He’s not coming back for you, she told herself sternly, but her heart said, He’s coming back for me.
“Send him away,” Dee said. “This is not the time or the place for civilians,” and Mare slowed as Crash rounded the final turn to the top, narrowly missing a frog that was hopping along the roadside. The frog sneezed.
“This is so not the time for us to discuss the relationship,” she told him as he parked his bike, but she sighed in spite of herself, he looked so good standing in front of her again.
He took off his helmet. “Your aunt is at the Greasy Fork. I think she’s possessed Pauline.”
“Really,” Mare said, smiling at the thought of Xan slinging hash at the Fork. “Well, she hasn’t possessed Pauline. Pauline’s in Baltimore with William. They ran off together after William’s dinner break in the middle of the libido spell. He quit his job at Value Video!! so they tried to make me manager this afternoon, but I’m busy with the whole Antichrist thing so they offered it to Dreama. She’s the youngest manager in the history of the company.” Mare knew she was babbling, but he was right there, with her, and it was all she could do not to reach out and pat him because he was right there.
I love you, she thought. I have to go do something horrible to my aunt and I’ll probably die, but I love you.
“Okay,” Crash said. “So who’s at the Greasy Fork?”
“Probably Xan, shapeshifting. What did she want?”
“Me, back in Italy. But I’m not going without you.” Crash got off his bike. “So what are we doing here?”
“Mare!” Lizzie called from the top of the path.
“Just a minute,” she called up. “This is new.” She looked back at him. “I can’t talk now. Xan has grabbed Danny and Elric for some kind of Evil Overlord plan and we have to turn her into a geranium. But if we survive this, her power will be broken, and then if you still love me without her spell—”
“You’re kidding,” Crash said.
“Which part?”
“The geranium,” Crash said.
“Oh, no, we have to turn her into something powerless, and Dee said if Xan likes red that much, she could go be a geranium on the kitchen windowsill in Hell. Dee’s really had it with Xan this time, and a geranium’s as good as anything else.”
Crash nodded, looking lost but prepared to follow anyway. “You really can turn her into a geranium?”
“I can’t, but Lizzie can if she has enough power, so if Dee and I channel what we’ve got into Lizzie, then Lizzie can turn Xan into a potted plant, and that should break whatever spell she has on Danny and Elric up there, and we can all go home for dinner, and then you and I can talk about living happily ever after in Italy, which we might actually have a shot at if we can turn Xan into a geranium. Or something equally nonlethal. And sedentary. And if you still love me when Xan’s power is gone.” Mare drew in a deep breath.
“Okay,” Crash said, and she couldn’t stand it any more and leaned in and kissed him, loving the taste of him and the heat of his mouth, so glad to see him that the pebbles on the path rose up and swirled around them, and then he put his hands on her arms and kissed her back and some boulders shifted.
“Mare,” Dee said, from the top of the path.
“I have to go,” Mare said, dizzy with love. “My aunt the Antichrist is up there. She’s probably going to kill us all.”
“And your plan is to turn her into a geranium,” Crash said, breathless. “Okay, if you’re up there, I’m up there.” He started up the path.
“Not a good idea,” Mare said, and followed him.
“No civilians,” Lizzie said when he reached them, but she didn’t stop climbing.
“I’m marrying in,” Crash said, not stopping, either.
“Not if you get fried by a stray bolt of something,” Dee said, as they reached the top. “You have no powers to protect you.”
“And they do?” Crash nodded over to the stone circle where Danny and Elric were sitting on the Great Big Rock, Danny looking bemused, Elric looking murderous.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Dee said.
“’Bout time you got here,” Danny called to Dee. “Okay, Elric and I slept with you and Lizzie, we know what we’re in for. But what did the frog do?” He jerked his thumb at a frog on the edge of the rock.
“Hey, Jude,” Crash said.
The other frog they’d seen sneezing on the path had made it to the top of the mountain and now was hopping frantically across the green toward the circle, as Dee said, “Crash, I’m sorry, but you have to go. You’re going to get hurt.”
“No,” Crash said.
