The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

by Jennifer Crusie

  ‘Her? It’s probably Charles,’ she said, resigned.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He had an oddly smug expression on his face. ‘Hurry up. I’m getting bored.’

  ‘You can always leave,’ she pointed out, heading for the door.

  It was Maxine from the diner, odd enough in itself, odder still because Maxine seemed to be twitching with nerves. ‘Hi, Lizzie,’ she said. And then she sneezed. ‘You’ll never guess what I’m here for.’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Lizzie said faintly. She glanced behind her. She could just manage to see Elric’s shimmering outline. A definite advance from earlier in the day, she thought.

  I’m collecting for the Salem’s Fork Wetlands Project. We’re… er… planning an auction, and we’re looking for donations.’ She stumbled over the words, as if she’d memorized them.

  Lizzie just looked at her. ‘I didn’t know Salem’s Fork had any wetlands.’

  ‘That’s an amethyst, isn’t it?’ Maxine said, her beady eyes focusing in on the pendant. ‘It’s new, right? You could donate that – I bet it would bring in a lot of money. And think of the poor frogs and salamanders.’

  Instinctively, Lizzie wrapped her hand over the amethyst, shielding it from Maxine’s eyes, and it pulsed in her hand. ‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Maxine. Maybe Dee could write you a check-’

  ‘Don’t tell Dee!’ Maxine said, clearly worried. ‘I’ve never seen you wear jewelry before, wouldn’t you rather donate it-’

  The door slammed in her face, and there was an audible click. Lizzie reached for the doorknob, but it was hot to the touch, and Elric was standing behind her shoulder, looking bored.

  ‘Sorry, Maxine,’ she shouted through the door. ‘The wind must have blown it shut. Come back tomorrow and we’ll give you a check.’

  ‘But I can’t…’ There was sudden silence on the other side of the door.

  She whirled around to face Elric. ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘Sent her back to work. Which is what we need to do. Come along. I’m not in the mood for any more interruptions.’

  He motioned her into the workshop. ‘This is a fairly simple array.’ He began to draw a circular design on the rough wooden floor there. ‘Just enough to help focus the energy. When you get better at this you’ll probably tweak it a bit, find one that works better for you. There are thousands of variations, carried down through history – you’re bound to find one that’s just right for you.’

  She looked at him, doubtful. It was late, and the wind outside was growing stronger. She could hear the creak of the branches overhead, the occasional rattle of the windows as a gust swept through. She’d spent the entire day listening to him, and she should have been tired and bored and restless. And in fact she was restless, though she couldn’t figure out why. Even Mare had been an intrusion, somebody to be gotten out of the way. Something was building inside her, in concert with the coming storm, and she kept thinking her life was about to change.

  Of course it was. Elric was showing her the secrets of the gift she’d struggled with so long, hated for so long, and she soaked up every word with rapt attention, mesmerized by the sound of his deep voice and his magical words.

  They’d been at it for hours, with only a couple of breaks for food and tea. She’d offered him wine, but he’d taken one look at the ordinary chardonnay Dee kept and shook his head. ‘Working with a gift like ours is tricky enough without throwing alcohol or drugs into the mix. If I were you I wouldn’t touch anything for at least five years, until you’re a master at transmutation.’

  ‘Five years without a drink?’ she’d replied. ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  In fact it wasn’t. Beer gave her a headache, wine upset her stomach, and the harder stuff made her shudder. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘Next you’ll be telling me I have to be celibate, as well,’ she shot back. Then strongly regretted it. Mentioning sex in his presence had the most unsettling effect. She glanced around to see whether any untoward shoes had popped up, but for once she was spared.

  He pushed his long, dark blond hair away from his beautiful face, and the silver stud glittered. ‘It all depends. Sleeping with someone like your fiancé will dull your gifts. Eventually they’d disappear altogether.’

  Her instincts had been right about that. Every time she was around Charles, the shards of magic faded, leaving her safe and quiet and dull. ‘Isn’t that what you’d like?’ she said. ‘Since you say I’m so dangerous?’

