Hardly Traditional

 

 

I suppose this is dedicated to everyone who helped me out, especially the Queen of the Goths, Skim, and Ardonowitz, who put up with my calling them by those stupid nicknames, told me this was good, and wrote great fiction of their own.

 

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

 

Margeaux would have said she was too old for this, except she was only twenty-two, which was hardly old at all. Piffle, Margeaux’s grandmére would have said, if she had been available for comment. Twenty-two is piffle.

 

Margeaux wished she were the kind of person who could use a word like piffle and not sound ridiculous. Unfortunately, Margeaux was a modern young woman, born in 1980 instead of 1880 as was considerably more fashionable, and was seriously not cut out for this line of work.

 

The family’s been doing it for generations, dear, her mamán had pointed out several times, which had always been enough to quell Margeaux’s arguments for the moment. Now, however, she was wondering what tradition had to do with anything. It was the twenty-first century, after all. Margeaux was pretty sure that following a profession just because every woman in your family had been doing it since before the founding of Rome wasn’t all that fashionable any more.

 

The thing was this: Margeaux was a fairy godmother.

 

It was pretty stupid. Margeaux lived in the West Village in New York City. She wore jeans and sneakers most days. She wasn’t particularly ethereal – Papa had been quite stocky, and she seemed to have inherited some of his build. Nor was she prone to fluttering about the skyline on gossamer wings, as the air traffic above the city was terrible to navigate when there were lots of planes and only one Margeaux.

 

Margeaux had tried to escape the traditional fairy thing, really she had. After living in Nice and being forced by her mamán to go to Fairy school (an extracurricular, much the same as Hebrew school for non-fairies), she’d left the château in France and escaped to New York City as soon as she was of age. She’d gone to NYU for college. She’d shared an apartment, first with friends and then with a boyfriend and then, when they’d broken up, had adopted a bachelorette lifestyle… and had then adopted pets because she was lonely. She owned a Rottweiler named Rosie, who had a tendency to tear up toilet paper, magazines and newspapers when he was feeling moody, and a fat cat named Mister Clean, who, ironically, declined to use a litter box (preferring a large potted plant in the corner of the living room), and whose favorite pastime was sitting on the windowsill and growling at the passers-by.

 

Margeaux was five-foot-six, a little plump around the tummy but otherwise healthy. Her feet were a little too large, and her hair, though it was normally pleasantly curly, frizzed in the heat. She sometimes bit her fingernails, and her favorite color was an odd shade of blue that unfortunately did nothing for her complexion. Margeaux was as normal as she knew how to be, and had several friends whom she’d thought would make excellent fairies, but the lot had fallen to her, and now, at long last, she was a godmother.

 

Her mamán had emailed her to tell her all about her best friend’s baby.

 

“She’s darling!” Claudette had written. “She’s cursed, of course, that’s how it usually goes, but she’s still the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen. And you’re godmother, Margeaux, isn’t that marvelous?”

 

Margeaux had no response for this.

 

“Her name is Tallulah Lenora Margaret Augustine Caroline Fabienne Dyna Mo Hampstead, but we’re calling her just Fab, because she’s absolutely fabulous, my dear. You must come and visit as soon as you can.”

 

Mamán very rarely gave orders, but that was because she was so good at coercion and guilt that she very rarely needed to. As soon as you can, which for normal people could translate to whenever your next holiday rolls around or when you feel you’re able translated, in Claudette-language, to something roughly approximating as quickly as is fairily possible.

 

Margeaux blew a raspberry at her computer screen, and then opened a new window to order airplane tickets online.

 

*   *   *

 

Mamán had been right. Tallulah Lenora Margaret Augustine Caroline Fabienne Dyna Mo Hampstead was darling, and she was absolutely fabulous. Fab, indeed.

 

Margeaux found herself cooing things over the baby’s elaborate cradle – things like, “Oh! You’re just good enough to eat, aren’t you?” and, “Urgle burgle pookie wookie!” and the far more dangerous, “I wish I could just take you home and keep you with me forever!”

