Fairy Godmothers, Inc_ - By Jenniffer Wardell Page 0,1

in distaste. “I told you to show me something dignified, young woman, a creature worthy of becoming part of my family. I can’t have my daughter marry a mere pig. I refuse to comprehend how any nobleman could allow himself to be turned into such a thing.”

Any kind of smile having been abandoned long ago, Kate took a few slow, deep breaths and tried to convince herself that screaming would be a bad idea. “I’m pretty sure that certain sections of the animal kingdom started using a democratic system a few years ago.” The sarcasm was wrong, she knew—one of the memos handed out at the last staff meeting had told her so—but she couldn’t stop herself. “Maybe mayors are more open-minded about what they get turned into.”

The queen’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What does democracy have to do with anything?” she snapped. “And why would any self-respecting witch or sorceress want to curse a mere mayor? We should be looking at more dignified animals—a hunting dog, perhaps.”

“I would be more than happy to show you another hunting dog, Queen Beatrice, but I’m afraid there were only four of them. The last one was Prince Tihold, whose fur you thought would clash with your son’s carpet.” Reminding herself that she didn’t know enough about killing people to avoid getting caught—it took at least four years of graduate school to really make it as an evil sorceress—Kate pasted a smile back on her face and prepared to lie her wings off again. “You know, a select group of our truly fashionable clients have been requesting enchanted swans to sweep their loved ones off their feet. They feel that land-based animals have been overdone by this point in the season.”

She felt no compunction about sacrificing some random swan-prince to this woman’s clutches. Fairy Godmothers, Inc. had received database requests from at least thirty cursed swans, all of them nearly impossible to get disenchanted after Odette’s little misadventure had hit the news a few years before. A tragic death in your lover’s arms might sound romantic, but it tended to discourage clients whose goal was more along the lines of grandchildren.

Beatrice paused, briefly intrigued by the idea of having insider information. “But what about that one girl everyone was talking about—” And here came Odette. “I can’t recall her

name, but she got herself involved with that sorcerer . . .”

“Her family didn’t hire a Fairy Godmother.” Kate leaned forward slightly, a conspiratorial tone to her voice. Being a Fairy Godmother had also, Kate thought ruefully, turned her into a much better liar. “We at Fairy Godmothers, Inc. can be trusted to end our assignments with weddings, not funerals—”

She was cut off as the butler hurried in, announcing to the dowager queen that someone with infinitely more money and social connections required her attention in the Greater Pink Receiving Room. Beatrice swept off without a backward glance, leaving Kate torn between frustration at her easy dismissal and relief that she had temporarily escaped what was rapidly becoming her own private version of eternal torment.

If she stayed, it would be all too easy to get sucked back in. With a quick glance out the window and a few sketched lines in the air with her wand, Kate soon stood in the middle of the ornamental gardens out back.

Once the glow had cleared, Kate stuffed the wand in the waistband of her embarrassingly fluffy blue tulle skirt, a company uniform with an unfortunate amount of glitter designed for someone about four inches shorter. She reached up for a long, bone-popping stretch, groaning in a way she would’ve been embarrassed to be heard in public, then tucked an errant lock of messy, mud-blonde hair back into her ponytail and looked for a decent place to hide for a few minutes.

It was days like this that made her wonder whether she should have tried harder to fit in with the back-to-nature fairy group that her aunt had wanted her to join. Of course, thinking like that meant remembering she hadn’t been cryptic enough to hold on to the Mysterious Old Woman internship her mother had set up, hadn’t been sweet enough to win the interview for the Good Fairy job her father had wanted her to have so badly, and had even lost her teenage summer job at Fairy Toadstools Theme Park for being rude to a particularly hateful six-year-old.

Becoming a Fairy Godmother was the one thing no one had particularly wanted her to do, and most of