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“True love can overcome anything. Even fish breath.”

—The Little Mermaid, from
Pea Soup for
the Fairy-Tale Lover's Soul

I rushed over to Kato. “Help him, please,” I pleaded. Hydra and Rexi spurred to action. I snatched Rexi's ankle, allowing my palms to keep just a flicker along the skin. “You've done enough. If you move, I will end you.”

She started shaking. “I couldn't help it. She wouldn't let me go back.”

Rexi seemed like a completely different person from the one who had conspired with the wizard at the tower. All the bravado, not to mention the tacky dress and ugly fire opal necklace, was gone. Right now, Rexi was either scared hexless of me or up for the best actress award at the Grimmy's. Something wasn't right, but my brain was still too muddled to sort through it. I released her leg and let her cower under the window.

Hydra emerged from her shack carrying a head by its red hair. She yanked off her own and tossed it. Rexi caught it and turned a distinct shade of “I'm going to throw up” green.

There was that squishy plop sound and bippity bob's your uncle, Hydra was a redhead with a white streak down the side—like a skunk. She blinked her green eyes a few times. “Ahh, that's better.” Now she spoke with a bit of a twang while smiling a crooked and yellowed smile. The shack behind her shuddered and folded in on itself—all the way down to a square the size of a tinderbox.

What in story was going on, and how was packing all her junk up going to help Kato? Now was not the time for redecorating.

Hydra sensed my impatience and held up a hand. “Wait fer it.”

The box wiggled and jumped, then opened back up and expanded until it was a light blue stucco building with a blinking neon sign out front that said “Spare Parts.”

By far the coolest thing I had ever seen. If I ever got home or had a chance at a normal life again, I was so ordering one of those from the Castle Shopping Network.

Hydra grabbed Kato's back legs. “Don't just stand there. Help me git him inside.”

I grabbed his front paws, and we heaved, moving about a dwarf's length before we had to set him back down. I grunted and tugged while Kato groaned, not entirely conscious. “If you can hear me, you are officially on a diet.” While I was in the Ivory Tower, he had doubled in size again. And weight.

Hydra snapped at Rexi. “Git over here.”

Rexi shook her head emphatically. “Nuh-uh, she'll—”

“She'll behave on accountin' her friend is gonna be just fine. Provided we git him inside…” Hydra finished.

I didn't look at Rexi, so the lack of evil glare must have been her signal to go ahead. She lifted under Kato's middle. Together we hefted, but there was no way the three of us would be able to move him through the door. Cursing, Hydra let go, and Kato fell down again, trapping my legs.

Please
, I prayed, no longer sure if anyone was listening.
There
has
to
be
a
way
to
get
him
inside.
I struggled to get free and felt my heels click against his claws. Within the space of a blink, Kato was gone. Before I could wail and rev up my flames, he reappeared inside on the stainless steel table. The two other conscious people present looked at me, one with trepidation, the other with thoughtful consideration. If Hydra knew something, she wasn't sharing. Quietly, she went into the back room to search for something.

I didn't really care how Kato got inside; I was just glad he did. It was probably something with this magic house. I mean, it obviously had power since the inside of the building had changed just as dramatically as the outside. It was an odd combination of doctor's office and carriage body shop. There were grease spots—at least I hoped they were grease spots—on the floor, but nearly everything else was clean. The wall of shelves containing all of Hydra's other heads was the only thing the interior had in common with the last time I'd stepped inside.

Amid the clanging and banging from the back, I held on to Kato's paw. He was going to be all right. His breathing had leveled out, so it would be okay. The more I kept telling myself that, the more I hoped I would believe it.

Rexi stood nearby with a conflicted look on her face. Her head was down, but I could see her reflection in the stainless steel table. Her normal reflection. Everything between the Ivory Tower study and the wedding march was pretty much a drugged, blurry mess. But unless it was a dream, I recalled her having a silver-haired reflection.

I sighed wearily, tired of nothing being what it seemed. “It wasn't you at my wedding, was it?”

