Chapter 35
PANDORA’S DIARY
Elixirs: Lost count, but a jilted faerie-kin’s gotta fizzle
Diary, I did what I always do when I feel shitty about a guy: I went to find Deja.
Well, first I went to find the Inn’s golf cart, which wasn’t in the new carport the gnomes had built of woven twigs and sea glass. Apparently someone had taken a load of clean linens on a joyride in the middle of the night, then parked outside the laundry room.
I muttered “Stupid Leo,” even though this was in no way his fault.
I unloaded the cart, drove to town, and said, “Stupid Leo” again as the bell jingled on the front door of Essence.
I stepped inside and the bell kept jingling.
When I looked to see why, I found a pixie darting around the bell.
She waved at me, then jingled the bell five more times before stopping.
I returned her wave and took a deep, calming breath of the shop’s perfume, which smelled at the moment like eucalyptus and juniper.
Deja stepped from the back room, wearing her shop uniform and her professional smile, which widened when she saw me. “Pandora! Perfect timing, I need an extra pair of hands. C’mon back.”
“Stupid Leo,” I said.
She retreated through the doorway. “What’d he do now?”
“He’s a jerk,” I explained, following her into her little lab where the scent of juniper intensified, mixed with arnica and chamomile.
“Oh,” Deja said. “So I’ve been experimenting with a poison ivy balm, and—”
“You’re not supposed to say ‘Oh,’ you’re supposed to say, ‘What did Leo do, Pandora? What horror did he perpetrate?’”
She peered at me above a flask of amber liquid. “I just did.”
“And I said he’s a jerk.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “What horror did he perpetrate?”
I flopped onto the chair in the corner. “It’s nothing, actually. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Good, because I don’t know if the folk are spreading poison ivy or what, but we’re seeing some nasty rashes, so I’m making—”
“He won’t shut up about cramming the folk back into the manuscript!
” I told her, because she’d asked so politely.
“As if that’s even possible. I wouldn’t know where to start if I wanted to, which I don’t.
He thinks everything is my fault. He’s like, ‘Oh, yuck, now that Pan’s gift brought magic into the world, actual magic, amazing magical creatures, I don’t like magic or gifts anymore’ and he keeps trying to get me to bring him to the library so he can—I don’t know—scour the manuscript for clues about making everything go back to normal. ”
“What a jerk,” she said, with zero sincerity.
“I know, right?”
Deja poured a few drops into another jar. “Definitely.”
“Okay, fine! What’re you working on?”
She explained that she was making an herbal balm for faerie-kin suffering from skin rashes.
She showed me how to measure the dried leaves and powdered petals, then listened to me complain as we worked.
I kept weighing and measuring as she helped customers.
I enjoyed the repetitive work, and not only because the room smelled like heaven.
When we finally finished, Deja said, “I mean, Leo is a definitely a monster, but Dames the folk do get underfoot.”
“What are you talking about?”
She reached into a sample jar of face cream and pulled out a lotion-slathered pixie. “Are they even hygienic?”
“Of course they are. They make your skin sparkle!”
The pixies liked that, but Deja just shouted at the pixie ringing the bell over her door, “Stop already! The shop is closed.”
We ushered the pixies out of the shop, leaving the brownies to clean up, then headed to the Driftwood to drink about love. Apparently Deja’s situation was back on the mainland.
“Like he can’t work remotely?” she grumbled.
We sat at a table downstairs, in the “normal” section of the bar, because it was so quiet. A distracted-looking Dennis brought us tangerine elixirs, but he must’ve gotten the “girl-talk” vibes because he didn’t stick around to chat.
“What does he do?” I asked.
Deja wrinkled her nose. “He’s, like, an emergency room triage nurse or something. His gift helps him numb people.” Then she actually blushed. “Or make them more sensitive.”
Violet and Daffodil shimmied in the air and I said, “No way! That’s a gift that keeps on giving.”
“Well, it does me no good when he’s not even on the island.”
I took a fortifying sip of my elixir. “I’m pretty sure triage nurses can’t work remotely, you bonehead.”
“Yeah,” she said glumly. “Let’s talk about what an asshole Leo is.”
“He’s only a jerk because he’s worried,” I said, defending him for no reason. “But it’s so frustrating. This is my faerie-kink gift, not his! I’m not saying he’s completely wrong, but—why are you giggling?”
“Faerie-kink gift,” she said.
“Faerie-kin gift,” I repeated.
“That’s not what you said the first time!”
“Are you drunk already? And don’t talk to me about kinks, I’m not the one sleeping with Dr. Sensitive Nerve Endings.”
