‘You haven’t even tried it,’ Dee protested.

Mare met her eyes. ‘College can’t teach me what I need to know, Dee. I need to know how to use my power, we all do, we’re cramped here in this little house, hiding our powers from everybody, and they’re rotting inside us. The only one who can show us how is Xan.’

‘No,’ Dee said. ‘You don’t know her. You were too young when we ran, you don’t remember. She killed Mom and Dad, Mare. She could-’

‘She didn’t kill anybody.’ Mare flipped her hand as if she could flip the idea away. ‘They died of stupidity, just like the coroner said. You really have to get over that, Dee.’

Dee clenched her hands. ‘Trust me. She’s dangerous. Isn’t she, Lizzie?’

‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. I can’t stand this, she thought, picking up her book again.

‘At least Xan doesn’t hide who she is,’ Mare said. At least Xan doesn’t tie her own hands and hide from the world.’

Dee straightened. ‘We are not going to Xan, and that’s final. Now it’s time to vote.’ She turned their mother’s jewelry box so they could see inside. ‘I vote yes. We use one of Mother’s necklaces to send Mare to college.’

‘Not the amethyst,’ Lizzie said from behind her book, and blinked as she felt that coppery dust in her eyes again. She could feel the satin sheets against her naked skin, the weight of the purple stone between her breasts, his breath warm and… She shook her head. Not the amethyst.

‘Not any of them,’ Mare said. ‘I vote no.’

‘Lizzie?’ Dee said to the cover of the metallurgy book.

Lizzie lowered the book. ‘You really don’t want to go to school?’ she asked Mare.

Mare rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘No!’

Lizzie looked at Dee. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think we should force…’ Dee scowled at her, her eyes stormy, and Lizzie sucked in her breath. ‘I abstain.’

Dee drew a deep, angry breath, and green fog began to rise, swirling around her.

‘Oh,’ Lizzie said faintly. ‘Oh, no…’


Well, that tears it, Dee thought, coughing green fog. It wasn’t bad enough that her head was about to explode, now the rest of her was, too. Her skin burned. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. Her body was in the throes of cataclysmic change, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

Couldn’t she just cry when she got upset like other women? Maybe throw a tantrum? Hell, even spinning muffins would be better. No, she had to be theatrical. But God, didn’t the two of them understand? Did they want to end up stuck here for the rest of their lives?

She didn’t. She wanted what she’d seen when that copper dust had blown through the door and into her eyes: a high, white studio in Montmartre and paint on a canvas, and a model she seemed to know. A breathtaking man who smiled as if he’d waited just for her…

‘Oh, Mare,’ Lizzie said.

‘I am not taking responsibility for this,’ Mare said.

Dee could feel her cells metamorphosing, twinkling into new patterns like the transporter beam in Star Trek. Her throat tightened, her vision sharpened, the colors faded. Damn it, this was the worst time for this to happen. It was tough enough to get Mare to take her seriously. It was even harder when she was-

Poof!

‘An owl!’ Lizzie said, as she waved away the green fog. ‘Oh, dear. Are you a screech owl?’

‘I’m a pissed-off big sister owl,’ Dee said, but it came out in screeches and chirps only her sisters could understand. She wasn’t sitting at the table anymore, she was on top of it, clad in cinnamon feathers and perched on a set of talons, frantically scrabbling for purchase in the nest of her collapsed clothing.

‘You sound like a screech owl.’ Mare stood up and shoved her chair under the table. ‘Not that you don’t most of the time anyway.’ She looked down at Dee, perplexed, as if she were ready to continue the fight but wasn’t sure how. ‘Listen, I think I’ll just go ahead and do my morning run now. You have a nice, uh, flight.’

She did not always screech.

‘You’re not going anywhere until I return to form,’ Dee screeched.

Mare bent down, so that they were eye to eye, which made Dee blink. ‘You look very Disney, all ruffled up like that. You should have a perky little musical number with the other forest creatures coming right up. Call me if the urge to sing sweeps over you.’

‘Go on and run like the dog you are,’ Dee said. ‘But I’ll be here when you-’

The doorbell rang.

For a second, they froze, looking at each other. ‘I’ll get the bunnies,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll check the window,’ Dee said.

‘I’ll get your clothes,’ Mare said and scooped up the nest out from under her.

Lizzie shoved the bunnies into the kitchen. Mare tossed Dee’s clothes into her room. Dee focused on the view out the front window, which revealed nothing more than the jungle of flowers that was their front yard and the picket fence that contained it.

