MaryJanice Davidson, Cheyenne McCray, Christine Warren, Lori Handeland

For my agent, Ethan Ellenberg, for always getting me fabbo deals, and for Monique Patterson, for offering same fabbo deals. And to me, for just generally being fabbo!

Yeah! Ha! Weren't expecting that, were ya? It takes a special kind of author to dedicate a story… to herself! Bet you didn't see that coming. In your wildest dreams you couldn't have guessed the deep dark hole my ego has carved out of my soul.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my family, especially my husband and my brilliant, gorgeous, self-entertaining children. Thanks also to my father-in-law, who had the bad taste to get cancer (these Along men!), but the good taste to get better. Dad A., these tiresome ploys for attention have just got to stop. You're not fooling anybody.

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second kiss is intimate, the third is routine. After that, you take the girl's clothes off

—RAYMOND CHANDLER, THE LONG GOODBYE

Zombie: a person believed to have been raised from the grave by a sorcerer for purposes of enslavement. The zombie is used by its master to perform heavy manual labor and to implement evil schemes.

—THE COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA, SIXTH EDITION

To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism.

—SINCLAIR LEWIS, BABBITT

Take off my magician robes.

—William Shakespeare

I am my father's daughter. I am not afraid of any thing.

—QUEEN ELIZABETH I

Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

—THE MATRIX

[Ireland] is a nation of contradictions, sir. Consider this: Ireland is an island nation that has never developed a navy; a music-loving people who have produced only those harmless lilting ditties as their musical legacy; a bellicose people who have never known the sweet savor of victory in a single war; a Catholic country that has never produced a single doctor of the Church; a magnificently beautiful country, a country to inspire artists, but a country not yet immortalized in art; a philosophic people yet to produce a single philosopher of note; a sensual people who have never mastered the art of preparing food.

—PAT CONWAY, THE LORD OF DISCIPLINE

Prologue

Micah set the empty bottle of Jack on the corner table. If this was a story, he would have been so drunk he would have miscalculated and the bottle would have hit the hotel carpet with a shocking thud. In fact, he was drunk. But his marmosetlike reflexes saved him (again) and he simply caught it by the neck and righted it.

He stared up at the ceiling—all hotel ceilings looked the same—and tried not to glance at the germ-infested pile of bedspread huddled in the far corner. He'd face down a rabid werecricket before he'd lie on a hotel bedspread.

Micah was bored. It had been at least fifty years since he'd found and trained the last Majicka, and that guy had been in his prime. Terrified of his responsibility, too worried about making a mistake, but in his prime. Much too careful to do something stupid, for certain.

Likely there would be nothing to do for the next sixty or seventy years (their kind was certainly long-lived, which, unfortunately, meant so was he) except wander the world, seek out various Sheraton Suites (the only permissible choice for a neat freak, plus you couldn't beat the free Continental breakfast), and try to pickle his liver in new and interesting ways.

Here came the spots, slowly growing blobs in his right eye that he couldn't see through. Here came the nausea (most likely from the whiskey). Here came the crashing pain on the right side of his head. Definitely a migraine.

He flopped back onto the bed, ignoring the blood running down his cheeks like war paint.

Chapter 1

Ireland Shea tripped over the zombie huddled next to the headstone, and flopped facedown into the mud. Sadly, this wasn't an unusual occurrence for her. It wasn't even unusual for the week.

She scrabbled to her knees and rubbed the wet dirt out of her eyelashes before it gummed them shut. At least she'd missed the thorny raspberry bushes, which ran wild along the south edge of the cemetery.

The barefoot zombie—probably female from the tattered gray dress, and shredded black pantyhose (probably black… sunset was about five minutes away and they were on the downslope of the cemetery's south hill)—said nothing, just clutched more tightly to the headstone.

"Right," Ireland said, as if she (it?) had replied. "But you can't stay here. It's the full moon."

Ireland leaned forward, mindful of the zombie's doubtless need for brains, and poked her (it?) in the shoulder. No response. It was like poking a beanbag.

"Look, I don't know if you're guarding or lost or whatever, but you really can't stay here. Cannon Falls is a deceptively benign-seeming small town crawling with denizens of the undead. It even says so in the brochure—the head of the Chamber of Commerce is a warlock. So you better come home with me."

Ireland smothered a sigh, and when she turned to face the newcomer it was with her prettiest smile.

"You have mud on your teeth," Ezra Chase informed her. Even if she had not known the moment they met that he was a vampire, he was right out of Central Casting. Tall—over six feet. Whip thin. Cadaverous complexion. Brown hair that looked black against his white skin. Eyes like onyx that glittered in the dim light. She had lived with him for five years and his creepy charisma still hit her like a fist. "And on your knees."

"With this overcast? And how many times must I tell you to toss your Farmers' Almanac? It's not the, ah, the be-all-end-all of nature's happenings."

She smirked at his inability to say "bible." "Look at this poor thing here. Leave her in the mud? And it's supposed to rain later. Give me a hand with her, will you?"

Ezra folded his extremely long, skinny, white arms across his chest and sniffed, a good trick as he did not have to breathe. "I certainly will not. There is no reason we need to take that into our home."

"My home," Ireland reminded him, hanging on to her smile. She'd known her roommates would be difficult, but had no idea it would begin so soon. She'd just spotted the poor girl! Zombie! "If you help me now, we can get her home before the others even notice."

Ezra blinked down at her. She was pretty sure he blinked. Man, it had gotten dark in a hurry! She could already hear scattered wolf howls beyond and to the north.

"Is your life not complicated enough?" her vampire pal wondered aloud, staring at the full moon with his hands on his bony hips. Normally Ireland would have answered, except she knew darn well he wasn't speaking to her. This was his way of talking to himself to arrive at a decision. "With all the complications in your life, you seek out yet another one? The others will not be pleased."

"Talk to me when you've hit your first century. No, I will not help you. I'm afraid you'll have to leave it here, and just as well. Think of the ruin to Judith's upholstery!"

"This 'stray-animal adoption' quirk of yours was amusing at one time. Now it's merely tiresome."

"I remember things entirely differently," Ezra twanged in his annoying Medford drawl. "I seem to remember saving your ignorant ass on more than one—"

Muttering about the general uselessness of the undead in general and Ezra in particular, she knelt, grabbed (gently) the zombie's arm, flung it over her shoulders, shifted the zombie's weight, then slowly lifted.

Ah! The fireman's carry worked nicely in this instance, and it wasn't as bad as she'd feared. The zombie didn't smell like rotten meat or feel like squirming maggots. More like dust and mud and old dirt. Ireland had smelled plenty worse. Just last week, she'd forgotten to clean out the fridge and that had been—

"Nnnnff," she replied, staggering toward the red Escape which was parked between Todd Petit, Faithful Friend, Husband, Father; and Janie Opitz, God Grant She Never Return.

A silvery howl split the air and she nearly flipped the poor zombie ass over teakettle back down the gentle slope. Ezra had no doubt scented, or heard, him coming but, being a typical stick in the ass, had not warned her.

"Is it the whole pack?" she gasped, scrambling up the slope to the car. "Or just him?"

"Just him," Ezra replied, brushing pieces of bark off the knees of his brown silk slacks. "You know they keep running him off. Poor sot cannot take a hint to save his silvery hide."

Speak of the devil (or the local rogue), Owen sprang over yet another tangle of raspberry bushes and plopped into the middle of their group.

He was the size of a golden retriever, with the coloring of an albino, blue eyes she could see gleaming even in the near-dark, wide white tail lashing a greeting, teeth flashing in the moonlight in what Ireland knew was a greeting.

"There's nothing really going on," she said, shifting her weight so as not to drop the (thankfully quiet and complacent) zombie.

"Oh, like hell," Ezra snapped in his fading (but not fast enough) Massachusetts accent. Ireland figured he'd need to live in the Midwest at least another forty years before he was rid of it completely. "Our beloved landlord has found a new project."

"It'll be fine," she said, hobbling toward the car. "Owen, you better get lost in case an unfriendly pack member finds you. You—"

Ezra opened the rear passenger door, looking resigned, and Owen leaped in at once.

"Aw, Owen," she complained, then went around to the other side, waited for Ezra to open that door (he took his time, the bum; her knees were trembling by the time he swung the door all the way open), then plopped the living (unliving?) doll next to Owen. She started to fumble for the zombie's seat belt, then stopped. What was the point? The poor girl's head could come off and she'd still be walking around.

Ireland searched for her keys while Ezra hauled his bony limbs into the front passenger seat, refusing (as he always did) to share a seat with anything that had fleas or the potential to rot off body parts. Prig.

Just when she was resigned to hot-wiring the car (how hard could it be?) she felt the lump of her keys. Ah! They had slipped way down into her front pocket. She fished them out, climbed into the Escape, and started the engine. Too late, she remembered she hadn't shut off the radio when she'd parked, because the first thing she heard was an angry squeal of static that sounded like a woman's shriek of anger.

Followed by, "What the hell are all these things doing in my car? Ireland? You jerk, you've got some explaining to do! So talk! Right now!"

Ezra, in his one moment of kindness (must be a Wednesday), reached out with long white fingers and shut the radio off. She flashed him a look of gratitude, put the car in gear, and made for the Shea Family Farm.

Chapter 2

Shea Farm loomed around the corner and, as always, she grinned like an ape when she saw it. Old Man Willow stood guard in the field across the dirt road, and when she pulled past him (never it) and into the drive, the bright red barn rose up on her left, with the squat house on the right. Her earliest memory was of falling down in the dirt beside the gigantic willow tree, and gripping the bark to pull herself back up.

