Chapter Nine

"We have found Annabelle," Mrs. Von Helado announced.

Ethan wondered for the first time why her sons or grandsons, or whoever they were, didn't speak. Maybe they couldn't speak? Maybe they were drugged or hypnotized. Maybe they weren't even Human at all, but robots or big, nasty guard dogs dressed up to look Human.

With a force of will, he kept his face calm and shoved his suddenly ludicrous, wild imagination back into the cold, dark closet where he usually kept it chained.

"Congratulations. I guessed that you had other investigators working in other states. One of them located her for you?" He reached for the drawer pull, glad to think of that talisman being out of his possession once and for all.

"Not at all. You're the only one with the right, shall we say, qualifications?" Mrs. Von Helado nodded once for punctuation. That gleam that Ethan could only describe as malice flickered once in her eyes. "You helped us narrow down quite a few leads, discarding illusions and lies for us. We're grateful. No, something happened recently, which alerted us to her whereabouts. We want you to come with us to Neighborlee, Ohio, to help us confront her, keep her under control." Her thin smile widened just barely enough to be noticeable.

Ethan thought of the grin of a shark.

"Neighborlee?" He knew if he lied, pretended ignorance, they would sense it. Now was not the time to make them panic, make them act too quickly. "I know the town. I've done some work for another P.I. there."

"What do you think of the place? The atmosphere there?"

"It's a small college town. Feels like Mayberry, but with computers." He shrugged. "Nothing to write home about."

That chill raced up his back when Mrs. Von Helado definitely looked pleased with his response.

What would she have done, what would she have said, if he confessed that the town made the hairs stand up on his arms and prickled his scalp? That he gave himself a headache ignoring the illusions, the lights and movements and sounds that surrounded him from the moment he drove over the border.

"We're preparing the paperwork to take Annabelle into custody."

"You're sure she's there?" He thought of the sketch of their alleged Annabelle, and how Angela had grown sick and weak at the sight of it. The sour smell when it burned. How it had resisted when he tried to tear it.

Had he alerted them to her presence by taking the sketch to Divine's Emporium?

No, that was weeks ago. They would have acted right away, wouldn't they, if the sketch and its Dorian Gray reversal trick had been the trigger, the alarm?

"We're very sure. Not entirely one hundred percent." She let out a dry whisper of a laugh. "Would you be so kind as to go ahead of us, to simply look at her, perhaps talk to her? Do a little preliminary work for us? Lawyers take so much time completing what should be simple tasks. It would be comforting to me to have a little more assurance while we're being delayed by tiresome legal matters."

"Yeah, sure. Might save you some trouble, in the long run. I mean, what if she isn't your Annabelle? Wouldn't that be kind of embarrassing if you showed up with custody papers, and it wasn't her?"

"Highly embarrassing. Mortally so." Those eyes sparked malice again, and amusement. "We need you to gather a little evidence that she is indeed in need of caretakers, someone to take responsibility for her. Why don't you take that sketch we gave you, and compare it to her?"

That answered that question. The destruction of the sketch hadn't alerted them.

"Even better, see if she remembers the bauble we gave you." She inhaled sharply and licked her lips, once, a movement more reminiscent of a lizard than a cat. "You do still have it, don't you?"

"Close and safe." Ethan opened the drawer and cleared the impromptu plug out of the top of the mug without them seeing. His skin suddenly crawled at the thought of touching the chain, so he picked up the mug and upended it onto his cluttered blotter.

"Just show it to her. Perhaps you should wear it around your neck, so it seems very casual when you encounter her, perhaps on the streets of the town. Let her notice it naturally. See where it leads."

"What if she recognizes it and calls for the cops, claiming I stole it? What if she goes into hysterics over it?"

"She won't. Annabelle was never the hysterical type, despite her flaws, her mental problems." Again that lizard-like flick of the tongue.

Ethan made a note to himself never to wear that talisman. With all the things the lab had found coating the chain and the coin, and Angela's reaction to the sketch, nothing in the world could convince him to let it touch his bare skin. Poison or mind-altering drugs or something else, something beyond his imagination, he wasn't taking any chances.

