She decided to find Vale and get the lowdown on some of the guests, and was on her way when suddenly in the hallway a dark figure loomed ahead, drawing her gaze. Abruptly she was staring at a virtual duplicate of herself—a shadow of her shadow. The woman, exactly her size, also wore black stockings, a black leotard and domino mask, and her face hands were blackened with greasepaint. She was indistinguishable from Miriam except for her fingernails, which were bright red, and the black satin pumps she wore instead of boots. The blue light of her eyes was so intense and familiar that Miriam took a step backward, alarmed.

"God," she whispered.

"Oh," the woman exclaimed, and she took a step forward so precisely that it was like an inverse replication of Miriam's movement. She stared at Miriam as Miriam stared at her. In that moment a unique sense of peculiarity came over Miriam and she suddenly felt the kind of giddy sensation that might accompany a glance over a railing from the top of a tall building. Moreover, the moment seemed to disassociate itself from time so that she had an impression of reflecting the woman's gaze for an interminable period while the sounds of the party receded into a sort of incontiguous sub-reality. Then a vivid premonition of sensuality came over her, a surge of strange desire as she stared at the woman.

"Beautiful," whispered the woman, and Miriam saw the black semaphore of her tongue as she spoke.

Then the woman abruptly turned and walked away.

As she disappeared into the kitchen, Miriam moved to follow her as if by reflex. As she entered the kitchen, she saw the woman simultaneously exiting through the back door, and she hurried after her.

A flight of steps led down to small lawn and garden that Miriam knew well from occasional afternoons of nude sunbathing. She paused and put her glass and apple on the porch's handrail, then followed the woman down the steps, her heart beating quickly.

At the bottom the woman waited, smiling up at Miriam as she descended.

Now Miriam felt a sense of excitement starting to absorb her, starting a tactile simmering along her arms and legs. She felt a stirring of warmth in the depth of her sex. One hand seemed literally drawn to her crotch and her fingers lingered there, finding the fabric of the leotard flushed with dampness.

"Ohhh," she murmured with burgeoning arousal.

"Ohhh," echoed her facsimile. The shadow came toward her, her face moving toward Miriam's until. . .their lips met and the woman was taking the pad of Miriam's upper lip softly between her lips and sipping on it, then slipping her tongue fully into Miriam's opening mouth, curling it coaxingly around Miriam's tongue to conjure it irresistibly into her own mouth. There was a moment of total blankness in Miriam's mind then, followed by a sense of complete commitment as she began to participate in a thirsty sialorrheic exchange of kissing and tonguing in which the two disgorged delicious gobbets of spittle into each other's mouth until it began trickling down their chins.

"Darling," the woman whispered, and with the tip of her tongue painted halos of saliva around Miriam's heavily breathing mouth, licking the greasepaint off her cheeks and turning her head to feed in the aperture of an ear. Miriam moved her head swimmingly under the sorcery of the tongue, becoming balmy with desire and yielding fully to the hands now touching her, fingers fanning out over her breasts, slinking down to seek the throbbing presence of her sex.

On the lawn, on her back, Miriam opened her eyes to see her shadow standing over her, taking off her shoes and leotard. She turned half onto her side and quickly removed her own leotard, slipping off her boots. They were both naked except for stockings held up by black garters. Miriam's legs were drawn up, her feet firmly on the ground, arms spread. The facsimile put her hands on the inside of Miriam's thighs and parted them until her knees were tilted at angles and her cunt, labia uncloaked, was displayed like a lustrous bloom in the moonlight. Miriam drew her double down into her arms for more kisses, their mouths blending and tongues flowing in concert. She murmured with exhilaration as she felt a finger winnow into the vestibule of her cunt, then forge deeper into the slippery channel, a thumb pressing into the resilient clutch of her asshole.