Flattened pink pads, curved gray nails…claws. A vague, two-legged shape. Then a fanged, terrifying face, half pale flesh, half gray fur with gleaming blue-green eyes backlit by carnivorous yellow.

The mirror was making me into a monster, assembling a werewolf version of myself…or connecting me with a supernatural shape-shifter inside it.

I pulled my fingers away, but they were bound as if by Superglue. I really wasn’t this appalling vision! I pulled harder. My flesh seemed to peel away, leaving glowing raw pink spots. Had the mirror changed into an acid pool that had eaten off my own fingerprints?

With a sizzling, hissing sound, the monstrous reflection vanished.

My fingertips felt as raw as open sores. Had there been any decent light in this hallway, I probably would've swooned to see the damage. As I watched, the mirror bulged out in the same starfish spots that my fingers had touched.

Blue-white hands came reaching through, stretching the mirror's surface like Saran Wrap. Those cool blue hands were the color of Madrigal's front-surface glass. Now the entire mirror surface was a cool blue lake. I plunged my throbbing, skinned fingertips into it, as into ice water.

I felt a bracing tingle, and then she assembled before my eyes, in the mirror, my severed self, naked where I was clothed, serene where I was battered, soothing where I was agitated.

When her full figure was visible, I stepped away and broke our contact.

Her silhouette wavered, flashed through a rapid-fire of alterations from demon to the dead girl of Sunset Park, and ended by reflecting me entirely, dressed as I was, looking as I did now.

I stepped even farther back, exhausted.

Somehow I knew that no mirror image of me-made-flesh existed at the Gehenna anymore. All those expensive billboards would have to be painted over.

Madrigal's act would be all Sylphia's and Phasia's again.

Cicereau would be furious.

Nobody would be able to explain it.

Not even me.

At least that left only one dangerous mission to accomplish onsite at the Gehenna.

I had to break back into Cicereau's office to copy the photo of his dead daughter. That would be proof enough of the old-time crime victim for Nightwine, and my own satisfaction. Getting back in shouldn't be a problem. For now, the ghost of myself was still supposed to be alive and well and performing nightly. It was still five hours to show time.

Masquerading as my own reflection, as Margie, I'd be in and out of there in a heartbeat.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Ric would have been worried that I was off and running without waiting for him, but there were lots of things I didn't want to explain at the moment. Like my mirror-split personality.

Quicksilver was still out on big doggie business, so no one witnessed my exit from Nightwine central. I'd used Godfrey's codes to disable the security cameras when I came home. I didn't want anybody in the main house to tumble to my intentions and try to talk me out of them, or any record of my criminal intent.

When I departed again, I was, in fact, as good as a ghost of myself.

I wore a black leotard and Spandex leggings. My black ballet slippers and best vintage black satin opera gloves had rosin on the soles and fingertips to give them more traction. I was entering a reptile-arachnid world and I needed to slither with the best of them, even if only by artificial means. I'd removed the thin sterling hip chain I wore for Ric -it was fragile and might snap during exertion, but I worried about the glaring reflectivity of the silver familiar. It could really cook my cat burglar act if it migrated somewhere obvious at a key moment! But, not to worry. The prescient thing had instantly morphed into a duplicate of the sterling chain and settled on my hips. One might think Snow had intentions of usurping Ric. At least I knew this chain wouldn’t snap…although it might bite.

This time I parked Dolly two long Las Vegas Strip blocks away from the Gehenna, where nobody bothered with security cameras, and retraced my escapee steps. Into the laundry Dumpster and up the chute I went, crawling like an insect. I passed the churning central mechanical systems and finally arrived at the theater's backstage area.

The first show wouldn’t open for more than three hours. It was late afternoon. Everything and everybody unloosened their corsets and breathed at a major hotel and casino during the hours that change over from day to night.

I prowled the deserted backstage area, feeling an unhappy twinge of homesickness. My reflection had adapted quite well once I was gone. I sensed that. Madrigal had been thoroughly pleased at this outcome, also his pets. They had liked the Stepford Wife me. tamed, predicable, not upsetting the status quo.

Too bad. Stepford Divorcee was here now and this was Splitsville.

First, I had to confront the blue-toned front-surface mirror in which I'd split in two.

The mirror surface was inert, as it had always been. When I touched my black-gloved fingers to their reflection, my whole hand plunged right through. Whole. Uncorrupted by debased mirror images. I stepped through again. Presto-change-o, I was in Cicereau's office, the slim flash drive case flat against my hip inside the leotard, concealed. The drive was memory overkill-I was only after one image-but a CD was more difficult to conceal in Spandex and I could hardly email that damned and damning file to myself from his machine.

The trouble with breaking physical barriers is that you can't scout ahead. Even as my body emerged crouched on the wet bar, I saw that the joint was jumping.

Not only was Cicereau present, and his butch bodyguard Sansouci, but my most non-favorite wanta-meet, Detective Hardboiled, Half-balled Haskell.

At the moment I was a scintillating reflection in a dozen silver surfaces. Maybe if I kept the dazzle going, I'd be overlooked.

"You've been useful before because you were human, Detective Haskell," Cicereau was saying. "Now you are neither flesh nor foul, but a freakish half-breed. You don't even know which super bit you, half-werewolf or debased vampire or something worse."

There was something worse?

"I'm a half-were now." Haskell spat the words through distended fangs. He looked a mess. Everything human about him had degraded and mixed with the worst of beastliness. "I can do even more special work for you."

"Such as?"

"I know where to find that meddling Maggie you're missing."

"Madrigal has been here having a fit when you arrived because she'd disappeared, and I admit I'll drop a bundle in advertising, but I don't want her, Haskell. She's more trouble than she's worth. Just get out of here."

Sansouci made it happen in one muscle-bound moment.

One down, two to go.

"Scum," Sansouci said, wiping his hands on his black denim thighs. "Now half-breed scum."

"Agreed." Cicereau smiled. "Still, scum is always useful, always has been. No trace of my Margie?"

"Your little Margie has left the building. Gone." Sansouci sat in the swivel chair before the desk, then swiveled my way. I thought, Sparkle, sparkle, little reflective star. Hide me.

"Think that Madrigal had anything to do with it, despite his indignant act?" Cicereau asked.

"No. He had the perfect new trick worked up. I saw it in rehearsal. It rocked."

"Yeah, it did, didn't it? What hooked you, like, as just an audience member?"

So I had to listen to Sansouci rave about me being swathed in silk and then naked in serpent coils and elevated into thin air and having a rhinestone apple sucked out of my throat. These mob guys made a fanged Howard Hughes look enlightened, but what the hell else did they have to do?

"We're still probably better off without Margie," Cicereau concluded. "Dames will always turn on you and then you have no choice but to off them, which makes you feel bad."