Summary: When Cosmo doesn't come home with milk - or home at all, for that matter - Mama Cosma files an after-hours complaint with Mr. Sanderson… by barging into his apartment at 2 AM on a work night.

Characters: Sanderson, Mama Cosma, Cosmo (Heavily referenced)

Rating: K+

A/N: For bonus fun, consider reading 130 Prompt #70 - "Repeat" - either right before or right after this one. Enjoy!

Posted: May 19th, 2023

121. Told You So (Almost 10,000 years pre-series)

Year of Breath; Spring of the Early Groundhog

Probably, the worst reaction Sanderson could have had to waking up with Florensa Cosma in his bed was, "We need to use stronger protection."

Yes, the "we" in that sentence encompassed all of Pixies Inc., and the protection he was referring to happened to be the apartment building's (clearly faulty) security system, but his chosen phrase made his roommate jolt and snap straight up in bed, lavender eyes glowing wide-eyed in the dark. Not just that, but it also did little to improve the woman's mood. Her brow furrowed. She sunk her fingernails through his thermal shirt, almost ripping it in the process. Which would have been a shame. It was his favorite shade of gray. Florensa's eyes blazed the brightest tint of blue he'd seen in months, years, centuries. His oil lamp flickered on the bedside table. It cast dancing red and black snakes across her twisted face. Even in the dark, he could see the mint-colored curls that stacked higher and higher on her head like a layered cake.

"Get up."

Her words splattered his nose with hot saliva. Ugh. Sanderson dropped his head back to his pillow. He didn't groan, didn't express any noise of discontent in the presence of an outsider, but he certainly would have liked to. The pillow wasn't that nice, either. Recent lumps and wrinkles had marred its usual pleasant flatness. "Didn't I hang up on you, like, five times tonight?"

He had… Hadn't he? In fact, he was fairly certain that after Florensa's last call, he'd dumped all the water on the floor, flipped his scrying bowl upside-down, and nestled beneath his thin blankets once again.

Florensa Cosma gave him another shake, this one so hard that he nearly bit his tongue. "You're in customer service, young man. The complaints department. I need you. Get up, you lump of lump. You have work to do."

Urrrgghh… Sanderson peeled the pillow from beneath his head. Sweat had stained the white fabric gray; he could tell that much even in the dark. Letting his head bounce back against his mattress with a squeak of springs, Sanderson stretched his arms as high as they could reach and allowed the pillow to drop on his face. "Pixies Inc. is closed right now, so you'll have to wait a few more hours. I'm off the clock, Dm. Cosma. I don't work at the dustforsaken time of… early in the morning."

"Does it look to you like this can wait until morning? This isn't my idea of a good time either- I wouldn't be traipsing 'round about your silly little squarefest if I didn't have to. Do you have any idea how long it takes to disable all your alarms? Even with magic?" Florensa ripped the limp pillow aside, flinging it against his closet door. It smacked with a shifting of wooden door panels. Sanderson screwed up his eyelids in the face of her glowing irises again, until she grabbed his shirt and twisted fabric and skin with both hands. He jolted up. Their heads collided. Bonk! "Oof!"

The pain only lasted for a spark, then subsided. Elastic fae skin never stayed injured very long. Taking advantage of the way she recoiled, Sanderson snuck a glance towards Hawkins' bed. His roommate had quietly lain down again, pulled the covers over his head. He faced the window and didn't say a word.

"Oh you slippery snatter, how I envy you," Sanderson muttered.

"Watch your language, young man! You have a paying client here."

Sanderson stared at her, making a heroic - if bleary - attempt to focus on Florensa's facial features. Meh. He lifted his foot (still restrained beneath perfectly straight and even sheets) and nudged her further down the bed. "Let's you and me talk business, Florensa. Between the hours of 8:00 and 8:00 in the purple time zone, you are no client of mine."

"Mister Ennet Chipixie Sanderson," Florensa snapped, kneading the blankets around his knees with her fists. Her wings flickered up behind her. "Do I need to haul you down to your office with my own bare hands?"

Hmm. Sanderson eyed the muscles rippling beneath the short sleeves of her green dress. "No. Okay… Answer me this: Pixie World is closed to outsiders in the evenings. That's in local time. How did you get past the anti-poof sensors?"

