Maud and I spent the rest of the afternoon chatting about our forthcoming adventures. Well, she called them "client visits," but I preferred "adventures," since traveling to kingdoms with goblin caves and bramble forests definitely deserved the term to someone who had barely ever left her backyard.
"This week, you'll meet one of my clients and help me run an errand in the Tented Market," my trainer said.
I had completely forgotten that the traveling bazaar was here in Irisia. I told Maud about the man and the horse-wife I had run into on the way to Valentine's house and she laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.
"I'll have to share that one with the girls in the record-keeping department," she said, wiping her eyes.
When she had recovered, she told me that our first stop would be Viridian, the kingdom at the foot of the Citrian mountains. I told her about Geoff up at knight school and asked whether we might have time to pass by.
"I have an errand there, so yes," she agreed. "But not for a little while. Once we take care of my client in Viridian, we need to head east to Heliotropia." The name seemed to remind her of the crate by her feet, which had a door made of thin metal bars.
"What's in there?" I asked.
She opened the door and stuck a hand inside. I wasn't sure what I expected her to bring out, but it wasn't the gigantic frog that emerged. Its skin was purplish-green, like a bruise, and gleamed in the sunlight. It looked slimy and sticky to the touch.
"Gross!" I exclaimed.
The frog opened its large yellow eyes and glared at me.
Maud laughed. "Now, Noelle, that's not very nice. Alfonso is a perfect gentleman. Aren't you, Alfonso?"
"Sorry," I apologized. "I guess I'm not a big frog fan."
Alfonso closed his eyes and turned his little green back, as though he couldn't stand the sight of me. His tongue lashed out vengefully at a passing fly.
"Oh, he's still a bit cranky from the journey," said the fairy godmother with cheer. "We just got back from an assignment overseas."
"Is he a pet?"
Maud waved a hand in dismissal. "Only witches have familiars. Alfonso's got to do with my client in Heliotropia."
Before I could ask her more questions about the frog – which was still shooting me dirty looks – we were interrupted by the appearance of Muffet, who looked rather cranky himself.
"Noelle, I thought you were going to come get me for dinner," the cat complained.
"Sorry, I lost track of the time," I said, just realizing that my stomach was rumbling.
"It was my fault, Muffet. I was talking my new trainee's ear off," Maud said. "You look great, by the way. Valentine said you'd been feeling a bit under the weather."
He hopped up beside her to be petted. "Thanks. There's nothing a cup of strawberry yogurt can't fix," he replied, turning to me. "I'm glad you two got paired up, Noelle. Maud's one of our best fairy godmothers."
"I know. She's going to get a seat in the House of Godmothers soon."
"Just being considered for one," Maud corrected me.
"Oh, Merlin's tutu." Muffet waved a dismissive orange paw. "I think of myself as somewhat of an insider, and I'd say you're a front runner."
My trainer flushed with pleasure. "And just for that, Muffet, your strawberry yogurt's on me tonight."
"That's very decent of you, Maudie."
We headed into the cafeteria, where there was much more activity than before. Almost all of the umbrella tables on the lower branches of the wandwood tree were filled.
"Noelle, take Alfonso and get whatever you guys want. Muffet and I will meet up with you in a few," Maud said, popping the frog on my shoulder before I could protest. She and the cat wandered off to the yogurt stand together.
I glanced at Alfonso, who did not look happy to be stuck with me. He was surprisingly heavy, but not as slimy as I had expected. I decided that because I was Maud's trainee and he was her pet – and he had to be, no matter what she said – I would just have to try to be nice.
"So, Alfonso. What would you like to eat?" I asked politely.
The frog's beady yellow eyes were fixed on the popcorn trolley.
"Flies and popcorn. You are a true epicurean," I told him, taking out my badge to pay for a giant funnel of buttered popcorn, which Alfonso immediately jumped into. While he crunched away blissfully, I walked to the sandwich cart for a classic BLT: basilisk, lettuce, and tomato. Only when I stood in line to pay for my food did I realize who was standing nearby.
"I guess C.A.F.E. doesn't have quite the good taste I thought it did." Jessaline's glance took in my bulging sandwich, sloshing drink, and the popcorn funnel on which Alfonso was currently enthroned, chewing away with half-closed eyes.
"It's nice to see you, too, Snapp-dragon," I said shortly. I was starving and not in the mood to bandy insults with my nemesis.
