They had looked up in shock as I followed Incy in, and Katy physically drew back when she saw what I was wearing: olive green jeans with mud-stained knees, a thermal undershirt, and a plaid flannel work shirt.

"Oh my G.o.d! She was kidnapped!" Katy exclaimed. "Incy, you were right! Look at your face! Nas, were you being held on a work farm?"

"Kind of," I said.

"Good to see you, Nasty!" Hugs and air kisses all around.

"We've missed you!" Katy especially looked genuinely excited to see me. I scanned her carefully but saw nothing of the furious, fed-up Katy of my vision. Also? Totally not in pieces or on fire. So that was good. "But seriously, what are you wearing? Did you come from a costume party?"

"Kind of," I said again, accepting the chocolatini she pressed into my hand.

I had taken a deep sip, which was fabulous, then grinned at Incy, beaming at me from across the room. Let the party begin!

This part of Boston was great for walking, and after I'd borrowed some clothes and dabbed makeup on my eyes and nose, we'd gone from pub to bar to club to bar. I'd been gone for two months but didn't want to recap the highlights of my work-farm fiasco. Instead they had talked, telling stories about getting kicked off of planes, thrown out of parties, and an unfortunate incident where a heavy hotel table had ended up getting pushed over a balcony in an attempt to hit the swimming pool below. It had missed by only four feet. Boz had lost a thousand dollars on that bet. And Cicely had accidentally spooked a horse in Central Park, causing it to rear, almost overtip its carriage, and race off down a path while the top-hatted driver tried to get it to stop before they ran over someone.

I started off smiling and laughing at some of these stories. Katy in particular was hilarious, and her descriptions of outraged people were sharp, biting, and incredibly funny. But as the night went on, they became less interesting. I didn't perk up again until Boz told me about a citywide art installation in Barcelona. I wished I could have seen it; it sounded crazy and ambitious, statues everywhere. And throughout the whole evening we had drunk and eaten everything we could think of. Everything was available, whether it was locally grown or in season or whatever. I didn't have to prepare any of it or clean up afterward. I loved that.

We'd stumbled home around two-ish, somewhat early-bars actually have a closing time in Boston-but continued to party in our suite of rooms until management came to ask us to keep it down a bit. Good times.

It was just... I had forgotten about the inevitable afterparty effects. Now I felt really terrible. Like I had the plague. What I imagine the plague to feel like, having seen its effects. (Quick aside: The Black Death, which killed maybe a third of all Europeans over the course of a century, can nowadays almost always be cured with a course of standard antibiotics. I mean, antibiotics. Wiping out the bubonic plague. Knowing stuff like that freaks me out, makes me so wish I could go back in time. I'd let the mold grow on the bread, invent penicillin, and make a fortune.) Plague-victim me couldn't manage getting the door when room service knocked, but he let himself in and set up a cunning little doily-clad breakfast tray on the bed next to me.

"Could you pull the curtains more closed, please?" I asked, reaching for the first mimosa. Mmm. Hair of the attractive, purebred, champagne-drenched dog. Plus vitamin C from the orange juice: We were in cold and flu season.

The waiter subdued the morning sun, creating a blissful, dim interior.

I got down half a Danish, the other mimosa, and an Alka-Seltzer chaser. I realized I was exhausted and had no reason to get up yet. So I pushed the tray out of the way, punched some pillows into submission, and snuggled down into the cushy, enormous mattress. Cuddling the down duvet around my chin, I thought I had never been more physically comfy in my entire life. Clearly the life I should be living. What. A. Luxury.

"Come on! Rise up, you sleepyhead!"

I felt someone thwacking my back with a pillow. Cautiously I pulled my head out from beneath the duvet. The curtains had been pulled wide, and the room was full of bright winter light that was a.s.saulting my eyeb.a.l.l.s again.

"Ugh, stop," I mumbled, holding out a hand.

Incy perched on the side of my bed. "It's two o'clock," he said. "In the afternoon."

It was so strange to see him again, after wondering if I would ever see him again in my life. After the huge wall of fear I had built up around him, for whatever reason. He still looked... fine. Clear-eyed, not crazy, and we were on Day Two, so yay. How many times had I woken up in some hotel or some apartment with Incy there? A million? Quite a lot. True, he'd often ended up at someone else's place. Or sometimes I had. But we'd spent a lot of time together in the last hundred years. Much more time than I'd ever spent with any one person in my entire life.