 

“Well, then,” Claudette said, satisfied. Margeaux turned to see her mamán standing in the doorway to the nursery with Fab’s mamán, Elspeth, at her side. Both women looked insufferably smug.

 

“Er,” said Margeaux.

 

“That’s settled perfectly!” Claudette announced, marching into the room and bending over the cradle to stroke the sleeping Fab’s delicate soft cheek with a fingertip. “Elspeth,” she said in a quieter – though no less iron-willed – tone, “Margeaux will be able to take Fab with her when she leaves.”

 

“What?” said Margeaux.

 

“Oh, how darling of you!” fluttered Elspeth from the safety of the doorway. “I did so want my baby to be brought up by her fairy godmother. I’m sure you’ll do a lovely job, dear.”

 

Margeaux wilted slightly. “Well—”

 

“And after all,” Claudette reminded them, “It is tradition!”

 

Blast that tradition three ways from Sunday.

 

“Sh!” Claudette added, catching a glimpse of the expression on Margeaux’s face. “We mustn’t wake the baby!”

 

Margeaux was ushered out of the nursery by her mamán and a cloyingly grateful Elspeth, who thanked her upwards of a hundred times before Claudette managed to shoo her away. When they were alone, safely locked in Margeaux’s elaborate suite, Margeaux allowed herself to explode.

 

“Take her with me?”

 

“Margeaux! Volume!” her mamán said hopefully.

 

“To New York?”

 

“Margeaux—”

 

“I have friends, Mamán, I have a dog and a cat. I have a one-bedroom apartment. I work for a graphic-design company, I can’t support a baby! I don’t want to take Fab with me, I was just talking at her, I’m twenty-two, how am I going to explain a baby to my friends—”

 

“—Margeaux—”

 

“—Eighth Street is no place for a baby. My apartment is a third-floor walk-up. Food! Diapers! Day-care! Mamán, I can’t do this—”

 

“Margeaux Vespertine Gabrielle Darien Isabel Kyrie Betancourt! Please be quiet and listen to me.”

 

When Mamán used all seven names, Margeaux knew she was in trouble, because it took quite the angry effort to remember all of them in the first place. Margeaux shut her mouth, realized she hadn’t taken a breath in quite a long time, took one in a hurry, began coughing, and had to sit down. Claudette rolled her eyes and Summoned a glass of water, which she shoved unceremoniously under her daughter’s nose. “Here.”

 

Gratefully, Margeaux took a small sip, and then a larger one. While she was thus occupied, Claudette took the opportunity to respond.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Margeaux. Of course you’ll take little Fabienne. And don’t waste your time muttering about child-support; people were never stupid enough to give a fairy sole responsibility for their child and then refuse to pay for the baby’s upkeep, they won’t start that kind of foolishness this late in the game. You won’t be going back to New York – don’t give me that look; it’s never worked for you. Tradition has worked for millennia, dear, I don’t see why it’s not good enough now. I think the standard isolated tower should suffice perfectly until Fabienne is sixteen, don’t you?”

 

“Sixteen?” gasped Margeaux, very nearly spitting a mouthful of water across the room. “That’s sixteen years of my life gone, too! I’ll be almost forty when she leaves!”

 

Claudette scoffed. “Don’t be so tiresome, Margeaux, you’re a fairy. Or had you forgotten? You’ll look twenty-five when you’re forty, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you look young until you’re three hundred, if only you’d cut back on sweets. It’s hardly your whole life gone, dear. I’ve played godmother to five girls, and they’ve barely aged me at all.”

 

It was true. Middle age, for a fairy, was somewhere around five or six hundred years old. After the first twenty years or so, the fairy ageing process generally slowed to a crawl, which was why Margeaux’s mamán, at the respectable age of five hundred and sixty-three, looked barely forty-five for a human, and quite handsome for that as well.