"It stops now," he whispered when he was alone. He had made arrangements with the Von Helados to meet here in his office in five days to report, and plan the next step in the campaign to retrieve poor, demented, helpless Anabelle.

If there was anyone in the world who was the polar opposite of the woman the Von Helados described to him, it was Angela of Divine's Emporium.

He stuck to the plan, the timetable he had made with them, stayed in his office clearing up loose ends, making arrangements to be away for a few days, and then went home at the end of the day. There were only a few times in his career that Ethan hadn't trusted his clients. All the other incidents combined didn't add up to the wrongness, the certainty of lies and ulterior motives and threat that he sensed from the Von Helados.

He had learned it was wise to always overestimate his enemy's capabilities. As in having him watched, followed, his phone bugged. He stopped at a drug store on his way home and used a pay phone to call Stanzer. Less than five minutes later, he hung up and continued on his way, feeling a little better with the knowledge that the other investigator had been warned, and he would warn Angela in turn.

* * * *

"Mr. Jarrod." Angela was standing in front of the counter in the main room of the shop when Ethan walked in that early morning, before Divine's Emporium opened for the day. He would have thought she would have stayed behind it, putting the heavy marble barrier between them, like a shield.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to call me by my first name?"

"Not quite yet. Yes, you are acting as a friend and ally, and John trusts you. But--"

"But you don't." He shrugged. "Fair enough. I guess it has to be earned. Especially after what happened last time."

"You say these people are preparing legal documents to take control over me?" She lifted one hand and rested it on a dark, rainbow-shimmering globe sitting on the counter. Ethan flinched when tendrils of multi-colored, pearly mist rose from the globe and wrapped around her fingers. Angela lifted one elegant eyebrow. "Do you see that?"

"I don't know what I see." He coughed to clear his throat of whatever made his voice turn into a rasp.

"You don't want to see. You're very good at not seeing," she half-whispered. "But this--everything that's happening--is pulling down all the barriers you've erected in your mind."

"Look, these people who claim to be your relatives sent me here to get evidence that you're crazy." He tried to laugh. It caught in his throat. "Don't give me that evidence."

"I'm not insane, but you could well be if you don't learn to believe. Or learn not to see all those things that dance at the edges of your sight and your imagination. I believe I feel sorry for you, Mr. Jarrod."

"That's a start at friendship, huh?" He looked around the shop, caught in wonder for a moment at the wonderful hodge-podge of treasures and junk. He even enjoyed the sensation that there was far more here than what he could see, as if a slight turn, a different angle of view, would reveal multiple doorways and stairs where no stairs or doors belonged, and upside-down rooms, like in an Escher drawing.

He dug his hands into his pockets just to have something to do. Something sticky and hot bit his fingertips. Ethan cursed and yanked his hand out. The talisman came with his hand and clattered to the ground.

It shouldn't have been in his pocket. He had left it in the coffee mug in his office. The plan was to tell the Von Helados that she didn't react to it, and be able to tell the truth--just not the whole truth.

Angela gasped and sagged against the counter. The light coming from the globe darkened and the tendrils thinned.

"I did not bring that with me. I swear. I left it in my office. I don't know how it got--" Ethan clamped his mouth shut when he realized he was babbling.

"More proof that there are outside forces acting on us, using you in the first campaign." Angela shuddered and her eyes got bigger as she stared at the talisman.

Ethan took a step closer, positive she was going to pass out on him. He stopped with one foot in the air.

The talisman lying on the floor in front of him glowed with a weird, black light effect. Misty rainbow streaks trailed along the floor, floating toward the coin as if it sucked all the light into it.

"That's not good," he muttered. Images and ideas crashed through his head. Pictures of himself in a dozen different costumes and times and settings collided in his mind.

"Pick it up," Angela whispered.

"Are you crazy? The lab says there's something on it. I'm ready to believe it's some new drug."

