“Oh, but before we get into that, I want to see,” says Lauren. She cracks open the glass bottle, sniffs. “Smells like . . . lemon. No, sarsaparilla. No, that’s not it. But it’s . . . something effervescent. Am I right?”
Holly’s staff freezes. Holly’s known for her strict adherence to the agenda, and she’s been known to explode when someone goes off schedule. Even Barry’s giving her the side-eye, but Holly surprises them all.
“Think of it as . . . the scent of springtime,” she says, shrugging almost imperceptibly toward Barry. For the amount of money on the line, she can afford to play nice.
“I like that. How does it work?” Lauren asks, tapping a tiny bit into her hand.
Holly nods at the marketing director, who cues the video. A wide shot pans to a beautiful young girl by the banks of a frozen lake. Ice covers the ground. A glass bottle floats through the night sky. The girl catches the bottle, opens it, and blows the contents into the air. As the golden powder swirls above her, her face brightens, as if lit from within by stars. She turns to the camera, radiant.
“All you need is faith, trust, and a little Pixie Dust,” a man’s voice intones. The screen fades to black.
“Oooh,” Lauren breathes. She tilts her head up, blows the dust in her palm into the air, closes her eyes as it settles on her face. “It feels . . . tingly.” She turns to the man next to her. “How does it look?”
The man inspects her face as if he’s looking at a spreadsheet. The powder has disappeared, but there’s a slight sheen to Lauren’s skin, a radiance that wasn’t there before. Her skin looks taut and even. “It’s subtle, but there’s a definite glow. It’s quite pretty. More to the point, it looks completely natural. Honestly, it’s like nothing we’ve seen out there.”
“Exactly.” Barry grins. “And you won’t find anything else like it, either.”
“How does it work?”
“We use a proprietary blend of light-refracting pigments, combined with the best masking and camouflage agents in existence.”
“And it’s nontoxic?”
“Of course,” Barry says. “We at Darling Skin Care have been the leaders in that area for quite some time.”
He points to the deputy marketing director, who produces a hand mirror emblazoned with a large D. Barry passes the mirror to Lauren, who stares into it.
“Wow,” she says. “Your guys are really, really good.”
“Thank you,” says Holly. She’s particularly practiced at keeping the edge from her voice on this one, but Lauren must catch a hint, because she stops looking in the mirror and glances over.
“Sorry,” she says, and has the grace to blush. “It’s hard to remember you’re a scientist on top of everything else.”
“It’s quite all right,” Holly says, although it’s not. This is one of the reasons she decided early on to partner with Barry—strictly in the business sense, after those first few nights—since even in this day and age there are some people who can’t seem to believe that a woman who looks like she does could also be a real, hands-on scientist. But Pixie Dust is every bit Holly’s baby, in more ways than one.
“Well,” says Barry. “If you’ll look in the folders in front of you, you’ll find a standard—”
There’s a knock on the door, and Holly’s assistant pokes her head in. “Dr. Darling, I am so sorry to interrupt, but I need you for a minute.”
Holly makes an effort not to scowl. She has a habit of running through assistants, and this one is so new Holly’s struggling to remember her name. “Can it wait?”
The assistant shakes her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Excuse me a moment, everyone,” Holly says. “I’ll be right back.” She pushes her chair out, stalks around the table. She runs through the list of what it could possibly be, stops short when she gets to the most likely. Jack. There’s one thing her assistant would interrupt her for right now, and that’s her son. His is the only call she’ll take no matter what she’s doing. But he knows what a big day today is for the company. He wouldn’t bother her unless it was an emergency. Her pulse pounds in her ears, and she hurries outside.
“What is it?” she demands. Her voice is brusquer than she’d intended, and the girl flinches.
“I’m sorry, but the caller said it was urgent.”
Barry has left the conference room too and come up behind her. His face is so worried it’s clear he’s had the same thought as Holly.