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Not every irl can have her rented house bloay by a jealous weather witch in Kansas one week and end up in the post-Millenniue the next

But, as Disney says: fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, and it had happened to me, Delilah Street, forever orphan and ex-WTCH-TV reporter

The Enchanted Cottage is a char little place fro played a pilot disfigured in World War II and Dorothy McGuire portrayed a plain shy spinster They find sanctuary and happily-ever-after love in a cottage just like erto be retro or pretentious or both And nobody knoho Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire were except filhtwine, producer of the internationally franchised CSI V forensic TV shows

For a nuas of 2013 isn’t worth a five-dollar chip from Cesar Cicereau’s Gehenna Hotel and Casino Fortunately, though, I’m worth a lot to Hector So, here I ahtwine’s Fort-Knox-secure Sunset Road estate, surrounded by Hobbity English charh-tech convenience I ah four-poster bed with gargoyles carved onto the posts while a Jacuzzi tub in the adjoining bathrooles htmares will come home to roost in this place It’s as safe as fairy tales and Nightwine’s state-of-the-art security technology caninto the thousand-thread-count sheets, when I heard a scratching at my second-story caserow aroundBeauty’s thorny forest A stray vine was probably blowing against theglass I openedA s shadow danced there in rhyth

Had a cat cliet in?

I arlish muffin from my formerly cold feet to the top of as, but I’h at night Now, though, they finally were

So I didn’t want to get up

Froarlic chicken I seldo with the yard troll and the garden pixies and who knehat else, but she could bake fragrant loaves of crusty bread in the wood stove as readily as she could nuke a frozen Weight Watchers entree in the arlic odor froht’s hoe wolfhound-wolf-cross dog wheezing in sleep from one of the downstairs roohts out on the town that never shuts down I figure adopting hiive me a lock on his nocturnal need to patrol and rock and roll with his kind

I wriggled deeper into the war snare-dru into sleep It could be a kitten caught up a tree, clinging there, helpless

Forcing myself to sit up, I shivered at an inrush of air-conditioned air and put my bare feet to the icy wooden floor My sleep-T he me I moved toward the pair of s

A Rorschach blot of black was indeed pressed to theglass It was as big as er head It looked like a starfish shadow

I stumbled nearer and squinted tokitten-but asn’t it h? Only when a squeal revealed rows of tiny fangs did I realize that my visitor was a bat

Naturally, I squealed a bit too

Mind you, I’ator of rural phenoht’s -clinging bat shouldn’t set

I reminded myself that bats were enormously useful consumers of insects and other pests and returned to bed, shuddering as my floor-cooled feet found the sheets already chilly Even the sliled stomach-down, curled up, and waited for sleep to findAnd the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before

Daar Allan- Poe’s "The Raven?"

Maybe because the rustling sounded like curtains and there weren’t any curtains onsounded like a big bird’s wings

’Tis the wind and nothing morel

If that mantra had worked for Poe’s uneasy scholar it would work for me I pulled the covers farther overincreased to a California condor-size woosh, with a wingspread of, say, ten freaking feet Only an idiot would ignore that kind of indoor tempest This was no little lost bat or even athe covers half down, and faced the s "All right!" I challenged the night

Not all right, baby girl, whispered etting called on byBird We’re not on Sesame Street anymore, Delilah

No The room’s temperature had dropped to meat-freezer cold and I was instantly afraid I was the s that went buht

I was appalled to see that the small shadow from the pane had moved inside to become a pillar of darkness draped in black, severe and funereal I was al apparitions in the tall hall mirror, but not in thin air Slowly, the head of the entity s

Awe mated with my fear, and both held me frozen A pale white face ca dark eyebrows and a gray grinningan ash-gray satin lining fraant antique cut The vintage clothing collector in oose buure had no color at all, not even red around the eye whites

Then I recognized raphs and posters

I was beholding the most commercially potent incarnation of Dracula of all ti onscreen with Eastern Euro-trash swagger and Art Deco decadence I recalled a few pre-adolescent longings to someday meet a classic vampire: suave, smooth and deliriously sinister I hankered for any one of a dozen pop culture reinventions of the father of all vaosi had a certain predatory hunger, but he wasn’t the hunky anti-hero wo for his seductive suction action

Lugosi was nasty Not as nasty as the ancient devouring vae lizard, oral-sex fiend Frank Langella’s portrayal had o crazy over a few decades back Why do woo for the bad boys? I sure hadn’t liked the variety I fought off in the group homes

I could think clearly, but sat paralyzed-just like all those passive silver-screen victiers curled into the sheets At least this wasn’t a debased half-vah not a Golluht like Nosferatu fro-clawed leech and lech was all too rehes in his current undead state to conjure

No, Bela Lugosi’s slo-liding to your bedside, he wasHe leaned in and down, showed only the tips of his pointed canine teeth, and lowered his gaze to drink in the sight of my bare neck

By now my silver chain bracelet had subtly shiledcollar aroundall ports of entry

"Bah," Dracula said, recoiling "Cheesy silver trinket! I only wanted to take a tiny symbolic taste"

"Bad taste is never sy the smooth, defensive form my silver familiar had taken It never failed to surprise-and defend-me

"My master wants you"

"Isn’t that Renfield’s line?" I didn’t mean to be a smart-mouth; I was just surprised that Dracula would admit to a rettably, live on, but the bug-eater ended with that blasted file I bear remains: You must co that question, like I ht consider it some other day

"No Never," I corrected myself "We know all about you these days You can’t reverse your surname and pretend to be some Transylvanian nobleland between the World Wars of the last century This is post-Millennium Revelation America We’re all on to you"

"Perhaps, Miss Street, but you have tried to trick my master He’s had time to discover your name and profession He could choose to crush you like one of that pathetic Renfield’s bugs Instead, he is nanimous He wishes to eator, do you not?"

"Barely I just phoned the Yellow Pages today to order the ad It’ll take ages to show up Hoould your master, whoever he is, know that?"

"We he knows h many means"