"Ready to believe--but not quite? As long as you don't believe, you're safe."

"Believe in what?"

"I can't tell you. You might believe. Please!" Angela half-stumbled to a display rack on the other side of the counter, picked up a thickly embroidered scarf, and tossed it to him.

"I want some answers, lady." He wadded up the scarf and bent. Clashing images tore through him, warning him not to touch the talisman--and begging him to destroy it. But how?

"You'll have more answers than you'll ever need if you'll just do--what--I--say!"

"Baby, you're beautiful when you snarl." He took a deep breath and reached down to pick up the necklace before he lost his nerve.

"Hey, Angela? What's going on? The whole top of the house is twisting like it wants to pull all the nails loose." A little man with gaudy, shining wings flew into the room and hovered in the air midway between Ethan and Angela.

Ethan froze, staring at the little man. He was close enough to make out the details of his clothes--a polo shirt in lavender, and khakis. The little man stared back, his face twisting in fury.

"What are you doing back here?" he growled, and despite his size, his voice made the room vibrate.

No, Ethan realized a moment later. The shaking, the vibrations, came from the coin, as the streaks of light spilling into it--sucked into it--grew thicker, darker.

"We have to get that out of here," Angela said. She stumbled away from the counter, reaching for the talisman, holding another scarf in her hand.

One thing crystallized for Ethan in that moment. No matter what happened, Angela must not touch that coin. Not even with the insulation of the scarf. The world would shatter and crumble to dust if she did. So he dove, reaching for the talisman, to get to it first.

The little man was closer. He went into a tailspin, light trailing from his wings and getting sucked into the talisman, and scooped up the talisman by the chain.

Darkness erupted out of the coin and black light flared from the chain. It lifted up in the air, pulling the little man with it.

"Maurice, where are you taking it?" Angela shouted.

"Heck if I know. It's taking me!" the little man shouted, his wings beating so furiously they were nearly invisible as he fought the pull of the chain and talisman. He was losing the tug-war as the talisman neared the doorway into the room.

"Let go!"

"I can't!"

And a heartbeat later, it pulled him out and around the corner.

"It's going up the stairs." Angela staggered past Ethan.

He followed her, holding onto the scarf with a vague idea of grabbing the talisman and pulling the little man free. They raced up the stairs, with the talisman and its prisoner getting a step further ahead of them with every one they took.

"The painting room," Angela gasped, when muffled thuds reverberated down to them from the fourth floor, just as they reached the third floor landing. "Thank goodness, it's locked."

"Angela!" The shout came from above. "It's getting ready to blast--"

Black light erupted down the stairs as they reached the landing between the third and fourth floors. Angela leaped two stairs. Ethan twisted sideways and got ahead of her and reached the fourth floor in time to see a blackened door swing open and the talisman, pulling the little man, streak into the room.

"No, he can't go through," Angela said, as she stumbled onto the landing. "The paintings are spelled to block him. It's part of his exile. If it tries to pull him through--"

The panic on her face moved Ethan more than her words, which didn't make any conscious sense. What frightened him, though, was that on the gut level, he knew exactly what she feared, what she meant. He dove into the darkened room, taking a swing at the wall where he expected a light switch to be. It didn't come on.

But the lack of light didn't matter. Black light lit the room in bursts every time the talisman slammed into the frame of a painting, like splatters from a triple-sized paint ball shot at the highest velocity possible. It ricocheted around the room, slamming against painting frames, knocking them out of their racks and off the walls and off the crates where they were propped up, leaving a trail of black light behind it, and slapping the poor little man against twice as many surfaces, still caught on the end of the chain trailing behind it.

Ethan lunged, barely remembering to reach with the scarf to insulate his hand, and tried to grab the chain. It led him on a merry dance around the room, banging into crates and dislodging paintings from their resting places.

He stumbled over a stack of paintings, knocking one out from behind another. Angela cried out warning as the talisman arched up to the ceiling and dove, slapping its captive against the high surface before dragging him down with it. The painting finished falling as if in slow motion, landing painted side facing up. The surface flared with blood-tinted light and the talisman penetrated with a splash as if it were water.