Unlike most traditional farmhouses, Shea Farm was a sprawling ranch, complete with hot tub, mother-in-law apartment (though she knew never to call it that in Ezra's presence), dog track in the back yard, ski lift in the beyond back yard, five bedrooms, three baths (not counting the extra bedrooms and bathrooms in Ezra's section), two parlors, and a full-sized dressing room between one of the baths and one of the bedrooms.

Despite the fine accessories, the house had a lived-in, haphazard look, as every generation someone would add on a wing or two.

Farming had treated her parents and grandparents, God rest them, very very well. Too bad about that awful threshing incident… if only her mother hadn't skipped her meds, and then lured her father… but it was pointless to think about that now. The important thing was, they had left her well taken care of, which was a relief as her roommates were more or less a full-time job.

"I don't think she needs to sleep, but she should at least have her own room."

"Just let her run around with Owen on the dog track—yee—ouch!" Ezra whipped around in his seat and fixed the werewolf with a forbidding glare. "Don't bite my ear; you don't know where it's been."

"Can we argue about this once we get inside? It's been a long day, annoying roommates withstanding, I need a bath, you've got that creepy 'I haven't bitten anybody yet' whine in your voice, and I—Help!"

"I have told you and told you, first clutch, then brake!" Ezra shouted over her yowl.

"It's Judith!" Ireland wrestled the wheel for control, but it was like holding on to a live thing. Using all her strength, she barely managed to avoid the tractor. She stood on the brakes with both feet, only to feel the wheel wrenched to the left and the small SUV headed straight for the (closed) barn doors.

Ezra quickly turned on the radio. "All right, Judith. Your wrath has been duly noted."

The Escape shuddered to a stop about—as Ireland could best guess—three inches short of the barn door.

"What is the matter with you?" Judith blared instead of the dulcet soft rock tones of 102.9 Lite FM ("Your Station at Work!"). "Bad enough that furbound fuckface is shedding all over my back seat, bad enough you're getting mud all over the clutch and brake, but now there's a corpse in the car?"

"What are you trying to do to me? Like I don't have enough trouble trying to break the curse and—"

"Walk and talk like a real boy?" Ezra finished, clasping his long white hands over his bosom and fluttering his eyelashes.

There was the sound of grinding gears and the entire car shuddered. "And you! I saw you. I know you were the one who shut the radio off. I'm stuck in this stupid SUV until someone breaks the spell—"

"At least it's a hybrid," Ireland piped up helpfully. "You can save the environment while you're ensorcelled."

"—and the only chance I can talk is through the radio, which one of you is always shutting off—"

Possibly, Ireland thought, because you're such a jerk on wheels all the time. Literally! A jerk on wheels!

Ireland, in the act of tugging on the door handle (God only knew when Judith would let them go), swallowed a whimper. She'd forgotten all about her other roommate, the Violent Fairy.

While she was pondering those difficulties, the door swung open of its own volition and she was, for the second time in half an hour, facedown in the mud.

Chapter 3

Ireland heard the roar of the Escape as Judith took off down the driveway. Great. Now, when she needed a car, Judith would probably be sulking ten counties over. Well, she'd be back. Eventually.

As if reading her mind, Ezra asked, "Why not buy another car? Your trust fund is healthy enough."

The fact was, while Judith was temperamental, vocal, determined, shrill, and had a martyr complex, she also prided herself on being Ireland's main mode of transportation. In fact, she'd saved Ireland's life more than once. The time Ireland had rented a Honda during Judith's fifty-thousand-mile tune-up, Judith hadn't moved—or spoken—in a month.

The two of them (three, counting the zombie Ezra had gingerly thrown over one shoulder… the poor woman's long, muddy hair was dragging on the tiles) made for the hot tub. The Violent Fairy's room was right next door and, this time of night, he could be found in one place or the other.

Not bothering to knock (two years of trying to teach the fairy manners—or natural modesty—had been a dismal failure), they opened the door and walked in.

"Hi!" Ireland shouted over the hot tub's grinding motor. As usual, Lent had it cranked so much, the windows were utterly fogged over. She instantly felt all the pores of her body open. Beside her, Ezra coughed and tried to wave away the steam. "What's up?"

"Avoiding human small talk is up." The Violent Fairy was lolling on the far side of the huge tub. He was so long, his toes touched the far edge. "What's that you got there?"

"First things first, Ireland, dear. Let's get this thing cleaned up. She's ruined this suit jacket already."

"I'm holding it, aren't I? It's leaking nasty bodily fluids all over my second favorite jacket, isn't it?"

"Jesus wept," Lent grumped, which was curious as he wasn't a Christian, and stood. Gallons of water cascaded off his six-foot-seven, two-hundred-sixty-pound (fat-free) frame. Ireland tried frantically to look everywhere but at the large naked fairy climbing out of the hot tub and marching toward her.

With no further comment, the Violent Fairy pulled the zombie off Ezra's shoulder, carried her like a doll to the tub, then slung her in.

"Temp's just under forty Centigrade. Humans can handle higher. Especially dead ones." He stirred her around as if she were a zombie stew, and Ireland tried not to stare at the crack of his ass. Or the rest of him, for that matter. She wasn't especially attracted to him, preferring men who weren't as tall as small telephone poles, but it was hard not to look at a six-foot-seven-inch nude fairy. His wings looked like crumpled tissue in the humid room.

After a long moment, he fished the zombie out, looked her over critically, then dunked her again.

Out she came. Was examined by the fairy. Back in she went. "Where'd you find her?" he asked over one mammoth shoulder.

"And our Ireland naturally could not resist," Ezra added, also unable to resist.

Lent, long used to ignoring his roommate's nasty comments, fished the zombie out and sat her on the bench nearest the door. When she sagged, he propped her upright, then matter-of-factly climbed back into the whirlpool. "Did you bring anything to eat? Besides her?"

"Very funny, tough guy, we all know you're a vegetarian. You said you knew something about zombies?"

"Yeah." The Violent Fairy yawned, then shook hot water out of his short-cropped, wheat-colored hair. His eyes, Elizabeth Taylor purple, were slitted with boredom.

Ireland waited. Ezra stared at the ceiling. The zombie slumped four inches to her left. Finally, Ireland almost shouted, "Well?"

"Oh, she's supposed to be somebody's slave. Find out who rose her from the dead—"

Lent ignored him, as English was his ninth language and the occasional grammatical error didn't bother him. Nothing bothered him. "—stick a two-by-four into their heart or crotch or decapitate them or suffocate them or chop them into pieces or shoot them in the face, and poof. Bye-bye, dead girl."

"Yeeesh," was Ireland's comment. "My to-do list is already pretty full. And you made me throw away all the guns."

"It was a condition on his moving in," Ezra reminded her. "Fairies and iron never ever mix."

"We should have left her in the cemetery," Ezra said, triumphantly flicking graveyard mud off his lapels.

"But how do we find out who she was? Or who the bad guy is? And when we find him—or her—do we just, you know, axe them? Can we reason with them first? Why am I the only one brainstorming?"

Lent, who had already submerged, didn't come up for nearly five minutes. They had no choice but to wait patiently; he could hold his breath longer than a seal. When he finally came up, it was to mumble, "Check the grave she was guarding."

"I've asked you and asked you not to call me that," she whined. "Besides, nobody's died in town this weekend. There's less than seven thousand of us; deaths make the news."

Chapter 4

The next morning, Ireland entered the kitchen in time to see the zombie tip over until her head was resting on the table, Owen wolfing down the heel of a loaf of bread, Lent spearing an entire head of lettuce and forcing it into his mouth (it went, easily), and Ezra reading aloud from Entertainment Weekly.

"Halle Berry's getting divorced again," he greeted her. "Poor girl must have the self-esteem of a grubworm."

Ireland had no sympathy for a gorgeous, rich, talented woman with an Oscar on her mantel, having enough troubles of her own. "Anybody have any ideas in the night? Owen, that better not be the last of the bread."

"Of course it is," he said cheerfully. In a house of dour or taciturn roommates, the rogue werewolf was a breath of fresh air. She didn't understand why his pack wouldn't have him, and felt guilty for being glad they wouldn't.

It couldn't be something so dumb as his coloring. In wolf form he was gorgeous—snowy-white fur and gleaming sapphire-colored eyes.

In human form, he was a little on the small side for an American male—about five foot nine—but powerfully muscled and charming besides. It was the rare moment when he wasn't smiling or laughing. Even casually dressed in cutoffs and a STOP ME WHEN I'M AS BORING AS YOU T-shirt, he was devastatingly good-looking.

Owen was nearly as pale as Ezra, with shoulder-length, white-blond hair and of course those amazing eyes. He was almost as strong as Ezra, too, and a bit quicker. She'd be proud to have him in her family—was proud—and didn't understand why his pack had driven him away. Even three years later, he had never given up the details. And she valued his friendship—and privacy—too much to ask. That had not stopped Ezra (Lent literally could not have cared less), but the vampire hadn't gotten any more out of Owen than she had.

"But there's lots of bacon and sourdough rolls," he continued. "And Cap'n Crunch."

"How can you eat that?" Ezra bitched good-naturedly, turning the page. "Doesn't it shred the roof of your mouth?"

Lent belched, rattling the coffee cups, and answered. "Pulled her out of the spare bedroom and brought her here. It's morning. Everybody gets up and has breakfast in the morning."

"Yeah, that's great, Lent. Thanks. But, um, maybe next time you could dress her first?"

"Human traditions," Lent said, forking another head of lettuce, "are stupid. Figured that out right away."

"She looks about my size," Ireland guessed, staring at the zombie's mottled gray back and mop of black hair.

"I think not," Ezra said. "She's three inches shorter and twenty-two pounds lighter."

"Save your eerie vampire powers for when I've had some coffee. And she can wear my sweatpants and stuff."

