Damsel Under Stress

“The friend you were trying to catch up with in the train station. I saw her at the party when we were both watching you. When I discussed your romance problems with her, she volunteered to help. It was very brave of her. Not many fairies like being shrunk to that size.”



If it hadn’t been for Owen’s firm hand on my shoulder, I would have come out of my chair. “You mean I’ve got a fairy inside my skull? And you thought Ari was my friend and was volunteering out of the goodness of her heart? Are you insane?”



Owen’s grip tightened on my shoulder, and I couldn’t tell if that was because he was trying to restrain me or if it was because he’d become very tense. “You have to undo the spell,” he said with the kind of icy calm in his voice that meant he was absolutely furious.



She shrugged and flounced down onto the sofa. “I can’t.”



“You can’t?” This time, I did shriek. “You mean, this is irreversible?”



“I can’t do magic on an immune. It won’t work.” She waved her wand at us teasingly. “Surely all of you are well aware of that. I didn’t realize her immunity would return again so soon before I could undo it.” She pointed her wand at Owen. “If you weren’t so eager to get her away from the party, I would have had a chance to undo it before it was too late.”



I couldn’t help but whimper. Owen rubbed my shoulder gently, which made me feel a lot better. I had to bite my lip to keep from blurting out an Ari-like comment about how much better it made me feel. And then my sluggish brain caught up. “We know how to take care of the immunity issue,” I said. “Could you get Ari out of my brain if we did that?”



Ethelinda blinked. “Oh. I suppose I could.”



I sighed in a mixture of relief and resignation. I’d just barely regained my immunity, and now I had to give it up again. In this case, though, I was more than willing. Magic powers would be cool to have, but not at the price of having a psycho evil bitch fairy stuck in my head. As that thought crossed my mind, I was struck with another stabbing pain. That made me realize something. “While she’s in my head, it’s very possible that she can read my thoughts,” I told the others.



Merlin turned his attention from Ethelinda to me. “Why do you think that?”



“Just now, I thought something about Ari that was, well, not very nice, and it felt like someone kicked me in the head right away. And one of my roommates told me the mean things I said to her at the party were things only I knew. There’s no way Ari could have known, and I’m thinking that since I don’t remember that time at all, she must have been totally in control then. She’s possibly picking up on anything I think, which means she might also be getting anything anyone else says around me. We’ve got a spy all over again.”



“That’s easy enough to solve,” Merlin said, walking over to the kitchenette area of his office. He took out a glass, then opened the cabinets, fiddled with a few jars, mixed something up in the glass, then brought it back to me. “Drink this. It’s a sedative specific to fairies. As it doesn’t rely on magic to work, it should still be effective, even with the current circumstances. You may notice some minor effects, but I’m afraid they can’t be helped.” I took the glass and downed it in one swallow, even though it tasted pretty nasty. Anything to get Ari out of my head.



Merlin then returned his attention to Ethelinda. “It will take a couple of days to remove Miss Chandler’s immunity once more, and then we will have to call upon you to undo the spell. You will cooperate.” He said it in a way that emphasized that he was Merlin, the greatest wizard who ever lived.



“Why, yes, of course!” she said. “Anytime you need me!” He waved a hand, and she vanished instantly.



I was beginning to feel light-headed. “Why do we have to drag her into it?” I asked, resting my elbow on the chair’s arm and propping my head up against my hand. “We know she’s incompetent. I’m not sure I trust her to do this right.”



Merlin tucked the locket into his vest pocket. “Unfortunately, a fairy godmother’s magic can only be undone by the godmother, herself. There are occasionally ways to counteract her spells, but not to actually undo them.”



“Oh yeah, like in Sleeping Beauty, where they can’t undo the curse about pricking her finger on the spindle and dying. They can only change it to sleeping.”



“From what I’ve heard, that might not have been technically a fairy godmother situation,” Owen said, sounding like he was veering dangerously close to launching into a scholarly lecture, “but the analogy is close enough to work.”