‘Then I vote we don’t vote,’ Mare said. ‘It’s my future, and I’ll take care of it when it gets here.’
‘And just how is refusing to plan for your future going to protect you from Xan the next time she finds us?’ Dee said, goaded.
‘What makes you think we need protection from her?’ Mare said. ‘She’s our aunt. And she hasn’t come after us in years. I’m not even sure she’s the demon you make her out to be.’ Dee began to protest and Mare overrode her. And anyway, I don’t see the connection between going to college and escaping Xan. I don’t see your college degree getting you much protection or anything else except stuck in that damn bank. At least I get to watch movies.’
‘I wouldn’t be stuck in that damn bank if you’d grow up and take care of yourself-’ Dee stopped.
Oh, Dee. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said into the silence, trying to fight the sick feeling inside her. ‘Dee, I’m sorry about the bunnies and I’m sorry about the bank. I’ll get us money, I’m almost there, I’ve almost got it, I’ll get us the money and you can quit and paint fulltime, I swear-’
‘No, Lizzie, it’s all right.’ Dee patted Lizzie’s hand. She reached out to Mare and Mare pulled back. ‘Mare, I didn’t mean it, I’m fine at the bank. We’re fine. I just want you to have a future.’
‘I have a future.’ Mare focused on the muffin crumbs and they piled onto each other in lumpy parodies of muffins, little Frankencakes, misshapen and wrong.
That’s not how you make a muffin, Lizzie thought. Mare didn’t know how to make things. Making things took time and patience and thought and understanding.
Mare shook her head and let the muffins fall apart again. ‘You don’t need to work at the bank for me, Dee. I don’t want college.’
‘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.