“I mean, yeah?” Daisy arched a perfectly gilded eyebrow. “I told you last night.”
“Like actual fae, with actual magic powers? Not cosplayers or pagans?”
“I don’t know about powers, but they are contractors,” Alyx said. “And I can definitely understand being pissed when you don’t get paid. Contractors are always the first to get screwed.”
“Tell me about it,” Daisy groaned.
Edwina thought about the three years she’d worked as a Task Rabbit after college, and how grateful she’d been to get hired as a staffer at Skin Seraph. “I mean, I get why this Witchy Wonders person is angry, but she’s going to ruin a lot of people’s lives. It’s not just Isobel. There are hundreds of Skin Seraph employees all over the world.”
“I’m going DM them,” Alyx said, fingers twitching midair.
“What? No!” Daisy yelped.
But Edwina was curious. “Do it!” she said. “See if you can find out how bad the contract violation is.”
Alyx started giggling, eyes foggy with data. “The person running their socials remembers you, Edwina. She says she’s really sorry because she liked how sparky you are.” Alyx kept typing. “Okay, yeah. Yeah. This is bad. There’s nothing you can do. Isobel really screwed Witchy Wonders over, like for tons of money, and Skin Seraph is going down hard. It’s going to get a lot worse.” Alyx’s eyes cleared. “She says you should look for another job now. She’s willing to give you a few days before she pulls the trigger on the next curse.”
Edwina sank down on the bar stool, feeling simultaneously freaked out and vindicated. There was no way she was going to find another job with decent benefits in a few days. But it was oddly affirming to know that there was a scary magical woman roaming the city who thought she was sparky. Suddenly, she had an idea.
“Alyx, ask if she’d be willing to meet with me and Daisy to work something out. Maybe we can salvage this.”
A smirk spread over Alyx’s face as they typed. “She’s open to talking. She says she’ll meet you at Skin Seraph tomorrow when you close.” They folded up the mobile and tucked it into a front pocket. “Her name is Agony, by the way.”
Recalling the fae’s last couple of visits to Skin Seraph, Edwina was willing to admit that Agony had earned her hyperbolic name.
“What are you thinking?” Daisy asked, picking at a piece of glitter caught in the sleeve of her sweater. “I told you I’m probably not staying at Skin Seraph. Plus, are you really going to try to bargain with a fae? That shit is dangerous.”
“Listen.” Edwina expertly flicked the glitter off Daisy’s sleeve. “She likes me, right? I just want to see if we can get her to slow down. I need this job if I’m going to save enough to go to grad school next year. Plus, I actually like working at Skin Seraph—it’s chill, and we have good benefits.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Daisy shot Edwina a look of sympathy.
Alyx poked Daisy’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to meet somebody who is a literal shit disturber? She sounds cool.”
Daisy laughed. “I guess so. But I’m out if things start to get weird. And I’m not going to make any deals or bargains with her.”
“Thank you!” Edwina hugged Daisy and Alyx at the same time, almost unseating herself in the process. She had no idea what she was going to say to Agony, but somehow it felt like she was making the right choice.
The next evening, Daisy kept finding excuses to sit at the front desk with Edwina, watching the sidewalk outside warily. Nearly every appointment had been canceled, so it wasn’t like she had anything to do in the treatment rooms.
As daylight drained from the picture windows, a flock of green parrots crowded into the tree outside, chittering and eating the tiny red berries that grew between its spoon-shaped leaves. More kept arriving. Within minutes, it was hard to tell parrot from tree.
“That’s kind of weird,” Daisy said, pointing at the growing flock.
As if in answer, the door shushed open and three parrots flew inside to land next to the bottles of frog milk. Their feathered heads were as red as the berries they’d been eating. One of them immediately squirted a shit onto the pristine glass shelf.
Following the parrots inside was a woman with magenta hair in a fitted green jumpsuit embroidered with tropical flowers. She was muscular and tall, her bulky silhouette filling the doorway. She curled her hand into a gun shape, index finger pointed at the camera over the front desk, and an alert flickered in Edwina’s contacts: Skin Seraph Security Feed Temporarily Offline.
“Well that wasn’t creepy at all,” Daisy whispered.
“You must be Agony,” Edwina said loudly. “I’m Edwina, and this is Daisy.”
The fae smiled and pretended to blow smoke from the loaded barrel of her finger gun. Now that she was wearing her skin, Edwina could see that she was probably in her late twenties, with a pale brown complexion. She might be Latinx, or possibly southeast Asian. Did fae have human racial identities? Probably best not to assume.
Agony walked slowly around the store, picking up a revitalizing cream packaged in a squishy plastic bulb, peering at its warning label, then setting it back down. One of the parrots landed on her shoulder.
“I—I like your jumpsuit, Agony,” Daisy said.
At last the fae looked directly at them. “Isn’t it the best? I got it on sale at Wildfang.” Agony finished her circuit of the room and leaned on the counter across from them. “I love your self-care videos, by the way. I’ve been following you for ages.”
“Oh thanks!” Daisy had the desperately upbeat tone she used when Isobel visited the store and yelled at the clinicians who weren’t on the MakeMeProud leaderboard.
Edwina was glad the small talk was handled. “So, Agony, I wanted to talk to you about this thing you’re doing to Skin Seraph,” she said.
The fae turned her gaze on Edwina, and she felt a pleasurable tingle of… something. Was that magic, or was Agony just super hot? “I told your friend Alyx that I’d give you a few days before I burn this brand down.” Agony looked down and the tingle receded. “And for the record, I do feel bad about it. My boss at Witchy Wonders has this scorched earth approach that feels very 2020. You know? She’s from that extremist generation.”
“Yeah,” Edwina sighed. “Our boss is awful too. Obviously.”
“That’s why I’m going to work for myself,” Daisy said. “I just got another sponsorship.”
Agony shrugged. “You’ll still be a contractor. That means you can get screwed by ten people instead of one. Trust me. I spend half my days chasing down payments for the company. And when they don’t pay, well… I have to deal with that too.”
“Why do you work there, then?” Edwina was genuinely curious.
“I love doing socials and events. I figure I’ll work at Witchy for a couple more years, build up my portfolio, and then get a staff job at a marketing or design firm. I need some health insurance and stability.”
Daisy was losing her anxiety frown. “I hear that. I’m going to miss the health insurance here.”
Cocking her head, Agony blinked up something on her contacts. “Your numbers are amazing, Daisy. You should come to this healer pop-up I’m organizing. We need somebody to talk about nourishing beauty products.”
Edwina watched the two women talking shop and wished they could be friends. Agony might be a fae with supernatural powers—or a really good cosplayer with a camera-killing device hidden up her sleeve—but her job situation sounded a lot like theirs. There had to be some way to get her on their side. Suddenly she had an idea. “Remember how Wooden Board Café had that whole scandal where the dude who owned it was forcing everyone to do creepy stuff like compete for overtime bonuses and clean the bathroom when he was in the stall taking a dump?”