Page 7 of Run, Run Rudolph (Fairy Godmothers and Other Fiascos #2)

~ Estelle ~

“ T he girls need me! Char and Tamara!”

I’d withstood four long months of them claiming they didn’t need a fairy godmother in their life, and I was giddy to be back in the game.

“Report, Estelle,” the head fairy said with a sigh, as though I exhausted her.

“Yes! Right!” I was supposed to be filing my trainee report on what I’d done today here at Your Fairy Godmother. Not share my excitement that Char and her friends had made contact with me after several disappointing months of silence.

I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, trying to act more like the trainee who’d won the creativity award last summer.

Winning an award in your first year was basically unheard of.

Not to brag. Or rub it into the faces of anyone in particular, such as Trish, my primary rival who was also eager—make that overeager—to prove herself.

The head fairy was waiting, watching me with her lavender eyes.

“As you will recall, Char was our best client last year,” I stated unnecessarily.

And she was mine. All mine.

“I remember.” I caught a small, impatient eye roll.

I’d also won an award for most wishes granted, thanks to Char.

Last quarter was rather dire, though, and this one wasn’t shaping up well, either. We trainees only received a certain number of clients each year, and two of mine—Char and Tamara—hadn’t made a single, chargeable wish. I was falling behind.

“I also recall the mix-ups, broken rules, and errors.” The head fairy was clearly tired, ready to go home, but she had a duty to listen to all of us lower ranked trainees at the end of each day.

Provide guidance, remind us of the rules, keep us in line, and guide us so we could pass our next levels and basically become like her.

Right down to the barf-a-rific pink dresses I refused to wear.

Still, I think the head fairy liked me. And not just because we were related. She’d been in this job for a few hundred years and seen everything. And again, not to brag, but I continued to surprise her. And that wasn’t solely due to my accidental rule-bending and breaking.

My fairy godmother trainee colleagues all knew the rules by heart as their families had put them into fairy godmother-specific private schools from an early age, preparing them for today.

Unlike my family. I was truly a trainee, learning everything for the first time, and our jobs were beyond complex.

But, it turned out, I was good at finding loopholes and bending rules. Probably because my fellow trainees were already so well-trained on how to behave, there wasn’t much leeway for them to surprise our head fairy.

I took the wins wherever I could get them.

Especially since sometimes I could see a little spark of pride in Gram-Gram’s eyes when I did something unexpected. Oh, how I lived for those sparks.

“I will bring magic and goodness to their lives!” I told Gram-Gram.

“Have either of them made a wish?”

“Well, no.” So, technically, I couldn’t jump in and fix things for Tamara. But I could grease the wheels over here in the world of magic. Then Tamara would see that I wasn’t as scary as she believed, and she’d start making wishes for me to grant.

“Then why the optimism and excitement?” the head fairy asked.

“I was asked for a favour.”

“We don’t grant favours. We grant wishes.”

“Yes, I know.” You got paid for wishes. Not favours, or anything else for that matter, and there was a cost to running the offices of Your Fairy Godmother. “I need access to the regional communication system.”

“RCS?” The head fairy leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

She was pretty in her pale pink dress with the sparkles and matching hair clips.

I’d been told by Trish that tomorrow the head fairy would celebrate Christmas Eve by wearing red and green.

Red was my favourite colour, and I couldn’t wait to see someone else in the agency wearing something other than pink.

Baby pink, flamingo pink, bubblegum pink, cherry blossom pink…

The list of yack-inducing shades went on and on.

I was surrounded by so much pink I swear my estrogen shot through the roof every time I walked into the bullpen of fairy cubicles. I was the only one who refused to wear pink. I was also the only one wearing stilettos and black leather pants. And the only one with dyed red hair.

Was the whole wearing-red thing for Christmas simply Trish trying to pull my leg again?

She knew I didn’t understand the fairy world as well as everyone else.

I might come from a very long line of fairy godmothers, but some of this stuff just wasn’t in my blood.

And some of it—like the wardrobe—I didn’t want in my blood.

“Why?” the head fairy asked.

“Sorry what?” I was still trying to picture Gram-Gram in something other than pink.

“Why do you need access to the regional communication system?”

“To call the North Pole. To speak with Santa Claus.”

“And why is that?” Gram-Gram was instantly suspicious. Obviously she’d heard about the solstice party, and the ensuing, lengthy fight between Santa and Mrs. Claus, thanks to me and my social blunder.

But it was an easy mistake to make. Santa hadn’t been in his red suit, and Trish had told me he’d been eyeing me all night, and that he was a high wizard. Feeling brave, I’d gone over, and we’d flirted over appies for almost an hour.

How was I supposed to know he was Santa? Wizards might also let out a ‘ho, ho, ho’ when they laughed. Trish sure had been pleased with herself once I was in Mrs. Claus’s line of sight. I shuddered at the threats Santa’s wife had made against me.

“I’m following the client rules,” I said, thinking on my feet. “Keep the client safe, happy, making wishes, and improve their lives.”

“Cut the unicorn-crap, Estelle.”

I sighed. Fine. “Tamara, my client, hit Rudolph with her car.”

“How? Where? With what?”

“Um. What do you mean?” I’d been expecting some sort of concerned panic from the head fairy, with it practically being Christmas Eve and all. But she seemed more befuddled than anything.

“Well, first of all, how did she see him? He’d be at the North Pole. So, are you sure it’s Rudolph? And if it is, how would your human get through the shroud?”

“I don’t know.” It was a special time of year where some types of magic were stronger.

But so, too, were the protection spells, such as the ones around Santa’s reindeer, so children and others couldn’t see or harm them while they made their deliveries on Christmas Eve.

Come to think of it, it was a bit odd that Tamara had not only seen Rudolph, but managed to hit him with her car.

I knew that when someone believed, they could see us. If we wanted them to. But why would Rudolph want to be seen by a human?

The head fairy sat back in her chair, her pink painted nails against her lips. “Tamara believes.”

“Yes.” She’d been in our offices and seen all of us. That was ironclad evidence.

“I think there’s something more at play.”

I quirked my head to the side. “Like what?”

The head fairy sat forward, her brow creased. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I think we’d better check on a few things.”

“Okay.” I nodded, eager to learn something new and special or odd. Something that fairies like Trish might not get to see or learn in their first year.

“When did this happen?” Gram-Gram asked, her expression growing more concerned, as though the news was finally sinking in past the disbelief that an accident of this type was not only possible, but had actually happened so close to Christmas.

“Just now. More or less.”

The head fairy stood up, face pale. She wavered slightly, as if she was standing in a gale force wind. It wasn’t until then that I realized that my client might have a major magical world problem.