes me a favor.” Ainsley moved across the room and threw her arm over my shoulders. “And Lily here wants to try for herself. “
“I don’t know,” I said. “I should probably just ride on the back of someone else’s.”
“Nonsense,” Ainsley argued. “Once you get a taste of the fresh air and speed, you’ll be begging Ranger X to get the rules changed on the island.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Trust me,” Ainsley said, a few minutes later as she handed over a broomstick from Stan. “You will love it. Follow me to the flight deck.”
Chapter 4
“I DON’T REALLY LIKE this,” I said, gripping the handle for dear life. “It feels like a death wish.”
“I would ignore your death wish if it showed up in the Wishery queue,” Lizzie said, comfortingly. “Don’t worry. It’s against policy.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Riding on an agency issued broom is one of the safest ways to travel,” Ainsley said. “They have to inspect it between each and every flight.”
“Except for that one time
last year when Stan…” Lizzie trailed off at the look in Ainsley’s eyes, then quickly muttered, “Never mind.”
“Seriously. Just hold on tight, squeeze everywhere you can, and enjoy the rush of it!” Ainsley clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic pat. “You will love it, I promise.”
“I just don’t think that’s accurate.” I stood at the very top of MAGIC, Inc., an eighty-story skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis. I finally recognized my whereabouts now that I had the entire view of the city before me.
The top forty floors of this building were invisible to the human eye, and the bottom forty floors had been disguised as a bank. This high up, there was absolutely nothing between me and a painful death on the ground except for a flimsy little stick with some straw attached to the end. The thing was meant to sweep floors, not hold my weight when I took a nosedive off the flight deck.
“One, two…” Ainsley took my hand, tugged me to the edge, and on three we all tumbled over the side.
For the first thirty seconds I screamed bloody murder. I shouted until my throat went hoarse. A tear from pure fright might’ve manifested on my cheek.
“Am I flying?” I glanced at Ainsley, who had muttered a silencing spell to cut down on the noise. I nodded toward the shimmering bubble around us. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. Are you good?” Ainsley held up a hand and, when I nodded, waved the spell away. “Excellent. I hate to use the spell; it blocks fresh air, and you’re not really flying until you’re one with the clouds.”
“You make it sound so poetic.”
Lizzie zoomed around to my side. “I got caught outside the Silencing Spell. How are you liking the flight?”
“Once I realized that I wasn’t dead, I was fine.” I took stock of my surroundings. My hands encircled the thin broomstick, and when I glanced behind me, little wisps of cloud circled behind like an airplane writing messages in the sky.
“She’s ready,” Ainsley said, beckoning with one hand. “Follow me.”
