‘I got your message,’ Crash said as he came in. ‘Nice dress. Corpse Bride, right?’

Mare picked up the broken beanbag chair and jerked her head toward the storeroom.

‘Both of you, in there,’ she said to them. ‘Take care of the store, Dreama. The boys and I are going to have a little talk.’

When they were inside the storeroom, Mare dropped the beanbag chair on the floor, folded her arms, and said, ‘Okay, which one of you bitches is my mother?’

Jude said, ‘Huh?’ but Crash said, ‘Phoebe Cates. It’s from this bad movie she made me watch once.’

‘Lace,’ Mare said.

Jude still looked perplexed. ‘Who’s Phoebe Cates?’

Crash frowned at him. ‘You never saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High? The pool scene? Every guy knows that scene.’

‘Exactly,’ Mare said. ‘He also never saw Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Corpse Bride, Young Frankenstein, the third Indiana Jones, or Ghostbusters.’

‘Son,’ Crash said. ‘You’re in the wrong business.’

Mare leveled her eyes at Jude, who was breathing heavily now, his Adam’s apple practically palpitating, his fingers rubbing his tie tack so hard, she almost expected a genie to appear. ‘You don’t happen to know a tall, dark-haired woman in a red dress, do you? Very beautiful? Dark eyes with a red ring around the iris? Looks like she could cut you in half with them?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jude croaked.

‘The hell you don’t,’ Mare said. ‘My aunt Xan sent you, you little bastard.’

Jude shook his head, his chest heaving.

‘Back to Aunt Xan, are we?’ Crash said.

‘I have a few questions for you, too,’ Mare said to him, suddenly angrier with him than with a lying VP she didn’t care about anyway. ‘Five years you’ve been gone but all of a sudden you want to marry me. How’d that happen?’

‘It was time,’ Crash said. ‘You’re mad about that?’

‘You’ve been gone for five years,’ Mare said. ‘Why now?’

Crash shook his head. ‘I don’t know. The business is on its feet. I bought a house. We’re making money. I was tired of chasing girls.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Mare said.

Crash looked confused and more than a little annoyed. ‘This guy in Annapolis ordered a bike and it was ready to ship, and I thought, I could deliver it and see Mare again. The bike I’ve been restoring for you is finished. I looked out the door one day and thought about you standing in the sun, and I missed you so much I couldn’t breathe. It was just time.’

‘Just like that,’ Mare said, trying to ignore the ‘couldn’t breathe’ part. ‘I find your timing suspicious.’

Crash shrugged. ‘You’re the Queen of the Universe. Maybe you made it happen.’

I’m not the queen of anything,’ Mare said grimly. ‘So what did my aunt Xan tell you?’

‘Nothing,’ Crash said, definitely annoyed now. ‘I don’t know your aunt. What’s this about?’

‘I think you’re both Xan’s evil minions.’ Mare swallowed hard, appalled to realize that she was upset, almost crying upset. ‘She was always trying to get control of us, and I think she sent men after us this time, and I got a doubleheader. At least I only fell for one of you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jude said, trying for the high ground and just sounding slimy. ‘I’m offering you a promotion and the chance for great earthly power. All you have to do is stop doing anything’ – he gestured to her dress – ‘strange. It’s corporate America. We don’t do strange.’

‘And I told you, I don’t know your aunt.’ Crash straightened, his face dark now. ‘But you know me. You knew me for three years before I left Salem’s Fork, so if I was going to be an evil minion – and who the fuck talks like that anyway? – you’d have known back then. You really think I’d hurt you, do anything that would hurt you? Jesus, Mare, if you can really think that, you don’t deserve me.’

Mare’s mouth dropped open. ‘What? You’re mad at me?’

‘Hell, yes, I’m mad at you. You drag me up on that damn mountain last night, you give me some kind of dumb story about magic, we have great sex, but then you tell me there’s no spending the night because you live in a damn nunnery with your sisters, and now you’re accusing me of being a minion? Yeah, I’m mad. What did I do to-’

‘Listen, you,’ Mare said, stabbing him in the chest with her finger. ‘You left me. I loved you and you left me, for five years you left me, bleeding and alone and then you came waltzing back in, all charm and marriage proposals like I’m just gonna fall right back into you, and of course I DID-’ She blinked back tears. ‘Because I missed you so damn much, you bastard, and you did not just show up here by chance out of the blue by a wild coincidence at the exact same time that Xan sent men to Dee and Lizzie, so yes, I think you’re a minion, you rat bastard, and how dare you come back here and make fantastic love to me and minion me when I love you and trust you and love you, and-’ She smacked him on the chest, gulping back tears, and he caught her fist and shoved her away.

‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘When you get your head out of your butt, you give me a call.’ He headed for the door and she moved to block him, sticking her chin out as he loomed over her. ‘Out of my way, O’Brien.’

‘Give me one good reason to trust you!’

‘Because it’s me,’ he said, and moved her roughly aside, kicking the beanbag chair out of his path and spraying pellets everywhere as he walked out the door.

‘Well, he’s obviously not a gentleman,’ Jude said when the door had closed behind him. ‘Now about New York, I think you can go right to the top if you don’t do anything that’s not normal and give up-’

‘Shut up, Jude,’ Mare said, fury and pain making her savage. ‘You are so evil minion, it’s written all over you. You probably even have the goddamn T-shirt. Go back to the lair and push the button, Igor, or do whatever the hell it is that evil minions do when the jig is up. Just get out of my face.’

‘Huh?’ Jude said.

‘Jesus,’ Mare said, I’ve lost all respect for Xan.’ Then she went back out to the counter.

‘What happened in there?’ Dreama said. ‘Crash looked really mad.’

‘He was,’ Mare said miserably. ‘So am I.’

‘Heads are gonna roll, huh?’ Dreama said, grinning. ‘The Queen of the Universe is gonna kick some ass.’

‘I’m not the Queen of the Universe,’ Mare said, close to tears. I’m not even Queen of Value Video!! and that’s about as low as you can go.’

Dreama’s face went slack. ‘Mare!’

Mare picked up a stack of DVDs. ‘I’m going to restock these. And then I’m taking my lunch break. That okay with you?’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Dreama said, with a catch in her voice.

‘Everything,’ Mare said, and went off to shelve movies. Starting with Girls Gone Wild Cleveland.


Mare went to the Greasy Fork to pick up lunch on her way to Mother’s, threading her way through the crowd of locals and tourists. It was easy to tell them apart; the locals didn’t bat an eye when she walked in wearing her ripped blue tulle wedding dress, but the tourists all gaped. ‘Are you in a play?’ one of them asked.

‘No,’ Mare said over the tops of her heart-shaped glasses. ‘Why would you think that?’ and then moved on without waiting for an answer, heading for the register.

Pauline went past her, carrying her tray shoulder high like the pro she was. ‘There’s a lady over there in the booth, said you could sit with her.’

‘A lady?’ Mare said, turning to look at the booths. ‘I don’t know any

In the last booth, a brunette beauty with a fine-boned face and flawless skin sat looking at the menu with barely concealed distaste. Her ruby earrings and cashmere blue hoodie were drawing more glances than Mare’s blue tulle, but she didn’t seem to notice. Then she looked up and saw Mare and smiled, her red lips curving an invitation, and Mare began to walk toward her without realizing she was moving.

‘It can’t be you,’ she said, taking off her sunglasses as she reached the booth. ‘You haven’t changed. It’s been thirteen years and you haven’t changed.’

‘Diet,’ Xan said. ‘Exercise. Plastic surgery.’ She waved a languid hand. ‘Magic. Have a seat, Mare. You look beautiful.’

‘Well, blue is my color,’ Mare said, trying to get her snark back as she slid into the booth, the scent of cinnamon and sulfur taking her back to childhood. ‘I should have known you were here. They’re serving martinis here now. That had to be a sign of the apocalypse.’

Xan closed her eyes for a moment.

‘So you sent guys after us and now you’re here in person,’ Mare said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Guys?’ Xan said innocently, but the red flash in her heavy-lidded eyes was just like old times, and the red ring around the black iris said Xan was cooking, magic at work.

‘Danny,’ Mare said. ‘Jude. Eldred.’

‘Elric’

‘Exactly,’ Mare said. ‘You sent them.’

Xan laughed, the lovely, liquid musical laugh that Mare had tried to emulate as a child, only to have Dee yell at her for sucking the helium out of her balloons. ‘Just trying to get back in touch, darling. Bring the family together again.’

‘How sweet,’ Mare said. ‘But you know how the holidays are with families who eat their young. So that would be no.’ She looked closer at what Xan was wearing. ‘Is that cashmere?’

‘Yes,’ Xan said, and peeled it off, shaking out her hair so that it fell over the white silk tank top she wore underneath.