I could put some of my snarkiness away for the night and just try to enjoy the evening. Even if it was an event I normally wouldn’t be caught dead at.
A short time later, Caroline stepped back, squinting at her handiwork. She gave a firm nod. Evidently, I’d passed her exacting standards.
“Done. Have a look.”
Caroline had achieved her goal. The person in the mirror was the nicest put together version of me that I’d seen in a long time. The makeup accented my eyes and cheekbones without being overwhelming. She’d curled my hair and then pulled it back into a soft twist, giving my face an almost dreamy quality and offsetting the fierceness of the dress perfectly.
“You do good work,” I told her. Better than good, if I was being perfectly honest. I didn’t think I could replicate this look. Not without several hours and even then I would only approximate a poor imitation of it.
She handed me a pair of silver shoes with a decent sized heel. Not as high as hers but higher than what I normally wore. “Luckily I was able to find a pair of shoes in the boxes that were sitting in front of your door. I didn’t have anything in my collection that would go with that dress. Good thing you thought to have these included in the delivery with your dresses.”
My hands froze where they were fixing the strap around my ankle.
“What boxes? What are you talking about? I thought you brought this dress.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “No, I found the first set of boxes on your door step. I thought you had ordered some stuff and had it delivered.”
I held my hand away from my dress, “Does this look like the sort of thing I would buy on my own? Let alone be able to afford it.”
She shrugged. “I thought it was a little out of character.”
“You didn’t think the boxes were delivered to the wrong place?” I asked, my voice approaching a screech.
“It had your address on them.” She held up a hand to forestall my next question. “And your name. I checked. Three times.”
A pair of green wings appeared in my periphery vision near one of the boxes. The one that held the dress with the interesting bodice.
My eyes shot back to Caroline who was in the process of turning back to the boxes, intent on showing me the address and name she said she saw.
“That’s alright,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. “I believe you.”
“Ok.” Caroline studied me, suspicion on her face, like she knew something was off. Like she knew I was trying to hide something. She knew my tells better than most and even a four year gap in our friendship didn’t change that.
The fairy disappeared into the box.
“I should probably change out of this though since I don’t know where it came from,” I said, giving her a stiff smile.
She picked her phone up off the bed and grimaced.
“No time. We should have left fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’ll just take two seconds.”
She latched on to my arm and hauled me behind her, grabbing a black lace clutch, my phone and a set of keys off my dresser. “Nope. You look awesome. Just be grateful someone sent you a dress that works on such short notice. That’s like trying to find a pair of shoes that fit comfortably and also look great. Possible but highly unlikely.”
“As great as that sounds in theory, I don’t want to be on the hook for this dress if something happens to it. It feels expensive.”
What I didn’t say was that I didn’t want to be beholden to the person I thought likely to have been responsible for it showing up when it did.
She paused and gave my dress a critical look.
“Don’t spill anything on it or trip and rip it and you’ll be fine.”
With that final statement, she dragged me out of the apartment to her car.
“Wait, I need my bike.” I thought about it. “And a change of clothes.”
I had a few witches I wanted to see after the gala and it would save time leaving from there rather than coming all the way back here.
