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Four

The ferry glided across Puget Sound trapped between two slices of brilliant blue, the sky and the water, with the snowy peaks of the Olympic Mountains behind, the Cascades ahead, the sharp white peak of Mount Baker up north beyond the San Juan Islands, the perfect cone of Mount Rainier to the south. It was one of those days that appeared on postcards that lured more and more tourists and transplants to Seattle. But, as was often true of such eye-appealing days, it was bitter cold, so Rose enjoyed the scenery from inside the ferry, warming her hands and her throat with a cup of cappuccino from the ferry's espresso bar while she listened to two musicians, Tania and Mark, play Irish tunes on a variety of instruments.

Rose didn't often get to hear the ferryboat musicians, since they only played the Bainbridge Island—Seattle route, and she normally rode the Bremerton ferry. But this morning, as sometimes happened, one of the Bremerton ferries had mechanical problems and wasn't running. It had taken her three hours to get home instead of just one. On the way over, she'd had no choice, since her car was still parked at the ferry terminal in Bremerton, but she chose to take the more reliable Bainbridge ferry on the way back. It took twenty minutes longer to drive to it from her house, but the trip across was only a half-hour instead of an hour. Besides, this way she could see the musicians.

Had she known the trip home would be such an ordeal, she'd have arranged to have her cats fed and just stayed in Seattle to go to Linden's and then riding with Cindy. But she hadn't arranged for the cats and hadn't brought riding clothes, and Linden didn't open till eleven and Rose's shift was over at seven, so there should have been lots of time.

After dropping Hank and Gigi at the Ogdens', she had been able to sleep through the rest of the night in the clinic, then called in and reported to Hager, who was taking call the rest of the weekend. Since Hager lived in Seattle, she needed only to carry a beeper. Normally, Rose would have had scads of time to get home, feed the cats, shower, change, and catch up on mail and phone calls, but because of the delay in the ferries she had had to rush. So now she enjoyed kicking back and letting the music refresh her.

Although soliciting on the ferries was strictly against the rules, only one or two of the more hidebound captains, afraid that the boats would become an extension of the panhandling street life in the city, prevented the musicians from playing. The passengers enjoyed the diversion. The music was usually instrumental—a harpist, a couple who played mainly Scandinavian music on accordion and mandolin, and Tania and Mark, who played fiddle, guitar, harp and hammered dulcimer, and sometimes other exotic instruments.

"Now docking Seattle," a voice on the intercom announced about ten minutes from the dock. On the left was the cityscape, the Space Needle, the Smith Tower which had once been the tallest building in the country, the modern skyscrapers mingling with the art deco remnants of another, kinder, gentler generation, the big E of the Edgewater Inn and the sign for Pike Place Public Market. Stretching along the waterfront to the right were the old wharfs now gentrified into gift shops full of jewelry, T-shirts, shell lamps, fudge, Mount St. Helens glassware, gourmet chocolates, Indian crafts and exotic imports, all of which could be reached by a walkway studded with seafood restaurants, and hung with brightly colored banners. Horse-drawn carriages lined the water side of the Alaska Way, waiting forlornly for the tourists who were not out on such a cold day. The trolley tracks sat empty under the Highway 99 viaduct, and beyond them cars prowled in the shade of the viaduct, searching for parking places. Rose was glad her office was right downtown and she seldom had to drive in Seattle. The traffic getting off the ferry was particularly bad, being routed far to the south, toward the Kingdome.

Along the waterfront, a shoal of giant orange cranes loaded and unloaded barges like so many spindly spiders storing food for the winter.

The ferry docked. Rose dropped a dollar in Tania's guitar case and followed the teal-and-purple parka ahead of her down the causeway and out onto the sidewalk outside the ferry terminal, across the tunnel walkway that ran under the viaduct and over Alaska Way, spilling ferry passengers out onto First and Marion.

One youngish boy Rose didn't know sat listlessly against the side of the tunnel, while on the other side a bearded, red-faced man in his forties or fifties greeted each passerby with a pleasant remark followed, if they waited long enough, with a request for change. The guy was a vet, and she wasn't sure what his trip was, but at least it didn't seem to be hostile.

