And then I spied her twin still high above us.

A twin!

She was as petite and perfect as her double, the dark sister with her hair loops of shiny licorice, her skin a glittering dark-neon pattern of turquoise, purple, fuchsia, emerald. She oozed downward on a bungee cord to her lighter sister…twirling, spinning, suppleness personified.

I watched as they met in the middle some forty feet above the stage floor and twined into a lover's knot of sisterhood.

"And now, introducing me," I said. Sardonically.

I saw that we'd all been impressed into service on the stage. Impressed into exploitation, like the CinSims. Only here, with this established triumvirate, I was the odd woman out.

I sighed and dropped my eyes from the fey creatures twining down toward Madrigal and me. Quicksilver was sitting in the empty aisle, looking like he only needed a cigar in his mouth to masquerade as a Broadway angel.

"Phasia," Madrigal told me that evening in the shower in answer to my soggy questions. "Sylphia's…sister, I suppose. Even I don't know. They're why Cicereau keeps me alive and working. The pack ran me down on the streets of Las Vegas when I had a contract at a smaller hotel. Their fangs notched me, their saliva filled my veins." He guided my fingers to the tattoos on his left forearm. I felt a Braille pattern of fang scars underneath the camouflaging ink.

"How? For how long?"

"First Bite," he said. "It makes you their servant, but not a supernatural. How long? Sixty years. So far."

My heart began to beat faster for a reason other than the hot, steaming water. I grasped Madrigal's tattooed upper arms. They seemed the epitome of strength. Why couldn't he use it? "You look thirty years old. You've been in Las Vegas that long?"

"Thirty years is a heartbeat for my kind, but any burr under any kind's skin is eternity."

For some reason I was not eager to probe exactly what he and his assistants were. Also, like most reporters, when I was hot after a certain story, it would take a world war to distract me.

"Then you know about the Werewolf-Vampire war?"

"Know about? I'm a prisoner of it. And my wards with me."

"Wards?" For a moment I thought he meant magical guards, like talismans.

"Sylphia and Phasia. I brought them into servitude with me."

His wards, as those to be guarded.

"You'd be gone from here if you could leave them," I said.

"Yes, but I never will do that to them."

"And me?"

"I want you gone. You upset the balance. You make it even more unlikely that I'll be able to free all three of us. Cicereau's stake in us is stronger because of you."

"So I'm both savior and anchor?"

"More anchor."

"I know I'm useless in the act, on stage. It's not me."

"That wasn’t you on the CSI episode?"

"No."

Madrigal didn't seem surprised, but thoughtful. "Then perhaps Cicereau has finally miscalculated."

"Does it matter? I'm still here, a prisoner expected to reprise a role I never had, never would consent to."

"What did you mean, you might have a way with mirrors?"

"I see things in them other people don't."

"That's a very minor talent."

"Have I ever claimed to be a useful magician's assistant?"

"Cicereau expects your dazzling stage debut by tomorrow night."

"Then we dazzle, but meanwhile, how can I move around this hotel, unseen?"

"With Sylphia, but you would have to trust her webs."

"She's as trapped as anyone here. How can she be untrustworthy?"

"Her webs are part plain spit and part fairy dust. Her nature is predatory, to bind and devour, despite her deceptively dainty look. I care for her, but I can't control her. If you partner with her, you risk your life."

"This is your familiar?"

"A familiar should be both sheath and weapon, wall and goad. Were they not dangerous, they would not be useful."

"Swell." But his words kind of defined the role of Snow in my life, didn't they? "She was kind to me."

"She has a heart and a mind, only her nature is always…uncertain. And she is very jealous of me."

"These shower 'conference calls' of ours?"

"Have made her suspicious and bitter. A familiar is a jealous god."

Didn't I know it?

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I was used to being a failure, but I wasn’t used to failing at a job.

After Madrigal's last Margie-less show was over and the myriad stagehands had left, I crept back to the theater and climbed the black iron ladder against the outer brick wall high into the flies.

Above me the deadened lights-as shuttered and heavy-lidded as a hooker with industrial strength mascara-could cast no cold, critical eye on my feeble maneuverings on the wires and lines that stretched down to the stage.

I just wanted to rehearse on my own, discover what I could-and couldn't-do in this new arena I'd never chosen.

I grasped one of the bungee cord lines, wrapped it around my wrist as Madrigal had instructed, and…jumped. Flew like Peter Pan. Dive-bombed. Let myself out on a string of elastic until I thought I would crash and burn, then let myself be snapped back to the top of the building, waiting for my skull to shatter bricks.

I was a human yo-yo. I never hit sidewalk or sky, but boomeranged back and away from disaster at the very instant of impact.

I finally clung to one of the high perches where the performers rested before the next death-defying plunge. Scared, exhilarated, and beginning to get the rhythm of fall and rebound, of being a human Slinky. Also of trusting the equipment, the instructor. Wait! Wasn’t this all a metaphor, maybe, for human relationships?

Madrigal would not let me crash and burn. His masters didn't want that. He wouldn’t tolerate it, no matter how bound he had been. I crouched, panting alone in the dark, watching the one bare light bulb left burning below, an ancient theatrical custom called the "ghost light."

I guess I was beginning to know a few things about ghosts. And light. And myself.

The impact came out of nowhere like a clock's narrow metal pendulum swinging into me: unannounced, sudden, slicing.

I was off my safe perch, spinning into empty air, grabbing for any stopgap.

I caught a hanging bungee cord. It burned the skin from my palms before allowing me to rebound, then bounce down and up, and finally dangle forty feet above the stage floor. Low enough to see salvation. High enough to die.

I tried to decipher what had happened.

I was alone. I was working the ropes and bungee cords. I was making progress! I had been…seen. Watched. Sabotaged. Torpedoed.

I looked down. None of Cicereau's very earth-bound werewolves were prowling. Even Quicksilver had been left cooped up in our quarters. Dumb me, thinking I was a solo act.

So I looked up.

I spotted two gleaming figures, lithe and alien.

One came plunging down at me, spewing loops of lucent fibers like strings of pearls.

The other came sweeping across my lifeline, living tendrils from her head whipping around my bungee cord and severing it.

I had no choice but to grab a viscous rope of…spider web.

Ooh. Sticky. Stretchy. The black stage floor was rising like a solid wave, ready to crack my skull. The brain inside that skull understood that Madrigal's familiars were strenuously objecting to my new alliance with him.

Familiar. I didn't spin spider silk from my…well, let's not think what. I didn't have snaky Medusa locks to use as hangman's nooses.

I knew something they didn't know. I had a familiar of an albino.

I felt a strong silver tug. I was instantly wearing a strongman's belt, an all metal-mesh waist-cincher draped with chains on silver rings. The chains whipped out to loop around Phasia's snaky tendrils and pulled her down, down, down.