Mare groaned and put her head on her knees.
‘-but not about something like this. You’re serious about this. And I have to tell you, there are weirder things in the world. So why not? I saw it. Do it again.’
Mare looked away from him, biting her lip.
‘Hey.’ He put his arm around her, and when she looked back at him her eyes were bright. ‘Don’t cry. We’re good.’
‘We’re great,’ she whispered. ‘If you can hear all that in five minutes and believe it and still say, “We’re good,” we are fucking great.’
‘Well, we knew that,’ he said, and kissed her, and any doubts he had went away in the heat and the rightness of that kiss, the way she fell into his arms and became part of him, the way he went dizzy, wanting her.
When she broke the kiss, she sniffed, and he thumbed away the tear on her cheek. ‘Hey, I love you,’ he said. ‘You were always magic to me,’ and she sniffed louder.
‘Okay, then.’ She rolled to her knees and wiped her eyes. ‘Look in here.’ She took the front of his jacket in her hand and pulled him toward her bedroom window, and he peered inside and got the first good look at it he’d ever seen.
The room looked like Mare. The walls were draped with mismatched blue velvet and satin curtains with glittery gold butterflies embroidered on them and dark blue flowers painted on them. There was a long backless couch covered in blue zebra skin and a vase full of the black satin roses he’d given her for prom – she’d kept his roses, that was something – but the biggest thing in the room was a broken iron bedstead, huge and black with spirals and circles, spinning and turning in on each other, making Crash dizzy when he looked at it, mostly because it was Mare’s bed and he wanted her on it. A big black witch’s hat was stuck on one of the high posts, and the mattress was piled high with blue and lavender and green pillows, and even as he saw them, they began to stir and flip and tumble to the floor on their own -she’s doing that, he thought, she’s magic - and when the watery blue satin comforter rolled slowly back, no hands, he drew in his breath and looked at Mare, and she smiled at him in the moonlight. Then the blue-striped top sheet rose up and floated toward the curlicued iron foot of bedstead until the bed lay open and inviting in the full moon, and all the blood left his brain, and he pulled her closer to him, feeling her soft flesh yield to him under that slippery, torn blue tulle dress.
Mare whispered in his ear, her voice full and rich, making him shiver. ‘This is my room. No man has ever been in here before. We don’t bring men into our bedrooms. We’re magic in there and we can’t trust them.’
Oh, Christ, he thought, and nodded and began to turn away, and then she whispered, ‘Come to bed, Crash,’ and he shuddered as a wave of lust hit him and damn near knocked him off the roof, but she caught him and climbed through the window, pulling at his arm, and he fell into the magic that was Mare’s bedroom.
Her room seemed smaller with Crash in it, a little kid’s room with a witch’s hat on the bedpost and the cheesy crystal ball and black fake flowers on the vanity, and she swished her Corpse Bride dress a little from nervousness because it was one thing to boink with her boyfriend on a mountaintop and another thing entirely to bring her One True Love and future husband home to meet her bedroom.
‘So this is my place,’ she said, fighting back the heat that washed over her every time she looked up at him because that was the libido spell and she had to keep a clear head for this next part. He looked around, taking his time, and she did, too, biting her lip, seeing through his eyes the moth-eaten secondhand draperies she’d tacked to the walls every place she’d ever lived, covered with the sloppy blue flowers she’d painted on them when she was ten and the crooked gold butterflies she’d embroidered on them at twelve; and under them the beat-up iron bedstead she’d found in a junkyard at fourteen, its spirals broken and bent and some of them missing; and the silky blue comforter she’d gotten on sale when she was sixteen, the day she’d decided to have sex with him someday, whenever his dad stopped calling her ‘jail bait.’ She remembered that first time, how careful he’d been, and she put her hand out to steady herself on the bedstead as the libido spell got her again, or maybe it was just that memory. She jerked her mind back to the room and all its failings: the tacky zebra-covered fainting couch was missing one leg that she’d replaced with her copy of the OED, the cheval mirror that was so speckled with age that it looked like it had mildewed, the threadbare rugs and the cracked lamps, the whole place just so…
‘Great room,’ he said, his voice a little unsteady.
