The Wishing Business

By Laura Schiller

Crossover: Dangerous Angels/Wish

Copyright: Francesca Lia Block and Alexandra Bullen

"Sorry, we're closed," said Mariposa Mendez as the opening door made the chimes ring.

"Is that something you say to every customer, young lady?"

She looked up from her well-thumbed Nora Roberts novel in surprise. The speaker was male, Middle-Eastern in appearance, and had the most strikingly attractive voice she had ever heard. Like chocolate for the ears, she thought. He had blue eyes in a dark face, wore a white turban and robe and a ruby stud in his nose, as if he had walked right off a page of One Thousand And One Nights. His age was difficult to determine; there were no lines on his face or gray hairs in his short black beard, but his eyes looked ancient and sad. It was a look she recognized – her grandmother had looked that way after a lifetime of working for others with little reward.

"A test, am I correct?" The stranger added, in perfect English, looking solemnly down at her as she sat curled up on the battered sofa. "So that only those with a true need for your powers will enter here. Interesting."

Posey almost dropped her novel and caught it just in time. None of her customers had ever called her out like that, especially not the first time. Not that she'd had many customers in the six months since her abuela's death.

"My – my powers?" She giggled nervously as she stood up. "What do you mean?"

"Come now, Mariposa," he raised an eyebrow at her. "I sensed the magic in this place the moment I opened the door. That is your name, no? Mariposa of the Mission?"

Posey blushed. She had never actually met a fellow magic user before, except for Abuela of course. She stood up straighter, hoping he didn't mind the mess of half-finished projects and spells.

"They call me Posey, actually. So … how can I help you?"

He draped a garment bag over the counter, making her blink in confusion – had he been carrying it before? Surely she wouldn't have missed it. If it was conjured out of thin air, that had to come in useful.

"I need this … mended," he said, looking down at the bag with a look that told her he valued its contents very much. "I know it's easier to enchant an item you've designed yourself, but I would appreciate it if you worked on this. It has … history."

Unzipping the bag, she found a dress so beautiful it took her breath away. A creamy silk dress, simple and elegant, with just the faintest touches of lace and crystal beads. The hem was torn, and Posey immediately saw what the stranger had meant – the flaw hurt, and it made her fingers itch to fix it.

"Looks like a wedding dress," she murmured, running her hands over the silk, trying to sense its story as her grandmother would have done.

"It was," said the stranger.

Posey closed her eyes. Even for a beginner, this dress was easy to read; it fairly glowed with love and memories, so much that Posey wondered, in passing, if its maker had had powers anything like hers. She saw a haggard young woman in a dark parlor, huddled over a sewing machine, making this dress; smiling radiantly as she modelled it for the blue-eyed stranger; folding it away with gentle hands as she hummed a lullaby to the child inside her. Posey saw that child grown up, smaller and livelier but with the same ancient blue eyes, skipping up the steps of a courthouse building with white roses in one hand and a tuxedoed gentleman's arm linked through hers. Her careless laugh was almost audible as she stepped on the hem of the dress with one tiny foot – Oh well, as long as they let us in! I can fix it later, right, darling?

Except that the dress hadn't been fixed. The second bride, after becoming a widow much too young, had dropped it off at a thrift store to get as far away from its aura as possible, where the stranger had recovered it. Its yellowed condition and the smell of mothballs told Posey it had spent decades at the back of a closet, and the stranger's face and voice told her that both the brides who had worn it were no longer with him, wherever they might be.

"So … who's going to wear it now?" she asked. "And what's the occasion? I work better with specifics, you know," she added, trying to sound brisk and professional to hide her apprehension. A job like this, with a dress already enchanted, could have some serious consequences, and offending an entity such as this stranger – who was obviously not human, and quite possibly even immortal – might ruin her business, or worse.

A faint smile lit the man's inscrutable features for the first time. "A young friend of mine is getting married and following her husband to this city," he explained. "Like you, she is a gifted seamstress." Like your wife and daughter, then, Posey thought, noticing the emphasis on the word "gifted". "But what she lacks is the confidence to develop that gift. I am hoping that this dress might … encourage her, as it did its creator long ago."

Posey thought of a few of her own recent customers – the shy redhead who had called on the spirit of her dead sister, for example, or the snarky photographer searching for her birth mother. Troubled young women were her specialty; after all, she thought ironically, hoping the stranger couldn't read her mind, wasn't she a classic case herself?

"I can do that," she said, nodding firmly. "Come back tomorrow and I'll have it fixed. Not that I can control what she wishes for, by the way. Hints I can do, but the rest is up to her."

"I understand."

The stranger gave her a nod, almost a bow, and turned to leave.

/

Posey, who never could resist improving on a customer's request, did not stop at mending the wedding dress. She dry-cleaned it, sewed a perfect enchanted butterfly tag on the hem just above the torn spot, and then set to work on a long-sleeved, collared silk shirt in the same pale, crystalline blue as her customer's eyes. Blue as the tears of a grieving lover and father. Blue as the early morning sky and the promise of new beginnings. When the stranger came back the next day to retrieve both items, he did not say 'thank you' out loud; his face said it for him, as his pale eyes turned soft as a summer mist.

He gave her a long, searching look across the counter.

"What do you wish for, Mariposa?" he asked.

She shrugged casually. "We – I mean, I can't use my powers for myself." Neither could my abuela. "It's part of the deal."

"Who said you had to use your powers?" The stranger smiled again, and this time the light reached his eyes. They shone like pale sapphires in his coffee-colored face.

"As I tell my friend, you can be your own genie. No magic required. It can't do any harm to speak the words."

Posey knew her wish without having to think about it. It had been in the back of her mind for six months, half-choked with solitary work and doubts, but still growing, like a stubborn flower from a crack in the pavement.

"I wish I had someone," she confessed. "A friend, a partner … someone to help me at the shop, someone to spend time with. Besides these." She held up the romance novel with an ironic smile.

"I will see you soon," said the genie as he left, picking up a business card from the bowl on the counter and turning it this way and that, so the golden butterfly symbol shimmered in the sun.

/

Two weeks later, the phone rang. Posey jumped and ran to answer it, hoping it wasn't the IRA on her case again.

"Mariposa Mission," she barked into the receiver.

"Hello," It was a young woman's voice, warm and bright as honey. "May I speak to the owner of the business?"

"You've got her."

"Hi." Posey could hear the woman's smile through the receiver. "I'm Cherokee Jah-Love," as matter-of-factly as if she were Jane Smith. "I heard you're looking for a business partner."

"Where did you hear that?"

"An old family friend. Lamp salesman with a ruby nose piercing? Mysterious attitude? Sound familiar?"

Posey snorted and rolled her eyes, but grinned at her reflection in the shop window all the same. "It sure does. Nice to meet you, Cherokee. Come on over and we'll discuss it, okay?"