by Erica Ridley
“Tooth fairy.” Trevor shot an unreadable glance toward Daisy. “I didn’t believe it at first, but by the time I got trussed up in the troll net, the situation was obvious.”
The D.A. whirled toward the jury.
“He knew she was a fairy,” she reiterated, pointing first to the witness then to the defendant for emphasis. “The first broken rule.”
“Objection,” Daisy called out. “Children know we’re fairies, or why would they put their teeth under their pillows? And we’re allowed to lull them back to sleep. I tried.”
“Did you?” D.A. Sangre bared her teeth. “Is the witness a child? No? Is he the owner of the tooth? Also no? Then the rules were broken.” She turned back to Trevor. “Were you brought in for questioning yesterday, following illegal use of magic?”
Tiny lines creased his forehead as Trevor glared at her. “Yes. But if you’re taking me to trial for that, you better extradite me right back to Indiana because this crowd doesn’t begin to resemble a jury of my peers.”
The D.A. waved away his comment. “What wand did you use to wreak your havoc, human?”
Trevor looked at Daisy, his expression once again unreadable. She arched her eyebrows and kept her gaze focused on his. He rolled his eyes toward the audience. She turned to scan the crowd, but didn’t see anything out of place. Her family, her best friend, her boss, her ex-coworkers, and a few random gossipmongers. The usual. She lifted a shoulder. His eyes widened as if annoyed she wasn’t getting his bizarro body language. She raised her palms and stared at him in question.
With a snarl, D.A. Sangre leapt between them.
“Human,” she purred, one red-lacquered fingernail trailing across the smooth wood of the witness stand. “Allow me to repeat myself. Whose wand did you use to wreak havoc?”
Trevor slumped back in his chair, arms crossed. “Daisy’s?”
D.A. Sangre cast a knowing smirk toward the jury. “And how did you happen across Miss le Fey’s magic wand? Did you, perhaps, steal it from her without her knowledge?”
Daisy gulped. Let’s hope Trevor retained a sense of poetic license.
“Sort of.” He stared at his lap. “She left it in my office.”
“She left a wand in his office,” D.A. Sangre repeated for the jury, utilizing her infamous stabbing finger motions for emphasis. “Another broken rule. And how did you get the magic wand from your office on Earth all the way to the residential subdivision on Cloud Nine?”
Trevor touched the outer edge of his black eye. “Bubbles brought me. Daisy’s, uh, where-frog.”
“Bubbles the where-frog,” D.A. Sangre crowed.
Daisy wanted to smack her. The jury was paying plenty of attention without the extra theatrics. They sat bug-eyed and slack-jawed, peering over the banisters so far she wouldn’t be surprised if they started tumbling over the edge like lemmings.
“And why do you suppose Miss le Fey left such obviously proprietary magical items behind in your office?”
“Urgh!” Daisy’s lawyer leapt to his feet. “Urrrrrghhhh!”
“Overruled,” Judge Banshee snapped, twisting to face Trevor. “The witness will answer the question.”
“She was in a hurry.” Trevor tossed an apologetic grimace in Daisy’s direction. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
“Oh? And what could possibly discombobulate a scientist like Miss le Fey?” D.A. Sangre’s tone implied that even the rising and setting of the sun could discombobulate the ever-unmagical Miss le Fey. If she wasn’t already on trial, Daisy really would stomp up there and smack her.
“We…” Trevor’s teeth clenched together, as if he didn’t want to speak his next words any more than Daisy wanted to hear them. “We had just made—uh, sex—and I was sort of trying for more. Sex. So, she disappeared without all her stuff because I had her… somewhat… trapped on the edge of my desk.”
The courtroom gasped.
“Aha!” D.A. Sangre beamed at the jury before jabbing at Daisy with her blood-red talon. “The defendant had sex with a human.”
Daisy closed her eyes and pretended she was invisible. Matter of fact, if she’d known an invisibility spell, she’d chant it right now, even if she ended up turning herself into a pumpkin in the process. At least she’d be an invisible pumpkin.
When she pried open one tentative eye, the jury was still staring at her in scandalized glee. They probably expected a fiasco like this from an ex-neurophysicist.
