“You have the ring, though.”

“Which is on the yacht that’s stuck in the mountains.”

His lips purse. “You seem upset about that.”

I wave him off. It’s yet another hiccup in my fun plan to enrich myself with the holiday spirit by requesting all of the presents in the song “Santa Baby.” The worst hiccup was when Hall didn’t get my wish quite right and ended up conjuring a baby Santa. It had the measurements of a newborn with the face of an elderly man, rosy-cheeked, bespectacled, with a full white beard, wailing HO HO HO.

“At least I have Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress.”

“You should have let me get you a replica.”

“I need the warm, fond memories that go with the original. Athena will be able to smell them when she opens it up on Christmas morning, and it will hands-down beat anything she’s ever gotten for me.” Besides, I deserve this win. I work so hard.

“I work so hard,” I say. “I need to treat myself. If I had a therapist, that’s exactly what they would advise.” I am between therapists at the moment, as I have a terrible penchant for developing the hots for anyone who uses soothing, validating language or tells me I should work on myself, and I keep trying to seduce them.

“Every time you ask me to grant wishes I’m morally opposed to, I get ill. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” His face is tinged green. “The travesty we unleashed upon Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas.” I smile, recollecting the wonderful two hours we spent cursing distressed farmhouse mirrors so that the wearer could only see Jamie Lee Curtis eating Activia.

“You can’t tell me that wasn’t fun.”

His gaze flicks up to mine, stern. “The chicken nuggets thing.”

I have to snicker. Tabloids, paparazzi, and anyone who’s ever sued me has had their taste receptors tinkered with, so now sweet foods taste sour, and salty foods taste exactly like if you microwaved Stouffer’s chicken nuggets for half the recommended time, so they’re partly soggy, partly frozen. Are they eating chips? Fries? Pretzels? Not anymore! It’s all flavorless chicken nuggets now!

“Then, there’s the laundry list of requests I had to reject because they cost too much magic, or would change the fabric of history, or would punch a hole in time, et cetera.” Hall conjures a second receipt from nowhere, unfurling a naughty list so long that it rolls across the street, right up the steps of Town Hall.

It’s not as bad as he’s making it sound. All I wanted was to put myself somewhere in the background of The Wizard of Oz, holding a cell phone, to confuse people in the present day. It would spawn so many delicious conspiracy theories.

Figuring out what Hall is and isn’t able to do has been a fun system of trial and error. The rules of magic are ironclad in some areas, but overall, they bend toward randomness. Magic wouldn’t allow me to illegally stream Lost, for example, but it let me conjure up the box set of DVDs. It said no to an inflatable pool filled with chocolate pudding for some reason, but yes to fireworks that yelled “Boom” with the voices of The Black Eyed Peas whenever they exploded. Sometimes it has high-strung principles and says no to requests, but after rephrasing them creatively, I get my yes. I’m the loophole whisperer. Hall is the unwilling admirer of this, since I can tell it amuses him whenever magic swerves me forty times and then I finally win. This has led to him wanting to grant most of my wishes, because his amusement amuses me in turn, and my amusement gives him that nice, bubbly feeling of doing his job well. Very symbiotic.