"That's why you stay here."
"I'm caught between two equally unpleasant forces. But my association with Sylphia and Phasia has lengthened my life. I can wait."
"Then what you do with the mirrors is merely magician's tricks?"
"I myself mostly, yes. Real magic is too unreliable for a nightly act. Sylphia and Phasia can play between here and there with mirrors."
"And my 'tricks'?"
"Were quite astounding. Sylphia and Phasia have never transported themselves through the mirror beyond the immediate area, just to the flies and the stage. It's handy for my act. Where you went, I'm not sure, but you left no shell of yourself near the stage area until I worked with you. And Delilah, Cicereau didn't know how right he was. You and I could have invented superb illusions, but we'd probably have been sent to Starlight Lodge to be eaten before that."
Madrigal was watching me carefully, but I didn't react. He didn't need to know I'd used his offstage mirror to slip into Cicereau's private office and snoop.
"Why can they and I move through mirrors?"
"I don't know. They're sisters, of course, but yours was a solo act."
Or was it? Was I accessing Lilith in the mirror? Did she sometimes assume my exact form by mimicking my dress? Was my mirror simulacrum only a shadow form or Lilith in bondage to my actions? Did we just miss meeting in that timeless, spaceless plane?
I pushed my hand at the slightly aqua surface, so like a pale natural blue topaz. My fingers melted into tepid air and stirred the mirror surface into ripples, as if it was water.
Madrigal's hand struck snake-fast for the surface and tapped on ungiving glass.
"For you it melts, for me it freezes over like ice." He frowned, then took my wrist in his hand and guided it to the mirror, through the mirror.
This time the mirror was an opaque pool of mercury, shimmering but solid, reflecting a distorted version of our hands, his totally solid and mine half-submerged.
"The mirror bends to your touch, not mine, although I can use your limbs like a puppet master to penetrate it. I must try this with Sylphia and Phasia. It would make a spectacular illusion."
"It's not an illusion, that's the problem!"
"Your problem, not mine." He smiled grimly. "You'll just have to do as Cicereau's humble house magician does: experiment with your equipment to find intriguing new uses and effects for it."
"Aren't you afraid of losing Phasia and Sylphia in the mirror world if you send them in too far or for too long?"
"You I wanted to lose," he said, smiling. "Them, not. Without them Cicereau would axe my act, and perhaps me. He was furious to lose 'Maggie' in her docile remnant form."
"He saw her? Me?"
"Yes, in the mirror. But don't worry. He thought my magic produced her image. When you jerked her out, however you did that, I had to confess to him that my 'spell' had weakened. Cicereau doesn't tolerate weakness in any living thing around him."
"So you got in dutch with the boss over me and my shadow. Sorry."
"Cicereau runs hot and cold. He was a lot angrier about your physical form escaping from Starlight Lodge. How'd you manage that?"
"No smoke and mirrors, just running and dodging and a little help from my friends."
"One of them that big lupine hound?"
"Actually not. Quicksilver was safe at home that night, like a good dog." Not quite true. He'd been out on errands of his own. But he wasn't talking and I wasn't asking.
I returned to the central question.
"What am I to think about my new gifts for manipulating mirror? The only thing I did with mirrors in Kansas was put on TV makeup goop in them."
"So much came out after the Millennium Revelation. My girls"-he nodded up to the flies where they kept invisible watch-"your gifts. Don't let anyone fool you, Delilah. Magical talent, paranormal gifts are like DNA characteristics. The pattern for them lies hidden somewhere in the physical body. Magic, which so often depends on natural things for its spells and enchantments-"
"Eye of newt?"
"That's from a play. Made up. It's more useful to think of magic as herbs with their many healthful effects and uses and to consider science as the drugs and medicines that are synthesized from the raw material of nature."
"You're saying science and magic have things in common?"
"Of course. That's what makes a big corporation like the Industrial Special Effects and Magic Show so profitable. Take the governmental experiments in such a woo-woo effort as remote viewing. That's been going on for decades."
"You mean people seeing things happening from a long distance away, via their minds? That's never been proven possible."
"You do remote viewing, from what you tell me, in your funhouse mirror at home. Perhaps the Millennium Revelation brought out a lot of dormant gifts in the humans, as well as legions of unhumans.
"What is mirror walking, Delilah, except remote viewing in 3-D?"
Chapter Twenty-one
MIRROR WALKING.
Was that the name for what I did? I mulled Madrigal's words and ideas after I left him and the theater area.
Maybe what I'd told Captain Malloy wasn't bullshit. I was a predator. I'd come stalking three men in the past twenty-four hours: Snow, Madrigal and now perhaps the most dangerous of all.
Meanwhile, mirror walking was of no use. I could only walk around the immense exterior of the Gehenna hotel and casino as day turned to night, hoping to catch sight of my next prey leaving. The constant movement helped me forget my killer cramps, and I looked like Security making rounds.
Quicksilver was with me, but on "shadow" alert. That meant he remained invisible until needed. He was such a brilliant dog. I only told him "shadow," once, and he had my back with nobody the wiser.
So I could pretend to be a tough mean street-walking investigator and know I had an awesome ace in the hole. In fact, Quicksilver was so discreet even I forgot about his presence at times.
Finally, I spotted a black-clad man leaving the massive hotel's back service area. It was after ten p.m. but I thought I recognized the man's not-quite-muscle-bound movements, as graceful as a Grizelle's in white tiger form.
He was big and tough, but had a brain. And, more important, I thought, a sense of humor. And he was definitely heterosexual. My newly awakened senses told me that. My newly awakened senses also told me he had recognized my newly awakened senses.
True, he had seen me escorted off the Gehenna premises to become dog meat or werewolf meat, if there was a difference, but I'd sensed a tad of regret. In this town even tads of regrets are hard to come by.
I was willing to bet that an urban werewolf's daily sex lust was stronger than the monthly, moon-driven killing lust. One must live to kill another day. I had no idea where he'd go, but was prepared to dive into the Sinkhole's migrating underbelly again, if necessary. Instead, he led me to a private club off the Strip.