She caught a bus up First to Third and Pine and walked over to Nordstrom's to buy a new pair of walking shoes before heading to the Market, past the Bon and the deserted Frederick's and Nelson building, and by the scrumptious shops of Westlake Plaza. The usual steel drum band entertained people lunching at the patio tables set on the ornamental brick-and-concrete work that blocked off the street as a strictly pedestrian area. A street preacher was exhorting shoppers about the love of God. She happened to know this particular proselytizer, from her former position as a counselor at the Seattle women's shelter. She felt like getting up and doing a little preaching herself about people who claimed to be religious and did to their wives what this guy had done in the name of morality. She kept walking.

The Pet Man, one of Patrick's clients, sat on the next corner, his two lovable mutts and the gray striped cat sitting beside him, his battered hat with a few coins and a dollar or two next to him. A young woman in a skirt printed like an Indian bedspread dropped a bag of dry cat food into the hat and passed on. The Pet Man said nothing to her, but one of the dogs sniffed the bag. Rose didn't think the dog could be too interested. She knew how well fed these animals were.

The Pet Man's menagerie was among the animals Linden cared for from time to time. She licensed all of the pets she cared for. Once the Pet Man had disappeared for six months, and the Humane Society in Spokane had called Linden because her name was on a dog's tag. Linden had the dog flown back to her, but when the Pet Man returned, he had avoided her for months, not wanting to tell her he'd lost the dog.

As she neared the market, Rose heard the competing musics of the street musicians who worked every available corner, doorway and level of the area. The clapping gospel music of Gasworks Gus, an older black man, and three young recently acquired protégés, the new washboard band with the blonde woman and her guitar-playing partner, all aggressively competed against by one of the crewcut, orange-overalled Accordions From Hell group who seemed bound and determined to drown out other street music. She glanced in the window of the ice cream store, where Linden's songwriter friend Merle usually spent all day with his dog Pal at his feet, a guitar on his lap, a notepad, pencil, and a cup of coffee with endless refills on the table while he wrote songs. He wasn't there today.

She looked across the street, under the canopy of the market proper, where vendors sold fish and honey, flowers and tie-dyed T-shirts, rubber stamps and handmade silver jewelry. She would cross at First and Pike, she thought.

"Rose," someone said at her elbow. "Rose, it's me. Rose, please, have you got a couple of dollars? I'm really hungry."

The voice was male and young and did not yet have a good street whine to it. It sounded scared. And the face was familiar.

"Dico?" she asked, looking under the grime to the chocolate-brown skin beneath.

"Yeah."

"What did you do? Run out on the foster home?"

"What foster home? I've been on the streets since I turned eighteen."

"But I found you a placement . . ."

"Yeah, well, not fast enough. And I'd look for a job, honest, Rose, only I got no place to clean up, you know? I sure don't want to use the shower at the shelter. How about it? Couple of bucks for a snack?"

She took a five from her purse. Dico Miller wasn't a bad kid, wasn't on drugs or anything else that she knew of, and he did look thin. His parents had both been killed in an accident and hadn't left enough to bury them, much less pay their debts, and left their teenage son alone. No other surviving family members, no house, school over, no job, no prospects. She stuffed the five back and fished out a ten. "Get something to eat and try to clean up a little. I'll talk to a friend and see if I can get you a job, okay? Will you be here tomorrow?"

"Naw, I got an important appointment. Shit yes, I'll be here. What d'ya think?"

She ignored the attitude and crossed into the market, more preoccupied with wondering whom she could hit up to hire a former client than with the goodies at Fortunate Finery.

Then the crowd in the market jostled and assaulted her with noise, color and sensation from all directions so that she had to pay attention to keep from getting trampled or carried past the exit that led underground, into the belly of the market, where Fortunate Finery rubbed elbows with rock shops and comic shops, antique stores and Afghanistani imports, among others.

The fellows at the fish market were tossing humongous salmon back and forth while entertaining the customers with their patter. She stopped in at Tenzing Momo for some Tibetan incense, bought crocheted catnip balls for her cats, and then ducked around the corner to the ramp leading down to the next level.

