Page 18 of Run, Run Rudolph (Fairy Godmothers and Other Fiascos #2)

~ Estelle ~

“ W hat are you doing here?” Tamara growled at me as I appeared before her in the dark, snowy alley behind Haden’s veterinarian office.

Her snappish tone received some interesting looks from the reindeer milling about. I nodded to the boys and swept closer to Tamara, my ankle-length faux fur coat dragging through the piling up snow.

The snow wasn’t actually landing on me, since I wasn’t truly here. Thanks to a splitting spell, I was as snug as a bug in my Calgary office, all warm and toasty. Me being in Eagle Ridge was simply an illusion, as if I’d stepped into a long-distance projector.

“I didn’t make a wish,” Tamara added. She crossed her arms in her bulky parka. “I’m never making a wish again.”

“Well, you should. Then I could help you tonight.” Hopefully.

I would be circumventing some magical world consequences for the way she was interfering with Christmas, one of our most important holidays.

But, as long as we moved now, and quickly, Gram-Gram and I figured a good wish could mend this problem before Christmas was truly ruined.

“I don’t need help,” Tamara insisted.

“That’s not what Char told me.”

“I needed you to call Santa. That was all.”

The reindeer shifted, all eyes on Tamara. She lifted her arms in their direction. “What? This was before you guys started talking to me! Now I know that you’re trying to stay out of trouble.” She turned to me. “You don’t need to call Santa.”

“You boys aren’t supposed to be down here, are you?” I asked, turning to them.

“We can leave at any time. There’s no rule,” Blitzen said. The party animal had ornaments hanging from his antlers, a clear indicator that they’d been up to some serious shenanigans.

“That is correct,” Prancer said primly.

It was an implied rule. Gram-Gram and I had looked it up.

“So,” I asked innocently, “why are you trying to keep it a secret, then?”

They remained silent, their eyes pleading with me.

I sighed, understanding their need for a bit of secrecy.

They were in a sticky situation, and Mrs. C.

, one of their bosses, so-to-speak, was scary.

And I liked the reindeer. When she’d flipped her lid at the summer solstice party after some innocent flirting with Santa, the reindeer had tried to console me.

Hugo, the little evil minion elf, had run straight to Mrs. Claus, simpering and trying to calm her. But he’d only made things worse.

Considering that the word on the street was that Mrs. Claus and Santa were still fighting, the reindeer could end up stuffed and mounted above Mrs. Claus’s fireplace if word of this disaster got back to the North Pole.

But I could maybe help. If Tamara made a wish.

I reassured the herd with the truth. “I couldn’t call Santa through the regional communication system, so nobody knows.” I turned to Tamara. “You should know that interfering with Christmas is a serious offence. We need to extract you from this situation.”

“I’m not interfering. I’m trying to help Rudolph.” She pointed to the unmarked metal door behind her. “He’s in there getting an x-ray.”

“You’ve injured Rudolph within twenty-four hours of Christmas Eve, and you’re failing to protect the magical world from more human interactions.”

“They chose to be seen!”

I glanced at the reindeer for verification, but they all seemed too busy pawing the snow to pay me much heed. I turned back to Tamara. “Please. Make a wish and I’ll fix all of this for you.”

“I’ve scrubbed the word ‘wish’ from my vocabulary.”

I’d expected this. Her friend, Char, due to a filing error thanks to her former fairy godmother, who’d been a bit senile, had ended up with incredible debt.

But it had all turned out well in the end.

Spectacular, really. So, it made little sense that Tamara would give up on us fairy godmothers, and the light we could bring to her life.

Or in this case, her salvation from the scariest woman in the white magic world.

Thumping and banging, and a weirdly masculine yet squeaky voice came from inside Tamara’s car, which was parked beside me, its top down. I paused. I knew that voice.

I slowly turned from the car to Tamara, a feeling of dread sinking deep into my fairy bones. “Why is Hugo in your trunk?”

“He likes it there.” Tamara crossed her arms, clearly trying to look tougher than she felt.

I sighed and rubbed my temples. This was getting worse by the minute. I got the impression that Hugo was Mrs. Claus’s favourite. She wouldn’t take too kindly toward this sort of treatment. “Make a wish, and I’ll do my best to undo all of this.”

“This is a magical world fiasco. I shouldn’t have to make a costly wish in order to fix it.”

“I’m a fairy godmother. I can’t fix your problems without a wish.”

“Isn’t this a magical world problem?”

“It started with you.”

“Did it though?” She crossed her arms.

“You need extraction.”

“Well, I saw what happened with Char. I’m not plumping up your Christmas bonus, or whatever you get for charging people for all their wishes.”

“In the end, Char put a lot of good out into the world,” I reminded her, struggling to hold on to my patience. “And I can procure a price list for you, if it would make you more comfortable. Or we could ask Char if she’d share her account’s credits. I’m sure she’d like to help you.”

“Why are you really here?”

“To help.”

“You implied I’m in trouble.”

“Yes, you could be.”

“Am I going to get eaten by Igor?”

It took me a second to realize what she was getting after. “The guy in accounting? No.”

“But he’s an ogre.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t eat people, remember?”

She shook her head as though not quite believing me.

Seriously, Trish, my rival at Your Fairy Godmother, had made me believe that if my clients didn’t pay on time, Igor would eat them.

And me. I accidentally let it slip once, and now here we were.

This was one big muddled mess of confusion that just wouldn’t die, no matter how many times I insisted that Igor was vegan.

“I just want all of this fixed so I can go home, have a hot bath, and go to bed.”