  He looked at her, considering. ‘It would be a loss,’ he said finally. ‘You have more talent than I’ve seen in decades, and it would be a shame to waste it. Particularly on an oaf like your fiancé.’

  ‘Decades?’ she echoed, amused. ‘I doubt you were that aware when you were a kid.’

  ‘In fact I was very aware as a child, but I’m older than you think.’

  ‘How old are you?’ He couldn’t be much over thirty-five, though she would have guessed closer to thirty.

  ‘Older,’ he said in a voice that allowed no further discussion. ‘Are we going to do this or are you going to throw everything away on true love?’

  He sounded annoyed by the notion. Was it simply that she’d be wasting her talents, or something else? That had to be some bizarre streak of wishful thinking on her part.

  ‘Don’t you think true love is worth risking everything for?’

  ‘It depends on how you define it,’ he said. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and his long hair was rumpled. He should have looked more approachable. In fact, the more human he appeared, the more nervous it made her, and she wasn’t sure why.

  ‘I bet you don’t even believe in true love.’

  ‘To quote the Queen of Hearts, I try to believe in six impossible things before breakfast every day. Are we going to do this or are you going to keep talking?’

  ‘We’re going to do this,’ she said, eyeing the chalk circle doubtfully.

  ‘You’ll need to take off those shoes.’ At some point her espadrilles had been replaced by black patent Mary Janes, an odd look beneath her jeans, but then, she was used to having strange things on her feet. She kicked them off and under the workbench.

  ‘Socks, too,’ he said. ‘Your body needs to be in contact with the circle.’

  She peeled off the white socks with the lace trim, grumbling under her breath, and then stepped into the middle of the circle. Immediately the pendant went into hyperdrive, thrumming against her heart.

  She met his dark eyes for a moment, startled, and he nodded. ‘Very good. You’re even more receptive than I thought. This would work better if you were naked, but I’m assuming I can’t talk you into that. At least, not yet.’

  ‘Not in this lifetime,’ she said, half expecting him to mock her on that blanket statement. His silence was even more challenging.

  He picked up one of her shoes and set it on the wooden workbench, in the center of the smaller circle he’d drawn there. ‘This should be easy enough to start with – it’s already been transmuted once, and I can still feel the energy. What do you want to turn it into?’

  ‘Gold,’ she said promptly.

  ‘Don’t be so single-minded,’ he chided her. ‘The first time you ski you don’t go down a double black diamond run, the first time you sail you don’t head across the ocean. Try something small.’

  ‘A diamond?’ she suggested, ever hopeful.

  ‘Go for something you’d wear,’ he said patiently. ‘Just a small transmutation, nothing drastic. You’ll learn by small steps.’

  ‘I’m going to have to learn fast if you’re only going to be here three days.’

  ‘You’ll learn. Close your eyes.’

  That was the last thing she wanted to do. Standing barefoot in a circle with her eyes closed made her feel too vulnerable. But the longer she hesitated, the longer it would take, so she dutifully closed her eyes.

  ‘Relax. You’re tight as a spring. I’m not goi
ng to tickle you.’

  Her eyes shot open again. ‘You’re not going to touch me,’ she said, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a warning or a question.

  He didn’t respond. ‘Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax all your muscles.’

  Easier said than done. She exhaled, letting the pent-up breath out, and tried to release the tension that was knotting her muscles. She rolled her shoulders, shook her hands, and tried to concentrate on the single black patent shoe.

  Of course nothing happened. ‘Maybe you need some wine after all,’ Elric muttered. ‘Are you always this tense?’

  In fact, she wasn’t. She liked life to be peaceful, easy, and she went out of her way to make sure things went smoothly. He jangled her, unnerved her, made her jittery and upset in ways she didn’t even begin to understand. Or didn’t want to.

  I’m trying,’ she said. ‘I just…’

  ‘What was that?’ Elric froze.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘You haven’t learned to listen properly. Someone’s in your bedroom.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why would someone…’ Elric had already moved past her, not touching her, shoving the door open.

