Chapter 13 Cendi
CENDI
By midmorning, a manila envelope appeared on my desk with my name on it.
A jolt of excitement washed through me. This was our group’s first godmother assessment.
Doing this was the real start to becoming a fairy godmother, and I absolutely couldn’t wait to take this next step.
As soon as I pulled out my phone, a knock sounded on the door.
I opened it to Jessie and Jaylyn’s smiling faces. Each held up their own envelopes proudly.
“Our first real shadowing experience,” Jessie said.
“I’m so ready.” I stepped aside so they could enter my dorm.
All of us scooted closer, gathering together around my bed. Jessie opened the flap of her envelope and slid out the contents: case details, one thin support token, and a return sheet with irritatingly vague questions.
Client: Tamsin Reed. Sixteen. Witch.
Location: Franklin Park, a bungalow neighborhood three towns over.
Presenting problem: escalating conflict with stepmother, Victoria Reed. Father traveling for work. Wish stated by the guardian through the request line: restore order. Wish stated by client via anonymous link two hours later: let me go.
“Two wishes,” Jaylyn said, under her breath.
“Mutually exclusive as written,” Jessie answered.
“Our job is to find the wish underneath both.” She set a fingertip on the travel charm, a square of paper with a thumbprint pressed into it.
“Rules. We ask first. We stop when anyone withdraws consent. We do no harm. We leave the home better than we found it.” Her eyes flicked to me, then Jaylyn. “We go together or not at all.”
“Together,” I said.
“Together,” Jaylyn echoed.
Jaylyn smiled at me. “Are you nervous?”
“No,” I said, then added. “Yes.”
We all laughed.
“You’re going to do a great job. This is what you were being prepared for,” Jessie tells us gently.
I take a deep breath. “But I don’t have any ideas on how to fix things yet.”
“Just wait until we get there. Things will become clearer.” Jessie gives me a comforting smile.
I square my shoulders. “Okay.”
“Ready?” Jaylyn asks.
“Ready,” I say.
We each touched the charm and thought of the lines on the dossier. About where we were going and who we were going to help. Paper softened. Space folded. The room moved, then decided it had always been somewhere else.
A living room took shape around us, small and spotless and trying very hard.
Lemon cleaner hovered over the couch. Two framed school photos lined the mantel.
A cork board held color-coded lists in a handwriting that admired rulers.
A round of basil sprouted in a jar on the sill.
Three stick-on wards glowed in the corners, store-bought and sincere.
A girl sat on the rug with her back against the couch, knees up, phone facedown on a textbook as if she had been pretending to study.
Black nail polish chipped at the edges. The sharp set of her jaw said she would not give an inch.
Magic hummed around her the way static clings to certain shirts right out of the dryer. She didn’t stand.
“Hi,” she said, wary and brave at once. “I didn’t ask for you.”
“We know,” Jessie said, settling into the calm of a woman who guides storms. “You did ask for something. We won’t help if you don’t want us to.”
A woman, whose hair had been coaxed into smoothness with effort, suddenly appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.
Victoria. The woman who had asked for our help.
She held a dish towel in one hand. Her gaze ran over us the way a mother counts heads at a pool.
Relief showed up, then suspicion took its seat.
“You’re early,” she said, then caught herself. “I mean thank you for coming on short notice. I spoke to the... I put a request in, and they said someone would help. I need help.”
“Victoria,” Jessie said. “We’re here to listen first. Then we’ll see if there’s a wish in the room that wants to be granted.”
“My wish is for peace,” Victoria said, and the dish towel twisted, just once.
“My wish is to not be smothered to death by chore charts,” Tamsin said. “And for my room to stop being a demilitarized zone.”
“Good,” Jessie said, tone steady enough to stack books on. “Clear and honest. May we sit.” She didn’t wait for ceremony. She chose the floor across from Tamsin and left the couch for Victoria, which gave both women a height they hadn’t asked for and choices they hadn’t noticed.
Jaylyn took the armchair angled between them. I hovered near the window. A clock in the hall ticked with conviction.
“Ground rules,” Jessie said. “We don’t fix people. We change the furniture around the choices. No one gets what they want by stealing it from the other.”
Tamsin’s mouth tilted. “Does that line work on everyone or just stepmothers?”
“It works on kitchens, classrooms, and bullies,” Jessie said. “It works on me when I try to win by being clever.”