"I. Walked." Florensa scootched forward until she knelt over him again like a snake about to strike. This time her hands went around his throat. She wouldn't… She wouldn't. But although he wanted to believe she wouldn't, her thumbs hovered dangerously above his windpipe. That actually made the pixie slip out of his practiced poker face.

"You walked. To Pixie World."

"I hopped a tram, I skimmed a bit, but yes. I did walk."

Sanderson re-evaluated his tormentor, from the mess of tangled mint-green ringlets hanging in front of her searing blue eyes to the scratches and cartoon-like bandages pasted along her arms and cheeks. He bit his lip.

"Good gracious, Sandy," she huffed, exhaling a cloud of glittering gold magic. "I will not ask you again (and for Nuada's sake, try wearing something decent at night that doesn't have the image of a suit and tie printed on it, for once- you look like a human corpse). My son has been missing for two days. I really did think for a while that he left only to pick up milk, but it's been so very long… I'm beginning to worry. He's never been away from his mother this long since the war. He still lived at home during school."

"Your first son or your favorite son?"

"Favorite son." She sat back on her heels, opening and closing her hands in her lap. Her nails scratched against the sleek fabric of her dress. "Sanderson, you must understand how a mother cares for her children… He may be out there somewhere, perhaps beaten and mugged and alone. Those nasty bullies he keeps running into will have taken all his loose change- he does carry so much loose change, you know, and it always jingles when he walks. Now, I didn't stomp up here to nag you about you sleeping habits. Come and help me turn on your wand-tracking doohickey in the basement, or I'll take my clean energy filtering business elsewhere. Permanently."

"Dm. Cosma," he whined.

Off went his covers. Florensa slammed a hand to either side of his head, staring down at the squirming pixie as he attempted to dissolve into his bedsheets. "Don't you come complaining to me! This is your job. You're Head of the Complaints Department. You exist to listen to my concerns and help me work them out. Now… Are you with me?"

"… Okay." Honestly, did he have much of a choice? He could ping her away somewhere with his wand, but that wouldn't change the fact that she wanted his help. Sure, she might not come back for some time, but she absolutely, most definitely, undeniably would be filing a complaint directly against him. The glass ceiling he toiled beneath didn't need any more reasons to keep him down.

Plus, H.P. would find out about it… and he dreaded the look of disappointment that always underscored the Head Pixie's tired eyes when he had to deal with complaints against individuals instead of against contracts and fine print. Sanderson would float there, silently, with his hands linked in front of him while H.P. read her notes. Dm. Cosma would be thorough. She'd twist and skew and paint herself the victim in every possible way. Never mind the fact that she'd broken and entered. Never mind the fact that he'd woken with a start to her leering over him in bed. Florensa Cosma would report him. For once, Sanderson didn't think blaming Mr. Abernathy would get him out of this mess.

The reputation of Pixies Inc. might take a ding. H.P. would find some reason why Sanderson should have "handled this situation himself" or at the very least "been an adult about it." Fairy World would ignore his protests because those prissy poofers lived and breathed their little caste system, and in their minds it was hard for any fae species to drop much further down the social ladder than the pixies were. They wouldn't care… A pixie's rights and safety may as well be jokes unless stamped out perfectly in an iron-clad contract.

He may as well get this over with. Then he'd remind her - forcefully - that he had office hours for a reason and it was immensely inappropriate to contact him during his time away from the desk. He'd put up stronger safeguards. He might buy one of those whistling shield things that Pixies Inc. sold and stored down in the warehouses.

It was just one favor. It was just one night. No other fae he knew had ever been Florensa Cosma levels of crazy. Anyway, she'd never barged in on him like this before… so maybe it really would turn out to be an emergency. Privately, Sanderson had always thought Cosmo Cosma to be a little smothered. Maybe he'd finally cracked beneath the pressure and fled his mother's excessive coddling. He could be long gone by now.

But if it was an emergency… Would he want that on his dull little conscience? As squirming and gray as it was?

Sanderson rubbed his exposed eyes and waited for the fairy to lean away. She did. He swung his legs out of bed, stretched, and buzzed his wings. The oil lamp went out. It shouldn't have been on anyway. He grabbed his wand. Then, scratching behind his leg, he floated over to his bedroom door. Dm. Cosma followed him down the hall and gave a snort.

