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He touched my back, I think to help me up. He drew his hand away from my shirt. His hand was bloody. He went on all fours, using one hand to raise my shirt. It was so blood-soaked that he had to peel it away from my skin. “Jesus and Joseph, what the hell have you done to yourself?”

“It doesn’t even hurt anymore.” I heard myself saying it from a long way away, then I was sliding over into his arms, his lap. I heard someone call my name, and I finally passed out.

I woke up in the hospital. Doctor Cunningham was bending over me. I thought, “We have to stop meeting like this,” but didn’t even try to say it out loud.

“You’ve lost blood and had your stitches redone. Do you think you can stay in here long enough for me to actually release you this time?”

I think I smiled. “Yes, Doctor.”

“Just in case you got any funny ideas about leaving, I’ve doped you up with enough pain killers to make you feel really good. So sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

My eyes fluttered shut once, then opened. Edward was there. He bent over me and whispered, “Crawling through bushes on your belly, threatening to cut off a man’s balls. Such a hard ass.”

My voice came faintly even to me. “Had to save your ass.”

He bent over me and kissed me on my forehead, or maybe I dreamed that part.

49

SOME TIME DURING the second day in the hospital they lowered the meds, and I started having the dreams. I was wandering in a maze made up of high green hedges. I was wearing a long, heavy dress, made of white silk. There were heavy things under it, weighting it down. I could feel the tightness of a corset under the dress, and I knew it wasn’t my dream. I would never dream of clothing that I had never worn. I stopped running through the green maze, looked up into a flawless blue sky, and shouted, “Jean-Claude!”

His voice came, rich, seductive. He could do things with his voice that most men couldn’t do with their hands. “Where are you, ma petite? Where are you?”

“You promised to stay out of my dreams.”

“We felt you dying. We felt the marks open. We worried.”

I knew who “we” was. “Richard isn’t invading my dreams, just you.”

“I have come to warn you. If you had picked up a phone to call us, this would not be necessary.”

I turned and there was a mirror in the middle of the grass and the hedges. It was a full-length mirror with a gilt-edged frame. Very antique, very Louis XIV. My reflection was startling. It wasn’t just the clothes. My hair was in some kind of complicated mound, with thick curls hanging down here and there. There was also more of it, and I knew at least some of it was a wig or at least hairpieces. There was even one of those beauty marks on my cheek. I expected to look ridiculous, but I didn’t. I looked delicate, like a china doll, but it wasn’t ridiculous. My reflection wavered, then grew taller, and it was Jean-Claude in the mirror, and my reflection had vanished.

He was tall, slender, dressed head to foot in white satin, in a suit that matched my dress. Gold brocade glittered down his sleeves, the seams of the pants. White boots rode over his knees tied with huge white and gold ribbons. It was a foppish outfit, sissy to use a modern word, but he didn’t look foppish. He looked elegant and at ease like a man who’d pulled off his tie and slipped into something more comfortable. His hair fell in long black banana curls. Only the delicate masculinity of his face and his midnight blue eyes looked normal, familiar.

I shook my head, and the weight of the hair made it awkward. “I am so out of here,” and I started to reach out to shred the dream.

“Wait, please, ma petite. Truly, I have a warning for you.” He looked up as if seeing the mirror as a sort of prison. “This is to let you know that I will not touch you. I come only to talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Was it the Master of Albuquerque who harmed you?”

It seemed an odd question. “No, Itzpapalotl didn’t hurt me.”

He winced at her name. “Do not use her name aloud within