Page 10 (1/2)

THAT NIGHT AT Cold Creek Motel did us all a lot of good

The water was hot, the sheets were flannel, and Ric slept like a baby while Quicksilver roaure out the connection between my silver fa and rescuing and slaying of zombies, offscreen and on

I also rounds, the boy turned irl turned off on womanhood by the threat of boy-vamp bites

I decided all these issues deserved to be interred with film-phantom zombie bones, and finally went to sleep

DRIVING DOLLY BACK on the highways that had taken as felt like a time trip It had only been a couple of ed

The golden daylight felt a world away fro Ric along, co fields of wheat in west Kansas and eagerly anticipating our last big town before Wichita, Dodge City, opened ranted It seee’s Wyatt Earp Boulevard is no as," I cautioned him "Yes, Boot Hill is here, smack dab in the don area, but it’s pretty touristy tame these days"

"Maybe on the way back we can stop and do all the tourist shtick," Ric suggested, eyes still glued on his phone screen as it jumped from one hokey website to another A boy and his remote, on the road

"Sure," I pro it, but open to being bullied into so later if I had to be

Ric was into the second week of his second life, so I tried to be tolerant

"No more replays of the Cold Creek Drive-in zoross"

"That was a little … weird," he conceded, "but fascinating I don’t know if your silver fa new iris drew or repulsed the zombie attack Maybe my revamped eye is too powerful for supernaturals, and I’ll have to wear sunglasses all the tias posse, Snow and Sansouci"

"Lord, you three all in shades would make a freaky Blues Brothers trio for the new uys aren’t my posse They’re my … frenemies"

"You see to"You can’t deny you keep running into Christophe and Cicereau’s main man"

And vice versa

Ric had reason to bring that up Two o, I leave Wichita an old y to intias, meet my own true love in the first twenty-four hours, and then start tangling with potent paranorhly flirtablesexually active gives a girl a glow other dudes h, ere all four on the sauys did soroup for the female e the canine

At least Shez personal

While I mulled my sudden popularity with the opposite sex andmy elusive mirror double, Ric moved on to serious topics that he faced

"Delilah, I’ve got to figure out what’s happening withhis sunglasses up on his forehead

It was hard to decide whether to gaze besottedly into his hot chocolate-dark brown eye or to catch tiny glimpses of myself in the iris of his new silver one

"Your vision remains twenty-twenty in both eyes?" I asked

"As far as I can tell It’ll be good to try sos out here in the boonies"

"Wichita isn’t a small city, Ric"

"I know I read the chamber of commerce site Two hundred thousand ‘pop’ We’ll meet my local contact about fifteen usta?"

I nodded "Faotiate She doesn’t rough it"

"Don’t worry We’re hooking up outside the park at soer Station A fellow ex-FBI agent will be our native guide"

"You and I hooked up in Sunset Park," I reminded him "Who’s our third here? Soed DC prep school roed with a disarrin "Can I help who my friends are?"

His answer made me even more suspicious Ric usually slipped into Spanish whenso noould clearly have to indicate gender Auys Maybe I really was going to meet an old FBI flame of Ric’s

I touched the silver faallery-class piece of turquoise-embedded Native American jewelry

"That silver shape-shifter sure kno to coesture

Quicksilver barked in the backseat

"Your baby blues too, Gray Shadow," Ric twisted around to tell

"This is awfully Southwest style for Kansas," I said doubtfully, fingering the fah Coronado didfor silver"

"Coronado? The conquistador?" Ric sounded sharply surprised

"Ooh, say that again It sounds so sexy with the proper accent"

"Coronado?" Ric repeated in an are-you-nuts tone

I wasn’t about to confess that his authentic pronunciation of the lovely rolled r and soft d of the Spanish language was quickly beco my instant aphrodisiac

"No Conquistador, hombre," I cooed

"Don’t flirt so hard when you’re at the wheel, Delilah Dolly ood about going back to Wichita for the first tiot nothing to fear here but fear itself

She was right Wichita was roup hoh school on scholarship, alow, and my old enemies All "former"

"Take this next exit," Ric said

"Are we heading for the horse pasture or the cow pasture?"

"Neither I hope we stay on the road We’re aihway junction with the county road, where the ‘gas’ and ‘grub’ signs tower I didn’t know Kansas looked so Western east of Dodge City"

"Millions and horn cattle have been herded over this earth since the ’ Kansas, city boy, the Free State that started the Civil War over the slave issue"

"Then it fits that vampires should show up here early and often after the recent millennium meltdown All that historic blood spilled"

"Interesting point I never thought of those greaser varoup homes before puberty--mine--as early adaptors"

"That’s what I’ive you new insight on your unhappy childhood history You’re not the only bleeding heart in this car"

I slowed Dolly to take the exit ra if I wanted to know more about a past that included repeated assault attempts and some unknown event or events that had ain

"Rape survivor" wasn’t a convincing piece of personal history I wanted to claim I shivered in Dolly’s sun-warmed red leather interior Usually she felt womblike, and--after I’d met Ric--sexy Now, she just felt damn bloody Like Kansas

RIC AND I sat outside at a wooden picnic bench, slurping giant paper cups of root beer, soaking up early suht a corny straboy hat inside the Red Ryder Ranger Station to shade h-SPF sunscreen thiswhite forearms

"Yes, dear Gallons of it Isn’t that citified silk-blend blazer hot without Vegas air-conditioning to duck into?" I asked in turn