Dancing With Werewolves (12 page)

Chapter Nineteen

I will never understand dogs.

They see the returning master standing
right
in front of them
right
inside the front door and they still have to sniff your crotch to guarantee you’re you.

Quicksilver was tall enough to make quick work of this ritual greeting but tonight he responded with a growl rather an eager leap to lick my face. I can’t say I was all that fond of the face-lick anyway. He had a tongue the size of a Saks Fifth Avenue washcloth.

“
Back
, boy.” I brushed past his second growl of parental distemper. It was kinda sweet that he cared about my dates, but a darn good thing I’d kept Ric out of sight and scent.

Quick’s nails clicked over the wood floors to the kitchen, where I let him out the back door. The yard gnome, Woodrow, complained about picking up after Quick when I didn’t manage a run in Sunset Park and do it myself. Tough. Growing things was his job and Quicksilver leavings made really potent fertilizer. Woodrow was, apparently, one of the perks of residing in the Enchanted Cottage of film fame.

But I was . . . what? Tired. In a way. And wired, in a way. I refilled Quick’s water dish and leaned against the kitchen sink, daydreaming, until the dog’s nails clattered on the stone back stoop and I let him back in.

To the background sound of the Loch Ness monster lapping at the giant stainless steel water bowl—another thing about dogs: they go out and then come in and drink up a storm—I ambled toward the bedroom. The fancy-framed full-length mirror at the end of the hall reflected all my bare-midriffed disheveled glory. I looked like a woman in a Calvin Klein perfume ad, hip, hot, and hungry.

I wasn’t sure I felt the same way, but it was damn close. All so new, so alien to me.

I dropped my partying clothes over the chair and hesitated between the shower and the sheets. Nope. I didn’t want to wash the night off just yet, so I slipped between the umpteenth-thread-count sheets and fell asleep before you could say “nightmare” and I could even think it.

Twittering birds announced the morning. The cottage always thronged with fragrant flora and noisy fauna, like a cartoon paradise.

I bounced out of bed humming “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from
Flower Drum Song
, took a long, hot shower, then donned sweatshirt and shorts to take Quicksilver for a gallop in the park.

Afterwards I had a quick, cold follow-up shower, gulped down some oatmeal and yogurt, and made a shopping list.

“You can come along, boy,” I told an anxious Quick as I grabbed my denim hobo bag to leave, “but will have to guard the car. This is an indoor, girly expedition.”

We both trotted outside. Although the cottage had a quaint carriage house that could function as a garage, I kept Dolly sitting under the carport. Sun was the only real enemy to an automobile finish in Las Vegas, just as it was for flesh-and-blood girls.

I stopped cold as I neared the car’s side window. Quicksilver had turned it into a doggie door during the attack at the pet store lot. Now it was rolled up tight, perfectly whole and reflective. What kind of sneak thieves broke into your yard to replace an irreplaceable car window?

Quicksilver was dancing and panting at the passenger door, eager for a ride. I shrugged and went around to open the door and let him in. Yup. The window fit Dolly’s massive frame perfectly. I shrugged and headed for the driver’s seat.

In a minute, Dolly roared through the automatically opening gate onto Sunset Road. She loved Las Vegas as much as I did. No parallel parking slots except downtown. I headed for a big suburban mall. Lots to do before meeting Ric in the park. First a discount clothing store fringing the mall for, what else, clothing? My Kansas WTCH tailored suits and blazers looked like social-worker wear here in the casual West. And I bought a 30-inch, fine silver chain. I wore what I bought and bagged my old clothes as I went. It felt like I was changing skins, not styles.

Next, I wandered through the crystal and silver maze of the Saks Fifth Avenue cosmetics department. There was so much of this stuff, and my black eyelashes and eyebrows hadn’t needed emphasis, not even for a TV camera. I’d had to wear the heavy masque-like foundation, though, to warm up my lily-white skin. Maybe that’s why I avoided makeup off-camera. A woman behind one glittering counter with an awesomely flawless foundation job approached to ask if she could help me.

“Uh, yeah. I don’t wear lipstick. It’s too clownish for me.”

“You’re right. Your hair and eyes are so vivid. Have you tried lip gloss?”

“Just lip balm.”

“Oh, there’s lots more than that. With your black, white, and blue coloring you’re one of the few that even orange would work on.”

