Page 10 of Wickedly Ever After (A Fairy Tale Romp, #1)

Ida

There was mail. Nothing from Hector, though.

Ida thumbed through the morning stack at three in the afternoon.

She shouldn’t expect to hear from him. After composing six different ways to tell Hector she wasn’t speaking to him anymore, she’d decided not to speak at all.

Coming about twelve hours after the effects of the spell wore off, this epiphany seemed more a stray bubble of the enchantment than a return to her usual diplomatic self.

She apologized to the pastry cook and told him she loved his cakes, cookies, and pies.

She’d simply not been herself when she called his claim-to-fame cake a heart attack.

He was so happy, he made cream cheese Danish pastries for breakfast. She made a mental note to tell Hari not to feed them to the pigs because now she was worried about the state of their arteries.

She sent a note of profuse apology to the Princess Ball Committee, excusing her absence from the festivities due to a sudden and serious attack of diarrhea. Diarrhea of the mouth was a serious illness.

Hari had found the hairdresser sprite confused and sad in the north tower.

Ida heard the poor creature out over what the Common Princess said about putting her fairy powders and pixie dust into the anal orifice, and assured the sprite nothing like that would ever happen again.

She suggested the sprite retire and open her own hairdressing shop at Ida’s expense.

She had the money and who didn’t love a tax deduction?

She stared glumly at the remaining correspondence on her desk to be personally answered: Invitation to the Witch of the South’s soiree (regretfully decline, alternate engagement); the Gardening Club’s tea party (attend, grateful for the opportunity to speak on magical rose breeding); the Council itself, needing to know if she would speak to the Young Witches Society as part of the Unicorn Jubilee festivities (yes, but dinner invitation declined); and an invitation from the palace for the Prince’s Dinner (delighted to accept, can’t wait to see you again, dear Annabeth!).

She’d have liked to get out of that last one. She couldn’t stand Queen Annabeth.

Beside her, Hari answered fan mail and the graceless requests for money, magic, and time. He put most of the petitions in the wastebasket, which happily devoured them along with the small stack of Angel’s Dream petit fours left over from the reception.

“Lady Jane, asking you to come visit,” Hari said, holding up a letter.

She rubbed her temples. “Throw it away. If I open it, I’ll say yes, and I can’t say yes again. I’ve said yes to everything except Tara South’s soiree.”

Hari chuckled. “Still remembering the last time you said yes to that?”

She gave him the fish eye. “Three hundred years isn’t enough time to recover from that gallbladder attack. I don’t know how the woman isn’t translucent. Every one of her recipes calls for a stick of butter. Besides, my schedule is packed.”

“You could turn down the garden meeting. Or the Young Witches.”

“I can’t turn the Young Witches down! And the Garden Club has been asking me to speak about my rose breeding program all year.” She sighed. “If I turned down anything, it would be the dinner with Annabeth, but I can’t. That’s the toast to the prince. I have to be there for that.”

“You’re going to wear yourself out.”

She leaned back in her chair. “When this week is over, I’m spending a month in the gardens and greenhouses. I need to get my hands dirty, plant some seeds, talk to the chickens. I’m nine hundred eighty-four years old. I’m allowed to be an eccentric old Baba Yaga.”

“And you don’t look a day over nine hundred.” Hari held a letter in his hand as if it might bite him, but he didn’t throw it in the trash. Instead, he set it aside. It was a small square envelope, addressed in a firm, bold hand.

“Who is that one from? A fan?”

Hari blushed. “It’s…uh…it’s for me. I hope you don’t mind. I used your box—I didn’t want my mother asking questions.”

“A secret admirer?” she asked.

“Sort of.” He turned crimson.

“Well, I’m going to ask questions too,” she said, leaning forward. “What does he look like? Is he handsome?”

“I…I don’t know. Uh…we didn’t exchange pictures.”

Ida tensed. “Hari—this isn’t one of those Norn services, is it?”

He sighed. “What if it is?”

“Those fates are notorious for jinxing happy endings! Have you told your mother about any of this?”

Hari’s face flamed. “No. She’d read me the riot act about how I can’t commit, how every time I date a guy, it all falls apart. She’s already disappointed in me.”

