Page 22 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

“Just yes. I am your fairy godmother.”

“Then I want a new one. One who can’t hear me.”

She looked as if she’d been slapped. “You think you’ll find someone who cares about your wishes more than I do?” Her voice was wobbly. “One with…with better rates? We’re regulated, you know.”

“Well, I’m not paying.”

Estelle stared at me.

“I don’t have this kind of money,” I explained.

The colour drained from her face.

I leaned back, arms crossed. “I couldn’t pay this even if you were legit. Plus, I’m going to report you for an invasion of privacy.”

“No, no. We are within the bounds.” She patted a thick book at her side, one I hadn’t noticed earlier. Had it always been there? It was massive and worn, leather-bound and oozing old-world vibes. “And wishes aren’t free, Char. There are costs involved with every wish that’s granted.”

“I don’t have the money. I’m basically broke and have no assets. You picked the wrong mark for your little psychic scam-a-roni. I’m not paying this.” I shoved the papers so hard they flew off the desk.

“But…but.” She was blinking so fast her lashes were a blur. “I’m never going to pass the level to become an eighty-fourth generation fairy godmother. That is what is expected of me.”

“Really not my problem.”

She was spiralling, gulping air between sentences. “I can’t be demoted to a tooth fairy. Teeth gross me out! And I’m too big to be a garden fairy, and my black thumb will kill everything. Garden fairies are tiny and get eaten by frogs. They’ll have to shrink me. What if they do it wrong and I end up with one giant arm that didn’t shrink and everyone will scream in horror?” She jammed an arm in my direction. “I’ll be shunned by the family. I have to pass my levels. I have to.” Her voice was low, hoarse, and desperate. “This is my only chance. You have to pay your bill. It’s in arrears, Char. It’s due now, and I should have told the head fairy how much you owe before I ever granted you more wishes! I’ll be demoted! I’ll never pass.”

I blinked at her performance, unsure if she was done. “Well, I can’t pay it.”

“You have to! You knew what this was going to cost you!”

“Actually, no.” Her spiralling was making me more calm, more assured. “I mean, I never even got a price list.”

Estelle, suddenly calm, chirped, “Of course you did!” She flipped to the sheet at the bottom of the thick file folder, frowned, then skimmed a list stapled inside the front flap of the folder. It had dates typed on the left and some sort of handwritten inventory beside it. Her jaw clenched, and she rapidly flipped through the scrawled pages, blinking hard.

And that was when Estelle started intermittently crying and swearing, and black and silver glitter began raining down around us.

CHAPTER6

~ Estelle ~

Char had bolted.

And now the head fairy was summoning me into her office for my daily report, which wasn’t due for another hour. Had she heard my unfairy-like swearing? Or maybe spotted the human tearing through the bullpen? Or had it been the silver and black glitter borne of my frustration, rage, fear and futility raining down in Paxi’s old office that had clued her into the need to meet with me immediately?

Holding my scattered emotions inside, I walked as slowly as possible to the head fairy’s office. She was going to shrink me into a tree fairy. I only hoped she would choose someone who knew the spell this time, because I hadn’t been exaggerating about the giant-arm thing.

“Hope Igor’s hungry,” Trish sang as I trod past her pretty desk with its prominently displayed bouquet of posies. She began smacking her perfectly shaped lips like she was eating something tasty.

What was she even talking about? I shot her a disgusted scowl and kept my focus on the head fairy’s office door. Tall. Gold. Imposing. And still so far away.

“You do know what she does to bad trainees who are beyond demotion, right?” Trish whispered, falling into step beside me like she was heading over to the wish machine. That was where the wishes came in from our clients. All day long the white and gold beast sputtered out a never-ending strand of paper, striped in different colours like a random rainbow, the wishes pooling on the floor until they were doled out to their assigned fairies.

It was cute. Quaint. And glitchy. In my first week, I’d bypassed the old, hard-of-hearing machine with some tech of my own that caught many more wishes. After all, I had to prove my worth to Gram-Gram (my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother who was head fairy of this region), and I figured my ticket was a bit of ingenuity and innovation to boost my granted wish revenue beyond everyone else’s in the region.

In other words, it was the only hope I had because in our family of eighty-three generations of fairy godmothers, they all steadfastly refused to talk about their work outside the office despite holding many of the top fairy godmother positions. They felt it was up to each new generation to prove themselves without a drop of handy nepotism or any kind of assistance.

That meant I was lagging behind pretty much every other fairy godmother trainee in my cohort as their families had sent them to fairy godmother playschool, elementary school, junior high school and then, at last, high school. They’d had thirteen or more years of tutoring, quizzes, and memorizing our giant rule book. Whereas I felt a lot like Harry Potter on his first day at Hogwarts. Every day.

And since I came from a family of high-ranking fairy godmothers, Trish, in particular, wanted to show me up. Likely because her family and mine were constant rivals for pretty much every high-ranked seat in the whole wide fairy godmother queendom. It didn’t help that my family had the better fairy house with nicer shaped rocks, gems and shells on our front door as gifts from the humans, and from our back deck we could watch the water sprite games in the pond like we were royalty sitting in our private spectators’ box.

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