Virtual Virgin

“Sansouci called the double killing ‘the Blood Price.’”



“That’s a very Mafia concept, and now like the drug cartels too,” Ric said. “Cicereau probably wanted a male heir, so the female, especially a disobedient female hooking up with a male not of his selection, was expendable.”



“He certainly will force anyone to work in his Vegas empire—magician, vampire, or little me in the guise of my double, the CSI autopsy queen, Lilith.”



“Why’d you keep that surprise under wraps for so long?” Ric asked, his dark eyes narrowed to indicate he was teasing. “Afraid of some really direct competition?”



“She’s why I came to Vegas. Lilith supposedly was one of the TV series’ actual corpses, who kill themselves for the immortality of being taped during their autopsy on the number one show in the world. But Hector seems to want me to replace her, or . . . find her. I don’t know what he really wants, or what Lilith really is, spirit, doppelganger, sister, or evil spirit.”



“Nightwine is a wild card among Vegas powers that be,” Ric mused. “As with Christophe at the Inferno, exactly what paranormal he is, if any, remains a mystery. I knew Nightwine had some hidden motive for keeping you under his thumb and oversight at the Enchanted Cottage. Still, it’s a cool place for you to live, cheap and secure. But playing landlord is not charity on his part.”



“I could sue him for using my ‘image’ without authorization, and told him so when I first came to town.”



“What about your mirror-chase of Lilith? Is she ever going to show up on our side?”



“I did confront her outside a mirror once, in a back alleyway. Inside or out of a mirror, she’s rebellious, bitter, savvy, and in that alley she left me to the oncoming hyena pack from the vampire empire.”



“Lilith. The rebellious teenager you never had a chance to be. Instead, you grew up as the innocent, loyal, inquisitive, defensive, smart girl.”



“Sometimes you’re eerily perceptive, Montoya.”



“Try having a renowned child psychologist for a foster mother.”



Mention of Helena Troy Burnside made me think of my CinSim foster dad, super defense lawyer Perry Mason. I wondered if he could force Snow to release a copy of Metropolis to us because we fought to help the Inferno head man keep it. No, even Perry Mason wouldn’t intimidate Snow.



That idea led to another that perked me up like the Silver Zombie with Ric in the sights of her blank oval eyes.



“Ric! I bet I know where else we can see an uncut copy of Metropolis!”



“Back at the restored vintage movie theater near Wichita? No more road trips to weather witch country.”



“Oh, this will be a very short trip.”



Chapter Fourteen



LEAVING THE CRYSTAL Phoenix lobby, we soon found the world beyond the artificial novas of its glass and white neon-lit entrance canopy was—surprise—dark as night.



I looked up to check if the moon had risen high enough to be visible in the usually cloudless Vegas sky. Not yet. I wondered when, or if, Cesar Cicereau would get back to his hotel in time to go into hiding until he could finish his “shift.”



I smiled. For now, the werewolf mob boss was facing job time conflicts like any other working stiff.



I checked my watch face. “It stopped.”



“You can’t rely on those vintage timepieces, Del.” Ric pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. Then he frowned.



“I’m not getting a signal. Must be all the wattage. The Strip is famous for messing up cells. This movie thing isn’t working out. We should forget it. It’s later than we thought anyway.”



I nodded. That comment cut a lot of ways.



“Besides, that thing is awfully long, isn’t it?” Ric added.



I couldn’t resist. “I don’t think so. They never can be too long for me.”



“I just think the timing is bad.”



“Aw, c’mon, Ric.” I draped myself over his shoulder, cajoling like a gun moll. “We’ve gotta do it sometime.”



Revolting bimbo act, Irma confided.



“You folks need a ride someplace?” A cabbie who had just unloaded his passengers at the Crystal Phoenix entrance idled his small yellow SUV beside us.



“Perfect!” I opened a back door and hopped in. I leaned forward to tell the gentleman originally from Oman, it turned out, our destination before Ric heard it. As an ex-reporter, I was used to chatting up people in the service industries, getting their life stories along with their cooperation, so Ahmed began a monologue. Driving a cab can be a lonely occupation.



Ric hadn’t seen this side of me before. He settled back to eavesdrop as I elicited which hotels had the better occupancy rates, that Chez Shez was the hot new can’t-miss offbeat spot on the Strip, and Madrigal’s sparkly little assistants were really “puppets.”



“Puppets, no kidding,” I marveled, accepting the usual stream of both information and misinformation.



Ric, meanwhile, was eyeing the streets as we turned off the glare of the Strip.



“Nothing resembling a cineplex this way,” he noted.



“I should just ask you to close your eyes until we get there.” I shut up both Ahmed and Ric by pushing mi amor back in the seat for a make-out session. Sure enough, his eyes closed on cue.



“You’re being impetuous and mysterious,” he was able to murmur before I took total control. “I like it.”



Ahmed switched on the solo driver’s consolation and wake-up pill, Poxx talk radio.



MY SURPRISE WAS sprung when I had to use the tiny remote I worked out of my pants pocket.



Ric looked up to see the rearing forefeet of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bronze sculpture looming over our vehicle.



The cab stopped inside the now-open iron gate.



