She put the family photo back on the table and made herself a fresh pot of tea, but despite a brew containing enough St. John's wort to turn Attila the Hun into a tree sloth, Edwina found herself unable to release her troubles and go with the cosmic flow.

The cosmic flow didn't have children.

She made an impatient sound with her tongue and sat up straight on the sofa. She had reached a decision:

"It may not be my problem if Dov and Peez want to wear each other's guts for garters, but if I don't want E. Godz, Inc. to go down the corporate tubes, I'd better be the one to fix it," she said. "The question is—how?"

She settled back among the cushions, took a deep draught of tea, and closed her eyes while she brought all the powers of a mind Machiavelli might envy to bear upon the present sticky wicket. Music from an unseen source wafted gently through the parlor, a medley of New Age hits that she had conjured up to help her think. At last, when it seemed as though she would burst out of her house stark naked and foaming at the mouth if she had to listen to one more meandering flute trill, Edwina's eyes popped open, the light of inspiration shining bright within.

"Of course," she said aloud. "It's the perfect plan: simple, elegant and practical. Excellent." A sharklike grin—her father's corporate lawyer heritage at work—spread itself across her face as she told the air: "Take a letter."

Three more ensorcelled fountain pens floated up from the green baize-lined leather box atop Edwina's desk. The left-hand top drawer opened of its own accord and three sheets of blank paper like three white miniature flying carpets arose to take their places beneath the waiting nibs. The top right-hand drawer opened and two envelopes slithered out to await developments. A ghostly file cabinet hovered on the edge of materialization, pending the completion of the letter under composition. Ever the consummate businesswoman, Edwina never failed to make a copy of all correspondence for her personal records.

"My dearest children," she began her dictation, to the accompanying scritch-scritch- scratch of the three animate pens. "It is with a heavy heart that I write this from what will be, in the inevitable course of time, my death bed. There is no cure for the ailment that has so suddenly come over me and my doctor tells me that I have, at most, a few months more to live. I admit that I've been toying with the idea of retirement for a while now, but this news has forced my hand.

"Thus I find myself compelled to make a decision which I have been putting off, namely determining who shall succeed me as the new chairperson of E. Godz, Inc. My deepest desire has always been to be able to turn over cooperative control of the business to the two of you, but I realize that this is impossible. You two couldn't find cooperative in the dictionary even if I cast a spell on it and had it bite you in the butt. How to describe your relationship? Cats versus dogs? Hatfields versus McCoys? Pepsi versus Coke? Trekkies versus Trekkers?

"If I gave you joint control of E. Godz, Inc., it would only be a matter of time before your bickering, sniping, and outright attacks on one another distracted you from the business of running my company well and profitably. I didn't work so hard all these years to have my creation torn to shreds after I'm gone.

"Therefore I am resolved: Only one of you will inherit control of the company, together with the bulk of my estate. Which one? I'm still thinking it over. To be frank, though I love you both for the totality of your personhoods and embrace your unique younesses with the wholehearted, nonjudgmental attitude of our Mother Earth, as far as your business smarts go, neither of you has impressed me worth a dog fart. As for leadership ability, if either one of you encountered a horde of midair lemmings who had already gone headfirst over the cliff's edge, I sincerely doubt whether you could persuade them to complete the plunge.

"I may be telling you something you already know. Perhaps you have been working for E. Godz, Inc. solely out of family loyalty rather than real vocation. If you've spent the last few years just pushing papers without a thought for the people behind them, this is your chance to bow out gracefully and seek your true world-path. If one or the other of you wishes to withdraw from the running, voluntarily, do so, and do it quickly. Lift the burden of decision from my shoulders.

"Please.

"Love, Edwina."

The three pens capped themselves and retreated to their box. One copy of the letter flew across the room to pop itself neatly into the phantom file cabinet, which promptly vanished. Only the copies of the letter intended for Dov and Peez remained, along with the two envelopes.

"On second thought," Edwina told the loitering stationery, "I believe I'll fax this." The superfluous copy of the letter let out a low moan of despair and tore itself into a shower of still-grieving confetti. The two envelopes slunk back into their desk drawer, muttering darkly through their gummed flaps.

As the lone page fluttered away to run itself through the fax machine, Edwina headed upstairs. If she was going to pose as the victim of a mysterious-but-fatal illness, it wouldn't hurt to get into the spirit of things by taking to her bed. In fact, it might be more than just a melodramatic necessity. Dov and Peez weren't exactly newly hatched chicks when it came to matters of magic. Though Edwina had spied on them diligently ever since they'd taken up their posts in the New York and Miami offices, she knew that even the tightest espionage net could still let a fishie or two slip through the meshes.

For all she knew, someday they might try spying on her. The nerve!

Edwina's bedroom was as luxuriously Victorian as the rest of the mansion, its centerpiece being a four-poster with creamy white brocade curtains, an avalanche of plump pillows, and mattresses soft yet firm enough to demand a 911 call to the Paradox Police. A big-screen TV with built-in DVD player was hidden in the armoire opposite, with two large, well-stocked bookcases flanking it. A satisfactory selection of drinks and snack foods were stowed in the refrigerator disguised as a hope chest that stood at the foot of Edwina's bed. If she required anything more, she had only to invoke her powers and it would be brought to her by invisible hands.

"Not a bad way to wait for Death," Edwina said, changing into an Egyptian cotton nightgown. "A nice, long wait, but the kids won't need to know that."

She grabbed a pleasantly tawdry romance novel to keep her company, slipped under the bedcovers, and settled comfortably back among her pillows to await developments.

The phone in Peez Godz's office rang while she was in the middle of giving dictation. Her secretary, the formidable Wilma Pilut, answered it with the warm, welcoming tones of a testy Doberman. One bark, two snarls, and a protracted growl into the mouthpiece later, she turned to her employer and reported: "Chicago on line two, Ms. Godz."

"Not those idiots again," Peez grumbled, finagling a particularly tricky paper clip into the chain she'd been working on since eight that morning. She looked up from her mindless, endless task and gave the secretary her most engaging smile. "Tell them I'm not in, please, Wilma."

Wilma refused to be engaged. "That would be a lie, Ms. Godz," she said brusquely. "The Great Mother doesn't like lies."

"The Great Mother doesn't need to know," Peez replied, doing her best not to sound like she was wheedling. "Besides, it's not like you're lying; you're just relaying a teensy, weensy, miniscule li'l ol' fib of mine."

Wilma shook her blocky head ponderously. "The Great Mother would know. And She wouldn't like it." When Edwina first had set up Peez in the New York City office of E. Godz, Inc., she'd provided her daughter with everything needed to run the business smoothly, including this short, stocky, monolithic secretary. There was something so very, well, not earth-y so much as earth-en about the woman that Peez had spent most of her first week at work on the phone to her mother making Edwina swear again and again, on a stack of talismans, that Wilma was not actually a golem in disguise.