Glimmers of Glass (A Glimmers Novel #1: Cinderella)

Chapter 10

If meeting the Faerie Queen in a restaurant bathroom had been surreal, a few hours of godmothering was enough to bring me back to reality fast. I sat on the brick wall outside the school grounds and waited for the bus while a headache gathered between my eyes.

After forging a doctor's note excusing me from class, I'd glamoured myself invisible and spent the last few periods following Tyler Breckenridge around.

He'd spent all of lunch period chatting up his gorgeous blond not-quite-a-girlfriend. During the first half, he'd bragged about his amazing athleticism at the last basketball game. During the second half hour, he'd ranted his agreement with some talk show host's hostile stance on global warming. The rest of the day, he'd texted various girls under his desk when he thought his teachers weren't looking.

I had a hard time conjuring up the idea of anyone who would be more likely to annoy Elle Ashland. It was a match made anywhere but heaven.

Elle's dad hadn't been convinced by my arguments last time we'd talked, but I'd done my research this time. Surely he'd see sense and at least bring the terms of the case down to something a little more reasonable. Maybe he'd settled for "a moderately likeable individual," say, instead of "the most popular boy at her high school."

Turning down the notch from "the romance of a great teen movie" to "the satisfaction of a pretty okay evening" wouldn't hurt either, but I wasn't going to get crazy.

I breeze blew by and knocked a few strands of hair out of the knot on the back of my head. I'd been using my wand as a hair stick. Now, I pulled it out and tapped it on my phone.

The screen lit up and sparkled as I ran a quick tracking spell using a GPS app.

"Greg," I whispered.

A bright purple push pin dropped down onto the map, landing right on Pumpkin Spice.

The bus pulled up a moment later. I climbed on, my heart pounding harder than it should.

Greg was there, standing behind the counter and talking to his oldest stepdaughter, Mallory. They seemed to be having a pleasant enough conversation, but Elle, working the counter beside them, didn't seem interested in joining. She took orders and threw them together without so much as glancing at her family.

I tapped the handle of my wand, now back in my hair, and sent a zing of attention toward Greg. He flinched, then stood up and looked around as if confused by what had hit him. After a moment, he saw me standing near the doorway.

I gestured for him to come over, then sat at one of the window tables and turned my back out toward the road. Elle couldn't see me talking to her dad, and I was no Imogen—I couldn't use one of my mediocre glamours or I'd risk confusing him even as I hid from her.

He slid into the seat opposite me, a disposable coffee cup in his hand. I glanced at him, then angled back to look out the window. A middle-aged woman in a bright red coat walked an ugly Pekinese past us.

"Is everything okay?" he said.

"I need you to revise your wish," I said.

His eyebrows went up. I kept talking.

"I found the most popular guy at Elle's school," I said. "He plays, like, three different sports and has twenty different girls all trying to be his girlfriend. Elle is going to hate him."

"Why?" Greg said.

It was like he hadn't even been listening to me last time.

Or maybe like he'd never listened to Elle in his life.