“Give it up,” Lizzie said to Dee. “Neither one of them can take an order. I say he’s part of the family and he stays. Now, has anybody seen Xan? Because if not, this is going to be the biggest anticlimax—”
The setting sun hit the Great Big Rock, and Xan appeared from behind it, clad in a long white dress, looking spectacular with her dark hair flowing across her shoulders.
“Nice entrance,” Mare said.
“Overdone,” Dee said.
“Well, natural light is tricky,” Lizzie said fairly.
“Especially at her age,” Elric said from inside the circle.
Xan’s face darkened.
“Does not take criticism well,” Mare said primly. “Needs to improve.”
“And she’s wearing white?” Dee said. “Who is she kidding?”
Lightning split the sky behind Xan, lighting up the circle with fluorescent clarity, tinting the rocks with a bloodred glow.
“Did she do that?” Crash whispered to Mare.
“The lightning, no,” Mare whispered back. “The red light, probably. That’s just high school stuff for her. The real magic is keeping the guys in the circle. If we can distract her, they can get out.”
“Like if I went and got my bike and rode it straight at her?”
“I’d get you a very nice wreath and put flowers on your grave every Sunday.”
“So, Plan B,” Crash said.
Dee stepped forward. “Let the guys go, Xan. They’re not part of this. You can keep the frog if you want.”
Jude croaked and the other frog croaked, too, and then sneezed.
“Of course they’re part of this,” Xan said, sounding exasperated. “I brought them into this. It’s a trade. I brought you True Love—”
“Thanks for the amphibian,” Mare said, scowling.
“Do you know how rare True Love is?” Xan said to Dee. “And I found yours for you. And Lizzie.” She lifted her head and looked past Dee to Lizzie. “You think you’d ever have gone to Toledo and found Elric? It would never have happened. Without me, you never—”
“Yo,” Mare said. “About the frog.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Xan said to her. “I made a mistake. Sue me. You got your mechanic. Stop complaining.”
“I’m not complaining about the mechanic,” Mare said. “I’m pissed about the frog.”
“And what are we supposed to give you in return?” Dee said.
Xan smiled. “Your powers, of course.”
Dee looked exasperated. “Our powers. Of course.”
“Well, you’re not using them,” Xan said, her voice full of reason. “You don’t even like yours, Dee, you’re inconvenienced by it, and I can set you free. And Lizzie, well, poor Lizzie can’t control hers, Elric was ready to take it from her just because of the damage she was doing to the universe, like a baby with a flamethrower. And Mare …” Xan turned and smiled at Mare. “Mare doesn’t have enough power to worry about controlling it. She’d rather sell videos and make babies with a mechanic—”
“I don’t like her,” Crash said.
“—except that she can’t do that for fear the villagers will burn her at the stake if she goes to the backwoods of Italy and moves something while she’s screaming, ‘yes Yes YES!’ So really, girls, I think I’m making you an excellent offer. I’m giving you the loves of your lives and freedom from powers you don’t even want. I’m
doing you a favor—”
“Well, color us grateful,” Dee said flatly. “Sadly, we’re just going to have to say no. Let them go.”
“That’s so like you,” Xan said, drifting closer. “Making all the decisions, not even consulting your sisters.”
“Oh, we’re with her on that,” Mare said, moving to stand beside Dee, sandwiching Lizzie in the middle. “We want our powers. And our lives. We’re selfish like that.”
“Yep,” Lizzie said. “Let ’em go.”
Xan sighed, and opened her arms, the long sleeves of her white dress flowing like bat wings. “Fine. Then we’ll do it the hard way.”
“Like there was ever any other way,” Lizzie muttered and took her sisters’ hands.
“Maybe we should have been practicing this,” Mare whispered, praying this was going to work. “Like for thirteen years. Plan ahead.”
“Stop it,” Dee said. “Strong thoughts. Positive thinking.”
I’m positive we’re going to get our asses kicked, Mare thought and looked at her sisters’ faces, stern and determined as they faced Xan. Well, hell, she’d be stem if Crash were in that damn stone circle, too. She’d be homicidal. “Right. Strong thoughts, positive thinking. Don’t cross the streams.” And then she concentrated on giving Lizzie everything she had.
