Lizzie looked at her for a moment, astonished. ‘Finally having sex really does change everything, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘You look like a different woman.’

Mare came in from the kitchen. ‘You’re looking pretty lovestruck yourself

Mare was looking miserable. ‘What happened?’ Lizzie almost took her younger sister into her arms, then thought better of it. For one thing, Mare wasn’t into the huggy thing, for another, Lizzie really needed a shower. She was going to have to get Elric to teach her that trick about cosmic bathing.

‘I made Crash go,’ Mare said, sticking her chin up. ‘He was gotten here under false pretenses. Unlike the frog.’

‘Frog?’ Dee asked. ‘What frog?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said, very sure of herself. ‘Crash is your soul mate.’

‘Lizzie’s right, honey,’ Dee said, patting Mare. ‘He came all the way from Italy for you. What frog?’

Mare sighed. ‘Jude stopped by this morning and turned Crash into a frog, only it turned out that Jude was really a frog, so Lizzie has him in her room in a bunny cage.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Dee gave up on Mare and turned to Lizzie. ‘So where’s Elric? Don’t you think I ought to meet him?’

‘He’s cleaning up.’

‘Where?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. In Spain, for all I know. He’ll be back momentarily. In the meantime I need to take a shower.’

‘I can make toast,’ Mare said in a lousy attempt at cheering up. ‘You want me to make toast for you?’

Lizzie looked at her miserable younger sister. Mare was no longer the Queen of the Universe – she looked lost, broken. ‘Toast would be lovely,’ she said in a gentle voice. ‘I’m starving.’

By the time she got back downstairs again, fully dressed, there were three squares of burned toast on a plate, and a distinct odor of charred bread coming from the kitchen.

‘Mare got distracted,’ Dee said. ‘Maybe we should take her to the Greasy Fork…’

‘I don’t think we should leave the house.’ Lizzie sat down and reached for the toast. ‘Xan can’t get in here for a very long time, according to Elric’ She looked down at her feet. They were bare – for the first time since she could remember there were no extraneous shoes on her feet.

Naked feet, with the glowing purple butterfly tattoo to set them off. How appropriate.

‘Don’t eat that,’ Mare said. ‘It’ll kill you. I’m working on a second batch. It’ll be good. I dialed the toaster back to two again.’

Dee pushed the toast away. ‘We still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about Xan. We can’t hide out forever. And I’m hungry, too. What do we have besides… toast?’

Mare said, ‘There’s nothing in the kitchen. Nobody made muffins this morning. Maybe I’ll go make muffins-’ She started to get up.

‘Elric!’ Lizzie called. She knew the moment he’d reappeared in her tiny, wonderful bedroom. The door opened, and she sucked in her breath. He was wearing dove gray this time, and yet the colors shimmered around him.

‘Damn,’ Dee said. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘Mine,’ Lizzie said. ‘This is my older sister, Dee. Deirdre Dolores O’Brien.’

Elric crossed the room with his usual elegance, taking Dee’s hand in his. ‘Darling Dee-Dee Fortune,’ he murmured. ‘It’s an honor.’

And Dee was so dazzled she didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Call me Dee.’

‘And you’ve met my sister Mare.’

He nodded in Mare’s direction.

‘Hey, Elric,’ Mare said, still depressed. ‘I’m going to make muffins.’

‘Please don’t,’ Elric said.

And this is Elric,’ Lizzie said to Dee.

‘Elric who?’ Dee said, smiling at him, her older sister instincts clearly shot to hell by one night with Danny James. ‘Let’s see, what am I supposed to be asking here? Are your intentions honorable? Who are your people?’

Lizzie blinked, glancing at him. Had she just spent the last twenty-four hours doing really wicked things with a man and she didn’t know his last name? ‘Elric the Magnificent?’ she suggested.

Elric laughed, and shards of color split the room. Lizzie glanced at her sisters, but apparently they were immune to it. Only she could see the scattered rainbows.

‘Then you’d end up being Mrs The Magnificent,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think that suits you.’

‘You’re marrying a man you just met?’ Dee asked, sounding far less protective than usual. ‘What am I talking about? So am I. When he comes back, anyway.’

‘Of course. We’re soul mates,’ Elric said, moving up behind Lizzie and putting his hands on the back of her chair.

Lizzie looked up at him. She wanted to grab him and drag him back into the bedroom. She wanted to send her sisters away and haul him onto the dining room table, and she could see by the deep purple in his eyes that he was thinking exactly the same thing. And the libido spell had worn off at dawn.