  A blond man in a charcoal suit and a hideous green tie stood there, rummaging through her underwear.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said.

  His eyes narrowed as he stared at her neck, and then he dove at her.

  Instinctively her hands came up, knocking him away, and then he was gone, vanished in a puff of purple smoke.

  ‘Jesus, Lizzie,’ Elric muttered, picking up a small, noisy frog from the floor. ‘You really read too many fairy tales.’ He opened the window and dropped the frog outside, and in the distance they could hear an anguished screech.

  ‘At least this time I didn’t cross elemental boundaries.’ She peered out into the darkness. ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘I expect so. He should regain his natural form in a few hours. Unless your sister turns into an owl again and offs him. The question is, what was he after and who put him up to it?’

  ‘He was looking at the amethyst. Like Maxine.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ Elric murmured. ‘I may have to make a few calls. But in the meantime we have to concentrate on you. Back to the workshop.’

  She followed him, her hand still cradling the stone. ‘You’ve been trying too hard,’ he said, closing and locking the workshop door behind them. ‘Hold on a second.’ He pulled off his shoes and socks, and even though she knew what was coming, her body froze into a block of ice as he stepped inside the very small circle with her.

  He circled his arms around her, pulling her back against his body, and ice met fire, melting, against her will. He, however, seemed supremely unaware of the effect he was having on her. Odd, because he’d seemed so intuitive before.

  ‘This is another way of making an array,’ he said, his voice calm in her ear. ‘When you get really good you won’t need one at all, you can simply visualize it. In the meantime, if you simply put your arms in a circle it can do the trick.’ He pulled her arms up, wrapping them around his as they formed a circle in front of them. ‘Now relax, and think about nothing.’

  ‘I… I can’t.’ He was so hot, vibrating with energy just as her pendant was vibrating. She felt trapped in his arms, assaulted, warmed, aroused, blood coursing through her in response, and she knew, with awful certainty, just where her dreams had been coming from. That same powerful, erotic intensity was flowing through her, from the man who surrounded her.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he whispered, and his breath smelled like the peach and raspberry tea she’d given him. She loved peach and raspberry tea, she loved…

  ‘There you go,’ he said, and her eyes flew open. A plume of lavender mist hung over the workbench, and a pile of shimmering gold silk lay on the rough surface in place of the shoe. ‘You do have a thing for gold, don’t you? It’s the wrong color for you.’

  He’d released her, stepping back, and she put out her hand to touch the fabric, watching in fascination as the color deepened, shifted, moved like a living thing until it settled into a deep rich purple.

  She looked back at him. ‘Did I do that?’

  He shook his head. ‘You made it. I fixed the color.’

  She picked it up, letting the silken fabric slide through her fingers. It still seemed to hold a trace of energy, and she could feel it dancing through her veins, settling in her breasts, between her legs, and she dropped it, horrified. ‘What is it?’

  He reached past her and picked it up. ‘It’s a night-gown, Lizzie. Just an ordinary piece of clothing.’

  Now that was where he was dead wrong. There was nothing ordinary about the nightgown at all – it was alive with sex and sensuality and magic, and it made her extremely nervous, and if…

  ‘Goddammit, Lizzie,’ he grumbled, picking up the purple rabbit that had taken the place of the nightgown. Another puff of purple mist. ‘Stop getting rattled.’ The silk streamed from his hands again, a rich swathe of fabric in his long, elegant fingers.

  A squirming purple bunny in his long, elegant fingers. He looked up at her, astonished. ‘How did you do that?’ he demanded.

  The room was slowly filling with purple mist, and she wondered whether it could escape through the cracks in the ill-fitting windows. Even if it could she didn’t need to worry. It was late – no one would be around to notice puffs of purple mist drifting from their unremarkable little house.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, nervous. ‘I don’t think I could do it again if I tried.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, setting the bunny down on the counter as it flowed back into the nightgown. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you have hang-ups about sex?’

