Hot. Smoky. Sweet with an acidic tang. So fresh-from-the-oven it made your mouth water.
Ginger.
I groaned. So much for Aruba. There’s no way the boss would let me go out of town with a gingerbread man on the loose in Cityville. And after I’d just packed my new swim trunks, too.
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I revved my motor and slipped out of park, checking the glowing digits of the clock on my nightstand. 2:59 a.m. I’d woken just in time. It’s tough to be a crime-solving teenage car. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little sleep.
But I had a mystery to solve.
“I hate my job.” Tina scowled at the curtains that separated her from the audience. “I’d rather play bingo.”
“No, you don’t.” Tello, the stage manager, shuffled his cue cards. “And no, you wouldn’t. You hate bingo.” He tugged at her arm. “Come on, your cue’s coming any minute!”
The crunchy bitterness of the riptalion leaf takes a slight edge off my craving. Grasping my swollen stomach, shoulders hunched, I glance back toward the castle, pushing strands of golden hair out of my face. Here in our private garden, my husband and I grow the dark green, large-leafed lettuce
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I never wanted to leave the luxurious south for the frigid north, but my parents’ decision was firm. I still despised the cold and the frozen landscape. I huddled on my window seat, watching the lone star that illuminated the snow.
“If,” I whispered, “the first star truly grants a wish…”
But I couldn’t voice it.
Mia fluttered through the tower window, her fairy wings leaving a trail of sparkling lights as she circled the room. A spinning wheel stood in the center, surrounded by dirt and straw. Shaking her head, she snapped her fingers. In a flash of light, she became the size of a human.
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Rank upon rank, we stand ready.
Faces set and stern, wings unfurled, eyes locked forward, swords at our sides—though they will dance like flames in our hands at the first sign of trouble. We have seen battle, terrible and costly, against ruthless enemies. We will leap into combat again, if threatened, if met with resistance.
But that is not our mission.
The call from steel magnate Charles Weldon interrupted my plans to spend a pea-souper of a morning with two fingers of Jack Daniels and a newspaper. But I knew I wouldn’t regret it when I stepped into the tycoon’s home office. Whatever made one of the richest men in California this jumpy was bound to pay well.
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I shut to door to the conference room behind us. “Sir, please calm down.”
“I’ll calm down when I get some answers.” Mr. Buxton rounded on me. “My boy went missing for more than twenty-four hours and no one can tell me where he was or what happened to him.”
If Brandy heard one more person tell her what a good wife she would be, she was going to drown a sailor.
She heaved a deep breath as she twisted her silver locket around her fingers and walked down the dark cobblestone streets. It was a paltry trinket, certainly not a token of love, though it had been given to her by the man she loved.
I was nearly done raking the lawn when someone plump, perky, and purple-clad appeared in a gust right there, scattering leaves.
“Who are you?” I wielded the rake.
She shook a leaf from her skirts. “Your fairy godmother, dear.”
“Fairy godmother—? But I didn’t know fairies were real.”
“That explains your rude surprise.
The book was lost. Of that, I had no doubt.
The problem was that it couldn’t remain lost. My life, as I knew it, as I longed for it to be, would not continue without the words my mother had left me.
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