“In her defense,” Trevor ventured, straightening his shoulders. “I—”
“You are not her attorney,” D.A. Sangre interrupted. She jerked her thumb toward Mr. Squatch. “That is. And he’ll have his opportunity to cross-examine in a moment.” With a self-satisfied nod to the jury, she crossed over to the prosecution’s table and slid into her seat.
“Urgh?” the big yeti whispered to Daisy. He tilted his furry white head toward Trevor. “Urrrrrghhhh?”
Chapter 12
The last thing Daisy needed was for the judge to deem her a menace to society and instate the maximum five-year sentence after all.
“Don’t bother cross-examining,” she said to Mr. Squatch, and rubbed the tips of her fingers against her pounding temples. “Trust me, nothing Trevor could say would help the case.”
“Urrrrrghhhh,” Mr. Squatch muttered in reply.
Daisy’s sentiments exactly.
She dropped her head face-first onto the hard table. Even if Vivian had attempted to claim responsibility for the charm debacle, who would the jury blame for the resulting trouble? The popular, glamorous fairy with the magical powers and the gorgeous wings? Or the ordinary, wingless wannabe, with her pathetic where-frog and unenviable non-magical track record?
“Human,” Judge Banshee screeched. “Would you like to return home now?”
“Yes.” Trevor fell back into his seat as though relieved the D.A.’s interrogation had ended at last. “Please.”
“With a proper ForgetMe orb,” D.A. Sangre interjected, jerking her head in Daisy’s direction. “And this time, performed by a competent fairy. Sound about right, human?”
Trevor tensed, as though offended on Daisy’s behalf. “To be honest, I’m not looking forward to losing memories of Daisy. She’s smart and funny and sexy. If she were, say, an earthbound human, things might be… possible between us.”
She couldn’t help the rush of warmth that flooded her cheeks. Hadn’t she wished the very same thing, but in reverse?
“But she’s not,” Trevor said, the muscles flexing around his jaw. “And I need to straighten my life out. Fast.” He turned his gaze to the judge. “It’s time for me to leave this world behind.”
Although she knew he had to return to his own world sometime, she couldn’t quiet the icy thorns pricking her stomach at his words. He couldn’t wait to forget, to return to a life without magic, without her. She tried not to be hurt. She wanted the same things, didn’t she?
“Any more witnesses?” Judge Banshee scrambled to the center of her desk. “No?” Her sharp eyes pivoted toward Mr. Squatch and D.A. Sangre before refocusing on Trevor. “Is there anything else you’d like to add, human?”
“Well, there’s something else I’d like to have. Even if you do erase my memory, my career will be ruined if I don’t go back with my teeth.”
“Objections?” Judge Banshee asked D.A. Sangre, whose skeletal palm lifted in a why-would-I-care expression. “Very well. I hereby order the Pearly States to produce the confiscated teeth—”
“Urgh,” Daisy’s lawyer interrupted, leaping to his furry feet. “Urrrrrghhhh.”
“All right, good point.” Judge Banshee nibbled on the edge of the gavel. “So that Miss le Fey is not docked any apprenticeship points, since she did in fact collect the tooth she’d been sent to retrieve, I hereby order the Pearly States to produce all the teeth but that one—”
“What?” Trevor’s mouth fell open. “I want them all!”
“You’ll get what you get, and like it!” Judge Banshee shrieked.<
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“Pretend you hadn’t found one,” put in D.A. Sangre with a flash of pointy incisors.
“That’s stupid. Nobody even knew whose it was!” Trevor’s voice rose in outrage. The D.A.’s face whitened, but he was too busy glaring at the judge to notice. “I need them more than any of you. What do you guys even do with them?”
Judge Banshee shook her gavel at him. “None of your business, human!”
D.A. Sangre’s face stretched into a sudden feline smile. “Can you even tell which teeth go where, human? Would you even know how to replace them?”
“Not by sight alone,” Trevor hedged. “But my database has notations that might help indicate which set belongs to—”
“Then there’s little impetus for Nether-Netherland to return anything at all.” D.A. Sangre turned her back to him. “Judge Banshee, the human cannot use the specimens if he can’t tell one from the other. There’s no sense allowing him to—”
“I could,” Daisy ventured, earning a furry nudge from her lawyer and general confusion from everyone else.
