to me right after I go to the bathroom,” I said, remembering all the water I’d chugged down when I’d gotten to the sink the night before. All my wanderings had made me thirsty. Claudine swung gracefully from the bed, and I followed her awkwardly.
“Careful,” Amelia advised, when I tried to stand up too quickly.
“How’s your leg?” I asked her, when the world had righted itself. Claudine kept a grip on my arm, just in case. It felt good to see Claudine, and I was surprisingly glad to see Amelia, even limping.
“Very sore,” she said. “But unlike you, I stayed at the hospital and had the wound treated properly.” She closed her book and put it on the little table by the chair. She looked a little better than I suspected I did, but she was not the radiant and happy witch she’d been the day before.
“Had a learning experience, didn’t we?” I said, and then my breath caught when I remembered just how much I’d learned.
Claudine helped me into the bathroom, and when I assured her I could manage, she left me alone. I did the necessary things and came out feeling better, almost human. Claudine had gotten some clothes out of my sports bag, and there was a mug on the bedside table with steam rising from it. I carefully sat against the headboard, my legs crossed in front of me, and held the mug to my face so I could breathe in the smell.
“Explain the fairy godmother thing,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about anything more urgent, not just yet.
“Fairies are your basic supernatural being,” Claudine said. “From us come elves and brownies and angels and demons. Water sprites, green men, all the natural spirits . . . all are some form of fairy.”
“So you’re what?” Amelia asked. It hadn’t occurred to Amelia to leave, and that seemed to be okay with Claudine, too.
“I’m trying to become an angel,” Claudine said softly. Her huge brown eyes looked luminous. “After years of being . . . well, a good citizen, I guess you’d call it, I got a person to guard. The Sook, here. And she’s really kept me busy.” Claudine looked proud and happy.
“You’re not supposed to prevent pain?” I asked. If so, Claudine was doing a lousy job.
“No, I wish I could.” The expression on Claudine’s oval face was downcast. “But I can help you recover from disasters, and sometimes I can prevent them.”
“Things would be worse without you around?”
She nodded vigorously.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “How come I rated a fairy godmother?”
“I’m not allowed to say,” Claudine said, and Amelia rolled her eyes.
“We’re not learning a lot, here,” she said. “And in view of the problems we had last night, maybe you’re not the most competent fairy godmother, huh?”
“Oh, right, Miss I-Sealed-Up-The-Apartment-So-It-Would-Be-All-Fresh,” I responded, irrationally indignant at this assault on my godmother’s competence.
Amelia scrambled out of her chair, her skin flushed with anger. “Well, I did seal it up! He would have risen like that no matter when he rose! I just delayed it some!”
“It would have helped if we had known he was in there!”
“It would have helped if your ho of a cousin hadn’t killed him in the first place!”
We both screeched to a halt in our dialogue. “Are you sure that’s what happened?” I asked. “Claudine?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice placid. “I’m not omnipotent or omniscient. I just pop in to intervene when I can. You remember that time you fell asleep at the wheel and I got there in time to save you?”
And she’d nearly given me a heart attack in the process, appearing in the front seat of the car in the blink of an eye. “Yes,” I said, trying to sound grateful and humble. “I remember.”
“It’s really, really hard to get somewhere that fast,” she said. “I can only do that in a real emergency. I mean, a life-or-death emergency. Fortunately, I had a bit more time when your house was on fire. . . .”
Claudine was not going to give us any rules, or even explain the nature of the rule maker. I’d just have to muddle through on my belief system, which had helped me out all my life. Come to think of it, if I was completely wrong, I didn’t want to know.
“Interesting,” said Amelia. “But we have a few more things to talk about.”
Maybe she was being so hoity-toity because she didn’t have her own fairy godmother.