"Lovely thought. As if I hadn't already despaired of you finding an appropriate style."

"You lay off my style," she ordered. "Can I help it if I like to be comfortable?"

"Really, Ireland. You're much too pretty to slop around in leggings and sweatshirts ad nauseam."

"Don't bother," Lent said, masticating furiously. Tiny green shreds flew everywhere. "She's stupid that way."

"You people are costing me a fortune!" she shouted, slamming her seat into the chair and nearly going sprawling. Ezra had waxed the floor—again. "Your hot tub is plenty big enough. Ezra, pour me a cup, will you? And somebody get that poor woman a robe."

Nobody moved. Ezra broke the silence with, "Can you believe they're casting for another Spider-Man movie? How much money does Columbia need? My God, Tobey Maguire is going gray. He's the oldest college student on the planet. This is worse than fifth-season 90210!"

"You guys," Ireland whined, "we have a serious problem here. How are we going to help this poor girl?"

Lent shrugged. Ezra didn't comment. Owen slurped down the rest of the bacon. "What poor girl?"

"Oh." Owen licked grease off his upper lip. "Right. Isn't she going to move in and, you know, be one of your merry men?"

"I realize that's the way things usually go," Ireland admitted, "given the present company, but I don't think letting her shack up indefinitely is helping her."

"Like Lent said, somebody did this to her. She doesn't want to be a zombie—who would? So it's up to us—"

"Well. We could go back to the cemetery. Check out the grave she was guarding. It's a start."

"Or," Ezra said cheerfully, "we could go to bed. Not all of us can run around like bugs at a picnic during daylight hours."

Ireland drummed her fingers on the tabletop, thinking. It was true, due to Ezra's great age (he never said, but based on casual conversation she put him between a hundred and a hundred and twenty), he could walk around during the day, provided the shades were drawn. And naturally, every room in the house had thick shades. She had installed them twelve hours after he turned up.

"I think—" she began, and that was when Judith began blaring her horn from the driveway in Morse code.

"Aunt Key!" Ezra nearly screamed, and Lent dropped his third lettuce head, knocking over the creamer.

Chapter 5

Ireland ran down the foyer, lost her footing, and slid the rest of the way, fetching up against the front door with a teeth-rattling thud. Ezra had waxed the entry way… again.

She fumbled for the doorknob, cursing her fastidious roommate, and swung the heavy mahogany door wide. As Judith had warned, her maternal Aunt Jessiciah ("Key" was the best the three-year-old Ireland could do with a mouthful like "Jessiciah") was standing on the front step.

"Ireland!" the small woman shrilled. She was dressed in buttercup-yellow slacks and an eye-wateringly bright green blouse. With ruffles. All of which clashed with her dark red Lucille Ball wig. Everyone on her mother's side had red hair; only Aunt Key felt the need to pretend she was still a natural redhead. Not that her nutball mother had lived long enough to—"It's been too long!"

"Hi, Aunt Key." Ireland extended her face for the ritual cheek-peck. "What brings you by? Again?"

"Oh… the usual. Places to go, you know, and people I want you to—oh!" She had spotted Ezra, with the usual reaction. It wasn't that he was the invisible man or anything; he just stood so uncannily still it took a few seconds for people to really see him. "Hello, Ezra."

"You should have Ireland wear more cheerful colors, instead of those icky sweatshirts."

He sighed. "I try, madam. I try." Ezra courteously stepped back and did the butler-fade-thing, allowing her aunt Key to begin the harangue.

"Darling, I hate seeing you cooped up on this awful, awful farm," Aunt Key began, kicking off her green clogs. She massaged her left heel for a moment, then followed Ireland into the kitchen. "You should meet a nice boy and start a family."

"I don't mean just me," she went on, oblivious. "I promised your dear mother, God rest her crazy soul, that I'd look after you and I've failed. I've—Good God!"

Aunt Key was staring wildly around the kitchen which, to be fair, looked as though a cyclone had whipped through. Her roomies were used to the drill, and had vacated accordingly.

"The least those others can do to earn their keep is some light housekeeping," she sniffed. "It's bad enough they don't use their, um, special skills to help you, um, coordinate."

She coughed. It had taken her a while to break the Violent Fairy out of his habit of referring to most people as "stupid humans" and himself as "superior fairy."

"Darling, you never go out. It's not natural for a beautiful young lady to surround herself with—ah—"

"The dregs of society?" she said cheerfully, handing her aunt a shred of lettuce.

Aunt Key stared at the small leaf, then let it flutter to the floor. "Honey, I really would like you to meet some people who—"

"At least come with me tonight. My neighbor's nephew is in town and he's a wonderful boy, he used to be a dotcom millionaire—"

Ireland looked—and nearly screamed. The zombie-clothed, thank you, Jesus—had wandered into the kitchen and was poking through the detritus on the table with a vacant look in her cloudy eyes.

"Oh, don't even tell me." In a lower voice, she added, "That sweat suit does nothing for her. Makes her coloring look positively ghastly."

Zelda the zombie was, Ireland was swooningly grateful to notice, clean, dry, and combed out. Except for her grayish complexion and cloudy eyes, she looked almost normal. In fact, her hair was actually pretty, falling in a rippling dark wave to her waist. Fortunately Aunt Key was so self-centered that—

Ireland heard Ezra snort from the next room, and was grateful he didn't rattle off the long list. "It's just that there's a lot going on right now."

"This is what I'm saying! You need to do something nice for yourself. You never do anything nice for yourself. You've got this big farm to run, too much land to keep up, not to mention the buildings and house. Promise to come over."

"Aunt Key, I'll try. I really will," she lied. "I've just got so much, um, work."

"You work awfully hard," her aunt said suspiciously, "for someone who doesn't have a job."

"Oh here you are!" Owen cried, bounding into the kitchen. He seized Zelda by the forearm and grinned at Aunt Key, who had her usual reaction to Owen's too many teeth.

"—have a hot date. Come on, honey pie," he crooned, leading Tina/Zelda toward the doorway. "The Family Guy marathon awaits."

"Really, Ireland," she said after the odd duo had departed. "You have to get out more. Spend some time with… you know…" She lowered her voice. "Normal people."

Chapter 6

Micah pulled into the long driveway, noting with disinterest the rustic barn and ranch-style house. There was a red Ford Escape parked a bare inch or two in front of the barn doors and, other than the far-off barking of a dog, no sign of life.

He climbed out of his rental and started up the path to the house, stifling a sigh. He'd been through this many, many times in his long life. He'd been doing it since before the Great War. The real one, not the follow-up fakes.

First, the Magicka would be in utter awe of his/her newfound position in society, of his/her responsibilities. An endless period of questions and answers would begin. Then, the teaching would begin. Decades of tutoring. Then, bye-bye, birdie, out of the nest. Then, he/she would die of extreme old age or in some eternal good/evil struggle, and Micah would be on the road again, ready to train the new one.

He heard gravel crunching and turned. To his mild surprise, the SUV was quite a bit closer than it first appeared.

He shrugged and raised a hand to knock. Before his fist could land on the wood, the door was jerked open and he was nearly run down by a teeming horde. As it was, he had to jump into the bushes lining the walk to avoid being trampled.

"That's taken care of Aunt Key for the day," a ridiculously pretty redheaded woman with chocolate-brown eyes was saying. "God! I thought she'd never leave." She was shrugging into a light jacket, and thank goodness, because anything was an improvement over that shapeless sweatshirt.

"I could eat her, if you want," the blue-eyed werewolf said, hot on the woman's heels.

"Don't be ridiculous, Owen," a brunette vampire snapped, bringing up the rear. "Chewed bodies are always messy and invariably involve the authorities. Even here."

"So we squash the authorities," an inordinately large man rumbled—was that a fairy? In this day and age? He was dragging a washed-out, grayish brunette behind him, this one wearing a sweat suit identical to the other woman's. "Boom, squish, no more problems."

"Don't be silly, Lent," the first woman said. She glanced over at Micah and seemed not at all surprised to find a strange man lurking in her bushes. "Hello, we've already accepted Christ into our hearts, good-bye."

Micah stared at what was absolutely the oddest assortment of magical beings in three hundred years. He'd seen them all at one time or another, of course. Separately. Why, vampires and werewolves didn't even believe in each other, and fairies were notorious loners, even when they had been plentiful on this earth. As for the other one, what was she doing without her—

"Move your ass, Ireland," the fairy ordered. "I want to be back in time to try new bath salts."

Micah cleared his throat. "Ah, I am the Tutor, and I am here to tell you of a sacred duty, for you are the One, the newest Magicka, and it is your destiny to—"

He was talking to their backs. And the SUV was running, with all four doors open. It must have one of those automatic-start things.

"But you can come with, if you promise not to sell us anything," the Magicka said.

Chapter 7

"Oh now, what's this?" the radio squawked. Micah, who had beaten the vampire to the front seat by a bare half second, stared at the source of the noise. "Ireland, how many fucking people do you have to drag around?"

"It isn't my fault," the redhead said. "He just showed up. What'd you say your name was? Mr. Tudor?"

"Who else, dingleberry? Mess up my interior and you'll find out your seat belt doesn't work at an important moment, get my drift? And what is she doing back in here?"

Micah craned his neck and saw the werewolf and vampire sitting shoulder to shoulder, while the other woman was on the fairy's lap, staring dully at the scenery.

"But her mom was crazy and her dad was indifferent, so there you go," the car finished.

"Shut up!" the Magicka howled, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. "Can we focus on one thing at a time?"

"A fine idea," Micah said, still completely flabbergasted by the events of the last five minutes. "I have come to tell you your duty, Magicka, to make you aware of your destiny, to—"

Micah turned in his seat again, unable to resist. "I thought your kind were extinct."