And here we were again.

"I see you've breakfasted," he said, using a quaint phrase to be funny.

"Yes," I said, sitting up and pushing my hair out of my face. "Somewhat."

"Well, you need to get up now." Incy tossed the pillow toward the headboard and stood. "We've got a lot to get done today."

"Like what?" It wouldn't be gathering eggs from h.e.l.l-chickens or mucking out stables. Thank, thank, thank G.o.d.

He kicked at my old clothes on the floor with distaste. "Your clothes are awful, and you can't keep borrowing. Your hair is a disgrace. If you hadn't worn Cicely's Miu Mius last night, I couldn't have been seen in public with you. So let's get you fixed up. Come on! You have seventeen minutes!"

I smiled. Incy was fun. Bright and vivacious. He could be incredibly annoying, but he was also fun. Mr. Excitement. The party began when he walked in the door. He was a catalyst-he made things happen. And I got to be by his side when he did.

"What?" he asked.

"You care about what I wear," I said. The only times Reyn had mentioned my appearance, it hadn't been to compliment it.

"Yeah." Incy sounded indignant. "You're a beautiful girl. You should be draped in satin and velvet. Only the best for my bestie."

I smiled again. It had been such a long time since anyone had called me beautiful. I realized that Incy really did make me feel like beauty was attainable. After having no one impressed with my looks for ages-certainly not at River's Edge-it felt fantastico.

I grabbed a leftover pastry and went to the shower. The hot water felt wonderful. I kept one hand outside the door and took bites until the Danish was all gone. Then I just washed off the sugar and stickiness. Very efficient.

Incy had thrown away my clothes by the time I got out, so I went clothes shopping wearing the hotel bathrobe, with my scarf around my neck.

"I'm thinking magenta," the stylist said, pinching her lip in concentration. Once again she ran her hand through my hair, letting it slide through her fingers. "It's in amazingly good shape, considering how you bleached the h.e.l.l out of it." Then she frowned and rubbed some strands between her thumb and forefinger. "Oh my G.o.d, it's not bleached. This is your real color. Wow."

"That's your real color?" Incy got up from his chair and came over. "You're kidding."

"No," I said, remembering when River had done the spell that revealed the real me. Now I was covering me up again. And so what? That was how I felt comfortable, okay? "I guess you haven't seen it."

"Yeah," Incy said, seeming bemused. He touched it, smiled, then sat down again. "I mean, even ancient Romans dyed their hair."

He smirked at me, and I made a face. I wasn't that old.

"Anyway, you need a huge change," he directed. "I agree that magenta would be fabulous. And maybe a short razor cut? That would be amazing with your eyes."

I looked at myself in the mirror, seeing the deceptively simple black cashmere sweater, the b.u.t.tery-soft tan suede pants from Comme des Garcons. I didn't even know how much I'd spent today. My definition-of-perfection Ann Demeulemeester black ankle boots alone had cost three times as much as I'd spent on myself the whole time I'd been gone. I looked sleek and expensive; clothes fit me much better now that I wasn't a scarecrow.

I held out my hands: Incy had bought me a gorgeous Hoorsenbuhs gold-link "friendship" ring, set with emeralds big enough to choke a small dog. It flashed in the salon's lights, and I turned my hand this way and that. Incy saw what I was doing and smiled at me.

Meanwhile the stylist played with my hair, flopping it over, parting it in the middle. I guess waiting for the muse of hairdom to strike with inspiration. I hadn't had a haircut in ages. Even before I'd gone to River's Edge, my s.h.a.ggy cut had been growing out because I was too dysfunctional to keep it up.

"No, not a razor cut," I said. "Too much maintenance. Can you just tidy up the edges, give it some shape, but keep it long?"

"Sure," said the stylist, while Incy frowned.

"How about something angular, sculptural?" he suggested. "To show off your heart-shaped face, your beautiful eyes?"

I tried to think back, about whether Incy had controlled the way I looked. Had my hair and clothes reflected him, and not me? How would I know? There had barely been a me to reflect. Just the same, I wondered how he would take being crossed.

"Nah," I said lightly. "Something easy that I can wash and go. I don't want to have to blow-dry it and mousse it and futz with it."

