The boy in the chip shop asked if their mums were waiting outside.
Mavis looked up at him beneath her pink curls. In this body she was thirteen, two years younger than Nika, with puffed pink sleeves, a little heart on each boot, and a voice like the smallest bell on a bicycle.
"I'm forty-seven, love. And you've charged us for three large. That one's a small."
The boy inspected the till. Nika inspected the ceiling.
It wasn't the correction. Nika did want their money back. It was the love, and the way Mavis had licked her thumb to separate the notes, and the fact that the deadliest person Nika knew was presently asking whether they still did the loyalty card.
Mavis caught a bottle the boy knocked off the counter. A pink flower opened under it; the bottle sank gently into the light. She returned it upright, accepted their change, and put the receipt in her sleeve.
"There. Supper."
Outside, twelve-year-old Alma was trying to tie the torn handle of their equipment bag. She had already joined the two ends with a loop of green light. She put a finger through the loop and pulled. The canvas strained; the knot stayed exactly the same size.
She tried to squash the loop between her palms. It stayed round.
"I can carry it now," she said.
"I've got it." Nika took the bag and hooked it over the shoulder opposite her own satchel. "You take the chips."
"I can take both."
But Nika was already opening her wings. The right one caught the shop awning. She folded it, ducked, and tried again, with two bags banging against her hips.
Alma watched her clear the awning, then looked at Mavis.
"Wednesday," Nika said, before either of them could say anything. "Can I take point on Wednesday?"
"We haven't finished talking about that."
"I got the turns right all last week."
"You did." Mavis handed Alma the small bag of chips. "Come down and eat yours while they're hot."
Nika landed. It was difficult to look ready for command while reaching around two bags for a wooden fork.
Mavis, whose magical name was Peony, had been Peony since she was thirteen. Other things had changed. She had a grown son, a car that made a noise on left turns, and glasses she only needed when she wasn't transformed. The curls and little heart boots had remained. Nika had once seen a photograph of her standing next to her son at his graduation. He looked like a young man posing with his baby sister.
Alma had chosen Clover. Nika was Skylark, which came with wings taller than she was, pale gold at the roots and violet at the tips. Of the three of them, only Nika could fly. She thought this should count for rather more than it did.
They ate on the low wall beside Mavis's car. The street was busy with people leaving the cinema. Down at the corner, a carousel turned behind the windows of the closed toy shop, its horses rising and falling for nobody.
"Your coat's on the back seat," Mavis said.
"I'm warm."
"You won't be sparkly all night."
Nika's mother had said precisely the same thing before Nika left the house. It sounded worse coming from somebody whose feet didn't quite reach the pavement.
"I know where it is."
Mavis ate a chip. She didn't pursue it. Somehow that was annoying too.
Nika was about to explain her Wednesday route, including the shortcut Alma wouldn't have to jump, when the carousel stopped.
One horse remained at the top of its pole. Another hung low. Their painted eyes all faced the street.
A tall display cabinet beside it opened two eyes in the carved crest above its glass door.
"Oh," Alma said.
The thing pushed through the toy-shop window, taking the frame with it. Its surface looked like varnished wood, but a breath shuddered through it. Four long legs unfolded beneath the plinth. Its glass front swung outward on heavy hinges, and the shelves inside flexed like ribs.
The cinema crowd screamed and broke apart.
Mavis was off the wall before her chips hit the pavement.
"Alma, take the people toward the cinema. Nika, above it. See how many."
Nika dropped both bags. One wingbeat put her level with the thing's carved top.
There was only one. Its eyes rolled upward to follow her. Along the inside of its door sat rows of the shop's china dolls, with porcelain faces and limp cloth legs. Paper price tags hung from their wrists; bright little hooks held them upright.
"New ones," it said, in a voice like a music box winding down. "Three new ones."
Mavis struck its front leg. A burst of pink light drove the foot through the pavement. She stayed between it and the people, small enough that its brass-coloured handle would have passed over her head.
It reached around her.
Alma was helping a man lift a fallen pushchair. She had her back to the long arm coming from the cabinet's side. Mavis was under its other arm. Nobody else could reach Alma in time.
Nika dived.
She hit Alma shoulder first and sent her sliding beneath the cinema canopy. The metal fingers closed on Nika's left wing.
They didn't crush it. They stroked the violet feathers flat.
"Mind the paint."
