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I eyed the loose-liiness I didn’t re Stones wife-beater tee-shirt, a chain hip-belt, and stone-washed jeans

Young Lilith It had to be

I shookover , clai--the parts of my screen-revealed body

"Honest, Moer for the first ti "No marks on her that I haven’t put there I swear"

"TMI," Helena said, raising her pal azure eye shadow gathering like a glittering e creases

"I said this was a puzzle," she rees are not Delilah Not only do my eyes and your joint testiht explain why Delilah had a difficult childhood She had, at tiirl This very disturbed girl No girl is bad, but this one had very little good shoard her and returned it in kind to others"

"An evil twin?" Ric put hts into words

I’d never told him about Lilith, another dirty little secret kept to ensure his peace of mind and my keen sense of privacy

"The TV soap operas are dead, Helena," he said, dis his foster o Evil twins have been a hokey plot device since forever"

"Callto watch the two revert to a non-blood-kin parent/sonhot-blood and testosterone-y inreal danger I’d never had an inner teenager-- except for Irer--but I felt like a pro off all e that luxury for too long

"I’ about a post–Millennium Revelation effect," Helena said "The dates when ‘Delilah’ was picked up for juvenile delinquency are after January first, two thousand"

"I was never ‘picked up’ for anything," I protested

"You admit you don’t reh school, really," Helena pointed out

"Who does?" Ric argued "You reraduate of your hed "The records show her--you, Delilah-- with a history of running away froes, tattoo and piercing shops with ‘a bad crowd’"

"No," I said, shaking roup hoainst those creepy half-va then, but they still caht Then she said, "I believe you, Delilah I believe you had your own history in your raphs was never a conscious part of yourself"

"Or an unconscious part," Ric insisted "She was a virtual virgin Only it was real She had a lot to overcome before we … became a ‘we’"

"Did she bleed the first time, Ric?" Helena sounded all cold-blooded physician

He glanced at ed conversation

"Why should she, Helena? Did you?" he fought back for irls are wayflower The hy--" He turned tostables?"

I nodded nuh to keep horses stabled there; some of us just snuck in and patted them, or were occasionally invited to ride I didn’t feel these detailsinto this seaze turned steely "You know and I know and Delilah knows she’s got a deeply ingrained phobia against lying on her back, in bed or out of it I can literally see the black cloud of suppressed fear hovering at the rear of her brain, and that’s a formidable barrier to sexuality You’ve done an ad her around that barrier, but you can’t change the underlying pathology"

"It’s no ‘job,’" Ric exploded "It’s a labor of love, and I can live with that black hovering ghost without knowing its name forever"

"Can Delilah, Ric? The files show an off-the-books yn Mrs Haliburton can lie, but the files can’t It’s against the law to destroy theh they can be censored and blacked-out and buried in botto later and knew they’d be liable for so is also buried in Delilah’s psyche"

"I don’t care what those files blacked out," he answered "I’ll find every last blotted-out name--doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, ‘bad crohatever, including supernatural stalkers I’ll track thenaw the balls off theuts out"

I believed every word, reue cop who’d roughedhad too

"You have to face it," Helena said "Revenge won’t erase whatever it is Delilah confronted at a way-too-early age, likely rape"

Rape The only four-letter word that rockedand hovering infor my will and soul

"Thanks, Ric and Helena" I finally spoke forthose defaced files I’m an ex-reporter, remember? I know Wichita history, names, and places" Then I looked only at Ric "I’ iet his teeth into any dirty work required more enthusiastically for me than for anyone else on the planet"

He stopped cold, unable to keep up the façade that I hadn’t been seriously dao

"Now, let me see those files," I told Helena "I appreciate your help, Madam Freud, but they are mine, you know I’d like a printout to take back to thethe hotel staff get a duplicate file, or snoop? I don’t trust anyone about now"

"WE NEVER HAD a decent real er seat as I drove us back to the Thunderbird motel, a sheaf of rare hard copies in a folder on the red leather seat between us

"Takeout time," I said "Let Quicksilver choose"

We passed a Wendy’s, a McDonald’s, and a Captain Kirk’s before a sharp bark ca Hood’s, wouldn’t you know? We got the fa Quick on night duty with the bulk of the basket, we brought the reh the folders

"I love you, and I don’t want you hurt, now or in the past," Ric said

"I know the feeling," I pointed out, with feeling "That’s why I was leery about co back to Wichita"

"I was so sure you were haunted by just a natural, general fear because of the Revelation hitting when you were only a preteen"

"Maybe that’s all it is I do know if an abscessed tooth is a constant pain, you need to pull it out before it poisons you"

WHEN RIC FINALLY fell asleep, I got up and went to the cheesymyself in

I really didn’t want tonew option was a Vegas wrinkle Helena was right that the Millennium Revelation revved up paranormal powers in ordinary people

I suspected now that I’d never been ordinary, the thing I’d longed forLoretta Cicereau, the vengeful ghost I’d bound She was into see that even supernatural power depended on places as well as people

Wichita had its own circuit box Power could travel from node to node, but you could tap into only what mojo you had built up in various locations Here, I was ed in than I wanted to be

I took out h they could be worn for weeks without changing Then I leaned the heels of my hands on the cold sink surround and pushed rade mirror

"So you had to stick me with a sealed juvie record, Lilith? You sure weren’t borrowing my clothes in those days They were all Goodwill and buttoned up to here and down to there to keep the creepy boys away How did I get funneled into a socially and psychologically deviant population? I was just an orphan And you did everything you could to hurt er and angst Me, or Lilith, or Memorex?

"It ever occur to you, Dee,"the pressure off you?"

Her glossy black head of hair shireat hair Why I had never seen that? Because Lilith was hot, and I was not

Now she was saying she took the … heat … off, so I could remain safe behind my defensive devices, my solitary ways, my old movies, my wounded shyness?

"So hopelessly na&iu, but you just wanted to soldier on in your stupidly save me a record"

"Everybody wanted to pin a case file on you and forget you I met their expectations and then they left you alone"

I could feelinto fake stone

"Lilith, did you get me raped?"

The blue eyes in the mirror shut

Funny, I could see that

Was this denial or …

"Lilith, did you get raped in my place?"

She tossed that superstar hair of ours, and flashed our ultrabright baby blues

"A little"

Oh, ed and sneered and went on "But the systeot you, after all, in its oay It always does"

"I’m so sorry"

"Don’t say that Don’t ever say that I’m not And that’s why I’m in here and … you’re not"

"You have more than a mirror existence," I told her even as I realized it "You have powers You didn’t really kill yourself to get autopsied on CSI V Las Vegas?"

"TMI, Delilah Street I can see why you wanted to disown h" She turned her half-profile to ht nostril "The only personal distinguishing mark you ever voluntarily went for And you lost it fast Because of , because of her?

I sighed "Lilith, I don’t like where this road trip to Hell is leading"

"It’s not a theme park joyride, Dee, but you have way more allies than I ever did"

"You’re not one?"

"You want to claim the tattooed lady with the smokin’ past?"

"Hey I can always use chutzpah in Mirrorland"

"Yeah But where you need it is here and now, baby Kiss the past and ood-bye And screw Ric for me while you can"

My fist headed for her face on that last taunt, but my knuckles stopped on cold e

Lilith was right The only way of going forward to the future was back to the past

It was a paradox, and my vehicle was not a DeLorean car, but one of Detroit’s nostalgia best, Dolly Frankly, the vintage past I so loved in general had been pretty much a real-time bust in my case