The stylist met my gaze in the mirror, a frozen expression on her face as if I'd just suggested we give me a frizzy perm from the eighties. I raised my eyebrows and smiled.

Incy sighed, grinned at me, and held out his hands. "Whatever you want, babe," he said. "It's your hair." Then he turned sideways, put his feet on the chair next to him, and started reading a dog-eared celebrity magazine.

Calm down, I told myself. So you had a few dreams, a few visions. Look at him: He's not trying to control your every move. Just relax.

I looked back into the mirror and met the stylist's eyes. "Not magenta," I said. "But I would do some kind of red."

Like maybe a magenta-ish red, for effing example?

"I said some kind of red," I said, turning my head to see my new haircut swish. Despite looking like I'd been dipped headfirst in Kool-Aid, the cut was great and did the whole whoosh thing. I was enjoying it while I could, because this effect required blow-drying and moussing and a shine spray and who knew what else? Many hair products had died in the making of this whoosh, and any one of them was too much for me to deal with. Plus, you know, the whole freaking magenta thing. "I said not magenta quite clearly."

"It's still fan-tastic," said Cicely, standing next to me. I was back in my hotel room, and we were getting ready to go to Den, advertised to me as a "superhot new club."

"It's magenta." I tried to recall the undo spell River had done, and of course remembered it as a bunch of magicky-sounding gibberish. "I don't even recognize myself."

"Because you don't look like Hilda the goatherd anymore?" Katy leaned in next to me and made the OMG face to put on mascara. She caught my gaze and raised her eyebrows. "Honey, you looked like Hilda the goatherd. Now you look fabulous. Like yourself."

I had bright magenta hair cut in a crisp bob right at my shoulders, with a few spiky bangs on my forehead. The stylist had layered in the still-too-short pieces, and it all looked on purpose and chic. Around my neck I wore a wide choker made of many thin strands of green and purple Swarovski crystals. I was still paranoid about my neck and had layered a thin silk scarf underneath to be doubly covered up.

I tugged up on my poison green satin boned bustier that emphasized a couple places I had gained weight. I guessed it was supposed to be cut like this, but mainly I was afraid of leaning over to pick something up. I wondered what River-or Reyn-would think of my completely impractical black satin cigarette pants and completely impractical and amazingly uncomfortable needle-heeled Louboutin pumps. Fortunately, neither Reyn nor River was here, and also fortunately, I couldn't care less what they thought. I looked amazing. Really pretty, I decided with surprise. All my bony, hollow places had been filled in with, like, quinoa, at River's, and I couldn't remember my skin looking so clear and glowy. I looked hot and totally fashionable. Huh. I hadn't looked this good in I didn't know how long. The sixties? Late seventies?

"Ladies?" Boz poked his handsome head around the bathroom door. When I'd first met him, I could have only described him as "incredibly handsome and blond." As the decades have rolled past, I could now accurately say, "If Robert Redford and Brad Pitt had a love child, that's Boz." And every time I saw Boz not in big chunks minus all his blood, I was relieved. Those had been some weird, weird dreams. Probably brought on by too much healthy food. Good thing I was cleaning all that out of my system.

"Ready," said Katy, giving herself a last look in the mirror. Over the years my looks have changed as much as I could change them, with every color and length of hair, a big weight range, wide variety of whiteness or tannedness. Katy was one of the few immortals I knew who didn't vary too much out of her comfort zone. She had naturally sun-streaked medium brown hair, ivory skin, and brown eyes. She put her hair up or left it down; sometimes she went curly. But that was it. And where my fashion sense (you can put air quotes around that, if you want) had also gone through extremes, from peasant burlap and rough linen to beautiful hand-loomed silk jacquard to torn jeans and kind of trashy to boring and now to slightly cutting-edge high style-Katy had always dressed with very expensive good taste. Not too far out, not frumpy. Just very expensive clothes, beautifully cut and fitted, decade after decade.

Cicely expressed yet another style for immortals: the perpetual teen. Yes, of course most of us look really young; our aging process seems to slow way down when we're about fifteen or sixteen. But then you get the exceptions, like Jess, who literally looked to be in his late fifties. Even River, who was 1,300, looked like she was maybe only in her late thirties, but with silver hair. I get away with a range of about seventeen to barely twenty-one. But Cicely really looked young. With skillful makeup, she still got carded everywhere. With no makeup, she couldn't get into an R-rated movie by herself.

