She did not always screech.

‘You’re not going anywhere until I return to form,’ Dee screeched.

Mare bent down, so that they were eye to eye, which made Dee blink. ‘You look very Disney, all ruffled up like that. You should have a perky little musical number with the other forest creatures coming right up. Call me if the urge to sing sweeps over you.’

‘Go on and run like the dog you are,’ Dee said. ‘But I’ll be here when you-’

The doorbell rang.

For a second, they froze, looking at each other. ‘I’ll get the bunnies,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ll check the window,’ Dee said.

‘I’ll get your clothes,’ Mare said and scooped up the nest out from under her.

Lizzie shoved the bunnies into the kitchen. Mare tossed Dee’s clothes into her room. Dee focused on the view out the front window, which revealed nothing more than the jungle of flowers that was their front yard and the picket fence that contained it.

‘One person at the door,’ she said. ‘No official vehicles at the gate.’

Lizzie sat back down and tried to look calm. Dee tried to look as normal as an owl could under the circumstances. They all nodded to each other, and Mare opened the door.

‘Good morning,’ a baritone voice said. ‘You must be Moira Mariposa Fortune.’

‘What’s it to you?’ Mare snapped, but Dee’s beak dropped open. That man. The one she’d just seen posing for her in Montmartre, there in the swirling dust: she swore it was him. Tall, lithe, and dark, his sable hair just a little too long, his leather jacket a little too worn, and his battered jeans a little too tight. In short, as wicked as sin. Especially when he smiled. When he smiled he was Dennis Quaid in Daniel Day-Lewis’s body. And in her fantasy he’d been smiling at her.