I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) by Michael Angel

of strong tea.
    My thoughts kept up with the beat of the
windshield wipers.
    I feel like my world’s been turned upside
down.
    No, not quite. That was when I learned who –
or maybe I should say what – my husband truly was. But now,
thanks to Dora and the Sphinx, I’d been given a peek behind the
stage curtain, been given a glimpse of how the world really
worked.
    Greater, immensely older beings existed in
the world. Ruled their little pieces of it the way a studio boss
would run their little self-contained chunk of the universe. Magic
existed too. I supposed that I should have felt relieved about one
thing, at least. That I wasn’t losing it. Nor was I falling off the
wagon and getting ready to check into the Betty Ford Center.
    Matter of fact, my threshold for disbelieving
the craziest things had just gotten its limbo bar lowered.
    And rather than flying
completely blind, at least I had something else to puzzle out.
Yet another creepy-cool riddle for Our Heroine Cassie to
figure out, before it was too late.
    But you want to know how I really felt about
all of this?
    Try going down to your local Chinese take-out
place. Get the Pork Chop Suey platter, extra spicy, and make a dive
for the fortune cookie come dessert. Crack it open, read the
message inside and ponder it for a moment.
    Now, imagine that your life depends on
divining the right meaning from it.
    That cheery thought echoed through my brain
as the freeway ramped up through the Cajon Pass. I crested the
summit just as the storm finished rolling into the Los Angeles
basin below. Stalks of lightning flickered back and forth across
the cloud’s leading edge, as if the weather were a pacing, angry
tiger.
    I shuddered and pressed down on the gas pedal
until I had to stop in the town of Barstow, on the edge of the
bone-dry flats of the Mojave Desert. I pulled into a nearby service
station to top off my gas tank. Then I breezed into a nearby used
bookstore to top off my Dolce & Gabbana handbag with a
paperback book titled the Myth-O-Pedia . Said book was so
dog-eared that it practically sat up and begged for a treat.
    Evening fell with the suddenness of a blown
klieg light as I blazed down the nearly empty freeway, one eye on
the road, the other keeping a sharp lookout for cops. Or
Apocalyptic Horsemen, for that matter. But nothing lunged out of
the blackness to pounce on my car. Another hour and a half, and I
could clearly make out the eye-catching glow of Las Vegas on the
horizon.
    That glow brightened into whole rivers of
light, a ballet of glitz and synchronized glitter as I merged into
the slow-moving stream of traffic that flowed with gelatinous
majesty down the Las Vegas Strip. I checked my watch, saw that I
still had plenty of time to make my rendezvous this evening. When
I’d first read the Sphinx’s printout, a little chill had run down
my spine.
    Cee Cee was at The Grotto tonight.
Given the age and size of some of the so-called ‘mythical’
creatures I’d been meeting, I immediately pictured some dark, dank
cave done up with lots of wriggling, squirming creatures courtesy
of the charming fellows in the F/X Department. But with a glance at
the first billboard I spotted near the Strip, I knew I had little
to worry about. It showed Cee Cee, clad in her silver
tuxedo-and-top-hat showgirl outfit and reclining on a snow-white
Siberian tiger’s back. The verbiage touted her show in ten-foot
curlicues of script.
    THE GROTTO PRESENTS AN EVENING OF SEDUCTION
& SORCERY – BY THE FAMOUS ILLUSIONIST CEE CEE! MAN AND BEAST
FALL TO HER BEAUTY! ONLY AT THE ODYSSEY CASINO!!!
    Yup, complete with not one, not two, but
three exclamation points. For the slow learners in the audience,
I’m guessing.
    I followed the Sphinx’s printed instructions
to the letter as I pulled up to the glassy, neon-green tower that
made up the bulk of the Odyssey. Instead of driving up to the front
entrance, I headed around to the back towards the parking garage.
Once there, I slowed to a