“Taren and I followed her gaze to the body lying on the floor. The most romantic kiss of my life had just taken place next to a corpse.”

“The door dings. I glance out and realize we are at the foyer again. A lady is standing there looking at us. She's holding a small shivering dog and they both look horrified. I follow her gaze to my shredded panties lying on the floor of the elevator.”

“Sitting in the shadows, with a killer, in an empty building, gazing at the corpse of another killer. When had her life grown so strange?”

“Then I placed the blade next to the skin on my palm. A tingle arched across my scalp. The floor tipped up at me and my body spilled away. Then I was on the ceiling looking down, waiting to see what would happen next...”

“If you kiss her mind, her body will follow.”

“As to my mouth, of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother’s lips, generous below and above; and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them, I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they’d melt into compliance, everyone of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done. But the fire didn’t spare my lips; it took them too, erasing them utterly.”