"No, we just slept for a really long time." The fairy yawned, as if accentuating his point. Micah could see the male's tonsils.

"Snob," the vampire snarked. He looked miserable, squashed in the middle as he was.

"Do you often make evening journeys to the local cemetery?" Micah asked, fascinated in spite of himself.

"Oh, sure," the Magicka replied. "It's like, our weekly thing. Followed by eating cream puffs and playing bingo at the Veterans' Hall."

Chapter 8

"Well, here we are again!" Ireland said, forcing cheer. They all clambered out of Judith and stood around the car in a loose group. The stranger, Micah, had a look on his face she'd seen more than once. He looked like someone had whopped him on the forehead with a hammer made of putty. "Now what?"

Owen barked, then sniffed around the tombstone where they'd found Zelda. He had changed to wolf form in the car, to everyone's dismay and the stranger's near-panic, and now they were all covered in white fur. Judith had stalled twice in protest, but had finally brought them where they needed to go after Ireland promised to vacuum her out the next morning.

"May I?" Ezra asked politely. Without a word, Micah reached into one of the pockets of his tan trench coat and extracted a bottle. Ezra unscrewed the top, guzzled enthusiastically, capped it, then handed it back.

"Oh." The Magicka looked at him. She was, he had decided during the drive, more than pretty. Quite beautiful, actually, with the vivid hair and the piercing eyes, the freckles and the cream-colored skin, really very nice. Long, strong limbs. Ready smile. "Having that kind of week, huh?"

"That kind of century," he said truthfully. He glanced around the small cemetery, intrigued. It was hard to remember he'd been bored half an hour ago. And yesterday. And last year. And fifty years ago. And—"What are you going to do now?"

She was already kneeling in front of a tombstone and brushing mud away. "Marnie Trevor," she read aloud, "Nineteen sixty to two thousand six. Is this you, Marnie? Is this your grave?"

"Well, that's progress, anyway," Ezra said. "We know she understands, at least."

"I'm bored!" Judith called. They'd left her engine running and the doors open. Her headlights were the only lights in the cemetery; they needed her. " 'Help,' she says. Well, duh."

Owen, meanwhile, had been nosing through the raspberry bushes and through the small wood running along the southern border. He came back after a few minutes, obviously empty-handed (empty-pawed?), and sat beside Ireland, tail swishing in the mud.

"What else could we do?" Ireland wondered. "This is where we found her. There should have been a clue or… or something."

"I'm afraid not," he admitted. He was having trouble keeping all their names straight, never mind following their trains of thought.

Ireland rolled her eyes. New guy was cute, if slow. "Somebody had to bring her back from the dead, or she wouldn't be a zombie."

Micah started to laugh. He couldn't help it, and didn't try. When he finally finished, his face was wet with tears. "You poor things, you don't know anything. She's not—"

Just then, Zelda cried out, held her middle, and slowly sank to her knees. This was startling, and no one knew what to do. So they did nothing as she rocked back and forth in the mud for a few seconds, whimpering quietly.

After a minute, Ireland knelt beside her, putting a steadying hand on the other woman's shoulder. "What's wrong, honey?"

"Uh-huh. About that." Ireland cleared her throat. "Can you give us a little more detail?"

Zelda blinked painfully, big gray eyes luminous with tears. "The planet is yours, now. You kill as you like. I am dying."

"Can somebody change the record on this girl?" Judith bitched. "I'm still bored out of my mind."

"Shut up, Judith!" Ireland took a breath and forced "shrill" from her tone. "Zelda, we can't help you if you don't give us more information."

"There's no one here but us, Zelda. Please talk to us. Enough with the riddles! Tell us how to help you. I know you don't want to be a zombie forever."

Zelda cried out again and huddled tighter into a smaller ball. Ireland had never seen someone in such pain outside an emergency room. "Help," she said softly. "Help."

"Wait," the Violent Fairy said. "You aren't asking us for help, right? You're telling us you came here to find help."

"Who was going to help you here? There's nothing." Ireland took another glance around, just to be sure. "It's all trees and bushes and gravestones."

Zelda nodded again. The attack, or whatever it was, seemed to have worn off, and the Violent Fairy picked her up out of the mud and brushed her off as if she were a toddler. "Help."

"She's not a zombie, she's a dryad," Micah said. "Somewhere, right now, somebody is killing her tree. Once her tree is dead, so is she."

Chapter 9

"What else do you need? This is a dryad. Not a human being. Her life force is tied to her tree. If her tree is hurt or dies—is cut down, or what have you—she ceases to be. The end."

"For help, as she said. The oldest trees in any city can almost always be found in the local cemetery."

Micah continued: "Obviously she came looking for more of her kind. Poor creature; it was a long shot and it failed." He blinked, staring at Ireland. "Except it didn't, not really."

"Okay, okay," Ireland interrupted. "So, she's a dryad. That's an improvement over zombie, right? None of you were happy about a zombie joining our band of merry men."

At once, Zelda the non-zombie stood and began walking out of the cemetery. The small group watched her go, until Ezra finally said, "I guess we're to follow her?"

"She's not real verbal," Lent said. "It's not like she can sit in the car and say 'Turn left at McDonald's.'"

"Her liveliness, for want of a better word, is tied to her tree. As her tree recovered, so did she. But then…" Ezra trailed off. "Then whatever happened… happened again."

"That was so vague," the car said, "you shouldn't have bothered to talk at all. Let's go."

Ezra beat Ireland to the passenger seat, and Lent folded his considerable bulk behind the wheel, so Ireland climbed in the back seat with Owen and New Guy, Lent put the car in gear, Judith corrected him, and off they went.

At a crawl, to keep pace with Zelda. Judith groaned as the scenery inched by. "I'm burning out all kinds of pistons and things doing this," she complained.

"What is your story?" she whispered back. She brushed Owen's tail out of her face and gave the werewolf a shove to get more room. Squashed in the back seat between the stranger and the werewolf, she had a moment to reflect and had the usual thought: I must do something about my life.

At least New Guy wasn't still walking around looking like someone had hit him. But she supposed anyone ridiculously tall, with a young, unlined face and snow-white hair, had a few stories to tell.

"I'm the Tutor. At the very least, I know the names of things. If it's in a book somewhere, I'll find it. Once I find it, I remember it forever. It's my job to teach what I know to the person who can actually use the knowledge."

"I'm going to keep on pretending what you just said had nothing to do with me." Micah opened his mouth but she bulldozed right over him. "Anyway, Judith was engaged to an archmage and she cheated on him."

"He bound her into—I'm not sure exactly how it works, because before she was in this Escape she was in my grandpa's old thresher… anyway, she's bound into engine-run machinery until…" Ireland raised her voice. "Hey, Judith, what do you have to do to break the curse again?"

"I am being serious," the SUV said crossly. "Shut up and stop babbling my business to New Guy."

"I'm not the new guy," Micah said. "I can assure you—all of you—I'm strictly a temp worker. As the Tutor, it's my duty to—"

Yes, Ireland thought. "No, of course not, don't be silly, that's just so silly."

"This is so bad for my engine," Judith commented as the downtown area crawled by. Fortunately there were only three other cars on the street, and they handily passed the SUV. And didn't notice the dryad leading it or, if they did, had no comment, or interest.

They were going so slowly, in fact, the Violent Fairy had time to hop out, buy half a dozen cream puffs from the Cannon Falls Bakery, and hop back in.

"You did tell me her story," Micah reminded Ireland. "So it's only fair I tell you mine."

"No, just bitter and disillusioned," she retorted, "and there's a history of insanity in my family, so watch out!" She was startled that last had popped out, and decided to pretend she had been teasing, and forced a laugh.

Chapter 10

Later, when Micah looked back on that endless, lightning-quick drive back to the farm, he had no real idea how long he and Ireland huddled in the back seat, talking.

He found a reason to look at a county map some time later and observed the actual distance Judith had driven was 7.3 miles. Which she had taken at roughly three miles an hour.

So, not long at all. Not a terribly great distance. Or, to look at it another way, just long enough to fall in love for the first and last time in his life.

Chapter 11

Zelda the former zombie had led them all back… to the Shea Family Farm. To the enormous willow tree arching into the sky directly across the road from her house and barn.

"This was your tree all along? But then you must be…" Ireland shut up and thought about it. Zelda was decades—maybe hundreds of years old! Had lived right across the road during Ireland's life, her father's, her grandfather's. "How come I've never seen you before?"

"You're human," the fairy said, "she's dryad. Unless something's wrong, you'd never see her. Even when something goes wrong, you'd probably never see her. Who ever sees them? I lived in a forest for sixty years and never saw one. It was just a coincidence that she was in the cemetery the exact time you were."

"No," Micah said. He'd climbed out of Judith after Ireland, and now they were all standing in the field beside Old Man Willow. Zelda had broken from their small group and leaned against the tree, resting her forehead against the bark. "No coincidence. She's the Magicka."

The group blinked at him for a moment, then dismissed his comment as one. "But there's nothing wrong with Old Man Willow. See?" Ireland rapped her knuckles on the trunk. "Ow."

"Nothing we can see," Ezra said. "You can't see cancer, either, until the very end. I'm sure Willow, here, has a slightly different opinion about the health of her tree."

"Willow suits her much better," Ezra added, trying not to look smug. "And besides, she—What on earth has gotten into Owen?"

For the normally amiable werewolf was growling and stalking around Old Man Willow's trunk, actually digging up the soft turf with his paws. His growls were so low and continuous, he sounded like a well-kept motor.

"He's never done that before," the fairy commented, as if watching a new and previously undiscovered insect do something new and previously unsuspected.

Distressed, Ireland reached for Owen—only to find her wrist seized by Micah. "I wouldn't," he warned.