She quirked a perfect eyebrow at the frog. "New pet? I didn't realize you had stooped so low that you'd begun frequenting cesspools."
Alfonso's yellow eyes popped open and he crushed a popcorn in one of his little amphibian hands.
"Don't tell me you sleep with that thing like a teddy bear," she went on, sneering. "Although that's so pathetic, it wouldn't surprise me in the least."
I clucked my tongue. "You'd better be more polite than that to a valued staff member, Jessaline," I scolded her. "That's my trainer you're talking about. She's in frog form now, but wait until you see her as a bat. She especially likes to nest in long, red hair."
"That is not your trainer," Jessaline said, though she looked uncertain as she ran a hand through her hair.
"Come on, Maud. Let's pay for our food," I said to Alfonso. "We don't have to stand here and be insulted like this."
The joke would have been complete had the real Maud not walked up to us at that very moment, with a yogurt-licking Muffet draped around her shoulders and a large basket of fried cockatrice fingers in one hand. "I hate it when they run out of barbecue sauce, don't you?" She noticed Jessaline gawking at her. "Oh, hi. Are you a friend of Noelle's? I'm her trainer, Maud."
Jessaline managed to give me a withering stare and Maud a bright smile at the same time. She had always been a good multi-tasker. "Jessaline Snapp. I just got into the program, too," she said, shoving past me to shake the fairy godmother's hand.
"Good for you," Maud said warmly. "I'm glad Noelle will have someone to sit with during Trainee Week. Why don't you join us?" She didn't see me shaking my head and giving her a frantic thumbs-down behind Jessaline.
"Why, of course. I'd love to," the Snapp-dragon replied.
I exchanged dark glances with Alfonso, who took a huffy bite of popcorn.
"My trainer and I already have a table. Come with me." Jessaline sashayed ahead of us.
Muffet peered at me from Maud's shoulders. "What was with all the winking and waving, Noelle?"
I sighed. "Jessaline Snapp is my archenemy from home, and I really, really don't want to sit with her."
Maud chuckled. "Oh, Noelle, you're such a kidder. It can't be as bad as all that," she said. When I gazed back at her unsmilingly, she added, "Well, remember that old saying. The best way to destroy your enemies is to . . . make . . ." She trailed off.
"Make them your friends," Muffet finished. "Come on, Maud, that's the oldest proverb in the book." But then he followed her gaze to where Jessaline stood beside an umbrella table with a sallow-faced woman. "Oh, slop buckets."
Maud groaned. "Slop buckets is right. Tell me that's not her trainer."
Both Jessaline and the woman, who was also red-haired and looked as though she could be her sour older sister, were staring at us.
"Sloane Davis," Muffet whispered to me. "She's up for the open seat in the House, too."
"Is she a front runner like Maud?" I asked.
He licked his strawberry yogurt. "She'd like to think she is. Anyway, what were you saying, Maud? About destroying our enemies?"
"Never mind," the fairy godmother grumbled.
Sloane greeted us with a chilly stare. She looked chic in a silver ensemble with a matching headband, but I thought her boots - gray and pointy-toed with a white star pattern sprinkled over them - looked ridiculous.
"To what do we owe the honor of you joining us, Maud?" she asked, though her emphasis on the word honor gave it the exact opposite meaning. "I would have thought you'd be too busy prepping for your review to shovel down deep-fried food." She turned to Jessaline. "I can't even look at plates like that without gaining twenty pounds."
Jessaline uttered a fake laugh. "Oh stop, Sloane, you'd look good even if you gained fifty."
I stared at them in disgusted disbelief.
Sloane simpered. "You're sweet." She turned her attention to me, appraising my appearance. She smirked at the frog in the popcorn funnel. "So you are the Simpkins girl. I must say, it was thanks to you that I got my brilliant intern Jessaline here."
"The name's Noelle, and how so?" I asked coldly.
"It was you who found that flier in the library," Jessaline spoke up. "And I heard that old bat Jenkins telling you about her sister, who worked at C.A.F.E., so I dropped in on her shortly after you did. Best decision I ever made."
I smiled back, congratulating myself on how well I was hiding my rage, until I realized that I had been squeezing the popcorn funnel so hard that Alfonso was ribbiting in protest. So I was right. The movement I had glimpsed in the library bookshelves had been the Snapp-dragon spying on me after all.
I narrowed my eyes at my sandwich, fighting the urge to throw it in her face. It was like being back in school again. Except this time, instead of cutting my hair to make sure hers was longer or running for the same student council position, she had applied to C.A.F.E. hoping she would get in and I wouldn't.