In her peripheral vision, she could see Xan turn and raise her arms as if to smite the men in the circle, and there was something wrong about that, too theatrical, too Disney witch by far, but Mare couldn’t do anything about it now. She bowed her head, touched her forehead to Lizzie’s shoulder to create a deeper contact, and felt the power start to flow. She heard Lizzie draw in a deep breath and breathed with her, felt blue mist flow into lavender smoke and twine with green, the colors making a watery rope that grew stronger as they twisted together, more powerful because there were three, and a part of her sent a silent apology for all the times she’d sneered at the TV for that power-of-three chant. Around them lightning crackled and then Lizzie raised her head, focused on Xan, and lifted her arms, encircled, and before them Xan wavered, and began to shift, elongating into a green stem, her head blossoming into bright red petals while her face grew slack with shock.
She snarled, “A geranium?” and then Mare rocked as talons raked at her mind, red claws cutting through the rope of their powers, smearing the colors into grays, Lizzie screaming as red mist filled the air, and then she realized she was screaming, too, and Crash hit her hard, knocking her to the ground, cutting the connection to Lizzie and to Dee and to Xan, who’d been raping their gifts, leaving her mind savaged and bloody, Lizzie weeping on the ground, and somewhere in that red mist Dee shrieking, and Xan rising up before them …
Dee felt the hit of energy like an explosion. The geranium was gone, and Xan had turned. All Dee could see was dark red. Old bloodred. She was shaking hard with the energy she’d expended, holding on by her fingertips to Lizzie, and she knew it had all gone wrong. The flow reversed. The rope of their powers tangled and snapped, a living thing that whipped back at them like a live wire. Lizzie screamed and Dee tried to pull her free, but she couldn’t manage it; she couldn’t see. All she could feel was that terrible shriek of energy shattering around them, and then she was on her ass, the connection broken.
She scrambled up, thinking it was Xan, but it was Crash who’d hit them, knocking them around like bowling pins and snapping the connection and saving them. But they were separated now, to be picked off at Xan’s leisure. Lizzie was weeping, and the men were shouting from the circle, Danny yelling, “Now Dee! Now!”
Now.
It was an instant, and it was filled with rage, with the weight of the accumulated years, with the liquid crimson viscera of Xan’s avarice that collected and solidified and grew. Suddenly out of the bloodred mist a dragon rose, black and skeletal and stinking—Xan, her mouth open in a scream of fury. Her eyes glittered crimson. Her neck arched, snakelike, as she reared up to strike Lizzie where she lay helpless on the ground, and Dee thought, Yes, Danny, now, and she let her rage gather, coalesce, compress into form and light and fury, and she rose off the ground herself, there off the dust of defeat where her sisters were still in danger, where Xan wanted to leave them crushed and empty and bloody, and Dee could finally call on every ounce of her power and know that her sisters would help her to finally, finally call that bitch to task. She rose right up, her cells swelling, the light so hot it blinded her in the red mist that suddenly sparked green. She opened her mouth and filled her lungs and shrieked, a terrible bone-chilling cry she’d never heard before, greater than a hawk’s, more awful than any predator she’d ever been or hoped to be, a magnificent full-throated war cry the kind that she’d wanted to let loose her whole life, and she stretched out her hands, but they weren’t hands, and she was the one reaching now, because she was going to impale herself on that fearsome neck, she was going to rip out that snakelike neck that rose above her. The red mist had been swallowed by green fog, but she could see. She could see Xan and she was finally going to have her …
Lizzie stood frozen, staring up as the huge black dragon reared overhead, bearing down on her, lethal, merciless, and then it was engulfed in a cloud of green fog as Dee attacked.
Oh, God, not an owl, Lizzie thought, horrified. They were all going to die. But then Dee speared upward, out of the thick fog, and even in the darkness of the storm, her green and gold scales glittered brilliantly. She had outdone herself—a magnificent Chinese dragon, soaring through the air, flying straight at the black and red Xan beast with a shriek of rage. For a moment, the older dragon wavered, and little Py leaped beneath them both, aiming for Xan’s huge black tail with the same determination he’d shown for Lizzie’s bunnies, the ballsiest house cat in Salem’s Fork.
