Free Philippa Fisher and the Fairy's Promise by Liz Kessler

get some sleep tonight, then I’ll come to get you in the morning. We’ll tell Philippa’s mom and dad that we’re preparing for the party all day tomorrow,” Robyn went on. “My dad’s one of the organizers this year, so we can say we’re helping him. Then we just tell Philippa’s parents you’ll come to the party with us and meet them there. That gives us twenty-four hours from now.” She smiled nervously. “Do you think that’ll be enough time?”
    Twenty-four hours ? I didn’t know how to respond. Laugh hysterically at the mere suggestion of fixing this mess in the space of a day? Throw myself on the floor and cry like a baby? Give up completely? In the end, I looked at her face, and when I saw the hope in her eyes, I knew there was only one response I could give.
    “I think that’s a great idea,” I said.
    Robyn responded with a bright, confident smile, and we went downstairs to ask Mr. and Mrs. Fisher if I could spend tomorrow helping out with Robyn. After today’s events, they took some persuading. We had to promise not to go anywhere near that path and to stay near Robyn’s dad all day. In the end, they agreed.
    And when it was bedtime and they both gave me enormous hugs and put Philippa’s new pajamas out for me and told me how much they loved me, I got that warm feeling again — and I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps everything just might turn out OK.

The ALD supervisor, FGRaincloud74921, bowed low in front of her superiors. “FG32561 is due in my office first thing in the morning. If I might be permitted to offer an opinion, given this fairy’s previous misdemeanors, I would suggest that she be given the harshest of punishments. And this is my newest recruit, who helped us find the errant fairy,” she said, holding out her MagiCell to show her superiors a picture of the heroic young fairy.
    The two night stars looked at the picture on the screen, and then at each other. To an observer, the slight nod which passed between them would most certainly have passed for an agreement with FGRaincloud’s proposal for punishing FG32561.
    To them, however, the nod meant something quite different.
    “We are delighted with your work,” FGNightstar90034 said with a smile so bright, the room twinkled and sparkled. “But we would like to deal with this fairy ourselves. We will have her brought directly to us in the morning.”
    “Would you like me to see her first, so I can give her an indication of the severity of her punishment?” FGRaincloud74921 asked with a lick of her lips, as though thirsty for blood.
    FGNightstar27785 shook her head. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “We’ll take it from here.”
    The interview was clearly over, and with a brief nod, an awkward curtsy, and a swift exit, FGRaincloud74921 returned to her post in ALD.
    The two senior High Command officials sat in silence for a moment as they waited for the door to close behind the supervisor.
    The conversation they were about to have needed absolute privacy.
    “It’s a miracle!”
    “I’ll say. At the eleventh hour, as well!”
    “This could be just what we’ve been looking for.”
    “Let’s hope so. It’s our last option.”
    “I know. It’s getting hard to put up a normal front. If word gets out about our situation, we’ll have no way of stopping the panic.”
    “But can you imagine FGRaincloud74921 not spotting the truth about her new fairy godmother?”
    “To be fair, without seeing the picture, we wouldn’t have known ourselves — and even then it’s only because we’ve recently come across her in our research.”
    “True. And now the pair of them have been virtually delivered to our door. Let’s get on with it.”
    “Wait. The stakes are so high, and we need to be sure they’re up to this. We can’t afford a failure.”
    “How about putting them both to the test first, to make sure they are the ones?”
    “Good idea. If they don’t pass the highest loyalty test, we don’t go