"Don't be silly," she said impatiently, "it's Owen. He'd never hurt me. He'd never hurt any of us."

"Maybe he's going rabid," Judith suggested helpfully. "Anybody see Old Yeller! I think it's the kindest way to handle this."

Ireland ignored her. "Owen, you're freaking everybody out. What's the matter?" She caught herself. "And why am I asking you when you can't talk?"

Owen yipped in reply, a yi-yi sound that was halfway between a groan and a giggle.

"I die," Willow said, and followed it with a disconsolate sigh the exact moment an evening breeze ruffled the leaves of her tree.

"I don't think I've ever been so bored and mad at the same time," Judith commented. "If you guys need me, I'll be in the driveway trying not to burn out my engine with what's left of my oil." Without another word, the SUV put itself into gear and roared out of the field.

"What? Why?" Ireland looked around at the small group. "We can't just quit. There's so much left to do." Even as she heard herself, she thought, This is why you have multiple roommates but no real life.

"I realize you've got the smell of a good mystery in your nostrils, Daphne, but there's nothing more to be learned until Owen changes back, which at best guess is…" Ezra glanced at the moon. "Six and a half hours away."

"Regroup, if you like the sound of that better. Until Owen is once again verbal, I suggest we eat. Or get some rest," he added with a pointed look at Ireland, which she ignored. If Ezra had his way, she'd be tucked into bed every night at nine o'clock.

"Forget that. You guys go," she replied. "I'll stay here and guard Willow's… uh, willow."

Ezra actually slapped his forehead. "Of course. We can't leave her tree alone until we get to the bottom of this. In fact, posting a guard might be the way we get to the bottom of this. We'll go in shifts."

The Violent Fairy yawned. "We will? You're the nocturnal guy. You can stay up all night in the cold—"

"It's sixty-five degrees out," Ezra said mildly. "Practically room temperature."

"As will Willow, presumably." They glanced at the now-silent woman, still leaning against her tree and looking as if she would fall, if not for the trunk. "Poor thing."

"I'll watch, too," Ireland said, "seeing as how it was my idea and all. Rock, paper, scissors for first watch?"

"Ah… no," Ezra said, glancing at her extended, grubby fist with thinly concealed distaste. "I will take the first watch. As the fairy pointed out, I am uniquely suited to the detail. Relieve me in three hours, please, Micah."

"No, it's fine," Micah said quickly. He smiled at her, and for a moment, he looked younger than all of them. "I should earn my keep, right?"

"I'd camp out in your field. It wouldn't be the first time I'd slept on the ground. It wouldn't even be the hundredth."

"So!" they heard Ezra say to Willow. "Have you read this week's Entertainment Weekly? Can you believe David Hasselhoff is making a fourth comeback?"

Chapter 12

Ireland rolled over and looked at the clock. Nope. Still far too early to relieve Micah. She rolled back, stared at the far wall, and tried to count in her head. She hadn't been to sleep; she hadn't even wanted to climb into bed. But the fairy, who was horrifyingly practical in addition to being infernally smart, pointed out that there was no point in remaining up when people were deliberately staying awake in the middle of a darkened field so everyone else could rest.

So to bed she had gone. And waited to fall asleep. And waited. And waited. She was tempted to pop an Ambien, except that would knock her out for a good seven hours and leave her groggy all morning. And she wouldn't get to see Micah all night.

Wouldn't get to relieve him, and watch out for Willow's willow, is what she meant.

She decided it had been at least half an hour and rolled back over to peer at the red, glowing numbers of her alarm. How she hated the thing.

She hated the clock, but she was a deep sleeper, and only its strident "NEHHH! NEHHH! NEHHH!" would wake her. Just knowing it was there, ticking like a time bomb, was enough to rob her of sleep some nights, and—

She thrashed around in her lonely bed like a rolling log with red hair. Poor Micah.

Because, she answered herself, she had never met anyone with pure white hair and a young face to go with it. Because he seemed so sad, even when he smiled. Because he had allowed himself to get swept up in her

And for what? Now he was all alone in the field in a strange place, alone except for Willow and her willow, and no doubt the two of them (three of them?) weren't exactly having a scintillating conversation, the poor guy, and he'd be lonely and hungry and thirsty. So far today she hadn't seen him eat or drink a thing.

She would… she would feed her guest! Yes, that was it. After all, it wasn't wasting their efforts at keeping watch if she was devoted to keeping their strength up while they kept watch. Er, right?

It had nothing to do with Micah-with-the-white-hair. Why, if it was still Ezra's watch, she'd trot right out into the field and offer him her wrist. He could have all the O-negative blood he—

She had never even seen Ezra eat, for that matter, although she knew he did, every single night. Judith had hinted that he had worked out an "arrangement" at the Cannon Falls Nursing Home with a few of the ladies, but since she knew he never killed to feed, she decided the rest was none of her business.

Besides, she'd volunteered at that nursing home all through high school. She'd never seen a building filled with angrier, pluckier people. Victims, they were not.

She tossed the blankets back and fairly bounded toward the doorway. No matter! She'd find something, even if she only brought him some sugar packets and a bottle of ketchup.

She paused, her hand on the knob, and contemplated her sleepwear: a pair of the Violent Fairy's lavender shorts, which had shrank in the wash and were now too small for him, and a sleeveless yellow T-shirt with the logo SOME DAYS IT'S NOT EVEN WORTH CHEWING THROUGH THE LEATHER RESTRAINTS.

Prob'ly should change, she thought. But into what, she had no idea. Her wardrobe wasn't exactly, ah, current.

For the first time in her admittedly exciting life, she wished she had more in her closet than a tasteful array of sweatshirts and leggings.

Chapter 13

Ireland tiptoed out of the house, the snores of the Violent Fairy still ringing in her ears. Even better, she hadn't ran into Ezra, so she assumed he'd run into town for a bite. Heh. So nobody was—

Too late, she heard the crunch of gravel as Judith pulled up beside her. "Whatcha doing?" the SUV asked brightly.

"I'm bringing Micah something to eat," she said, waving the Ziploc in the direction of Judith's windshield.

"You don't have to walk all the way over there. Just toss it on my front seat and I'll run it over to him."

Her engine raced, the SUV equivalent of an exasperated sigh. "Come on, Ireland. You know I almost never have the impulse to do something nice and, on the rare occasion I do, I almost never obey it." She added, in an even rarer moment of self-introspection, "Maybe that's why the curse is taking forever to break…"

"It's fine," Ireland almost groaned. Of all the times for Judith to be pleasant and helpful! "I'll take care of it."

"Take care of what?" Ezra asked, materializing out of the shadows. Ireland screamed and Judith stalled.

With a click, Judith restarted her hybrid engine. "No, you just scared all the oil right out of me! Seriously, there's going to be an embarrassing puddle right here."

"Jesus!" Ireland gasped, trying not to fall down. Ezra flinched away from her, but she couldn't say she was sorry. Her heart had nearly leaped out of her rib cage in protest at his out-of-nowhere question, and she was still recovering from the adrenaline surge. "Ezra, how many times do we have to tell you? Either stop doing that or wear a cat collar!"

"Not at all," Ezra soothed, "but there's no need to trouble yourself. I'm wide awake and happy to—"

She clutched the Ziploc protectively and backed away from both of them. "I'll do it! I just want to do this one thing and you people can't leave me alone! Now back off!"

"Wrong on both counts," she said triumphantly, waving the thermos at them. "Now leave me alone, both of you. Judith, go park and die. Ezra, go hop in your coffin and do the same."

"Since I was the one who startled you," Ezra (thank goodness!) said, "I suppose I should tend to you."

"Well, this pouf does not wish to soil his suit. Allow me a few moments to change."

"See, in the time you said all that? You could've dunked some 10W-30 into me. Takes maybe ten seconds."

Ezra, who had started toward the house, turned back. He folded his long skinny arms across his chest and sneered down at Judith. "The last time I opened your hood, you spit radiator fluid all over me."

"I did not cry. But if I had, it would have been a perfectly acceptable reaction to a psychopath's idea of harmless chicanery!"

"Off my ass, Lazarus! Is it my fault you lost your sense of humor about the same time you gave up breathing for Lent?"

"How dare you! This, this is why you were cursed, young lady! Your cavalier attitude about anyone's feelings save your own. It's no wonder…"

As Ireland crept toward the field, their voices faded away. They weren't following her. Oh, thank goodness.

Chapter 14

Micah heard what was definitely sinister rustling. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could make out a solitary figure coming toward him.

"Yes," Willow answered from far above him. At one point she had ceased hugging her trunk and scaled the tree like a ring-tailed lemur, quickly and gracefully. Now she was seated in the fork of a branch some twenty feet over his head. "It is."

It occurred to Micah that a centuries-old dryad probably recognized just about everyone. Especially one who wasn't afraid to leave her tree, as this one was. Therefore, it had been a stupid question to ask. He tried again: "Is that somebody you can—"

He leaped to his feet. "Ireland!" The distracted, messy, gorgeous, clumsy, redheaded Magicka was here! In the field! With him! Alone! (Except for the dryad.)

"Here!" He waved idiotically. She knows where you are, chump. "I'm right here!"

"Yeah, I know." She jogged the last few feet in order to reach him more quickly.

As soon as he had that thought, he instantly banished it. More quickly? Oh, the ego on you!

"Why is everyone so damned concerned about when my watch starts?" she practically shouted at him. Whoa. "It's like living with a bunch of clock-obsessed nuns!"

"Right." She stood, her hands behind her back, and looked at him. He stared back, happy to gaze into her—her—well, it was awfully dark out here so he couldn't exactly see the color of her eyes (though he remembered their vivid brown quite well, thank you), though he could make out her face.

