‘He was packing-’

‘I don’t care.’ Xan said and threw it into the bowl where the mist covered it. Elric had given an heirloom to Lizzie, to Lizzie, she’d known the girl was his true love, but he’d given her power, he’d given her-’

The mist rose up in arabesques, stone gray this time, and the river rock rose, too, and became the Big Bocks up on Salem’s Mountain.

Xan shook her head and waved her hand through the mist, curling her fingers in a summoning gesture until the arabesques coiled about her hand in response. ‘Like to like, silver draws you,’ she whispered, ‘like to like, silver keeps you, there to stay, till I release you, so I say, so be it.’ She blew on the mist and there below in the see glass she saw Danny James stumble into the circle and look around confused, and then Elric appear and look up at her, enraged, and then…

Nothing.

Where the hell was Crash Duncan?

‘Oh,’ Maxine said, looking into the glass. ‘Oh, no.’

‘Maxine?’

Maxine stepped back, visibly upset. ‘Well, I’ll just be going then.’

Xan narrowed her eyes.

‘Lunchtime,’ Maxine said, sidling toward the paneling.

‘Maxine, that tie tack you gave me. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Mr Duncan wearing a tie.’

Maxine froze. ‘Just give Jude one more chance,’ she whispered.

Xan looked down at the stone circle more closely. Danny James, Elric, and… ‘Oh, for the love of-’ She put her head in her hands. ‘Now I have to get this Crash lout out of town before I can get this charade over with since he’s not in the circle, is he, Maxine?’

‘No,’ Maxine cried. ‘But I love Jude, Xantippe. I had to save him.’

Xan turned cold eyes on her. ‘You love him, do you?’ Maxine lifted her chin. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then you should be with him,’ Xan said, and waited for hope to dawn in Maxine’s eyes before she waved her hand.

A minute later, a frog croaked its distress behind the Dumpster of the Greasy Fork. And then sneezed.

‘I should have done that a long time ago,’ Xan said and then made her plans. She had the men, or most of them, now all she had to do was get rid of the loose ends – Maxine was gone, Crash Duncan would be soon – invite the girls to the mountain, take their powers, leave them to their tawdry true loves – Mare would need an aquarium – and everybody would be happy.

Unless they resisted and she had to kill them.

‘Well, they were the ones who made this difficult,’ she said to the figures in the see glass and went to change for her last trip to Salem’s Fork.


The wind was growing stronger outside the house, and Lizzie could hear the sound of their neighbor’s garbage cans being tossed down the street. All the lights were on in the house, but an odd shadow remained, maybe just the manifestation of Mare’s unhappiness. The computer in the corner was in sleep mode, and Lizzie was half tempted to give it a knock so that the flying toasters on the screensaver would vanish, but she left it alone. She needed food.

‘That computer is taunting me,’ Mare said, watching the toast on the screen.

Dee glanced at her watch again, and frowned. ‘I thought Danny would be back by now.’

‘Danny? What about Elric and the pizza?’ Mare said. ‘I’m starving.’

The shadows gnawing away at Lizzie weren’t from Mare’s grief after all, she realized suddenly. Things weren’t right. Elric should have been back, even if he’d allowed them a little extra time for the sake of delicacy. Not that Elric was particularly delicate, though he could be, in the most delicious ways. And he could be quite indelicate, as well…

The sudden beep of the computer stopped her cold as the screen came to life. No flying toasters, no welcome screen. It was black, not the usual steel gray of a hibernating monitor, dead black, and then a cream colored dot spun itself into a square-shaped invitation with a sepia-toned script font:

You are cordially invited to

a Fortune Family Reunion

on the Mountaintop at Twilight

at the Great Big Rock

to meet your lovers or lose them forever…

‘She’s got Danny!’ Dee said, furious.

‘She’s got Elric,’ Lizzie said, astonished.

‘She’s got Crash,’ Mare said, panicked, and then she stopped and scowled. ‘Oh, hell, no she doesn’t, she’s probably got the frog. Well, she can have him. Maybe she likes frogs’ legs.’ She realized her sisters were looking at her. ‘Kidding. I’ll save the frog. What are we going to do?’

‘Whatever it is, we’re doing it together,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘We’ve got five hours to come up with a plan.’

‘Xan’s very powerful,’ Dee warned. ‘We can’t underestimate her’

‘She’s powerful on her own,’ Lizzie said. ‘But she’s nothing compared to the three of us put together. This time she’s gone too far’

‘Yeah,’ Mare said. ‘Who steals my frog steals trash.’

