6. ~ Estelle ~
CHAPTER 6
~ Estelle ~
C har had bolted.
And now the head fairy was summoning me into her office for my daily report, which wasn’t due for another hour. Had she heard my unfairy-like swearing? Or maybe spotted the human tearing through the bullpen? Or had it been the silver and black glitter borne of my frustration, rage, fear and futility raining down in Paxi’s old office that had clued her into the need to meet with me immediately?
Holding my scattered emotions inside, I walked as slowly as possible to the head fairy’s office. She was going to shrink me into a tree fairy. I only hoped she would choose someone who knew the spell this time, because I hadn’t been exaggerating about the giant-arm thing.
“Hope Igor’s hungry,” Trish sang as I trod past her pretty desk with its prominently displayed bouquet of posies. She began smacking her perfectly shaped lips like she was eating something tasty.
What was she even talking about? I shot her a disgusted scowl and kept my focus on the head fairy’s office door. Tall. Gold. Imposing. And still so far away.
“You do know what she does to bad trainees who are beyond demotion, right?” Trish whispered, falling into step beside me like she was heading over to the wish machine. That was where the wishes came in from our clients. All day long the white and gold beast sputtered out a never-ending strand of paper, striped in different colours like a random rainbow, the wishes pooling on the floor until they were doled out to their assigned fairies.
It was cute. Quaint. And glitchy. In my first week, I’d bypassed the old, hard-of-hearing machine with some tech of my own that caught many more wishes. After all, I had to prove my worth to Gram-Gram (my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother who was head fairy of this region), and I figured my ticket was a bit of ingenuity and innovation to boost my granted wish revenue beyond everyone else’s in the region.
In other words, it was the only hope I had because in our family of eighty-three generations of fairy godmothers, they all steadfastly refused to talk about their work outside the office despite holding many of the top fairy godmother positions. They felt it was up to each new generation to prove themselves without a drop of handy nepotism or any kind of assistance.
That meant I was lagging behind pretty much every other fairy godmother trainee in my cohort as their families had sent them to fairy godmother playschool, elementary school, junior high school and then, at last, high school. They’d had thirteen or more years of tutoring, quizzes, and memorizing our giant rule book. Whereas I felt a lot like Harry Potter on his first day at Hogwarts. Every day.
And since I came from a family of high-ranking fairy godmothers, Trish, in particular, wanted to show me up. Likely because her family and mine were constant rivals for pretty much every high-ranked seat in the whole wide fairy godmother queendom. It didn’t help that my family had the better fairy house with nicer shaped rocks, gems and shells on our front door as gifts from the humans, and from our back deck we could watch the water sprite games in the pond like we were royalty sitting in our private spectators’ box.
Trish really wanted me to fail. And I really, really did not want that.
“She feeds them to Igor,” Trish said wickedly, her face awash with a delighted smile as my legs lost their ability to propel me. She danced past. “Nice knowing you.” She spun, blowing me a light kiss before disappearing around a cubicle corner.
I swallowed hard. Surely that was just a nasty little lie meant to scare me. It couldn’t be true. The ogre from accounting, eating fairies? Gram-Gram wouldn’t allow that.
But how many failed fairies did I know?
Not a single one.
How many had I heard about?
Also, not a single one.
I’d only ever heard about demotions. Had I messed up enough that I wasn’t even worthy of a demotion from fairy godmother down to a tree or tooth fairy? Or was Trish just taking advantage of my lack of knowledge?
A nearby fairy caught my wandering, panicked gaze from where she was sitting at her desk, and she quickly went back to work, her body shivering, and my doubts multiplying.
With stiff legs, I began moving again. Would I get a chance to say goodbye to my family? Would my portrait, already half-painted in anticipation of me graduating into a fully-fledged fairy godmother, ever grace the halls of our fairy house? What would happen to it? And my beautiful shoes that had been so hard to come by in our pink world—they’d go to waste.
“Estelle. Report!” the head fairy snapped from her office.