She was smaller than me, more finely boned, with tiny wrists and ankles as befitting a well-born English lady in the late 1800s, which was when she'd been born. Her natural hair was fine, curly, and sunshine blond. It was her clothes that were an issue sometimes. She loved the latest trends, no matter what they were, and shopped in stores meant for teenagers. So she was pretty, really pretty, but almost never elegant, never sophisticated. I mean, not that I was. I could get dressed up, but I was still by my very nature kind of a schlump. I just didn't care enough to really work at it. Cicely worked at it but like a teenager would.

The three of us were so different. I hadn't really seen that before. Still, they were my best girlfriends, and we'd been literally around the world together more than once.

I smiled. "Lay-dees, we look stunning." I took them both by the arm and smiled at us in the mirror. Cicely laughed and kissed my cheek.

"Yes, we do," she agreed.

We took a limo to Den so Incy wouldn't have to drive if he got plastered. Very responsible of us. My stomach was knotted up all the way there, praying the driver wouldn't do anything to upset Incy.

The line to get into Den started at the end of the block and was maybe five people thick. Everyone looked dressed to kill, very unWest Lowing, and I wondered for a second what Meriwether would think of this crowd. Or Dray, for that matter.

The limo dropped us off without incident right at the red carpet that stretched from the club's door to the curb. We got out, and I was pleased by my feet's ability to adjust from sneakers to incredibly high-heeled shoes without making me pitch forward onto my face. Right back on the bicycle, that was me.

Loud, pounding music seeped through the club's closed door. I felt a twinge of excitement, the way I used to, and Incy smiled at me and took my hand. Two large, thick-necked bouncers were there to keep out the serfs and general riffraff. I wondered how they could see, wearing sungla.s.ses at night. They had those coiled-wire ear things that made them look like the CIA. I mean, for what? So they could rush inside if someone heard that a huge sale on drinks was happening at the bar?

One of them nodded stoically at Incy and Boz and stepped aside, undoing the guard barrier. The crowd of people waiting started shouting in protest-who knew how long they'd been on hold, and it was fuh-reezing out here. The bouncer yelled at them to shut up, and then the six of us swept inside. I won't lie: I felt like royalty, or some famous person, getting waved past all those poor line-waiters. It felt fantastic. After two months of being the low wastrel on the totem pole, I loved feeling like I was near the top again.

Inside it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness. The one lit s.p.a.ce was the stage, where a gorgeous girl in a red plastic miniskirt was fronting a retro band. The air was full of smoke and scent, loud voices and louder music. The huge ba.s.s notes pulsed through my chest like waves. The energy in here was practically crackling, like electricity. Almost like magick.

"I didn't realize how much I missed this!" I yelled into Stratton's ear, going on tiptoe to reach it. He grinned and nodded at me, and I grabbed his jacket tail so I wouldn't lose him, glad that he was tall and as broad as a linebacker as we threaded a path to the way-too-crowded bar.

Half an hour later we had our own table with a curved purple couch around it. I was drinking a whiskey sour, and Katy had demonstrated her ability to tie a cherry stem into a knot using only her tongue.

Good times were here again.

CHAPTER 19.

And the learning curve was quite flat here at Hacienda Liberty. I'd forgotten just how steep the price of good times could be. I woke the next afternoon cotton-mouthed with a splitting, and I do mean splitting, headache. When I raised my head, I half expected to leave large chunks of it on my pillow, like a broken melon.

Sorry. It was a really bad headache.

I looked down at myself: I'd slept in my clothes. I tried not to think about how much they had cost. They would probably dry-clean just fine. At least I'd made it back to the hotel. Wryly I berated myself: Gosh, maybe there's some connection between drinking too much at night and feeling like complete c.r.a.p the next day! I don't know-what do you think?

I crawled out of bed and made it to the bathroom, where I wanted to throw up and couldn't. I wrestled myself out of my clothes, looking at big raw blisters on my feet from those adorable, adorable shoes that I'd managed to dance in for hours. I put on the hotel robe and walked out to the suite's living room.

Stratton, sound asleep, had crammed his large body onto the too-small settee, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he rolled over and crashed onto the floor. Which would be amusing. Cicely was curled up in an armchair, one shoe kicked off, all her makeup gone. She looked like a kid who'd fallen asleep at her parents' party. Their suite was right across the hall, but judging from the bottles littering the floor, we'd continued partying after we'd gotten home, and it had been too far to walk.