"You aren't seriously going out looking like that, are you? My dust, take some pride in your appearance, Sandy… What sort of company are you running down here?"

"As you wish, Dm. Head Pixie," he drawled back in a sarcastic way. He made no effort to change his clothes. He'd already walked away from the closet, his bedroom was dark, and he definitely didn't want to waste his hard-earned dough on magic as simple as pinging his clothes on. Nonetheless, because Florensa looked impatient, he reached into the bathroom as they passed and swiped his comb off the counter. He flicked it a few times through his hair.

"Can't you do anything about that ridiculous tuft of yours?" she asked, watching stiffly.

"The cowlick's natural."

"Oh, fiddle dee!" Florensa licked her palm and pressed it against his head. Sanderson let her, stealing the opportunity to yawn, and showed no surprise when his tuft bounced back upright again. Dm. Cosma blinked. He only shrugged.

"Leave it be, Dm. Cosma. We're here to discuss this business with your son. Not critique my totally dazzling style."

"I just thought…"

"There's will o' the wisp saliva in my pores. I've carried my mark ever since I was a baby." In the kitchen, Sanderson stopped for a drink of soy milk. Florensa watched him, looking bewildered. As he downed the glass, a small twinge of guilt flickered down his wings. Should he maybe not be doing this when she'd told him that the last time she'd seen her son, he'd said he was leaving to pick up milk?

Then he rolled his eyes. It was his apartment.

"You have a milk mustache," she said dryly when he rinsed the cup in the sink.

"I don't shave before 7:00 AM." After rinsing the cup, he dried it with the dishrag and replaced it in the cabinet. Then he raised his wand. "Okay. To my office… but I have to warn you, I'm only allowed a small amount of overtime this week. I'll need to make this quick."

She sniffed back something about how she "liked quick results," but while the sentence was still half inside her mouth, Sanderson pinged them both down the street to the Headquarters building. He popped back into existence outside his office door as neat and prim as ever. Neater, maybe, than he'd been a moment ago. Florensa's ringlets, however, squirmed like snakes on her head. Full-body exposure to pixie magic made them want to straighten out. While she fussed over her curls, Sanderson unlocked his door… and tried to hold back a smirk.

The hallways of Headquarters always felt a little eerie this time of night. The lamps hummed with dormant sparks. Sanderson was no stranger to leaving the building rather late in the evening, but the AM hours were a field untapped. Maybe he could see now why Smith liked it so much. All pixies were born with identical genes, and as a species they tended to be quiet around dawn and dusk and more active around mid-day. That meant they weren't likely to be interrupted… but if anyone was at work tonight, it would definitely be Smith. Smith always kept himself busy. While Longwood would inherit Pixies Inc. someday, everyone and their cù sith knew the boss had been grooming Smith to run a subsidiary company in Hawthorn Haven eventually.

(Well… Sanderson knew. He didn't particularly care about anyone else.)

Anyway, Smith had been chomping at the bit for centuries, waiting for H.P. to greenlight him to leave Pixie World someday and start a company of his own. The answer, as always, was "No." H.P. still had work to do, paperwork to file, contacts to touch base with, before young PixieCo could spread its wings. Not even Sanderson knew how much of that was true and how much was just the boss playing the hand he played best… that of a master procrastinator. Please. He'd probably have the marketing team on the job of announcing the new location before he even finalized how it was meant to work.

As he unlocked his office door, Sanderson glanced down the hall for any sign of Smith. All the hallway lights were off… but since H.P. ruled the company during daylight hours, an increasingly frustrated Smith had taken to roaming them in the night. Smith had it all, really… Charming words, tense muscles, strong wings, freckled skin… all except a humble attitude. Sanderson didn't particularly want to talk to him tonight. He didn't want Florensa Cosma to start annoying him either. Smith was far more likely to punch a coworker in the head than a client, and elastic skin or not, it didn't fit within Sanderson's plans for the day.

He yawned and finally pushed the door open with his knee. He held the door open for Florensa, who barely nodded at him, and tapped his wand against the light-pad on the wall. Instantly, he regretted not putting on his shades. Ow.

I am… so tired.