I entered slowly through the gold door. On the opposite pink wall was another gold door that led to the reception area. I stood on the worn spot of faded pink carpet in front of Gram-Gram’s rosewood desk and reluctantly met her lavender-coloured eyes. She was all in pink today again. Chiffon that rustled when she moved. Her golden hair was more silver than in the photos at home.
“What is this I hear about no price list? Did you not go through Paxi’s files from top to bottom and double-check everything before you resumed the granting of wishes?”
“Paxi was a legend,” I squeaked.
A crusty, perfect legend who’d rarely ever granted wishes in her final years. I’d met her at family functions and had noted the reverence. But I hadn’t truly realized she was a legend and trailblazer until I’d gotten into training and everyone had greeted me with a hushed level of deference upon learning I was related to her. That had lasted until I’d failed my first quiz. Now I was at the bottom of the pack and the most eager to prove myself. But apparently I should have been going over Paxi’s latter work with a fine-toothed comb.
“As not everyone is aware,” the head fairy told me, “her work wasn’t perfect in her final days, and she had been ailing for some time before we realized it and reduced her load. I know there were many things to check, but that is part of the job. And quite frankly, with your lineage, I expect more from you.”
Everyone did. They thought the rules and regulations were running through my blood. Which they were not. Surely Gram-Gram, being a family member, knew the uphill battle I was facing for being kept in the dark for so many years and could cut me a break. Just a teeny tiny one that resulted in allowing me to continue my training.
“Paxi forgot to bill her youngest clients when they came of billable age,” I reminded her. I’d been the one to catch that oopsie. Not the accounting department who’d missed the discrepancies during audits, and not Trish, who’d been dealt the other half of Paxi’s small client list.
I’d thought my great-great-by-at-least-fifty-times aunt’s slip-ups had been overlooked due to her status and orneriness, but it seemed Gram-Gram and others had actually been quietly keeping tabs on her. If I was part of her account’s clean-up crew, was that a compliment? A severe test? Or a setup that guaranteed my failure?
Maybe Paxi had been fed to that dragon. Because how could you oust someone who went against the whole organization and practically predated it? When Your Fairy Godmother’s offices had switched to more branded colours—pink, a colour my fellow trainees had been indoctrinated to wear since birth—Paxi had steadfastly refused. At the moment, her office was preserved the way she’d left it, without a stitch of pink present, but I figured one day Gram-Gram would get her hands on it and barf pink all over everything.
My new dragon theory had me rethinking my resistance to wearing pink like the others.
“I’m the one who authorized the accounting team to send the invoices,” Gram-Gram reminded me right back, clearly unimpressed with my trainee position-saving argument.
“But I missed the price list,” I admitted. I desperately wanted to point out that so had Trish. With Paxi’s clients split between us, surely she also had clients missing price lists, too.
Come to think of it, cleaning up Paxi’s accounts couldn’t be hush-hush since Trish was part of it, and she’d happily smear our family name through the mud in hopes of elevating her own. Was this an act of transparency by allowing others to potentially see how bad Paxi had become at her job? Or couldn’t Gram-Gram see through seemingly sweet, backstabbing suck-ups such as Trish and thought she was a trustworthy trainee?
“The checklist, Estelle.” Gram-Gram gave me a stern look. “All of your assigned accounts. Run them again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Find what else was missed and report back. No shortcuts. You’re a dreamer, and floating through this job will not get you anywhere. You need to think differently. You need to see the flaws, the problems and come up with a solution. You will be treated the same as the other trainees.”
I opened my mouth to tell her about the tech I’d commissioned a hobbit to create for me so I could capture more of my clients’ wishes. But I held back, realizing I hadn’t asked for authorization, and my initiative might actually sink me further into the hot water I was currently wading through.
“We have systems in place for a reason. You need to prove you’re worthy of becoming a fairy godmother. There is no room for mess-ups. We are working with karma which is a very strong force. If you’re not ready and can’t handle it, I need to know.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand it, and I can handle it. I want to make the world a better place. I do. I really do.”
