‘Pure impulse is what gets inventions invented and great thoughts thought.’

‘And young girls pregnant.’

Danny stepped closer, crowding her against the bike, and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘Haven’t you ever given in to impulse, Deirdre Dolores?’

Dee found herself grinning against her will. ‘As seldom as possible, Danny James.’

‘Well, that’s where we differ. I do nothing that’s not spawned by a walloping dose of whimsy. And my whimsy right now is telling me I need to get up that mountain. With you.’

He was so beautiful, so alive, a shock to her senses. He was magic and freedom, and she was suddenly drunk with him. And she didn’t even know what his secret was. Because he had at least one. She could smell it on him, just like that power he refused to believe he had.

He lifted a finger to trace her lower lip. ‘You really are beautiful,’ he said, his eyes hooded and compelling. ‘I wasn’t lying about that. But especially with your hair down. You should wear it down more often.’

She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Couldn’t so much as get a breath past the sudden fire in her chest.

‘Now,’ he said, fingering one of her curls like a silk ribbon, ‘I say we find out what my girl can do.’

Dee took a breath of him and lost what sense she had. ‘Which one?’

He dropped a kiss on her nose. ‘The one I named after another special lady.’ He still had hold of her hair, and was using it to draw her closer. ‘But not, I think, as special as you…’

Dee wanted to ask. She thought she did, anyway. But when she looked up into his eyes she lost herself. Blue was the hottest fire, wasn’t it? She simply couldn’t look away from him, from his hot blue eyes. The gathering dusk settled in his hair and sharpened the lines of his face. The scent of power drifted off him, setting up a resonance in her, like a tuning fork. And he was stroking her face, his work roughened fingers trailing sparks. What did a researcher do to get hands like this? What could those hands do to her?

‘Xantippe said you looked like her,’ he murmured, bending closer. ‘She was wrong. You’re so much more beautiful.’

Dee lurched back. ‘Who said I looked like her?’ He blinked, bemused. ‘What?’

But Dee’s eyes were already closed in despair. ‘You named your motorcycle after my aunt, didn’t you?’


By nine o’clock that night, Mare was depressed as all hell. Algy had not shown up for the six-thirty showing, thereby shaking Dreama’s faith in her as Queen of the Universe; William was reaching new depths in moroseness, looking so depressed that she had to keep an eye on him at all times; and Jude repeatedly told her that the New York job was hers for the taking as long as she shaped up and gave up anything that wasn’t ‘normal,’ looking at her as if he expected her to do something in return, like fall into his arms or something. On the positive side, she’d made a noon appointment at Mother’s Tattoos the next day to get the tattoo she’d lied about to Crash so she’d have a new one to show him if he talked her into taking off her clothes before he went back to Italy. But the only really cheerful thing that happened all night was that Pauline from the Greasy Fork stopped in to rent My Dinner with Andre and told her that Lizzie’s incredibly dull boyfriend, Charles Conway, had left for Alaska that afternoon. ‘Why?’ Mare said. ‘Who cares?’ Pauline answered. Since Mare was pretty sure the answer would be ‘Not Lizzie,’ she said, ‘Good point,’ and went back to work.

‘So that man who was here earlier,’ Jude said from behind her. ‘You’re not supposed to entertain friends during working hours. Was he your boyfriend?’

‘Yes… he vas… my boyfriendt!’ Mare said.

Jude looked confused.

‘Young Frankenstein,’ Mare said. ‘Cloris Leachman. It’s a classic.’

Jude still looked confused.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Mare said.

Jude looked relieved.

‘Mare!’ somebody whispered loudly, and Mare jerked to her feet and saw Dee over by the door, motioning for her.

‘Customer needs me,’ Mare said to Jude. ‘Back in a minute.’

She went over to Dee and pulled her behind the game shelf. ‘Make it quick, that blond guy in the bad green tie is a VP from the head office, and he’s stalking me. Hey, what would you think about moving to Tuscany? Lizzie would like Tuscany and so would I-’

‘Can we talk about it later?’ Dee said, looking upset.

‘Sure,’ Mare said. ‘Or I just got offered a promotion if we move to New York…’ Her voice faded as she saw that Dee’s hair was loose, a riot of coppery curls, not like Dee at all. ‘What the hell have you been doing?’

‘Nothing,’ Dee pushed her hair back and then stopped, as if she’d just realized what she must look like. ‘Do you have a rubber band?’

