by Saxon, K. E.
If only the fairy would answer one of her calls or texts! Isadora’s fingers flittered across her silk clutch and then stopped short over the rectangular-shaped bulge. She’d left at least twelve dozen messages at the one and only number listed in the woman’s abandoned cell phone— TIN-KER-BELL—with not a peep in response.
Isadora’s mother leaned toward her. “The Perraults have a long history with the fey folk—they followed your great-great grandpapa here from France—and I’ll not rest until you get your blessing from one as well. You quit it much too soon.” She gripped Isadora’s upper arm and jerked it. Not with so much strength that others could see, but with plenty to give Isadora the full understanding of her wrath. “You are such a disappointment to me, Isadora.”
Isadora’s stomach twisted and then sank.
“I’ve always expected more of you than I have of your silly half sister.” Her mother slid her hand from Isadora’s arm and took a sip of her wine. “It is you who have the beauty and the brains to get us reinstated in the social register,”—Isadora clenched her fists in her lap, but forced the muscles in her face to remain relaxed—“something that I am not convinced Delilah is going to be able to do—even with the money and the catch she’s made in Chas.”
Isadora felt the heat of anger, of frustration, and of her own disappointment in herself rise up inside her like molten lava. She swiveled around and looked at the band. The first chords of “I’ve Got a Crush on You” filled the air.
A second later, a warm hand fell on her shoulder. She started.
“They’re playing our song—shall we dance?” The familiar smooth-as-Kahlúa voice sent an unwanted thrill through her.
I only dance with men with 9-figures. “I only dance with men with 9-inchers.”
“Isadora!” her mother said.
A very masculine chuckle followed.
Mouth. Shut!
“Well, you’re in luck then.” He took hold of her hand and lifted her from her seat. She finally looked at him. Sam. Samuel Thomas Slade. The devil incarnate. Still gorgeous as ever. And by the dark tan of his skin and the sun streaks in his chestnut hair, clearly still a slacker scuba dude as well. What a waste.
Sam led her out onto the dance floor and they easily fell into the same old perfect rhythm they’d enjoyed so often during their short interlude together her sophomore year in college.
“I like your hair. I’m glad you’re not ruining the effect of all that sexy red with those blonde highlights anymore. This look suits you much better.”
“Mmm.”
“So—Chas and Delilah. I’ll bet you’re pretty disappointed. You’ve had your sights on the guy for a long time now—what is it? Seven—eight years?”
Seven. And a couple of months.
“Wait, don’t tell me. January of oh-four. The first party of the new semester.”
Isadora shrugged. No telling what would come out of her mouth if she tried to answer him.
“That certainly was a defining moment for me: finding my fiancée going down on my best friend.” He dipped her and then slowly brought her up, holding her much-too-close against him.
Her breath caught in her throat. She blinked and then looked him straight in the eye. His pupils dilated.
“That’s why I was a little surprised,” he said, “when I got this invite, having lost contact with him after that. But I was downright intrigued when I saw that it was Delilah’s name, not yours, on the card.”
The hot flush from his ungentlemanly reminder of her desperate attempt to snag Chas now traveled from her bosom, up her neck, to her cheeks. Yes, well, my sister’s made millions since then. “Yes, well, I’ve laid millions since then.”
Shut. Up.
“No doubt.”
The music stopped and Isadora all but leapt from Sam’s embrace.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Chas said from the riser, “we’ve got a real treat for you. Isadora, my fiancée’s lovely sister, has a handmade piece of videography she’s put together just for this wonderful occasion.” He held his hand out to her. “Isadora?”
* * *
A few minutes later, the first image blazoned across the 100-inch projection screen. It was Delilah’s first baby picture. Many oohs and ahs rose in the air at the sight.
So far, so good. She wouldn’t have to say a word. The film began then—a montage of scenes from Delilah’s childhood—along with her favorite song from that time: “Beauty and the Beast.”
The tight band of tension across her forehead and temples began to recede and Isadora settled more comfortably back in her chair. All right. Fifteen minutes of blissful peace, here in the dark, with only the sound of the film audio and the audience response breaking the silence. Her eyelids drooped closed.