His office wasn't very big. It didn't need to be- his work was usually done one on one. In fact, he counted himself lucky that he even had an office at all. Even a windowless one. There was no glitz and glamor in the complaints department. He spent half his working days throwing highlighters at the paper dartboard on the other wall, deprived of even the mediocre joy of basic paperwork to file. After a hundred thousand years, doing nothing with your day beyond watch your coworkers ascend through the ranks can weigh bitterly on your tongue.

At least H.P. left Fairy World frequently enough to want an escort. It didn't matter where he went. It didn't matter who he talked to, even if his events for the day involved evil schemes and jail time. Any spot in the universe had to be more appealing than a millennium after millennium sitting at a cold, rectangular purple desk in a cold, rectangular purple room without anyone to speak to except a scry bowl and a crystal ball of clients who wanted to yell and seethe. Sanderson had told himself ten thousand times that H.P. valued the calm, collected way he handled every incoming complaint. Ten thousand and one times, he still longed for a promotion.

While Sanderson blinked against the humming lights, Florensa drifted over to his desk and admired… Well. How bare it was. He'd cleaned his things away, locking them neatly in his desk. She set her hands to her hips. "Is this where you work?"

"Yep. So all those days you talked my ear off from 9 to 5, I was in here. Have a seat, dame."

He only kept two chairs in his room on the regular. To his annoyance, Florensa took the padded one with wheels. That was his desk chair. But… Sanderson said nothing against it. Too tired to argue, he dragged the smaller wooden chair around behind the desk and set it next to hers. It only took a moment to set up his crystal ball. It was a newer model. Sleek and modern… It depicted a dark sky full of stars when at rest. None of those storm clouds you'd see across the border. In fact, his crystal showed none of the outrageous spikes and runes that the Anti-Fairies favored in their designs. It stuck to the basics: plain and simple.

Should he bother getting out the typewriter? May as well. He'd have to file a report about this… and note his overtime. He checked his wand screen for the light levels of the stars overhead. Sigh… He already knew they were in the low-light period of the brightness cycle, but it still didn't feel good to see the science of it displayed.

You know what, maybe after settling this thing with Cosma, he'd go look for Smith after all. Since he wandered around at night anyway, Smith usually had the snack cart with him. It wouldn't hurt to grab a chocolate bar… as long as it was a small one. He was allowed a few squares of chocolate on the job.

Florensa waited with rapidly thinning patience for him to finish with the typewriter and desk drawers. Even when he did, his work wasn't done. He moved to the filing cabinets in the corner of the room and started narrowing down his search. For his part, Sanderson took his sweet time flipping through his contact files until he found the right one. Cosma would be around the CN-CZ divider. There it was… The CO file folder went on his desk. His buns went in his chair. He scooted it closer in little squealing jerks.

"Now let's see…" Sanderson paged through the CO files, tracking every name with practiced precision. Florensa tried to follow, but he could tell her eyes glazed over fast. Understandable. Most Fairies balked at the spreadsheets that pixies dealt with everyday. Plus, pixies tended to have ridiculously small handwriting. Back in the old days when they'd copied everything by hand, they'd all been trained to write in tiny fonts so they could fit more information on a single page. That had stayed much the same when they switched to typewriters: H.P. had designed an exclusive line of Pixies Inc. brand typewriters for exactly that reason. He was a control freak. Sanderson liked him anyway.

All sensitive data was confined to chesberry paper. Magic couldn't alter the text of a magical document. And the collection had grown extensive throughout the years. Every fairy in the Fairy World colony could be found in Sanderson's filing cabinet, and Sanderson knew that because H.P. lost his entire mind whenever a newborn baby bumped his perfect system off by one. Oh, Plane 23 hath no fury like a perfectionist procrastinator torn. Executive dysfunction and obsessive compulsions were a horrendous combination.

Finding the Cosma family wasn't hard. Although "Cosmo" had always been the most popular name in Fairy World by far, there was only one Cosmo Cosma alive today. Sanderson ran his finger sideways, breezing through the spreadsheet cells. Cosmo's current address matched his mother's. Small hometown. Emper by name. Frigid up there… Sat right along the border with Anti-Fairy World. Far East Region, represented on the Fairy Council by the Pink Robe.

Species: Common fairy.

Designation: Drake.

Age: Over 370,000.