It’s a mess, she thought, it’s junk. Why would any man want to marry a woman who lives like this? ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘But you know, it’s-’
‘No, it really is great,’ he said, looking at her. ‘It’s hot and it’s magic like you,’ and she looked around again and saw the splashy flowers and the jaunty butterflies and his wicked black silk prom roses that Lizzie had gathered up off the road for her after they’d wrecked, and Py stretched out yawning on the windowsill-
‘I like it here,’ he said. ‘Do I get to stay all night?’
‘Yes,’ she said happily, and took off her veil and tossed it toward the bed. It floated through the air – she gave it a little help – and landed on the bedpost opposite the witch’s hat, the ends curling down to fold themselves like arms over the post.
‘That’s amazing,’ he said.
‘I can do better,’ she said, and pulled her dress off over her head and tossed it into the middle of the room where it pirouetted, its skirt spinning out around it, and then curtsied to him. ‘How about that?’ she said, and turned to look at him, but he was looking at her. ‘Hey, you missed it.’
‘I didn’t miss anything,’ he said, looking at her blue lace bra.
She sighed happily, and he didn’t miss that, either, so she kicked off her shoes and went over to crawl onto the bed and sit cross-legged with her back against the headboard, rosy with heat for him, smiling all over but determined to make sure he understood everything before they ripped into Xan’s libido gift.
When he tried to join her, she pointed to the footboard. ‘Sit.’
He sighed, but he took off his boots and sat down there.
‘Is there anything you want to know?’ she said, gathering her hair up off her neck where the heat was making it stick.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How long am I going be stuck down here?’
She let her hair drop. ‘I mean about me. About this.’ She gestured to her dress, and it pirouetted again. ‘What’s to know?’
‘Well, it’s hereditary,’ she said, a little annoyed. ‘All right.’
‘So if you’re serious about getting married and having kids-’
‘I am.’
‘-there could be some surprises down the road,’ Mare finished. ‘Okay.’
Mare leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. ‘That’s it? Okay?’
Crash leaned forward, too. ‘You sit like that, anything you say, I’m going to say “okay.” But yes, okay. Our kids will be all right. They’ll be ours. Now can we practice making one?’
‘You sure you want to have them?’
‘Yes,’ Crash said. ‘We can start tonight if you want. I’m ready. I want to get married to you, and I want to have kids with you. But mostly right now, I want to have sex with you. Lots of it. As much as we both can stand. All night.’
‘Libido spell,’ Mare said. ‘My aunt cast it.’
‘No,’ Crash said. ‘I always feel like this about you. I always have. But you always had to come home and shut your window, keep your secret, shut me out. Now I’m inside. I’m staying. Anything else?’
‘Just like that,’ Mare said. ‘You want to marry me and have kids, my aunt does libido spells, my magic’s no problem.’
Crash sighed. ‘Okay. Tell me the part I’m missing that makes it complicated.’ He leaned back against the footboard, patient. ‘Put a little speed on it if you can. I want you.’
‘Well,’ Mare began, and thought about it.
She wanted to marry him and spend the rest of her life with him. She wanted kids. She wanted them while she was young. If she thought about it, she was ready now. There wasn’t anything she wanted to do that she couldn’t do while backpacking a baby. Crash’s baby. Maybe two. Two would be good.
‘Two?’ she said.
‘Two would be good,’ Crash said. ‘Maybe three. Four.’
‘Two,’ Mare said. ‘They shouldn’t outnumber us. We don’t know what they can do yet.’ Maybe it wasn’t complicated.
Crash stood up and stripped off his T-shirt. ‘Is this something we could discuss later?’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and shoved off his jeans.
‘Why, yes, I think we could,’ Mare said, looking at the muscles in his back. In his thighs. Well, everywhere.
She cautiously let go of the edge of her control and let the libido spell in just as Crash rolled onto the bed and reached for her.
He touched her and she shuddered, sliding against him as the memory of him came back.
‘Huh,’ she said, as the heat washed over her, the bubble in her blood and the prickle under her skin.