Brimstone Kiss by Carole Nelson Douglas

Author:Carole Nelson Douglas [Douglas, Carole Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780809573042
Amazon: 0809573040
Publisher: Bill
Published: 0101-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Seeing the Enchanted Cottage again when I drove home that morning reminded me of the scarred film couple who had fallen in love under the place's spell in the film named for it.

Scars were just that: evidence of past pain. They had no power to hurt again, unless we let them. Although it pained me that Ric had been brutalized as a child and still felt enough shame to hide the traces, he was healthy, well-adjusted, successful and more concerned about my past traumas than his own.

I wondered if we could really root out the truth about my phobias if we went back to Kansas. There was a lot more truth to root out here first.

Now I settled into every-day tasks. Quicksilver greeted me at the door with fevered licks at my face.

"Yes, a walk. A run, rather. Just let me change."

I freshened his water and food bowls and ran upstairs to change into terrycloth shorts and jogging top. I knew I'd need another shower when we came back and grabbed a protein bar on our way out the door.

Sunset Park 's red-dirt paths attracted joggers because of the trees. The ducks were quacking around the lake, the sun was still bearable and I felt almost as strong and sleek as Quicksilver. Even Kon Tiki, my name for the lone, Easter Island stone head on the little artificial lake's sad excuse for an island, seemed to wink at me as we raced past.

Once back at the cottage, I resolved to stop dwelling on personal discoveries for a while and concentrate on what I didn't know, and needed to, here in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, where so little was what it seemed.

I felt a rising dissatisfaction with my opposite number, Lilith. Glimpsing her a couple days ago in my mirror, pert and sassy, had sharpened my fears that she was indeed dead. If so, my quest to find her. my main reason for being here in Las Vegas, was pointless.

Was my theory that I only glimpsed the dead in mirrors right?

Achilles was still a no-show there, but he was just a dog. He meant much more that that to me, of course, but maybe in the world of immortals dead dogs are only glimpsed crossing the Rainbow Bridge to disappear thereafter into a vague hereafter.

I was having trouble with the Vague Hereafter and maybe I should start dealing with it right here and now.

I showered and changed into jeans and T-shirt for the day and then went into the hall.

The mirror was tall and narrow with an elaborately carved wooden frame.

This narrow hallway kept the light to a minimum. Shadow was the mirror's natural environment.

I traced the carvings with my hands, realizing close up that it was a frame of demonic and gargoyle faces, some human, some beastly, some horned and barbed. It seemed the glaring eyes and open maws I traced yearned to trap my fingertips in their shallow three-dimensional surface of carved and polished wood.

I was glad I hadn't fetched a flashlight.

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