What time was it? I brushed just enough hair out of my eyes to see the clock on the night table, groaned, and burrowed under the covers. No point getting up now.

Then it registered, and a quick check under the covers confirmed it: I'd gone to bed coat and shoes and all. Would've still had my watch on, too, if Monica hadn't stolen it last night. Funny--I hadn't done that since college, after one of those damn Theta Chi parties. Last night, though, I'd been cold sober.

Funny, too--I hadn't dreamed.

I got up and made for the bathroom. What I had in mind, in no particular order, was a shower, pajamas, whatever was in the refrigerator, and the shortest path back to bed. What did you call it when you had breakfast at 1 in the afternoon? Surely not brunch. Brunch implied Bloodies at 10:30 at some expense-account hotel, not foraging in the kitchen after noon in last night's clothes.

Preoccupied with the question, I flipped on the bathroom light and glanced into the mirror on the medicine cabinet.

But it wasn't me in the mirror. It was Monica.

I believe that I literally jumped out of my skin. Wildly, stupidly, I slammed the medicine cabinet open and then slammed it shut again, on the chance that there was some sort of technical problem with the mirror. When I looked again, I saw my own reflection. Not an improvement, considering.

This wasn't the work of anyone from J/J/G Video. They couldn't have gotten in. Cassie couldn't have let them in. I'd hidden the spare key in a different place after she'd barged in the day before.

That thought hadn't hit all the way home yet when the doorbell rang. I jumped out of my skin again.

But why would a demon bother to ring? When they come for you, don't they just come for you?

Well, there was only one way to find out, and the only way out was through. Drawing myself up as bravely as possible, I went to the door to meet my fate.

Which turned out to be a stocky young man in coveralls. "Kerry?"

Puzzled, I nodded.

"Classic Auto. Got your car here."

The relief was stupendous. "My car? Already? Great. I didn't expect you till..." Then I caught sight of the vehicle in the driveway. "Wait. That's not my car."

Now the mechanic looked puzzled. He consulted his invoice pad. "Kerry? 8515 Park?"

"Yes, but that's not my car. It's a..."

"MG ragtop. Green. '73. Says so right here. Got your keys in the ignition. Sign this for me?"

Bewildered, I signed the pad. The car in the driveway was a cherry-red Miata, as new as a shiny dime. I'd always wanted one. But this one wasn't mine. Obviously, there'd been a mixup at the shop, and equally obviously, the mechanic was blind. I'd have to have a word with his boss when I took the car back; a blind mechanic couldn't possibly be a good thing.

"Have a good one," he said, and started off to the truck parked on the street, where his driver was waiting. Suddenly, he stopped and backtracked, searching his coveralls for something. "Almost forgot. They gave me this to give you."

I took the envelope. Parchment. No logo, no return address, just my name in elegant script. From a car-repair shop? This had to be bad. The bill on the MG must have come to a fortune.

Inside the envelope, though, I found not an invoice but a parchment sheet bearing the same elegant script. It said:

D--

You tempt beautifully. Being pleased, I send you this token of my pleasure.

Thank me tonight.

--M

P.S.: Your watch is under your pillow.

"Lady? You OK?"

I left the blind sonuvabitch standing on the porch. Maybe I'd drive the Miata for a couple of days, just for spite.

"Devlin? It's Susie Taylor. You know--Dr. Shapiro's receptionist? Listen, I saw you last night at the café. I don't want to upset you or anything, but I thought I ought to tell you that you were acting a little...well, kind of strange. Talking to somebody who wasn't even there, I mean. Our waiter said you were like that all night, and they were kind of humoring you, just in case you were dangerous or something.

"The reason I'm calling is I know you were in a couple of days ago to see Dr. Shapiro, and I was wondering if you're OK. Maybe your medicine's acting funny or something. Why don't you call up and make another appointment so she can look at you again? Just to be safe? We're open till noon today, if you get back in time. Thanks. Bye."

Just to verify, I played the message back. I had heard her right the first time.

