Fairytale Come Alive (Ghosts and Reincarnation #4)(121)
Then she asked, “Fairy godmother?”
His brows drew together. “You didn’t know?”
“No,” she snapped. “I didn’t know. I’m Prentice’s wife. Sally and Jason’s mother. I thought I was a ghost. A fairy godmother is fat and jolly and has a magic wand and didn’t used to be in love with and married to the heroine’s handsome hero, for goodness sake!”
Messenger Man got closer and squeezed her arm. “There are those, not many, who slide straight to black. There are those, not many, who lived lives so filled with good deeds, they move directly on. But all the rest, Fiona, are put to one final test. Especially if they’ve lived lives, no matter how short, filled with bounty. You,” he squeezed her arm again, “had a life cut short but it was a life filled with bounty. You have to share your bounty before you move on. It might be difficult, my dear, but it is the way, the only way, for you to move on.”
Fiona sucked in the breath she did, indeed, breathe in this strange world.
“It’s hard,” she admitted quietly. “And it hurts.”
“Selfless acts normally do,” he replied, dropped his hand and, even though what he was saying was upsetting (and also kind of pissed her off), she missed his touch when it was gone. “But you want them to be happy, all of them, I know you do.”
Fiona nodded. “I do.”
“Then find your magic, Fiona, and do your deed so you can go home.”
“How do I find my magic?” she asked.
He shook his head but answered, “I misspoke, you don’t have to find it, you have to recognize it.”
She blinked and said, “What?”
But she asked nothing and no one.
Because he was gone.
Disappeared.
Vanished.
She stared at where his white-suited body used to be.
Then she looked to the blue sky with its fluffy white clouds and she shouted, “This moving on business better be worth it!”
She received no reply.
Chapter Eighteen
Carver
Prentice
The doorbell buzzed to Elle’s apartment and Prentice woke instantly.
This was unusual, Prentice was a deep sleeper.
But from the moment they arrived in Chicago, he’d been waiting for this.
And he was looking forward to it.
Therefore he rolled into Elle who had woken too and looked into her shadowed face.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
“But –” she whispered, her voice sleepy but full of fear and Prentice felt his temper flare.
And he was glad for it. He wanted to be angry. He did not intend to keep a very tight hold on his control. If it snapped, he’d welcome it.
“Don’t move,” Prentice repeated.
“The children,” she said.
“It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t –”
His mouth found hers and he kissed her quiet before murmuring, “Elle, baby, trust me.”
He heard her pull in a soft breath and watched her shadowed head nod.
He threw the bedclothes aside and the bell buzzed again.
Jesus, the bastard was impatient.
Prentice wanted to make him wait. However Carver could wake the children, both also deep sleepers like their father, and Prentice courted this if he delayed.
So he didn’t delay.
He also didn’t put on a shirt but walked to the front door only in a pair of pajama bottoms.
He did this on purpose.
He wanted Carver Austin to be confronted with Prentice and Elle’s intimacy. He wanted that man’s imagination to run wild. He wanted him to know that he’d pulled Prentice from Elle’s arms, from her bed. He wanted him to wonder what they might be doing there.
It didn’t say much about him but he didn’t care.
After what that man did to Elle and took from the both of them, Prentice wanted Carver Austin to be tortured by every conceivable way Prentice could make Elle happy.
Prentice weaved his way around the many obstacles to the front door.
They’d been in Chicago three days and there were boxes everywhere. They spent the mornings packing or, Elle, Prentice and Jason did, Sally spent it mostly digging through stuff, showing treasures she found to Elle and asking, “What’s this?” and alternately chattering. They spent the afternoons seeing the city.
Sightseeing was strange, not unpleasant but not as pleasant as it could be and this was mainly because people recognized them everywhere they went. They gawked, they whispered behind their hands and more than once they opened their phones and took photos.
Sally seemed not to notice a thing.
Jason found it funny and once made a face at one of their impromptu photographers.
Prentice found it startlingly easy to ignore.
It would be easier to ignore if it didn’t make Elle visibly anxious.
All of this partly had to do with Elle already being famous, partly the photographers who’d already sold their pictures but mostly it had to do with f**king Hattie Fennick.
Hattie Fennick had sold Prentice and Elle’s story to a rag and it was printed the day before Prentice, Elle and the kids flew to Chicago.
Hattie had fortunately painted Prentice and Elle as star-crossed lovers, torn apart by a wicked, evil man and thrown back together by fate.
Knowing Hattie, who could be vicious but who wasn’t stupid, Prentice reckoned this wasn’t the picture she wanted to paint but the only one she could if she didn’t want to be stoned by the villagers.