Out of the corner of my eye I saw the ghost light soften, then flare. At the same instant, a gossamer steel net fell over my shoulders. Before I could pull any weapons from my hip-slung belt, I was jerked off my feet, swinging upside down and being drawn up into the high flies above like a wriggling fish on a line.

I kicked hard to grab the super-strong filament and twist semi-upright before all my belt trinkets fell to the floor and my wig hairpins pulled out.

Meanwhile, I felt a narrow ribbon of cold metal climb my torso under my clothes. It emerged out my short sleeve, twining my arm down to the wrist. Presto-change-o! I had a charm-bracelet chain dangling the cutest miniature wire cutter you ever saw. A Break-in Barbie accessory. There should be such a doll!

Pulling the implement into my hand, I began snipping links of the net that was forming around me. The fibers- stringy, gelatinous, yet strong-snapped. More formed to replace the broken lines as soon as I severed them.

My so-called wondrous opposable thumb was aching from my desperate, machine-gun fast motions. I knew I was up against Mother Nature. Well, a perversion of Mother Nature. Madrigal wouldn't hurt me, much less kill me, but I knew nothing of the sort about his fanatically attached pair of magician's assistants, Sylphia and Phasia.

A doll-small, gorgeously girly face penetrated the broken links to rub cheeks with mine. Her iridescent skin was colder than the side of an ice bucket.

"We don't want you back," she whispered, her voice like wind, or rushing water, or the pass of a dagger near your neck.

"I'm not back," I said. "Just visiting."

Phasia's supple serpent muscles tightened around me inside the entrapping mesh her spider-sister Sylphia had woven around me. Phasia was the serpent-sister of the two.

By now I was hiked so high above the dark stage floor below that snipping net fibers would be suicidal.

"Phasia!" My cry came out a whisper. The serpent-familiar was tightening her coils on my chest and lungs and heart.

I could feel the wire cutters lengthening and growing like a sterling silver vine toward Phasia's iridescent-scaled neck…

"Let her go," a voice thundered from below, its deep tolling power vibrating through all of us, felt by all three.

I was released so quickly that my lungs burned from a massive inhalation. I plummeted down fifty feet to the black floor below and the figure of a man making a small vertical island on it.

I wanted to shut my eyes, but resisted, seeing that it was a race to the finish. The lengthening silver rope tied around my wrist flung upward to loop around a pipe high above and shortened fast to stop my fall…just as my body landed, cradled in the muscular arms of the man bracing his legs below.

The metal rope released above and fell coiling into a delicate chain around my neck.

Madrigal lowered me to the floor, still glaring up into the darkened flies.

"Behave yourselves, spawn of Darkness. Dead humans on our doorstep will inconvenience Cicereau."

He eyed my blond wig and black leather, then let my boots touch the floor.

"You're trespassing," he said. "You have no business here. Leave and count yourself lucky."

"But I do."

Perhaps my voice sounded familiar. He paused in turning away.

"I do have business here," I explained.

Madrigal turned back to me. He was built and dressed more like a World Wrestling Federation champion than a magician. The Gehenna Hotel billboards advertising the magic act depicted him as a strongman and the homicidal assistants twin Tinker Bells.

Competition-level muscles made his tawny skin look sculpted in age-darkened bronze. His thick dreadlocks gleamed like beaten metal. Magicians came in three major stereotypes. The long-haired lean and elderly Gandalf type with flowing gown and beard was one. The short and muscular athlete type like escapologist Harry Houdini was another. The modern model was lean, limber, and dressed to kill, either in formal tails or spandex Las Vegas glitz. Madrigal was in a class all by himself with his unique shtick: power lifter with demonically delicate assistants.

While I reacquainted myself with his hunky persona, he stared at me, clearly annoyed. Any visiting female threatened his spooky and possessive familiars; I wasn't doing as I was told and leaving.

"I need to know more about your front-surface mirror," I said.

And then he got it. A fingertip flipped my blond wig off-center.

"Delilah? You were lucky to get out of here the last time. Cicereau is so angry that he's destroyed all surviving film of your image, despite its commercial value, even on security tapes. He calls you 'Lodge-leveler'. He lost twenty-three prime werewolf soldiers at Starlight Lodge last full moon night."

"My image would be worth a pile if he claimed I was Maggie."

"He knows that and no longer cares. Attempting to coerce you into becoming the world's first Maggie in live performance has cost him more than you would have earned him. He's extended my contract fifty years, without any increase in pay."

"I'm sorry, Madrigal!" And I was. "It wasn't my idea to get tangled up in your act or with your assistants."

He sighed and massaged his trunk-thick neck. "How can I get you out of here fast, so neither you nor I suffer further?"

"Tell me about your mirror magic. You know I have some link with the looking glass world beyond. I manifested it here for the first time. I need to know why and how."

"Why should I tell you anything?"

"Why are you so hostile?"

"Why are you playing ignorant? You know far more than I about mirror magic. You were able to abduct the mirror image you left behind here by using remote viewing after you left. Even I can do no such thing."

"I don't know how I did it, Madrigal. I didn't do… anything. I felt desperate to leave no part of myself, of my soul, here for Cesar Cicereau to exploit on his theater stage."

"And so to save some infinitesimal part of yourself from nightly nude exposure on a stage, I and my assistants are indentured for another fifty years."

"I didn't know taking… it… away would cost you anything. How? No one knew about it but you and I."

"Even after the lodge slaughter, Cicereau would have gloated if I'd had some remnant, some illusion of 'Maggie', to add to the act."

"Hector Nightwine would have stopped it anyway. Legally, the image and the nickname are his."

"Possessing that tame remnant would have placated Cicereau even if he couldn't use it on stage."

"How?"

Madrigal looked uneasy.

"How?"

"For his private… use."

"You bastard!"

I stepped out of his reach and flicked my wrist with anger. The silver rope still attached to it snaked around his neck four times, tight.

"You're trying to make me feel guilty for taking back a stolen sliver of myself you were willing to pimp out to Cicereau. I suppose you already do that with Sylphia and Phasia."

The living metal rope tightened.

"No." Madrigal stood very still, all his mighty muscles clenched.

My attack was bluff. I knew his possessive familiars would soon swoop to his rescue.

"They'd kill him," Madrigal said, "and he knows that. Only I can control them. Besides, they are too petite and childlike for him. He likes statuesque women."

Statuesque. I'd never been called that before. Another ego boost. Still, I was a piker in the statuesque department compared to Vida, the dramatic brunet in the 1940s photo I found of Cicereau and friends, including Sansouci and Cicereau's soon-to-be slain daughter.

I relaxed my tense muscles and particularly my right wrist. The rope slid away from Madrigal, twining my right arm up to the biceps and adding a striking snake's head to both ends. It was at rest, but not disarmed.