Page 23 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

Trish really wanted me to fail. And I really, really did not want that.

“She feeds them to Igor,” Trish said wickedly, her face awash with a delighted smile as my legs lost their ability to propel me. She danced past. “Nice knowing you.” She spun, blowing me a light kiss before disappearing around a cubicle corner.

I swallowed hard. Surely that was just a nasty little lie meant to scare me. It couldn’t be true. The ogre from accounting, eating fairies? Gram-Gram wouldn’t allow that.

But how many failed fairies did I know?

Not a single one.

How many had I heard about?

Also, not a single one.

I’d only ever heard about demotions. Had I messed up enough that I wasn’t even worthy of a demotion from fairy godmother down to a tree or tooth fairy? Or was Trish just taking advantage of my lack of knowledge?

A nearby fairy caught my wandering, panicked gaze from where she was sitting at her desk, and she quickly went back to work, her body shivering, and my doubts multiplying.

With stiff legs, I began moving again. Would I get a chance to say goodbye to my family? Would my portrait, already half-painted in anticipation of me graduating into a fully-fledged fairy godmother, ever grace the halls of our fairy house? What would happen to it? And my beautiful shoes that had been so hard to come by in our pink world—they’d go to waste.

“Estelle. Report!” the head fairy snapped from her office.

I entered slowly through the gold door. On the opposite pink wall was another gold door that led to the reception area. I stood on the worn spot of faded pink carpet in front of Gram-Gram’s rosewood desk and reluctantly met her lavender-coloured eyes. She was all in pink today again. Chiffon that rustled when she moved. Her golden hair was more silver than in the photos at home.

“What is this I hear about no price list? Did you not go through Paxi’s files from top to bottom and double-check everything before you resumed the granting of wishes?”

“Paxi was a legend,” I squeaked.

A crusty, perfect legend who’d rarely ever granted wishes in her final years. I’d met her at family functions and had noted the reverence. But I hadn’t truly realized she was a legend and trailblazer until I’d gotten into training and everyone had greeted me with a hushed level of deference upon learning I was related to her. That had lasted until I’d failed my first quiz. Now I was at the bottom of the pack and the most eager to prove myself. But apparently I should have been going over Paxi’s latter work with a fine-toothed comb.

“As not everyone is aware,” the head fairy told me, “her work wasn’t perfect in her final days, and she had been ailing for some time before we realized it and reduced her load. I know there were many things to check, but that is part of the job. And quite frankly, with your lineage, I expect more from you.”

Everyone did. They thought the rules and regulations were running through my blood. Which they were not. Surely Gram-Gram, being a family member, knew the uphill battle I was facing for being kept in the dark for so many years and could cut me a break. Just a teeny tiny one that resulted in allowing me to continue my training.

“Paxi forgot to bill her youngest clients when they came of billable age,” I reminded her. I’d been the one to catch that oopsie. Not the accounting department who’d missed the discrepancies during audits, and not Trish, who’d been dealt the other half of Paxi’s small client list.

I’d thought my great-great-by-at-least-fifty-times aunt’s slip-ups had been overlooked due to her status and orneriness, but it seemed Gram-Gram and others had actually been quietly keeping tabs on her. If I was part of her account’s clean-up crew, was that a compliment? A severe test? Or a setup that guaranteed my failure?

Maybe Paxi had been fed to that dragon. Because how could you oust someone who went against the whole organization and practically predated it? When Your Fairy Godmother’s offices had switched to more branded colours—pink, a colour my fellow trainees had been indoctrinated to wear since birth—Paxi had steadfastly refused. At the moment, her office was preserved the way she’d left it, without a stitch of pink present, but I figured one day Gram-Gram would get her hands on it and barf pink all over everything.

My new dragon theory had me rethinking my resistance to wearing pink like the others.

“I’m the one who authorized the accounting team to send the invoices,” Gram-Gram reminded me right back, clearly unimpressed with my trainee position-saving argument.

“But I missed the price list,” I admitted. I desperately wanted to point out that so had Trish. With Paxi’s clients split between us, surely she also had clients missing price lists, too.

Come to think of it, cleaning up Paxi’s accounts couldn’t be hush-hush since Trish was part of it, and she’d happily smear our family name through the mud in hopes of elevating her own. Was this an act of transparency by allowing others to potentially see how bad Paxi had become at her job? Or couldn’t Gram-Gram see through seemingly sweet, backstabbing suck-ups such as Trish and thought she was a trustworthy trainee?

“The checklist, Estelle.” Gram-Gram gave me a stern look. “All of your assigned accounts. Run them again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Find what else was missed and report back. No shortcuts. You’re a dreamer, and floating through this job will not get you anywhere. You need to think differently. You need to see the flaws, the problems and come up with a solution. You will be treated the same as the other trainees.”

I opened my mouth to tell her about the tech I’d commissioned a hobbit to create for me so I could capture more of my clients’ wishes. But I held back, realizing I hadn’t asked for authorization, and my initiative might actually sink me further into the hot water I was currently wading through.

“We have systems in place for a reason. You need to prove you’reworthyof becoming a fairy godmother. There is no room for mess-ups. We are working with karma which is a very strong force. If you’re not ready and can’t handle it, I need to know.”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand it, and I can handle it. I want to make the world a better place. I do. I really do.”

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