"So. And don't get angry—but if your watch hasn't started, what are you doing out here?"

"Lucky Charms," she clarified. She handed him a small thermos. "And milk. I hope you like skim. And also, please please please don't tell Lent I gave you some of his cereal."

"That's so—" Weird, he had been about to say, but quickly reconsidered. "Thoughtful. Ah… how am I supposed to… ?"

"I figured you could pour the milk into the bag. Here, I've got…" She dug into her pockets and at last produced a spoon of questionable cleanliness, which he accepted gratefully.

It occurred to him that he was starving. Usually he had alcohol for dinner, followed by alcohol. Sometimes a sandwich, followed by alcohol. Not that he had a problem, exactly—he had gone for weeks, sometimes months, without a drink (and don't start with that "the first step is admitting you have a problem" stuff, because his problem was training Magickas since time out of mind, his problem was spending the time between Magickas not trying to slit his wrists from sheer boredom). But when he was in between Magickas, drinking was something to do. It certainly beat staying up all night and staring at hotel wallpaper.

His long silence must have made her uneasy, because she hesitantly added, "Is it all right?"

"Thank you," he said, and promptly sat down, cross-legged in the dirt, and did as she suggested. "It's delicious," he said with his mouth full.

She laughed and leaned forward, wiping his chin with her sleeve. He nearly flinched—not at her touch, but at how close she was to him when she leaned nearer. It took most of his willpower not to toss the bag o' Charms into the dirt and grab her.

"I was lying in bed and couldn't sleep, and got to thinking about you out here, hungry and cold—"

"It's sixty-some degrees out here," he reminded her. "Barely sweater weather, now that the rain has stopped."

"Even so, you're still going to get mud everywhere. I mean… we're in a field. Of mud."

"So we are. So, you were lying in your bed." Hastily, he shoveled in more Charms, lest he say something really boneheaded.

"Yup. I was indeed." She peered up at the tree and spotted Willow. "How's it going up there?" At the predictable lack of answer, she shrugged. "She seems better. She climbed twenty feet, for God's sake."

"Yes, whatever's wrong seems to come and go, like waves of pain." He shrugged. He had never, in his long life, met a dryad. "Or something."

"I can't believe there's been a dryad across the road my entire life and I never knew it."

"I can't, either," he said bluntly, "and it's one of the things we need to talk about once we solve Willow's problem."

"You showed up out of the blue and started babbling about my sacred destiny or whatever, and you can't get mad because I didn't drop everything and get all 'Please, Obi Wan, tell me more.' "

"All the others did," he grumped, and gulped down another spoonful of sugar-fortified cereal. "And from the looks of things, people drop in out of the blue all the time."

She laughed. "There's a bit of truth in that! I didn't go looking for any one of them, they all found me."

She looked a little hurt. "It's the way I was raised. I've got the room, and plenty of money. Who am I to begrudge—"

"Now, quit. They earn their keep. Heck, two years ago Ezra nailed a dirty cop from a few towns over, and last spring Lent figured out why all the kids at the high school were getting so sick. And Owen—" She cut herself off and, even in the dark, Micah could tell she was troubled. "Owen needs me," she continued, and he tried to ignore the vicious swipe of jealousy across his heart.

"It's hard for a pack animal to be on his own," she began, "and especially—You know what? I really shouldn't be talking about this. This is Owen's business and he'll tell you if he likes. Or not, if he likes."

"Right! Even Judith—well, okay, Judith is a gigantic pain in my ass, but she's had a run of bad luck. It's not her fault. Not really."

"Just an innocent victim, oh definitely," he agreed. "But the point is that these magical beings showed up one day? Over and over again?"

"Yeah, they pretty much fell out of the sky. In the Violent Fairy's case, literally." She rubbed the back of her neck, remembering. "Landed right on top of me. I thought Ezra was going to have a heart attack. I'd always thought fairies were teeny and dim. Not huge and smart. Who'd have thought those gossamer wings would support all that weight?"

He laughed, picturing the scene. He was dying to know all their backstories, but right now it was none of his business. He understood perfectly why they had all been drawn to her; what he didn't understand was why, once she solved their problems, they remained.

"No. You're a Magicka the way Lent is a fairy. He's not human, and neither are you."

"All right," she said kindly, and he was momentarily taken off guard. She got it! She understood! Why, this was going to be—"No more Lucky Charms for you," she finished, and snatched the dripping bag away.

Chapter 15

Micah, who was really very handsome for a crazy person, was still babbling about the Sacred Duty of the Magicka. And she had quit listening. Not because the very idea of being something so fundamentally different and—and weird was scary. Because it wasn't.

It was just, he was wrong. That's all. He was completely utterly totally wrong. So she watched his mouth move and waited for her turn to talk.

After a minute, it was. "You're wrong," she said as nicely as she could. "You've got the wrong girl."

"What an awful noise you just made. And you really do. I'm not the magic one. My friends—they're the magic ones, the weird ones. Yeah, that's right, I said it: they're weird. But I'm normal! I'm totally, totally ordinary."

"Yeah? This lady hasn't even started protesting, big boy. I'd be laughing if this weren't obviously such a big deal to you."

"You can say that after the day you've had? Which as I understand it is a very typical day for you? You can say that while sitting in your field with a stranger and a dryad?"

"Like I said," she repeated patiently, "it's not me. It's them. It's them all the time. It's one hundred percent all them."

"But, honey, why do you think they find you?" The "honey" had slipped out and he could feel himself blush in the darkness. Thank God she couldn't see him. "You, out of any other person on the planet?"

"Because I live on a secluded farm in the quiet Midwest and have plenty of room and an open-fridge policy?" He could hear the rising irritation in her tone. Interesting. She certainly tightened up whenever he started nosing around the truth. After all this time he had fallen in love with a Magicka, and after all this time, he had found a Magicka who had completely deluded herself about her true nature.

The others had known. On some level, they had known. But Ireland… she not only seemed determined not to know, she seemed invested in it.

"Ireland, to answer your question, a Magicka is. Just like a dryad is, or a werewolf. You're the guardian of the Magick."

"Your friends were drawn to you," he continued patiently, "because they sensed what you've managed to keep from yourself: you keep them safe."

"No, I don't! I don't keep anybody safe; cripes, the PTA almost burned Lent at the stake last year! They didn't know fairies are fireproof. My friends look out for themselves; they have to. I don't have to do anything."

She steamrolled over him. "Look at Ezra: ten times as strong as me, and quick as a cat on crack. Look at Lent! As smart as he is big; fireproof and waterproof. Heck, look at Judith! Nobody can hurt her unless they're driving a semi, and even then she'd just jump into another vehicle and come back twice as bitchy."

"I'm not saying they know what you are and are keeping it from you. I'm saying they sense it, the way you sensed your friends were all special, one way or the other. I'll bet you weren't surprised at all when Owen changed during the full moon that first time."

"Actually, I found him in the back field, badly hurt, in his wolf form," she admitted. "I got Lent to carry him back and we fixed him up. Of course, when he turned back he was all better, but at the time we didn't—"

"If anyone else had tried that, Owen would have bitten their face off. Any werewolf would have. But he trusted you. He knew you'd keep him safe. Even if he didn't know that on the top of his brain."

"Listen: in this group, I can't be the weird one. Hear me? I can not be the weird one!"

"Who said anything about weird? I never used the word 'weird.' And even if I did, what's wrong with being special?"

"My mother was special," she said bitterly. "And so was her mother. Really super-special. It's not for me. It isn't me."

She shook her head. Showed what he knew. Some Tutor. "Micah, you are the nicest crazy man I have ever met. And I have known a lot of crazy people, so that's not just a backhanded compliment."

"Thank you. But let's get back to you. Picture it like this: you walk around in a perpetual force field of protection. And you can throw that force field around any supernatural creature, like a net or a web. And lo, they're safe."

" 'Lo'?" She shook her head. "That is the dumbest description of a superpower I've ever heard."

"Micah, I'm not the special one. I'm really not. It's them. It's always been them."

He reached out and gently pushed a red wave off her forehead. "And why, Ireland Shea, is it so difficult for you to believe you're the special one?" And he leaned forward, not quite sure what he was going to do until he did it, and kissed her.

Chapter 16

Ireland had been hoping something would break this awful train of chat they were trapped on, and lo! (as Micah would say) he had kissed her. This saved her the trouble of kissing him. It was either kiss him, or punch him. Because she couldn't be expected to listen to his craziness for one moment longer.

utter nonsense. It was pure insanity, not to mention nutball intense! And to suggest that her friends were somehow

in on the whole thing on some sort of unconscious level, like they all had some kind of paranormal Bat Sense was just

beyond silly. Ever since her parents had died, it had been all she could do to keep from tearing her hair out from sheer loneliness, but to suggest she pulled people to her like she was made of Magicka Sticky Tape was

Nobody with her family background could be responsible for any one person, never mind an entire subset of creatures who were—ech!—dependent on her like she was the sheriff of Crazytown

(you walk around in a perpetual force field of protection) just looking for a fabulously dangerous job.

The last thing she needed was a shovelful of "You're the Magicka, you have to protect not only your roommates but any other Tom, Dick, or Werewolf"

And even if they didn't knock! Did he expect her to ride the range of the world, looking for people to save? He didn't even know her! How could he expect so much of someone

Didn't he understand? Didn't he realize she couldn't be responsible, it was too much, it was too big, too frightening, too bizarre, and too damned strange? Didn't he know that she was perfectly happy living

on the Shea Family Farm? Didn't he realize he was messing with the very fabric of her life? Worse than Aunt Key ever did, or could do? Didn't he know that everything fell through her fingers if she tried to hold on to it?

