A FIRE DID a mazurka in my parlor fireplace, even though this was a simmering Las Vegas June. The parlor was a shadowed Victorian retreat crammed with bric-a-brac. I veered toward the comfort inside, drawn by the hearth flames as if they were the bloodied, beating heart I imagined pulsing inside my own body.
The lobster-tank-size plasma television in the media corner reflected my passage. I jerked to a stop and whirled to face it, my hand reaching for a weapons belt I'd left behind in the Inferno's bridal suite.
I spied only a shadow of myself, black-on-black. Or maybe my doppelganger, Lilith, was moving in that dark world I could sometimes walk into through mirrors. Even the promise of one of Lil's rare personal appearances couldn't breach my frozen self at this lost moment.
I went to the wooden mantel above the fireplace, focusing on the black glass vase embossed with the undulating form of a five-toed imperial Chinese dragon. It drew me as if it too held the magnetic warmth of a hearth fire.
With Quicksilver guarding my sleeping prince at the Inferno, my first dog waited here to welcome me home. Sort of.
Achilles' ashes rested inside the black mantel top vase. I stroked the dragon on it. Now I'd actually seen one breathing fire.
A blackened ring with a green stone was a new addition to the mantelpiece, a gift from a strange old lady living a half-life at a Sunset City retirement village near Vegas. She'd recently acquainted me with the historic and fearsome medieval Parisian dragon Gargouille, whom I'd just met in person and in massive physical form when Snow had resurrected it from its ashes.
How's that for a brand-new Las Vegas attraction? I tried to laugh at the thought, but couldn't.
I edged down the mantelpiece to inspect an alien addition. Wow. A huge juicy muffin squatted on a china plate. EAT ME, a paper tag ordered in tiny type. Beside it, a mug of tea broadcast the seductive, steamy scent of licorice. DRINK ME, a matching tag read.
Eat me. Drink me. I grimaced at the hidden sexual and sacrificial religious undertones I now saw in those "whimsical" Alice in Wonderland instructions.
Muffin. Tea. How homey. I hadn't eaten in... thirty-six hours. My body needed this, I knew. So I took my post-battle snacks to the upholstered wing chair near the fire, setting plate and cup on a small end table.
The cranberry-walnut muffin was delicious, but I noted the taste from a distance and used the tea to wash it away until I felt refreshed enough to walk upstairs.
The tall mirror at the upper hall's dimly lit end was as dark and unseeing as an ordinary mirror, though it was made of unusual front-surface glass with a blue cast.
Nothing moved in the looking-glass now, not the ghost of a mobster's daughter named Loretta Cicereau, not my doppelganger, Lilith Quince. Not even my reflection. Did a black mourning pall now obscure the sometimes magical surface?
The cottage interior was a strange blend of an earlier century's country charm abetted by up-to-the-minute conveniences. My bed was an old-fashioned four-poster but I could hear the modern Jacuzzi bubbling in the adjoining bathroom.
I entered the bedroom to find the Enchanted Cottage shocking the patent-leather boots off me once more. Someone or something had suspended a white-linen 1940s frock from a hook beside a closet that had expanded to hold all my clothing, vintage and contemporary. Below the dress waited white lace-up oxford pumps to match. Who'd been playing personal shopper in my closet?
Pulling off my knit caftan, I sat on the dressing table stool to struggle out of the long tight boots, then stood to unfasten the supple battle suit, letting it pool like a small tarpit at my bare feet.
Except for a thin silver chain around my hips, I was nude. You don't put modern underwear beneath the clingy vintage velvet gown I'd worn to the Inferno.
Walking into the bathroom, I winced to remember my humiliating bargain for Ric's rescue, which resulted in Snow's half-stripping that gown from me. He'd somehow even relieved me of the unwanted, shape-shifting silver familiar. I'd hated accepting the familiar back after our bargain was made, but freeing Ric required every weapon I could command, even a thing I loathed.
Betray a lover to preserve him.
I shuddered from cold in that cozy, hothouse atmosphere and eyed the Jacuzzi tub's inviting cauldron of churning water. Chilled to the bone and soul or not, no way would I loll in comfort anywhere while Ric suffered elsewhere.
In the shower, I turned on the water and walked under the spray before it had time to warm.
The Enchanted Cottage got me again. Instead of the icy, punishing sleet I craved to wash me free of my Brimstone Kiss sins, I got a welcome massage from a hot spray of water.
When I stepped back onto the plush area rug outside, the sight of the blue velvet gown hanging fresh and un-wrinkled above the blue-sequined pumps I'd worn to the Inferno gave me another unwanted chill.
Whatever agency had revived and moved the outfit, I'd never wear it again. Yet... the cottage had never before revealed the presence of a lady's maid, although I'd glimpsed the kitchen witch and Woodrow, the grumpy garden gnome. Woodrow resented his new yard duty, cleaning up after Quicksilver. Almost three times the size of a small wolf, Quicksilver left a lot to pick up, so I was happy to have less to collect on our Sunset Park walks.
In a weird way, the Enchanted Cottage was soothing my stress by enveloping me in more magical services than I'd ever suspected it possessed.