“You could wish for that.”

“I can’t afford it, Estelle. I’m barely making ends meet on my rent, and feeding horses is way more expensive than I realized. Can’t you use your magic to help your magical reindeer friend?”

I shook my head. I’d already looked into what I could do from the sidelines—nothing.

The only way I could help was if Tamara made a very specific wish.

Then I’d be tagged in, and ready to rumble.

But her wish had to be solely about herself, and not Rudolph.

As in, I wish I’d come home a minute sooner.

The impact would be that she’d miss Rudolph on the road and not hit him.

Then she wouldn’t be wishing about things that involved magical creatures, and I could grant those wishes.

It would change their timeline, preventing this unfortunate overlap.

The longer we let this mess run, the more likely bad things would happen.

Such as Mrs. C. finding out. She had special powers and was caught between two magical worlds in many senses.

She hadn’t been born into Santa’s world, and her residency was tentative.

If she got mad—sorry, madder than she already was—and refused to do her part with Christmas, she could get sent back to her world.

Seeing as the woman didn’t have a pinch hitter who could jump in for her if she didn’t feel like doing her Christmas jobs, the holiday would be screwed.

The non-magical human world would surely notice, and that was a major breach of our inter-worlds contract.

We had to keep Mrs. C. in the dark, and happy. Very, very happy.

The problem was, she was already in a foul mood, fighting her black magic nature and a strong force that could easily take over if given a bit of darkness to grab onto.

Tamara’s phone chirped from deep inside her coat. She sighed, bit the end of one of her thick, insulated mittens to hold it between her teeth, then withdrew her hand from within its confines.

“My mom,” she grumbled around the mitt. “I forgot to text her that I got home okay after supper.”

A blast of snowy air hit her full-force like a punishment and she shivered, tapping on her phone’s screen.

“Got home okay,” she muttered as she tapped on the screen’s keyboard. “Right. I’m alive, so that counts. Not a total lie.” A whooshing sound filled the air. “I’m definitely not telling her I went back out into the storm.”

“Tamara…”

Her phone chirped as soon as she repocketed it, her hand already burrowing back into the warmth of the fluffy mitt. She groaned. “Wanna help me?”

“Yes!”

“Tell my mom to chill,” she snapped.

Now we were talking. Any wish to get the ball rolling was a win. “Simply close your eyes and make a?—”

“Estelle. I’m not making a wish.”

“You don’t understand what you’re unravelling here tonight,” I stated, trying to walk that fine line between not wanting Tamara to panic, yet somehow make her understand how dire this was.

She needed to do something! “You’re meddling with magic during one of our most important holidays.

Beings from my world might assume you have malicious intent and are a threat. Do you know what they do to threats?”

“No,” Tamara said weakly. Under the rosiness from the cold, her skin paled.

“You shouldn’t even be able to see the herd.”

“I still believe.”

“Believing isn’t enough to see through the magical shroud at this time of year.”

“I think they chose to let me see them. That’s what Hugo said.”

I turned to the reindeer. They all looked away.

But like Gram-Gram had said, something was still not adding up. Seeing the herd was one thing, severely injuring Rudolph was another. There had to be something wrong with the shroud.

“Rudolph is inside?” I asked.

She nodded.

“With the human? Who can see him?”

“He’s a vet. He’s helping.” Tamara hunched deeper into her mountain of winter layers. Being human looked miserable.

“You look cold,” I said kindly, hoping she’d let a wish slip out. We could start small and work our way up to saving her and Christmas, and most of all, avoiding the Magical Court of Rules and its punishments. “Would you like to be warm?”

“I am not making any wishes, Estelle. Why do I have to go into fairy godmother debt to clear a problem that has more to do with misbehaving, drunken reindeer than anything of my own doing?”

My mind cleared. “They were drunk when you first saw them?”

“Yes! And Blitzen is even more drunk now. He got into my alcoholic punch.”

“You gave him…” I felt woozy. My office flickered in my mind’s eye, over the vision of the alley. My splitting spell wavered in my panicked distraction.

“Not on purpose! And I mean, yeah, I was driving the car that hit Rudolph. I admit that’s fairly significant. But still . They were drunk.”

The reindeer being drunk had weakened the wall between the magical world and Tamara’s. That was how she’d done damage to a magical being despite the shroud!

This was important information. And it could lessen the perceived severity of Tamara’s actions if she came under judgement. Well, except for her having given Blitzen more booze. That was very bad. As was injuring Rudolph. Even if by accident.

However, the worst part was that because this was a Christmas incident, and it included misbehaviour on the part of magical beings, it all fell into Mrs. C.

’s domain. That meant she’d be the one judging Tamara.

Yes, it would be a strong conflict of interest on Mrs. Claus’s part.

One that would not work in Tamara’s favour.

And, to make matters worse, the woman was already mad at Santa as well as resentful of the holiday.

And if she knew Tamara was one of my clients… Who knew what might happen to her.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” I blurted, wishing I could spill all the details to Tamara to help her understand.

But Gram-Gram had been firm, telling me I could only reveal so much about our world to a human client.

“It’s too close to Christmas and you’re interfering with the magical world.

You need to make a wish so I can make all of this not happen. ”

“It’s not my fault!” Tamara pleaded.

“Tamara, you’re meddling in something that’s well beyond you.” My surroundings were starting to blur. My splitting spell that held an image of me here was fading. “Your only hope in avoiding judgement is to correct your actions by making a wish.”

The alley around me vanished, sending me back to my office. I could only hope that Tamara understood just how important it was for her to make an immediate wish.