‘One person at the door,’ she said. ‘No official vehicles at the gate.’

Lizzie sat back down and tried to look calm. Dee tried to look as normal as an owl could under the circumstances. They all nodded to each other, and Mare opened the door.

‘Good morning,’ a baritone voice said. ‘You must be Moira Mariposa Fortune.’

‘What’s it to you?’ Mare snapped, but Dee’s beak dropped open. That man. The one she’d just seen posing for her in Montmartre, there in the swirling dust: she swore it was him. Tall, lithe, and dark, his sable hair just a little too long, his leather jacket a little too worn, and his battered jeans a little too tight. In short, as wicked as sin. Especially when he smiled. When he smiled he was Dennis Quaid in Daniel Day-Lewis’s body. And in her fantasy he’d been smiling at her.

‘Well, if I’m right,’ he said with a big smile at Mare, ‘it means I can stop tramping across this town like a door-to-door salesman.’

‘Then move on, Willie Loman,’ Mare said and tried to shut the door.

The guy stuck his foot in her way. ‘If you’ll just listen…’

Deed listen, all right. She’d nestle against his neck and trill in his ear. She might be the oldest virgin in North America, but she wasn’t a dead virgin. And she could swear she knew what every inch of him looked like without those clothes.

‘Good heavens,’ Lizzie whispered from behind her. ‘You’re preening.’

Good heavens, she was. Fluffing her feathers and twitching her tail and tucking her head, as if the guy standing in the door was a big barn owl.

‘Did you know you have a screech owl on your table?’ he asked Mare.

‘No,’ Mare said. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Close the door, Mare,’ Dee begged.

It came out as a descending carillon of chirps. The guy on the other side of the door lifted amazed eyebrows at her. ‘And I think she likes me.’

Leave it to her to turn into an owl in front of an ornithologist. Who else would recognize the mating call of the Eastern screech owl?

‘You think wrong,’ Mare said to him, trying to close the door. And good-bye.’

‘Good,’ Dee said, panting. ‘Get him out of here.’

It wasn’t often a man got under her skin like this. She didn’t allow it; it was too dangerous. She’d tried a few times, letting herself believe that the arousal from hormones would affect her differently than the agitation of anger or fear. She’d been wrong. She’d ended up sending two guys into therapy and another to an ashram in India. She could still hear him screaming as he ran into the night, her bra dangling from his hand after she’d shifted right there in the back seat of his Jeep. And not into anything as cute as an owl. No, she’d shifted into his mother. Just like she had with the other two guys. And she hadn’t even liked their mothers.

She’d been celibate ever since, and assured herself she was happy that way. She didn’t have a choice, after all. But for some reason, this man suddenly made her feel like a nun peering out the convent gate, longing for what she could never have.

Thank God he was leaving.

He kept his foot in the door. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Please. I’m looking for Moira Mariposa, Elizabeth Alicia, and Deirdre Dolores Fortune. I’m researching a book.’

‘Our name’s O’Brien.’ Mare stopped trying to kick his foot away. A book?’

He nodded. About Phil and Fiona Fortune. That’s your real name, isn’t it? You just took O’Brien as an alias when you moved here.’

Dee shut her eyes, suddenly sick. Oh, hell. Didn’t it just figure? She couldn’t even have a decent fantasy without it blowing up in her face.

‘No, our name really is O’Brien,’ Mare said. And we don’t know anybody named Fortune. Would we lie to you?’

‘Since I got your alias from your parents’ old commune members, I’d say that’s a yes,’ he said, perfectly calm for all the disaster he was unleashing. ‘I was hoping to at least talk to your oldest sister, Deirdre.’

‘She doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Dee chirped. ‘Get rid of him.’

Her heart was slamming against her tiny chest. Her head threatened to explode again. It wasn’t fair. They’d run so far, hidden so well. And here was the man of her dreams – well, her dust – blithely threatening to do a great big Geraldo on them.

‘Thanks,’ Mare said, ‘but no thanks. Now if you’d move your foot so I could close this door-’

He just kept smiling. ‘That’s what I was told you’d say.’

‘Really?’ Mare asked. And here I thought I was being delightfully unpredictable. Go away.’

‘Find out who told him who we are,’ Dee begged.

‘How about we start over?’ he asked, putting out a hand. ‘I’m Danny James. Like I said, I’m researching a book-’