“I BLAME YOUR FATHER.”
Isadora bolted upright and stared at the screen. Her mother’s image stretched across it. Oh, God. The fairy’s doing. It must be.
“HE LEFT US VIRTUALLY PENNILESS WITH HIS LAST SCHEME, AND NOW HE HAS NOT A CARE IN THE WORLD, ENJOYING AN EXTENDED VACATION IN THAT EXECUTIVE COUNTRY CLUB THEY CALL A PRISON.”
Shocked gasps and murmurs abounded in the ballroom, and Isadora felt the weight of every eye on her as she valiantly searched for the on/off switch. Wasn’t it just here? On the back of the projector? Blasted piece of machinery.
“WE CAN’T RELY ON THAT TWIT DELILAH, EITHER. AND NOW THAT YOUR FRIENDS HAVE DESERTED YOU, IT’S EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAT YOU FIND YOURSELF A HUSBAND OF SUFFICIENT BREEDING AND WEALTH TO PULL US OUT OF THIS MESS.”
Isadora clawed at the tape that held the electrical cord snug to the floor, mindlessly breaking nails as she went, and then yanked the loosened cord as hard as she could.
“HERE’S A LIST OF ELIGIBLES I’VE DRAWN UP. WE’LL WORK THEM ONE-BY-ONE. MOST ARE IDIOTS—NOT LIKE OUR CHAS—
More gasps and now a few snickers from the assembled guests.
Please, please unplug!
—SO IT SHOULDN’T TAKE YOU LONG TO REEL ONE OF THEM IN. MEN THINK WITH THEIR NETHER REGIONS, MY GIRL, IT—”
The plug gave way. Finally.
The screen went blank, the room went as silent as death, and then: the clatter of high-heeled shoes, the harsh, heaving breath of a dragon in human form, and a rawboned, be-ringed, long-nailed hand gripping and twisting the flesh of Isadora’s upper arm. In the next instant, she was yanked through the black void, tripping and stumbling across the ballroom floor to the exit just to the side of the riser.
* * *
Rain poured from the purple-clouded autumn sky, pounding the roof of the limousine as it took the corner at the end of the private drive. Isadora repositioned the drooping strap of her emerald colored satin gown onto her shoulder. Her heart tripped against her breastbone and a lump of dread clogged her throat as she determinedly kept her eyes on the passenger window. It was swathed in a silver-gray watered silk veil of fog and wet.
As her mother arranged herself on the seat beside her, she tossed Isadora’s clutch in her lap and said, “Explain yourself.”
With effort, Isadora turned her attention to the woman beside her, whose feral amber eyes shot fire from beneath the angry hand-drawn brows. The much-cultivated blasé mask was off, revealing age-and-tension lines around the terse set of her rose-tinted lips. Time to come clean. I’ve been cursed, Mother. My life is ruined. “I curse you, Mother. You’ve ruined my life.”
In the dizzying millisecond that followed, the harsh hissing sound of indrawn breath pierced through Isadora’s spinning consciousness.
“Driver, stop the car.” Her mother’s damp, yellow silk-chiffon covered arm snaked around her and the door flew open. “Get out. You are no longer my daughter.”
The car was still rolling to a stop as her mother shoved her from the limo. Isadora’s foot caught on the rubber doorjamb and she ended up facedown in the front flowerbed of God-only-knew-who’s River Oaks mansion. She lifted her face out of the mud and opened her mouth to beg for forgiveness just as the limo whee
ls squealed and sent an arc of gutter water down her throat and up her nose. She hacked, gagged, coughed and sneezed for a good minute.
The frigid rain pelted her skin and stung her eyes, blinding her and making her even more miserable. With shaking hands, she dragged the hair off her cheeks and tried to get her bearings. After another several seconds of sitting there quaking and quivering, she crossed her arms over her chest and scrubbed at the gooseflesh.
Shelter. But where? She couldn’t knock on the door of any of the homes in the neighborhood in the state she was in and expect to be allowed entrance. Besides which, she couldn’t trust her tongue to say what it should.