Victoria sat, ankles crossed, the dish towel making another turn around her hands. “I’m not a bully,” she said, brittle at the edge, and then gentled her tone. “I’m outnumbered by a teenager who can hex the toaster because I asked her to empty the dishwasher.”
Tamsin did not look away. “One time,” she said. “And it unhexed when it cooled.”
Jessie checked that both sets of eyes stayed with her. “Tell me the story that ends without anyone losing,” she said.
Tamsin stared out the window. “I get room to breathe,” she said finally. “I can do my homework without someone standing in the doorway. I can practice without every spell turning into a family referendum.”
Victoria’s breath hitched. She pushed through it. “The house stops humming like a beehive,” she said. “We eat dinner without a speech about independence. I stop living in terror that something goes wrong and I’m the adult who didn’t stop it.”
Jessie nodded as if both answers made sense, because they did. “All right,” she said. “Let’s play the Minute.” She reached into her bag and drew out a palm-sized hourglass. The sand inside glinted with a faint charm that promised to nag when someone broke the rule.
“Oldest tool I own,” she said. “When the sand runs, one person talks and the other listens. No eye rolls. No sighs that could power a windmill. No texting ‘help’ to a cousin.” She checked both faces. “We do three passes. Then we decide if we need a second tool.”
Tamsin’s eye roll started and stalled. She nodded. Victoria pressed the towel flat on her knees and nodded too.
Jessie turned the glass and tipped her head at the girl. “Tamsin first. Tell your stepmother one thing you need by the end of this week. Not your entire manifesto.”
Tamsin’s mouth moved. No sound came for three beats. Then the words lined up. “If I text you where I am and I’m with people you’ve met, you don’t need to blow up my phone every thirty minutes,” she said. “I come home on time. You trust me like a person.”
The charm at the top of the glass made a contented chime because she had stayed within the rule. Jessie flipped the hourglass. “Victoria.”
Victoria had her reply ready, which meant she’d been rehearsing it.
“If you’re late,” she said, voice low and precise, “I need a call, not a text. I need to hear your voice. I need to hear that you are as annoyed as I am that the bus ran slow, or the practice ran long, or your friend’s mother got stuck at work.
” A breath slid out. “And I need you to stop throwing the fact that I am not your mother in my face every time I ask you to rinse a bowl.”
Tamsin’s eyes flashed. Then she shut her mouth because the sand said wait. Jessie flipped the glass. “Two more,” she said. “Smaller.”
“I want my door closed without it becoming a referendum on secrets,” Tamsin said. “If I’m doing homework, the door stays closed. If I’m in there with a friend, you can knock, then ask to meet them after you’ve knocked.”
“Reasonable,” Jessie said. “Victoria.”
“I want the family phone rules back on the fridge,” Victoria said. “I want you to pretend for one week that the rules aren’t the enemy, they’re the net.”
The sand finished its work. The room shifted a hair toward breathable. Jaylyn made a small humming approval that did not carry smugness. Jaylyn glanced at the cork board and the lists no longer clenched quite so hard.
“Second tool,” Jessie said. “This one is sillier. It works anyway.” She drew out a fistful of bright string. “The tether. Whoever holds the end has the floor for five sentences. The other holds on and does not interrupt, which makes the hand remember that they are connected.”
Tamsin snorted. “It’s yarn.”
“It is relational magic that can be repurposed as a cat toy,” Jessie said. “Which means it is perfect.” She handed them each an end. “Five sentences. Then switch.”
They tried. The first round snagged on history within two sentences and the charm on the hourglass pinged a warning for an eye roll that could have fueled a small town. The second went better. The third reached something under both wishes. I watched the moment land in their faces.
Tamsin squeezed the yarn. “I need to know you like me,” she said, each word careful. “Not love. Everyone says love while they hold their breath. I need to know you like me when my hair is bad, and my room is a disaster, and I haven’t put the bowl in the sink.”
Victoria’s hand tightened on her end. The dish towel lay forgotten beside her. “I do,” she said. “I worry so much about you. Your father travels and I am trying to be two people and I somehow started making my rules do the job of being affectionate for me. I’m sorry.”
The air changed. Not a miracle. A clean inch of truth.
“Pause,” Jessie said, soft. “Decision time. Do we push or do we hold.”
“Hold,” Jaylyn said. “They need to practice the small things before we rewire the house.”
“Hold,” I agreed.