  She could feel the color flood her face, feel the tingling grow stronger in her body. ‘Charles has no complaints,’ she said, defiant.

  ‘Charles wouldn’t notice.’ Elric dismissed him. ‘I think you need…’ He stopped talking, abruptly, almost as if he’d said too much.

  ‘What do I need?’ It came out as not much more than a whisper, but it was one of the bravest things she’d ever said.

  He stared down at her for a long, thoughtful moment, and she could get lost in his eyes, she thought. He could kiss her again, and wrap her in purple silk, and those long elegant fingers could touch her, soothe her, teach her…

  ‘You need to sleep,’ he said.

  And everything went black.

  About the same time that Elric was drawing circles on Lizzie’s floor, Crash was climbing the trellis outside Lizzie’s workroom. The ancient lattice on the closed-in sun porch at the back of the O’Briens’ beat-up little Carpenter Gothic house was as rickety as ever, possibly more rickety than it had been five years earlier, but Mare would be stretched out on the porch roof outside her bedroom window, Crash was sure of it, so he put two Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes on the low edge of the roof and climbed up the wooden frame, just like old times, holding his breath as he got to the top and the lattice shook harder.

  She was there, stretched out on the shingles with her hands behind her head, the cords from her iPod lanyard tangled in her silky hair as her head bobbed to whatever she was listening to, the shadows from the tossing branches making the moonlight dance across her white overalls. Py, her tiger cat, raised his head and fixed him in his yellow gaze as Crash climbed onto the roof. Then Py put his head down on her thigh and watched Crash pick up the sundaes and walk across the roof and sit down beside her. Crash wasn’t sure of his welcome since Mare had said, ‘Tomorrow,’ but there was only so much a man could do when the woman he loved was this close and susceptible to DQ hot fudge.

  She rolled her head on her hands as he eased himself down beside her, her eyes pale in the moonlight, almost as pale as her smooth skin, white against her blue-black hair. She pulled the iPod buds from her ears and he heard Kim Richey faintly singing ‘Here I Go Again before she clicked it off and said, ‘Took you long enough,�
�� and he relaxed and held one of the sundae cups out to her. She sat up and he watched the curves of her body, the plumpness of her breasts and the arch of her back, strong and graceful in everything she did. She was Queen of the Universe, and he wanted her so much he ached with it.

  Slow, he thought, and Py raised his head and watched him as if he knew what Crash was thinking.

  Well, he was a male cat, he probably did.

  She cracked the plastic lid off and said, ‘Spoon?’ and he pulled one out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her and then took the lid off his own cup.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘How’s things with the universe?’

  ‘It’s screwing me over.’ Mare scooped up some ice cream and fudge, and then closed her eyes as if savoring it for a moment before she swallowed.

  Crash looked down the front of her overalls while her eyes were closed, all that blue lace and round flesh, the shadow of her cleavage, probably damp with sweat and-

  Mare opened her eyes. ‘I asked it for a choice in my life, and it sent me two I can’t take and didn’t offer me the one I need. It’s just cruel.’

  ‘One of them’s me, right?’ Crash started on his ice cream.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why can’t you take me?’

  ‘I can’t leave Dee and Lizzie.’

  Crash almost said, Bring them along, until he remembered Dee hated him. ‘You’re going to have to leave them sometime. You’re not going to live together forever until you rot and die, right?’ What a waste of all that heat and flesh and-

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Mare said. ‘But basically, I can’t come to Italy with you. I’d have liked it a lot, but I can’t. Sorry.’

  Crash nodded, and thought, Maybe. If family was the only thing keeping her back-

  It couldn’t be just that. Nobody refused to get married because she couldn’t leave her sisters. It must be something else, the damn secret she could never tell him, the reason he could never stay the night, never climb inside her bedroom. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He still wasn’t sure how he’d ended up back in Salem’s Fork, but he was growing more and more positive that he wasn’t leaving without Mare.