Just then another fairy, whom I recognized as Merlin's receptionist, showed up. That had to be Trix. "You girls ready to par-tay?" she whooped.
"Girls' night out?" Rod asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes, and you two are not invited," Isabel said.
Owen narrowed his eyes. He didn't exactly frown, but he didn't look happy, either. I glanced at the other women and saw that Ari was giving him a look of raw, undisguised hunger. That must have made him uncomfortable.
Isabel took her purse out of her desk drawer. "Well, you boys be good, and don't call me if you need someone to bail you out."
"We'll be fine," Rod said with a laugh. "Owen can get us out of any tricky situation.
You girls have fun, and be careful."
"Don't get Katie into any trouble," Owen added softly. The two fairies laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like little bells. The four of us headed out, leaving the men behind.
Isabel was apparently our cruise director for the evening. "I thought we'd warm up by hitting happy hour near here—all those cute Wall Street guys getting off work.
Then who knows?"
We settled into a dark, noisy downtown bar and ordered a round of cosmopolitans.
If I hadn't been with two women who had wings on their backs and hovered slightly above their chairs, I'd have felt like I was back in my old life, on one of the rare occasions when my coworkers convinced me to join them for a drink-and-bitch session after work.
As soon as we had our drinks, Isabel said, "Okay, first item on the agenda is Trix's breakup."
"I am never dating an elf again," Trix muttered.
"This may be a stupid question, but are there guy fairies?" I asked.
"Sure there are," Art said. "They just don't like to be called that."
"They prefer the term 'sprite,'" Isabel said, putting air quotes around the word
"sprite."
An snorted. "Yeah, like that sounds any less gay."
"I don't think I've seen any of them around the company."
"There aren't too many who work at MSI," Isabel explained. "They prefer outdoor jobs. You'll find a lot of sprites working as messengers or as gardeners. Anyway, back to the agenda. What does the dirty, cheating elf deserve?"
"Cheating?" I asked.
Trix rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it seems like he had a weakness for anything in wings."
"Then hit him with a love spell that makes him fall desperately for a butterfly," Art suggested. We all laughed at that. I might not be magical, but I had to appreciate the mental image of a man in love with a butterfly.
"Are you really going to do that?" I asked, suddenly wondering if this was just girls'
night out talk or if it was more literal in the magical world. My friends and I had wished all sorts of horrible things on men who'd done us wrong, but we didn't have the power to actually do anything about it.
"Of course not," Isabel said.
"But it would be funny," Ari added.
"It would serve him right," Trix said, "but it falls into a gray area. It's not outright harm, but it's also not a good idea to manipulate another person's free will. No, I'll just have to satisfy myself with the knowledge that I'm better off without him. I guess I'll have to hang out in the park more often, since I'm off elves and humans don't do much for me."
"I like human men," Ari said with a lascivious smile.
"But what's the point? You can't have children with them."
"Who says I want children? I just want fun, and human men are a lot more substantial than sprites. I like a guy I'm not worried about breaking. Besides, if I had kids, I'd just piss off my parents by not giving my kids some sappy fairy name."
"You have a perfectly nice name," Isabel said.
"Yeah, until they came out with The Little Mermaid, and suddenly every human girl is naming her cat Ariel." She turned to me. "It totally ruined the name."
"You shouldn't complain," Trix said. "I have a cousin who got stuck with the name Tinker Bell because her parents thought it was cute. She goes by Belle.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do with Trixie. Half the Westies in New York are named Trixie. It's embarrassing when you hear your name, turn around, and then End out they're talking to their dog."
"Looks like we've wrapped up that agenda item," Isabel said, signaling to the waiter for another round. "Item two: surveying and possibly selecting male companionship."
I took a sip of my new drink as I took in my surroundings. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone out on the prowl with friends. With Gemma's unofficial dating service, that usually wasn't necessary. The bar was full of suited Financial District types. Some of them were quite attractive, but they were all a little too intense for me.
"What do you think, Katie?" Isabel asked. "Anything that isn't what it appears to be?"
"I don't know. Remember, I don't see what you see. Point someone out to me, and I'll tell you what I see."
Art pointed to someone who looked like a taller, slightly older, much slicker version of Owen. She definitely had a type. "What about him?"
"Tall, dark, and handsome. No pointed ears, horns, fangs, or wings."
"Hmmm." She cast her eyes in his direction, caught his eye, then glanced away.
Gemma had tried to teach me that game, but I was hopeless at it. I either stared too long and made my target uncomfortable or not long enough and never caught his attention.
As I watched the flirting I asked, "What do others see when they look at you guys?"
"You mean fairies?" Trix asked.
"Yeah."
"Basically, just us with no wings and no hovering. Human men find us incredibly cute. Personally, I'm not so thrilled with human men."
"All men are trouble, whether or not they have wings, or how their ears are shaped, or how tall they are," Isabel said. She sounded like what Gemma called the Bitter Single Woman—the kind who pretends to hate men to cover up her hurt about men not being interested in her. Isabel was attractive enough, in a striking Amazonian way. I wondered if she was fully human or if there was something else in there, like maybe a trace of giant blood. Still, it would take either a very large or a very confident man to cope with her. We needed to find a professional football player, maybe an offensive lineman. I considered putting Gemma on the job.
"Men are okay," I said. "I like them well enough." I hated to dampen a good bitch session, but I'd never had a guy really screw me over. They had to be interested enough in me to give me any hope in order to cause much damage, and I hadn't had many get that close. Gemma was right, I needed a boyfriend.
"You're single, though, aren't you?" Trix asked.
"Yeah. But my roommate's working to fix that. She's set me up with half of Manhattan."
"And nothing right for you yet?" Isabel asked.
"Not yet. But if you kiss enough frogs, you're bound to stumble upon a prince."
Trix slammed her palm against the tabletop. "Brilliant idea, Katie. Isabel, I propose a change of agenda. Let's find ourselves some princes."
"Where? The pond in Central Park?"
"That's where I have the best luck."
I had to interrupt. "Whoa, you mean there really are men who've been turned into frogs?"
Isabel shrugged. "Sure. But what they don't tell you in the storybooks is that only the real assholes get punished that way, and being a frog doesn't have quite the personality reforming effect you'd expect."
"But they do tend to be very, very grateful about being rescued, and that's good for at least one night
of fun," Ari argued.
"I was being figurative about kissing frogs, in case you were wondering," I said, wondering if this conversation was really taking place or if I was drunker than I realized. "In my world, that just means you go out with a lot of people, even if they don't seem to meet your criteria on the surface, because you never know which one might be right for you."
"That's boring. Wise, but boring. Our way's more fun," Trix said.
"And I bet our chances of finding someone are better than they are in here," Ari added.