‘Nope, but I can fix it, although it’s a shame, it looks great like this.’ Mare tilted her head to concentrate as she began to pull the strands together at the top of Dee’s head, little blue sparks among the copper. It was like the sugar grains; the key was to think of the hairs individually and then to align them so that-

‘Stop it,’ Dee said, trying to shove her hair back into place, ‘it’s Xan.’

Mare stopped and Dee’s curls dropped back to her shoulders. ‘You saw Xan?’

‘No. Danny did. Xan sent him.’ Dee’s voice was miserable. ‘He hasn’t said so, but it’s a fact.’

‘Oh, hell,’ Mare said, feeling lousy for her. ‘Damn, I’m sorry, Dee.’

‘I think she’s close by,’ Dee said. ‘I can feel it.’

Close by, Mare thought, and her pulse kicked up a beat. Xan who really was Queen of the Universe and who could teach them how to control their powers and then… ‘Listen, she could set us free.’ And I could go to Italy. ‘She-’

‘No.’ Dee grabbed Mare’s arm. ‘She’s dangerous, Mare. She has real power, and she wants us. She’s unstoppable, so we can’t let her start.’

‘But she’s-’

‘And now I can’t find Lizzie.’ Dee sounded truly upset. ‘I left Danny as soon as I learned the truth and ran home to find her, but she wasn’t there. I’m going back out to find him and ask him where Xan is. If I can’t find out, we’ll have to run again. We’ll vote on it, but I just don’t think we have a choice. We’ll have to go.’

Oh, hell. Forget ever seeing Italy or even New York, Dee was going to bury them in another nothing little town again.

Unless something stopped her.

What would make Dee stop running?

Danny James.

Mare surveyed her sister. ‘We can’t vote until we know more about what’s going on. So I’m thinking, with your hair down like that, if you unbuttoned a couple of buttons on your blouse, Danny would probably tell you anything you wanted to know.’ She tried to unbutton Dee’s top button with her mind, but the material just puckered as the button pulled on it.

Dee slapped her hand over the button, her green eyes clouded with worry. ‘Stop it, this is serious. Xan’s tried to find us before, but this time feels different. I can feel it like that storm coming in. Can’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Mare said. ‘You wouldn’t believe what’s already come in for me. Crash is back in town.’

‘I heard. You don’t think he-’ Dee’s face changed and she said, ‘Shhhh.’

Mare turned and saw that Jude had come closer and was watching them, not even pretending to be doing something else. ‘That’s the vice president.’ She stopped, struck by a thought ‘You know, the VP turned up about the same time Danny did. You don’t suppose Xan sent him, too, do you?’

Jude cleared his throat.

Mare turned back to Dee. ‘Never mind. Xan’s a lot of things, but she’s not lame. Listen, I gotta go. The bottom line is, you have to seduce Danny to find out what’s going on. If he’s from Xan, he’s used to magic, so the whole mom-in-bed thing won’t faze him. And if it turns out that he’s just a pawn, he’ll leave and recover. Eventually.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ Dee said, her voice bleak. ‘Just keep your eyes open for Lizzie and stay away from Xan. You want an education, go to college, not to Xan.’

She headed for the exit, as sure as ever that she was right, so just as she opened the door, Mare messed up her hair, ruffling her curls in all directions, and Dee snapped around, looked enraged and really, really beautiful.

Go look like that at Danny, Mare thought, but she called, ‘Must have been the wind. Big storm brewing out there.’ Then she turned to see Jude right behind her, watching everything. ‘Yes, Jude?’

‘Was that your sister?’ he said as Mare heard the door slam behind her.

‘Yes, it was.’ Mare started to head for the counter and then stopped. ‘What makes you think that was my sister?’

‘You’re a lot alike,’ he said, meeting her eyes.

No we’re not, Mare thought. We look nothing alike. So how did you know?

Maybe Xan was that lame.

Up on the big flat screen, Victor Quartermain fired at a little gray bunny that went hurtling backward toward a white light. I know how you feel, Mare thought, and then the bunny ended up in the Bun Vac 6000 floating in rabbity ecstasy, not dead after all.

‘I love the Bun Vac,’ she said. ‘What?’ Jude said.

‘The Bun Vac 6000,’ she said, nodding at the screen. ‘You’ re vice president of a video company and you don’t know the Bun Vac?’

‘Oh, that.’ Jude polished his silver tie tack with his finger, almost a nervous twitch by now. ‘I don’t watch children’s movies.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Mare said, and turned back to the screen to watch Victor put a bunny on his head.