Ethan fell backwards against a crate, staring, stunned to realize the canvas hadn't broken. The painting absorbed the talisman, and then the chain.

The little man let out a yelp as he hit the surface and a geyser of silver and gold and poisonous green sparkles hid him from view. His yelp turned into a howl of pain, and the sparkles grew thicker, higher, and took on an orange cast, as if the painting would burst into flames at any moment.

Angela went to her knees on the frame of the painting and reached into the eruption of light. Ethan had a flash of an image of her falling into the painting. He flung himself down on the other side of the painting and reached into that stinging, cold, fizzling power.

A noise like a sonic boom deafened him and blinding light erupted, flinging him and Angela against the walls of the room, knocking over every painting that hadn't been toppled. Frames cracked and warped and clouds of multi-colored dust gushed upwards from several.

Ethan rubbed his eyes, trying to clear them, and dimly watched as several paintings went completely black, and then turned to empty, pristine canvas inside their broken frames.

He was surrounded with silence. He spent a few seconds checking himself. Nothing broken, nothing torn. No blood. No burns. Then he caught a dim thrumming, and realized he was hearing his pulse in his ears. When he turned over and got to his knees, he saw Angela kneeling over a man's body sprawled across the painting on the floor. The canvas on this one hadn't turned white. It was shredded and blackened.

The talisman lay glowing softly in a menacing purple hue among the ashes.

"Maurice. Maurice, wake up," Angela sobbed, her voice growing stronger as Ethan's hearing returned.

He knelt next to her, shaking all over, feeling scorched and oxygen-deprived and aching. And he stared at Maurice, now over six feet tall, bruised and pale, with his clothes scorched and burned in some spots, torn in others, and a faint haze of smoke rising up from his flesh. The soles of his sneakers were completely melted away, just the scorched uppers remaining on his feet. Somehow, the pointed ears revealed by his scorched, smoking hair were the least of all the impossibilities and surprises.

"Is it safe to move him?" he asked.

Angela's head snapped up and she stared at him, eyes wide, made enormous by the tears glistening in them. It amused him for a moment to realize she had completely forgotten he was there.

"Yes." She swallowed hard and rubbed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She smeared some of the ash from the painting across her cheeks. "Yes, please, we should move him, make him comfortable." A trembling exhale escaped her, evidence of sobs she fought. "Oh, Maurice, what do I tell Holly if anything happens to you?"

Ethan took most of Maurice's weight, but Angela supported his feet and guided them down the three flights of stairs. They ended up in the furniture room, and settled him, still unconscious, on a long, old swayback sofa.

"Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his own bed?" Ethan said, when Angela produced a basin of herb-scented water and a soft cloth from nowhere.

"Maurice's bed isn't even big enough for one foot, let alone all of him." She shook her head, frowning as she swabbed the smeared ashes off his forehead, and then pressed the cloth against his throat, his wrists, and wiped his face again, wringing out the cloth each time.

"Oh. Right." He shuddered, remembering with an odd sense of calm he couldn't quite understand, that until that geyser of light, Maurice had been six inches tall and flew on big, glittery, Hollywood-gaudy wings.

They both jumped when a banging sounded at the front door. A moment later Ethan saw the light ripple through the room. He had a sense of the light doing that through the entire shop. The front door slammed open and the sound of running feet came toward them through the shop. A plump young woman with ginger-tinted hair and pale, round cheeks hurtled around the corner into the room.

"What happened?" she demanded, and slid to her knees next to the sofa, reaching for Maurice's hands.

Ethan figured it was a good bet this was the Holly Angela had mentioned.

"How did you know?" Angela asked.

"I felt it. Like someone pulled hard on something I was holding and couldn't let go of, and then just before it snapped, they let go and it rebounded on me." She tugged on a braided cord hanging around her neck and brought out a teardrop-shaped pendant. A smoky haze coated it, obscuring the white and any other colors it might have contained. "What did he do?"

