Goddess of the Rose (Goddess Summoning #4)(14)

Kind of like she'd done tonight, she thought happily. Well, minus the dress, the haircut and the dancing. She did a happy little skip step under the next light and laughed at herself. Maybe not minus the dancing. She'd have to go back to the restaurant tomorrow night for dinner and get all the gory after-she-left details from Blair and the gang.

The sidewalk was interrupted by the road forking in front of her. Mikki was at the juncture of where the mansions gave way to Woodward Park. Here was where she usually crossed the street to her apartment. Hesitating, Mikki looked into the park. She didn't detect any strange shifts in perception that might signal one of her episodes. Actually, until that moment she'd forgotten about the weirdness that had crept into her life with her recent dreams.

"Just goes to prove dumping a man is good for what ails me," she said pleasantly to herself.

And everything did look utterly normal. The free-standing antique streetlights scattered throughout Woodward Park speckled it with pools of creamy light. The wind whispered through the well-tended oaks, calling softly the change of seasons and causing a cascade of leaves to scatter like mini-tornados that had been taught to heel. And smack in the middle of it she could see the soft illumination of the stage lights for the Performance in the Park rehearsal. Faintly she could hear the actress speaking her lines . . .

"A little love is a joy in the house,

A little fire is a jewel against frost and darkness . . ."

She started to cross the street toward home but hesitated, looking longingly at the park, awash in light and sound. It was so lovely. It looked like a magical oasis in the middle of the night - a special little sub-city of her very own. A teasing breeze whisked from the park and twirled around her body, enticing her forward with the cinnamon scent of autumn leaves.

Why not?

Mikki checked the time. It was only nine. The park and the rose gardens didn't close till eleven. Nelly had specifically told her to go on with her normal life. It was definitely normal for her to walk through the park and visit her roses. She'd make her way around the rehearsing actors and then take a quick stroll through the gardens. She really should check on the roses that surrounded the construction site. She'd been concerned that all the tromping of the workmen's booted feet with their clumsy comings and goings was overstressing the roses.

Mikki glanced up at the darkening sky, reminding herself that it was the night of the new moon. If the roses needed help, what better time could she choose to give it to them?

She'd make one pass through the central tier and be sure the workers had cleaned up their mess and not manhandled the roses. Then she'd go home, pour herself a glass of bedtime wine and curl up with a good book . . . by a female author!

Or, her errant thoughts whispered enticingly, she could just go to sleep. Wouldn't she rather revisit her dream lover than do anything else?

With a supreme effort of will, she steered her mind away from that line of thinking. She couldn't start living life around her fantasies. Then she really would be crazy.

Chapter Six

MIKKI stepped into the crossroads between the park and the street and then onto the sidewalk that twisted past the lovely waterfall-fed ponds that framed the north edge of Woodward Park. At the next fork in the walkway she headed up and away from the northern street side, walking toward the central area of the park, which was currently abuzz with activity around the raised stage that had only just been erected the night before. Bits and pieces of poetic lines drifted around her, teasing her with snippets of the play.

"The holy fountains flow up from the earth,

the smoke of sacrifice flows up from the earth,

the eagle and the wild swan fly up from the earth, righteousness also

has flown up from the earth to the feet of the goddess . . ."

Intrigued, she searched her memory for details of Medea's story. She vaguely remembered that the play was an ancient Greek tragedy and that the plot centered around Medea, who had been jilted by her husband, Jason, for . . . Mikki scrunched up her face as she tried to sift through the dregs of long-forgotten high school English.

. . . But women will never hate their own children.

Floating to her on the soft wind, the line jogged her cobwebby memory. Medea had been pissed at Jason because he had dumped her for a younger woman, the daughter of the king of wherever it was they had fled to after she'd betrayed her homeland to save Jason.

"Figures," she muttered to herself. "Just like a man . . ." She slowed as she approached the busy group of people who were rearranging lights and hauling pieces of freshly painted plywood setting here and there. Several actresses were onstage, but they had fallen silent. Three grouped nervously together on stage left. Another woman was standing by herself opposite them stage right. They were wearing drapey toga-like outfits, and their hair flowed long and loose down their backs. All of them were looking around as if they expected someone to materialize from the shadows at the edge of the stage. Mikki stopped to watch, wondering why they seemed so uncomfortable.

"Where in the hell is Medea?"

The voice boomed from a little open-ended tent not far from her, causing Mikki to jump.

"She . . . she said she had to take a break," the lone woman said sheepishly.

"That was half an hour ago!" the shadowed voice yelled, clearly annoyed. "How are we supposed to finish the sound check without Medea?"

Mikki's eyes slid to where the voice was coming from. All she could make out from the interior of the tent was an illuminated soundboard that had lights and switches blinking away on it, in front of which the dark figure of a man stood.