I peeked into Incy's room, hoping I wouldn't find anything awful. I didn't. He was asleep in his own bed, one arm thrown over his face. Katy was next to him, but she'd probably just collapsed there-we'd all somehow avoided having romantic relationships with one another over the years, which was amazing and so much smarter than any of us actually was.

I stood quietly, watching Incy sleep. Once in the Metropolitan Museum of Art I had seen an ancient Roman funeral portrait of a young man who had died two thousand years ago. He'd had olive skin and large dark eyes, a straight nose and full mouth. I didn't know whether he had died at the full bloom of his youth or if it was an idealized portrait of an older man who'd wanted to be remembered at the height of his charm. Either way, he had been beautiful in a masculine, cla.s.sic way, his features so proportionate that not even two thousand years could change a viewer's notion of what beauty was.

Incy looked exactly like him. In fact, when I'd first seen the Fayum mummy painting, I'd gasped and started, as if Incy had played a trick on me by having his own portrait inserted into the museum collection.

I was reminded of that now as I watched him sleep, his face smooth and relaxed.

Incy. He and I knew each other very, very well. We'd seen each other sick, furious, barfing, deliriously happy, bored, drunk, stunned. We'd seen each other at our bests and our worsts, and always stood by each other. Even during his Lala Burkhardt episode. Even during my Evan Piccolo fling, and that one still made me wince. G.o.d, poor Evan.

Actually, now that I thought about it, I couldn't place when our "bests" had been. When had either one of us been at our best? Hmm. There might be a message here somewhere. I'll let you know if I find it.

I realized anew how incredibly awful I felt and sank into the armchair by his window. I needed Alka-Seltzer, which I believe is one of civilization's greatest gifts. Possibly chelation therapy. I closed my eyes.

I was wondering vaguely how much effort it would take to get hold of some Tylenol when I realized that Incy was propped up in bed on one elbow, watching me the way I had been watching him.

"Hi," I said unenthusiastically.

"What you need is a spa day," he said, sliding out of bed. He stood and stretched, his custom shirt horribly wrinkled. Then he let out a deep breath and smiled, ready to start his day.

"How do you do that?" I asked, keeping my voice down so my head wouldn't implode.

"Do what?" Incy headed for his bathroom.

"You look fabulous." I gestured at his entire being. "You look rested, springing out of bed full of pep and vim. Why don't you look like c.r.a.p? Why aren't you hungover? You were completely smashed last night. I remember that much, at least."

"Oh, I don't drink as much as it looks," he said airily. He tugged off his shirt and flicked me with it. "Come on, get dressed. We'll take you to get fluffed and primped. You can steam all the toxins out of your delicate little system."

That actually sounded really good, and six hours later I felt like a new woman. I'd been steamed, pummeled, ma.s.saged, had hot rocks put on my spine. All with my thin cotton scarf wound around my neck: the eccentric scarf girl. I'd drunk a gallon of coconut water and green tea and eaten a bowl of brown rice with a little vinegar sprinkled on it. It was better than it sounds. My face hadn't been this deeply clean since a very, very bad sunburn in the late seventies that had essentially resulted in my entire face sloughing off.

I'd been mani-ed, pedi-ed, made up, and blow-dried. My hair was whoosh-tastic once again. After Katy zipped me into a black sleeveless turtleneck dress from Armani and I put my Band-Aid-covered feet into hot-pink stiletto pumps, I looked like a short fashion model. With bright, bright freaking magenta hair. G.o.d.

That night Incy and Katy and I went to dinner at B&G Oysters, in the South End. There were a dozen fresh entries at the raw bar, and Katy reported that the wine selection was excellent. I felt people looking at me and at first a.s.sumed it was my hair, but Incy a.s.sured me it was because I was a knockout and they were wondering who I was.

I loved this, I did. I loved going to really good restaurants, instead of, say, Auntie Lou's Diner. I loved wearing beautiful clothes instead of flannel and jeans. I hadn't realized how much I loved it. Over a dessert that made my knees weak, I decided that I truly hadn't appreciated all this before. I'd taken it for granted and gotten, I admitted, to an unhealthy place in my life. But now I knew more about balance. This time around, everything was going to be terrific.