"Feels like I sunburned the inside of my skull and my skin," Maurice said, his voice a creaky whisper. He didn't move, didn't try to open his eyes, but he winced when Holly pressed his hand to her cheek.

"A very apt description." Angela scrubbed her eyes clear of tears with the heel of her hand. She stood up and gestured for Ethan to come with her. "Holly, keep him from doing anything until I send for help."

"Help? What kind of help? Maurice, so help me, if you tried to break that curse ahead of time and make the council listen..."

"The exact opposite." She bent and squeezed Holly's shoulder. "He was playing the hero to the extreme. I fear he stepped into a trap meant for me. Keep him quiet, would you?"

"Don't worry," Maurice said. "Couldn't get me to move to save my life. Aww, honey, don't cry."

Ethan followed Angela out of the furniture room to the main room of the shop. He felt as if he walked about an inch above the floor. All sounds and colors were muted, yet at the same time an added dimension had been added to all his senses. The question was if the change was in him or the shop. Maybe he had been scorched inside and out, as Maurice had so aptly put it.

"Do you have it?" Angela asked. She flinched when Ethan brought the talisman out of his pocket.

He kept the scarf between it and his skin, and flinched again, remembering how it had bit his fingers when he thoughtlessly put his hand in his pocket. If he hadn't reacted, if he had left it in his pocket, none of the last half hour would have happened.

"It looks dead, or at least quiet for now. Who gave this to you, and why?" She shook her head when Ethan opened his mouth to respond. "Hold that thought. I have to send for help."

She turned to the dark, iridescent globe sitting on her counter and pressed one hand to the top curve. The colors slowly swirled, gaining speed the longer she spoke. "This is an emergency call to Asmondius of the Disciplinary Council, and a request for medical assistance for Maurice, assigned on parole to Divine's Emporium. He has been seriously injured, caught between a dimensional transport curse and the barrier spells woven into his exile. He is back to his normal size, but--"

"But you're not sure if anything else is normal?" A wizened, silver-bearded man in a violent purple sweat suit flickered into being four steps behind her. "Believe me, my dear lady, the alarm went off the moment the spell was destroyed in such a brutal matter. I came as soon as I got the coordinates. Where is the boy?"

Ethan sat down. He had to, with the way the floor seemed to be rolling like a stormy sea under his feet. He landed at a little white wrought iron bistro table, and waited for Angela to come back from showing the old man to the furniture room. The worst part of all this was the feeling, growing stronger every moment, that everything should have seemed perfectly normal to him. And that didn't make any sense.

"You'd feel better if you gave yourself permission to believe," Angela observed, when she came back into the room.

"Believe what?" Ethan flinched at the volume of his voice, which seemed to echo off the ceiling, the display of dishes on one side of the room, and the windows.

"Coffee?" She narrowed her eyes and tipped her head to one side for a moment. Her lips flicked into and out of a smile almost too quickly to be seen. "I can't... read you, for some reason. It's odd. Refreshing, but odd. What kind of coffee would you like?"

"Black. As strong as you can make it." He snorted and rested his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. He felt as if he had been awake six days in a row, on his feet the whole time. "I don't suppose you could make it half whiskey?"

"Let's start with coffee, and if you need it, I'll find something stronger." She set a cup down on the table and took the seat opposite him with her own cup.

Both cups were twice the normal size. Ethan snorted, sparsely amused to see the liquid in his cup was so deep black it looked thick, as if he couldn't stick his finger through the surface. Definitely the way he liked his coffee. He took a sip, holding the cup in both hands, and was astonished to find it was scalding hot.

"How did--" No, he didn't want to know how she dispensed coffee hot enough to be fresh, but thick enough to have been condensing in a pot on the back burner for a week. He took a swallow and waited until the heat and the extra-strength caffeine jolted through his system. Then he opened his eyes, sat back, watching Angela sip coffee that was nearly white with cream, and started talking.

