‘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.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
Mare swallowed. ‘Still?’
Crash looked patient. ‘I told you this.’
‘She has abandonment issues,’ Dee said.
‘Who doesn’t?’ Crash said.
Mare blinked back tears. ‘You came back for me and you weren’t under a spell?’
‘Like I’d leave you,’ Crash said.
‘I’d rather have the giant snake spitting venom,’ Elric said, casting his eyes to the heavens. Then his face changed. ‘Oh, hell’
‘What?’ Lizzie said and followed his eyes up.
‘This isn’t over,’ Elric said, staring up at the snake’s eyes. ‘She’s still alive in there.’
‘No,’ Maxine said, holding Jude tighter.
Danny pulled Dee closer. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Her eyes’ he said. ‘Just a slight movement, but she’s in there.’
‘How?’ Dee said. ‘She’s gold.’
Elric shook his head. ‘You can only turn like to like. The human body is about eighteen percent carbon, so that’s what Lizzie transformed. Xan’s just a very unstable shell right now. She’s going to change back, and when she does-’
‘Oh, hell,’ Crash said to Mare. ‘I knew the holidays with your family were going to be a bitch. Well, you’ll just have to keep changing her into something else. A piano or something.’
‘The piano from hell,’ Mare said, leaning into him again. All it plays is Tree Bird.’
‘Dee and Lizzie can’t do transformation magic again this soon,’ Elric said. And since my powers seem to be on the fritz from the damn containment spell, and Mare thinks she isn’t good at anything-’
‘Hey!’ Crash said.
‘- I suggest we leave. Xantippe is not going to be up for an intercontinental chase for a while. We should have time for three honeymoons before…’ He looked at Mare with distaste. ‘Tree Bird.’
Mare looked up at Crash. ‘You got any ideas?’
‘No, but you can stop that I’m-not-good-at-anything moan. You’re Queen of the Universe. If you can’t move big things, move something else, but settle that bitch’s hash. She tried to send me back to Italy without you. Fix her good.’
Mare thought, Yeah, she tried to ruin my life and my sisters’ lives, it’s time we did settle her hash. She stared at Xan, trying to see what Elric the master sorcerer saw, trying to believe what Crash the master mechanic believed, and began to imagine what it was like inside Xan right now, what it had been like when Xan had transformed herself from Xan to dragon. If Xan had done it, she could do it. Xan must have just seen her human molecules and maybe rearranged the atoms so they were dragon molecules, and then something had gone wrong and the dragon molecules had become snake molecules. And then Lizzie, Lizzie must have gone in and made snake molecules into gold molecules. And if that was what they’d done, Mare wouldn’t even have to change anything, all she’d have to do would be to wrap her mind around Xan’s molecules the way she’d wrapped her mind around the bed and the sugar grains and the muffins, and then just bang them together and start a chain reaction…
She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. She was Queen of the Universe, and she could see the molecules in her mind – there they were, gold snake molecules with Xan-red centers, right there in front of her – and if she could see them they must be real and if they were real…
She reached out with her mind, blue sparks flying, and surrounded the gold dots. They were feisty little devils, those Xan molecules, but as she started to make her move, she saw purple smoke and green fog in there, too, in her mind, backing up the blue sparks, and then she laughed out loud.
‘Mare?’ Dee said, and, Lizzie turned to look. ‘You know my abandonment issues?’ Mare said. ‘I’m over them.’
‘We’re happy for you’ Elric said, taking Lizzie’s arm. And now we’re leaving.’
High above them, the golden eyes turned red, flickering. ‘Go,’ Mare said. ‘I’m on it.’
‘No,’ Dee said, and Lizzie stepped closer, and said,
‘We’re here,’ and Mare reached out for them, and then she reached out with her mind again and went inside Xan and found the gold molecules there, her blue sparks zeroing in on the weakest part That’s it, she thought, and aimed for two molecules that looked crucial. She tried to pull them apart and they stuck together, so she yanked hard, and then there was cool green fog and warm violet smoke and big-ass blue sparks blowing holes through everything, and Mare used it all and broke through to set free two big fat gold molecules. One more, she thought, and kicked out a third and set them rotating, spuming faster and faster, as green and violet and blue, fog and smoke and sparkly mist, began to fill the space between the molecules and the space between her fingertips and the space between the sisters, and the whole top of the mountain began to hum.
High above her, the eyes of the golden snake flickered madly red, and Mare felt her eyes flicker madly back. Iknow what you wanted, Xan, she thought, and so do Lizzie and Dee, it was this, and we’ve got it now, and then she clamped down on the thought, no gloating, time to concentrate on the molecules, keep those suckers spinning, and as she did, the blue and green and violet became stronger, brighter, driving back the rain and the clouds, until somebody said, ‘Oh, shit,’ and then Mare gave the molecules a flick with her frontal lobe and they smacked into each other and then smacked into other molecules that smacked into other molecules that smacked into other molecules…
Crash yanked her to the ground and a second later Xan exploded into chunks of gold that exploded into smaller pieces that exploded into little pieces that exploded into golden dust, and Mare laughed into the mud of the mountain and hugged Crash to her, so grateful she had him, and her sisters, and him, and her power, and him, especially him, as the gold went everywhere, and when it was all over, she sat up and saw the gold dust coating everything. Xan was bronzing powder.
‘God, she’s gaudy,’ Dee said, trying to brush off her borrowed sleeve. ‘I hope she washes off’
‘Well, that’s Xan for you,’ Elric said. ‘She always liked things shiny.’ He flicked at his sleeve and the gold dust fell away, leaving him immaculate.
‘You’re going to be annoying me for the rest of my life, aren’t you?’ Dee said.
‘Lizzie?’ a very small voice said from the underbrush, and when they turned around, Maxine crawled out, covered in mud and gold, still holding Jude.
‘Oh, Maxine,’ Lizzie said. ‘We forgot about you. Elric, give her your coat.’
Elric looked at Lizzie as if she’d asked him to bathe Maxine by hand.
‘I don’t want his coat,’ Maxine said. She held out Jude. ‘I want him. Turn him back, please.’
Lizzie swallowed. ‘I can’t, Maxine. He is what he is. I’m sure he’s a lovely frog, but even if I made him a human again, he’d turn back into a frog again in a couple of days. He’s supposed to be a frog, honey.’
Maxine looked at her, tears in her eyes. ‘Okay, make me a frog’
‘It won’t last,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’ll turn back.’
‘Maybe,’ Maxine said. ‘But maybe I won’t.’ Mare looked at Lizzie. ‘Do it.’