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Usually Beatrix would have burned it. In fact, she did not usually burn any of her rubbish mail; paper went into the scrap paper box for Wisp, because Wisp had an ugly fondness for making papier-mache since they'd just gone over it in art class, and it was a suitable gravestone for circulars and spam-mail. But this she would have given the match treatment, dropped in the sink and waited until it was little black fluttery bits.

Magical mail that compelled you to fill it out was something you could not burn immediately. For a moment she wondered in furious horror if it was Jack's idea of a joke, a bad one, and then realised that although Jack had his own repetoire of bad jokes none of them were anything but gentle when aimed at her; this hadn't got his earmarks, anyway. No, it was something worse.

"What's that, M.B.?" Jace, who was scanning the mail for letters announcing she had won a million dollars and could they forward her the cheque.

"A fund for impoverished children," said her mother, who was looking around for a pen blindly -- Thwomp right next to her, guiding her hand with the flashes of magic that echoed around the kitchen, found the plastic and ink shell of it in the cupboard -- "impoverished, sickly children."

"I'm impoverished," said her eldest daughter, who was swigging straight from the milk carton, having found no offers of a million dollars. "Ten bucks a week for pocket money isn't even, like, minimum friggin' wage in this town."

She fumbled with the pen: horrified at her lack of resistance anyhow. Oh God, a dating service. A dating service, something designed for the criminally lonely and the psychotic and the depressed, those who could not net another human being into the institution of marriage without having to have a computer and an agency organise it for them first.

You are a prime victim for this, her subconscious told her sneakily. The last time you went on a date was sometime in the Triassic period.

"Shut up," she said, to thin air more than anything else.

"Wow, harsh," said Jace, not sounding incredibly hurt, still taking long swigs of the milk. At least she was getting her calcium. "I'm sickly, too. See?" (Bandaids decorated both her child's elbows, shoulders, and cheekbone.) "They're going to send my a** into the Abused Children Society soon, take you away to pokey, give me to Uncle Jack who'll let me eat licorice strips for breakfast and let me get a motorbike and play with knives."

"I'll up the limit to twelve dollars if you find another part of the house to be in," said her mother, not quite listening. (Jace was gone so quickly on the promise of two dollars that there was practically a little dust cloud announcing the empty space.)

Dating service! Dating service! The indignity of it burnt. Frankly, every single assumption and sly implication of it burnt, burnt terribly, but -- and there she was doing it anyway. It wasn't just the magical compulsion to, weaved in and out of the bloody paper, it was -- she didn't even know what it was. Morbid curiosity. Morbid curiosity and loneliness. Dates were harmless; and it was dates, wasn't it, not an announcing of the banns or a fully-fledged commitment. Dates were what normal single mothers did of a certain age. Dates were maybe even healthy.

No: morbid curiosity, Beatrix told herself firmly. Masochism.

Fervent masochism really, because then she posted it back.