had anything to do with this.”
“He won’t. It’ll be at least a month before he figures out we’re not in Portland anymore. By then we’ll be settled someplace else. We’ll probably rent for a while, and I’ll tell Julian . . . I’ll tell him something.”
Maggie nodded. “But I want you to know that I don’t like this, and it isn’t fair of you to ask this of me.”
The room suddenly felt too soft. “I’m hungry. We need to hunt.”
Instead of telling me to go hunt by myself, she reached down and picked up a lock of my hair. “You can’t go anywhere looking like this. Did you bring any other clothes?”
“Not much. We left in a hurry.”
“Come look in my closet. You’re small, but I might have something that works.”
Her abrupt change in attitude caught me off guard. I looked up at her beautiful face, but saw no malice or guile. Now that she had given in, she was letting her emotions take over. Good.
“What do you usually do with your hair?” she asked.
The question threw me. “Brush it.”
Raising her eyebrows, she said, “Stay here.”
She left and came back with a set of hot rollers. Then she opened the door of a walk-in closet at least the size of her bedroom. She disappeared inside and came out holding a small, red minidress with a rip in one side.
“Try this on.”
I undressed immodestly in front of her. She watched me with a detached interest.
“You have a pretty body,” she said. “Too fragile maybe, but some people like that.”
I listened to her comments, surprised by how enjoyable I found this entire conversation, different than my talks with Edward—more personal.
“How long have you lived alone?” I asked.
She moved up to help me zip the dress. “How long? I left Philip in 1841 and sailed from France to Boston. Sometimes it feels like yesterday and sometimes it feels like forever.”
Philip was her maker. I wanted to ask Maggie why she left him in the first place, but thought better of it and looked in the mirror, quite startled.
The dress fit tightly, snug all the way from my shoulders down over my hips just to the tops of my thighs. I looked different.
“Good.” Maggie smiled. “Now sit down and let me do your hair.”
This felt strange, like missing something I’d never had. She seemed pleased to be fussing over me. It started to make me nervous. Using her was one thing, allowing myself to become involved was another. But I didn’t move, just sat there letting her touch me and put curlers in my hair.
“You might find this look easier,” she said. “We can change our gifts for the moment, baby. You don’t always have to stay with the same routine.”
I assimilated two important facts from her words. One, the fact that she’d called me baby meant that she was completely seduced, and two, I could learn a great deal from this woman.
“You can alter your gift?”
“Sometimes,” she answered. “It depends on the situation. What you do should always depend on who you’re with.”
“Like how?”
“I’ll show you when we get downtown. I haven’t seen your own routine yet, but I can guess what it is.”
Odd how she was smart enough to see me for what I was and still allow herself to be influenced. Maybe she had been alone too long.
“What are you doing to my hair?”
“Hang on, and you’ll see.”
While the rollers rested in uncomfortable heat against my head, she tilted my chin back and put black liner under my eyes and a russet-brown lip gloss on my mouth. Then she took the rollers out.
“Shake your head, Eleisha. Then look in the mirror.”
I did what she asked . . . and stood staring. I hardly recognized myself. Wheat-gold hair spread out in a mass across my shoulders. My hazel eyes looked huge, and my mouth stood out like a dark heart in my small face. “What did you do?”
“Didn’t take long, did it? Don’t worry. In a couple of days you’ll be doing it by yourself.”
Yeah, right.
A voice from the hallway startled me into reality. “Eleisha! Where are we?”
Maggie’s face clouded. I bolted away from the mirror and out into the hallway in my bare feet.
“William, it’s okay. Don’t you remember? We’re at Maggie’s. We came on that big silver bird last night.”
He looked frightened and lost, starting at the sight of me. “Eleisha?”
“It’s me. I’ve been playing with Maggie. Remember Maggie?”
Sad sweet thing, my William. Maggie appeared in the bedroom doorway, none