He used a threedspiral wand. Of course he did. Threedspiral was always the easiest to replace, and although Sanderson wasn't too familiar with Cosma himself, he'd glimpsed him throughout the war with Anti-Fairy World. He knew the man's anti-fairy too… But that was a distracting thought. Sanderson scratched his nose, trying not to conjure the scent of salted caramels to his mind.

Marital status: Single. Cosmo had no significant other marked in the next box. Blank… waiting for someone to fill it with ink and quill one day.

But the next two boxes weren't so empty. One said Westley Periwinkle. The other Phoenix Abdul. Sanderson lingered over them longer than he meant to. Beside him, Florensa tightened her fingers around the seat of her chair. Honestly, he was mildly impressed she didn't have to sit on her hands to keep from fiddling with his things.

It wasn't important. Not today. He just needed a shred of information, and it wasn't related to this.

Ah. There. 77… 8… 1…

Sanderson kept one hand on the spreadsheet and used the other to rattle the serial number of Cosmo's wand into his crystal ball. The stars inside the crystal began to swirl. They clustered together, growing brighter and brighter as they started to form a picture.

"There, you see?" Sanderson leaned back in his chair, fanning away a yawn. "Easy enough… Told you so, Mama Cosma. Nothing Pixies Inc. can't handle."

They waited. And they waited… but the crystal ball stayed white and glowing and did not bring up an image of the wand's surroundings. Sanderson sat forward with a mild frown. Had Cosmo invested in a wand storage box, lit from the inside to create a white landscape exactly like the stalled screen of a pixie crystal? Maybe. Unlikely, but not impossible. Wand storage boxes were popular for exactly that reason, but usually came in black to mimic most crystal balls on the market. That's why Sanderson liked his modern one so much. He tilted his head, trying to decipher the image in the screen. He'd have expected to see at least the faint edge of the wand… A crystal was supposed to show an object among its surroundings, after all, and not the point of view of the object itself.

But there was nothing. No one was home. Sanderson waited a minute more, then checked the number on the sheet against the display screen of the crystal's keyboard.

"That's unfortunate. I typed the serial number right. Perhaps he just took this wand out of commission. If it's recent, our records won't be updated yet. We won't get the new data until noon tomorrow, and that's at the earliest. How long ago did he leave home?"

"Oh, thirty hours at the most," Florensa fretted, clasping her hands. Her wings fluttered like falling leaves at her back. "I try not to scold too hard when he's late with curfew… He's my sweet baby boy, after all." Another minute passed in silence. Then she said quietly, "He took it out. The tracking pin."

The tracking pin?

All of a sudden Sanderson was wide awake. He spat a word he shouldn't have in the presence of a client and grabbed her wrist. "That's not meant to be possible. Tax evader. He's out there not paying taxes on his magic."

Florensa shot him a withering glance, pulling her arm away. "Why-! Is that all you can think about? I'm surprised at you! Have you nothing, then? No leads? Where is my son?"

"I… I don't know." His mind spun down one passage, then ricocheted to another. The rug hadn't just been yanked out from under him, but rolled up like a newspaper and smacked against his back. How did this happen? You couldn't remove a tracking pin from a wand without shattering it in the process. That was the hope, anyway… It was tightly integrated with the credit system that tracked wishes and charged fees at the end of every month.

Those fees paid for all the people (and technology) who worked around the clock to filter stinky magic out of the energy field that Fairies and Pixies used to breathe and do their work. If everyone in the cloudlands started dodging taxes, Fairy World would crumble. Sanderson, in his moments of relying on mental fidget toys, had played with the idea of taking over Fairy World just as much as H.P., but not even the Pixies could do much with the place if it collapsed because no one in the area could breathe. That sort of obstacle tended to derail even the most carefully laid plans.

If no one tended to the energy field, the cloudlands would soon be overrun with hexes and spells gone amok. You couldn't breathe in a place like that. Panic would spark. A mass migration out of the Fairy World colony would occur… Red Retreat, Legend Peak II, and Hawthorn Haven would be flooded with immigrants, and the Pixies didn't have a subsidiary set up in either of those colonies just yet. Legend Peak II surrounded the iron planet, Mars. The early fae settlers had died there long ago and the present-day colony became a mere mercantilism. Those poor saps fed off Fairy World's Big Wand too and could hardly provide for themselves. So that was Strike 1.

