about Dao’s health, but when it came time to ask her to call and make an appointment for him, she grew very quiet. Granted, she didn’t say she wouldn’t, but for some reason…
Why wouldn’t his wife, the woman who loved him, want him to go to the doctor?
The phone rang, and still lost in her thoughts, Sophie swept it up, tucking it between her chin and shoulder as she answered, “Tri County Paranormal Research Associates. How may I help you?”
Like most folks who called her work, the woman on the other end sounded breathless and panic-stricken as she detailed the nature of her problem. Sophie took down the woman’s information, then put the call through to her boss, Tim, who happened to be in the office today. Most of the time he was out playing ghost buster with a truckload of electronic gizmos that as far as Sophie could tell did nothing but blink and make ugly noises.
Tim was extremely intelligent, like a card-carrying member of MENSA smart. And because she believed genius and insanity were like kissing cousins—too close for most people’s comfort—she attributed his obsession with paranormal gobbledygook to this relationship. At least his stories were amusing, and the interest from his trust fund would keep her paychecks coming for a long time.
After she passed on the call, she set the shiny thing aside, figuring she’d ask Tim what he thought of it later. It had no markings like a coin, and it had a slightly irregular shape. On closer examination, it reminded her of two things—either a dime that had been flattened on a train track or a piece of fish skin or scale. Knowing Dao’s propensity to eat fish, she suspected the latter.
Still, it was an odd thing. Semitranslucent, the color changed, depending on the light it was examined under. In natural light, it was mostly white and blue, but in artificial light it glowed in a wide range of colors from soft pink to deep midnight, depending on the angle she held it. Even more curious, every now and then it seemed to emit a small electrical charge. A little zap that made her fingers tingle.
Unable to resist the urge, she plucked it up one last time and ran her fingertip over the surface. The colors shimmered as she stroked it. The effect was almost mesmerizing. She stared at it a moment until Tim’s voice broke the spell.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I was hoping you might have an idea. You know a little about everything. What do you think? Is it a fish scale?” She set it in her palm and lifted her flattened hand so he could get a better look.
His eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead as he picked it up and examined it. “Wow, this is amazing. Truly amazing. Where’d you get it?”
“A friend’s house. It was on the floor.”
“Does your friend have a pet snake?” he asked as he flipped it over to look at the other side.
“Pet snake? Heck no! He hates snakes. Why?”
“Looks like a piece of shed snake skin to me. I’d have to get a look at it under the microscope to be sure. Be right back.” He walked back to his office-slash-lab, where he kept all his electronic gadgets and gizmos, and disappeared behind the closed door.
Sophie stayed put, despite her growing curiosity about the strange scale—skin—whatever, and tried to imagine how a piece of snake skin would end up on Dao’s floor. She came up with absolutely nothing. That was, indeed, a mystery all in itself.
Tim returned several minutes later with the most bizarre look on his face. It was something between awe and terror. “I need to meet her. I must meet her—”
“Meet whom? Slow down, would you? What would a snake scale—”
“Skin. Definitely shed skin.”
“Fine. Snake skin. What would a snake skin have to do with…her? It’s a female snake? How can you tell? Did you get a little piece of nipple there? And how does one ‘meet’ a snake? Do you need a formal introduction?”
Tim rolled his eyes and looked at Sophie as if she were an absolute twit—which she was not, thank you very much.
“Don’t look at me that way,” she said. “I wasn’t privy to whatever you saw under the microscope. I’m not a moron. Fill me in.”
“Is your friend a male?” Tim asked as he continued to study the skin.
“Yes. A male human, that is. Just to clarify.”
“Yes. Of course he’s a human. Is this friend of yours dating someone…or married?”
“Yes. He’s married but not to a snake.”
Tim shook his head. “Poor guy,” he murmured.
“What poor guy?” Sophie yanked on Tim’s sleeve. “Poor guy because he isn’t married to a snake?”
“No, poor guy because he’s married to her already.”
“What’s Dao’s marital status have to do with anything? Besides, what’s wrong with marriage? I never imagined you to be one of those ‘marriage sucks’ kind of guys.”
“I’m not, unless the wife happens to be a lamia.”
“What the heck is a lamia?”
“A muse. A female vampire. Is your friend by any chance a writer?”
“Yes, but what’s—”
“And since he’s been married has he been more obsessed with his writing? Has he become ill yet?”
“Yes, on the writing. And yet?”
Tim looked into her eyes and again shook his head. “Poor guy. He’s doomed.”
“Doomed? Why?”
“She’s destroying him.”
“Who? Lisse? She’s a quiet little thing. Maybe a tad demanding in bed from what I surmise, but hardly the kind one would expect to be a vampire. She doesn’t even have a widow’s peak. Don’t real vampires have widow’s peaks? And her teeth all look normal.” Despite all the things Tim seemed to know about Dao, for which there was no reasonable explanation—he couldn’t have been listening in to her conversation with Lisse—she wasn’t buying the whole lamia thing. There was no such thing as vampires. Or ghosts. Or monsters. Nuh-uh.
Tim’s work as a paranormal researcher was a joke. She’d seen nothing to convince her of the existence of anything paranormal. His so-called proof consisted of hazy photographs and less than credible eyewitnesses.
“Yes. She’s a lamia. Half woman, half snake.”
“I’ve seen her. She’s no snake. In fact, she’s very beautiful. And she definitely has two legs. Couldn’t speak for her tongue, though. Could be forked. I’m not about to go ask her to open wide and say ‘ahhhh.’”
“She wouldn’t show her true self to anyone but her lover.”
“If there’s one thing I can be certain of it’s that Dao wouldn’t find a woman covered in scales sexy, even if the scales were rather pretty.”
“He