 

“What about my friends? What about my pets? What about my job? Can’t you find a different fairy godmother? I’ve never been good at the fairy thing, Mamán, you know that!”

 

Claudette sighed wearily and massaged her high, pale, fairy-like brow with long, slender fairy-like fingers. “Margeaux. Why are you making this so difficult for me? I’m sure you’ve complained to your friends about the trials and tribulations of being a fairy before…”

 

Margeaux hadn’t realized she was quite that transparent.

 

“Tell them your time has come at last, it’s inescapable, and you’ll be able to communicate only by email for the next sixteen years. I’m sure they’ll be understanding if they’re as good friends as you say they are.”

 

“Mamán—”

 

“No, Margeaux Vespertine, I don’t want to hear it. Your pets? Let them come with you. Your job? What do you need it for? There, all of your problems are taken care of.” Claudette glared at her daughter testily. “Or will you try to manufacture something else for me to solve?”

 

Try though she might, Margeaux couldn’t think of any excuse that would hold water. At long last, she pursed her lips, shrugged, and shook her head without meeting her mamán’s eyes. “Nothing else, Mamán.”

 

Claudette’s triumphant expression was one Margeaux had long been familiar with. “Marvelous,” the older woman said, and favored her daughter with a forgiving smile. “Til the morning, then.”

 

A negligent wave of her hand had the door opening for her.

 

Margeaux sighed. Her mamán definitely had a flair for the dramatic.

 

“Oh, and Margeaux?” Claudette called over her shoulder, as she swept regally out of the suite and into the corridor. “Remind me later – we must discuss the specifics of little Fabienne’s curse.”

 

The door closed before Margeaux could even think of trying to have the last word. Biting her lips closed over what would have been a colorful curse indeed, Margeaux huffed (she’d never quite got the hang of flouncing) into her bedroom, where she collapsed on the ornate four-poster and glared at the ceiling as though everything were its fault.

 

The curse.

 

Of course.

 

How could she have forgotten? There was always a curse.

 

It was tradition.

 

*   *   *

 

The logistics of the curse turned out to be in quite a muddle. Apparently the spell itself had been cast by a reluctant wicked fairy on his first assignment (Margeaux couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the wicked fairy, who, it would seem, had some of the same hang-ups regarding tradition as she had), and was actually a clumsy combination of quite a few different curses.

 

“As far as I can tell,” Claudette told her daughter, as the pair took a brisk walk around Elspeth’s gardens, “there’s something of a Sleeping Beauty clause in there, although that might just be the age specification – please, Margeaux, assure me that all of your schooling was not in vain. Remind me of the unique quality of the Sleeping Beauty curse.”

 

“There is an age specification,” Margeaux recited coolly, “tied into the main conjunction. The most common age used to be sixteen, though more modern spells have bumped it up to nineteen because of the legal emancipation age in most countries.”

 

“Hmph,” said Claudette, who appeared to be disappointed that Margeaux’s lessons had not been entirely forgotten. “All right, then. There’s the age specification from an antique Sleeping Beauty curse, as well as the launch parameters for a Cinderella curse – what are those, dear?”

 

“A series of conditional imperatives ensuring that the subject of the curse will have a need to attend the nearest ball before she turns twenty-one. That kind of age specification isn’t the same as that of the Sleeping Beauty curse, because it’s a less-than rather than an if-and-only-if, but here, combined with the Sleeping Beauty curse, the imperatives state something more like, Fabienne will need to attend a ball no earlier than sixteen, preferably around that age, and no later than twenty-one. Tricky clause, that.”

