The bathroom was blanketed with pill bottles: vitamins, painkillers, aspirin so old they had disintegrated into powder, three vials of deers' horns, a box of herbal tea marked USE WITH CARE, THE WARNING LABEL DOES NOT LIE, a spice rack filled with strange wrinkly Chinese roots and labeled in Greek, and two shot bottles of Goldschlager that had crept into the medicine chest by accident. Quin was working his way through the mess for a second time, picking up each bottle and then shaking his head and setting it down again.

Vin regarded him from the doorway, yawning. "Whatcha doing, kiddo?"

"Folic acid supplements," Quin said. "I need them."

"What for?"

"CDC recommendations. Everyone who can conceive should consider themselves pre-pregnant and act accordingly. Don't you read the news?"

"Not when the shop's gearing up for fall," Vin said. "Do you plan to get knocked up, Quin?"

"You never know. Does this look like folic acid?"

"Licorice root. How do you never know? Wouldn't you notice if you were, like... like..."

"But does it look close enough to folic acid?" Quin pleaded. "I'm willing to try sympathetic medicine if we're all out of real folic acid."

"Yes, Quin, licorice root looks almost exactly like a folic acid plant," Vin said. Quin made a little Ah! of pleasure and started hurrying the rest of the medicine back into the cabinets. "Now that that's solved, how are you getting in a family way?"

"This I want to hear," Ariel said from behind her.

"Well, Uncle Loki slept with a giant horse," Quin said.

"Fair enough. But barring a sudden attack of horny horses..."

"Set shagged Horus and then ate a salad," Quin said.

"Salad. Dangerous. Check."

"Zeus ate Metis and then got a headache."

"That was twins," Ariel added.

"Better take the aspirin with you," Vin said. "That is, when you get out of the way. Take all the time you want, I only have to be at the shop in 45 minutes."

"He also showed himself to another girlfriend, burnt her away with his glory, and had to rescue the baby and pin it into his thigh," Quin said. "That was your father, wasn't it?"

"Poor Grandad, always knocking himself up," Vin said. "No nudity in front of pregnant girlfriends, check."

"Being a throbbing pagan sex god is more dangerous than I thought," Quin said mournfully. "How am I going to get anywhere if I can't drink or smoke?"

"Girls love the smell of licorice on a boy's breath," Vin said. "Makes 'em hot. Hoo baby. Better get out there and breathe on a few of 'em quick.

"Operative word out. Of the bathroom."

"Are you sure it's just like folic acid?" Quin said dubiously, examining the vial.

"Quin, if you don't get out of the bathroom right now, I'm going to bend you over and peg your own head up your ass so hard that you'll become Quin, Throbbing Pagan Hemorrhoid God."

"Ariel, help me! This is important," Quin said.

"Why would I give up a chance to see Vin follow through?" Ariel said. "We haven't seen anything that interesting since the Woodchuck Incident."

Quin sulked as he pushed past his sisters into the hall. "My babies are going to be born with three eyes and half a head, and it's all because of you insensitive wenches."