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SOUTHERN SURPRISE
“No, the dragon shouldn’t be there. He should be over here, near the water slide,” I said with a sigh, attempting to make the party planner understand my Water and Fire themed vision for Gizzy’s birthday party.
The professional planner, Nathan, pushed his glasses up his nose with the blunt end of his pencil. “You want the dragon by the water?”
“Yes, in case a small fire breaks out.”
Not that I expected one to, but we were talking about dragons and fire, and it was definitely better to be safe than sorry. The dragons had promised to be on their best behavior, but you never knew. One could wind up getting its tailed pulled by a small child and then lose it and start blasting fire everywhere.
I know what you’re thinking—why am I letting the dragons around the children at all? Well, that would be because the parents had requested dragons. So had Gizzy. And we weren’t even talking about a lot of dragons. We were talking about three—Hugo, Xenith, and Gwynwyn.
In the last few months since Wells Morgan’s death, the dragons that he had been warden to had moved to Magnolia Cove, so we now had our own menagerie of dragons that lived on the perimeter of the Cobweb Forest. They hunted and ate what they caught in the forest, and had learned that we would not abide by them eating humans, a rule which they had (as far as anyone knew), obeyed.
But now Nathan was staring at me skeptically. It took everything in my power not to roll my eyes. “The dragons are great with kids. They’re not going to burn anyone, but I can see them trying to light the birthday cake. That’s the sort of fire I meant.”
“Um, right,” Nathan said, shaking his head in what I could only imagine was great distaste for my parenting skills. But he wasn’t hired to judge me. He had been hired to do my bidding (insert evil laugh here).
Just kidding. I’m over being evil.
Nathan pointed to an area of the backyard that was shaded. “We’ll set up the food there, and the water slide over there, the petting dragon there, and…is there anything else?”
“Yes, her father will be doing magic tricks.” Nathan lifted an eyebrow. “Since the kids can’t work magic, they love seeing adults do it,” I explained.
He pointed to the pen and pad of paper hovering in the air beside him. “Add magician to the list.”
The pen scribbled it down. I could feel Nathan’s dislike as clearly as I could still taste a hotdog in my mouth an hour after I ate one.
It was palpable.
Or should I say, palatable?
Ha! Sometimes I cracked myself up.
“The cake will be chocolate chip,” he told me.
“Fantastic. Gizzy will love it.”
“And the theme for the decorations?”
“I was thinking dragons on ice.”
Nathan blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Well, Gizzy recently saw a program on TV about ice skating and ever since then she’s been all about it. So, and I’m sorry if I forgot to mention this, but one half of the yard will be covered in snow so that the kids can make snowballs and have a snowball fight. So we’ve got the summer side of the yard and the winter side of the yard.”
Nathan gave me a slow blink.
I grimaced. “Did I forget to mention that?”
“Yes, you did. So let me get this straight. You’ve got dragon rides, a water slide, a snowball fight, and a magician. Is there anything else that I’m missing?”
I beamed at a very frowny Nathan. “Nope. I think that’s it. That covers it.”
“I should hope so,” he mumbled.
“Sorry. I don’t know where my mind’s been lately. I’ve had a hard time focusing.”
That was an understatement. The past few months had been rocky as all get out.
He smiled tightly. “With a child I know it can be hard to focus on other things.”
“It sure can be,” I agreed.
And speaking of, the back door opened and out walked Betty and Gizzy. My daughter was holding her great-grandmother’s hand as they made their way over to us.
“Here’s the soon-to-be two year old,” I said with a huge grin, reaching down to pick up Gizzy and hug her to me. She smelled of vanilla and her fingers were sticky with chocolate.
I shot Betty a look. “Have you been feeding her sweets?”
Betty glanced up and rocked back on her heels. “Who, me? I’d never do anything like that.”
“Sure you wouldn’t.” I rolled my eyes. “Nathan this is my grandmother, Betty Craple, and this is Gizzy.”
“How do you do?” he said.
“Very well, thank you,” Betty told him. “So, is my granddaughter bossing you around, yet?”
“I’m not doing that.” Was that a migraine blooming behind my eye? “We’re discussing how the party will go.”
“Should be a great one. I suspect over three hundred people will come.”
Nathan paled. “Three hundred?”
I elbowed Betty. “She’s such a kidder. No, no. It won’t be anything like that.”
“Whew.” He mocked wiping sweat from his brow. “For a moment you had me worried. That’s a lot of people. We’d be talking more like the size of a wedding and not a birthday party.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, three hundred is an exaggeration. It’ll probably be more like two hundred once you count all the werewolves, many of the witches in town, neighbors, business associates, all that.”
Nathan’s voice thinned to the point where I almost couldn’t hear him. “Two hundred? For a children’s party?”
“Yeah, you know people love riding dragons.” I raked my fingers through Gizzy’s silky curls. “Once word gets out, we won’t be able to beat people away.”
“So we’ll need a lot of food.” He blotted his head with a handkerchief. “And a big cake.”
“A huge cake,” I confirmed.
Nathan turned to his pad. “Let me do the calculations, then. With a party that size, and food and drink, not to mention decor and table accessories…yes, yes, we’ll need those and that, too.” His gaze lifted to meet mine and his eyes sparkled with glee. “Okay, given all of that, the cost for me to organize Gizzy second birthday party is this.”