Bemused, I dressed as it had suggested. The silver familiar ran up my torso in chain form, then whipped down my right arm to circle my wrist as a moonstone bracelet. I was so used to its body-surfing ways that I hardly felt its faint stirrings.
I eyed it askance. That Brimstone Kiss night, Snow had sworn it reacted only to me, despite having morphed from a lock of his hair. I still felt unclean from its connection to a supernatural blackmailer who'd demanded a trivial but humiliating sexual surrender.
Whatever I felt about Snow now-at the moment a noxious stew of anger, self-disgust, queasy gratitude, and confusion-I didn't seem to have become addicted to the infamous smooch. I did not harbor an ungovernable desire for another Brimstone Kiss.
That was encouraging, especially since I'd learned the usual effect was every woman's dream... multiple orgasms. Call me crazy, but that was an awful thing to have foisted on you by a man, or whatever, who'd never kiss you again!
At least I hadn't suffered that reaction, that night or ever. Orgasms one at a time are plenty for me. Many women don't ever get even one. At least I still felt only fury from the Brimstone Kiss fiasco, not any desire for a rerun like the idol's addicted mosh-pit groupies.
The crawliest new emotion I could detect was my shame at having reacted to Snow's stagy sexual magnetism enough to be putty in his hands for maybe a minute too long. After a puberty of fighting off punk vamps drawn to my undead looks, I'd always prided myself on independence and immunity to self-serving male lust.
I stared at the innocuous moonstone bracelet the silver familiar had become. Wait! I kept a strand of Achilles' white hair in a locket.
Was there anything on earth purer to counter a lecherous rock star's long lovelocks? Pure pet love from a Lhasa 's floor-sweeping snowy coat? The breed had guarded Tibet 's Dalai Lamas all these centuries, tough little warrior-terriers. I could use all the mojo I could contrive.
I dug through the bedroom chest that housed my jewelry until I unearthed the locket holding a coil of white hair curled behind lead-crystal glass.
I opened the locket, removed the crystal oval, and paused. Eyeing the bracelet, I touched the soft circle of hair inside the locket. This risked bridging two beings, two species, two states, life and death. I'd been chancing that a lot lately.
A whiplash of past emotion made me again mourn Achilles' brave death in my defense. I lifted the hair to my Brimstone Kissed lips... a machine-gun blast of static shock numbed my mouth.
The lock of dog hair curled around my forefinger tight enough to cut off the blood supply. Then it spun down to my wrist to twine the moonstone bracelet as if seeking a mate.
Staring, I watched the original bracelet thin into a chain. A string of silver Lhasa apso heads appeared as dangling charms. The silver familiar had produced this particular charm before, but never so many.
Again, the silver reshaped itself faster than the eye could detect, this time into an old-fashioned charm bracelet loaded with keen little items, like the weapons in a game of Clue.
I turned on the small dresser lamp to inspect them all: doghouse, ball and leg iron with lock, binoculars, wishing well with bucket, violin, top hat, mummy case, shackles, globe, scissors, chariot, anchor, high-heeled platform sandal, fan, cannon, war helmet, chair, wolf's head, and thimble.
Some of those charms seemed mighty relevant to me and my recent adventures. I shook my wrist and heard a cheerful jingle. I felt much better. Achilles' hair-lock would be my own little watchdog on duty to ensure Snow didn't retain any smidgeon of influence on the silver familiar.
I spotted my tiny Lip Venom case from the Prada bag downstairs returned to me on the dresser. I always carried the tingling lip gloss as a memory of how meeting Ric had sent me on the first girly shopping spree of my life. So not me.
Now the slick little container was a bigger mystery on its own. It was a physical object transported by a wandering CinSim, an object I'd unknowingly lost at what had become the scene of the crime against Ric... the vamp-infested underbelly of the Karnak Hotel.
Peter Lorre as Ugarte from Casablanca had somehow smuggled the lip gloss case to Rick Blaine at the Inferno, who then returned it to me as a message that my Ric was in danger. This was impossible CinSim behavior. Purchased automatons were incapable of free movement, free will, loyalty, or innovation, right?
Later I'd solve how the CinSims had violated their boundaries to smuggle me the lip gloss. Now I needed to get back to Ric, pronto. What if he woke up without me there?
I slipped the Lip Venom into a pocket. Dresses and pinafores had pockets in the forties. I grabbed a white crocheted clutch purse and headed downstairs to fetch my ID and usual items from the Prada bag.
Prada, Irma snorted. She was my inner voice and alter ego since early childhood. Irma acted as my older, more cynical sister in times of trouble, which were becoming a lot more frequent. You are getting so upscale girly, girl! The designer shopping bags probably belonged to Grizelle, doncha think?
I eyed myself in the hall mirror. Dressed in white from head to foot, with my pale complexion, I looked like a ghost.
As what persona, I wondered, had the Enchanted Cottage really chosen to dress me? A nurse eager to return to her patient or a bride aching to return to her groom?
Or the ghost of a woman with no soul since the Brimstone Kiss.