 

“Hmph,” said Claudette again. “You’re doing much better than I expected, Margeaux. Fine. On top of the Sleeping Beauty age specification and the Cinderella ball imperative, there’s an undefined and non-secure Rapunzel adjective as well as a Swan Lake imperative. All of this is tied up with what looks to be completely unrefined raw power, which means this has to be treated very delicately, or the whole curse will unravel and fly around. I expect the only real difficulty you’ll have for the first sixteen years are the Swan Lake curse and the Rapunzel curse. However, it looks like she’ll be a swan for a day and a night only on the equinoxes and solstices, which will save you a lot of bother, and her hair should be all right to deal with; we’ll make sure the château is well-stocked with shampoo and conditioner, and probably if you must cut her hair nothing dire will happen. Even if it does go against tradition.” Margeaux’s mamán beamed. “I’m so glad you’ve agreed to do this, dear,” she said.

 

Apparently she’d forgotten how much Margeaux wanted nothing to do with the whole venture.

 

… Wait a minute.

 

“The château?” Margeaux demanded. “I thought I was staying in an isolated tower in a valley in Belgium, or something!”

 

Claudette scoffed. “Belgium, darling? Hardly. And besides, I’ve heard that this whole cursing business has become quite the little trend over the past few decades. Most of the uninhabited valleys I know of are getting quite crowded with isolated towers, and that’s not really on, is it? Elspeth told me the most horrific story of two cursed girls who had to share towers – I’ll have nothing of the sort for my grand-goddaughter. No, the château in Nice will do quite well, I think, and you can use the townhouse in Paris once she turns sixteen and has to find a suitable ball to attend.”

 

Margeaux had to admit that this was beginning to look up just a little bit, but she’d be damned if she was going to say any such thing aloud to her mamán.

 

“Just keep a sharp lookout,” Claudette added, as the two of them rounded a final corner in Elspeth’s neat row of flowers and headed down a small gravel path to the back door. “That curse is a tricky one, and we might have missed something. I’d expect you to keep in touch anyway, of course, dear, but do email if anything unexpected or tricky comes up. You will, won’t you?”

 

“Yes, Mamán, of course I will.”

 

“Of course you will,” Claudette repeated, and then looked, frighteningly, as if she just might burst into tears. “Oh, my little Margeaux! This is a true sign of your growing up at last, you know, not like that college nonsense. I’ll miss you very dearly.”

 

“It’s only sixteen years, Mamán,” Margeaux said, and then, contrite, kissed her mamán on the cheek. “But I promise I’ll miss you too.”

 

*   *   *

 

Sixteen years can pass surprisingly quickly, especially when one expects, like Margeaux did, for the time to drag on in the worst way. Soon after Claudette had briefed her on the ins-and-outs of Tallulah Lenora Margaret Augustine Caroline Fabienne Dyna Mo Hampstead’s curse, Margeaux had retired, with baby Fabienne, to her mother’s château in Nice, where they were soon joined by Rosie and Mister Clean (the former immediately set to work expressing his discontent at being dislocated by chewing steadily through Margeaux’s collection of Cosmopolitan magazines; the latter made himself at home easily, and within days adopted a potted fern in Margeaux’s bedroom as his new litter-box).

 

Baby Fab was not a particularly exceptional baby. That is to say, she gurgled and grinned when she was happy, and cried very very loudly when she was not, which was typical behavior for most infants. While Margeaux had read plenty of fairy tales about perfectly sweet-tempered children who never seemed to soil their diapers or (once they were able to walk) fall and scrape their knees, Fab was not one of them. However, for a child growing up in an isolated château – if not a tower – with only a reluctant fairy godmother, a sulky dog and a fat cat for company, Fab was amazingly well adjusted. She even took the news of the curse well, once she was old enough to understand it, and told Margeaux she’d pretty much figured it out for herself anyway: “Normal girls don’t turn into a swan four times a year, you know, Aunt Margeaux. Or have hair that grows a foot longer in a month. I’d kind of guessed.”

 

Since Claudette had neglected to provide the château with a host of either invisible or non-corporeal servants, Margeaux was able to make sure her goddaughter grew up relatively unspoiled; as a matter of fact, it was while Fab was rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher that she asked the question Margeaux had come to anticipate with a dull sort of resign over the past sixteen years.