Rexi's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Holy toad. You and Kato got married?”

“Not Kato, the wizard.”

“You married the wizard?” Her mouth popped open wide to match her eyes.

Hydra shouted from the back. “I know a good divorce demon.”

“No. It was a trap. It's…really confusing.” I had no idea how to explain it coherently. It was still jumbled up in my own brain. “The demon puppies were there. And Verte and Rexi were there, but I don't think it was really them. I just don't know who's who anymore.”

I let my head hit the table with a bonk.

“Ain't really
that
confusing. You was at the home of the Mimicman.” Hydra emerged from the back holding a black raven's wing and held it up against Kato's body. “Nope, too small.” She headed back into the storeroom to try again.

“No, I was at the Ivory Tower with Mick, the Wizard of Is.” Exhaling loudly, I rolled my head so that my cheek rested on the cold metal table.

Hydra stuck her head back out. “Pish, is that what he's calling himself now? Bah, he got more names than I got fleas. But ever since he turned human, he's been the Mimicman, master of illusions. He can cast a few parlor spells, but his only real source of power is shape-shifting himself into anybody.”

Turned
human?
Not sure I wanted to know exactly what kind of thing he'd been before that. I thought back to the scene in the blasted tower. “So he pretended to be Verte and my parents.”

This time, Hydra came back out with a much bigger white wing. “Yes, ain't that great?” she said, chipper, and held the wing up against Kato's body again. “Right size, wrong color. Oh well, it'll have to do. Hold this.” She shoved the wing in my face.

I spit out the feathers that got stuck between my lips. “Why is that great?”

Hydra rummaged around in a drawer that was full to bursting, tossing random junk over her shoulder until she found what she was looking for. “Aha!” she exclaimed, holding up a jar of spider glue. She went over to Kato and slathered it on the raw part of his shoulder where the wing was destroyed. “Because the Mimicman can only mimic what
is
, what exists in this world. He don't got no form of his own anymore, and you cain't imitate death, so any shape he takes—”

“Has to be alive,” I finished. “So my parents and Verte are alive and well somewhere.” Hydra took the wing from me before I dropped it as I jumped up and down with excitement.

Rexi poked me. “I told you he looked like the guy from the cover of
Sorcery
Illustrated
.” She smiled just a little, like she was testing the water with a big toe to see if I were a ticking crocodile that would bite.

Still aligning the wing, Hydra perked her head up. “The Fourteenth Swimsuit Edition?” Rexi nodded, and Hydra's face brightened with an expression of nostalgia. “Yeah, that one were pretty yummy. But just to clarify an earlier point—hold his wing in place please—your people is
alive
somewhere. I ain't say a thing about them being
well
.”

Hope is like a balloon. It seems like it swells up just so someone else can pop it in your face. I would have smacked my head again, but I was busy holding the wing in place so the glue could dry. Oh well, alive was good, and I would take what I could get at this point. But something still bugged me. “So best guess is that the McWizard made Griz a Rexi suit. Right?”

Hydra shooed my hands and moved the wing up and down to check its range of motion. “Or she done made it herself. Were the Fake Rexi wearing an opal necklace, by chance?”

My insides shuddered just thinking about her and her horrible fashion sense. “Yes, and it did not match her tacky silver dress.”

“Were it a black opal or a fire opal?”

I thought back. “Fire. Why does her bad taste in jewelry matter?”

Hydra sat back in the chair next to the table. “Because a fire opal holds someone else's life essence. She done gone used their life to power her spells and do the replication.”

“That's horrible.” Rexi turned pale and green again. “Is there any way to give it back to the person it belongs to?”

“Nope. Once it's agone to a new vessel, no exchanges, no returns. Then it's only matter o' time afore it's used up.” Hydra nodded to me. “Your emerald flame is the exception. The more yous usin' it, the more you gots to be rechargin' it. 'Cuz each time you is chuckin' fire, it sucks
your
life instead of someone else's.”

