When the door closed behind her with Allie still staring at her phone, Charlie crossed to the kitchen, plucked the phone from Allie’s hand, and dialed. “Hey, Aun . . . tie Mary.” Even two years after Aunt Mary’s eyes had darkened and she’d crossed to first circle, Charlie still screwed that up. “Allie has something she needs to tell you. We’ll be downstairs,” she added as Allie snatched her phone back. “Jack, you’ll need arms. Grab a twin.”

“Mama?”

“Mama’s busy right now, Edlet.” Charlie lifted him from Jack’s hold. “Let’s go down to the store and see what Joe’s doing.”

“Yoyo!”

“Probably.”

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused in front of the mirror and let the baby dive toward the glass, playing patty cake with himself. Her reflection looked up toward the ceiling, her face in shadow. Beside her, Evan hung from two enormous claws in front of a gleaming gold background. Except for the fact that the claws were unattached—Jack’s forefeet would have engulfed Evan, Edward, and Charlie completely, taking up the entire reflection—they appeared to be to scale.

“Are you looking up at me?” Jack bounced Evan who shrieked with laughter.

Given their relative sizes and how little of Jack’s reflection she could see, it was hard to work out the eye lines, but Charlie shook her head. Looking up, yes. Looking up at Jack . . . “No, I don’t think so.” With Edward balanced on her right hip, she lifted her left hand and stroked a line of blue into her hair.

Jack grinned, the mirror adjusting his reflection’s size until his teeth were visible. “Did you do that for me? Because I said it was bland?”

“No, I did it for me.”

“Why?”

“None of your damned business.”

His grin broadened. “You did it for me.”

She hadn’t, not consciously. She’d just thought a little color might be less domestic. Less . . . bland. Yes, fine, she’d done it for Jack. Done it so he’d smile at her exactly the way he had. But he didn’t need to know that. “Sure I did.” Nothing sent up a smokescreen quite like the truth. “Because you’re the arbitrator of all my fashion choices.”

“Yeah? Then you might want to give the cowboy boots a rest.”

“Bite me.”

A burst of laughter pulled them away from the glass and into the store in time to see a pair of girls dressed in purple and black head out the door. A tattered lace shawl and trailing ends of a purple scarf became black wings on the other side of the clear-sight charm etched into the glass of the door.

“Corbies,” Joe said as Charlie set Edward down on the counter. “They emptied their box. Seems they’re moving on.”