The witch was dead. But, so was the princess, which meant nothing short of a catastrophe. Grace is a reluctant Fairy Godmother in a world dependent on keeping Magic contained. In order to do this, Grace and her fellow Fairy Godparents enact strong spells in the guise of Fairy Tales. These spells work to calm and control Magic and keep it from reverting to the Chaos it originated as. It's a tough job. Fairy Godparents are looked at as heroes. It is the career all young fairies dream of. Except for Grace. She has been dragged unwillingly back into the career that her parents and ancestors have made famous. A descendant of the original Godmother, she has high expectation riding on her—and she has done everything within her power to avoid the whole mess. Now middle-aged, she has been dragged from her failed attempts at other careers, right back into the world she had tried to avoid for two centuries. Now, here on Grace's first case alone as a Godmother, everything has fallen to pieces. The Sleeping Princess has been found dead and... stinking. And Magic is already beginning to act strangely. Grace should have stuck to baking.

There are several variations of the story of the Little Mermaid or the Undine who loved a prince and few of them end happily... This one ended in murder. Successfully sorting out a princess disaster should have been enough for new Fairy Godmother Grace. She would happily never have to deal with murder again. Sadly, her very success has led her family to encourage her strongly to assist in an investigation of another death, and this one hits a little close to home. The victim of this murder is an old friend. And a fellow Fairy Godparent. At first glance, everything is simple and straight forward. There is a body. There is a murder weapon. There is a suspect. The spell sequence of the Mermaid and the Prince was completed before the murder, so there should be no problems with Magic reverting back into the Chaos it was born from. It should be simple. But Magic has different ideas. And nothing is as it seems.

The third and final book of the Middle-Aged Fairy Godmother Trilogy. In a far away kingdom, the princesses dance through their slippers every night... At least, that's how the story is supposed to go. But this kingdom isn't supposed to have a Fairy Godmother. And these aren't princesses. And Grace is supposed to be dead. But she's not dead... yet. And who better than Grace to figure this tangle out from the inside? At least, that's what she's counting on. And she has twelve dancing witnesses to help her figure things out.