Be Careful What You Wish For Read online

  “But it’s not even your fault,” Cass protested before she thought about it. “I mean, not that I want to see Phil get punished. Hell—nobody should get punished. Even if you would have gotten those calls, we still couldn’t have gotten here any sooner.”

  “I know that.” O’Shea looked grim. “And I would dearly love to know who was responsible both for changing the judge who is seeing our case and for moving the court date up thirty minutes. Possibly someone who also knows that I always plan to get my clients to the court house fifteen to thirty minutes ahead of time in order to avoid this sort of faux pas.”

  “Wait a minute—are you saying that someone did this on purpose?” Cass walked a little quicker so that she was almost beside him instead of trailing behind.

  “All I’m saying is that this is most irregular. Court dates and times are not changed an hour before they are scheduled.”

  He pronounced “scheduled” the British way, with a sh instead of a sk and Cass couldn’t help thinking that his deep voice would be nice if he wasn’t always making sarcastic remarks.

  “So what you’re saying is—” she began but just then O’Shea came to such a sudden halt that she nearly ran into the back of his broad shoulder.

  “What I’m saying is we’re here.” He gave her a penetrating glance. “Remember—courtroom protocol at all times, please, ladies.”

  Cass looked up to see that they were standing in front of a large set of double wooden doors that apparently led into a courtroom. Well at least we didn’t have to ride one of those hovering footstools to get here, she thought.

  There was a bored looking attendant with pale purple skin standing to one side of the doors. Beside the attendant was a small folding table with clear plastic-looking face masks made to cover the nose and mouth of the wearer.

  “Counselor Jacobin O’Shea with my clients the Swann sisters reporting to Judge Rosinbloom’s court,” O’Shea said formally as the attendant checked their names off a clipboard. “We were unavoidably delayed and didn’t get the message that our time had been moved up. Will the judge still see us?”

  The attendant glanced at her watch. “Just barely, Counselor. She gave instructions that you were to be let in if you came by ten after nine but not a moment later. Better hurry, it’s nine-o-five right now.” She nodded at the clear face masks on the table beside her. “Care for a filter? It’s her growing season and the pollen count is at an all time high right now.”

  “No thank you,” O’Shea said briskly. “My people are high elves so I am not susceptible to any natural substances. But perhaps for my clients…” He glanced back at Cass and her sisters and Nana. “Are any of you weakened or made ill when you inhale large quantities of pollen? I know many humans are prey to such an affliction. What do you call it?”

  “Allergies,” Rory said. “And mine are pretty bad. Just pollen though, not animal hair or I’d be in trouble.”

  “She wants to be a vet,” Phil explained. “Rory, you’d better wear a mask. In fact, we probably all should just in case.”

  “Very well—quickly please.” He picked up a mask from the table and held it out to Cass who took it doubtfully.

  “There aren’t any straps to hold it in place,” she said, turning the clear plastic-like mask in her hands.

  “Here, we’re running out of time.” O’Shea took the mask back and suddenly his large hand was on the back of her neck, under the riot of coal black curls she hadn’t gotten a chance to brush before being dragged out of the house that morning. He held her firmly in place and Cass started to protest but before she could, he had pressed the mask to her face so that it fit over her nose and mouth. She felt a strange sucking sensation and when he took his hand away, the mask stayed on, apparently having adhered to her face.

  “What is this?” Cass asked, surprised to hear her voice coming out normally despite the filter mask. Or as normal as it currently sounded since she was still very hoarse. She could breathe perfectly well too which was surprising since there didn’t appear to be any air holes anywhere in the contraption currently stuck to her face.

  “Time to go,” O’Shea said without answering. “Right now. Ladies, if you please.” He gestured at the attendant who had just finished fitting Nana with a filter mask, Phil and Rory having managed their own. The attendant nodded and grabbed the long, vertical brass handle on one side of the thick wooden doors and swung it open.

  “Good luck,” she said under her breath. “You’re going to need it.”

  Nine

  Cass didn’t know what she had expected to see when the door opened—something from the set of a TV legal drama maybe, with lots of dark wood and polished brass and a stern looking white haired Wapner-esque Judge sitting at a high podium with a gavel in his hand and a scowl on his face.

  What she saw instead as they walked into Judge Rosinbloom’s courtroom was…a garden. But like no garden she had ever seen before.

  There was a large grassy field filled with every imaginable flower—violets, daisies, gardenias, and a great many more Cass couldn’t name, including every variety and color of rose imaginable. It all appeared fairly normal (if having an English garden in the middle of a courtroom could be considered normal) except for the chairs and tables.

  Cass didn’t even know if you could call them chairs to be honest—they were more like flowers grown to huge sizes and placed at the right height to sit on. Up ahead on the left she saw an armchair-sized pansy and a row of futon-sized Gerbera daisies in bright shades of pink and purple. There was a large rectangular flat-topped toadstool in front of them that seemed to serve as a table.

  To the right of the courtroom was a similar arrangement of petunias and at the front where the judge’s podium should have been was a beautiful deep red rose in full bloom as big as a Buick. Far in the corner of the court a yellow and black striped bumble bee as large as a Great Dane buzzed quietly to itself.

  The air was golden with pollen which appeared to be falling like snow and Cass was glad for the filter mask. Breathing in here would have been impossible without it.

  Their fairy godmother, Lucinda LaFleur, was already present, Cass saw. She was sitting on one of the petunia chairs on the right side of the room, her pale mother-of-pearl wings fanning the pollen in the air slowly. She was over a thousand in fairy years but except for her wings and her silver eyes, she appeared to be an anorexicly thin blond woman in her mid forties.

  She was dressed, as always, in a pale pink outfit that looked like Prada, or whatever the fairy version of Prada was, and she was laughing and giggling with another middle-aged fairy who was seated beside her on another giant pansy.

  To their right sat a tiny woman no more than four feet high with a shriveled apple of a face and bright blue eyes. Her thin brown hair was pulled back into a scanty bun at the nape of her neck and she was wearing a severely cut brown skirt and jacket that seemed to have been designed to be as ugly as possible.

  “But you wouldn’t believe what he said when I told him,” the fairy seated beside their fairy godmother said. She had pale green wings that looked more like a moth’s than a butterfly’s and her hair was blond with a distinctly greenish tinge. The long green robe she was wearing accented her hair and Cass was betting that if she turned around, her eyes would be green too.

  “Tell me,” their fairy godmother said breathlessly. “You always were so bad, Glinda. I can’t believe the things you get away with.”

  “Well I was the naughty one back when we attended finishing school together,” the green haired fairy giggled. “But you know, Lucinda, I don’t think age has slowed me down a bit. I’m every bit as likely to get into trouble now that I’m a thousand as I was back when I was two hundred.”

  “You’re fifteen hundred if you’re a day,” their fairy godmother said, shaking one long thin manicured finger at the green fairy. “But who’s counting? You’ll always look five hundred in my book.”

  “Aren’t you a sweetie?” The green haired fairy trilled.