"Well?" she demanded, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt until they were nose to nose, kneeling across from each other in the mud. "Don't you?"

"Wha?" he managed. She saw he was rumpled and mussed, as if he'd been thoroughly enjoying their kissing while, inside, a big rat of doubt had run around in her brain until she couldn't take it anymore. Well! That was nice.

Actually, that was nice. She yanked on his shirt until they were mouth to mouth and kissed him back. Anything to get that damned rat out of her brain. And where it went, she did not care.

"So? The others will be out here after my watch and then we can change our clothes. Or Judith can come out here and take part of my watch while we go on and shower."

Quick as thought, he unbuttoned his (formerly) spotless blue oxford, whipped it off, spread it on the mud, and eased her onto it. She decided not to mention all the cold mud squishing all over the backs of her legs. Who knew what he might whip off next?

She pulled him down to her and ran her fingers through his white hair. "When did your hair start—"

"Wow. But you don't look any older than me; I swear you don't have so much as a laugh line. So how old—"

She sat up so fast, they bonked foreheads. "Ow!" her incredibly decrepit, ancient, crumbling lover-to-be howled.

"You're older than America! I'm about to make it with a guy who was old when Martin Van Buren was young?"

"Aren't you just a little skeeved out to be jumping someone my age? Next to you, I'm a fetus!"

"Well," he said, reasonably enough, "I never found anybody my age I wanted to jump."

"I don't like vampires for sex partners because you have to share blood to guarantee monogamy," he explained, "and I've never met a female fairy, and I didn't know there were dryads until yesterday. And you're the first Magicka I… you know." He paused and cleared his throat. "You're the first Magicka I liked enough to—anyway, that's about it for the paranormal. To the best of my knowledge. Which I feel obliged to remind you is considerable. And a human with a seventy-year life span is absolutely out of the question."

"What about me?" she asked, chills running up and down her arms as the new, unwelcome thought struck her. (Well, the chills could have been from the fact that they were wriggling around in the muck like a couple of mudfish.) "How long will I—how long do my kind live?"

"Every Magicka I've known has died of old age, even if, at the end, they were in some sort of epic good/evil thing," he soothed. "To be blunt, you're too damned powerful to be killed off. Your energy has to be—"

"On second thought, don't tell me." She chewed on that one while he chewed on the collar of her shirt. Too powerful to be killed off? People were drawn to her? Well, shit! That made her a… a… "A damned Mary Sue!"

"Oh, it's this silly thing Ezra told me about. He reads about nine books a day, you know, and don't even ask me how many magazines. He said a Mary Sue is a heroine who is the bestest prettiest coolest powerfulest awesomest heroine in the history of fiction. So nauseatingly sweet you could just as easily barf on her as fall in love with her. He says they're running rampant in historical romances."

"Oh. Well, that's not you," he said, and she perked up. "You're not sweet at all," he went on with heartless cheer, which was less fun. "You yell a lot, and you stammer, and you fall over everything that isn't nailed down, and sometimes you've got kind of a dirty mouth. You're a great big bundle of flaws."

"What is your shirt made of? Titanium? These buttons…"—he struggled with them—"will not… budge!"

"That's because they're snaps." She demonstrated, sliding her hand down the vent. Her blouse obligingly sprang open. "How old did you say you were?"

Chapter 17

The clothes had finally come off (most of them… it was damned chilly in the wee hours of the morning) and they moved and strained against each other. Her hair was the brightest thing in the field, the world. Her soft, ripe mouth opened for his, bloomed like a black orchid, her limbs twined with his, her pelvis met his, her eyes met his.

He could see everything, feel everything: the sweat beading in the hollow of her throat, her temples. The way her eyes were slitted, the way her body tightened in an all-over spasm as she came and came and came again. The way her nipples were hard points against his bare chest, the way her nails dug into his ass. And still they rocked together in the mud and he had a dim thought

which he couldn't quite catch hold of. Then his orgasm started at the base of his spine and roared up and out of his central nervous system, leaving him shaking, leaving him exhausted, leaving him in the mud with the woman he loved, would always love, no matter how long he lived and no matter how long she did.

Chapter 18

"Uck," Ireland said, and stretched. Tried to; Micah was sprawled on top of her, snoring with an odd "whee… wee—wee—wee!" sound. Good thing he hadn't done that before she'd taken off her pants. At least she was warm, if slightly squashed. She couldn't believe they had both dozed off after their muddy humpy sex, long day or no. "Micah?"

"Um?" he said, and raised his head. He looked around the field with total incomprehension, and then the light dawned. Literally: the sun had come up, best guess, ten minutes ago. Then: "We fell asleep? Ack, God, I'm freezing. And I've got mud everywhere."

There was a circle of four faces around them, all unfamiliar, all male, all scowling. Except for one.

"Aunt Key?" she gasped, thinking: three visits in one week? And she caught me in postcoital slumber after a four-year dry spell? What are the odds? Dear God, WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

"This lifestyle you lead," the older woman tsked, shaking her head. "Really, Ireland."

"What are you doing here? What are all of you doing here?" She thought of an even better, more relevant question. "Who are you?"

"Don't you remember? I told you." Key shrugged out of her coat and dropped it down onto them. Micah sat up, eased Ireland up, and while she struggled back into her jeans he pulled his shirt out of the mud and handed it to her.

Ireland contemplated the muddy rag for a moment, then pulled on Key's red windbreaker. "Told me what?" she almost snapped.

"Don't you remember? I already told you, Aunt Key, I'm not selling this field. I'm not selling any of my land. And can we have this discussion any place and time but here?"

"I thought if you met them you might change your mind," the older woman said brightly.

"So you brought them over at the crack of—" At "crack," Micah started to laugh. She silenced him with a glare and finished. "Dawn?"

"—since I showed it to them last week." Aunt Key gasped and turned to the men. "What did you just say?"

"What I've always done," the older woman replied. "Looked out for you. Tried to make your life easier. Tried to stop you from making things too hard on yourself. These men—they have lots of money."

"If you only had the house and barn to worry about, maybe you'd go out more! And maybe those roommates…" Her shrill, accusatory voice trailed off and Micah jumped into the gap.

"Maybe those roommates would leave if they didn't have all this land to, um, romp around in?"

"As you can see," Aunt Key sniffed, clutching her purse to her (ample) chest, "I'm not here a moment too soon."

" 'Monkey' is very unpleasant werewolf slang for 'human,' " Micah explained. He was getting to his feet very slowly. He did not, she noticed, give her a hand out of the mud. "A dirty, filthy, lice-picking, descended-from-primates human."

Ireland gaped. Two of the others gaped back in a perfect imitation of her expression, then gleefully elbowed each other. "You're werewolves?" she nearly squeaked.

"And you wanted to buy my land? Which isn't," she added, glaring at Key, "for sale?"

"Yeah, well, we're always looking for more territory. If we can't get it one way, we'll get it another," Ian, a blond man with a porn-star moustache and the build of a fire hydrant, explained. "We figured you'd want to sell if your pet tree died."

"How were you doing it?" Micah asked, which was annoying. He was catching on much, much faster than she was. Mary Sue, my big pink ass! Everyone else is ten times quicker than I am! "Is werewolf piss caustic? Is that how you were making the tree sick?"

"Jeez, no," Ian said, and Ireland wondered if the other two could talk. They seemed perfectly happy to let the tallest one do all the verbalizing. "Every time we came over to 'look at the property' we brought a picnic. Insecticide in the thermos bottles."

"Oh, that's very nice," she snapped, leaping to her feet and nearly skidding back and falling down. She steadied herself on Micah's arm and added, "What'd Willow ever do to you?"

At once, it all made sense. Poor Willow! Helpless against werewolves who came back… and came back… and came back! Right under her very nose; that was the part that really hurt. If she'd ever spotted strangers strolling around in her field, she wouldn't have thought a thing about it: this was the country. You didn't automatically distrust strange faces.

And each time they showed up with cups full of what the casual observer thought was Kool-Aid, but was really—

"I—you—we—" She could feel herself sputter with rage as ten insults fought for dominance. "Douchebags! That's really nasty human slang for 'werewolves,' you know. I'm not going to sell my land or her to you, you scumbag… scumbags!"

"I didn't want to sell before you were up to this shit, and I'm sure as shit not going to sell now, you pieces of shitty… shit!"

"And you!" she shouted, rounding on her last living relative. "My mother didn't ask you to run my life for me! She sure as hell didn't ask you to play Realtor behind my back. And even if she did, hello? She was crazy! Regardless, just because you don't approve of my roommates is no good reason for you to stick your nose into my business."

The hilarious thing was, Key had no idea how true her words were. She thought the others were gay.

"They're unnatural," Ireland agreed, "and I love it. Hear me? Love. It. So take your fuzzy friends and get the hell off my land before I remember where I hid the guns after I told Lent I got rid of them."

"Well, there's going to be a small problem with that," Micah said, "although I'm incredibly proud of you right now. And that's—"

Micah, warningly: "They mean it, Ireland. Werewolves are not inclined to bluff."

"Pay attention, monkey, we're threatening you. Now: sell us the land or—Stop that."

Micah had lunged forward and slugged the large blonde with what appeared to be all his strength. And now he was hobbling in a circle, clutching his ruined fist and groaning in pain.

Ian, who hadn't rocked backward with the blow, rubbed his chin. "I've had harder punches from my cubs. What are you?"

"I'm a teacher," Micah groaned, cradling his hand with the other hand. "Ahhh, God! I think I broke most of my knuckles."

"Don't worry," Ireland soothed. "I'll throw my, uh, incredibly lame net of protection around you. Isn't that how it works? Hey, that's right, I'm invulnerable!" She stepped up to Ian and thrust out her chin. "Hit me with your best shot, you big stupid blond—"

Chapter 19

Ireland opened her eyes and looked up at a now-familiar circle of faces, including Ian's and Key's. "I thought you said I was invulnerable," she moaned, massaging her jaw and deciding it wasn't broken, just bruised.