Lizzie turned steely eyes on her and Mare said, ‘Hey, I’m on it. This bitch screwed up my life forever, and for that alone I’d go after her, but she’s taken the two men who made my sisters happy, so this chick is toast.’ She held up the charcoal square on her plate. ‘And we all know what happens to toast in this house.’

Lizzie nodded solemnly. ‘So we get the toaster from hell…’

Mare started to laugh, and Lizzie did, too, and then Dee got a gleam in her eye, and leaned forward.

‘Maybe not toast,’ she said. ‘But I like the ‘kitchen from hell’ part. Let’s put that bitch where she belongs.’


Crash took the after noon to finish up the last of his American business, pack, and talk to his partner about the

Annapolis delivery for the Moto Guzzi, but when it came time to go, he couldn’t leave Salem’s Fork, not without Mare. All right, so there were some new wrinkles in the relationship, the magic thing was still giving him headaches, he’d been a frog, for Christ’s sake, and there was that love spell mess, but at the end of the day, she was Mare, and he loved her, and he’d sworn to never leave her again, and he wasn’t going to. So he’d spend the extra week and she’d see he still loved her…

What if he spent the extra week and he didn’t love her? It had taken him five years to come back for her. What if she was right?

Clueless about what to do next, he went to the Greasy Fork. It was packed because the service was slow – one of the waitresses had disappeared and the place was buzzing with gossip about it – but then a booth miraculously opened up even though the people had just sat down – ‘Forgot my wallet,’ the guy told Crash, bemused – and Crash told Pauline to bring him the usual.

‘Could you be more specific?’ she said, and he looked up in surprise, but when she glared back, he told her.

Fuck, not even Pauline could remember him.

When his burger and fries were gone, and he was trying to drown his sorrows in his milkshake, Pauline came back with the check.

‘So what’s with you?’ she said, cracking her gum.

‘What’s with you and the gum?’ he said, feeling hostile. ‘You never did that before.’

Pauline stopped cracking. ‘You look like you lost your best friend.’

‘I did. Mare dumped me.’

Pauline nodded. ‘Eh, it’s for the best. She really wasn’t the Italian type. Good-looking guy like you, it’s too soon for you to settle down. Go back to Italy. Play the field. I hear they got a lot of fields there.’

‘No, it’s not for the best,’ Crash said, annoyed. ‘I’m ready to settle down and I always knew I’d settle down with Mare. And she’d have loved Italy. And Italy would have loved her’ And what the fuck’s with you, Pauline?

‘You’re telling me you’re ready to get married. Ha.’ Pauline cracked her gum again. ‘With all the lookers in the world, you’re gonna give all that up for one woman you probably haven’t even thought about for five years.’

‘The hell I haven’t,’ Crash said.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ Pauline said. ‘She doesn’t want you. You think she hasn’t been dating and screwing around? I can tell you, she has.’

Crash winced. Then something bumped into the window and he saw a butterfly fluttering there, a big blue one with round wings, staring back at him. Belligerent, aren’t you? he thought. It looked like the kind of butterfly that probably beat up the other butterflies. In fact, it looked exactly like Mare’s butch butterfly, tilted above Mare’s beautiful round butt. ‘Well, why shouldn’t she have?’ he told Pauline, as the butterfly shoved off and disappeared. ‘I did, too. We lived our lives. We learned things. Now we’re going to learn things with each other. We’re ready. No regrets.’

Pauline cracked her gum. ‘Yeah, you look ready.’

‘She wants me.’ Crash pushed the milkshake away. I’m the one she loves, damn it, she said so.’

‘You just don’t love her,’ Pauline said. ‘Well, them’s the breaks. You should go back to Italy.’

‘Not without Mare.’

‘You’re just being stubborn.’ Pauline began to clear the table as Crash got out his wallet to pay the check. ‘You haven’t thought about her in five years, so why-’

The picture of Mare’s Florett fluttered out of his wallet, looped a loop, and landed face up on the table.

‘The hell I haven’t.’ Crash picked up the picture. ‘Look at this. I’ve been looking for the parts for this bike for three years…’

He stopped, realizing what he was saying.

‘Three years,’ he told Pauline, jabbing the photo at her. ‘I’ve been planning on coming back for her for three years. I’ve always meant to come back for her. I’m just slow.’ He looked at the bike. And stupid,’ he added to be fair. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t love-’ He looked up at Pauline and for the first time noticed the red glint in her eyes. And the red ring around her iris.