Madrigal wasn't here to amplify my mirror-walking abilities. I was about to risk a fatal concussion on a weird do-si-do with a quasi-reflective surface. Risk not. reap not.

I sent my mind leaping up into my own pixie-sized reflected image, tensed my muscles and pantomimed the mental leap with fast, fearless action. First up to her cold sculpted lap. feeling oddly like one of those mini-adult doll-size painted Egyptian children.

Then I dove upward to her elaborate headdress, imagining the two-foot diameter moon disc as a cool silver pool I could dive into. I felt a cold crash of cymbals in my brain, a jolt to every bone and muscle in my body.

As I crouched there, chilled and shaking for what seemed a truly split second of time, I saw the tomb painting of the slim Egyptian pair in profile, their shoulders and chests faced out, frozen in some eternal throne room.

I was not timeless. I had a heart and head that needed to start ticking again. I leaped behind and beyond the tray-sized disc on the figure of an ancient goddess. I passed through another split second, utterly blank and black.

Then it was as if I was speed-dating Mirrorland.

I was shot through a tunnel of shadowed time and space, fast-forwarded past all the eerie places I'd had access to, including the Sinkhole or maybe even deep space.

My body emerged in cold water, upright, and my eyes blinked open through a curtain of liquid to see a crowd of squealing tourists backing away from the spray my appearance here caused. They started clapping.

I stood there dripping silvery strings of water in a Karnak fountain that spit golden discs of gambling chips from a small cow's mouth into a huge pool. Apparently I was taken for a performing acrobat. Tourists stood nine-deep around the fountain, still clapping as I waded out of the water, pulling my dripping hair back from my face.

I paused to bow my head and curtsy, then hopped over the shallow rim of the fountain onto dry marble.

"How do they do it?" a she-tourist asked a he-tourist. "They must have a trap door in the statue someplace. Then she tumbles out, pre-sopping, to look like she came from the fountain."

I looked up at the twelve-foot high statue of the goddess Hathor, seeing my dripping reflection in her mirrored moon-disk headdress. My head ached as if it was holding up that huge symbol. Thank you, ma'am.

All I had to do next was slip through the crowds, past the guards and out of the Karnak's dark shadows into the blazing desert daylight of Las Vegas.

I shuddered from the combination of my wet hair and clothes in the meat-locker air-conditioning and a sense of having communicated with too many of the dead way too closely.

Among the weirdly attired bellmen, security guards and roaming performers, one wet woman in tourist duds was eminently overlookable.

I finally burst back out on the Strip, basking in the blare of sunlight and heat.

Hermie was waiting with Dolly, top cranked down. He'd obviously taken several unauthorized joy rides, but he was back here when I needed him.

"Home, James," I said, hopping into the passenger seat.

I'd never let anyone, even Ric, drive Dolly before, but I was still shaking, fuzzy-brained, and seeing double from my mental-physical leap through solid silver. And my menstrual cramps were killing me, although they proved I was still alive and kicking.

"Where is home, doll?" Hermie asked, obviously hoping for a long journey and a huge tip.

I wasn't about to lead anyone from the Karnak to Hector Nightwine's estate and my small piece of home, sweet heaven on it. I puzzled for a moment.

"The Inferno and make it snappy," I said, pulling out some dough to get him back to the Karnak and grinning at the idea of a demon needing cab fare.

Funny thing. After my brief inspection of the Karnak, darned if the damned Inferno didn't feel like home.

Chapter Twenty-six

"YOUwent to the Karnak? Alone? Jesus, Delilah!"

Ric had caught me on the cell phone coming back from the Inferno in Dolly. We'd met on the far fringes of a Sonic Drive-in lot. Now we were leaning against our parked cars and exchanging sour little nothings.

"Why are you getting so bent out of shape? It's a tourist attraction, for God's sake."

"It has an evil reputation."

"Worse than the Inferno?"

"Maybe. People have been disappearing there."

"People?"

"Yeah. Humans like you and me. The Karnak is an even newer player on the scene than the Inferno and nobody knows much about it."

"Nobody until now."

I'd been ready to bubble over about all I'd encountered there when I intercepted Ric, but I was reaching the threshold of my endurance of running around like normal with the constant pain throbbing in my stomach, back, and thighs.

"You scouted the place?" he asked, finally getting curious instead of overprotective.

"The place scouted me. I had an accidental audience with the owners, I think, and they are into attack spirit-hyenas, drawing out precious bodily fluids-a.k.a. embalming-ancient Egyptian sexual perversity, Old World depravity and death and tattooed genitalia."

"You found all this out in how long?"

"Uh." I checked my wristwatch. "Four hours."

"And you couldn't leave me a message before you went because-?"

"I was just Strip-hopping. I didn't expect to find out anything interesting. Once I was inside, the Vegas Strip's famous inhospitality to cell phones kicked in."

"But you did find something and probably it was dangerously interesting and nobody knew where you were."

"I did."

"No one who could sound the alarm if you didn't come back. I'm only worried because I care, Del. If you'd had parents, you'd have known about making sure the ones who love you know where you are."

A girl is supposed to go all gooey when she hears those words from male lips. Ilove you. Especially from deeply familiar male lips. Maybe I would have on another day, but today I hurt and just felt antsy, like I did when my dreams pinned me flat on my back and vague bad things happened to me. I felt a panicked need to dodge.

"Does this mean I can't go anywhere without you?"

"This means that you shouldn't go anywhere risky without telling me, or at least leaving me a message so I know where to send the coroner. Grisly Bahr would love to get you naked under his high-intensity lights."

I made a face. "He likes me, but he's not sadistic about it."

"Okay, I'd love to get you naked under his high-intensity lights, but not dead."

Only Ric could make me laugh and blush at the same time.

"See how oversensitive you're being, chica? If you worked on my FBI team, I'd ask no less. Okay. You're an independent operative. So don't ask me to go somewhere you think warrants investigation, but don't forget to tell me where you are."

"The law enforcement version of the armed forces' issue-ducking credo: don't ask, but do tell."

"Right." He was laughing now too.

"Please don't rag on me, Ric. I had to leave the Karnak via a very rough exit, and I'm still feeling a little shaky. Plus, I've got menstrual cramps that could wake the dead."

I'd never confided my female troubles to a male before. Letting him in was my way of making up, and also getting him off my back.

"Querida." He drew me close, fanning his hands on my lower back where it felt like a guillotine blade was pushing in. My equally aching belly was tight against his pelvis. That male metabolism warmth was sandwiching my pain between his hands and torso. His body heat made me feel instantly better and I couldn't muffle a purr of contentment.

"Sorry," he whispered. "You're coming to my place for some sangria and heat and massage. And then you can tell me all about what you found out today." His kiss before he let me loose promised that I wouldn't get to do much talking at all.