Nika beat the free wing, hard enough to wrench her back. The thing folded her into its top compartment. Her feet struck the upper shelf. Its door swung shut. Something caught behind her shoulders; the left wing stopped moving.
She slammed both hands against the glass.
"Mavis!"
Below her, Peony went still.
The cabinet bent forward, bringing its carved face down toward Mavis.
"Little doll," it crooned. "Your turn."
Mavis put a hand on its outstretched wrist.
"Let go of her."
The cabinet giggled. Then its wrist broke away in a shower of polished splinters.
The noise Mavis made next did not fit through thirteen-year-old lungs.
It struck the glass against Nika's palms. Pink light raced up the cabinet in great overlapping petals. The long arm came off. Its carved cornice split down the middle. For an instant, every doll on every shelf bowed forward as though a wind had passed through them.
The cabinet stopped giggling.
It scrambled backward. Its legs extended, lifting Nika above the toy-shop roof. The movement drove a hook deeper through the stiff feathers at her wing's root.
Pain flashed across her shoulder.
"Stop!"
Mavis stopped before Nika had finished the word.
The creature tried to turn away from her. She caught its remaining arm and hauled it back so hard that one foot ploughed a white furrow through the road. It made a little descending chime.
"Not you," Mavis said. "You stay."
Nika could see Alma under the canopy. The man and the pushchair were safely inside. Alma stood with green cord shining between her hands, looking upward.
Mavis climbed the cabinet's side. There was nothing delicate about it. She kicked footholds into its surface and pulled herself up by the broken edges. The creature tried to shake her off; flowers burst under her boots, driving her weight back into it.
Her pink curls appeared beyond the glass.
"Where's it hurting?"
"Shoulder. My wing's stuck."
"All right. Don't pull."
"I wasn't."
"I know, sweetheart. I know."
She took hold of the door's upper edge. As she forced it outward, a gap opened between the glass and the frame. Cold air touched Nika's face.
Behind Nika, the hook shifted.
"That's enough. That's enough!"
Mavis held the gap where it was. She was braced sideways between door and frame, her small boots planted on opposite edges. Nika could see the muscles standing out in her arms.
The opening was wide enough for a person. It wasn't wide enough for her spread wings. The left one was pinned flat against the back panel, with the hook through its stiff feathers beside her spine. There was no room to turn the wing and lift it off; any tug would pull at her shoulder.
"Can I break that bit?" Mavis asked.
Nika felt behind her with one hand, but couldn't reach the hook's base or turn far enough to see it.
"Not without twisting me."
"Then I won't."
The cabinet tried to close its door. Mavis pushed back. Pink petals opened along her sleeves; each one crumpled against the frame, and another took its place.
From this close, Nika could see a little heart on Mavis's glove. One stitch had come loose.
She looked through the gap. Below it were an overturned display of spinning tops, the striped cinema canopy, and a great deal of pavement.
She had never looked down from this height without wings.
"If I change back," she said, "it won't have anything to hold."
Mavis looked at her.
Nika almost took it back. She wanted Mavis to produce another answer, one with no empty air in it.
But there was the hook behind her. There was the gap. There were her own ordinary clothes, waiting under all this light.
"I need you to catch me."
Mavis glanced down. Her fingers tightened on the door.
"I have to keep this open."
"Alma can."
Alma's face lifted when she heard her name.
Nika pointed through the gap. A carved knob stood on the door's upper corner. Its matching knob stuck out of split wood on the frame, above Mavis's foot.
"Tie those two. Keep them this far apart."
Alma came out from under the canopy. The cabinet's loose legs stamped; she ducked back from one and sent her green cord upward. Its first loop slipped over the door knob.
Mavis watched the second end climbing toward the frame.
"The broken side won't take it," she said. "Use the brass catch. Just below my heel."
"I can reach," Alma said.
Her cord changed direction. It passed twice around the catch, came back through its own loop, and pulled tight. Alma closed her fingers. The knot shone white at its centre, and the green line set rigidly across the gap.
Mavis eased one hand away.
The door held.
Alma grinned, briefly and fiercely. "Got it."
Mavis reached into the gap, and Nika stretched her free hand toward hers. The cabinet bucked; the ledge under Mavis's boot on the door broke away. She swung down around the outside, caught a lower stretch of frame with one hand, and reached back toward Nika. Her fingertips stopped below the shelf, and the knob creaked in its socket.
