The Good Elf – Book the Third

Available on Amazon.com

Hannah Ladd is a Washington, D.C. resident and business owner. She’s always been practical and down-to-Earth. She was clueless that magic even existed. That was before she accepted an invitation for a dinner date with a tall, dark, and handsome man named “G” she had met at a Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. He not only told her that both of her business partners are witches but that he is a dark elf. He thinks she might be a white elf.

That was just in the first book. The second novel told us more about Hannah, but left us with still other loose-ends. No cliffhangers — never a cliffhanger.

This will be the final book in The Good Elf series, giving you the complete story of the magical being who thinks of herself as Hannah Ladd, part owner of Treasures Past, a vintage clothing and antique shop. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to read the first two.

A Naughty Elf – Chapter 2

For the last four months, for the most part, I have worn what I think of as my “Hannah Ladd” glamour — a magical disguise which makes me look pretty much the same as I looked before I learned I was an elf, or at least something that isn’t human. The Hannah Ladd (version-two) glamour is a little bit more attractive and a good bit sexier than the way I looked originally. I didn’t go overboard with it. My two best girlfriends, Kimmie and Jessie are still way more attractive than even this new version of me is. I look the way I want to look. I could have outdone them but I wasn’t trying to win a contest. My boyfriend liked the way I looked before I could change my appearance at will so I don’t think it matters to him. I guess I’m not really sure why I upgraded myself.

One of the things that I can do, which almost no one else can, is to change my appearance on the fly. So, yes, this morning, as I do every morning, I magically made it look like I am wearing makeup. I usually remove it when I go to bed because that’s what you do with makeup, right?

There are two advantages to using magic rather than cosmetic-counter beauty products. First, it’s instant. Think of how long it takes to put on your own makeup before you go out. And hey, if you’re a guy and wouldn’t be caught dead powdering your nose, think how much time over the years you’ve waited on your date to get ready. Yes — instant is definitely an advantage. Second, it’s completely waterproof — a permanent enhancement until I change it. I don’t leave red lip impressions on coffee mugs. I can cry up a storm and nothing runs down my cheeks. I could go swimming with it on or, hell, stand outside during a monsoon.

But anyway, this morning, after drying off, I got dressed, dolled up, and opened a portal — a magical doorway — into the backroom of Treasures Past, the vintage clothing and antiques shop owned and operated by Kimmie, Jessie, and me. (Some of the antiques and a couple of the outfits have magical spells on them. Depending on the nature of the spell, we keep those in a separate room in the back that our normal customers have no interest in exploring. That was due to more magic — just a mild aversion spell across the doorway.)

The girls came along with me. This time, I’m not referring to my partners. When I use the term “girls,” these days, I’m usually talking about Sparkle, Glitter, and Tinsel. All three are faeries and, yes, they sparkle and glitter like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Sometimes, I’m so clever I hurt myself. In the magical realm, where they come from, all three of them are about four-feet two-inches tall. I never measured them, but I do buy and sell clothing for a living, so I have a pretty good eye for things like that.

The mundane realm, as it is known to the fae, is called the mundane realm because there is almost no magic here. At some point in the distant past, two universes, or realms as the fae call them, not only collided, they interpenetrated. That’s the only reason we have any magic here at all. Most fae can use what’s called a portal to travel from one realm to the other unchanged. Faeries, on the other hand, despite technically being fae, can’t. Faeries are creatures made of magic. At least, more or less. If a faerie sneaks through a portal into the mundane realm they shrink. Since faeries are sadly lacking in common sense, they’ll happily flit through any open portal they come across. Anyway, they shrink in the mundane realm. They shrink a lot. Each of my three faerie friends are about the size of a tube of lipstick when they’re here. There just isn’t enough magic to support their full size.

They knew that would happen to them when they decided that they wanted to follow me here. These three have some kind of weird hero worship thing going on and wanted to stay with me when I came home. They’ve adored me ever since I accidentally turned myself into a dragon — the only creature other than themselves they didn’t use the adjective “ugly” when referring to. I let them come with us but laid down some ground rules. I finally broke them of their habit of referring to everyone who isn’t a faerie — or a dragon, I guess — as ugly. They know never to show themselves to mundanes. When they’re at the shop with me they stay in that special back room mundanes find so uninteresting they don’t even check it out. And they never, ever, go outside without wearing the tiny little amulets I made for them. In the mundane realm, faeries are prey to birds and little boys equipped with jars. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want a night light made from a beautiful, winged, naked faerie girl in a jar.

This morning, the girls fluttered around as happy as, well, as faeries fluttering around, while I took care of some of the accounting we had been ignoring for a few days. Since we started selling spelled items in the backroom, we have had more business than ever before. And you know, even if the customer didn’t always buy a wand or a grimoire, as often as not, they picked up an item or two from the main shop. Witches, as well as the occasional elf who stops in, like to dress in sharp vintage clothing as much as the next person.