Now it was my chance to turn pale and slightly green. At my wedding—and how surreal is that to say?—I had been in a blind rage, ready to burn down the world because it deserved to fall to ashes. I hadn't yet come to terms with how much I had used the flames or how much I enjoyed it. Worse, I was afraid I already knew how to recharge the life magic.

“So if Griz was pretending to be you, Rexi, what the pix happened to you?”

Rexi busied herself checking the new wing. “I waited for you outside the study. Then the cover model clone came out and said he had something to show me, said he knew how to spin straw into licorice. I touched the spinning wheel and…”

She got really quiet, probably embarrassed about falling for one of the oldest bad-guy tricks in the book.

“She washed up here yesterday,” Hydra said, filling in the rest of the details. “I told her to wait fer you here. I is wearing my oracle head at the time, so I knows you were coming.” She went to the door and picked up the old blind lady head and put it back on the shelf.

And there she stayed, doing nothing in particular, except maybe giving me a minute to make amends with Rexi. I guessed that because she kept moving her eyes from me to Rexi and puffing her cheeks out like blowfish.

“I'm sorry, Rexi,” I said quietly. “You're my friend, and I sure as spell should know better than to trust what my eyes tell me. I should have known that you'd never betray us.”

“Stop.” Rexi looked really uncomfortable. “I need to tell you—”

Kato's groan interrupted her. He was coming to. Thank Grimm. I helped him roll onto his belly. He rotated his shoulders, moving each wing up and down. I think it was kind of an auto-reflex thing, because his eyes were still closed. When he did open them and saw Rexi standing next to him, his entire body vibrated in a growl.

I stepped in front of Rexi, blocking her from his view. He still looked like he was going to plow through me to get to her. I had to talk fast, like the guy with the magical disclaimers on late-night infomercials. “The bad Rexi was really the Gray Witch with a Rexi mask on because this Rexi got duped and dumped in the sea, and she's been here ever since with Hydra.” By the end, I had run out of breath, so the last few words were a little strained.

He stopped growling but still didn't look convinced. “How do we know this is the real Rexi?”

“Reflection test.” I grabbed a startled Rexi by the scruff of her neck and positioned her close to the shiny table. “See, all blond, not a speck of gray or silver.”

Kato grumbled and hopped off the table. “Fine, but only because I trust Dot. I won't eat you…
yet
. But I'm keeping an eye on you.”

Holding a roll of gauze, Hydra returned to wrap his wing, binding it to his side. “Why just one eye? I gots more in the back iffin you want to make a few alterations.” She tapped the middle of his forehead. “Right here might look nice.” She scurried into the storeroom and came back with a jar of eyeballs and a broken unicorn horn. “We is having a special. Buy one get a half one free.”

Kato slyly scooted away from the googly eye jar. “No thanks, but I was wondering about a different kind of body alteration. Can you make me human again?”

Hydra put the extras back and watched Kato carefully. “Human? But why would you want to trade in the freedom of them skies to trudge along the ground?” She jerked her thumb in my direction. “Changin' yourself fer somebud else cain't work. Specially fer a high-maintenance ball and chain that ain't worth it anyway.”

“Hey! I'm didn't ask him to change.”

“Well, isn't that what this is all about?” she said matter-of-factly. “Personally, I like my men with a little chest hair, but I can see how difficult an interspecies relationship might be fer someone like you.” She stuck a finger in my chest. “Can you honestly say you is willing to put up with his shedding all over the furniture? Is he yer one true love?”

How had this become about me? My cheeks heated and I stumbled through my feelings for some sort of rebuttal. “Love isn't just something that happens at first sight. It, um, takes a while and, uh, grows with calcium and thorns and, um, might bite until you teach it to fetch.” I tried to remember everyone's love talks, but I'm afraid I got them mixed up. “Oh hex.”

Hydra took my disjointed answer as answer enough and went back to addressing Kato. “See? You is better off finding a nice chimera to nest with. The cost to change are too high, especially iffin you is only changin' fer the affection of someone who cain't care for the real you.”