“Don’t suck up to me. Prove yourself to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I blurted out what was in my heart. “I’d also like to say that I believe Char deserves good things and that we need to do right by her.” Gram-Gram nodded. “I want to create space for her in the world. I want to create a vacuum so the good flows in toward her.”
“You aren’t advanced enough for that.” Now she was shaking her head. “You can’t yet control which form of energy will flow, or which way it will go. Don’t start punching above your levels and working with things you’re not equipped for. You hear me?”
Her warning tone had me straightening my spine. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And no more wishes.”
I blinked. “Sorry?”
Was I being demoted?
“No more granting of wishes for Char until she is paid up. Her account was flagged by Igor.”
But we couldn’t cut her off! Char deserved a happily ever after and bright smiles, as well as someone creating space for her. All she wanted was someone in which to share the small moments of her life. She didn’t need another uncaring, crusty fairy godmother assigned to her like Paxi. I mean, she’d been a legend and all, but in her final years, she’d barely allowed the good energy to bloom in people’s lives.
I believed everyone had the right to be cherished and loved in a way that they could see and feel, and I wanted to be the one who granted that for Char at long last. Her world was waiting and ready to open up for her. She just needed me and a little magic. And numerous well-placed wishes.
“Do I tell her she can’t wish anymore?”
“You told her about divine timing?” Gram-Gram had her fingers steepled, her eyes bright and alive as she worked out her plan.
“Yes, I think I mentioned it.”
“Good. She’ll just think the timing isn’t right for her wishes. We don’t want to scare her off. She’s one of those dolphins or whatever Trish calls our best clients.”
“A whale.” I hated the term and, even more, I hated that Gram-Gram was now using Trish’s slang.
“Yes. She’s a whale of a client. She makes lots of wishes, which is good for us. So, we’ll bide our time this quarter while she pays off her debt.” Her voice lowered. “It should have been you who flagged her account, Estelle. As well, you should have stopped granting her more wishes. Go back to your desk and read up on the financial thresholds and protocols. Then write me a five-hundred-word summary before you leave tonight. Leave it on my desk.”
I held in my groan. “Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s two issues in one day, Estelle,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Please don’t feed me to Igor.”
Gram-Gram blinked at me, then leaned forward, aiming her right ear—her better one—toward me. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I heard that Igor?—”
“Nonsense. He’s vegan, Estelle.”
Her tone made me feel about an inch tall for believing Trish’s lies. The head fairy sighed heavily as though tired of me, and embarrassment washed over me. “Is there anything else I should be aware of?”
I sucked in a breath, knowing I needed to simply blurt out my next problem. “Char doesn’t believe.”
“Incorrect.”
“But she said?—”
“Did you pass your exam on this topic?”
I nodded. She knew I’d had to pass all the introductory and midlevel tests to be given client access.
“List the reasons we know she believes.”
“There’s a portal into our offices which hovers between our worlds,” I said slowly, thinking it through. “It’s protected by a spell. If she truly didn’t believe, she wouldn’t have been able to see YFGM, let alone enter.”
Gram-Gram nodded.
“She also wouldn’t have a bill with us, because if you don’t believe, we can’t hear your wishes.” I started to smile. “So somewhere deep down inside she believes, even if she doesn’t want to.”
“Very good.”
“I granted her a small wish to prove my identity like it says in the training, but she still said she didn’t believe me. She said it was kismet. She also said humans don’t believe in what happens during dreams.”
“In regards to her billable wishes notice from Paxi?”
I nodded.
Gram-Gram sighed. “That issue may be on us more than on Char. But her not wanting to believe and pay up is not an original problem. She’s a valuable client—assuming she makes good on her bill. It’s best we don’t cut her off completely, wouldn’t you say?”
She lifted her brows at me and I nodded eagerly.
“We won’t cut her off then. But no more granting of expensive wishes. Only ones that will help prove to her that you are the one making her wishes come true. She needs to be inclined to pay that hefty bill of hers.”
“She said she’s broke.”
Gram-Gram waved a hand. “They all say that.”