“I hereby call this meeting of the powerful women in Lily’s life to order!”
Emma glanced dubiously around the circle of women seated on the grass. She recognized three of them—Crystal, Gemma, and Mrs. Claus—but not the woman who spoke, and judging by the snow witches’ confused expressions, they didn’t recognize her, either.
Mrs. Claus, however, wore a serene smile.
Emma returned her focus to the sixth woman. She had to crane her neck upwards to do so, because the woman was as tall as the ice willow tree that used to stand in Lily’s yard. A gray fog hid her face from view, though Emma somehow knew she was smiling. Her long, slate gray hair seemed to blend into the airy dress draped over her slender figure, and massive smokey wings webbed with a network of black veins rose taller than her head and spread out across the ground to join a gray mist surrounding them.
Even to the wife of a mad scientist, she was unusual. But she seemed oddly familiar to Emma, too.
“Now, I’m sure you have many questions,” she continued. “I don’t want to waste too much time on them, since you’ll all forget this when you wake up, but—”
“Oh, so this is a dream,” Crystal interrupted, her furrowed brow relaxing. “That explains it.”
Gemma shushed her daughter with a sharp hiss and a sharper look from her sky-blue eyes.
“Yes, this is a dream,” the unknown woman confirmed, nodding her ephemeral head. “But it is also real. I guess introductions are in order. My name is Wendy, and I’m Lily’s fairy godmother.”
“You’re what?” Crystal burst out again. “No, Mom, I will not shush. Did you just hear what she said?”
“She’ll explain if you give her a chance,” Gemma retorted. “And what in Jack Frost’s name are you wearing?”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “It’s called a negligee, Mom. I’m not thirteen anymore.”
Two sets of sky-blue eyes met in a brief contest of wills. Gemma would have looked more intimidating if she hadn’t styled her blonde hair in two pigtails tied with cutesy pink ribbons, Emma thought. And if she hadn’t been wearing Barbie pajamas. And if her daughter hadn’t been wearing a very mature lacy pink negligee that showed off much of her very mature body.
Emma felt like a nun by comparison, with her blue housecoat and pink bunny slippers.
“Go on, Wendy,” Mrs. Claus intervened. “If you wait for them to stop arguing, we’ll be here all night.”
“I still think it would have been better not to invite them,” Wendy muttered. “Emma can handle this herself.”
Emma’s brown eyes went from the red flannel-clad Mrs. Claus to the fairy and back again. The two spoke like close friends.
“Well, yes, but there’s a certain poetry in getting the family involved, isn’t there?” Mrs. Claus replied. “And Emma prefers to remain in the background, anyway. Don’t you, dear?”
Emma tilted her head to the side slightly. “I’d prefer to know what we’re all doing here.”
“I second that,” Crystal interjected.
“Well, to make a long story short, Lily is cursed; people will start dying if she doesn’t get her magic under control; and she just ran away. Which won’t save anybody, but it’s what she does when she’s stressed. And that’s where you all come in. You need to save Lily so she can save you.”
A brief silence followed Wendy’s words, and then Gemma put her hand to her chin thoughtfully.
“What did I eat before I went to bed?” she wondered aloud.
“I think you made that a little too short,” Mrs. Claus said to Wendy. “Surely you can give them a bit more detail than that.”
Wendy sighed. “I’m already in big trouble for interfering too much. This is the last time I can intervene without getting fired, and if I say too much…”
“Well, say something that makes sense,” Crystal said. “That’s all pretty vague stuff.”
Wendy shrugged. “You can get the backstory in a children’s book Emma has. Or her children have, anyway. It’s the Disney version of the real story, but—”
“That came from you?” Emma interrupted, frowning.
“No, George, my boyfriend left it there. And wrote it. It’s kind of cheesy, but not as sappy as his love letters—”
“Don’t ever give my children something without my permission.”