D.A. Sangre found her voice first.
“You could what?” she asked, speaking slowly and carefully as if to a frightened, feebleminded reindeer lost in the snow.
Daisy’s face heated under the sudden scrutiny. “I could put them back.”
“How?” the D.A. demanded. “Did you minor in dentistry at Nether-Netherland University?”
“No,” Daisy admitted. “I double-majored in engineering and neurophysics. But I did make a Genetic Teradata Carbon Dentition Spectrometer for one of my electives.”
D.A. Sangre’s pointed teeth clicked together. “A what?”
Even Trevor gaped at her in surprise. His unblinking eyes locked on her face, as though replaying her words in his mind and still only hearing Sasquatchian.
“Layman’s terms, Miss le Fey,” Judge Banshee warned. “Don’t try my patience.”
“Well, it’s a… a machine that does automatic microanalyses. Of teeth. I invented it for class, but didn’t get credit since it’s not magical.” She tried not to remember how frustrating those days had been. She’d sorted teeth ten times faster than fairies and jackalopes alike, but had only scored half credit for having used mundane resources. And the laughter… She shivered and straightened her spine. “In a nutshell, the GTCDS is a diagnostic device in which the foreign key relational data infrastructure trips the light emitting diodes, or LEDs, as soon as the internal mechanism calculating the density and molecular origin of the specimen sends an ambit of nucleic tissue to the collimator prism, thereby initiating a—”
“Fine,” Judge Banshee screamed, hopping onto the edge of the table. “Miss le Fey will accompany the human and return his teeth to the proper location, with the exception of the tooth kept by the Pearly States. Non-negotiable. Afterward, she will utilize a ForgetMe orb and return to Nether-Netherland posthaste.” She lifted the gavel above her head.
“Please,” scoffed the D.A. “Miss le Fey is the worst spell-caster in the entire tri-dimensional area. She couldn’t turn a pea into a pumpkin.”
“Yes she could.” Trevor’s eyes narrowed. “She could turn a pea into a talking pumpkin if that’s what she wanted to do. With a candle inside!”
“Silence!” shrieked the judge. “Whom do you suggest perform the spell-casting, Livinia?”
D.A. Sangre’s gaze flitted from Daisy to Vivian and back again. But when she answered the judge, what she said was, “Why not… Arabella?”
Daisy started. Mama? Seriously?
“Hmm,” Judge Banshee murmured. “Objections, Mr. Squatch?”
After a quick glance at Daisy, her lawyer shrugged and made a shooing, go-ahead motion with one white-furred paw.
“Fine,” screeched the judge. “I hereby charge Arabella le Fey with preparing any appropriate ForgetMe orbs in advance to ensure no further ‘mistakes’ on the part of the defendant.” The judge hopped from one side of the table to the other. “Daisy le Fey, you are ordered by the court to return this human to Earth, replace all but one of the confiscated teeth, erase all memories of yourself from his mind, and leave him behind forever. Understand?”
Oh, she understood all right. Daisy wasn’t sure what stung worse—the shuddering in her bones at the cold word “forever” or Trevor’s obvious relief at hearing the same news.
“You are a collector of teeth, Miss le Fey, not a disruptor of human lives.” The judge gave Trevor a sharp nod before refocusing on Daisy. “Do not return until you’ve put things back to rights. Everything. Hear me?”
Daisy gritted her teeth and nodded. Everything. Got it.
“Due to political picketing by a coalition of scientists from the Neurophysics Compound,” Judge Banshee continued, “you have certain ties to this community that make me hesitate to impose the maximum punishment allowed by law.”
Daisy slid a grateful half-smile at the clusters of ex-coworkers present in the audience. They nodded supportively. The judge kept shrieking.
“You are hereby sentenced to a six-month probationary period. Once you return, you will report daily to your current mentor, Vivian Valdemeer. Should anything—and I mean anything—bring you back to this courtroom before those six months are up, I will recommend the jury consider nothing less than Purgatory.”
Maeve was waiting just outside the front steps when Daisy exited the court building. Daisy gave her long neck a quick hug and then collapsed onto the steps.
“That couldn’t have gone much worse.” She dropped her head to her knees, then turned her face toward the last withering tendrils of sunlight.