She tried to stand, but her spike-heeled slingback pump sank into the mud, all the way up to her ankle, and she fell back hard on her elbows. As she tried to rise again, a sharp tingling pain shot through her wrist and hand and she toppled over once again with a yelp.
On her third try, she managed to gain her footing. As she stood there swaying a minute, still struggling to keep her balance, a mammoth black pick-up truck barreled past her, did a U-turn, and pulled up beside her. For the first time, she realized just how vulnerable she was, all alone—at night—even in this neighborhood. She looked behind her at the lit front porch of the mansion and turned and took a step. Or tried to. She landed face-first in the flowers again.
She heard the passenger door swing open behind her at the same time she heard a much-too familiar male voice yell, “Izzy!”
She scraped the storm-ravaged hair from her eyes, spit the earth-taste and flower petals off her lips, and blinked through the raindrops and dark night up into the concerned face of her long-ago fiancé. Will you take me to my house? “Will you take me to your house?”
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sam shot another glance at the bedraggled, but beautiful, woman beside him before taking the exit onto the Gulf Freeway. She hadn’t said another word since making her odd request and then hauling herself up into the cab of his truck twenty minutes ago.
Not the Izzy he remembered, nor the Isadora Perrault he’d expected.
Even more disconcerting was the fact that he was still driving toward his house instead of taking her to any one of the hotels he’d passed. Truly a conundrum. And one he was afraid to unravel. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to unravel her reasons for asking.
“Look, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what happened between you and your mother after you left Chas’s, and— ”
A musical sound came from somewhere in the vicinity of Isadora’s purse.
“What the hell? Is that—is that ‘Bibbidee-bobbidi-boo?’”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard him, tearing and ripping at the metal clasp holding her ragged-looking purse shut and then yanking out what looked like a child’s pink-glitter cell phone with star-shaped rhinestones attached. “Hello? Hello?” she said into the thing. The speaker must’ve been on because Sam clearly heard what came through the phone: a crooner voice—Perry Como? His grandma’s favorite singer?—saying something about a mind in a dither and a heart in a haze.
This was followed by a distinctly feminine voice, very much like Glinda the Good Witch. “There you aahr, Dora dear. And Saaam,”—a chill shot up his spine—“so good of you to take my little project under your wing.”
“Proj—?” he said.
“You hexed me!” Isadora blinked several times and gave him a goggle-eyed look. “I said exactly what I meant!” she told him.
“Good for you.” This whole thing was getting more bizarre by the moment.
She returned her attention to the phone, punched the button to shut off the speaker, put her back to him and spoke into the receiver in much more dulcet tones, “May I meet you somewhere?” he heard her say as he pulled the truck onto the shoulder and stopped.
The speaker was still on. “Certainly. In time.”
“But—the curse!”
“You and you alone hold the power to lift it. Just un-puzzle the puzzle, un-muddle the muddle, and you’ll be free of it. Must be off—ta-ta.”
“No! Don’t hang up! Fairy—”
Sam’s ears perked up. Fairy??
“—fairy lady, come back!” Isadora shook the phone, then slapped it a few times, but no further sound came through. After a moment, she collapsed back, resting her head on the headrest and squeezed her eyes shut.
* * *
“What’s going on, Isadora?” she heard Sam ask a second later.
Isadora rolled her head from side to side and let out a faint whimper. Maybe he’d show a little pity and just leave it be.
But no such luck. “Who was that woman you were talking to? And what’s all the ‘curse’ business?”
She opened her eyes and took a good long look at him. Assuming the fairy hadn’t reinstated the curse yet, she might be able to give him enough of an explanation to enlist his help. The fairy had said that she, herself, held the key to lifting it, but Isadora had no idea what that key could possibly be. Maybe Sam might know. After all—weren’t two heads better than one? Plus, they’d been a good team there for a while back in college when they’d helped organize the five-campus initiative to support relief and charity efforts for the Red Cross.
A fairy hexed me. “Have sex with me.” Her hand slammed over her mouth with such force, her front tooth loosened a little.
