‘They’ve never brought me anything but trouble. I want to be normal.’
He let his eyes drift over her a brief, pregnant moment. This was a good thing – it was what he wanted. So why was he reluctant? ‘And just what is that noble mission?’ he said. ‘I can’t for the life of me figure it out. Every time you get upset, things change shape, and your workshop is a nuclear meltdown waiting to happen.’
‘My workshop is locked!’
‘Locks don’t have any effect on me,’ he said in a mild voice. ‘Tell me what you’re trying to do, and maybe I can help.’
She looked straight into those dark, mesmerizing eyes. ‘I’m trying to turn straw into gold.’
‘Change straw into gold? You’re kidding,’ Elric said to Lizzie in a flat voice, though he knew she wasn’t. Oh, Christ, he thought, staring at her. He couldn’t quite believe how someone so angelic looking could be causing this much trouble. Her guileless blue eyes didn’t begin to hint at the intelligence behind them, and with her tousled blond curls and slender body she looked like an impish teenager, not the woman he knew her to be. And what was it with her shoes? She was wearing Road Runner high-tops – how could he be attracted to a woman wearing Road Runner high-tops? Because he was.
‘We need money,’ Lizzie said. ‘That’s all Dee can think about, and if she didn’t have to worry about it, she’d stop trying to force Mare to go to college, and Mare would stop arguing, and if we needed to pick up and leave we could…’ Her voice trailed off, as if she’d realized she’d said too much.
‘And that’s what you think you need to do as soon as you can warn your sisters,’ he supplied for her. ‘But I’m not going to let that happen. You don’t need money, you need to stop what you’re doing.’
‘I need you to go away and leave us alone,’ she said, her voice stronger. She shifted, and he was afraid she was going to try to run for it. He could stop her, of course, without moving. But he was still shaken from their earlier contact, and he couldn’t figure out what had happened. Maybe all that random psychic energy that she and her sisters couldn’t control had managed to get between them and set off sparks. Maybe.
‘Too bad. Whatever made you think straw was a good base for gold?’
‘It’s traditional in alchemy,’ she said stiffly.
‘It’s traditional in fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, spinning straw into gold. In alchemy you turn base metals into gold. Like lead.’
She blushed. He liked his women sleek and sophisticated, dark-haired and whippet-thin. So what was he doing, fascinated by a pretty little girl who blushed? Besides, he was here for a reason, and getting distracted wasn’t part of his plans.
‘It doesn’t work,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried lead, copper, iron, Teflon. None of it works, so I went back to straw.’
‘And what happens with straw?’
‘It catches on fire.’
He shook his head. ‘There are laws that govern this sort of thing, and you seem to have no notion what they are. No wonder you’re on the edge of disaster.’
‘We’re doing just fine,’ she said, shoving her blond curls away from her face, trying to look fierce and failing. ‘We don’t want you here. I can figure things out on my own, and I don’t need your help. I’m not the total idiot you think I am.’
He was silent a moment. What would happen if he touched her again? Would there be sparks? Or nothing but this mild irritation combined with a surprising rush of attraction? He’d find out before this was over, just out of curiosity. He wasn’t going to do anything about the attraction; he didn’t want to get mixed up with the Fortune spawn if he could help it. But there was something about her that drew him, made him want to…
‘I don’t think you’re a total idiot,’ he said, banishing his errant thoughts. ‘You’ve just been living in a vacuum, away from people who could help you.’
‘The people who helped us when our parents died? I don’t think so. We can take care of ourselves.’
At that moment a baby rabbit hopped across her feet. She leaned down to pick it up, stroking it. She was something like those bunnies, pretty and soft and seemingly helpless. But she wasn’t, even if she herself wasn’t convinced of it.
‘Stop thinking so hard,’ he said.
She glanced up at him. Blue eyes, clear and wide and wary. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re trying to change him back, and you’re trying too hard. You have to let go, make it instinctive. Think about something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘Think about how much I annoy you, put the rabbit on the table, and tell me I’m an asshole.’
‘You’re an asshole,’ she said promptly, setting the rabbit down. A silver fork lay there for a moment, and she stared at it in disbelief, and then a moment later it turned into a lemon.
He shook his head. ‘You have to stop thinking about things. And one of the first rules of mutability is that you don’t cross elements. Animal turns into animal, mineral to mineral, and so on. You can’t turn a fork into a living animal or even a plant.’
‘I just did,’ she said smugly. And I could turn straw into gold.’
‘That’s because you didn’t know what you were doing and you were trying too hard. If you cross elements you disrupt everything, and it affects whatever you’re working on, not to mention those around you. Turn it back into a fork.’
‘You’re an asshole,’ she said promptly, trying it again, but of course the lemon just sat there.
‘It’s not an incantation. Think of something besides transmutation.’
‘That’s hard to do when I’m thinking how much I’d like to turn you into a toad,’ she said. The lemon flattened out to a spoon. A yellow spoon, but it was a step in the right direction.
‘I wouldn’t try it if I were you,’ he said. ‘You forget who I am.’
‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said, cranky. He suspected she didn’t get cranky very often – she didn’t seem to know how to carry it off. ‘Apart from Elric the Magnificent or something like that. I’m guessing you’re some kind of cheesy charlatan like my father.’
‘Really?’ She was making him cranky, as well, which was unusual. He’d expected this to be far simpler; he’d show up, stop Lizzie from screwing up the universe, send them all back to Xantippe, and get on with his life. But Elizabeth Alicia Fortune was getting under his skin, and it was enough incentive to make him drop his protective coloring. Just for a moment he was no longer a somewhat staid-looking man in a dark suit – he was a blaze of color and light that could blind the unwary, and then a second later he was ordinary again. Or as ordinary as he could carry off.
She blinked. That was it: she simply blinked at his temporary transformation, and then dismissed it. ‘I live with a shapeshifter, remember?’ she said. ‘I’m not impressed.’
‘That’s because you’re naive. I didn’t change shape. I simply changed your perceptions.’
‘Now that I don’t believe. You can’t alter the way I think,’ she said fiercely. She looked at him a little closer, and there was sudden doubt in her eyes. ‘Can you?’
‘Maybe there’s hope for you yet,’ he said. ‘No, neither I nor anyone else can make you think things that aren’t already inside you, not unless you’re particularly empty-headed. But I can alter the way people perceive me. People see what I want them to see. Or not see me at all if I so choose.’
‘You can become invisible?’
‘You aren’t listening. I don’t become invisible – people just don’t see me.’
‘Can I do that?’ she asked, fascinated.
‘God, I hope not,’ he said. ‘You’re trouble enough as it is.’
She looked oddly pleased at the notion. ‘So what do you want from me? From us? How do I make you disappear?’
‘You need to stop these dangerous experiments and return to your family.’
‘Not on your life.’
It was nothing more than he expected. ‘Then-’ The sound of the doorbell cut through his words. ‘Get rid of him,’ he said.