He liked how she didn't react when he told her about the Von Helados, their claims about her, the information they had given him, the blank circle with Neighborlee at the center. He told her about the lab report on the talisman, and even told her about the time he was sure it had tried to jump out of the coffee mug he had stored it in.

She watched him, face serene, eyes hooded, and sipped slowly. Until he told her how the Von Helados had showed up in his office again with their plans to file papers to take her into custody.

"What date was this, exactly?" She slowly, carefully put her cup down on the table.

Ethan saw the first reaction in her when he told her.

"I should have known, should have realized. We had an... well, let's just call it an incident, here. The protective barriers around our town were threatened, momentarily weakened or compromised, I suppose. I was, in essence, invisible to them, or at the very least they could not sense me strongly enough to know I was here. Until the barriers wavered." She shook her head. "The question still remains, are they after me, specifically? Or am I just a tool, a convenient gate?"

"They wanted you to get pulled into that painting by the talisman." Ethan nearly laughed at how ridiculous that statement was on the surface, yet he knew it was the simple truth.

"A very unfriendly painting. Many people through the generations have tried to destroy it, and got destroyed themselves--or sucked in--for their efforts. I suppose it is irony that the very magic that was sent to make me a prisoner there was strong enough to eliminate at least one threat."

She sat up and glanced at the doorway, as the old man appeared again. "How is he, Doctor?"

"You have a very sick young hero on your hands." He shook his head. There was a starkness in his eyes that sent an answering throb through Ethan. He had seen men look more hopeful as they watched a buddy bubble his life away, with a dozen bullet holes in his chest.

"The inimical magic wound itself around his inborn magic as the anchor to pull him through the dimensional doorway. However, the conditions of Maurice's exile were also interwoven with the core of his magic--part of the limitations on him, you see. The tug of war set up a friction and unraveled some things that I thought could never be unraveled." He shook his head and tsked a few times. "I just don't know. Be thankful he was returned to his normal size and those wings were removed, otherwise I'm mighty fearful he might have been stuck that way for the rest of his life."

"Ah..." Angela blinked a threat of tears out of her eyes. "What should I do for him?"

"The best medicine is that young lady holding his hand right now. But some heavy-duty cosseting wouldn't be amiss. I'll be back in a few days to see if there's been any change. Human-style analgesics, lots of chocolate. And I'd stock up on a couple crates of diet cherry cola to let him drown his sorrows once in a while." He bowed to her, stepped back, and vanished in a swirl of purple sparkles.

"Does that happen a lot?" Ethan murmured, and didn't even bother rubbing his eyes, in the vague hope he was imagining all this.

"It's almost normal around here, yes." Angela shook her head and looked at the talisman, lying on the table between them. "If the struggle killed this, then the Von Helados know you met me and the curse was triggered. If it is only sleeping... You have to get it out of here before it wakes up. It could open the protective shield around my town and my home, and let them in."

"If you're not their Annabelle, what do they want from you?"

"Finding the answer to that would mean letting them get close enough for me to interrogate them. I don't want to risk that." She shuddered delicately.

Something hot and angry stirred to life in Ethan's chest. Angela should never have needed to shudder, to feel a moment's fear or anguish. He hated the Von Helados for what they were trying to do to her, and for using him to weaken her for their attack.

She wasn't the kind of woman who needed protection, like a hothouse flower that had to be checked every hour to make sure conditions were just so. He suspected that she had many allies, people who would lay their lives on the line to defend her, and at the same time never consider themselves her defenders, because they saw her as strong, omniscient, eternally serene.

She might not need him, but Ethan wanted to protect her. Yet everything he had seen in the last two hours was beyond his experience, so what good could he do her?

"Could you leave?" he said finally, when he envisioned picking her up in his arms, carrying her out to his car and driving to an airport to get her out of the country, if necessary.

"I defend this place as much as it defends me." She briefly rested her hand over his on the table, little more than brushing her fingertips across the back of his hand.

The contact sent sparks through him, starting something fizzing in the back of his mind, in the dark, locked places. It stirred something in his chest that he thought was long dead and cold, turned to dust from lack of use.