Sam’s eyes narrowed and then he hauled himself back around and twisted the key in the ignition. “So, we’re going to play that game, are we? Fine, keep it a mystery, I seriously don’t care.” Once they were back up on the freeway, he looked over at her again and said, “But I’ll pass on the sex.” He turned his attention back to the road and after another minute broke the silence again when he said, “Look, to tell you the truth, I’d rather drop you off at a hotel—the Galvez okay?”
Isadora had no money—not even a credit card—in her evening clutch. She grabbed hold of his arm and shook her head. She hoped that would be sufficient to change his mind.
His eyes swept her from head to foot. “I’ll pay for it, if that’s the reason.”
She shook her head even more vigorously. No way was she going to waltz into a hotel in the state she was in and then let him plunk down his card for her. Like she was his charity case pick-up or something. That’s what people would think, she was sure of it. She’d be stared at and—oh, God—if they found out who she was, it’d be another horrifying addition to what was sure to be a humiliating recap in the society column tomorrow morning. And she didn’t even want to think about what was already flying around in cyberspace about her. How they loved to chronicle every tidbit in the lives of the fallen-from-grace Perraults. Even more reason for her mother to hate her.
No, much better to wash up at Sam’s house and then try to get him to call her mother—she’d worry about how later—so a driver could be sent to pick her up. Surely her mother hadn’t been serious when she’d said Isadora was no longer her daughter.
He gave her a hard look. “Okay. You can stay with me on one condition. I’ve got too much going on right now to keep my place in order and I sometimes forget to eat—but I like food. I think you know where I’m going with this, right?”
Yes, she did. And if she wasn’t sure she’d be out of his house by morning—afternoon the latest—she’d have nipped that condition in the bud right then. Somehow. Instead, she just smiled and shrugged and settled back more comfortably on the leather seat. A bath, a bath, my kingdom for a bath.
* * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At exactly 5 a.m. the next morning, the fairy phone sang out. This time, with the chirp-chirp-chirp of high-pitched voices rhapsodizing about working and whistling. Isadora shot up straight, got twisted in her sleeping bag, and nearly rolled off the sofa before she managed to wrap her fingers around the much-too-chipper sounding piece of modern technology. Her air-dried and finger-combed still-gnarled hair covered her face like a fur-lined burka as she jerked the phone up to her ear and croaked, “Hello? Fa
iry?”
“Dora dear, so good of you to pick up.”
She blinked rapidly a few times and took a deep breath in an effort to wake up her brain. “What do you want from me? I’ll do anything you ask—just give me my life back. Please.”
“Ah, but that’s just it, dear. It’s not what I want, it’s what you need.”
Isadora leapt to her feet. “What I need is to GO HOME. What I need is to have your blasted CURSE LIFTED.”
“We-e-e-ll, as to the former, I do have a proposition for you—actually, it’s more of a choice, really. But, as for the latter, well, my dear, it’s all up to you at this point.”
“But that’s just it—I don’t know what it is that I must do!”
“I’m sure in time you will figure it out.” Isadora heard what sounded like fingernails tapping on plastic and then the fairy said, “Now, let us talk about the choice I’m giving you. I’ve decided to return you to your mother’s house, but the curse will be in full force, and you will still be banished from her affections.”
“And the alternative?”
“I make that drama with the video last evening go away. Your mother’s reputation will no longer be tarnished by it. But in order for this to take place you must stay put and do the work that Sam has hired you to do.”
“But—but that’s not a choice at all!”
“Why, yes dear, it is.”
Isadora stewed and steamed. But not for long. “Fine. Twinkle your nose or something and get me back to my house.”
“Certainly—if you’re sure? Ab-ra”—Isadora ground her teeth and yanked on a big chunk of her hair—“ca—”
“NO! Wait! AHHH! ALL RIGHT! I’ll stay.”
* * *
Too angry and discouraged by the fairy’s dirty rotten deal to slide back into that blissful oblivion she’d managed to find only a few hours ago, but fuzz-brained and weary just the same, Isadora decided that a good dose of her favorite legal stimulant was the first order of business.