The sandwich board was not out front; she noticed that right away. The door was closed, and the shop was dark even though it was already noon. She peered inside but could see no sign of Linden.

"Ahem," someone said behind her. A refined, ladylike, alto someone. "Excuse me," said the woman, stepping forward. She was as silvery and sparkly as a coho salmon leaping out of the bay into the sunlight. Her hair was every hue and tint of silver from gunmetal through pewter through dove gray to white and curled to well below her shoulders, held back from her face by a silver rose. Silver-gray eyes full of intelligence and cool humor regarded Rose politely before turning their attention to the door lock. She wore white tights and gray Doc Martens under a long, heathery wool skirt with a silver-embroidered lace petticoat hanging out from under it and a long, loopy sweater spun with silvery threads and topped with a drift of sequined and rhinestone-studded silvery scarf.

"Is Linden sick today?" Rose asked.

"No, she's been called away," the woman said, over her shoulder. "I'm assuming management at present." She had a low, throaty voice, a torch singer's voice, Rose thought, like Eartha Kitt or Candice Bergen.

Merle ambled up, his dog, Pal, trotting along beside him. He stopped and stood with one long jeans-clad leg bent at the knee, and leaned against the door frame with his forearm. He was a tall man with thinning brown hair and bad teeth, but his quick brown eyes and soft musical voice betrayed him as more than an ordinary street person, however much he liked to play the role. He came from a good family and could have been anything, but he'd been an angry young man and kept being angry well into middle age. Now he was mostly angry at himself for letting all of his chances go by. The songs he wrote were good and true and best of all, Rose thought, not self-centered. Musicians all over Seattle performed and recorded them with Merle's blessing, but Merle, no matter what other gigs he tried, always ended up back at the market. Pal looked up at the silver woman and whined, a happy whine.

"Linden's not around?" Merle asked the woman.

The silvery lady turned and gave him the somewhat appraising smile he took so much for granted that he didn't react to it one way or the other. "No, but I am. You must be Merle and this," she said, patting the dog's head, "is Pal. I've heard so much about you."

"You have?"

"Certainly."

"Excuse me," Rose said a bit more sharply than she intended. "Who are you?"

"I'm Felicity Fortune. I'm part owner of the shop, actually," she said with a faint trace of a British Isles accent—Rose wasn't sure of the exact origin. To Merle she said, "I'm glad you've come. This letter came to the shop for you."

He accepted the letter and ran his fingers over it for a moment without even looking at the address. "I came to ask if Linden could look after Pal. I decided to ship out on a tanker for a while, pick up a little money. I want to make a new tape but I want it to be a really good one this time."

Merle was always talking about that. Except for one, the tapes remained unrecorded, and the one he had made had been so overproduced you could hardly hear the songs. Another of Merle's fatal flaws, she supposed—he was a good musician but a lousy producer.

Felicity opened the door and said, "Sorry to keep you standing in the hall while I prattle on. Do come in." Her smile was warm and genuinely kind, quite out of keeping with the rest of her silvery persona. She was not, Rose saw, even particularly pretty. More what you would call striking. Her features were strong and determined—a patrician nose and a square jaw—and something about the set of them reminded Rose of Linden."Linden never mentioned anyone else owning the store," Rose said, feeling anxious about her friend's absence. "Is she okay?"

"Oh, yes, dear. Just had a bit of an emergency. Thought it best if I filled in for the time being. Let me guess. You must be Rose."

"How did you know?"

"The mustard seed," she said, pointing to the pendant that Rose had decided to wear that morning on a whim, just to keep her spirits up.

Merle remained outside the door after Rose and Felicity entered the shop. When Rose looked back at him, she saw that he was reading his letter. His lower jaw dropped and his eyes boggled, his head nodding rapidly as he reread it several times.

"Not bad news for you too?" Rose asked, experiencing her usual feeling that the whole world was falling apart at the seams.

"Oh, no. Rosie, you aren't going to believe this, but somebody sent Ace Jackson my tape. He wants to record two of my songs. He wants me to come to Nashville and talk to him about it."