I made a face.

“You’ll see,” the salesclerk said, delving into the built-in drawers behind her.

And I did. It hadn’t taken long after I smeared a sheeny sample across the back of my hand and remembered Ric’s finger wetting my lips with my saliva. Three-two-one, lift-off! I left with three expensive little pots of tinted gloss named Orange Crush, Veiled Raspberry, and Goddess Gilt, for evening “sparkle.”

I also left sold on a similar little product called Lip Venom.

According to the saleswoman, this spicy, tingly gloss “plumps the natural shape of the lips by increasing circulation with a blend of essential oils including cinnamon and ginger. Great for shiny, bee-stung lips.” I bought the color called “Love in the Mist.”

“And the tingle effect is catching,” my saleswoman added with a wink.

I was feeling the tingling effect already, but left cosmetics and next applied myself to a mall bookstore. They had what I wanted, English-Spanish dictionaries, but not the exact type I needed. Then a thoroughly pierced teen clerk led me to the “slanguage” section where I found a tiny red leatherette-bound book titled
Street Speak in Spanish.

If Ric’s sexy murmurs included any dirty words I was going to know them. Already, just browsing, I’d learned that
hembra
meant “tigress.”
Really?
Of course it could also mean “nut of a screw,” which wasn’t exactly complimentary. Or was it a different tense of
embragar
, which meant “to put in gear?” Ric had been doing a lot of
embragar
with both the Corvette and me last night.

Last stop was a shoe store, where I bought a pair of platform open-toed slides. I’d sometimes gotten a kick out of flaunting fire-engine red toenails while the videographers focused on my dead-serious face and stiff upper torso when I intoned my spiel for the camera. Maybe I’d always been a split personality.

Quicksilver was sitting by the car. I couldn’t leave him locked inside and he liked playing guard dog.

Dolly approved of my new get-up. She was so anxious to get home her motor throbbed impatiently at the stoplights, which offered a low-rider next to us a chance to give a wolf whistle and shout a new phrase to look up. I wasn’t sure if it was for Dolly or me, though. Besides, I was interested in impressing a high-rider.

“
Who’re you foolin’, chica?”
Irma’s interior voice asked. “
You are goin’ for
forcin’ that man into an insanity plea.”
Maybe “Erma” was short for
hermana,
or “sister,” in Spanish. Who knew I had so much Latin blood in me?

Quicksilver’s nose inspected the crotch of my new jeans, but didn’t seem to register that they were low-rise and nicely set off the thin silver chain around my bare hips. Or that the off-the-shoulder crop top was red and had ruffle-tiered sleeves like a flamenco dancer’s skirt.

Okay, maybe this outfit was a little slutty. I couldn’t help it. For the first time in my life I felt happy and strong at the same time and I wanted more of what made me feel that way. Who.

One-two-three,
arriba!

Chapter Twenty

Of course everybody eyed me when I walked Quicksilver from the parking lot to the dog area. They always looked at me when I walked Quicksilver, so I couldn’t tell if my new outfit had any pulling power of its own. I left him with a shelter lady, who was only too pleased to entertain him for a while, and worked my way up the Trail of Dead People’s Trees to the picnic table area where I’d first met Ric.

He was sitting on it, feet on the bench seat, white-shirted, facing Sunset, expecting me to be coming from Nightwine’s estate. Maybe he was contemplating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse sculpture eternally charging out of the bland stucco wall.

“Hi.”

He turned at my voice. Ric had that law enforcement professional face down cold: blank, noncommittal, and unflappable. The moment he saw me it melted, did a 180-turn, although I couldn’t quite name his new expression, other than stunned.

He jumped down to the ground, met me coming toward him, still stunned. Now I knew how those night-time soap opera queens felt. He walked into me, or me into him, I don’t know which. He hooked his fingers through my belt loops, brushed a kiss over my lips, cheek, neck, just under my ear.

I’d heard of skipping stones, not kisses.

“Delilah,” he whispered. “
Muy tempestado
. A pity I have to go away soon.”

“Away?”

“South of the border.”

“Down Mexico way?”

“Yes, where exactly I can’t say.”

“For a long time?”

“It’ll seem long now. Two or three weeks.”

