Lizzie doesn’t have “guys”. She’s a romantic — and guys are too ordinary for her. Well, in fact she does have a guy, but her True Love soon dispenses with him quite handily (sends him off to Alaska to fall in love with a moose) so he can have Lizzie for himself.

And Lizzie’s true love’s name is Elric.

I know what you’re thinking. What the hell kind of name is that for a hero? But it all came from Lizzie’s gift, which happens to be alchemy. She’s trying to transmute things into gold (more on that later) and the most famous alchemist I know of is Edward Elric in the anime series, Full Metal Alchemist, so Elric he became. I didn’t bother with last names, since Elric is a wizard. He’s Elric the Magnificent, which means poor Lizzie will end up as Mrs. the Magnificent but in fact she doesn’t mind at all.

And with a wizard like Elric, who would?

He was leaning against the kitchen counter, and for a moment she couldn’t see him clearly. He was a mass of changing colors – swirls of vivid brightness dancing, and then everything settled down, like a camera coming into focus, and it was only a man standing there, a tall man in a dark suit and blond hair, watching her.
One of the bunnies hopped across his foot, and he leaned down and picked it up, a soft, tiny creature in his elegant hands. She watched, mesmerized as he stroked it, the long fingers caressing the fur lightly before he set it down on the table, where it lay in silver splendor, a fork once more.
“Who the hell are you?” she said, finally asking the right question.
He moved into the light, and she could see him quite clearly. Elegant, with long golden hair, dark eyes, impeccably dressed, with a silver stud in one ear. A little on the thin side – he was too well-dressed for Mare, and Dee didn’t like blonds. He was probably in his early thirties, though there was something almost ageless about him.
“Either your worst nightmare or your salvation,” he said. “It’s up to you.”
She didn’t like men in suits, she didn’t like men who just showed up in her kitchen, no matter how gorgeous they were, and she definitely didn’t like his lack of answers. “I’m getting out of here,” she said, turning to make a run for it.
The door in the hall slammed shut, followed by the very audible click of the lock.

Elric is, of course, amazingling luscious. He looks like Howl in Howl’s Moving Castle (another anime reference) but his nature is more reluctant snark. Picture Alan Rickman’s snarl. He arrives on the scene to set everything right, to make the girls behave, but before long he’s become totally enmeshed in Lizzie’s slightly scattered charms.

First he decides to help her:

He looked at her for a long moment. She would have thought being outside would have muted him, made him less formidable when she wasn’t trapped in a room with him. She was wrong. Even at the top of a mountain he was a disturbingly powerful presence. One she needed to get rid of, fast.
He didn’t look like he was going to be easily swayed. “You want me to disappear from your life, forget you ever existed?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then you do what I tell you and we’ll have a bargain.”
She didn’t like making bargains with the devil, and Elric whoever-he-was was downright satanic. But she wasn’t sure she had much choice. “And what are you going to tell me to do?” she asked, wary.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to show you how to turn straw into gold.”

Then he can’t keep his hands off her:

And then he kissed her.
It was the last thing she expected – the touch of his mouth against hers, and he pulled back, looking as startled as she felt. She stood frozen.
“Ah, shit,” he said, and catching her face in his hands, he kissed her again.
It was like nothing she’d ever felt before, and she reached for him, holding on, afraid she might fall. A swirl of color, greens and blues and lavenders, all dancing around in her head as he kissed her, with slow, deliberate thoroughness. Charles preferred closed-mouth kisses –
But Elric didn’t. He stroked the sides of her face until she opened her mouth for him, and he used his tongue, kissing her with a slow, deliberate care that left her shaking, cold and hot. She had no choice, no thought but to kiss him back, sliding her arms around his neck, pressing her body up against his, the living amethyst between the two of them, between their hearts, and it glowed, burned, sang, as she closed her eyes and let herself sink into the breathless wonder of the kiss.
She didn’t know what would have happened next if the ferret hadn’t scampered across her foot. She jumped away from him, banging her head against his jaw, and looked around her in dismay. Two ferrets, six mice which should have been white but were instead varying shades of purple, and Pywackt, staring at her in haughty disdain, a deep lavender himself, before he started after the mice.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Elric said. “There are already too many rodents in this world.”

And finally he gives in, his inner battles lost:

“Oh, hell,” Elric muttered. He was standing in front of her, and he put his hand on her face, pushing her tangled hair back. “Your eyes are purple,” he said, sounding impossibly gloomy.
“My eyes are blue,” she protested in a strangled voice. She didn’t want his hand to leave her skin – the feel of his long fingers gently stroking the side of her face was a sensation so astonishing that she wanted to cry. “Your eyes are purple.”
“What?” He sounded appalled, starting to pull away, but she reached up and covered his hand with hers, holding it against her face.
As if he couldn’t fight it any more he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. “Doomed,” he said bleakly.
Horrible things ran through her mind – had his protection spell backfired, infecting them both with some deadly disease? Had Xan done something unspeakably terrible, poisoning them both?
“Are we going to die?” she whispered, not sure she minded as long as he was with her.
His breathless laugh was only a slight reassurance. “Eventually,” he said. “Most people do. We’ll just be a lot older when it happens. A lot older than everybody.”
“Then what’s wrong with our eyes?”
“Disaster. A fate worse than death. I thought I’d done everything to keep this from happening, but my best efforts weren’t good enough. The universe will have its way.”
He lifted his head and looked down at her, and even in the murky candlelight the lavender glow of his eyes was unmistakable.
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” he said. And kissed her.

He still has some fight left in him, as does she. But in the end destiny is too powerful for two such powerful souls, and they’re bound to each other. And, heavens, is there a hot time in the old town tonight.