“He’s a nurse. Way sexier.”
We drank and talked until Deja started yawning, exhausted from a day of poison-ivy cures.
I told her to head home and tipsily headed to the second floor.
I enjoyed a thyme-and-orange nightcap with Daffodil and Violet, who sipped from thimbles of soda.
The carbonation caused their noses to crinkle adorably.
I took a slug of my elixir and said, “Okay, fine. Fine. Fine, fine, fine, let’s say for the sake of argument that I’m in love with him.
No! Let’s say I’m falling in love with him.
I am still mid-fall. I am airborne but have not yet hit the ground.
For the sake of argument, let’s admit that I’ve loved him forever even though he’s mean and I was too dumb to realize it.
Let’s say that, for the sake of argument and… ”
I sighed, and Violet sighed along with me. Daffodil patted my hand, which felt like a faint, warm breeze, then I polished off my elixir.
I may have polished off Deja’s, as well.
Then I blinked a few times, seeing double the number of Violets and Daffodils.
And brownies, too, because the sun had gone down.
Which pleased me so much that I followed four, or possibly two, brownies into the Driftwood kitchen where a dozen, or possibly two dozen, of them were washing dishes and polishing glasses and toppling into the sinks.
So naturally, I decided that that was a good time to practice my conducting skills. I clanked two butter knives together and got symphonic on their tiny magical butts and—
“Pandora?” Gabe said, from the kitchen doorway.
“The horn section keeps coming in late!” I told him.
“Dennis told me you were back here.”
“Gabriel!” I said. “Look at your gorgeous hair.”
“C’mon, you idiot,” he said. “I’ll bring you home.”
“And my hair?” I asked.
“I’ll bring that, too,” he assured me. “Along with the pixies nesting in it.”
“I’m Queen of the Pixies!” I said, then tripped as I crossed the kitchen toward him.
Gabe caught me, and I felt an upwelling of fondness for him. He was so reliable. He was always there for me. I liked him. He was a good friend.
“You’re also drunk,” he told me.
“I know! I’m swooming in the wrong man’s arms!”
“It’s swooning,” he corrected. “Oh Dames, I sound like Shrig.”
The cool outside air felt good on my face.
The golf cart slipped into place beneath me.
Then the cool outside breeze felt good on my face as we drove along.
Pixies flew behind the cart, looking like sparkly ethereal exhaust, and it’s possible that I said, “So I can unknot fae magic now. Unknot? What’s the word for that? ”
“Untie.”
“No, silly! And it’s more like remembering, anyway. If you want, I’ll try to recall your gift. Then you’ll have one. Except I can’t remember something that hasn’t happened yet. I’m sorry. I know how much you want one.”
“Yeah, about that…” he said. “I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Why?” I asked, fretfully. “Because you’ve seen how it’s ruining me?”
“I think that’s the elixirs, not your magic.”
He kept saying silly things until he parked at the Inn. After I fell into a forsythia bush, he carried me through the backdoor while Violet and Daffodil pretended to swoon in my lap.
I waved to the brownies in the kitchen then found myself standing in my bathroom gaping at my enormous face in the mirror. Violet handed me my toothbrush and Daffodil the toothpaste and then I was in bed alone, hoping I’d wake up tomorrow and everything would be different.
The gorgeous Maine sunrise slanted gloriously through my window and woke me at 5:18 a.m. Fuck you, gorgeous Maine sunrise.
I grumbled, covered my face with a pillow, and fell back asleep until the faint sounds of Pixie Camp woke me a little more gently.
I sat up and found a vial of Deja’s hangover cure in my hand.
Daffodil stood on the bed next to me, her dark skin and yellow dress glowing in the morning sunlight, urging me to take it.
I downed the foul-tasting brew in one go and stumbled to the bathroom.
I dressed in a white tank and matching shorts and shoved my arms into a green linen army jacket.
I rolled up the sleeves, then let a handful of pixies pin my curls into a complicated updo with purple pea blossoms from Dad’s garden.
Meanwhile, Violet applied my makeup. She’d eyed me with such fascination the first two mornings she lived with me that I showed her a few YouTube makeup tutorials and now she thought that my face was her personal canvas.
I couldn’t argue with the results. I’m usually an eyeliner-and-lip-gloss girlie but Violet seemed to conduct actual magic on my face. My eyes were huge and my cheekbones could cut diamonds. As she added a shading of glitter, my stomach growled.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I told her. “I need food.”
Violet frowned at my weakness.
“I’m faerie-kin. We eat a lot! At least I do.”