‘A diamond?’ she suggested, ever hopeful.
‘Go for something you’d wear,’ he said patiently. ‘Just a small transmutation, nothing drastic. You’ll learn by small steps.’
‘I’m going to have to learn fast if you’re only going to be here three days.’
‘You’ll learn. Close your eyes.’
That was the last thing she wanted to do. Standing barefoot in a circle with her eyes closed made her feel too vulnerable. But the longer she hesitated, the longer it would take, so she dutifully closed her eyes.
‘Relax. You’re tight as a spring. I’m not going to tickle you.’
Her eyes shot open again. ‘You’re not going to touch me,’ she said, and she wasn’t sure whether it was a warning or a question.
He didn’t respond. ‘Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax all your muscles.’
Easier said than done. She exhaled, letting the pent-up breath out, and tried to release the tension that was knotting her muscles. She rolled her shoulders, shook her hands, and tried to concentrate on the single black patent shoe.
Of course nothing happened. ‘Maybe you need some wine after all,’ Elric muttered. ‘Are you always this tense?’
In fact, she wasn’t. She liked life to be peaceful, easy, and she went out of her way to make sure things went smoothly. He jangled her, unnerved her, made her jittery and upset in ways she didn’t even begin to understand. Or didn’t want to.
I’m trying,’ she said. ‘I just…’
‘What was that?’ Elric froze.
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘You haven’t learned to listen properly. Someone’s in your bedroom.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why would someone…’ Elric had already moved past her, not touching her, shoving the door open.
A blond man in a charcoal suit and a hideous green tie stood there, rummaging through her underwear.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her neck, and then he dove at her.
Instinctively her hands came up, knocking him away, and then he was gone, vanished in a puff of purple smoke.
‘Jesus, Lizzie,’ Elric muttered, picking up a small, noisy frog from the floor. ‘You really read too many fairy tales.’ He opened the window and dropped the frog outside, and in the distance they could hear an anguished screech.
‘At least this time I didn’t cross elemental boundaries.’ She peered out into the darkness. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I expect so. He should regain his natural form in a few hours. Unless your sister turns into an owl again and offs him. The question is, what was he after and who put him up to it?’
‘He was looking at the amethyst. Like Maxine.’
‘Very interesting,’ Elric murmured. ‘I may have to make a few calls. But in the meantime we have to concentrate on you. Back to the workshop.’
She followed him, her hand still cradling the stone. ‘You’ve been trying too hard,’ he said, closing and locking the workshop door behind them. ‘Hold on a second.’ He pulled off his shoes and socks, and even though she knew what was coming, her body froze into a block of ice as he stepped inside the very small circle with her.
He circled his arms around her, pulling her back against his body, and ice met fire, melting, against her will. He, however, seemed supremely unaware of the effect he was having on her. Odd, because he’d seemed so intuitive before.
‘This is another way of making an array,’ he said, his voice calm in her ear. ‘When you get really good you won’t need one at all, you can simply visualize it. In the meantime, if you simply put your arms in a circle it can do the trick.’ He pulled her arms up, wrapping them around his as they formed a circle in front of them. ‘Now relax, and think about nothing.’
‘I… I can’t.’ He was so hot, vibrating with energy just as her pendant was vibrating. She felt trapped in his arms, assaulted, warmed, aroused, blood coursing through her in response, and she knew, with awful certainty, just where her dreams had been coming from. That same powerful, erotic intensity was flowing through her, from the man who surrounded her.
‘Of course you can,’ he whispered, and his breath smelled like the peach and raspberry tea she’d given him. She loved peach and raspberry tea, she loved…
‘There you go,’ he said, and her eyes flew open. A plume of lavender mist hung over the workbench, and a pile of shimmering gold silk lay on the rough surface in place of the shoe. ‘You do have a thing for gold, don’t you? It’s the wrong color for you.’
He’d released her, stepping back, and she put out her hand to touch the fabric, watching in fascination as the color deepened, shifted, moved like a living thing until it settled into a deep rich purple.
She looked back at him. ‘Did I do that?’
He shook his head. ‘You made it. I fixed the color.’
She picked it up, letting the silken fabric slide through her fingers. It still seemed to hold a trace of energy, and she could feel it dancing through her veins, settling in her breasts, between her legs, and she dropped it, horrified. ‘What is it?’
He reached past her and picked it up. ‘It’s a night-gown, Lizzie. Just an ordinary piece of clothing.’
Now that was where he was dead wrong. There was nothing ordinary about the nightgown at all – it was alive with sex and sensuality and magic, and it made her extremely nervous, and if…
‘Goddammit, Lizzie,’ he grumbled, picking up the purple rabbit that had taken the place of the nightgown. Another puff of purple mist. ‘Stop getting rattled.’ The silk streamed from his hands again, a rich swathe of fabric in his long, elegant fingers.
A squirming purple bunny in his long, elegant fingers. He looked up at her, astonished. ‘How did you do that?’ he demanded.
The room was slowly filling with purple mist, and she wondered whether it could escape through the cracks in the ill-fitting windows. Even if it could she didn’t need to worry. It was late – no one would be around to notice puffs of purple mist drifting from their unremarkable little house.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, nervous. ‘I don’t think I could do it again if I tried.’
‘Good,’ he said, setting the bunny down on the counter as it flowed back into the nightgown. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you have hang-ups about sex?’
She could feel the color flood her face, feel the tingling grow stronger in her body. ‘Charles has no complaints,’ she said, defiant.
‘Charles wouldn’t notice.’ Elric dismissed him. ‘I think you need…’ He stopped talking, abruptly, almost as if he’d said too much.
‘What do I need?’ It came out as not much more than a whisper, but it was one of the bravest things she’d ever said.
He stared down at her for a long, thoughtful moment, and she could get lost in his eyes, she thought. He could kiss her again, and wrap her in purple silk, and those long elegant fingers could touch her, soothe her, teach her…
‘You need to sleep,’ he said.
And everything went black.
About the same time that Elric was drawing circles on Lizzie’s floor, Crash was climbing the trellis outside Lizzie’s workroom. The ancient lattice on the closed-in sun porch at the back of the O’Briens’ beat-up little Carpenter Gothic house was as rickety as ever, possibly more rickety than it had been five years earlier, but Mare would be stretched out on the porch roof outside her bedroom window, Crash was sure of it, so he put two Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes on the low edge of the roof and climbed up the wooden frame, just like old times, holding his breath as he got to the top and the lattice shook harder.