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Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rehearsals began that very day A leotard and tights, rose pink, had appeared in al and I worked out

"You’re too tall, too heavy, too busty, too clual said when he saw me clothed in neck-to-ankle Spandex thatthis eirl in a white outfit like al called with an extravagant bow and arhtly as a forever pre-pubescent ballerina Her hair edish white-blond and her skin had the sugary glow of a pastel gumdrop in blended Easter candy colors, lavender, white, yellow, pink She was the born sugarplum fairy

For the next hour I watched her curl into a box that seemed no more than a square foot in dimension and squeeze into six-inch false backs behind deceptive ical cabinets Syl was triple-jointed, fairy-like, and astounding She not only collapsed every joint in her body, she coiled into herself like a Slinky She was also ured out And her full name paid tribute to her physical plasticity: Sylphia Emphasis on the PHEE as in a form of Sofia Which meant wisdom in the ancient world Or maybe the phee in her naether in awe and sha replacement for Sylphia’s abilities and artistry, bit players who should have stayed on the bottom fifth of the Screen Actors Guild meic and had to perforht me to curl into a fetal bundle as se, but when I had to do it in a lady-sawed-in half box, I freaked from the dark confinement

Sylphia fluttered toshoulders Her face was a mime’s mask of heartfelt sympathy I looked into her pale almond eyes and wondered, was she an enforced worker here too? Was Madrigal?

He unpeeled her froently

Madrigal seemed major upset With me, with the situation I couldn’t blame him Nobody professional wanted an a roohts like a paper cocoon Mine were sweaty and seelued to al, already changed into thick green terrycloth, the house robe

Syl’s thin eyelashes fluttered distress as he beckoned me out, silently

He was our fearless leader I followed

He walkedroom and then the shower, turned on the water, and tested it on his wrist as if warlass door shut as water pattered inside He stripped offto watch as I hopped, naked, to free my bare feet from the snarl of Spandex He dropped his terrycloth robe, yanked open the door on a cloud of stea but a wall of caramel-colored skin Luckily, the shoas so frothy neither of us could see much but hot mist Nor could anybody else, even a spy caal murmured in my ear, his hand on my elbow

I flailed a bit, still freaked by our sudden nude tete-a-tete

"This is the only way The olves revere hu rituals They only mate once a month in furred form Naked human lust 24/7 inspires theuarantee your continuing cooperation"

Oh

Madrigal pulled me more closely under the shower’s hot tropical rain He also pulled ainst him I didn’t want to think how nice all this wet heat and slippery skin felt after the frigid uncertainty of being snatched froas streets and forced to turn ie," he said

"Lilah," I corrected I was starting to split personalities, not wanting to pass asto be fully answerable as myself

"You’re too solid for this profession," he said, "but Cicereau only expects me to make a show of you, not a true performer Neither of us deserves to be a pawn in the were-packs’ game"

He was pretty, oh, solid himself

Gad! I’d put myself in a position where my new sensual self was bereft and alone Who wouldn’t welcoal? Better question, as I? Was it nory yet excited when suddenly naked with an attractive stranger in a tropical stea They didn’t teach us anything about this at Our Lady of the Lake Convent School In fact, I couldn’t reht us at OLLCS While I was dithering, my trip back down Amnesia Lane pretty much killed any knee-jerk libido I had left

What remained were the usual ations Sure, ed to pass as a se Trouble was, I had no idea what "normal" was I did realize that I had pretty much shut down any sexual outreach or input after whatever bad had happened, whenever and wherever that was

In the real, working world, I’d learned to look good for the cah all inter-sexual social situations My aloofness only uys I’d never uy, except goons, hitet too picky or wigged out

While I was doing all this useless navel-gazing, I suddenly saw that I really was seeing h the al standing behind me

I put out e The surface I touched was cool, slass Mirror So as it cold when the shower stall and steah that there wasn’te in a hopeless gesture of self-defense

A eyser fro me to my neck The nuns would be as proud as if I’d publicly disavowed patent leather shoes

"Did you do that?" Madrigal asked

"Do it? No, I just thought-"

"Thought what?"

"That that I was a little overexposed for conspiring under the guise of coed showering"

He stepped closer, behind me

Oh, no I apparently was now sensitized to rear approaches

His arh ain," he said

Well, um, "it" was one of those sneaky indefinite pronouns and er the lofty, pristine suht it had been

"Theat the top of rasped, and was h to enjoy, my confusion

Damn! I would become the coolest chick this world had ever seen soested

And then I sahat he had seen, which wasn’t justunderway more than any other part of me, which was an improvement, in my estimation I felt icy electrical static nips at the very heart of them, where headline and heartline and lifeline met and crossed This was the hollow center of my hands, which I could never flatten to any surface This was the navel of my hands, as I had one at the center ofin these zones before, but now they were ale of the just beyond al’s hands commandeered my shoulders "Lilah Come back"

I didn’t want to I was enthralled by Mirrorland I could sense others al pulled ainst his hot, wet body, so physical, so crude compared to the call of Mirrorland, of those insubstantial, shifting things in the mist

He wrenched himself and me away from the lass door, barely visible and a poor excuse for the lass door I’d just opened in the old shower head and controls

He’d wrenched ainst all of hiic and the mind? Or the power of desire and the body?

