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Vayl steered the van back onto the street as he began to mutter again. I didn't catch it all,
but I thought I heard him say, "That won't be all that is broken."
Dammit! If there is any way to screw up a relationship, I will find it. I pictured Cupid
sitting in a crappy little bar, drunk and depressed, while he moaned to the bartender, "That
Jasmine Parks, gods she pisses me off! Did you see what she just did? Totally blew off this
immortal stud who's nuts for her to play kiss-the-boo-boo with a fickle little rent-a-cop.
Why? 'Cause she's the biggest chicken-shlit on the planet! I'm ready to toss my bow and
pick up a bazooka!"
"Vayl?"
"What!"
"I love you."
I knew he was going to ask for a repeat before he even opened his mouth, as if it wasn't
hard enough to say the first time. That's what convinced me it was the real deal. I wouldn't
go through this for anyone else on earth.
"What?" he whispered, looking suddenly young and vulnerable.
"I love you, Vayl. There's Cole, see? Can we stop and get him before he keels over?"
"Only if you love me."
We smiled at each other. "I do," I said. "Sorry about the crappy timing. This sort of thing
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should be sealed with a kiss. Or& something."
"I suppose we will have to save that for the plane ride back."
Oh my.
Chapter Twenty-Two
P r e v i o u s T o p
N e x t
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I thought as I floated into Bergman's house, leaving Vayl
and Cole to pass the doorknocker's muster. From the looks of things, we shouldn't have
left the cowpokes to their own devices for quite so long. With Bergman bristling like an
irritated land baron and Cassandra throwing off bad vibes like a cornered gunslinger, it
looked like we were about to have a good old-fashioned bar fight. Never mind that the bar
had never seen a shot of whiskey in its whole upper-middle class life, Cassandra looked
like she wanted to drag Bergman down the length of it, scattering test tubes, chemicals
and bags of contaminated blood all along the way.
I moved over to her, hoping to overhear her low-pitched mutterings. "Lousy, neurotic,
egotistical, bigoted, neurotic bastard!" She threw a sidelong glance at Bergman as she sat
down at the dining room table, unaware she'd called him 'neurotic' twice, and that I agreed
with her 98%. The bigoted part I'd never witnessed, but I was willing to kick his ass once
I got my legs back if that part proved true. Then I realized she wasn't referring to skin
tone at all. "Thinks magic's for fanatics, skanks and lesbians, does he?" she muttered.
"Why, I'd like to& " her words trailed off as she narrowed her eyes, envisioning some
satisfying form of retribution. Then she looked skyward and growled, "What is the deal
with you? You'd think a thousand years of atonement would serve for one woman. But
noooo, you've got to torment me even more by shoving me into a gang full of wiseasses
and crackpots!"
A thousand years? I suddenly felt like die-hard stoner. All I could think was, Dude! She's,
like, really, really old! Whoa!& Cool!
Then she saw me. Her face puckered, like she'd just bitten into a not-quite-ripe apple and
she sat back so fast her chair went up on two legs. While she fought to regain her balance
I tried to figure out this latest mystery. David, Vayl and Cassandra could see me. Cole
couldn't.
"Hey, Bergman!" I yelled pretty loud, because the part of him that wasn't deeply pissed
was focused on conducting his experiments.
Nothing.
Cassandra gasped, "Jasmine?" and he looked up, his face so creased with annoyance he
looked ten years older.
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"What did you say?" he snapped.
With all four feet of her chair squarely back on the floor, she twisted in her seat, her frown
matching his. "Don't you see her?"
"I would if she was here." His tone suggested that maybe Cassandra had fallen right off
the deep end.
"Someday someone is going to pinch off your tiny little head," she told him. He had a
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