Fairy Godmothers, Inc

FIVE



Technical Difficulties


Kate glared down at the folder in her hand, wondering if turning it into a snail would make her feel any better. “Not a single detail about the ball she’s supposed to be going to, just a vague assumption that one would magically show up when we needed it.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds. “How long has this fancy banquet season been in effect?”

“Ever since the current king and queen took the throne.” Jon was sitting beside her now, the worry audible in his voice as his hand rubbed gentle circles along her back. She wished more than anything that she was in any condition to suitably appreciate it. “It’s the only time of year the queen’s willing to wear the same dress more than once.”

“She sounds like one of our clients.” Kate took a deep breath, reminding herself to be calm. The only way this was going to get solved was if she came up with the solution, and that wasn’t going to happen if she was busy wishing terrible things on management. “Is there any way someone else in town is rich enough to be holding a ball in the next few days?”

When Jon shook his head, Rellie bounced off the bed and moved toward them. “How does he know that sort of thing and you don’t?” She peered hard at Kate as if waiting for an answer, then went on before anyone had time to come up with a good enough lie. “And seriously, aren’t you supposed to have the ball ready before you even come see me?”

“Usually, it’s at least a month between when a job gets booked and when a Fairy Godmother is sent out, mostly so that someone in Research can make sure there’s a fancy dress ball going on when we need one.” Kate scowled, cursing herself for not thinking of this when Bubbles handed her the assignment. Not that it would have changed anything, but . . . “I should have known Bubbles wouldn’t think about a little thing like prep time when she had a chance of making one of the directors happy. She claims she is capable of walking on water when she is out in the field, so she expects us to do the same.”

Rellie moved closer, fascinated. “There’s actually a real person named Bubbles? Does she wear pink and giggle a lot?”

Kate squeezed her eyes shut at the visual conjured by Rellie’s questions. “Only when she’s had too much to . . . oooh.” The sensation of Jon’s fingers gently attempting to work out the dozens of kinks in her neck chased away any remaining words. “Don’t . . .” An embarrassingly pleased noise cut off the rest of the sentence, and she found herself tilting her head back in a completely involuntary gesture. This . . . this . . . was probably not a good idea. “Don’t . . . do that, really.”

Jon instantly moved his hand away, unfortunately, doing exactly what she’d told him to. After a second, he rubbed a hand across the back of his own neck. “Sympathetic muscle aches,” he muttered, not looking at her. “Just trying to get them at their source.”

Worried suddenly that she’d embarrassed him when he was undoubtedly just trying to be nice—and more worried that she kept caring so much about what he might be feeling—Kate touched his arm. When he turned to look at her, a little reluctantly, she offered him a sheepish smile. “Thank you. It was . . .” She took a deep breath. “It was really good. It just . . . makes it a little hard to think.”

Jon grinned, looking more than a little relieved. “I know what you mean,” he said softly, and Kate realized suddenly how little distance there was between them at the moment.

“You know, Jon,” Rellie cut in, down on her knees now and watching them with enraptured interest. “If you managed to magically come up with one of those fancy dress balls Kate’s been talking about, she really looks like she’d be willing to kiss you right now.”

“Rellie,” Kate growled, pushing herself forward to properly lunge at the girl and cut off any more useful observations she might be interested in making.

Then Jon’s voice cut in, suddenly thoughtful. “Actually . . .”

Surprised, Kate looked back at him. “You can find me a fancy dress ball?”

“Possibly, though that depends on how much emphasis you’re placing on the ‘you.’” Jon hesitated. “I might have some vague chance in getting the queen to ask for one, but with this little lead time I’m not even sure she’d be enough to persuade Madame Stewart to marshal her forces and get everything pulled together. For something like this you’d have to go straight to the Madame herself, the queen’s personal entertainment organizer, and she won’t even give me the time of day after that unfortunate incident with the ice archer.

“I doubt I’ll be able to convince the woman of anything on my own. But she loves Rupert, both because he’s pretty enough he matches the statuary, and he actually enjoys eating those disgusting canapés she makes. If I can convince him to persuade her that we need a last-minute ball, we should be fine. And if I mention there’s more alcohol at a fancy dress ball, and that fewer people will accidentally try and carry on an intelligent conversation with him, I won’t have any trouble getting him to agree with me.”

Rellie perked up at this. “Do you think I could learn to get him to agree to stuff that easily?” she asked.

Kate blinked, surprised. If Rellie’s advisors could keep her away from bunnies long enough, there was a chance the palace wouldn’t know what hit it. “Well, that’s certainly something to look forward to, isn’t it?” She pushed herself to her feet, forcing a brightly pleasant tone to her voice. “So, now that Jon’s saved our lives as far as the ball is concerned, do you think we can finish up quietly enough to not blind me or catch your stepfamily’s attention?”