If so, I never wanted to make that choice

"Relax, I won’t crowd you, here or onstage"

Madrigal’s grip loosened I sensed hissensuality in the words, yet our closeness had turned coh of relief, I wondered what he really wanted I wondered what I really wanted of him and if I could betray hi for ood

"We’ll have to work up a routine for them," he said

"I want out Can’t you tell? I’ bound in that damn horizontal corpse position froht be a key"

I tried to feel the silver upon , a talisuess it was love I wanted to believe it was love And where was Snow’s hair shirt, as he had called it? I couldn’t feel it, hadn’t thought of it, felt it, since being abducted

"My fa for time to think He surprised me

"The were-hunter Don’t think they don’t knohat he really is Theyits presence They must want you very badly"

Oh Quicksilver Were-hunter Sounds serious Good dog!

"Not as badly as I want them," I answered

"You think you’re a hunter too?

"I ahed, hard Okay, that was a pretentious line but we crusading journalists get a little over-intense at tio

"Investigative reporter? I wish you could do an expose on this operation"

"Sylphia You two can’t leave?" I asked

"It’s not that simple We could maybe Each in our oay, but we’d have to forsake the other She’s not the only one to consider"

I nodded, although he couldn’t see the gesture "You’re lucky to have such solidarity"

"And cursed"

"I’et out of here when I need to go, and I’ll do oing for you is that were-hunter"

And I didn’t knohat the hell a were-hunter was, except the obvious I had a deep-down feeling that Quicksilver ay ht take hi on to ic is mirrors"

"That’s where you could really teachI may be too tall, too heavy, too busty, too cluht have a ith e, his thu the roots ofof the attributes of a stageof my own personal preferences"

Okay His unbreakable bond to Sylphia wasn’t sexual or romantic That realization made me uneasy but I liked hie ician" as opposed to so?

"We have to let them believe we havefluoridation and h so that I knew he liked it Liked what? The water, the fear, the sweet sensuality, the danger of our hidden alliance? Who knew?

"Use oons don’t deserve a thrill"

He left rabbed the fallen terrycloth robe as soon as I stuck a toe out of that shower Then I checked for the silver faain a charm bracelet-did that mean that it would work like a literal char silver keys, with one lock as the aperture that all or any of those keys would slam home to

Snow had spoken Or I liked to think he had The keys to everything I sought were here Okay That gave ative reporter always liked that

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Syl descended from the dark of the theater flies on a thread of unseen spider-silk

I watched her, overwhele hands were on my waist, but his eyes were on Syl

"Exquisite," he said

"What is she?"

"I don’t know Fey Fairy Far too good for the Gehenna"

"How did you two-?"

"Familiar" His hands slid away frouish as if it was uish

"Our alliance was our doom, yes?" he said "She was far better than I had earned at that point I supposedly ’saved’ her from indenture to the Dread Queen, but I was indentured ed away his frustration "My ’act’ depended upon her"

"Dread Queen? Are we in Alice in Wonderland, or what?"

"Wonderland" He gave a weary little snort "Don’t worry your little head about it They’re my look-out, and you do need to look out They’re not reallyslowly froround I was sure that she did it for hih above us

A twin!

She was as petite and perfect as her double, the dark sister with her hair loops of shiny licorice, her skin a glittering dark-neon pattern of turquoise, purple, fuchsia, ehter sister twirling, spinning, suppleness personified

I watched as they e floor and twined into a lover’s knot of sisterhood

"And now, introducing me," I said Sardonically

I saw that we’d all been ie Impressed into exploitation, like the CinSims Only here, with this established triuhed and dropped al andlike he only needed a cigar in his al told y questions "Sylphia’s sister, I suppose Even I don’t know They’re why Cicereau keepsThe pack ran as when I had a contract at a ss notched ers to the tattoos on his left forear scars underneath the ca?"

"First Bite," he said "It ? Sixty years So far"

My heart began to beat faster for a reason other than the hot, steaal’s tattooed upper arth Why couldn’t he use it? "You look thirty years old You’ve been in Las Vegas that long?"

"Thirty years is a heartbeat for my kind, but any burr under any kind’s skin is eternity"

For soer to probe exactly what he and his assistants were Also, like most reporters, when I was hot after a certain story, it would take a world war to distract me

"Then you know about the Werewolf-Vampire war?"

"Know about? I’m a prisoner of it And ht he uards, like talisht theuarded

"You’d be gone from here if you could leave them," I said

"Yes, but I never will do that to theone You upset the balance You make it even more unlikely that I’ll be able to free all three of us Cicereau’s stake in us is stronger because of you"

"So I’m both savior and anchor?"

"More anchor"

"I know I’e It’s not me"