Nika had watched Alma's little knot outlast a bag handle. The knot would hold. The knob might not.
"Another one," she said. "Round the whole door."
Alma was already feeding out cord.
"Mavis, go. Tell me when you're there."
Mavis looked from the knot to Nika. She had been speaking in her ordinary voice, small and practical and high. Now she said, "Don't move until I tell you," and something in it reached all the way down to the pavement.
"I won't."
Mavis let go.
For one dreadful moment she was falling too. Then a flower flared beneath her feet. She landed in a crouch, and the flower flattened and burst.
The cabinet lurched sideways. Nika's cheek struck the frame. Below, Mavis ran with it, keeping herself under the opening. Alma's second cord looped around the door and back through the heavy brass catch.
"Done!" Alma shouted.
The first knob tore loose inside its green loop. The second knot caught the door before it could close, and the glass shuddered a hand's breadth from Nika's face.
Nika's breath came in little bites. She could not seem to fit enough air into her chest.
She looked down again.
Mavis stood just past the striped canopy. She had her feet apart and her hands raised. Beneath the curls, her face was terribly intent.
"Here," she called. "I've got you."
Nika could see the road behind her, the broken glass to her right. She could see the empty space between them.
She put both hands on the frame and worked her toes over the shelf's edge. The trapped wing pulled painfully at her back. She leaned as far through the opening as she could.
"Catch me."
She let the magic go.
The hook slipped through nothing. Her wings vanished; the bright costume went with them. For a fraction of a second, she hung in her jeans and thin sweatshirt, startled by how small her own body was.
She pitched herself forward and dropped through the gap.
The canopy rushed upward. Her stomach stayed behind. She tried to breathe and made a sound she would never have chosen to make in front of anyone.
Pink sleeves filled the world.
Petals folded around her back and legs, thick and yielding. She sank through them into Mavis's arms. They bent together; Mavis slid backward across the road, one boot scoring the grit, and Nika's face hit the soft place beneath her chin.
For a moment she heard nothing but two people breathing.
Mavis smelled of vinegar and the hand cream she kept in the car.
"There," she said. Her voice shook. "There."
The cabinet's shadow moved over them.
Mavis put Nika on her feet beneath the canopy. She kept one arm across her until Nika nodded.
"Stay with Alma."
Nika took Alma's wrist and drew her backward. Alma let the door knot go.
The cabinet opened its mouth.
Mavis caught the edge of the glass with both hands.
This time there was nobody inside it.
She tore the door off.
The cabinet tried to fold its legs and run. Peony hit it with its own door. A single enormous flower opened behind her, bright enough to turn every window on the street pink. The creature went flat, four legs splayed, with its shelves rattling against one another.
It made a faint ticking noise.
Mavis planted one heart-shaped boot on its fallen head.
"Alma. Tie its feet, please."
"To each other?"
"Yes. All four."
Nika held Alma's sleeve while she worked, keeping her back from the broken glass. Alma tightened the final loop, and Nika offered her a hand across the glass.
By the time the street wardens arrived, the cabinet was still breathing but had stopped ticking. Mavis gave them a very precise account of which arm it had lost and where the other hooks were.
Then she came back to the girls.
"Let's go home."
Her curls dissolved in pink light. The heart boots became scuffed trainers. Forty-seven-year-old Mavis stood in her fleece and jeans, with a broad face, a streak of grey at her temple, and the glasses she pushed into place with one knuckle.
She searched her pocket for the car keys.
They jingled against one another. She tried to pick out the right key, and missed.
Nika watched her try again.
The woman who had hit a monster with its own front door couldn't make her fingers close around a key.
"Mavis."
"Hmm?"
"We're here."
"I know." Mavis looked up quickly. "I know you are."
Nika put her hand over the keys. Mavis let her take them.
"Alma first," Nika said. "Her mum'll be waiting."
"Yes. Good."
Nika unlocked the car. Alma climbed into the back, quietly, and Nika got her coat from behind the passenger seat.
She put it on. She could feel the cold now, and her shoulder hurt. There were bits of glass in the tread of her shoes. For a moment, while she tried to get her arm into the second sleeve, the pavement seemed much too far away.
Mavis steadied the coat at her elbow.
Nika turned toward her. "Can you zip it?"
Mavis caught the little metal tab between both hands.
"Course I can, love."
Nika stood still until she had.