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“I’m here to help. Now, what are you gonna wear?”
“I don’t know.” I started looking through the dresses again, but they were hopeless, more ball-gown-y than goddess-y. And while I wanted to dress to impress, I didn’t think looking like I was waiting on Prince Charming was the way to go.
“Those aren’t gonna work,” Fred agreed, slurping coffee. “But I bet Augustine has something.”
“Augustine sent these,” I pointed out, talking about the best—according to him, anyway—magical designer around. His boutique occupied the largest of the overpriced shops in the drag downstairs.
“Well, yeah. But he was just sending regular party stuff. I bet he has something that would work.”
Augustine closed at six. And no way was I up to shifting back a couple of hours to try to catch the great man before he left.
“No problem,” Fred said, suddenly businesslike. “What size do you wear?”
“Anywhere from a two to a six, depending on the outfit. But it doesn’t matter. Augustine closes at—”
“Yeah, I know. What color you want?”
“White. But you can’t get in, and he doesn’t live around here. And by the time he could get back and open up, assuming he’d even do that for me—”
“Oh, he’d do it,” Fred said cynically. “He might not like it, but he’d do it. Have you seen his sign lately?”
“What sign?”
“The one outside his shop. The one that says ‘Couturier to the Pythia.’ He left off the official part, but it’s implied.”
Well, that explained the gowns I kept getting. I should have known Augustine wasn’t being generous. He wasn’t known for the softer emotions.
Or, you know, any.
“He’s been making a mint off all the wealthy women who want to dress like you,” Fred added.
I blinked at him. “Have they seen me?”
He laughed. “Point is, he’s in no position to complain. We’ll just take what we need, and let him know tomorrow. If he puts up a fuss, you can tell him to take his damned sign down.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t listening to me. We can’t get in.”
“Wanna bet?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was getting at. “No,” I said sternly. “We can’t.”
“Fifty bucks? Or do you want to make it interesting?”
“It’s interesting enough. Didn’t you hear about those guys last week?”
“What guys?”
“Two teens with sticky fingers tried to rip off some T-shirts or something. So Augustine spelled them to actually get stuck.”
Fred’s forehead wrinkled. “To what?”
“To everything. He did some spell that made it like they were human Velcro. Only once something stuck, it didn’t come off. One of the guys turned up at the end of the day, sobbing and freaked out, dragging a massive train of street trash, a folding chair, some kid’s baby stroller . . . and a homeless person’s grocery cart full of stuff.”
“Well, that don’t sound so—”
“And the homeless person, who was beating him over the head with a rolled-up newspaper.” They’d been stuck together all day, since the guy had grabbed the kid’s arm, begging for change.
“Oh. Well, yeah, that would kind of—”
