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said.
    Their hands met palm to palm. Rachel closed her eyes. She frowned in concentration and the atmosphere tightened around us. l yawned to unblock my ears.
    Rachel laid her free hand on one of the fish.
    It twitched, head jerking galvanically; its wings fanned open and shut.
    Kim gave a little grunt, which snapped my attention away from the fish. She was pale and sweating a little—
    I started to go to her, but I couldn’t. Someone was holding me back.
    “It’s okay, Evie,” Ophelia said soothingly. “Kim’s fine, really. Rachel knows what she’s doing.”
    “Kim’s pale,” I said, calm as the eye of a storm. “She looks like she’s going to throw up. She’s not fine. Let me go to my daughter, Ophelia, or I swear you’ll regret it.”
    “Believe me, it’s not safe for you to touch them right now. You have to trust us.”
    My Great-Aunt Fanny I’ll trust you, I thought, and willed myself to relax in her grip. “Okay,” I said shakily. “I believe you. It’s just, I wish you’d warned me.”
    “We wanted to tell you,” Ophelia said. “But we were afraid you wouldn’t believe us. We were afraid you would think we were a couple of nuts. You see, Kim has the potential to be an important zoologist—if she has the proper training. Rachel’s a wonderful teacher, and you can see for yourself how complementary their disciplines are. Working together, they . . . ”
    I don’t know what she thought Kim and Rachel could accomplish, because the second she was more interested in what she was saying than in holding onto me, I was out of her hands and pulling Kim away from the witch who, as far as I could tell, was draining her dry.
    That was the plan, anyway.
    As soon as I touched Kim, the room came alive.
    It started with the flying fish leaping off the table and buzzing past us on Saran Wrap wings. The porcelain cat thumped down from the table and, far from breaking, twined itself around Kim’s ankles, purring hollowly. An iron plied itself over a pile of papers, smoothing out the creases. The teddy bear growled at it and ran to hide behind a toaster.
    If that wasn’t enough, my jacket burst into bloom.
    It’s kind of hard to describe what it’s like to wear a tropical forest. Damp, for one thing. Bright. Loud. Uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. Overstimulating. There were flowers and parrots screeching (yes, the flowers, too—or maybe that was me). It seemed to go on for a long time, kind of like giving birth. At first, I was overwhelmed by the chaos of growth and sound, unsure whether I was the forest or the forest was me. Slowly I realized that it didn’t have to be chaos, and that if I just pulled myself together, I could make sense of it. That flower went there, for instance, and the teal one went there. That parrot belonged on that vine and everything needed to be smaller and stiller and less extravagantly colored. Like that.
    Gradually, the forest receded. I was still holding Kim, who promptly bent over and threw up on the floor.
    “There,” I said hoarsely, “I told you she was going to be sick.”
    Ophelia picked up Rachel and carried her back to her wingchair. “You be quiet, you,” she said over her shoulder. “Heaven knows what you’ve done to Rachel. I told you not to touch them.”
    Ignoring my own nausea, I supported Kim over to the rocker and deposited her in it. “You might have told me why,” I snapped. “I don’t know why people can’t just explain things instead of making me guess. It’s not like I can read minds, you know. Now, are you going to conjure us up a glass of water, or do I have to go find the kitchen?”
    Rachel had recovered herself enough to give a shaky laugh. “Hell, you could conjure it yourself, with a little practice. Ophie, darling, calm down. I’m fine.”
    Ophelia stopped fussing over her wife long enough to snatch a glass of cool mint tea from the air and hand it to me. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and she was scowling. “I told you