So much for what was left of my sanity. The only thing left to do was go work out.

Inside, it was even worse, all neon and mirrors and screaming supergraphics. Day and night, hard rock played at earbleed volume, even in the locker rooms; if you happened to be on the workout floor during an aerobics class, you also got a good blast of whatever was on the instructor's boom box. Add to that the characteristic aroma of the place--a hellbrew of Ben-Gay, Giorgio, and CKone--and you begin to understand the peculiar nature of a high-priced health club: the kind of place where you shower before you work out.

Even so, I liked the club. Whatever else it might be, it was clean, it was bright, and it didn't smell like a gym. Moreover, it was the best-equipped health club in the metroplex. I'd been working out there for six years and hadn't yet found a competitor that came close.

Besides, Club West was one of J/J/G's glamour clients, and it never hurts to keep an eye on clients.

I got there a little after 1:30, between aerobics classes, so lobby traffic was heavy. While I waited for the desk clerk to check me in--she was too busy flirting with a slack-jawed frat boy to notice me at the moment--I checked out the crowd. Nothing unusual. Nothing much like my ads, either. For every pretty boy or girl who looked good in Spandex, there were a couple dozen who didn't. Idly, I wondered for the zillionth time why so many men worked out in baseball caps when the caps were dead giveaways of hair loss. I wondered why so many women thought Public Underwear was a good look. A cutoff T-shirt and shorts were good enough for me to work out in; who wanted to wear sweaty Spandex anyway?

Of course, I wore the most expensive cross-trainers on the market, and true, I was guilty of showering before workouts myself, but there was a line between being serious and being a slob.

There was also a line between being serious and being a nimrod, which was what so many of my fellow clubgoers seemed to be. They fought for parking spaces right next to the door--at a health club. They fought for the lat machines--and just posed on them. They fought for the best treadmills--and just strolled on them while they talked on their cell phones. Even Cassie refused to go out with men who tried to pick her up at Club West; she said the gene pool around there didn't have enough lifeguards.

I brooded about all these things for few minutes and then realized that the clerk still hadn't noticed me. She was still very busy, shrieking in mock outrage at something the frat boy had just said. Frowning, I tapped my card on the counter. No response.

I was about to put the card in her face physically when a tall boy in a neon-green baseball cap pushed through the front door. Waves of Polo rolled in with him. Like a trout, the desk clerk leaped to him, reaching right past me for his card.

"Hey!" I protested.

The clerk gave me the fish eye as she swiped Green Cap's card through the reader. Silently, she handed his card back and held out her hand for mine. She swiped it, dropped it on the counter as though it had cooties, and then resumed her flirtation with the frat boy, turning her back on the group of women who were just coming through the door.

OK, sometimes I hated Club West, too.

On the way to the locker room, I passed a huge blowup of the new print ad. Something about the color register caught my eye--didn't remember the lettering being quite so red in the crom proof--so I stopped to have a closer look. Then, a little absently, I checked the rest of the artwork.

And jumped so high that I just missed hitting the ceiling tiles. Instead of Bouncing Betsy, the model in the poster was Monica. She was wearing the same skin-tight leotard and the same you-can-be-had expression, and there were two razor-sharp fangs in her half-smiling mouth.

I blinked and checked again. Still Monica. But now she appeared to be laughing--and she was wearing nothing at all.

There was only one thing left to do: run for it. In any direction. About three steps into my flight, however, I collided with a big person in a Club West uniform.

Danny. My trainer. Well, at least it was a big person I knew.

Shaking his head, he helped me off the floor. "Track's upstairs, Dev. You OK?"

I checked the poster again. Bouncing Betsy. "Yeah. I'm OK. Sorry."

"You sure? Everything all right?"

Carefully, I shifted my expression into neutral. "Yeah. Everything's fine. Thanks for the lift."

"Hey--no harm, no foul. You coming or going?"

"Coming. Then going to the office for a while. No time for a session today, Danny. Sorry."

