Suddenly the Fates became recognizable in all their-- um--glory.

Clotho wiped tears from her face. Lachesis tucked her pajama-covered feet beneath her, and Atropos grabbed a satin robe from a nearby table.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you never to visit a lady's boudoir in the middle of the night?" Atropos asked.

"It's not the middle of the night," Darius said. "It's lunchtime."

"It is?" Clotho's voice sounded watery.

Lachesis turned slightly, twisting her footie pajamas. "What day is it?"

"Sat.u.r.day," he said.

"Sat.u.r.day? Really?" Atropos let out a short whistle.

"We've been watching movies for a whole week?" Clotho sounded as if she were going to cry again.

"Maybe two," Lachesis said. "After all, he didn't tell us which Sat.u.r.day."

"You should know," Darius said, feeling annoyed. They still had the most irritating style of conversation he'd ever partic.i.p.ated in. "You're supposed to know everything."

"If we knew everything," Atropos said, "we wouldn't be studying Twentieth-century film."

"You're studying film?" Darius asked, feeling surprised.

"I thought it would be easier than reading all those mindless novels," Clotho said. "I never expected this to be such an emotionally wrenching experience."

"I suggested reading only the cla.s.sics," Lachesis said archly, although her superior att.i.tude was a stretch for a woman wearing footie pajamas decorated with little teddy bears.

"We need to know what happens in the modern world," Atropos said, "so I think television would have been the better choice."

Darius frowned at them, caught up even though he didn't want to be. "You're trying to learn about reality by studying fiction?"

"Is that so odd?" Clotho's face was red. She was still dabbing tears.

"Atropos wanted us to watch reality programming." Lachesis shuddered. "But it's filled with such violence."

"Violence bothers you?" Darius couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice.

"It bothers them." Atropos took out her shears and cut open the cellophane on another box of chocolates.

"I thought you three were a team," Darius said.

"Were is fast becoming the operative word," Clotho said with a sigh.

"Even Fates have fates," Lachesis said.

"Our time is running out." Atropos couldn't get the cellophane off so she stabbed the box with the scissors.

Darius had never seen the Fates like this. Although he hadn't seen them for a very long time. Everyone was supposed to change. Still, he needed their help. They couldn't be powerless when he needed them. It wasn't fair. "What do you mean, time is running out?"

"We have term limits," said Clotho.

"Who would have thought the Powers That Be--"

And with that all three Fates bowed their heads and spread out their hands in a reflexive movement, the way a Catholic might cross himself- "Would succ.u.mb to public pressure." Lachesis's face scrunched up, as if the chocolate she had just eaten was spoiled.

"Four thousand years is simply too short. We've only just gotten used to the way power works, and now they want to take it away from us." Atropos stabbed the box again.

Clotho took the shears away from her. Atropos grabbed at them, but Clotho moved them out of her way.

"Succ.u.mb to public pressure?" Darius asked. "What do you mean? You're not Fates anymore?"

"We're still Fates," Clotho said. "We just have to reapply for the job after four thousand years."

"Our term is up in a heartbeat." Lachesis sighed and flopped back on the pillows.

"A heartbeat?" Darius held his breath. No. This couldn't be happening to him. "What happens if you're no longer the Fates?"

"Well, there will be the Interim Fates," Atropos said, reaching for her shears. Clotho held them away from her.

"Interim Fates?" Darius asked.

"Mere placeholders," Clotho said, standing so that Atropos couldn't grab the shears. "They certainly won't have the connections we do."

"Certainly." Darius felt even more uncomfortable than he had been when he arrived. "Do I have to wait to talk to them, then?"

"No!" the Fates said in unison.

"Unless you want to," Lachesis added in a tone that made it clear she had no idea why he would want to wait. "But it seems to me that something pretty drastic must have happened to bring you here."

"Yes," Darius said. "I want you to reverse Cupid's spell."

"Which one?" Atropos was still sitting down, but she was watching the shears the way a cat watched a bird.

"The one he did on Ariel."

"Ariel?" Clotho stopped in front of the lit screen. The light seemed to go through her, and she had no shadow. The flipping sound from the imaginary projector had stopped long ago. "Ariel who?"

"Ariel Summers," he said. "You had Cupid shoot her with an arrow so that she would fall in love with me."

"The idiot," Lachesis said.

Darius had had enough. He stood as tall as he could, which wasn't that tall, considering. "Ariel is not an idiot She's a very good woman with a soul mate, and she has had no opportunity to meet him because of Cupid's spell that was supposed to make her fall in love with me. Set her free so that she can live her life. I got your point. I'll put the hundredth couple together. I'll live a better, more reformed life. Just give Ariel her life back."

All three Fates were watching him closely now.

"We need a more proper setting." Atropos waved a hand.