The pad flipped around so that I could see what he had written.
And what a sum it was.
“Oh, wow.” I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. “That much, huh?”
“I’m afraid so. The winter and summer theme, plus the cake, decorations, plus the threat of being shot in the butt with fire, have all made the cost a bit more than my usual fee.”
I frowned. “What if you’re not shot in the butt?”
“Then you’ll receive some money back.” He waved his hand and a new tally was penned onto the pad. “How does that look?”
“Better.” And like Axel won’t have a heart attack because I’m spending a small fortune on a birthday party.
Even if he did initially become angry, Axel would do anything for his daughter—including let her ride his dragon.
That’s right. I said ‘his dragon,’ because for all intents and purposes, Xenith had bonded to Axel.
“I’ll come up with a list of foods and potentially some other games and will be in touch,” Nathan said.
“Do you need me to show you out?”
“No, no. I’ll go around back.”
“Thank you,” I said as Nathan walked off.
As soon as he had walked out of the yard, Betty whistled. “Kid, you’re going to be in the poorhouse after that man’s through with you.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Gizzy wiggled in my arms and I put her down, where she proceeded to run willy-nilly over the grass. It was a beautiful warm day. Bees were bouncing lazily from flower to flower, and the chirp of crickets filled the air.
I had left a circular bubble wand and soap on a table, and Gizzy ran over to the wand, dunked it in the soap and toddled off, watching as bubbles billowed out behind her.
She giggled and the sound filled my heart with joy.
“You know,” Betty said, “I could plan this party for you and I’d do it for free.”
I barked a laugh. “No thanks. Nathan’s a pro. Party planning is what he does, and from what everyone says, he’s awesome at it. So thanks, but no thanks.”
“Don’t be calling me crying when something goes wrong,” she said, nose high in the air.
“I won’t.” I fold my arms. “Did you come out here to be my party planner, or for another reason?”
“For another reason.” Betty placed a finger against one nostril, closing it. Sparkly magic flitted from her nose. As it uncurled atop the grass, two chairs with a small table between them appeared. A pitcher of ice-cold lemonade and two glasses popped into existence.
Great. Betty wanted to talk. I had a feeling where this was going, and I wasn’t interested in having this discussion, but sometimes you simply couldn’t get out of a talk, no matter how hard you tried.
“Lemonade?” she said sweetly, a twinkle in her eye.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
We sat down and she poured me a glass. I had to admit that it tasted delicious, just the right amount of tart and sweet.
“Thank you for watching Gizzy while I spoke to Nathan.”
“You’re welcome.”
She sat back and sighed before pulling her corncob pipe from a pocket, lighting it with fire that flared at the tip of her finger, and inhaling a deep mouthful of smoke.
My grandmother was silent for a long minute, and I knew what was coming next. “Have you spoken to Amelia lately?”
My stomach soured. “No, I haven’t.”
“Have you called her?”
“No.” Gizzy ran out of bubbles, so I called out, “Go get more. Get more bubbles.”
“Otay,” she yelled, smiling and laughing as she made more bubbles.
To Betty I added, “But Amelia hasn’t called me, either. Communication is a two-way street.”
“It is, but you should be the one to extend the olive branch.”
I scoffed. “I’ve done more than extend an olive branch. I’ve invited her and Sherman over for dinner, I’ve called and asked if she wanted to go to lunch, but every time she says no. What else can I do?”
My grandmother shook her head sadly. “It’s a terrible thing to see my girls feuding.”
“For the record, I’m not feuding. She is.”
I nestled back in the chair and took a long sip of lemonade. I would have to get the recipe. It was that good!
“She just needs more encouragement.” Betty exhaled a smoke ring and I watched as it lifted into the air before being warped by the wind. “You have to keep trying.”
“Why? Listen, you and I know that it wasn’t either of our faults that Wells Morgan stole our goodness and that we did the things that we did.”
“Almost killing Babbitt Butts.”
“Right. I’d rather not think about that.”
I had almost fed the new mayor’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Babbitt, to a gigantic Venus fly trap that I had created in the back of Amelia and Sherman’s yard. Amelia swore that she’d forgiven me for being absolutely awful while I’d lost my goodness (not my fault), but the truth of the matter was wildly different.
My cousin had completely shunned me. Like I’d said, there were plenty of times in the past few months that I had reached out to her, but Amelia had simply been too busy, or already had plans, or was just—too anythingto be seen with me.
Needless to say, it hadn’t taken me all that long to get the hint—my cousin wasn’t just angry at me, she had felt betrayed and there was nothing that I could do to change that fact.
Nothing.
And it broke my heart.
But like I said, communication went both ways, and so did friendship. Amelia and Cordelia hadn’t been in my life for as long as I’d actually been living on the planet, but they were both like sisters to me, and to lose one of them was like cutting off my arm.
Yes, I’d been without an arm for months now.
“You should try again,” Betty said, sucking on her pipe.
Gizzy laughed as she ran past and I sighed. “Okay, I’ll give it one last shot.”
But I had a feeling that no matter how hard I tried, Amelia wasn’t going to come back around.
Ever....
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