halfway through her waking cycle in normal times. There was more than enough light to see by, the glow from the town's streetlights and a few on the casa's grounds; even a human could have made his way, and it was enough for a Shadowspawn pureblood to read by, if the print wasn't too small. She took a long breath of the air.
Now I'll pay Monica a visit…no, I'll have her up to the casa and play a little while I'm night-walking. Then a nice light meal, an omelette perhaps, maybe look in on the children, then some sweet, restorative sleep. And first a shower. Ah, the bourgeois pleasures!
She let herself through the gate and walked upwards on a sweeping stone staircase between rows of cypresses.
More night-walking, now that I can safely leave my body to take care of itself. The scents are lovely this time of year, with a nose that really works.
And there was always the details of her plots. Plots and plans and intrigues, and so many crossed threads that even she had trouble keeping track of them. Nudging them through the web and warp of probabilities, towards…
'The part where I get to be God,' she mused. 'Not just a God as I am now, but the God, with my face carved upon the moon.'
In the meantime, it was extremely convenient that everyone thought she was dead-including Peter, now, ready to walk out like a ticking bomb that her enemies would hug to their hearts.
And Peter gets to be very, very brave and suffer a great deal. What a tragedy!
'Fix us a drink, cherie?' Adrienne said.
Muffled sounds; she concentrated, and things that might have happened did, even if they wouldn't have by themselves before the sun expanded and then collapsed into a red dwarf.
The effort moved her hunger into the sharp, demanding phase; she'd drawn on her inner reserves for that. Adrienne suspected that metabolizing some sort of trace element was involved, but nobody had ever done much research on the biochemical pathways.
Buckles unfastened and snaps clicked free. Monica lay for a moment panting around the gag before she pulled it free, wiped her face on a towel and rose from the great bed and walked stiffly towards the sideboard. This was Adrienne's own chambers in the casa grande, pale arched Fragonardesque elegance and space, which she'd missed so badly while she was sick and crowded by machines and people.
Monica's step swayed more as she stretched, and she glanced aside at herself in one of the eighteenth- century mirrors in its ormolu frame.
'And to think I once thought 'spank me rosy' was a figure of speech,' she said playfully.
Adrienne laughed. 'It's your fault for having such a delectably elegant posterior.'
Michiko was right, she thought. She does look remarkably like Ellen apart from the hair color, and they both do look like Monroe, and I'd never thought of that before she mentioned it; Michiko can be disturbingly acute sometimes, when she bothers to make the effort.
'Anything in particular?' Monica said. 'Your word is my command.'
'Use your imagination, cherie. You're good at that.'
Monica laughed and struck a thoughtful pose, like Rodin's Thinker but standing up and female.
Or Monica looks like Norma Jean before she became Monroe and went blond, whereas Ellen was a natural platinum. But the figure is very similar, allowing for Monica being a few years older than Ellen. Odd. But then, its logical that Adrian and I should have similar tastes, no? I don't think I have any particular type when it comes to males, except of course that they be pretty in one way or another. And their minds are almost as important.
Adrienne put her hands behind her head and looked down at her toes; the left set was only a little paler than the right now, and no longer sore. She wiggled them with some satisfaction; it wasn't worth the trouble to override somatic memory when the waking form was so nearly back to normal.
'Cocktail?' Monica asked. 'One of those antique styles your parents like?'
'Splendid idea. Retro can be amusing.'
She went to work with bottles and shakers, making a little dance of it, which was entertaining.
Next to the bed was a painting; French Symbolist, showing the death angel bending over an old grave digger in a snowy cemetery, a soul-light in one cupped hand and her black wings making a counterpoint to the leafless branches; he'd dug his last grave, and it would be his own.
Schwabe's La Mort et le Fossoyeur had always been a favorite of Adrienne's. For the obvious reasons, and for another: the model the artist used for Azrael's face had been her great-aunt Zoe. Who had long since died the Final Death, a matter of a little family disagreement, but Adrienne remembered her fondly from her own childhood.
'Champagne Apricato,' Monica said proudly, handing her a cocktail glass and drinking from her own.
Adrienne took hers and sipped the chilly tart-sweet mixture. Champagne, apricot liqueur made on the estate, gin and the juice of fresh-squeezed lemons from just down the hill.
'A bit too sweet for constant consumption, but superb of its kind,' she said. 'Much like you, Monica.'
The human blushed and smiled as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
'In fact, when I was tucking Leila in earlier, she said you smelled like cake.'
Monica laughed. 'They're wonderful children,' she said. 'So cute and smart…Do I really smell like cake?'
'To a child. To me…a little. Definitely tasty. Perhaps a little more like kebab with a honey-mustard glaze. Also like sex on two legs, right now.'
'You are feeling better,' Monica said as she sipped at her drink. Softly, glancing over her shoulder: 'Will you kill me when my looks go, Dona?'
They locked eyes. 'Possibly. Or maybe not. But I'm going to swallow your soul in any case, so you'll never really die.'
Adrienne tickled her delicately with a toe-the pinkish, new oneand the human shivered.
'That'll be…interesting, dying and knowing I'm not really going to die.'
'I can assure you that at the time you'll be very focused on the physical side of things.'
Another shiver. 'But we get to go on with things together.'
'True. Of course, who knows what I'll be like in a few thousand years? Or what you will be? But we're both going to find out.'
The human's mind roiled, longing, lust, fear, adoration, and far down a faint screaming from the deeply buried core personality. She put her drink down by her feet; Adrienne knelt behind her and grabbed a handful of her hair, bending her head back. A shiver as the last of the cocktail was poured along her neck…
Sometime later Monica sighed drowsily and wiped at a drop of blood on her forehead with the back of her hand. The delicious coppery smell of it mingled with the earthier body musk and sweat.
'It's lovely to have you so active again, Dona,' she said. 'It's been a little lonely on Lucy Lane.'
'It has?'
'With Jabar…gone…even if he wasn't very friendly.'
Well, he shouldn't have tried to run, Adrienne thought, and grinned. Though it was a nice bonding experience to hunt him down with Maman and Papa when they arrived from La Jolla. How he cursed and then squealed, there at the end when we ran him to ground in those woods. Papa was so inventive I wouldn't have thought a reptile could do that .
'And Ellen too; it was nice to have another girl as a neighbor.'
'Cheba might be described as a girl,' Adrienne said.
'Cheba…Cheba isn't adjusting very well.'
'I thought you had her enrolled at all those ESL and adult-education classes at the high school? She's a veritable Horatio Alger story of immigrant success, in a way.'
'Yes, that's working out, but…There's Jose, of course, and Peter, they're both dears. I was going to ask Peter if he wanted to go up to San Francisco and take in the opera, if that's all right?'
'Alas, I'm afraid Peter will be going too. You won't be seeing him tomorrow, in fact.'
Monica went very still; Adrienne tickled the back of her neck, savoring the chill of despair.
'No, I'm not going to kill him,' Adrienne said. 'Not anytime in the immediate future, that is. He'll just be going away for a while.'
'I didn't think…' Monica said, over a rush of relief.
'That I ever let anyone go? I don't.'
Like a cat with a mouse, Monica thought.
