“What will you do?” Ric asked before I could forget myself and tell Irma aloud that it was an accident, not an assignation.
“I, ah, have some unfinished business from Wichita to settle.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m taking your shrink foster-mama’s advice and facing some of my own demons without even having to leave the Enchanted Cottage.”
“So, after a night without you, tomorrow morning I’m indentured to view an almost-three-hour-long silent film from 1927.” Ric sighed.
“There’s a stirring, newly recorded symphonic sound track.”
“Watching it with Christophe is not my idea of a film date.” He never used the nickname I did: Snow.
“I know, but Snow’s the only one in the world who owns the long-lost, utterly complete version of the film. You’ll be amazed by how scary-relevant that Holy Grail of filmdom called
“I hope there’s popcorn,” Ric grumbled.
“And you’ll see the Silver Zombie again, offscreen and in person.”
“Not a draw, Delilah. She freaks me out. I’m not the Immortality Mob or a CinSim collector like Christophe and Hector Nightwine. I don’t want the responsibility for any being that can be commanded by anyone else, including me.”
“Admirable. The film will do an even better job at freaking you out than its iconic
“I still think you’re jealous. She’s
“That shiny silver exterior is plastic wood molded onto the body cast of the actress, so she’s not as cold as you think.”
“She’s still born of silver nitrate film,” he pointed out, “on which the robot body was almost a solid image beyond what any human actor could convey, other than Joan of Arc in battle armor. I can see how powerful that could be in the wrong hands.” He hesitated. “I’ve had some . . . disturbing dreams since I called that thing off the film reel and into real life.”
“Me too. We need to discuss all this,
“Just go and be mysterious about your next steps, Del. I might be mysterious about how I get on with Christophe and
By then we were at his house, so I’d bribed him with a quick good-night kiss. As soon as he’d exited Dolly, my prize ’56 Eldorado convertible, Quicksilver leaped from the backseat into the vacant front passenger seat while it was still warm.
Ric shook his head. “If anybody is jealous of anything, it would be me of that dog.”
“You’ve never had a pet?” I asked as Quicksilver growled. “I mean animal companion.”
“Just goats. I get hooved herd animals more.”
I remembered his south-of-the-border childhood captors had called him goat-boy.
Next time.
Given the battle of wills Ric had going on with his former boyhood captor, now a major drug lord, I knew another, maybe even final, confrontation was inevitable. Neither demon nor Ric Montoya ever gave up.
REVISITING LAST NIGHT’S memories of the serious enemies Ric and I had made in Vegas made my head start to ache. I put a hand to my hot-skinned forehead without remembering I was gazing at my double in the mirror, that I was showing weakness to my sister image, my enemy.
“Poor Delilah,” Lilith cooed in that irritating way of schoolgirls who lay on the “jealous” as thick as strawberry jam on English muffins . . . or toes.
She ran her still-upraised hands down and then up her opposite elbows to her shoulders, and then down again over her breasts and behind her back. The motion clothed her in the twin of my red top like a paint tool in Photoshop.
“What an obvious stripper move,” I complained, “just to filch this old thing I’m wearing. Your wiles are wasted on me. Get your own wardrobe witch.”
There are real advantages to living in a Las Vegas version of an animated Disney fairy tale. I have a wardrobe witch and a kitchen witch and a yard troll. I almost expected Lilith to ask who was the fairest of all.
Lilith didn’t. She did laugh until the red of “our” top went fluorescent for an instant before she vanished. I was looking at myself for real, truly alone again. Sort of.
“She may well be,” I agreed. “And you are truly the last secret about me Ric isn’t in on. He now knows I can see my identical self in the mirror, what his shrink foster mother called a shadow sister. He doesn’t know I also hear voices.”
“Look, I am no longer a warrior maid. My virgin issue was resolved three months ago, thanks to Ric.”
“I had my reasons, as we found out in Wichita.”
Good questions.
“You’re right. I’m being a wuss,” I muttered. “Just because I’ve sorta done a vengeful murderess wrong is no reason not to use my mirror-walking talents.”
I closed my eyes to take inventory in a body-sensing moment. “Oh. It’s hiding out as an ankle bracelet under my right wide-legged pant bottom.”
“The familiar must duck for cover when Lilith is occupying the mirror because she doesn’t have one herself.”
“You’re disembodied, Irma. You can’t have a bucket list. And being locked into a shape-changing hunk of sterling silver is like wearing a pair of mobile steel handcuffs, trust me.”
Even now I could feel a cold, feathery shiver as the familiar slunk up my leg into its default position as a dental-floss-fine hip chain. I eyed my image in the mirror.
I’d faced some seriously dark, subconsciously buried news about myself back in Wichita and survived. Now it was time to confront what was keeping me from using and expanding my ability to walk into and through mirrors.
Maybe I could drag Lilith back out with me this trip, screaming and kicking in physical form. My gut felt a satisfying melted-caramel glow. Try to deal with real life like I do, Shadow Me.
So I walked forward to meet my reflected grin, feeling a breath, a sigh, a supersheer curtain of cool liquid silver clinging to my body like ectoplasmic Saran wrap. Then I was on the other side of myself, seemingly alone in a dark, bare place, a vacant soundstage built for psychic phenomena, an empty mirror viewed from the opposite dimension, a place of eternal twilight.
My world and welcome to it. I walked farther forward, poised for whatever would come, for what, or whoever, I would encounter. Bring it on.
Chapter Three
