Page 13 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

Hardly threatening.

Was this a fairy godmother forest? Hidden inside a city building?

Wait. What was I thinking? Fairy godmothers weren’t real.

But scammers wouldn’t take time to load their office with living plants. They’d be ready to drop and go at a moment’s notice. So what was this?

With a curiosity that would likely get me killed one day, I called out a ‘hello’ and stepped inside the botanical garden entry. Weird. My skills of spatial comprehension weren’t tops, but even I could tell things weren’t lining up. There were a lot of branches and leaves in the way, but it was obvious this room was much bigger than the narrow strip it had appeared to be from the outside.

To confirm my assessment, I stuck my head out the door and looked at the front of the building. It was still just a door wedged between two properly sized businesses. Logically, you would expect a stairwell and not much else beyond this wooden door. But there wasn’t a step in sight. Just an entry thick with plants, a carpeted path that wound between them and the sound of a water feature trickling nearby.

“Close the door!” snapped a growly voice, and I jumped, releasing the door like it was red hot, most of my body still inside the office. “The heat ain’t free, and you’ll make it colder than a witch’s tit in here. Then I’ll be real mad.”

I watched the door close behind me, considering whether I needed to bolt back out of it again. It clicked shut, and I tentatively followed the curved path, weaving through the plants until a half circle of three large wood desks that looked like they’d been sculpted from a giant oak tree came into view. Nobody was at them. Behind them, five veiny grained doors stood closed at various heights. Even further to the left was a wall covered in ivy that led back into the foliage entrance, and to my far right was a tall, ornately carved reception desk with a standing counter. Behind it was a gold-painted office door. There were plants everywhere and I swear, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something hummingbird-sized flit by.

“Well?” croaked the earlier voice. “What do you want?”

I peered around, not seeing anyone. “Hello? Where are you?” Was one of the plants talking to me? I half expected to sneak a peek of curtain with a wizard behind it, speaking into a microphone.

“Oh, for…” A short, witchy looking woman stood up and glared over the top of the reception desk. Well, she sort of did. She was quite short and, with the desk still between us, she probably couldn’t see anything below my neck. “What? What is it that you want?”

I stared, at a loss for words. This woman seriously looked like a stereotypical witch. She had a hook nose complete with a wart at the end of it, and straw-like grey hair. All that was missing was the hat, broom and cat.

A black cat delicately landed on the top of the reception desk and I nearly fainted. The feline stared at me with its glowing amber eyes, and I mentally scratched that last bit from the witch’s requirement list.

“Cat got your tongue?” The lady laughed, her voice crackling over a bubble of rusty laughter.

I would have fled if it weren’t for the fact that I was pretty confident witches didn’t exist. Not the fairytale kind, anyway. Wiccan witches, yes, sure. Witches that rode brooms and turned people into newts, no.

“Let me speak to your boss,” I said, surprised by how no-nonsense my voice sounded.

“Oh.” The witch put her hands on her narrow hips and gave me tone. “You think you can just walk in off the street and talk toher, do you?”

I reached into my pocket and unfolded the sheet of paper they’d mailed me, dangling it in front of the receptionist. “Yes, I do.”

“Yeah? What for?”

I waved the invoice. “I need to clear this up.”

“Accounting.” The witch sat down, giving a little hop to get into her chair. I was pretty sure her feet didn’t touch the ground, and I wondered why she didn’t cast a spell to make her work station more ergonomically-sized before blinking away that crazy thought.

Because, again, witches were not real.

Just like fairy godmothers.

The receptionist leaned back in her chair, tossing back her head and hollering, “Igor!”

Was it me, or did that name evoke a mental image of a scraggle-toothed monster?

The witch leaned forward with a sigh, reading her computer screen. “He says no.”

“What?”

“He’s not seeing human clients tonight. Something about a headache.”

Humanclients?

“Then what do I do?”

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