“What’s the thing that starts with a W?” Summer asked.
“Whips?” Jenny said hopefully.
“Whips? We can use whips here? Candy never told me that.”
“Wait—wait. I think we’re having a communication difficulty. You asked me for a W word and, naturally, I thought of whips.”
“Okay, no. Let’s start over. You said foolishness and something that starts with a W make us great teachers.”
“Oh!” Jenny brightened. “Sadly, the answer to that is not whips, though it should be,” she finished under her breath.
“Then it’s . . .” Summer prompted.
“Whatever.”
“Pardon?”
“The other thing. It’s the Whatever Factor. Honey, I can already tell that your problem is you give a shit too much about what the hormones and germs are thinking.”
“The hormones and germs?”
“Aka teenagers.”
“Oh.”
“Darling Summer, you need to understand that teenagers rarely think.” Jenny patted her arm. “Come on, let’s lock up, and then I’ll treat you to a drink at Knight Caps.”
Summer started to grab her keys and her purse, then her eyes flitted to the clock on the wall. “Uh, Jenny. It’s barely three. Isn’t that too early to drink?”
Jenny hooked her arm through Summer’s and pulled her toward the door. “When you teach high school, it’s never too early to drink. Plus, rumor has it you ate lunch in the vomitorium. You’ll need a good healthy dose of martini to cleanse your system of those toxins.”
“Vomitorium?” Summer asked as Jenny took her hand and led her toward the door.
“Just another word for the cafeteria. And, yes. You should be afraid. Very afraid.”
“Wow. Teaching is so not like I imaged when I was in college.”
“Darling, nothing is like you imaged in college. This is the real world,” Jenny paused and then snorted. “Okay, well, Mysteria isn’t actually part of the real world in the reality sense, but you know what I mean. College is college. Work is work. Teaching is work.”
Summer sipped her sour apple martini contemplatively. “Teenagers are a lot more disgusting than I thought they’d be.”
“Preaching to the choir here,” Jenny said.
“I mean, Candy told me to change my major to anything that didn’t involve teaching, and I just thought she was, well . . .” she trailed off, obviously not wanting to speak badly about her sister.
“Here, let me help you. You thought Candy was just old, burned-out, and disgruntled. And that you, being twenty-some-odd years younger and ready to take on the world, would have an altogether different experience with touching the future.” Jenny said the last three words with exaggerated drama while she clutched her bosom (with the hand that wasn’t clutching her martini).
“Yeah, sadly, that’s almost exactly what I thought.”
“Until your first day of real teaching?”
“Yep.”
“And now you want to run shrieking for the hills?”
“Yep again.”
Jenny laughed. “Don’t worry. A few short lessons in discipline from an expert—that would be moi, by the by—and another martini or two, mixed with one of Hunter’s excellent five-meat pizzas, which I’ll split with you, will fix you right up.”
“Okay, except I never have more than one martini, and, well, I’m a vegetarian.”
“One martini? Sounds like you’re a little tightly wrapped, girlfriend.”
“I like to think of it as maintaining a healthy control.”
Jenny rolled her amber eyes. “In my professional Discipline Nymph opinion, I might mention that ‘healthy control’ is often an oxymoron. And you’re a vegetarian? Really?”
Summer chose to ignore Jenny’s comment about control and said, “I’m really a vegetarian. I don’t eat anything that had a face. Makes me want to throw up a little in the back of my throat even to think about it. So get my half with cheese and veggies.”
“Cheese and veggies on your half it is.” She motioned for one of the fairies to come take their order and then frowned when the pink-haired, scantily clad waitress ignored her and instead giggled musically at something a werewolf at the bar had said. Jenny lifted one perfectly manicured finger and started swirling it around in the air. “Looks like girlfriend over there needs a little discipline lesson. She needs to learn it’s best not to ignore me when I—”
Summer grabbed Jenny’s finger. “Do. Not. Use. Magic!”
Jenny yelped in surprise and put her finger away. “What gives?”
“Did Candy never mention what kind of, ur, magic I have?”
Jenny’s frown deepened. “Well, no. Candy didn’t have any magic, or at least she didn’t until she hooked up with that handsome werewolf of hers. I think she felt kinda weird that everyone else had some sort of magic, so she didn’t talk much about it. Plus, you know school’s supposed to be a Magic Free Zone. There was no need to go into it much. Why? What’s your magic?”
“Opposite.”
“Huh?”
Summer sighed. “My magic is opposite magic. Any spell worked around me instantly turns opposite, or at the very least becomes totally messed-up and twisted around. That’s another reason I decided to teach.”
“To really fuck with the teenage mind by screwing up all the furtive little magics they attempt at school?”
“No, though that does sound like it might be a fun by-product. The truth is that I wanted to get a job back home in Mysteria. I really like it here. While I was in college, I missed . . .” She hesitated, trying to decide how much to say. “Ur, I uh, missed the people who live here,” she finally decided on. And it was true. She had missed the people—some of them more than others. Actually, one of them more than others. “Anyway, I wanted to live in Mysteria, but I didn’t want to constantly be messing up people’s magic.”
Jenny’s expression said she knew there was more to the “Ur, I uh, missed the people who live here” nonsense, but the only comment she made was, “Oh, I get it. So working in the high school, a Magic Free Zone, sounded perfect.”
“In theory,” Summer said, mournfully sipping her martini.
“Hey, cheer up. It could be worse.”
“How?”
“You could be teaching at the grade school. At that age they touch you and pee in their pants.” Jenny shuddered. “Yeesh!”
Summer sighed. “This might fall under Emergency Procedures and require one more drink.”
“Of course it does, and of course you do. I’ll get it and order our pizza.” Jenny slid her lithe body from their booth. “I’ll go to the counter and order it. Although I do wonder what would happen if my kick-the-flirting-waitress-fairy-in-her-lazy-ass spell went opposite.”
“You don’t want to know. It’s always a true mess and—”
A gale of giggles and the door opening caused Summer to lose her train of thought and glance over her shoulder at the entrance to the bar. Then she sucked air. Her face blanched white and then flushed a bright, painful pink.
“Oh, Goddess!” Summer whispered. “It’s Kenneth.”
Two
“Yeah, it’s Kenny the Fairy. So? What’s the big deal?” Jenny was saying when the gaze of the tall, blond, male fairy in the middle of the new group of laughing girl fairies lighted on Summer and, smiling, he hurried over to their table.