 

“When can we go to Paris?”

 

“Hm?” said Margeaux, who was wiping the kitchen counters down with a sponge and trying to pretend she hadn’t heard.

 

“I’m sixteen in a month. When can we go to Paris?”

 

“Er,” said Margeaux. She’d been anticipating this question with a dull sort of resign, all right, but she’d never really thought up an answer. “I suppose we’ve got to,” was what she came up with on the spot.

 

Fab gave her an exasperated look. “You suppose we’ve got to? Come on, Aunt Margeaux, you’ve wanted out of here forever, and I don’t blame you. I mean, the château’s nice, and the land is beautiful, but I’ve made friends with all of the sociable woodland creatures, okay? How about some humans? Let’s go to the city. I’ve got to anyway, because of the whole ball thing.”

 

Margeaux hadn’t been made for arguing with people she really agreed with anyway. “But the packing,” she began feebly, and Fab laughed at her.

 

“All you need is Rosie and Mister Clean, and all I need is a hairbrush. Get real, Aunt Margeaux, we’re rich. It’s not like living it up in the city is gonna kill us.”

 

Perhaps Fab was a little spoiled.

 

Margeaux thought this wasn’t such a bad thing, really.

 

*   *   *

 

Paris was amazing. Margeaux had become so accustomed to living in solitude that she’d forgotten how wonderful indifferent throngs of people could be.

 

Ah, the city. Margeaux didn’t think she could ever go back to live in Nice, not permanently. She seemed to fit right back into the hustle and bustle of urban life – the crowds, the noise, the garbage, the cigarette smoke – and to return to that isolated château would be like sealing herself off in a vacuum after this.

 

Of course, once Fab found her curse-ensured prince (or nearest equivalent), Margeaux’s responsibilities as the girl’s guardian would be unneeded, and Margeaux would be free to live however she pleased. She could even return to New York if she wanted. She could look up her old friends from college – who were all nearly forty by now, and looking it too – or she could start fresh. It was up to her.

 

To her chagrin, Margeaux found herself hoping it took Fab a while to find true love.

 

As a matter of fact, Margeaux thought to herself, who found true love when they were sixteen anyway? (Margeaux hadn’t, which was still a bit of a sore point.) And besides, the age specifications in Fab’s cure said she had until twenty-one to go to her ball. It could very well take that long.

 

Margeaux was having trouble admitting that she would very much miss her sixteen-year-old charge when it came time for them to part. (It is not unusual to develop an overt fondness for people you’ve spent the better part of two decades with, but Margeaux hadn’t considered this, since she’d spent the better part of that better part of two decades nursing a quiet resentment for being stuck in the wilderness with no one but a cursed child, a sulky dog, and a fat cat for company.) Reluctant to admit that she loved Fab like a daughter, and sometimes, when the girl acted unusually mature, like a sister, Margeaux spent her private time during their first two months in Paris hoping – and preferring to call it ‘hypothesizing’ – that Fab wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.

 

The reason Margeaux only spent two months instead of, perhaps, the whole of their stay in the city thinking dark thoughts to herself was that at the beginning of the third month, Fab received an invitation to a ball.

 

“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Fab, ripping the heavy envelope open. “I was beginning to think there was no hope at all of ever going anywhere. I mean, who knew balls were still popular?” She unfolded the invitation and read it quickly, her bright eyes darting over the words. “Ooh, Aunt Margeaux, look! It’s going to be a masquerade! I’ll be a swan, I think; it’ll be nice to turn into one by choice, rather than on some stupid equinoxes and solstices. And you’ll be my chaperone. This will be so much fun!”

 

Margeaux didn’t really think so – she’d been to a few balls before she’d come of age and escaped to New York City for college, and they’d been unutterably boring. However, she pressed her lips together, forced a smile, and two weeks later accompanied her goddaughter to her first ball.

