Regina Caeli wore the same habit as always, the bulky headdress producing a decades-outdated, Matterhorn-peaked silhouette against the dusk. Its profile reminded me of the mythical Minotaur, the horned and bullish beast from ancient Crete. From what I remembered of her seven years ago, by now Sister should be about as ancient as Crete.
"Delilah Street," her firm but rasping voice greeted me. "I've been waiting for you."
Whee. Welcome someplace at last. I felt the silver familiar changing into a chain mail necklace that covered my chest and decolletage. Especially any hidden cleavage.
Ric would so want the details of this. The conversation, that is, not the familiar making an armored nun's wimple on my chest. Too kinky for a Catholic boy.
"WE ENJOYED WATCHING your reports on WTCH in the convent recreation room, Delilah," Sister said when I was seated before her. "They were most informative. And then you recently ... disappeared."
"Pretty much fired," I said.
"Ah. Women still have an uphill fight in the media. So now you are - ?"
"A PI in Las Vegas."
"We watch the CSI Las Vegas show religiously."
"Did you see ... uh, me, as a corpse?"
"Oh, doing some work as an extra, are you, Delilah? Most interesting experience, I imagine. Sorry, no. We don't really watch the gruesome parts. You did wear a complete sheet?"
"Yes, Sister," I said virtuously.
I had been clothed during my recently filmed cameo, which certainly couldn't have aired yet. And all eyes here at the convent had turned away at Lilith's nude appearance. Why watch a forensics TV show, though, if you shut your eyes at the autopsies?
"Why have you been waiting for me?" I asked.
"Our Lady of the Lake was the closest thing you had to a home here in Kansas. Many of our girls do return for class reunions, but you missed yours in oh-eleven."
"That was only five years out," I said quickly. "I'll make the tenth."
Sister's cumbersomely attired head shook. "It's not that, is it, Delilah?"
So, I was going to have to admit to the mother superior and academic dean, scenic campus aside, that my four high school years were mostly forgotten and might have been as unpleasant as my group home sojourn? Naw. Better to shrug it off.
"Even the pundits can't decide if the true millennial year is the turn of two thousand," Sister Ermangarde went on, "or two thousand and one. Graduates from both of those years seem to have made themselves scarce when it comes to school spirit, including donations."
"Really?"
The reporter in me was getting interested. I'd always assumed I was the only disaffected one around as a kid, blaming it on being orphaned.
"Is the reason the Millennium Revelation or the upheaval of the nine/eleven attack, do you think?" I asked. "They almost coincided."
She tented pale white hands, balancing her chin on their prayerful support.
"What an excellent question, Delilah. You always asked good questions in class. We hadn't considered, frankly, that the ... ah, spiritual upheaval of the Revelation may have affected certain of our graduating students in those two years even more than the unprecedented political assault of mass murder."
I stared at Sister Regina. Ermangarde was just not a name I could stomach. Then it hit me. Ermangarde. Irma? Irma who is a guard? Just when did my internal voice show up?
Please, Irma herself interjected. I am eternal. I don't punch time cards.
I brushed her rude comment aside.
"When you say 'spiritual,'" I told Sister Ermangarde, "you really mean ... 'supernatural.'"
Her hands parted and slipped over the large wooden rosary lying atop the broad white wimple. At her gesture, I felt the familiar shape-shift into something smaller and longer again, like the sword. I wondered if she'd spotted my morphing metal accessory in action.
Luckily, Sister's faded hazel eyes were fixed on mine. "Spiritual? Supernatural? Aren't they the same? Unlike your eyes."
Rats! I'd forgotten I'd been wearing my gray contact lenses in Wichita to avoid being identified.
"You always had the most dazzling morning-glory blue eyes, Delilah. I'd hate to think time and travail had faded them, like mine."
"No such bad luck. I left town under a cloud." I guess that description honestly applied to a wildcat tornado. "I'm back here to find out who I really am and don't want any WTCH-viewer getting distracted by my former persona as a TV reporter."
"At least you haven't lost faith."
"Ah, no ... but I don't follow you."
Her gaze darted to my chest, which started the heat wave of a blush as I recalled recent activities.
"What a splendid Celtic cross you're wearing, Delilah.