Jennifer Crusie - The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

Then the door closed and they were alone.

‘You’re coming with me,’ Crash said, determination chasing confusion from his face. ‘You said-’

‘Baby, you don’t want me.’ Mare tried to sound matter-of-fact, as she pulled out of his grasp and levitated him into the hall, ignoring his ‘Hey!’

‘ You think you do, but you’re under a spell. If it doesn’t wear off on its own, I’ll go find Xan tomorrow and make her take it off, and you’ll be fine again.’

‘I’m fine now,’ Crash said, trying to resist as Mare floated him away from her and toward the door. ‘Or I will be if nobody else turns me into a toad and you come back to Italy with me. Why are we moving? Stop it.’

‘Frog,’ Mare said, steering him through the dining room. ‘You were a frog. And I can’t come with you. You were gotten here under false pretenses.’ She swallowed hard, knowing she only had minutes before she was going to burst into tears, the pressure increasing behind her eyes even as she blinked at him. ‘It was a true love spell, just like Jude said. Hell, just like you said, it was true love and that doesn’t happen every day, unless your girlfriend has a crazy-ass witch of an aunt who casts a spell because she’s trying to take her power. You should leave town now.’

Crash tried to stop the push toward the door by grabbing onto the woodwork around the dining room arch. He missed it by inches. ‘Wait a minute, damn it, what difference does it make how she found me?’

‘I knew I loved you,’ Mare said, guiding him toward the front door. ‘I never stopped loving you. But you left and didn’t come back for five years. If you’d loved me, you’d have been back. When the spell wears off, you won’t love me anymore again.’

He shook his head, grabbing at the doorframe as they reached the front door. ‘That’s crazy. I love you.’

‘Then why didn’t you come back for five years?’ Mare said.

‘I don’t know. I just didn’t.’

‘Bad answer,’ Mare said, and opened the front door. ‘No,’ Crash said, holding on to the doorframe. ‘Mare, I won’t-’

‘You have to.’ Mare pried his fingers off the woodwork with her mind. ‘Go. It’ll be okay, you won’t care at all tomorrow. And I don’t want to be with you when you don’t care.’ She waved good-bye, sadly, staying out of his reach. ‘Have a great life.’

‘Mare,’ he said, and she shoved him out onto the steps with magic, folding her arms across her breaking heart, and closed the door in his face.

‘And I even learned to make toast,’ she said and burst into tears.

Lizzie shoved Jude in the bunny cage, put the cover over it, and then let her sheet drop, which improved Elric’s mood considerably. Then she kissed him, which improved it even more. ‘I need to talk to my sisters,’ she said. ‘You can sleep some more.’

He sat up, leaning against the wall. ‘Let me clean up, and then I’ll face them, too.’

‘The shower is upstairs.’

‘You forget – I don’t need traditional plumbing,’ he said. And vanished, leaving Lizzie kneeling on the floor, alone. Apparently he wasn’t quite as exhausted as she’d thought.

She got Jude some water, tied the sheet tighter around her body, toga-style, and then headed out into the living room.

Dee was sitting at the table, a big splotch of bright blue paint on her cheek, a cup of tea in her hands, and a bemused, besotted expression on her face that Lizzie knew would be a perfect match to her own.

‘You have paint on your face,’ Lizzie said. ‘It looks good there.’

Dee blushed. ‘I was painting Danny’s portrait.’

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. ‘And where is Danny now?’

‘Gone,’ Dee said happily. ‘He needed to be taught a lesson. But he’ll be back.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’d say three hours at the most. He loves me.’

‘I take it you didn’t turn into Danny’s mother?’ Lizzie asked, closing the door behind her just in case Elric reappeared in the same condition as when he’d vanished.

Dee’s smile was both shy and extremely pleased with herself. ‘Uh… yes. Er… no. No mothers. No nothing. Just…’ She let out a happy sigh. ‘Just lovely’

Lizzie looked at her for a moment, astonished. ‘Finally having sex really does change everything, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘You look like a different woman.’

Mare came in from the kitchen. ‘You’re looking pretty lovestruck yourself

Mare was looking miserable. ‘What happened?’ Lizzie almost took her younger sister into her arms, then thought better of it. For one thing, Mare wasn’t into the huggy thing, for another, Lizzie really needed a shower. She was going to have to get Elric to teach her that trick about cosmic bathing.

‘I made Crash go,’ Mare said, sticking her chin up. ‘He was gotten here under false pretenses. Unlike the frog.’

‘ Frog?’ Dee asked. ‘What frog?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said, very sure of herself. ‘Crash is your soul mate.’

‘Lizzie’s right, honey,’ Dee said, patting Mare. ‘He came all the way from Italy for you. What frog?’

Mare sighed. ‘Jude stopped by this morning and turned Crash into a frog, only it turned out that Jude was really a frog, so Lizzie has him in her room in a bunny cage.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Dee gave up on Mare and turned to Lizzie. ‘So where’s Elric? Don’t you think I ought to meet him?’

‘He’s cleaning up.’

‘Where?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. In Spain, for all I know. He’ll be back momentarily. In the meantime I need to take a shower.’

‘I can make toast,’ Mare said in a lousy attempt at cheering up. ‘You want me to make toast for you?’

Lizzie looked at her miserable younger sister. Mare was no longer the Queen of the Universe – she looked lost, broken. ‘Toast would be lovely,’ she said in a gentle voice. ‘I’m starving.’

By the time she got back downstairs again, fully dressed, there were three squares of burned toast on a plate, and a distinct odor of charred bread coming from the kitchen.

‘Mare got distracted,’ Dee said. ‘Maybe we should take her to the Greasy Fork…’

‘I don’t think we should leave the house.’ Lizzie sat down and reached for the toast. ‘Xan can’t get in here for a very long time, according to Elric’ She looked down at her feet. They were bare – for the first time since she could remember there were no extraneous shoes on her feet.

Naked feet, with the glowing purple butterfly tattoo to set them off. How appropriate.

‘Don’t eat that,’ Mare said. ‘It’ll kill you. I’m working on a second batch. It’ll be good. I dialed the toaster back to two again.’

Dee pushed the toast away. ‘We still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about Xan. We can’t hide out forever. And I’m hungry, too. What do we have besides… toast?’

Mare said, ‘There’s nothing in the kitchen. Nobody made muffins this morning. Maybe I’ll go make muffins-’ She started to get up.

‘Elric!’ Lizzie called. She knew the moment he’d reappeared in her tiny, wonderful bedroom. The door opened, and she sucked in her breath. He was wearing dove gray this time, and yet the colors shimmered around him.

‘Damn,’ Dee said. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

‘Mine,’ Lizzie said. ‘This is my older sister, Dee. Deirdre Dolores O’Brien.’

Elric crossed the room with his usual elegance, taking Dee’s hand in his. ‘Darling Dee-Dee Fortune,’ he murmured. ‘It’s an honor.’

And Dee was so dazzled she didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Call me Dee.’

‘And you’ve met my sister Mare.’