All eyes turned toward Emma. She was the smallest person in attendance, a mere three feet tall when standing, and her appearance was almost comical, thanks to the green cream covering her face and the abundant curlers holding her hair in place, but everybody knew it took a lot to make her angry. And when she was angry, she was a force to be reckoned with.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Wendy defended herself.
“I don’t care whose idea it was,” Emma snapped. “It won’t happen again. They are my children, and I take their safety very seriously.”
“But it was child friendly—”
“This time. What about next time? They’re young and impressionable. I can’t have them thinking it’s okay to accept gifts from strangers. What if they see something they shouldn’t? What if it isn’t a book next time, but something harmful?”
“We’re at the North Pole,” Crystal interjected. “The chances of—”
“You’re dating a police officer,” Emma shot back. “You should know this isn’t as safe of an environment as people think it is.”
“You’re dating a police officer?” Gemma shrieked. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not dating him,” Crystal protested, a blush coloring her fair skin. She shifted nervously and reached up to fidget with her blonde hair. “I’m just… seeing him… sometimes.”
“Is that why you’re dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model? Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you? Why would you do this to me?”
“Okay, we’re getting off track,” Mrs. Claus called out, interrupting Gemma before she could get too far into her guilt trip. “The point of this meeting is Lily’s wellbeing. Crystal’s love life can wait until later.”
“Let me make myself clear.” Emma’s small voice rang out in the misty clearing as she stood. She walked right up to the fairy, bending over almost backward to glare up at her, and stabbed an accusing finger in her direction. “Nothing gets to my children without going through me first. Understand?”
The fairy towering over her nodded meekly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” Emma turned and walked back to her previous seat, reclaiming it and reforming the circle. Nobody dared speak. “Then let’s continue. You said Lily ran away?”
“Uh, yes.” Wendy seemed to shake herself, a ripple through the fog, and then she regained her composure. “I figured she would after reading that book, but George thought she should know, and we didn’t know how else to tell her without both of us losing our jobs. She’s on her way to Antarctica right now.”
“Question,” Crystal said, raising her hand. “What’s up with this book? It seems pretty important.”
“I can show it to you and Gemma later,” Emma replied. “It’s a fairy tale that tells the story of a fairy godmother and an imp who fell in love when they met to convey a blessing and a curse, respectively, to a newborn baby, but they couldn’t touch each other until the imp spoke the curse and triggered it.”
“Um, he fell in love right away. Not me,” Wendy corrected her. “He’s always been the romantic one.”
“Okay, well, I’m happy for you and all that,” Crystal said, “but just to clarify, Lily was the baby.”
“Yes.”
“And she’s blessed and cursed.”
“Yes.”
“And if we don’t help her, people start dying.”
“Yes.”
Crystal tapped her chin. “I gotta pitch this to Hallmark. With a little tweaking and the right spin, this would make a great movie.”
“Crystal! Would you stop thinking about your career for one moment and think about your poor cousin?” Gemma chided her.
Crystal rolled her eyes. “I am thinking about her. I’m just thinking ahead for myself, too. So, I’m assuming the blessing is her insanely strong magic. Right?”
“Yes,” Wendy confirmed. “And that’s actually the curse, too.”
“Okay, I can see that. But she’s really careful about using it so she doesn’t hurt anybody. What, is she supposed to go nuts and start killing people or something?”
“Crystal!” Gemma hissed.
“No, that’s a good question,” Wendy said. “We all know Lily is really sensitive and not the best at handling her emotions. I don’t know exactly how the curse is supposed to play out, but I could see her losing it if her magic starts killing people. But I think the magic is the problem, not her. Correct me if I’m wrong, Molly, but I think it’s supposed to start acting on its own, or something else will take control of it or influence it somehow.”
Mrs. Claus hummed, the black eyes behind her thin-rimmed glasses looking off into the distance. “I’m not at liberty to say, but you’re on the right track.”
“How much do you know?” Gemma asked the white-haired elf suspiciously.
Mrs. Claus merely smiled.
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