No one would be breaking past the ferocious quarantine of Jupiter's Red Retreat colony any time soon. Frankly, Sanderson wasn't sure any Fairies or Anti-Fairies in Red Retreat were still alive. They maybe were, but the Pixies didn't do any business with them. That didn't bode well for any short-notice expansion opportunities. Strike 2. And Hawthorn Haven, which enveloped the distant ice planet, Delk, had very few resources on its frozen host to work with. The residents there certainly weren't equipped to handle refugees. Without clean magic, so carefully filtered by the Big Wand (and by that wand's caretakers), all four of the known cloudland colonies would collapse.

Smoof, what he and H.P. wouldn't do for even a scrap of knowledge regarding the ancient, long-forgotten motherland of Elphame, where Fairy World's ancestors had frolicked before their abduction by the Snobulacs so very long ago… Just a scrap. Just one single taste.

But today's Snobulacs didn't remember where Elphame was (and probably wouldn't share that knowledge even if they did). That ancient land would never be rediscovered within H.P.'s lifetime, but it felt good to pretend. Any fae who led the way back to Elphame would go down in history with fame and fortune, and that much was guaranteed.

Never mind. What was going on with Cosmo's wand? Sanderson peered at the crystal ball again. Maybe the tracking system had gotten clunky. Maybe it needed to be re-tuned. Had Cosmo found a loophole? Had he been attacked? Maybe jumped? Hm. Sanderson pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to narrow his messy thoughts. Tracking people down wasn't normally his department. His job swapped on the daily from handling lost or damaged packages to running PR for the Head Pixie. With most of Pixie World asleep at this time of night, was there anyone he could turn to for aid? Certainly not Smith. Smith would only laugh at him in a dry and husky way.

Should he get in touch with Emery? She oversaw all assignments to human godkids. Sanderson didn't know exactly which species Cosmo had specialized in at the Fairy Academy, but even if Emery wasn't privy to that information herself, she might be able to get in touch with someone who was. She was also the Head Pixie's sister… He knew better than to bother her at this time of night, but perhaps he was due for lunch with his eternally busy aunt sometime fairly soon. Emery was married to an imp - a doctor - by the name of Logan Ranen, but had no children of her own. Yet. So, Sanderson had always suspected she was rather fond of him. She'd helped H.P. raise him after he was born, after all.

Sanderson stood then, bearing his palms against his desk. He steadied his wings. Barely. "I'll contact ASPRA headquarters in the morning, Dm. Cosma. But… you may want to brace yourself for the possibility that Cosmo left home of his own free will. Especially if word comes back from the top that he's filed for an extended work leave. Does he have a lot of savings accumulated?"

Or was that a stupid question? He knew the Cosma financial situation all too well. Before his death, her husband - Robin Cosma - had been a notorious gambler. He was passionate about poetry, but writing pretty words could only pay so many bills. He borrowed from the neighboring Fairywinkle family and it didn't always work out for him. While Sanderson hadn't known him personally, you still heard his name come up every now and then. Mostly from Florensa ranting in his ear for hours about what a notorious gambler and pretty poet her late husband had been. Frankly, if H.P.'s stern disapproval of Idona Ivorie wasn't enough reason for Sanderson to keep his hands to himself, then being chained to his desk at the complaints department while Florensa vented to him endlessly had turned him off from marriage long ago.

Yes, he could admit that to himself. While mates might be unnecessary in the Pixie race, marriage pointless, their species destined to reproduce asexually until eventually they ran dry of magic to pass down from one generation to the next… Well, he still wondered sometimes if he would welcome companionship in his life. Was there a way to sign up for a free trial of will o' the wisp cuddles and kisses without subscribing to a lifelong payment plan in the process?

"He wouldn't," said Florensa, her conviction shaking. She tried to press her hands flat against her knees. "Cosmo-lo-lo wouldn't run away… He isn't like his brother. He isn't… I can't lose them both. Are you quite sure there's nothing you can do, Sandy?"

"My crystal thinks his wand is busted, dame. I don't think there's anything I can do. Maybe try an Anti-Fairy. They sometimes use old spells from ancient texts, and maybe they know one for tracking someone who doesn't want to be found."

Florensa had her hands pressed to her forehead now, holding back her curls. Her fingers pulled at the skin around her eyes. "He said he went to get milk… He must have gotten tied up. He'll come home."