There was another pause, just long enough to draw attention to itself, before Jon stood. “I need to go,” he said, voice as equally bright and pleasant as Kate’s. “It tends to unnerve the palace guards when anyone but Rupert wanders in after two o’clock in the morning.”

Kate’s stomach sank. She had barely known him for an hour, and now she was never going to see him again. Why was the second goodbye so much harder than the first? “So when are you coming back?” asked Rellie. She busied herself by smoothing her big pink skirt out around her into what she probably considered a more pleasing shape. “Because I’ve got a lot of toiling and scrubbing I have to do during the day tomorrow, but I should be free after everyone else goes to bed.” As if realizing something, she turned to Kate. “How long is this going to take, by the way? I mean, I’d love to have you guys come over again, but I’m sure there’s more to this Fairy Godmother stuff than just hanging out with the clients.”

Kate sighed, brushing her hair behind her ear as she gave Jon time to exit gracefully. It would be better if she didn’t have the opportunity to watch him go. “I’m not sure yet when the ball will be, but I’m definitely going to get everything else done as soon as I can, within a week. We’ve got the dress taken care of, but we’re going to need shoes, a carriage . . .”

“Dancing lessons,” Jon added. He lifted his chin as Kate turned to look at him, confused. “For some reason, Rupert decided to actually pay attention during all of those dancing lessons the queen made him take. If Rellie doesn’t have at least some idea of where her feet go, her big moment is going to be ruined when she trips over her skirt.”

Kate hesitated, not quite certain where this was going. “She’ll just have to move slowly and trust me to make sure the song ends early.”

“Or I could teach her.” Jon raised an eyebrow, a hint of challenge in his voice. “And you, too, for that matter. It’s not nearly as painful and complicated a process as etiquette teachers make it out to be.” The corner of his mouth curled up into a half-smile. “Who knows, you might even like it.”

So, that was what people meant when they talked about a person’s heart skipping a beat. “But—”

She felt a tug on her skirt from Rellie. “I’m not sure about this whole dancing thing, but if I trip I might tear the skirt of the really neat dress you made me.” The girl made her eyes go big and plaintive as she batted her lashes up at Kate. “Do you really want to have to go through all the yelling it took to make it all over again?”

“She’s right,” Jon teased. “Think of the poor dress.”

Kate stared hard at Jon for a long moment. “Thursday night, then? Ten o’clock?” she asked finally, still waiting for him to say no. It was absolutely ludicrous to expect someone to have their schedule open with only two nights advance notice. “Just across the street?”

Grinning, Jon nodded. “Thursday night it is.” Looking very satisfied with himself, he rubbed his hands together. “Now, does anyone know how I’m going to get past that dog and Rellie’s stepfamily with all of my body parts intact?”


After Jon had made a relatively dignified exit through the window, Rellie practically bounced to her feet. “That was fun to watch, but it’s probably time to get back to me now. Didn’t that contract you mentioned say something about you having to make me pretty shoes?”

Kate forced her still-jumping insides to settle and refocus on the business at hand. “Yes, I’m going to make you some pretty shoes.” She took a quick look around the barren room, searching for the client folder she had tossed. Unfortunately, a quick look didn’t do it, and Kate had to get down on her hands and knees to peer into the herd of dust bunnies that had colonized the area under the bed. “You know, I thought tragically abused stepdaughters were supposed to be good at this whole cleaning thing.”

Rellie made a face. “Do you know how gross dirty things can be?” Leaning over the foot of the bed, she reached into the mass of dust bunnies and magically pulled out the folder. “Besides, I’m getting better at finding stuff. I even figured out your guys’ secret.”

Kate’s head shot up at that last snippet of insight. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah—it was easy.” Distracted momentarily by a hot pink sticky note peeking out from the file’s edge, Rellie sat back on the bed and began thumbing through the pages for it. “I mean, come on, how could a Fairy Godmother’s assistant be a guy . . .” She looked up for a moment. “He could be a Fairy Godfather’s assistant if there was one. But that would say he was assisting a Fairy Godfather, which you are not. You may not be old, but you’re still totally a girl.” She paused. “You guys really need to sort this out.”

Kate sat down, taking a few seconds to work her way back through Rellie’s tangent. Thankfully, none of it seemed like anything that would come back and bite her later, so she relaxed. “It may sound silly, but we’re all supposed to be called Fairy Godmothers, no matter our gender. It’s the name of the company, and the employees are representatives of the registered trademark, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, okay,” Rellie replied, the whole thing clearly already beyond her comprehension or caring. “But since the other guy’s clearly just somebody from the palace and not really a fairy anything, I can just call him Mr. Assistant Guy, right?” Finding the sticky note somewhere in between disclaimers and a list of house entrance protocols, she triumphantly peeled it off and stuck it on the wall. “Or your lover bunny, if you’d like that better. I wish I could give you more options, but lover opossum and lover chicken just sound silly.”