She gave herself a mental shake. ‘I’m starving. We’re all starving. Any chance you could go out and get us a pizza?’

His luscious mouth curved in a faint smile. ‘I think that would be within my capabilities.’ He glanced at the pile of burned toast, and she belatedly realized he could simply transmute. But he could read her far too well. ‘How long do we want me to be gone?’

‘Just long enough for me to talk with my sisters. Half an hour? There’s a pizza place in town – if you walked slowly it would be perfect.’

‘You don’t want pizza from New York? Or Venice? It’s much better, I can promise you.’

‘Salem’s Fork pizza will be perfect.’ I don’t want to be too far away from you, she thought. Knowing he could read it. ‘Oh, and set the frog free while you’re out, please.’

‘Half an hour.’ He released the chair and headed toward the door.

It closed after him, and Lizzie felt suddenly bereft.

‘How does he know what kind of pizza we want?’ Dee asked.

‘He knows,’ Lizzie said. ‘So what are we going to do next? We’re safe for now, but sooner or later we’re going to have to confront Xan. We can’t spend our lives dealing with her like this.’

‘We’re not going to,’ Dee said.

‘I don’t know why you two are so pissed,’ Mare said. ‘She sent you your true loves. Look what I ended up with. Ribbit.’

‘Crash came back to town,’ Dee pointed out.

‘And left again. You know, maybe we should just split up, go our separate ways. You’re happy with Danny, or you will be as soon as you let him back in. Lizzie’s absolutely glowing…’ Mare’s words trailed off as she stared at Lizzie. ‘You really are glowing, aren’t you? Literally.’ She bit her lip. ‘That’s lovely. Good for you both.’

Lizzie was still shimmering a bit. She smiled. ‘What can I say? He’s a wizard.’

‘I bet,’ Mare said. ‘Sometime you’ll have to tell me all about it. I’ll come visit you in Toledo.’

‘Wow,’ Dee said. ‘I guess I never thought of the three of us ever being apart. I think I saw us living together, sisters to the end.’

‘Like that cheesy television show?’ Mare said. ‘Kill me now. Even they got married. I’ll be the maiden aunt, the one everybody comes to for advice.’ The smell of burning bread rolled in from the kitchen. ‘And toast.’ She got up to save the toast and then said, ‘Oh, hell,’ and waved her hand as the newest batch of charcoal floated up out of the toaster and through the doorway on its own.

‘The important thing is, we’re not letting Xan get away with it this time,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘We have to face her and tell her to stay out of our lives. Are we agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Mare said, dropping the toast on the table.

‘Agreed,’ Dee said, and they began to talk, making and discarding plans, closer than they’d ever been before.


* * *

Xan stood over the silver bowl, now rimmed with smooth river rock, the see glass like mist in the center. In it, Danny James walked the streets of Salem’s Fork, Crash Duncan strapped his bags onto his motorcycle, and Elric, Elric entered a pizza parlor. A pizza parlor.

What the hell had Lizzie done to him?

Maxine stumbled through paneling, clutching her fists to her sweat-stained waitress uniform.

‘Did you get the talismans?’ Xan said.

‘What?’ Maxine said, gulping back tears.

‘The talismans,’ Xan said. ‘One piece of silver from Danny, Elric, and Crash. For my last spell,’ she said patiently, treating Maxine like the idiot she was. ‘Did you get them?’

‘Yes, but Xantippe, please, Jude-’

‘I told you,’ Xan said with no expression. ‘Jude is of no use to me. Put the silver in the bowl.’

Maxine gulped. ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to hurt them? Are you going to change them into frogs?’

Xan closed her eyes. ‘Maxine, I need them. They’re the men my nieces love. If I change them into frogs, then my nieces won’t recognize them, will they? Give me the talismans.’

Maxine opened her shaking fists.

A silver medallion. Xan remembered Danny James wearing that.

‘He took it off to shower,’ Maxine said as Xan took it. ‘Your spell pulled it through the window to me.’

Xan dropped it into the bowl and the mist from the see glass curled around it, obscuring it as she looked at Maxine’s shaking hands for the next token.

A silver stud, an earring. Xan saw it with a shock. Elric never took that off.

‘He gave it to Lizzie,’ Maxine said. ‘It got lost in the sheets. Your spell pulled it-’

Xan grabbed the stud from her and felt it hum against her skin. He gave it to Lizzie? It had been in his family for centuries, the contact power in it was enormous, and he gave it to Lizzie?

She dropped it into the bowl as if it had bitten her and the mist curled and covered it, and Maxine handed her the last piece, a silver tie tack.