Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

Then my double vision had cleared and I saw it was me, only I had blue eyes in that reflection, not gray, despite the color-dampening contact lenses. Weird. But the hall was ill lit with a single overhead fixture, and I'd been drinking, not to mention scared and stressed. Now, in daylight, I just looked like me, only more casually dressed in slacks and a knit top. I'd barely changed before the doorbell rang with an old-fashioned melodic chime.

When I rushed to open it, I found a little green man standing on my stoop. No, he didn't have the big black bug-eyes of an extra-terrestrial. He just looked like an impish offspring of the Jolly Green Giant of TV commercial fame. The silver sandals he wore did nothing for his hairy hammertoes.

No ho-ho-ho from him. "Sign here, lady." As he handed me a computerized device I noticed a green delivery truck outside the open gate. The print on the side read Mercury Express. Homegrown Delivery Service.

The plain white box was big, flat, and light, but way too deep to be pizza, unless it was a triple deep-dish Chicago style one. Besides, it was only faintly warm from the summer's day and the sun-heated back of a metal truck.

I gave the green guy a three-dollar tip and got a nasty look in return. "I should get hazardous duty pay for delivering to Nightwine's place, lady."

Twinkletoes stalked away, chiming. I hadn't noticed the bells on the toe sandal straps before. Only in Las Vegas, where every service person wore bizarre themed costumes. It had been a costume, hadn't it?

I was chuckling to myself when I laid the box on the dining table and pulled off the annoying invisible tape at the sides. I heard the encouraging crinkle of tissue paper.

This was beginning to look like a present. Had Ric -?

Okay, my mind was jogging on only one track lately.

Oh. No! It was the gown, and clips, from Deja-Vous. A sheet of white vellum written on in thick dark burgundy ink read: "With my deepest compliments and self-interest. Snow."

Amid the folds of black velvet coiled a slender lock of white hair, maybe nine inches long. Then I noticed a P.S. under the note's signature: "If I give you a piece of my power, maybe you won't feel compelled to cut it off, cut it all off, my modern-day Delilah."

I could practically hear him purring those words. Ridiculous. I couldn't, wouldn’t accept anything from him, and had, in fact, refused to accept the "handling discount" even though the clerk had whined about making out a new receipt. You might have thought the guy feared his far-distant boss.

I was more angry than annoyed now. The soft lock of hair reminded me, so painfully, of my Achilles that it brought tears to my eyes. I couldn't resist the temptation of recapturing the lost sensation of petting my lost Achilles, of reaching out to touch the long, pale hair.

The damned thing…moved, faster than I could see. Like a serpent it coiled around my right wrist, then tightened into something hard and silver and familiar. One-half of a handcuff.

Gooseflesh ran up my right arm along with an interior shiver that made me shudder. As soon as I'd registered the lock's silken circling of my wrist I'd felt it harden into cold metal.

The doorbell rang again.

Honestly! Couldn't anyone just leave me alone today?

I stomped to the door in my bare feet and pulled it violently open.

The man on the stoop looked familiar, but totally human at least. Well, sort of. I placed him: the police guy from the Sunset Park crime scene. That bigoted Detective Haskell. How had he gotten in here without going past the security system and Godfrey? Obviously, the delivery service had been passed through security, because it was a previous visitor, given the crack the guy made about Nightwine's tips.

"Yes?" I asked. "You want?"

He walked in like he owned the place and planned to rent it to someone else.

"You. Downtown."

"Me? There must be some mistake."

"Yeah. Yours. This isn't an invitation." He grabbed my arm.

I pulled away.

He jerked it back so hard I grunted protest.

The sound of a motorcycle revving its engine distracted us both.

We had not heard an engine. It was the deep sustained growl of a hundred-and-fifty-pound dog, like something you might encounter in a tiger cage. Quicksilver was standing in the hallway arch, moving forward.

"Jesus!" Haskell didn't drop my arm. He drew his semiautomatic from a rear paddle holster with the other hand and pointed it at Quicksilver.

"No!" I twisted myself between Haskell and Quicksilver. No more dogs died on my watch, in my own place. "Don't shoot. Quicksilver, no! Sit."

Haskell unleashed his own version of a growl. "Get that animal locked out of my sight or he's chopped liver."

Quicksilver was strong, big, and fast, but I wasn’t going to risk him against a hail of bullets, and I was sure Haskell was the type to overkill.

"Back, boy!" I didn't have a good place to pen him up, so I pushed him into the kitchen, and then shut the pantry door on him. "Stay!"

When I turned, Haskell was right behind me, stuffing the gun down the front of his pants as proud and pleased as if it was something else.

My heart was still pounding from the sudden threat to Quicksilver, but I found my calm, cool TV reporter voice. "What's this about, Detective?"

"Dead freak at the Inferno and you're all over the security tapes mixing it up with her in fancy dress. Very fancy dress." He eyed me slowly, as if I was a naked centerfold.

"If you want to talk to me about it-"

"Talk, nothing. I want your fingerprints. Your DNA." He swaggered closer on each sentence.

Quicksilver's claws were bounding against the shut door. It wouldn’t hold him forever. I had to get out of here before then. Cooperation, capitulation, was the best move for both of us.

"I'm onto you," Haskell said, getting literally in my face. "You're not ex-FBI, lady. You're nothing more than a suspect, a damn likely one. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an-" He stopped to stare at my wrist. "You're already wearing what's left of one set of handcuffs you've escaped?"

"It's a fashion statement," I snarled. Damn Snow for making me look like an escaped felon!

My show of resistance gave Haskell the spur he needed.

"You'll be making a statement, all right." Haskell spun me around to snap both my wrists behind my back into the real thing. "You damn Goth punks with your fake prison tattoos and your heavy-metal jewelry. Think you can sneer at the police. Think again."

He pushed me face-first against the nearest wall. I avoided a broken nose only be turning my head fast.

My heart was pounding so hard I could hardly hear anything over it. No wonder. First there'd been the threat to Quicksilver, now the swift administration of my favorite phobia: bound and in the hands of bullies. I didn't know what had happened long ago to kick it off, but this scene was much too close to that for continuing sanity.

I had to calm down and think.

Meanwhile, the bastard was indicating that I should spread my legs by nudging my inner thighs with the muzzle of his semiautomatic, simultaneously patting me down and feeling me up fore and aft.

Rage and fear mixed into a potent stew inside my chest, but my head kept fighting for control. He was police. He could maul me but he couldn't really hurt me.

"You white-trash bitches," he was muttering. "Always bad-mouthing white guys and you turn around hot to be Meskin meat. All that good white skin wasted as black boys' and bite boys' meat." He pulled my hair, hard, back to examine both sides of my neck as if I were a horse for sale. "No freaking bite boy nibbles. Wrists clean, but…oh, too bad, somebody's been bruisin’ ‘em."

Yeah! Him!