 

Fab was completely enamored with the gaudy costumes, bright lights, and cheerful music; Margeaux found it all dull. Dressed as a fairy (for lack of a better idea), she’d let out her real wings as a present to Fab, who had begged her, and wore a pale green silk dress in an attempt to look daintier than she was. She’d hoped it would be an original costume, but now, from where she stood by the punch bowl in the large hall, she saw that most of the fairy godmothers present had opted for the easy way out and done the same thing.

 

The ball was held expressly for cursed teenaged girls, almost all of whom had brought their fairy godmothers as escorts, though some had brought protective older brothers, valiant servant-boys, or wicked uncles who insisted they had the girls’ best interests in mind. Margeaux waved vaguely to a few fairies she thought she recognized and nodded politely to some of the girls with more unfortunate curses – there were several she’d seen with transformation imperatives gone awry, which meant that they had raven’s-wings in place of arms, or willow branches for hair, or the eyes of a cat or the ears of a fox.  Margeaux then gave up on being sociable and found a chair to sit herself in.

 

She scanned the crowd of masked faces for Fab, who stood out in her white swan’s mask, draped with feathers and sparkling with crystal and pearls. The girl’s long brown hair had been specially trimmed (by about three feet) for the occasion, and it hung down her back, past her knees, in shining waves. She was talking animatedly to a group of cursed girls, but seemed to be paying special attention to a pretty young woman dressed in shades of blue, purple and green, with peacock feathers expertly twisted into her unruly black curls.

 

Good, thought Margeaux, she’s making friends. Margeaux took a small sip of her punch, but startled and nearly dropped her glass as a dark shadow loomed over her.

 

“Um,” said a young man. He looked to be in his early twenties or so, and was dressed in a black tuxedo that, though it was elegantly tailored, only emphasized how very tall and thin he was, and didn’t do much else for him. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to surprise you.” He held a simple black mask in one over-large hand and a glass of punch in the other, and looked into his drink distractedly as he spoke. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

 

Margeaux shrugged noncommittally and scooted her chair over a little to make room at her table. The man sat – it looked like a difficult process, considering how long all of him seemed to be – and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He didn’t say anything further, though, and eventually the silence began to grate on Margeaux’s nerves.

 

“So,” she said finally. “Are you escorting someone?”

 

“Yeah,” he replied. “The girl dressed as Hera, with the peacock feathers in her hair. She’s my god-daughter, Alexia.” He nodded, and then added, “You?”

 

“The swan your god-daughter’s talking to,” Margeaux said. “I don’t know very many fairy godfathers – that’s kind of unusual.”

 

The man laughed. “Yeah. I get that a lot. I used to be a wicked fairy, but I was terrible at it. My papa’s the fairy in the family, and he knew someone who knew someone, so he was able to get me this job instead.”

 

“Huh,” said Margeaux. “A wicked fairy – my mamán would never have let me. What was that like?”

 

The man arched an eyebrow at her and shook his head. “Don’t even think it – you wouldn’t enjoy being a wicked fairy at all. There’s a lot of cackling, which is hell on your throat, and the spell theory is impossible. And the worst thing is that people don’t like your everyday curses any more, which is a good thing in some ways because us fairies as a race are way too hung up on tradition…” This was probably a favorite topic of his. “…But on the other hand people expect you to be really original. No more plain old sleep-for-a-hundred-years, oh no. And just being locked up in a tower with long hair isn’t good enough, and people are starting to want more than seven dwarves, too. What’s really popular right now is square numbers – they want sixteen, or forty-nine, which is ridiculous, because how can one girl be a maid for forty-nine people all by herself? I don’t care how small the people are or how willing she is to clean up after them, it’s stupid.

 

“People want you to combine spells all over the place, which is nuts. I only ever got Bs and Cs in Fairy school, especially in Spell Theory, so that was almost impossible. My first assignment—” He paused, and laughed. “God, that was embarrassing. I wonder if she’s here, the girl I cursed. She should be around sixteen by now.”