"Does he have a romantic interest?" Sanderson had seen his coworker Longwood duck away from Pixie World far too many times, humming as he went off to meet his secret selkie lover. Perhaps Cosmo was out there doing the same. Dame Florensa hovered even more over her offspring than the Head Pixie did with his employees.

"Oh, he wouldn't," the fairy muttered, flaring her wings. Yet Sanderson saw her stroke her chin in thought. "I suppose that Wanda girl he hangs around does hail from the Fairywinkle family… It certainly wouldn't surprise me if she's footing the bill for a weekend spa getaway right about now."

"Then Big Daddy Fairywinkle may be a good contact to ask about a new lead."

But doubt poisoned his mind. Sanderson glanced again at his crystal ball. If Cosmo had left for a weekend getaway, he probably wouldn't have disabled his wand. Sanderson couldn't shake the suspicion that the quiet, evasive fairy drake had finally snapped beneath his mother's doting and vanished without a trace.

Then again, Cosmo's wand was made from threedspiral. And threedspiral snapped all the time. Perhaps it really was an accident?

His eyes strayed tiredly back to the filing cabinet. He could look up Wanda Fairywinkle's name. He could just… float over there, grab the file, and type in the serial number. If his crystal came up blank again, they could rest assured that Cosmo and Wanda had both run off together. And if Wanda's wand came up with an image that revealed her surroundings, maybe Cosmo would be nearby.

But…

I'm so tired… I don't want to solve this problem for her… I don't care about Wanda. If she's in her father's house, Big Daddy might detect my crystal and think I'm being a creep. The Fairywinkles have always hated pixies and I'd rather he not find any reasons to twist my limbs in knots. If this meeting drags out much longer, I won't even get all my overtime pay for this.

"Well, until Cosmo registers a new wand," Sanderson said, shutting off the crystal ball, "he'll have to pay for everything in cash. Food. Bus fares. Clothes. Anything you can imagine. I'll talk with his wand provider and have a marker put on his name. Even with a new wand, once it's linked to his name, the system will flag him for review. Dodging the clean magic tax is serious. You'll find him."

"He went for milk," Florensa repeated as though in a daze.

Sanderson… sighed. He replaced the silk cover on his crystal and dropped his eyes to his desk. Had his elbows always been this pointy? His arms looked thin and scrawny, barely able to hold his weight. He leaned against them anyway and brought his eyes to hers again. "Forgive me for the small talk. My question may be useful to you… Has your son experienced a major drop in energy? An increase in time spent sleeping? A lack of interest in his usual favored activities? I can't imagine he's in the most whimsical of moods right now."

"How do you mean?"

"Well… Last time I saw him was at Fairy Con. He floated on sagging wings, looking distressed out of his mind. H.P. had me report it. Even for a fairy, I noticed he expressed considerable emotion during Jorgen's speech. Dm. Cosma, I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I think I heard your son ask if he could go back on forget-a-cin. Is this true? Pardon me if I am insensitive with this subject, but… How is he handling the separation from his kids?"

There it was… cold and dark between them, like a smooth stone dropped into an unmoving pond.

Florensa's blue eyes sharpened like snakeupine quills. "Those… those LEECHES under Jorgen's wing are not my son's children! That miserable SHREW forced responsibility on my precious boy! Oh, I'll wring his little blue NECK until he turns purple from it all!"

Sanderson stared blankly back at her, too tired to argue. Now would have been a really good time to have his shades. Could she read his thoughts from his eyes? He tried again.

"Has Cosmo spoken lately about the kids? I seem to remember he tried to disappear after Westley was born. Fairy World put out an A.B.B. It wouldn't surprise me if he still thinks about them sometimes. Perhaps he went looking for them. Or went to challenge Jorgen." If Jorgen had crushed him into oblivion with one of his mighty fists, that too might explain the shattered wand.

Florensa's wings bristled up. "We don't talk about the kids at home," she snapped. "It wouldn't be good for his health! My son is… He's… he's… Well, he's been under so much stress in the workplace! You know how it is, particularly at his age. I just hope he's not been hurt."

Hurt? Sanderson grimaced. It was all too easy to imagine Cosmo flattened into pancake form if he set foot anywhere near Westley or Phoenix. The pair were still the talk of Fairy World to this day. Two common fairy babies… the youngest of their subspecies. The first ones born in 370,000 years. They had to be 40 millennia by now. Jorgen bragged about them at every social opportunity, like he'd finally filled a void deep inside him that godchildren never could. And Anti-Cosmo, of course… Well, Anti-Cosmo had been elated with how things turned out.

