"W-What did you just say?"

"That was your wish, was it not?" Emma's hands tensed around the grip of her gun when Killian Jones reached into the breast pocket of his—was that a waistcoat? He held up one hand while the other removed a slip of paper, and he began to read, seemingly to himself, "Emma Swan, Land Without Magic, Boston, Massachusetts, apartment—ah, here we are. One happy ending in fulfillment of birthday wish—"

"How the hell do you know about that?"

Emma scanned her apartment from ceiling corners to table lamps, wondering if there'd been a recent installation of surveillance equipment, but cursory glances weren't going to yield the results she wanted. She'd have to conduct a thorough search once she got rid of the leather-clad whack job in her kitchen. Or had him arrested. She hadn't decided yet.

He continued with his slip of paper, which appeared to have increased in length in the span of ten seconds.

Emma blinked rapidly to clear her vision and commanded herself to keep it together. Paper didn't grow. Happy endings didn't exist. And they certainly weren't delivered by handsome albeit delusional strangers as part of some spur-of-the-moment wish.

Killian Jones mumbled to himself what sounded like contract clauses, not acknowledging a word Emma had said, "…no refunds, exchanges, or substitutions…all happy endings final…to be carried out at client's discretion prior to expiration…" he clicked his tongue as his eyes trailed farther down the page, "…precisely one year from date of aforementioned wish—"

"Wishes expire?" Emma asked before she could stop herself.

Was she really encouraging his bizarre explanation?

"You may well find it strange, but once upon a time, the business of happy endings wasn't the well-oiled machine it is now. It's simple enough to make a wish, as I'm sure you're aware—I wish to go to the ball, I wish for a prince, I wish for a child, and so on and so forth—"

"Hold on—"

He casually leaned his frame against the counter's edge. "But then a week, a month, a year passes and people come to discover their Happily Ever After isn't the fairytale they'd imagined—suddenly it's, I wish I'd never lost my slipper, I wish my philandering prince would keep it in his codpiece, I wish my son wasn't made of wood. Bloody nightmare."

Emma stared at him, speechless.

"This way, you've time to make up your mind about what it is you truly want, and my superiors, as it were, aren't breathing down my neck about loopholes and addendums and what have you. Now," he lay the slip of paper—which Emma was positive had grown to five times its original size—on the counter, in the exact spot where her wish was made. Not that Killian Jones could know this. Or could he?

This entire situation was verging on ridiculous. If anyone else had shown up in her apartment uninvited, in the dark, they would've been a stain on the linoleum before the point that conversation presented itself as a viable alternative.

"If you would just sign on the dotted line, we can get started." He pulled a pen from his waistcoat pocket and offered it to her, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger, as though to make it more enticing.

Emma looked at it, then back at him. "I'm calling the cops."

"Do what you feel you must, Swan."

She didn't move, and neither did he. She stared at him, wanting to strike the smug expression from his face. More than this, she wanted to smother the soft voice in the back of her mind that kept asking, what if?

"Shall I dial for you, or…?"

"First I want answers." Emma made a show of aiming for his head. "Real ones."

The bastard was as unperturbed as the moment he'd arrived. "I'm an open book, Love."

"How do you know about my…how do you know…I—?"

"Wished on a cupcake?"

Emma didn't answer. It sounded even more ridiculous out loud.

"It's my job to know these things."

"Who's your employer?"

"I'm afraid that's need-to-know."

Emma lowered her weapon, not taking her eyes off him for a second. There was no doubt he believed what he was saying, but that didn't make it true. It made him crazy. It made her crazy for letting him ramble on about things that only existed in animated movies with princesses who talked to animals.

She had to be dreaming. In a few minutes she'd wake up to find that the entire ordeal was a trick of her subconscious.

"So you're what? My fairy godfather?"

Killian Jones laughed. "Nothing like that. I like to think of myself as more of a guide. I can help you to your happy ending, but what that entails is ultimately up to you."

"What is that?" Her gaze moved to the page still awaiting her signature.

"That is your contract. It absolves me and my employer of any legal responsibility in the event of death or dismemberment throughout the course of your wish fulfillment."

"What?"

"Just a jest, Love." He smiled as he straightened his posture and meandered around the counter, coming to stand directly opposite Emma, who, against her better judgment, didn't raise her gun. "It's a contract, sure enough, but it merely states that you made the wish of your own free will, without coercion on the part of a third party, and that I, your guide, am under strict obligation to see to your every wish-related need, including but not limited to: meet-cutes, the arrangement of dates, walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, inexplicable musical numbers, lovers spats—with the added option of a rain-soaked locale, and the occasional pinching."

"Pinching? Seriously?"

"It's more common than you might think. Clients often require proof that they aren't about to wake up, and pinching, gods know why, seems to be the preferred method."

Emma frowned. She really was losing it, wasn't she?

If this turned out not to be a dream, she was having herself committed first thing the next day.

She was so engrossed in her own thoughts that her reflexes failed her, and before she could deflect his efforts, Killian Jones reached forward and pinched her arm.

"Ow!" Emma massaged the tender flesh. "I didn't ask for that."

"I'm quite perceptive, as you'll discover for yourself during our proceedings."

"What if I don't want proceedings? What if I don't want any of this?"

He shrugged. "There's a contract for every occasion."

"And if I opt out of this whole thing, you'll leave?"

"Before the ink is dry."

She looked him over, narrowing her eyes. "How do I know you're not just trying to steal my identity?"

He laughed, again, and Emma had to admit, if only to herself, that the sound wasn't completely unpleasant. "Would I could always have clients as spirited as you."

Emma's heart absolutely did not skip a beat at his phrasing mirroring another disarmingly attractive Englishman. "Would I could help you."

She shook her head. That was fiction and this was—

She didn't know what this was.

It hardly counted as reality, did it?

"So I can change my mind?"

"Any time you so desire—no one will force a happy ending on you. As I said, I'm here to help."

Killian Jones held the pen out to her a second time, and a second time, that cloying voice fought to drown out everything inside her that screamed, "Run!"

In the end, it was the whisper that saw her accepting his offer. It was the quiet insistence of a sensation she'd not dared entertain since one fateful night in Portland that persuaded her feet across the floor. But it was the face of a child she'd never seen that moved her hand across the page.

And finally, it was the smallest sliver of hope that pulled a sigh from her lungs once her signature was complete.

She'd expected the appearance of a strange man in her apartment, as though from thin air, to be the most difficult thing to accept about that day. But in the months to come, she'd remember the instant the script glowed bright as flame and disappeared, the page following soon after, as its true defining moment.

"What the hell was that? Where'd it go?"

"I have no idea." When he'd arrived at Emma's side, she couldn't guess. She'd been too distracted to notice—transfixed by…whatever that was. "I've never seen a contract do that before. Not unless the client was—"

Emma looked over to see him studying her. "What?"

"Who are your parents?"

"I don't have parents."

He stayed appraising her a moment longer, then said, "No matter. Now, for our first order of business," his gaze swept over her from head to toe, "if you'll be wanting the full makeover package, I'm afraid I've left the ball gowns at home." He grinned with an arch of his brow.

"I don't remember comedian being in your job description." She met his arched brow with one of her own before she put some much needed space between them. "I'll just…go get dressed."

"Aye. I'll wait here," he said as he helped himself to her couch.

Emma hurried to her bedroom and locked the door behind her, leaning against it for support. Taking a deep breath, she pinched her thigh for good measure, and winced from the jolt of pain.

Shit.

She was as crazy as Killian Jones.