With a scream, the black dragon fell back beneath Dee’s fierce onslaught, howling into the wind with rage and pain, and red mist flew upward like a tornado. The creature within it began to shift again, narrowing, changing, pulsing, until a huge snake remained, black, malevolent, only Xan’s glowing red eyes left with any trace of humanity, all of it bad.
“Lizzie!” Mare cried. “Do something!”
She wanted to hide. All her power, her self-assurance seemed to have vanished, and she was terrified, helpless. Her sisters were going to die, Elric was going to die, unless she did something. And then she felt it—the power rumbling against her heart, the amethyst pendant burning, and the strength flowing through her, not just her own, but Mare’s, Dee’s, Elric’s, all the power of the universe was surging through her veins, so strong that if she threw a transformation spell it would hit Dee, as well, turning her into a frail human who’d never survive. She tried to move, to get between the two massive combatants, one so ugly, one so beautiful, but the lightning was flashing all around them, and even as she finally slipped between them the snake focused on her, rearing its huge head to strike.
“Lizzie!” She heard Elric’s furious cry of warning, and it pulled the last bit of energy through her, enough so that she looked up, arched her back, and threw the spell upward, directly in the face of the snake, as purple smoke exploded around them.
Mare saw Xan draw back to spit poison at Lizzie and lunged to drag her away, but a huge violet crack of lightning split the sky and purple smoke rolled up, gushing over the landscape. Mare screamed, “Lizzie!” and crawled toward where she’d last seen her, hearing Crash yell and then a roaring, and then the rain began to fall, beating down the smoke. As it cleared, Mare saw Lizzie standing like a warrior queen, her arms encircled; and beyond her Dee, human again, sitting naked on her butt in the mud; and beyond her, Crash eyeing a large tiger who looked as confused as he was; and beyond them, Maxine, naked, too, looking startled and guilty as all hell; and in front of all of them, a giant gold snake, frozen in the attack position, glistening in the violet rain.
“Huh.” Mare looked up at Lizzie, and then at the giant gold snake, and then back at Lizzie. “Finally got that gold thing down, did you?”
Li
zzie took a deep breath and smiled and dropped her arms. “Yes. Yes, I did. Told you I could do it.”
Danny and Elric walked out of the stone circle, staring at the giant gold snake, even Elric speechless for once, the frog hopping behind them, while Maxine followed, looking lost.
“She looks like a giant war memorial,” Danny said as he picked up Dee’s silk dress and helped her slip it on.
“Yes,” Elric said. “If the war was really strange, and the victors were really rich.”
“Maybe we should make a nice plaque to commemorate the event.” Mare shoved her wet hair out of her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around it all. “With something from the Evil Overlord Rules. Like Rule Thirty-four: ‘I will not turn into a giant snake; it never helps.’” She looked at Maxine. “Hi, Maxine. So, you were a frog?”
Maxine picked up Jude. “Yes,” she said defiantly, cradling him in her hands, trying to pretend she wasn’t naked.
“Okay, then,” Mare said and turned back to Crash, who’d come up beside her, keeping an eye on the tiger.
“She tried to take your powers,” Elric said, his arms around Lizzie, as he stared up at the snake. “That’s why she wanted you all up here united to save us. She wanted your powers bound together so she could take them all.”
“Bitch.” Dee dusted off her hands.
Py gave up staring at Crash and came up and rubbed his huge, wet, furry tiger head against Mare’s leg. “Hello, baby,” she said, scratching him behind the ears. “Do you feel better back to normal? Kind of normal?”
“So it’s over?” Lizzie said, safe in the circle of Elric’s arms.
“Yep,” Mare said, letting her skirt drop. “You and Dee saved the day, all by yourselves. Unless you want me to turn Xan to face the east, I got nothin’ here. And she’d hate facing the east, you know how she stayed out of the sun.”
Dee and Lizzie looked at each other.
“Yes, it would be a nice punishment,” Mare said, exasperated. “But I lied, I can’t turn her to face the east, either. I’m not much good at heavy lifting. I’m not much good at anything.” She looked at Crash, and took a deep breath. “So the woman who put the True Love spell on you? She’s got no power, that spell is broken, you can leave now.”
Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, The Page 33