"Merle, that's great!" she said, thinking how lucky it was that he had come to the shop before shipping out. "You really deserve it."

"Thanks," he said, his eyes still on the letter as he tugged at the dog's lead. "Come on, Pal. We got to think about this."

"Well, it's good to see somebody get a break," Rose said to Felicity. "I just hope he uses it to good advantage."

"Oh, I think he will," Felicity said, smiling that same assessing smile through the window at the retreating figures of the man and his dog.

"I wonder how he'll get the money to go to Nashville," Rose said, watching after them too. "Do you suppose Ace Jackson will send it to him?"

"Oh no," Felicity said with a rather surprising air of authority. "I imagine he'll find an unclaimed scratch tab which will suffice. He's ready for luck now, you see. He's outlived a lot of the influences opposing him. And he's worked for it. That sort of people are still the easiest kind to make lucky."

"Excuse me. I don't want to be rude or anything, but how would you know?" Rose asked, her initial sense of irritation with the stranger returning. There was something so theatrical about Felicity Fortune—so deliberately mysterious—that Rose could not help but wonder if she was just being weird or if she really was weird.

"I know quite a bit, actually," Felicity said, flopping down in an overstuffed chair and making no effort to count out the till, turn on the lights, or open the door for other customers.

"Where exactly is Linden, then?" Rose asked in a tone that brooked no evasion."If you must know, she wasn't quite up to the job here," Felicity said, playing idly with a peacock feather fan.

"You said you were part owner. You didn't fire her?"

"Oh, no. She's gone on for further training. She suggested you as a possible candidate too, and as a senior member, I was sent to sort things out."

"A senior member of what?"

"A sort of sorority Linden and I belong to, one that helps people."

"Uh-huh. Linden never mentioned any sorority, and we've known each other a long time."

"Oh, she wouldn't mention this one," Felicity said, rummaging in the ridiculously small beaded evening purse she carried at her side slung from a belt that seemed to be made of fine-link chain mail. "She's just been a pledge until now. Wait a bit. I have a card in here someplace."

She produced one that read, in calligraphy-style script, "Dame Felicity Fortune, Godmothers (Anonymous), Fair Fates Facilitated, Questers Accommodated, and Virtue Vindicated. True Love and Serendipity Our Specialty."

Rose read it and chuckled with relief. "I might have known. That Linden. I never really figured her for a practical joker, but this is a good one. We were kidding around about this yesterday. Where is she really? Who are you? And please don't tell me you're the fairy godmother."

"Oh, no. I wouldn't put you on like that. I'm only one of the Godmothers and we're not exactly all fairies, not anymore. At one time, of course, that was true, but the fey actually found that human agents, properly seasoned, work out better. More identity with the subject. Just as many of you in your profession were yourselves the products of troubled childhoods so you now identify with your clients."

No wonder she was so theatrical! She was an actress. For some reason, maybe to give Merle his bit of good news, Linden had hired an actress to come in and play an elaborate joke on them all. Well, nobody could say Rose lacked a sense of humor. She played along, grinning to show that she knew what was happening, "Gee, that's very democratic of the fey. So okay, if you're who you say you are, how about my wish?"

Felicity nodded graciously. She was some actress, all right.

"Well," Rose said. "First of all, the division's budget could use one of those bottomless purses that were always turning up in the fairy tales. I don't suppose you've got one just lying around anywhere, do you?"

To her surprise, Felicity didn't do any fakey bibbity-bobbity-booing but snapped the peacock feathers of her fan together in a disgusted way. "That's it, throw money at it! Honestly, you Americans! And I thought you took your work more seriously than that."

"Money is serious," Rose insisted, drawn into earnest discussion in spite of herself. "Senate appropriations cut our budget by half this year."

"I'll look into it, though mind you, we don't do bottomless purses anymore. Too crude and very bad for the economy in general. Inflation and all that." She turned a shrewd gaze on Rose and for the first time, Rose saw that her eyes were very strange indeed—did they make holographic contact lenses these days? Felicity's eyes had that same crystalline look about them, and Rose thought for a moment that she could see rainbows in the irises.