Before I started cataloging some of the new items we recently bought for the shop, I got up to make coffee. Both Kimmie and Jessie should be arriving soon. It was Kimmie’s turn to bring us fresh bagels. We had cream cheese and supermarket lox in the refrigerator. We still own an older, twelve-cup, drip coffeemaker. It’s easier to clean than the pod-type, which is our main reason for keeping it. And really, how hard is it to make coffee? We had discussed a couple of times offering coffee to our customers, but each time decided that, while our customers might appreciate it, one stumble when someone’s eye is caught by a magnificent bustier in their peripheral vision and several hundred dollars worth of inventory winds up ruined by flying coffee.

I put the unbleached paper filter in the basket, measured the grounds, and carried the carafe with me to get water from the bathroom sink. We don’t have a kitchen for the shop. We keep the coffee machine in the tiny room we call an office. My walk-in closet at G’s Bethesda house is larger than our office. I never noticed those three faeries, who whenever we’re not open, have the run of the shop, fluttering over the coffee pot, shedding faerie dust into the coffee grounds.

Did you know faerie dust is faerie dandruff? It is. Faeries were created (assembled?) by magically combining traits of various insects. Fireflies are obviously part of their make up. Presumably, their wings come from the genus Lepidoptera — butterflies. Honestly, I find biological classifications confusing so that might be the order they’ve been assigned to rather than the genus.

Like butterflies, faeries have antennae. I don’t know if they are just decoration or serve a purpose. The point is, the antennae wave about almost continually. According to the Ancient who made them, there isn’t a layer of fat separating their scalp from their bony skull. The movement of the antennae causes irritation and subsequent inflammation. The inflammation results in dandruff.

I wasn’t planning a treatise on faeries, but I may as well mention, while I’m on the topic of their makeup, they must have some beetle DNA inside too. Faeries, unlike butterflies and fireflies, are meat eaters.

Since I’m sure we’ve all seen or read Peter Pan you might wonder why faerie dust would be a problem. Take a look under your bed. Unless you’re a better housekeeper than I am (not that that’s hard to do, by the way) you may be growing dust bunnies under there. Now imagine if those clumps of dust had magical properties due to largely being clumps of faerie dust. Are you following me? The elves even have a name for them in the magical realm — dust faeries. If they get to be the size of a walnut, the things start hopping around, which is annoying enough. In the faerie domain, apparently, they sometimes manage to get outside and attract hawks. Hawks also go after the wings of real faeries — even full-sized ones. Enough said?

When we were in the magical realm last August we met an Ancient being named Nakoma. Nakoma claims an area in the magical realm not too far from the main faerie hive. She had concocted a product — a hair spray — designed to eliminate faerie dust. She is almost certainly old enough to be considered ancient, but “Ancient” also seems to be what her species of being call themselves. It’s kind of like being French, I guess, except much, much older and without the accent or the cuisine. She considers faeries to be her children because — again, I’m going to go with apparently — she created them. I’ll give her this — they are beautiful creatures.

Faeries can be as annoying as hell, but are definitely beautiful. Her first attempt at solving their dandruff problem with a product she whipped up and named End Dust had been poisoning the faeries, gradually forcing them into extinction. No, not intentionally, although in a bizarre sense, that would have permanently solved the issue with dandruff. What I meant was, she formulated a hair spray that, while it limited the production of dandruff as intended, was slowly, over the generations, poisoning her children. She had been mortified after I had proved that to her. Sorry, that’s irrelevant.

What is relevant is that this morning, we wound up with tiny flakes of faerie dust, unnoticed, sprinkled over the coffee grounds. Even if I had noticed, I would have never imagined the consequences that would stem from that accident.

I will say the coffee was extra rich — amazingly so. I’m tempted to say, and it wouldn’t be wrong, that it was magically delicious.

Did you know some of the most expensive coffee in the world is derived from beans found in the poop of the Jacu bird? They eat the berries and the digestive juices in their gut alters the chemical properties of the beans. Or something like that. People go out and pick through the bird droppings to collect the undigested beans. There’s another cat-like creature, in Asia, I think, that eats coffee berries and craps out the indigestible beans. It’s supposed to be amazing, too. Once the beans are collected, they’re washed and roasted like normal. It’s really perfectly sanitary although in my opinion, a little gross.

I’ve never had the opportunity to try either of those types of coffee. I can’t imagine they can hold a candle to the brew that dripped out of my little coffeemaker this morning.

Oh, right! I may as well get it off my chest that I hate senseless expressions. I know I’m guilty of just using two. I can’t picture coffee holding anything and even if it could, why a candle? Coffee doesn’t need candle light, people. It can’t see. And the only things on my chest are my boobs in a lacy Victoria’s Secret bra. I miss G. If he was here now, I might want to get my bra off of my chest.

A Naughty Elf is available on Amazon.com