"Then let me stay and help." He couldn't believe he had said that. "What little good I can do, considering all the..." He gestured around the shop. The words stuck in his throat.

"The magic? The otherness?" A sparkle touched her eyes for a moment. Was she laughing at him, or did she understand his struggle?

"I'm pretty good with a gun. And other weapons." For some odd reason, he remembered the words of that woman at the newspaper office, the last time he had been in Neighborlee. She had called him a knight, a slayer of dragons. The mental image of a long, heavy sword in his hands, slashing and smashing and hacking his way through enemies, made him feel good. Useful.

"This danger, these enemies, are not the kind who can be dealt with using Human weapons." She stood, and Ethan was instantly on his feet. "Thank you, but the greatest service you can do me, and for the good of this town, is to take that poisoned thing out of here, back to its makers, as soon as--no, not to its makers. They can perhaps revive it. Just get it out of here. Even a remnant of poison inside our borders could be our undoing."

Ethan drove away a short time later, after stopping at Stanzer's office and consulting with him. If anything happened to him--such as the Von Helados pulling some nasty magic on him in punishment--he wanted to make sure the local P.I. knew about it, so he could warn Angela and Divine's Emporium could be prepared for whatever happened next.

He couldn't help feeling as if he had been punished for something that wasn't his fault. That he was a child who had been sent away for the crimes of his parents or his siblings. An ache shot through him the moment he crossed the border, leaving Neighborlee, but it didn't diminish with time and distance. If anything, it settled deep inside and became a part of him. And it stirred an anger he hadn't allowed himself to feel in years.

* * * *

"Is he gone?" Maurice's voice was slightly louder, stronger, but still a croak as if his throat had been scorched. Amazing how sharp his ears had grown when they were the only sense he could use without feeling that sunburn prickling that made him want to jump up and dive into something cool and thick and wet. The problem was that he needed to do it to the inside of his head and the underside of his skin.

"Gone." Angela stepped into the room, her footsteps stopping at the foot of the couch where Maurice usually woke up on his days of freedom from wings and everything shrunken.

"Can't trust him."

"I know." She sighed. Maurice opened one eye and saw the faint lines around her mouth and eyes, the shadows in her eyes, the weariness. "Until he is willing to see, to hear, to believe, he will remain their tool."

"This might help," Holly announced, scurrying into the room. "Angela, I hope you don't mind, but--" She gestured with a slight lift of the tray in her hands, holding ice cream and cold cream and sunglasses.

"Everything here is at Maurice's disposal." Angela stepped over to the other wall and pulled a little table forward, for Holly to put the tray on. "Doctor's orders are heavy-duty cosseting."

"He even prescribed a bath of cherry cola." Maurice tried to snicker, but it hurt his throat. Holly was instantly there, before he could finish wincing, offering a big spoonful of ice cream. He moaned through the blissfully cold and creamy mouthful, swallowed, and closed his eyes, hating the tears glistening in hers.

"Maurice, what exactly did he--"

"He didn't say anything exactly, but we both know the verdict."

"Your magic is gone, isn't it?" Holly whispered.

"For now," Angela said. "And since this is entirely out of the doctor's experience, we have no real idea when it will come back."

"If it will come back," Maurice corrected. He opened his eyes, despite the ache that normal light put in them. "Looks like you're stuck with me, babe."

"No, you're stuck with me." Holly slid the sunglasses on over his eyes, and bent down to kiss him.

His lips stung a little at the pressure, but Maurice didn't care. He knew better than to tell Holly or Angela right now that the trade-off was well worth it. Just like the proposal to have him take over the guardianship of Divine's Emporium, this situation solved his problem of how to stay with Holly. With his magic burned out of him, he was mortal.

Well worth it, he told himself again. He settled back to let Holly feed him ice cream and smooth cold cream over his tingling, prickling skin to sooth it. He planned to enjoy all the pampering he could get before he had to learn how to live like an ordinary mortal.