"I never said that. I never said that!" Micah cried, leaning down to pull her to her feet. "I said your kind lived to old age. I never said you couldn't be hurt!"

"Well, shit." She swayed, then steadied herself, then swayed some more. It sounded just right for the situation, so she said it again: "Well, shit."

"As you can see," Ian said, staring at them as if they were crazy people, which meant, if nothing else, he was a good judge of character, "we don't mind hurting you to get what we want. So why don'—"

"Ian!" A baritone bellow split the morning air. "You monkey-fucking sly sneaking rogue son of a bitch! Get away from them now. Yeah, that's right, it's me. Didn't expect me to come over upwind, did you, you pretending bastard?"

"Who is that, now?" Ireland cried, and turned. To her complete amazement, Owen was stomping toward them, his normally pale complexion flushed to the eyebrows. She had never heard him talk like that, not even when she had cooked his raw hamburger on Judith's hot engine and eaten it without a qualm. "Owen, wh—"

"I knew it was you assholes, I smelled you all over the place last night. At least you saved me the trouble of tracking you this morning. Get off our land."

"Her land," Aunt Key corrected. Then she corrected herself: "I mean, not for long."

"Did you really think you could turn us down and not ever pay the consequences? Did you think anybody who gave you shelter wouldn't get bit?" Ian smiled, a good trick since he looked so furious. The frightening thing was, it was a genuine smile.

"Oh ho," Micah said quietly. "Trying to form your own pack? Thrown out for whatever dull reason, stricken from the group—which can be like death for your kind. But you couldn't stand the thought of a true rogue turning you down?"

"A rogue who asks the Leader's permission to leave," Owen explained absently. "A legitimate rogue, I guess you could say. Are you guys hurt? You don't smell hurt."

"We're fine. I cast my web of protection over Micah, so he only broke half the bones in his hand. Then I cast my net of suckitude over myself, and got knocked cold. Owen, I didn't know you were—" "Hiding" seemed like the wrong word, but what was the right one?

"It's not your problem, Ireland, it's mine. It's always been mine. One of these days I'll see about mending fences, but I'd eat salads for a decade before I'd join up with these idiots. Ian, it's not that you guys are mean. It's that you're dumb. I mean, even a rogue has standards, you know?"

For reply, Ian's fist came whistling through the air toward Owen's face. Ireland didn't even have time to gasp a warning—not that Owen needed it; he ducked with time to spare.

"You sure you want to get into this?" Owen asked, his bangs actually ruffling from the wind of Ian's blow. "There's no walking away from this one."

"Why do you think there are three of us? We'll take you, we'll take the land, we'll have more territory and we'll be rid of you and the monkey you're shacked up with. It's what the monkeys call a 'win/win.'"

"I'll show you monkeys," Ireland began furiously, at which point a couple hundred pounds (and then some) dropped straight down onto Ian.

"Stupid werewolves," the Violent Fairy snickered, stomping Ian's head into the mud for good measure. From the werewolf's complete immobility, the landing had knocked him unconscious. At the very least. "Never look up. Just follow their nose. Harder to track a vegetarian; we don't smell like crap."

"Lent!" Ireland screamed, strongly resisting the urge to fling herself into his arms and sob like a toddler denied a cookie. "I've never been so glad to see anybody in my—"

"Oh gross!" Now Lent was screaming. "Not the head, Judith, not the head! You didn't listen to the plan."

"Sure I did," Judith said, setting her parking brake with a satisfying creak. "I just decided it was a dumb one. Ireland, are you guys okay? We saw you go down and, as they say, sprang into action."

A solitary creature, the third werewolf, a skinny brunette with skin the color of recycled paper, shifted nervously on the balls of his feet. "Okay, I guess I'm in charge now," he began, and it was a pity his voice cracked on "guess." Otherwise it might almost have been worrisome.

"Willow," Judith explained, just as her hatch opened and the willowy (hee!) brunette climbed out. "She came to get Ezra, who was just turning in. Ezra told us. We came out, Lent told us the plan, we swooped like the avengers we apparently are."

"Hey, she's still a little funny-smelling. You have no idea how tough it is to get odors out once they—"

Willow, meanwhile, had gracefully walked up to the last werewolf. She stood very close to him, arms at her side. She was very still; if Ireland hadn't known she was a dryad, she would have known something was off. Willow didn't move, stand, talk, or react at all like a human. She had planted herself in front of the third werewolf like the tree she was, and Ireland had a feeling nothing could move her unless she wished it.

"Not anymore, Willow," Micah said. "We figured out what they've been doing. They won't do it again."

"Get away from me," the werewolf—was it Brian or Greg?—said nervously. "I mean it. You think a vegetarian scares me?"

"She's not a—" Micah began, then cut himself off. "Actually, I suppose technically she is a vegetarian, but—"

Impatient and spooked, Brian-or-Greg swung a fist into Willow's left cheek. They all heard the sickening crunch and Ireland almost screamed, thinking Willow had been badly hurt.

"Do not I die ever again," Willow said. The blow hadn't moved her, ruffled her, harmed her, or moved her face so much as half an inch. "Do not."

"It's tough to hear her," Lent commented, "over the screaming. Did she basically tell him to shove off?"

"Yeah," Micah said, also shouting to be heard over the werewolf's howls of pain as he ran in small circles, blood running down his wrist and forearm in lengthening streams. "Basically!"

"What, huh?" Judith shouted. "Just a minute, you guys. Hey, werewolf! Cut the shit or I'll park on your face!"

"That's better," Judith sighed. "I guess you can't knock a dryad on her ass unless she wants you to."

"Not when they root themselves like that," Lent said. He was looking at Willow, Ireland noticed, in a whole new way. And… was that a smile? On Lent's face? "Huh."

"He doesn't date," she whispered to Micah. "He's afraid of hurting the girl. And he told us last year he hadn't seen a female of his kind in over twenty years."

"Don't tell me," he groaned. "I don't want to even think about the unstoppable offspring of a dryad/fairy union."

"I'm just saying." Then, louder, "Well, thanks for coming to our rescue, you guys. Although I must say, Micah here had it all under control."

"We could tell," Judith said with poisonous sweetness, "from the way he got his ass kicked."

"And as for you." Ireland rounded on her last living relative, who smiled sickly.

"No, you only had yours. You're a bigot, Aunt Key, a contemptible nasty-minded bigot who has always hated the fact that not only did I never need you, I never even liked you. You get off my—our—land and never, ever come back."

"Good-bye and good riddance," Aunt Key proclaimed, then spun (clumsily; it was still awfully muddy) and started marching away.

"Oh, Micah! Tell me you weren't going to say something mushy and awful like 'But you have a family, a family you made, and we'll be together forever.'"

"I was going to say, 'Well, I think it's time we went up to the house and got some breakfast.'"

"I don't believe this!" Micah cried, squatting beside the smashed, parked werewolf. The first one was still unconscious.

"Ugh, I know. I'd like to go one month without a secret moonlight burial," Ireland complained.

"That's fine," Owen said, staring down at the blond muddy mess. "I'll bring him around and explain the facts of life. Not that it'll take much explaining. And thanks, Ireland."

"You never asked any questions. In three years, you never asked. I just wanted to tell you I appreciated it. And like I said, I'll go back one day and settle this unfinished pack business." He grinned, looking like the sunny, cheery Owen of old. "But not today."

"So, how about some green tea?" Lent asked Willow, who replied, "I drink," and followed him up to the house.

"That's just great," Ireland said, following them. Beside her, Micah took her hand. "Everybody's got their happy ending but me. And Aunt Key. And her henchwolves."

"That's what you think. If you think I'm sticking around for the next twenty years to teach you but not marry you, fight with you, piss you off, and get laid regularly, you're crazier than your whole nutty family."

"I told you. If it can be found in a book, I can look it up. You think you're the only one with a bunch of crackers in the family tree?"

"Noooo," she replied, so relieved that her knees kept wanting to buckle. "But you have to admit, it's certainly colored my judgment over the years."

"Yeah, well. I can understand not wanting to be 'the weird one' after growing up the way you did, but that's years behind you now."

"No, of course not," he said gently. "What do I know about families? I've never had one. I never even knew my parents—Tutors are given up at birth and trained, also from birth. I'm just saying, your family shaped you into the woman you are now, right?"

"No more hiding behind your family. No more hiding, period. We'd have been in deep shit if your friends hadn't come helped. And that's fine. But the time will come when they'll be in deep shit without you. And you've got to be ready. I'll make sure you're ready."

"Well, that's not to say we can't shower, eat, and then have another roll in the mud, so to speak. Then I'll take up my slave-driving ways."

"I suppose." She smirked. "Just what I always wanted. My own pervert. Now if I can just catch the measles again my life will be utterly, utterly perfect."

Epilogue

Ireland discovered that mud did not come out of silk panties, and threw that pair away. After that, she stuck to cotton.

Micah decided that drinking after dinner didn't agree with him, and gave the whiskey to Ezra.

Ezra renewed all his magazine subscriptions for the next three years, and fell in love with the newest resident of the Cannon Falls Nursing Home: Ida Harris, aged seventy-two. They are currently dating. Jack Daniel's agrees with both of them very well after dinner.

Lent discovered that Willow had unbreakable bones. She is expecting their first child in the summer.

Owen, at the time of this writing, hadn't bothered to fix things up with his pack…

… and Judith is still cursed, and overdue for her ninety-thousand-mile tune-up.

The Majicka

No Rest for the Witches Anthology

By