"Also," Felicity continued shrewdly, and dead seriously, "a bottomless purse for your division would be of very little use to the persons it's meant to help if the money is spent under the direction of someone unsuitable."

Before Rose could protest that Linden surely must have briefed her about Rose's work situation, Felicity added, "I notice that you didn't ask anything for yourself, however. Your wish, in fact, was for reinforcements, a fairy godmother for the city of Seattle. Now that seems a little odd, Rose Samson. True, you don't believe I am who I am as yet, though you will, but have you no wish for yourself? I'd hate to think you were someone with a bit of that Messiah complex the pop psychologists are always on about."

Rose shrugged. "Maybe so, but I already have quite a bit compared to most of the people I work with. I've got a job, a home, food, and money enough to buy clothes from your shop if I want."

"Don't you wish for anything else? True love, maybe?"

Fred's face popped into her mind, but Rose said sensibly, "Felicity, no offense, but that's not something you get just by wishing." After all, she didn't even know if he was involved or not, or anything else about his personal life. She might not even like him if she knew him well and besides, real true love happened between the two people involved, not because some dingbat in motley silver waved a magic wand. Besides, there were lots of things more important than her own love life—or lack of it.

"I see," Felicity said.

"Look," Rose said kindly but firmly, "it's nice of you to encourage me, but lots of people don't even have the basics, much less two lovely cats and a vintage clothing collection. Sure my dad left us when I was a kid, but he continued to support us, and my mother was an alcoholic, but she sobered up before she died and we were able to deal with a lot of our issues together. Meanwhile, I've managed to make a very nice life for myself and I'm trying to help other people do the same."

"Survivor guilt, eh?"

"Will you cut that out? I'm just counting my blessings," she said. Before she could say any more Felicity, who reminded her a bit of a forties movie star with her dramatic gestures and grand, perhaps a bit matronizing tone, waved her own assessment of her motivations aside.

"Well, dear, there's nothing wrong with that, and mercy knows I would be the last to suggest there was anything wrong with you for wishing to bring blessings to others. It is, in fact, my raison d'être as well. However, if you could bring yourself to be a teensy bit more selfish and wish for something the wee-est bit more personal, it would be easier to prove my usefulness to you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You will be wanting to put me to the test, n'est-ce pas?"

"Mais non," said Rose, who could joke around as well as anyone. She was used to dealing with somewhat deranged people, and this woman seemed at least to be well intentioned. However, a reality check was in order. "Ms. Fortune, I'm sorry if you are under the misapprehension that, in passing time with my friend Linden, I somehow gave the impression that I wanted your help or advice. The truth is, as a social services professional employed by the City of Seattle and the State of Washington, I have rules to uphold, and one of those rules is that I don't tell you nothin' about nobody nohow no time, period. No matter what you show me, promise me, or give me. So please, let me disabuse you of any notions you may have that I will at any time break client confidentiality so you can prove—whatever it is you're trying to prove. Whatever you imagine you can do, the clients I have now, and my list by no means covers all of the people in the city who need help, have devastatingly real problems. Many of them face tragic, frightening, frustrating, humiliating, dangerous, even life-threatening situations every day. I—we—are trying to help them survive a little longer, in hopes that somehow they can last until improvement can be made."

Felicity Fortune was not the least put out, but dropped most of the melodrama, except for an eloquently raised eyebrow. "Well put, Rose Samson, and very loyal, I'm sure. But you'd be surprised what I can imagine, and what I've coped with. I notice you only say that you hope to help your clients to survive until improvements can be made—not until you can make them. Or they can make them."

"I'm being realistic," Rose said. "I can only do so much, the division can only do so much. Many of the clients could do more for themselves than we can possibly do for them if only they had the will or—"

"Or the luck?" Felicity Fortune asked, then waved the fan dismissively. "Oh, I know. I know. Luck is extremely unscientific, but like many unscientific things, it's also extremely useful. It also happens to be my business."

"Oh, cute! I get it! Your name is Felicity Fortune, as in good luck, and you make—ta da—good luck!"

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