“She is not really disappointed. She only wishes you’d settle down, marry a nice gnome, build an addition onto her house, and have children.”

“Grow up, in other words.” He pocketed the letter. “I don’t need to hear it from you too.”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.

“She doesn’t mean it that way, either. But it hurts anyway.”

“I’m sorry. But for my part, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, including me, Hari.

I want to see you with a good man, and if you have to leave to find him, you should.

I’ll bawl my eyes out and send you care packages five times a month, but Gods bless you, sweetheart, you deserve all the happiness in the world. ”

Hari laughed. “I’m not leaving for any man. If he’s the right one, he’ll come here to live with me.”

“You’re not going to find the right one by asking the Norns,” she said.

“I’ve tried everything else,” he said. “You’ve been so helpful, setting me up and all, but it just hasn’t felt right until now.

This guy—he’s different. He’s kind, and thoughtful, and he’s got this sarcastic sense of humor I love.

And he works for a witch too. He won’t say who, but I haven’t told him I work for you either.

Got to be careful, after all. I mean, like you say, I don’t know him. Yet.”

“Yet?”

“I told him I’d be in the capital next week and if he was there, you know, with all the witch conferences going on, we might, well, meet up.”

Ida’s stomach squirmed unpleasantly, probably as a result of the cheese Danish she’d forced herself to eat as penance, but it bothered her far more than lactose intolerance usually did.

Was Hari actually serious about this gnome?

He was romantic, like most of her staff, but he was usually sensible about most matters, especially ones of the heart.

This gnome, whoever he was, had clearly sidestepped Hari’s usual caution.

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“I’m going to be careful.” Hari gave her a curious look. “We’re going to meet at the hotel for dinner. Lots of people there. It’s not like I’m going to have my own room. I’m staying with you.”

“Oh, nonsense, I’ll update our arrangements—”

Hari set his hand on hers. “You don’t understand.

I want to stay with you. I don’t want to take a chance something might happen to make me want something I don’t already have.

I love it here with you. I don’t want to go anywhere else.

And if I like this guy, there’s one person he has to impress more than me, and that’s you, Fairy Godmother. ”

She refused to cry. Happily-Ever-After was her business, and if a person found one without the help of a witch, it was even better.

Those were genuine. They weren’t tangled up in any more magic than people wanting to be together for the rest of their lives because they loved each other.

She let out a sharp, happy laugh and hugged him.

“Go read your letter.” She kissed the top of his head.

“Your young man is going to be very lucky if he impresses you, and if he’s done that, he won’t have any trouble impressing me. ”

“Are you sure?” The gnome’s face creased into folds of concern. “I can get through the rest of the fan mail first.”

“It will wait. And anyway, Hector isn’t writing, so I don’t have to be afraid of getting a vomiting spell or something worse.”

“Yeah,” Hari said, still looking worried. “Yeah, that’s true. Okay, then. But you let me handle it. You’ve got enough to do with the personal mail today.”

“I’m going for a walk in the garden as soon as I finish answering the invitations,” she promised.

When the door closed behind Hari, Ida listlessly set the remainder of the letters aside.

Normally, she felt stressed before the week of a Happily-Ever-After, but also excited.

She loved the festivities associated with the kidnapping of the princess at the end of the week: the dinners, the garden parties, the Bards’ Festival—she certainly appreciated a good lute duet—not to mention seeing friends she only saw once a year.

And this was the Unicorn Jubilee. She should be celebrating a thousand years of love and happiness. But this year, it didn’t feel that way.

Blast Hector, blast him. She couldn’t even be properly happy for Hari.

Her eye fell on the crumpled letter she’d drafted.

Dear Hector,

Your refusal to write to me is your choice. If that is how you feel, then that’s how it should be. But I can’t say it causes me happiness to know you think I sent the laughing charm in order to hurt you. That was never my intention.

At my age, it’s easy to dispense advice to young men and women who come to me for help when one or the other has torn a rift in their relationship. It is somehow harder to give the same advice to myself. But if I had it to do over again, I would never have caused you pain.

Please forgive me.

Love,

Ida

She tossed it into the hungry wastebasket, which devoured it with great papery crunchings and gave a contented, inky burp.