Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

Whatever, I watched them work together in awe and shame.

Lilith and I were an insulting replacement for Sylphia's abilities and artistry, bit players who should have stayed on the bottom fifth of the Screen Actors Guild membership list. But here we were with our shiny cheap media magic and had to perform.

That first afternoon Madrigal taught me to curl into a fetal bundle as small as my stiff and medium-boned frame could manage, but when I had to do it in a lady-sawed-in half box, I freaked from the dark confinement.

Sylphia fluttered to my side, tiny hands soothing my shaking shoulders. Her face was a mime's mask of heartfelt sympathy. I looked into her pale almond eyes and wondered, was she an enforced worker here too? Was Madrigal?

He unpeeled her from me with gentle fingers, then un-pretzeled me not quite so gently.

Madrigal seemed major upset. With me, with the situation. I couldn't blame him. Nobody professional wanted an amateur for a partner. We split for the dressing rooms. I tried not to watch Syl shed her leotard and tights like a paper cocoon. Mine were sweaty and seemed glued to my tense, damp skin.

A knock on the door revealed Madrigal, already changed into thick green terrycloth, the house robe.

Syl's thin eyelashes fluttered distress as he beckoned me out, silently.

He was our fearless leader. I followed.

He walked me into his private dressing room and then the shower, turned on the water, and tested it on his wrist as if warming milk for a baby. Then he pulled the opaque glass door shut as water pattered inside. He stripped off my leotard and tights with one long gesture, not bothering to watch as I hopped, naked, to free my bare feet from the snarl of Spandex. He dropped his terrycloth robe, yanked open the door on a cloud of steam, and stepped in with me before I could register anything but a wall of caramel-colored skin. Luckily, the shower was so frothy neither of us could see much but hot mist. Nor could anybody else, even a spy camera.

"They can't hear us in here," Madrigal murmured in my ear, his hand on my elbow.

I flailed a bit, still freaked by our sudden nude tete-a-tete.

"This is the only way. The werewolves revere human mating rituals. They only mate once a month in furred form. Naked human lust 24/7 inspires them. They'll assume our presumed union will guarantee your continuing cooperation."

Oh.

Madrigal pulled me more closely under the shower's hot tropical rain. He also pulled me closer against him. I didn't want to think how nice all this wet heat and slippery skin felt after the frigid uncertainty of being snatched from the Las Vegas streets and forced to turn myself into a human Windsor knot.

"I hear your name is Maggie," he said.

"Lilah," I corrected. I was starting to split personalities, not wanting to pass as my maybe-sister, not willing to be fully answerable as myself.

"You're too solid for this profession," he said, "but Cicereau only expects me to make a show of you, not a true performer. Neither of us deserves to be a pawn in the were-packs' game."

He was pretty, oh, solid himself.

Gad! I'd put myself in a position where my new sensual self was bereft and alone. Who wouldn’t welcome an ally in this situation? Who human? So what was Madrigal? Better question, who was I? Was it normal to be a little edgy yet excited when suddenly naked with an attractive stranger in a tropical steam bath of a shower? Pardon me for not knowing. They didn't teach us anything about this at Our Lady of the Lake Convent School. In fact, I couldn't remember much that they had taught us at OLLCS. While I was dithering, my trip back down Amnesia Lane pretty much killed any knee-jerk libido I had left.

What remained were the usual mysteries and insecurities, hints and allegations. Sure, my background was weird and isolated, but I'd managed to pass as a smart, savvy cookie since college. Trouble was, I had no idea what "normal" was. I did realize that I had pretty much shut down any sexual outreach or input after whatever bad had happened, whenever and wherever that was.

In the real, working world, I'd learned to look good for the camera and pass unmolested through all inter-sexual social situations. My aloofness only made me more attractive, more of a "challenge," to the wrong guys. I'd never met any right guys until Ric. And now-hot dog! – every guy, except goons, hitmen, and werewolf CEOs, seemed sort of right if I didn't get too picky or wigged out.

While I was doing all this useless navel-gazing, I suddenly saw that I really was seeing my own navel through the mists of steam. And a lot of naked and tattooed Madrigal standing behind me.

I put out my palm until it hit a barrier and married with its own image. The surface I touched was cool, smooth, and solid glass. Mirror. So why was it cold when the shower stall and steam were so overheated?

I had stepped close enough that there wasn’t much mist veiling me anymore. I ran my palm down over my reflected image in a hopeless gesture of self-defense.

A modesty veil of steam welled up like a geyser from the floor, obscuring me to my neck. The nuns would be as proud as if I'd publicly disavowed patent leather shoes.

"Did you do that?" Madrigal asked.

"Do it? No, I just thought-"

"Thought what?"

"That…that I was a little overexposed for conspiring under the guise of coed showering."

He stepped closer, behind me.

Oh, no. I apparently was now sensitized to rear approaches.

His arms reached out of my shoulder-high mist to place both his palms on the mirror.

"Touch it again," he said.

Well, um, "it" was one of those sneaky indefinite pronouns and my mind was no longer the lofty, pristine summit of rational thought it had been.

"The mirror," he added more softly, his voice thrumming at the top of my head. There was just enough purr in it to tell me that he grasped, and was male enough to enjoy, my confusion.

Damn! I would become the coolest chick this world had ever seen someday. Meanwhile…I did as he suggested.

And then I saw what he had seen, which wasn’t just me naked, but which was the mirror, softening, blurring under my hands. As if I could sink into it.

My palms were tingling way more than any other part of me, which was an improvement, in my estimation. I felt icy electrical static nips at the very heart of them, where headline and heartline and lifeline met and crossed. This was the hollow center of my hands, which I could never flatten to any surface. This was…the navel of my hands, as I had one at the center of my body.

I'd never felt anything in these zones before, but now they were almost alive. My hands pushed into the silver graven image of themselves and it was as if I were touching a second self lurking just beyond my sight.

Madrigal's hands commandeered my shoulders. "Lilah. Come back."

I didn't want to. I was enthralled by Mirrorland. I could sense others moving out there, even picture myself out there.

Madrigal pulled my shoulders back until I was pressed against his hot, wet body, so physical, so crude compared to the call of Mirrorland, of those insubstantial, shifting things in the mist.

He wrenched himself and me away from the mirror to face the mechanics of the shower, the steamed-over glass door, barely visible and a poor excuse for the magical looking-glass door I'd just opened in the mirror, and the glitzy, gleaming overdone gold shower head and controls.

He'd wrenched me away from all that by pressing me against all of him. Was that my choice? The power of magic and the mind? Or the power of desire and the body?

If so, I never wanted to make that choice.

"Relax, I won't crowd you, here or onstage."

Madrigal's grip loosened. I sensed his mind backing off slightly, the usual singsong sensuality in the words, yet our closeness had turned comrade-like. Even as I breathed a sigh of relief, I wondered what he really wanted. I wondered what I really wanted of him and if I could betray him if I had to.