What was she going to do? Keep tailing me until, at last, she could prove she was better at something? Until she won?
Keep dreaming, I told her silently, and across the table, her face hardened as though she could tell exactly what I was thinking.
"Good interns are hard to find. Wouldn't you say, Maud?" Sloane was asking my trainer. "And they make all the difference when it comes to promotions. No one even gets considered for a spot in the House without having tutored successful trainees first."
Maud set her cockatrice fingers down on the table, hard. "I know how C.A.F.E. works, thank you," she said in an icy tone. "I am a sixth-generation fairy godmother."
Even Jessaline seemed to have sensed the winds of dysfunction gusting around our table and changed the subject. "Hey, Noelle, you'll be happy to hear that I had a fun carriage ride into Irisia. I ended up sitting next to Geoff Oakdale the whole time."
"I wonder if he would use the word fun to describe it," I mumbled.
"We had a lovely conversation," she continued, ignoring me. "We talked the whole time and he asked me all about my internship. He was very interested."
"Was he now?" I took a reluctant bite of my BLT and noticed that Maud had only nibbled at her cockatrice fingers. There was no better way to ruin a good appetite than dining with one's archenemy.
"He was so cute and concerned about whether C.A.F.E. would be a good match for a new intern." Jessaline played with a napkin as she spoke, shooting a sly glance at me.
"How nice," I said, chewing.
My complete lack of interest seemed to annoy her, which was exactly what I was hoping for. She rolled her napkin into a ball and tossed it onto her empty tray. "Sloane, isn't it time you took me to meet some of the Council members? I've been looking forward to it all day."
"Yes, it's time for us to leave," Sloane said, rising from her seat with the grace of a dancer. "So many more important things to do, you know, Maud."
"Yes, we wouldn't want to keep you from those," my trainer said grumpily, picking at a small piece of fried batter.
Sloane gave me a tight smile and Jessaline sidled past with a wave and a smug "See you in class, Noelle."
As soon as they left, I turned to Maud. "I'm such a kidder to have an archenemy, huh?"
She exhaled. "I am eating my words, kid. All I can say is, we need to trounce those two in this program. I don't even care about the House seat anymore. I just want to see Sloane's face when I shove it into the proverbial pile of dirt."
"A literal pile of dirt would do just as well," I pointed out.
Alfonso ribbited his approval.
Muffet spoke up. "Look, I'm not supposed to take sides, since I am the unofficial C.A.F.E. mascot," he said, "but I know how you can beat her and win the House seat. And maybe get the best intern award for Noelle here. It's a prize given by the Council to the most successful trainee," he added, noticing my quizzical look.
"How?" Maud asked.
"Sloane's specialty is romance as well. So you need to put together the next royal power couple before she does," the cat said. "Set someone up with Prince Christopher."
Maud burst into laughter. "Muffet, that would be so simple if it weren't the goal of literally every fairy godmother with a young female client," she pointed out. "It's going to be next to impossible to even get five minutes with this guy."
"Hey, don't be negative," I said. "Think happy thoughts. Remember pumpkins that grow and shoes that fit, and you'll feel better bit by bit."
Three pairs of eyes stared at me.
"What? My dad made it up," I said defensively.
"No, you know what, Noelle? You're right," my trainer agreed. "Being negative is no way to compete with Sloane and Jessaline. We're going to have to put up a fight." She took a huge bite of her food and continued talking with her mouth full. "Why not Prince Christopher? Why not us? Everyone knows all it takes is the right mood, the right dress, and some feminine wiles. Nothing we can't handle."
Muffet cleaned the yogurt from his whiskers. "You've got four months."
"Until what?" I asked.
"The big show, of course. The Christmas festival. The royal ball," the cat answered. "That's when you move in for the kill." He lowered his voice. "Again, I shouldn't be playing favorites, but . . . I'm rooting for the two of you."
"I don't see how we can fail, Maud," I declared. "We're going to show those two giant snobs that it takes more to win than a diet of salad and jealousy."
The frog, who had offered Maud a piece of popcorn to show his support, gave me one too. He seemed to have warmed to me considerably due to our mutual disgust for the Snapp-dragon.
Maud looked from Muffet, to me, to Alfonso, grinning from ear to ear. "You guys have sold me. Completely," she said, taking another enormous bite of her cockatrice finger. "Let's go out there and win, win, win!"