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I actually took a certain perverse pride in having been the worthy victim of one, even if it had been an intensely personal strike from a weather witch on my TV "team" A minor, secondary-city weather witch didn’t aim a teensyweensy sixty-foot-circumference "twister" at just … anybody I had to have really pissed her off

Why? Not just jealousy

Sheena was beco as much a mystery to me as Lilith

That couldn’t be allowed to continue

I turned on Dolly’s engine and checked the rearviewbeyond the safety screen of the station news van Dolly was idling backhen irl! Dolly didn’t let out so much as a squeak

Speak of the devils you know I recognized Undead Ted’s and Sheena’s profiles through the tinted side s of an i in the parking lot

A ot out to open the back passenger door

I watched a hose-sheened, long, lean leg thrust out to place a scarlet platforh Sheena always dressed like the head bitch on a seventies nighttime TV soap opera The short skirt of a sliernails, swollen-sphincter crimson lips and "done" blond hair

The same old Sheena, only much more expensively dressed

Undead Ted crawled out after her, gazing like a love-sick puppy at the lady in bloodred

Everybody at WTCH had known Ted took injections to resist daylight so he could do pre-sunset newscasts A George Ha hilo his vampy complexion looked just plain sallow, freckled with a carefully cultivated thirty-six-hour brown beard se He was a liver-spotted puppy

His dried-blood-color designer suit--I’d seen Lightdays pads more attractively shaded--wasnext to Sheena, Ted looked … drained Who was the vampire here?

The driver had er door

I grabbed my cell phone and twisted my head over limpse of their obvious lunch date At first the Lincoln’s roofline just glea over the hot metal horizon

A hat A wide black-leather brim somewhere between a flat-crowned Western hat and the razor-sharp oversize fedora affected by seventies piht wear … if she were Janet Jackson onstage

Under the sinister briany-deep color of a Greek island suntan and peaked, scowling Satanic black eyebrows The nose was long and bulged in theboa constrictor The tip narrowed and dipped so delicately it ht see on a serpent’s face

In contrast, the ed upper line and drooped down over sloppy lips alen-pu this yptian cobra rear its fanned head

Theand lot so intently I felt sure he’d seenaround to the car’s rear stopped his gaze before it passed the parked van that concealed Dolly Black is beautiful … caers hile the driver came around to open the popped trunk He handed out two exotic-skinned wooden briefcases, presenting the black one to Sheena, the brown to Ted

The stranger with the bad-and-the-ugly eyes was shorter than ht, like uessed his age at sixty or so His suit and shirt may have been expensive, but both seemed wilted by the intemperate intensity of his expression and stance His business was not being telegenic I sensed his business was about not being seen at all

My fingertips felt cold on the cell phone now that he’d been captured inside it The driver was already ushering hi in a salty dew line under his cap band as he came around to drive the boss away

Undead Ted blinked in the sunlight when the driver’s door slalided away, a shadow of Dolly’s tirace Ted and Sheena turned andtheir overstated briefcases and grinning at each other

Okay I took my foot off Dolly’s brake and I backed her out until ere clear of the van, which took several seconds Then I wrenched her steering wheel left and spurted forith an engine thrust no one could ignore

I braked in front of the briefcase buddies with a deliberate squeal

They’d turned to regard er side

"Delilah … ?" Undead Ted began, his face turning pale saffron

Sheena strutted toward Dolly

"Delilah Street and her Cadillac clunker, ht you’d hitched a ride out of town on a Kansas twister"

"No That teensy little tornado missed me Don’t you two look sharp Must have had a lunch date with the new ement Care to share the contents of those briefcases with a fellow reporter?"

"It’s … it’s nothing," Undead Ted spilled Of course it was so they didn’t want anyone to know about

Sheena keyed his shin with her spike heel

"Looks like payday toTed writhe in intimidated silence What a wi as if she was about to do the sae to Dolly’s shiny black side

"Don’t worry," I called, waving "

I accelerated before Sheena’s foot could connect with anything but air

Unfortunately, air is all around us and Sheena was a weather witch

I hit the power button to lower the top, but that took mucho seconds They had y Dolly accelerated while I punched the sidebutton closed

The shadow creeping overtop, but a nasty black cloud the size of a railroad car My rearviewon Dolly’s trunk We sped down the endlessly curving drive Hailstones were moments behind

I needed to hit the s on the driveway behindlot’s other end I roared Dolly onto the broad intersecting sidewalk and then cross-country on WTCH-TVs expansive green lawn, under a landscaped grove of s!--down a few blocks, and under a gas station canopy

"Cool wheels, lady," exclaile Dolly He cocked an ear at the hail ping-ponging off the metal canopy above us "That rainstoro," I said Sheena wouldn’t want any inexplicable weather phenoh this is a thirsty big girl"

"What year?" he asked, following ish as Undead Ted was these days "Maybe fifty-eight, sixty? Biarritz! I heard Cary Grant owned one of these"

I stopped cold "You knoho Cary Grant was?"

"Sure He was a movie star back in the last century They owned a lot of cool cars Can I look under the hood?"

Wouldn’t you know Dolly would get a proposition in Wichita and I wouldn’t?

"Sorry I’ve got to get going But you can polish her tail fins and trunk before we leave Don’t want any dust spots on that finish"

"Gollee, no"

I provided a flannel cloth frolove compartment and he went to work

You were really thu your nose at fate back there, Ir under a clear sky You should have had the kid check Dolly’s shocks

I ignored her until she went away

THE DAY WAS still young and the boys and I hadn’t planned to rass’s place until much later I suspected some beer-accompanied reminiscences of mutual FBI days would occupy them after the pasture inspection

Before my visit to Wichita delved too far intoon my own behalf Dolly seehborhood past the station, so we veered together to the site of hty specific tornado had torn off its foundation

What a jolt to see a half-co up on the site I’d likeda paranor people about their brave newly supernatural world …

Construction was idled today, but I spotted the back of a big sign on the lot I drove past and craned my neck Habitat for Hu So soht Of course, even nowadays I supposed the houses must be available to all "ed to Habitat for Unhu, I decided to wheel out to Sunset City and look for Lili West’s extended-life address I’d been a reporter, right? Maybe it was high time to "report" my own backyard