It took Kate a second to realize that her mouth was hanging open. “Lover . . . chicken . . . we aren’t—didn’t . . . I . . . ah . . .” She decided to stop talking before she came off looking like an even bigger idiot than she already did. “He has a name, you know—Jon.”

“But that’s just so boring. Mr. Assistant Guy is more fun to say.” Rellie leaned forward and handed Kate the folder. “Now, let’s get back to my cute little shoes. I think it’d be the very best if they were—”

“Pink. Yes, I know.” Grateful that the topic had moved to much safer ground, Kate turned the file around and started flipping through it. “But they recently redid the minimum requirements for the shoe portion of the package you’ll be receiving, and if I don’t take that into account now I’ll probably end up having to redo the shoes entirely. Ah, here we are.”

“Oh, let me read it. Please, please let me read it,” Rellie chimed in, doing a miniature version of her usual bounce. “It’s not like I’m going to get the chance to do this sort of thing again, and I don’t want to get to be a wrinkly old woman and suddenly think I missed out on something.”

Kate just looked at her. “If you think reading files is exciting, you really need to get out more.”

“Probably.” She shrugged, completely unconcerned. “But isn’t that what this whole thing’s about? Me getting a little action?”

“Action? Do you even know what that—” Kate stopped, deliberately shutting her eyes for a moment. “Never mind. You’ve got the nasty habit of answering questions like that honestly, and I’ve suddenly realized that I don’t want to know.” She held the folder out. “Start in the middle of the second page, under ‘footwear specifications.’”

“Sure.” Plucking the folder from Kate’s hand, Rellie dropped it on her lap and furrowed her forehead in what was no doubt an adorable manner. “Such tiny writing—no cute curlicues or anything. Let’s see, ‘The shoes must of course be the pin . . . pinnacle of the girl’s look, like delicate little jewels pointing the way to the young prince’s heart.’” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s dumb. Why would a guy care about what shoes I was wearing?”

“Let’s just say the guy who wrote the manual was a very interesting person.” Kate shook her head. “Just keep going, okay? I’ll explain later.”

“Okay. ‘As such, the shoes should not in any way be dictated by the dress—its style is, to a certain extent, dictated by the client, and our tastes are far more trustworthy than hers will no doubt prove to be.’”

Kate looked down at her poufy blue skirt, wincing a little at the irony.

“The shoes should, as described earlier, have all the qualities of the jewels which they will em . . . emulate. As such, they should be clear like the facets of a diamond, sparkling with each step the girl should take. Though the Fairy Godmother may tint the shoes to match the client’s dress, the shoes should be made out of glass—”

“Glass?” Kate interrupted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Reaching over, she snatched the file out of Rellie’s hand and started scanning, hoping the girl had somehow misread something. “No, you’re not kidding me, are you? Geez, do these people have any contact with reality?” Groaning, she rubbed her eyes. “Okay, okay. I’m sure there’s a way I can work around this. Plastic, maybe, though the sparkle would be harder and I don’t know how much fun that would be for you. Maybe they would consider a shimmer close enough to a sparkle—”

“Wait, they actually want me to walk around in glass shoes?” Kate didn’t even get the chance to respond before the girl’s eyes widened in horror. “What if I want to start jumping up and down or something? The shoes would get smashed and make my feet all cut up and bloody and disgusting!”

“Which is why I will figure out how to take care of this,” Kate said, trying her best to sound soothing. “I just . . . need a little while to work out the details.” Stretch details out to mean “a plan of any kind,” and she could actually claim the last statement had been honest.

“I’m sure Mr. Assistant Guy could help. He looks kind of like that cute guy who shows up on the coins sometimes—it’d probably be more fun with him, too.” Distracted from her sudden fear of dangerous footwear, Rellie stopped playing with one of her new bows and glanced up at Kate. “You sure do blush an awful lot, you know that?”

“It’s been a recent development,” Kate muttered, closing the client folder and stuffing it back in her waistband. Then, more loudly, “I’ll be back tomorrow, and you’d better hope I can change management’s mind about glass footwear by then.” She waved her wand for what would hopefully be her last transportation spell of the night. “Because if I can’t, there’s going to be a four-foot stack of liability forms in your future.”

Rellie gave Kate a little wave as the glow kicked in. “Why?”

Kate turned to step into the spell. “Do you know how much you could sue us for if the prince ends up stepping on your toes?”