‘You tried,’ Mare said.

Dee nodded, looking distracted. ‘Come on,’ she said and turned toward the dining room, her gray wool suit perfectly fitted to her tiny waist. Mare stuck her tongue out at Dee’s auburn chignon and followed her into the dining room where ethereal Lizzie sat hunched over her book in her purple silk kimono, her blond curls tangled and blue eyes wide, dripping muffin butter onto her notebook as she ate.

Dee put the jewelry box on the table and said, ‘Mind the butter, Lizzie,’ and Lizzie turned another page, oblivious to Dee, the butter, and the wind whistling outside the open garden windows.

Mare plopped herself down at the table and looked at the muffins. ‘They’re all apple bran, Lizzie. That’s boring. I like blueberry and lemon poppy seed and-’

Lizzie moved her hand over the muffin basket, still not looking up from her book, and tendrils of violet smoke trailed from her fingertips and across the apple bran.

‘Thank you.’ Mare craned her neck to look into the basket and then went for a newly transformed blueberry, but Dee moved the basket out of her reach.

‘First we vote.’ Dee straightened the jewelry box.

Lizzie looked up from her book. ‘Now?’

Crap, Mare thought, and looked longingly at the muffins. Lizzie had baked them so they were bound to be munchable.

‘Yes, now.’ Dee sat down at the head of the table. ‘If Mare’s going to college, she has to register now. Which means we have to decide if we move so she can go to a school we can afford. And which piece of Mother’s jewelry we sell to finance it. And I have to be at the bank in an hour, so we have to do it now’

‘Not now.’ Mare stared at the blueberry muffin just out of her reach – come here, damn it - so that a couple of dust motes lazing in the air sparked blue. ‘Not now, not ever.’ She lifted her chin, feeling the weight of the muffin in her mind, and it rose slowly until it hovered at eye level.