"You want to spar, pretty American girl?" asked Katerina.
One of Savannah's missions was to get her unarmed combat skills as a woman up to the level he had attained as a man, and there was no better hand-to-hand fighter in the new female world than Katerina. Savannah could squeeze in a quick bout in the twenty minutes before her first appointment.
"You want to make bet, Tullio?" asked Katerina as the two of them were dressing in the locker room. "I win, we go out on date?"
Savannah knew that Katerina knew about the state of his marriage. About six months before the change, Seth had gone out with Katerina for a drink in order to pick her female brain on how to restore his relationship with Lydia. Katerina's homosexuality, Seth figured, meant that he wasn't going to be mistaken for some sleazo trying to pick up a woman by complaining about his wife. That night Seth had learned two things: the old Cold War guys were right in telling him never to try to match a Russian drink for drink, and a person like Katerina who considered being with the same woman for three months a long-term relationship was not going to be a good marriage counselor.
Savannah's brain was stumbling over "I'm a happily married, well married, man, well woman" when what was coming out of her mouth was "What if I win?"
"I do your HR paperwork for next two months."
"Deal" said Savannah, getting the word out quickly before her conscience could engage.
Twelve minutes later, Savannah was pinned under Katerina. The Russian was grinning. "If you had gone all-out, little American girl, I would have told you the whole thing was joke and we didn't have to go out and you could run home to your wife. But I gave you three openings where you could have beaten me, and you didn't take any of them. I think pretty American girl wants to go out with big bad Russian chick."
She leaned over to give the helpless Savannah a hard kiss on the lips, with a hint of tongue. "I tell you what day. Will be soon." Savannah was more turned on than she had been since Seth was in high school.
++++++++++
Like Savannah, Lydia had initially hoped that the Great Change would revitalize their dead marriage. But first with horror, then with acceptance, Lydia realized that even though she and Savannah were both lesbians now, Savannah was the wrong kind of lesbian for her. Cold, tough, tight-lipped, emotionally withdrawn. Not all that different from Seth, actually.
The type of woman Lydia was now attracted to was warm and feminine, with emotional spontaneity and a love of pink. Maybe even slightly ditzy. Women like their neighbor, Hermione, a retired Marine Sergeant who had reacted to the Change in exactly the opposite way that Seth had, by embracing everything feminine with an unholy zest. Savannah hardly ever laughed and never cried, at least not in Lydia's presence. Hermione did both, profusely.
In her pink bathrobe and fuzzy bunny slippers, Hermione was making a pot of herbal tea in her kitchen, after a passionate bout of sex with Lydia. There was something unbelievably sexy about the way Hermione burst into happy tears after climaxing.
"You're sure Savannah won't be coming home early?"
Lydia gave a bitter laugh. "Not once, since he started the current job, has Seth nor Savannah come home early. Late, yeah."
++++++++++++++
By this time, relatively little of the communication between Regina and Aziza was verbal. Most of it took place in a joint magical space their minds had created and shared between them, enabling them to communicate at a distance and even when they were in different universes. Sometimes each one had difficulty distinguishing between their own thoughts and their partner's.
Several possibilities for getting the ring were examined and decided. The two sorceresses agreed that the best way would be to lure Greta into a universe where its magic would not work, and removing it there. But how to lure her? Both immediately dismissed the possibility of kidnapping Jean--they were magic-users, not thugs.