"Soon, then. It's been a couple weeks. You built that beast; now you've gotta keep it up. Give me a ring when you get the time. OK?"

I promised to do that. Then I headed straight to the locker room, with the idea of sticking my head in one of the sinks and running cold water over it until everything cleared.

Unfortunately, I couldn't even get near a sink; six or seven college girls were lined up at the mirrors, putting on makeup. They were getting ready to go upstairs for extended bench class.

All right, so maybe troubles come in fours and fives every so often.

"We must've just missed each other at the club," she said. "Danny said you said something about coming here. He also said you looked funny. He was right. What happened to you last night?"

"Couldn't say," I told her, truthfully. "What are you doing here?"

"Came in to check my e-mail. But don't change the subject. I saw you out back last night talking to some strange woman. You..."

"Spying on me, were you?"

"No, I wasn't spying on you. Linda asked me to see if you were out there relapsing and ashing in her precious garden. So I looked out the back window, just to humor her, and there you were--with Morticia Addams. The next time I looked, you were gone. If she'd been a guy, I'd have been worried about you. Who was she?"

I feinted. "Did you ask Greg and Linda?"

"They don't know her. They never even saw her. Apparently, I'm the only person who did, except for you. You really don't know who she was?"

"Sorry."

Cassie perched on the edge of my desk. Couldn't have been comfortable under all that Spandex. "But you know everything. Or so you think."

I didn't bite, but I studied her for a minute, trying to read her mood. She'd said that she'd seen Monica. Was this some sort of proof that I wasn't crazy?

"Cass? Can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What?"

"Did you see my car in the lot?"

"I did," she said. "I parked next to it."

"What does it look like to you?"

"Like it always does--like a moving violation. I keep telling you that you can afford a real car now."

I studied her more closely. She'd seen the MG, not the Miata, and she wouldn't have lied about it; Cassie had always hated the MG. How come she couldn't see the car if she could see Monica?

"You can afford a house, too, as far as that goes," Cassie continued, taking my silence for agreement. "Why you live the way you do is beyond..."

"Do you believe in witches?"

"Not since preschool. Why? Do you?"

Not sure how to answer that, I turned away from her to the window.

"Witches, Dev. Really. And what would they have to do with your car anyway?"

"What about vampires?"

"Only if they're Tom Cruise," she said promptly. "What are you getting at?"

"I don't know. Forget it." I turned back around and smiled sheepishly, in apology.

But Cassie wasn't buying. "You do look funny. Peculiar, I mean. You've been looking peculiar for a couple of days now. What did Shapiro say? Did you hit your head in the wreck? Do you have a concus..."

"I'm OK."

"You're OK." She snorted. "You're sitting here in broad daylight, sober, asking me if I believe in witches and vampires and goblins, and you're OK."

"Forget it, I said. Forget I asked."

"How?"

Silence.

"That does it," Cassie said. "Go home. Go to bed. Don't even get up tomorrow. I mean it. If you're still like this on Monday, I'm taking you to my doctor. Shapiro's a quack. She..."

"Just because she married Dr. Right out from under you?"

"You leave me out of this. The woman's a damn mallard, I tell you. If you looked up her skirt, you'd see feathers. If she had any medical training at all, she'd have shot you full of Thorazine and called Research Psychiatric. So it's up to me now, and I am not going to let you go any crazier than you already are. Capeesh?"

I opened my mouth to talk back, but to no avail.

"Don't start with me," Cassie warned. She gave me a little shove for emphasis and then got up to leave.

At the door, though, she turned. "Does any of this have anything to do with that mystery woman last night?"

"What a question," I said coolly. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. But you did just disappear like that." She shook her head, dismissing the subject. "I'm going. Go home and get some rest."

"Hey. By the way. How was Mark last night?"

Cassie smiled wryly. "I'm thinking about putting a sticker on my bra: 'Some Foreplay Required.'"

"There's always celibacy."

"Don't try to recruit me, you pervert. See you Monday."

Maybe, I thought, and went back to reading the fine print in my disability policy.

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 5