 

“I hardly know anyone here,” Margeaux said apologetically. “Fab and I have been isolated in my family’s château for the past sixteen years, so my social life hasn’t exactly been what you’d call wild.”

 

“A château? I thought it was usually an isolated tower.”

 

“There was a really big rush on towers when we started out,” Margeaux explained with a shrug. “And we were probably far more comfortable in Nice than we would have been in any drafty old tower.”

 

“Fair enough,” the man said, “traditions be damned. Um – what’s your goddaughter’s name again? ‘Fab’?”

 

“It’s a nickname,” Margeaux said. “You know how people love to give their kids extra-long names, especially if they’re going to have a fairy godparent. It’s to try to catch up to the fairies – we all have seven names, and people think that’s cool.” She chuckled. “Fab’s mother beat me, though; Fab’s got nine names, all told. She’s Tallulah Lenora Margaret Augustine Caroline Fabienne Dyna Mo Hampstead, but that’s quite a mouthful, so we usually just stick to ‘Fab’… What’s wrong?”

 

Her companion had gone white – or whiter, as he was already quite pale naturally. “Tallulah Hampstead? She’s your god-daughter?”

 

“Don’t tell me,” Margeaux muttered, “that she was your first assignment? That curse is embarrassing.”

 

“Oh, God,” said the man. “I mean – this is so awkward, I’m sorry—”

 

Margeaux blinked at him. “It’s only awkward because you’re making it that way. I mean, the conclusion imperative of the curse is perfectly all right, so once Fab has her first kiss it’ll all be over. If you’re embarrassed about being wicked, the only really terrible thing was how bad your curses were in terms of logistics. Stop looking shell-shocked and have some punch.” Margeaux crossed her arms and sat back in her chair, glaring pointedly, until something occurred to her. “Oh my goodness. I sound like my mother.”

 

“You sound like my mother,” the man said, and laughed. “All right.” He sat up straight and held a hand out. “I’m Matthias Guillaume James Justin Scott Caligula Delacroix, and it is very nice to meet you.”

 

Margeaux took his hand and shook it firmly. “Margeaux Vespertine Gabrielle Darien Isabel Kyrie Betancourt,” she said. “And it is nice to meet you too.”

 

*   *   *

 

Margeaux and Fab left the ball around two o’clock in the morning – thankfully, there had been no ‘midnight-or-else’ clause in Matthias’ botched curse – and took a taxi home.

 

Margeaux spent the first ten minutes of the ride grinning to herself – she’d danced with Matthias several times, and she had his phone number and email address written on a napkin smuggled safely into her purse. Finally, Fab let out an exasperated snort.

 

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll ask. What has you so happy?”

 

Margeaux told her.

 

“So that guy you were talking to was Alexia’s godfather?” Fab said. “Huh. He was cute. Good for you.”

 

Margeaux privately agreed, but thought it bad manners to say so. She looked over at Fab to smile at her again, and noticed her goddaughter had a happy-face of her own.

 

“Oh, and how about you?” Margeaux asked teasingly. “Is that curse gonna get broken any time soon?”

 

Fab laughed, startled, and coughed. “Um,” she said. “Aunt Margeaux – I think it already is broken.”

 

Margeaux widened her eyes and lifted her eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”

 

“Nope.” Fab was beginning to loose her deer-in-headlights expression and was instead just looking smug.

 

“Well, you fast mover,” said Margeaux, and got elbowed in the side for her trouble. “Ow! All right then, who’s the lucky guy? I noticed you disappeared for a little while, there, but I thought you were with Alexia.”

 

“…Um,” said Fab again. “I was with Alexia.”

 

Margeaux blinked.

 

Fab eyed her nervously and waited, but patience had never been one of her strong points. “Aunt Margeaux, say something.”

 

Margeaux coughed. “Er,” she began, and then laughed. “It’s hardly traditional.”