That was sarcasm. Ha ha. Ha ha. But still true, to some degree. Emotions can be hilarious. From the way he fawned over Anti-Westley (Well… "Talon") with his hands clasped against his cheek, you wouldn't think Anti-Fairy World's bachelor king actually lost his first wife over the whole affair. Or his daughters, for that matter… Anti-Saffron had taken both Anti-Miranda and Anti-Phoenix when she left him. As far as the media could guess, the High Count lived by gritting his fangs to bear it.

Sanderson thought of divorce quite often… It was one thing to lose your gambling addict of a husband to forces outside of your control, but to risk burning hatred growing like a seed? Rejection? … Maybe Florensa's relationship wasn't the only one that left him listing more cons than pros to rekindling sparks with Idona someday. He wasn't even sure how well he knew Idona anymore. Now that they were grown, the world didn't look the way it did when they were young.

Anti-Cosmo didn't show more than a sliver of his grief to the media. He tried not to, anyway. Since the High Count frequently flitted through Pixie World these days, Sanderson caught glimpses on occasion. Anti-Cosmo always stiffened when he came near. At the annual Fairy Reunion, people pitied him in hushed whispers. They cast scathing looks when they saw him meet with H.P. in the gardens to kiss the forehead of his hypochondriac, fair-weather son.

"Poor, strange man," they tittered, oblivious to Sanderson waiting in line for food a wingspan away. "The poor old fool without a wife… He must be so deprived at home in that dreary castle. Seems like he only gets affection from pixies now. And you know, they weren't pure anyway, the children… It wasn't done proper. The nature spirits won't forgive him for that."

Anti-Cosmo had Talon. Jorgen had Westley. Binky had Phoenix. Perhaps Sanderson wasn't listening to the right crowd at parties, but… no one really spoke of Cosmo's suffering the way they spoke about his counterpart's. No one knew how. The awkwardness of his choice, his consent, his fate… the clever trick that his own counterpart had pulled on him had left all of Fairy World on edge- it was all so muddled, cold, and gray.

Not only that, but the whole cloudlands knew Jorgen had set a strict "every other millennium" policy on visitation days. In polite company, it wasn't the type of thing you'd want to bring up. As he stared at the bare place where his crystal ball had sat a moment ago, Sanderson asked himself again if maybe Cosmo ran away… because he's haunted by his past like a ghost. Weeping, meandering… still searching for the two fairy babies Jorgen wrenched from his arms 40,000 years ago. What a cruel contract that must have been. Cosmo should have sought a Pixie lawyer.

Maybe reporting overtime could wait until morning. Sanderson put the typewriter away after all and shut the drawer with a click. In doing so, maybe Florensa would get the hint that he was ready to leave. She stayed stubbornly in her chair. His chair. Sigh.

Sanderson held out his hand. It took a few seconds, but she took hold. He lifted her to her wings. "I regret that Pixies Inc. was not able to meet your needs today. I hope this experience doesn't detract from your opinion of our company. May I escort you outside?"

She looked at him then… Through him, really. She looked right through him, and he felt his eye twitch again at the reminder of how exposed he felt without his shades. "I'll be back," she told him, without force. She would be, though. She always was.

"You'll find him, Dm. Cosma. Just keep your ears open for any news from Fairywinkle or your son's wand provider. Even if Cosmo did leave of his own will, he'll come back for one reason or another eventually. Money… heirlooms… loneliness… You'll see him again."

"I think he left me," she murmured, in a daze. "Ran off, perhaps… Eloped with that snooty Fairywinkle dame. That little weasel. And this after everything she did to him… She went after my sweet baby boy…"

Running away did seem like the most likely option. Did Florensa ever confide in her younger son the way she'd spent centuries confiding in him here at the complaints department? Did she ever keep him up this late? If so, Sanderson couldn't blame Cosmo one whit for leaving. Maybe he needed space… Maybe he needed time.

Cosmo likely had run away, but it was much too late to discuss this with his mother any further. Sanderson shook his head and tried, with every fiber of his being, not to say "I told you so."