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.
‘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:
‘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’