Maeve tossed her forelock from her eyes. “Why wasn’t Vivian in the stand explaining how you ended up with a lust charm? That woman’s a two-faced liar.”
“She didn’t lie. When I confronted her, she never once denied having one,” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t she have been less forthcoming if she were hiding something? As it was, I showed up uninvited to beg for favors, and if she handed me the wrong pouch…” Her voice trailed off. She was still ticked. Maeve was right. “The point is, Vivian’s got her own reputation to protect. And now she’s got the power to make or break mine. She’s my court-appointed hall monitor, for Hermes’ sake. Now is not the time for me to cop an attitude with her.”
“Should’ve let me.” Maeve bared her teeth. “I’d’ve bit her.”
“Negatory.” Daisy gave a light kick at one of her best friend’s hooves and swore when she stubbed her toe. “How am I ever going to earn wings if you run amok biting my superiors?”
“Ah, your precious wings.” Nickering softly, Maeve shook her head. “I knew they were the root of all evil.”
“Wings aren’t evil!” Daisy jumped up and gave her a shove. “They’re—they’re glorious.”
Maeve chuffed. “They’re killing you, sunshine. They’re your monkey’s paw of bad karma.”
“You were born with magic.” Daisy couldn’t quite keep the resentment from her voice. “You can’t possibly understand.”
“I understand you were making gooey eyes at the sexy human.”
“Whatever. Gooey or not, his return is court-mandated.”
“Oh, so you would like another desktop tryst or two?”
“Stop twisting my words. I don’t care about him.” Well, not exactly. She already missed him. He was an excellent lover and she was sorry she had to take his teeth, but business was business, right? “Besides, what would it matter? He said he couldn’t wait to go home.”
Maeve snorted. “Men lie.”
“Well, he didn’t lie about anything else, did he?” But boy would it have been better if he had. Daisy rubbed her forehead. Of all the men in the universe, she had to tangle with an honest one. “He had the opportunity to deny everything, but chose to sit there blabbing to the jury about my sex life.”
“That is pretty weird. He seemed so into you.” Maeve frowned. “Maybe he was under a Truth Spell.”
“Be serious.” Daisy propped one elbow atop Maeve’s back.
“You know those have to be authorized by the Elders and announced on record before any testimony. Judge Banshee didn’t say a word. Maybe Trevor doesn’t give a Mayura Feather whether I get into trouble or not. After all, I did steal his teeth.”
“Maybe he didn’t realize you would get into trouble.” Maeve dislodged Daisy’s elbow with a flick of her tail. “It’s not like he’s familiar with the Nether-Netherland penal system.”
“Why are you sticking up for him?” Daisy’s shoulders tightened. “I’m your best friend. Shouldn’t you be on my side?”
“I’m always on your side. I’m just not sure whose side you’re on.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Forget it.” Maeve jerked her head in the direction of the darkening horizon. “Better hurry to your parents’ house if you want to pick up the mouthy pumpkin and ForgetMe orbs before you drop Prince Charming back in his office.”
“I know what to do.” Daisy held her palm up for Bubbles before Maeve could offer any more unsolicited advice.
In a blink, she and her where-frog materialized in her parents’ kitchen. Mama and Dad were seated in the breakfast nook, Dad with a glass of white wine and Mama with a shot glass and a bottle of tequila. Both flashed lopsided smiles.
Probably Daisy shouldn’t hang around any longer than necessary.
“So,” she ventured as casually as she could. “I’m off to Earth to set ‘everything’ to rights and all that. I just swung by to—”
“Kitchen counter.” Mama poured another shot, slopping most of it onto the table. “Light blue pouch will de-pumpkin Katrina. Pink pouch contains ForgetMe orbs. There’s two so you can use one on Katrina. Don’t forget the ten-second window.”
Daisy’s father set down his wine glass in order to give her a hug. “Good luck, honey,” he said gruffly.
“Pop back by if you need anything,” Mama said, gripping the sides of the bar stool as though she might topple off any moment.
With a sigh, Daisy skirted the granite-topped island and slid the heavy pouches into her purse. Pouches that contained true ForgetMe orbs. Yay. She was off to erase a human’s memory for real this time. Why didn’t the thought make her happy?
