So is everybody. You just have different ways of doing it. We were always "different."

I'd never talked back aloud to Irma before, fearing that would put me clearly in the delusional category. Now I couldn't stop, hiccoughing through my sobs and the smashing patter of water on tile.

"But it'll be so hard to hide."

Pity is always a tattletale. You can't afford to feel it for a proud man.

"He was only a boy, then-"

My hands made fists. I pounded my palms against the wet tiles until they burned.

I hated feeling helpless again, unable to protect where I was protected. Yet I dared not wallow in my discovery here and now, in Ric's refuge of soft clothes, gently falling fountains and metallic, chuckling chimes. All soothing, all comfort he could put on, like me.

I brushed the heels of my hands over my cheeks, washing away saltwater and chlorinated city water.

"You're up already," Ric called through the aural storm of shower water and chirpy morning radio music.

Did he sound a trifle wary? I must pull myself together and fix that. I must fix a lot more than I realized.

"I woke up when it was still dark and listened to the house play, um, 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head'. Dumb song. Man, that is some sensitive sound system. I'll be out in a couple minutes."

"Fine, I'm dressed already. You can wear this for now."

I glimpsed the black satin robe being tossed to a bench outside the shower.

Shit.

I couldn't bear donning his robe and finally ventured out fully dressed. My "motorcycle mama" leathers seemed pretty silly by daylight in a kitchen. Ric handed me a mug full of coffee and caramel-flavored cream.

"Sit down like you're planning to stay a while," he urged. "We have lots to discuss."

Did we ever-and nothing that was relevant to what I'd just learned. I wanted to lie on the floor, kick my hands and feet and scream. Instead, I took the mug, sat at the breakfast bar, took a long sip and a deep breath, and said, "What's next?"

Orphan's motto.

Ric took another of the stools. "Don't worry, chica. I know you didn't mean to do a sleepover, but the pooch is fine on his own and Hector won't kick you out for crossing Nightwine cottage lines for immoral purposes."

I produced a smile on cue. "I've got actual paying customers for the backstory on the young-old vampire in the Sunset Park burial site, so I'll follow upon that. What about the zombies in the mountains?"

Ric made a face over his steaming cup of tricked up java. He was back in the pale smooth suit and the tie, the silky, stylish stuff that was his trademark. The daily disguise.

"I've already been up there, hunting, and I'm going again later, after some appointments. I can't find them, which is worrisome. I expected them to scatter, though. Unchained zombies are like migrating Monarch butterflies. They mill around, heading for Mexico on their own hither and yon schedule."

"Can't you just let them go there?"

"To get nabbed and 'napped by secret Immortality Mob 'agents' at the border? I wouldn't let that happen to Haskell's crabs."

"But what will you do with them? They're raised now."

"I know." Ric sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "And I don't know."

I shuddered at the simple gesture.

"But they're my responsibility. I can't just leave them there while Cicereau calls in a wagon train of construction machines and combs the mountains until he mows them all down into reburied shards of flesh and bone."

"You've seen the heavy equipment moving in?" I guessed.

Ric nodded. "Those earthmovers drive slower than a funeral cortege."

"Most of those guys Cicereau's werewolves ran down and killed were crooks, weren't they?"

"Some were unlucky gamblers who welched on bets. Some were probably just schmucks who got caught in the mob crossfire by mistake. I can't let any of them be used and abused further, by anyone."

That Ric. He was one sexy saint. I almost lost it again, but sipped scalding coffee while I corralled my emotions.

He tapped his buffed fingernails on the granite countertop. Even his hands were cared for, smooth, sexy.

"Okay," I said carefully, smiling even more carefully.

"Why so shy this morning? Was it what I said, or did, last night?"

He'd sensed my mood, of course. Lying had never been my long suit.

"No, amor mio." I put my hand over his. "Nothing you did. Ever."

I wished to hell that I could say that about me.

Chapter Eighteen

Seeing the Enchanted Cottage again when I drove home that morning reminded me of the scarred film couple who had fallen in love under the place's spell in the film named for it.

Scars were just that: evidence of past pain. They had no power to hurt again, unless we let them. Although it pained me that Ric had been brutalized as a child and still felt enough shame to hide the traces, he was healthy, well-adjusted, successful and more concerned about my past traumas than his own.

I wondered if we could really root out the truth about my phobias if we went back to Kansas. There was a lot more truth to root out here first.

Now I settled into every-day tasks. Quicksilver greeted me at the door with fevered licks at my face.

"Yes, a walk. A run, rather. Just let me change."

I freshened his water and food bowls and ran upstairs to change into terrycloth shorts and jogging top. I knew I'd need another shower when we came back and grabbed a protein bar on our way out the door.

Sunset Park 's red-dirt paths attracted joggers because of the trees. The ducks were quacking around the lake, the sun was still bearable and I felt almost as strong and sleek as Quicksilver. Even Kon Tiki, my name for the lone, Easter Island stone head on the little artificial lake's sad excuse for an island, seemed to wink at me as we raced past.

Once back at the cottage, I resolved to stop dwelling on personal discoveries for a while and concentrate on what I didn't know, and needed to, here in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, where so little was what it seemed.

I felt a rising dissatisfaction with my opposite number, Lilith. Glimpsing her a couple days ago in my mirror, pert and sassy, had sharpened my fears that she was indeed dead. If so, my quest to find her. my main reason for being here in Las Vegas, was pointless.

Was my theory that I only glimpsed the dead in mirrors right?

Achilles was still a no-show there, but he was just a dog. He meant much more that that to me, of course, but maybe in the world of immortals dead dogs are only glimpsed crossing the Rainbow Bridge to disappear thereafter into a vague hereafter.

I was having trouble with the Vague Hereafter and maybe I should start dealing with it right here and now.

I showered and changed into jeans and T-shirt for the day and then went into the hall.

The mirror was tall and narrow with an elaborately carved wooden frame.

This narrow hallway kept the light to a minimum. Shadow was the mirror's natural environment.

I traced the carvings with my hands, realizing close up that it was a frame of demonic and gargoyle faces, some human, some beastly, some horned and barbed. It seemed the glaring eyes and open maws I traced yearned to trap my fingertips in their shallow three-dimensional surface of carved and polished wood.

I was glad I hadn't fetched a flashlight. Light would only emphasize the shadow creatures I sensed framing the mirror.

The mirror itself was cool and glassy. My fingertips skated over its even surface, finding only their own reflection. I did rather fear finding the Wicked Queen in it. After all, I was a latter-day Snow White, pale of skin, dark of hair.