“But I wanted to find out about the dead couple. Nightwine will pay me for a solved case he can fictionalize on
CSI
. You have police access—”

“Not with Haskell on the case. Can’t you use your reporter’s wiles to check into it?”

“Librarians rarely need wiles and that’s where I’d find information on missing persons from decades ago—newspaper archives.”

“Good, a library is a fairly safe place.” He grinned. “Then there’s the angle of the Inferno gaming chip. And, if needed, I do have one police contact you might try: Captain Kennedy Malloy. See? Lots to keep you busy while I’m away. When I’m back, we’ll go salsa dancing. The werewolves won’t leave if they see you in this.”

“It’s not supposed to mean anything to the wolves.”

“And that,
Querida
, means everything to me.”

We’d billed and cooed as much as I felt comfortable doing in public. My Irish genes still had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the arena of open emotion.

I pushed off enough to capture Ric’s eyes again. Seriously. “One thing. Does it bother you that our being so . . .
simpático
. . . started over a couple of dead bodies?”

“In Mexico, we celebrate the dead, we don’t fear them.”

“I know, ‘Day of the Dead’ and all that. But—” I lowered my eyes, not because I went for that flirtatious crap, but because I couldn’t quite face some things. Like my own history. “I don’t mean the impact of death. I mean the . . . sensuality that came with it. It’s almost like it took us . . . me . . . over. I mean, I’ve never—”

“I know. But I’ve never either.”

“
You’ve
never?”

“Not that intensely. I agree. We were borrowing from the dead. It was like their last bequest.”

“Isn’t that . . . creepy? Doesn’t it bother you?”

He ran his hands down my midriff to my hips. “You bother me. That’s the way it should be,
Querida
.”

Okay, I liked it. I’d been asking for it, in the shy honest truth of that phrase, not as an accusation. I’d trusted Ric to know and appreciate the difference, and he did. It was always so touchy for women to be sexual without being misinterpreted. Maybe that’s why I’d never wanted to do it before. Or maybe Ric was why I’d never been able to do it before.

Or maybe the dead bones, the skeletal lovers buried in the limestone crypt, had been waiting for a couple of fools with our particular weird talents and my dicey personal history to be infected with their own lethal passions.

Maybe we were doomed to the same fate.

If so, I could only hope we’d enjoy getting there half as much as they apparently had.

                                                                                          * * * *

The man-dog introduction was not as successful as the live-dead introduction in Sunset Park two days earlier.

When I escorted Ric to the dog area, Quicksilver’s usual embarrassing crotch-sniff turned into a sudden snap. Ric’s pelvis did an evasive maneuver as fast, skilled, and sexy as a matador’s, but the fact remained that my dog had serious territorial issues.

“Bad boy!” the shelter lady and I shouted in unison. “
No!”

Quicksilver sat down and commenced to lick his privates while casting resentful glances at all concerned.

The shelter lady and I giggled.

Ric was not amused.

                                                                                          * * * *

“At least,” he said, when he kissed me goodbye under Quicksilver’s watchful ice-blue gaze, “I don’t have to worry about your personal safety while I’m gone.”

I was going to miss him. I forced myself not to look back as I led Quick back to Dolly at a trot, trying not to worry about Ric’s personal safety on his vague quest south of the border. I didn’t need to ask if it was risky; his tight-lipped dismissal of my questions said everything.

I latched Quick into his safety harness in the front passenger seat. We both knew that it would break away in a second if he wanted it to, but it was easier to look like I was following responsible pet ownership rules than to explain to traffic cops that he was more like a hyper-bright twelve-year-old than a dog. After he’d broken major automotive glass to roar to my rescue in the pet store parking lot I wasn’t keen to tie him up.

“I’m going to be hitting the research trail,” I told him as we pulled out of the park’s lot.

“This town boasts two daily newspapers and a major university library. Somewhere in their records our dead folks must have left a trail.”

Quick regarded me with such intelligent eyes that I wanted to put a pair of sunglasses over them so as not to give away his awesome IQ. While he was looking so Rhodes Scholarish, I added, “Ric is a great guy and I really, really like him, so you will not treat him like an appetizer tray, got it?”

Quicksilver growled softly and stared out the open side window, letting his tongue flap through his fangs so he looked like the usual idiot canine easy rider.

When your dog is better at undercover work than you are, you have a problem.