The dark, close, chocolate-smelling room vanished. Instead, Darius found himself in the front parlor of a farmhouse. Sunlight streamed in through the windows that overlooked the porch. He sat on a horsehair sofa pushed against a wall covered with blue-and-white-flowered wallpaper.

Clotho sat near the fireplace. She wore a demure white dress that went to her knees. Her blond hair was pulled on top of her head in a topknot. She clutched the shears in her hand as if they were a bouquet of flowers.

Lachesis stood near the matching sofa on the other side of the room. She wore a dark dress that reminded Darius of a matron's uniform in World War I. Her high-b.u.t.ton shoes looked uncomfortable and so did her hair, which was bound so tightly on the back of her skull that it pulled the skin on her face.

Atropos sat at the upright piano in the corner. Her pink dress was covered with fringe and didn't go past her knees.

On her legs she wore no stockings, and her shoes were the flat-soled ones of a flapper. Her black hair was cut short and made Darius think of all the women he'd seen fawning over Scott Fitzgerald.

"You think this is more formal?" Darius asked. He held a bowler hat between his hands. He looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue wool suit and spats. "It's only formal if I was going to propose to someone, which I am not."

"Really?" Clotho clutched the scissors even more tightly and looked somewhat offended. He supposed if the little scene before him was any indication, the woman he would have been sparking was Clotho in her demure white dress.

The idea of dating her made him nauseous.

He said, "All I mean is--"

"Don't explain yourself, Darius," Lachesis said. "You've already said enough."

"No, I haven't." He stood and flung the bowler hat on the scratchy couch. "You're picking on an innocent woman. I want you to let her out of your clutches."

"She's not in our clutches," Atropos said, running her hands over the keys without pressing them.

"Then she's in Cupid's clutches, which is worse." Darius wanted nothing more than to get out of this cloying room.

"You know," Clotho said, "Eros is no longer on probation."

"Wonderful," Darius said. "He's a schmuck and he gets time off for good behavior. I serve my sentence, and the woman I care about loses the life she's supposed to have."

"We didn't say he got his sentence reduced," Lachesis said.

"He made an illegal deal with the faeries," Atropos said. "Inferior arrows, pretend shootings, faked affairs."

"Not to mention the loan-sharking." Clotho shook her head. "He claims they were repaying him for a slight that happened--oh, a long time ago. That horrible man you brought here, what was his name?"

"Shakespeare," Darius said reluctantly.

"The man who thought we were evil," Lachesis said.

"Boil, boil, or whatever he wrote about us," Atropos said.

"I told you we should have destroyed that play," Clotho said.

"Art is sacred," Lachesis said.

"Whose rule is that?" Atropos said.

"Guess," Clotho said.

"We were talking about Cupid," Darius said.

Lachesis shook her head. "The man has more magical IOUs than anyone in the history of our people, which is saying a lot when you consider Caligula."

Darius had had no idea that Caligula had been a mage, but that didn't surprise him. Nothing surprised him anymore.

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"We're saying that Eros has been sent up." Atropos was now holding a cigarette in a very long holder. A feather had appeared in her black hair.

"Sent up?" Darius wasn't following the conversation anymore.

"He'll be gone for a very long time," Clotho said, her lips pursed in disapproval. "Hadn't you heard?"

"Heard what?" Darius asked.

"About the attempted murder?" Lachesis sat on the couch as if this conversation tired her. "Actually, it should have been attempted genocide, but the Powers That Be--"

And again the three genuflected.

"--felt that the genocide charge should be reserved for creatures like Vlad the Impaler, and shouldn't be applied to lesser cases--"

"As if this is a lesser case," Atropos sniffed.

Cupid had just been in the restaurant. Sofia and the bus-boys had seen him. "What did he do?" Darius asked.

"Oh." Clotho waved her hand in dismissal. "It is too disgusting to discuss. Besides, he didn't succeed."

"Fortunately for the faeries," Lachesis said.

"For all involved, really." Atropos took a long drag off the cigarette. "It could have set a nasty precedent."

"Considering the fight was over money," Clotho said.

"Well, it couldn't have been over love." Lachesis stretched out on the couch. Her outfit changed as she did so, from the prim, matronly one she had worn a moment before to something diaphanous.

Darius had to look away so that he didn't see anything improper. "How does Psyche feel about this?"

"Psyche?" Atropos exhaled cigarette smoke through her nose. "Manipulative little schemer. We nailed her as an accessory."

Now Darius had to sit down. He sat on the bowler, crushing it, but he didn't care. "Psyche? I thought she was too smart for that."

"So did we." Clotho sighed. She set the shears down and leaned back in the chair.

"But who knew the head always followed the heart?" Lachesis said.

"We thought it was the other way around," Atropos said.

"I could have told you it wasn't," Darius said.