“First the time got away from us, and now the place isn’t right.” Ric’s frown barely dented his dusky Latino forehead, but it made him look intense and muy macho.



“This is one of the highest-security pads in Vegas,” I pointed out. “Ours free for the duration.”



“I don’t want to owe anything to our ambiguously supernatural host.”



“He can’t be worse than the morning movie date you ultimately stood up.”



Ric was teasing now too. “I suppose we have to do it sometime.”



“Umm, yes, we do.”



Ahmed’s eyes were popping in the rearview mirror.



“For two hours and fifty-one minutes, you say?” Ric asked.



“And fifty-two minutes.”



Ric groaned.



So did Ahmed.



“Twenty bucks will do it,” Ahmed said. “I gotta leave.” As Ric leaned forward to pay him, the cabbie rasped, “That woman is insatiable, buddy. Run for your life.”



The moment our feet touched pavement, the cab’s wheels squealed away like an abused Indy 500 stock car. The cab’s taillights disappeared down Sunset Road. Ahmed’s meter was now a tracking meteor.



“That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said about me since I left Kansas,” I told Ric. “Now,” I went on, “I need to quick-change into something more comfortable . . . and less wafting an odor of boiling blood. You can hang out in the courtyard for a sec. Look. Isn’t that cute? Quicksilver’s waiting for you on the stoop to play catch.”



“Cute” was my way of kidding. Quicksilver was all dog, and then some. The half-wolf part dominated his looks, and the half-wolfhound part accounted for his huge size and striking blue eyes to match mine, that being a rare wolfhound gene.



“You don’t need to doll up for me!” Ric yelled as I raced inside the Enchanted Cottage, leaving him to confront a very bored guard dog in search of a little home entertainment, just like us.



In four minutes flat, I was back outside. Quicksilver was waiting by the Enchanted Cottage’s hobbit-hole-shaped front door when I came through in one of my Hector-cajoling outfits.



The platform heels almost looked “today”—purple satin peep-toes with marabou feather trim over the instep. The knee-length forties frock of pale lilac print voile was short at the flutter sleeves and swing hemline. I had puffed my hair up at the sides into a heart-shape, thanks to two tortoiseshell combs, but it was down in back, falling like a curtain over the nape of my neck.



“Holy Hedy Lamarr!”



Ric had recently seen the real thing, so I was highly flattered. He was still under the influence of the Lust level; I could tell by how he eyed me.



My new yet discreet hairstyle, designed to hide any trace of his love bruises, was a private signal and a turn-on for him that would be wasted on our unsuspecting host. Hector Nightwine struck me as a leg man anyway, or perhaps, more accurately, a drumstick man.



“How do you manage these vintage transformations?” Ric asked. “I hate to say it, but you’d be the queen of the Inferno’s Lust level in that getup, especially the silly shoes.”



Apparently Ric’s stroll through the Inferno’s shady lady section had upped his appreciation of vintage rags, if not footwear.



“Frilly, not silly, shoes,” I corrected him. “My secret weapon is a long history of attending Wichita estate sales, added to an Enchanted Cottage wardrobe witch I never spot.”



“I love how you look, but I hate that you gussy yourself up for that CSI lech, Del.”



“He’s genuinely fond of CinSims and their vintage appeal, Ric. I doubt he ever leaves his estate, and rarely his office suite. He likes being cajoled, but he’d never touch me and risk destroying the illusion. There are worse power mongers in Vegas nowadays. And I’m betting you’ll get a chance tonight to research my favorite CinSim, Godfrey. Just don’t mention to Nightwine that Snow owns a totally complete new version of Metropolis. Hector would chew on more than the usual Survivor reality show vermin atop his desk if he knew that.



“Come on, Quick.” I turned to my patient dog, who’d been following our conversation like a spectator at a tennis match. “Time for us to get our due at the Big House.”



Quizzical, Ric jammed his hands in his pockets and held his tongue too, trailing Quicksilver and me while we trotted across the driveway into the servants’ entrance of Hector Nightwine’s Sunset Road mansion.



Cameras on stalks rotated silently across the courtyard to follow us, reminding me of mechanistic alien eyes in a fifties science-fiction movie.



“Now you’ll see what I have to put up with,” I told him as I opened the kitchen door, “to live in high-end security.”



“MASTER QUICKSILVER! MISS Street,” Godfrey exclaimed, meeting us inside the door, as he always did.



If I didn’t know that his master required him to dance twenty-four attendance on his apparently insomniac self, I’d think Godfrey lived by Nightwine’s back and front doors, the eternal butler.



“And Mister Montoya,” Godfrey acknowledged Ric with a nod of his head. “The master is most curious about the purpose of your visit. May I say, Miss Street, you look most like Miss Carole Lombard in that ensemble?”



“Thank you, Godfrey. That’s an enormous compliment. Carole Lombard,” I told Ric, “was Godfrey’s love interest in the film named after his butler character, My Man Godfrey.”



“Does Nightwine lease that Lombard CinSim?” Ric asked us.



“Alas, no,” Godfrey said in his emotionless butler voice. “It might distract from my duties, and, frankly, the girl was a bit of what you nowadays call ditzy, and a pushy dame on top of it.”



“She made Godfrey marry her at the end,” I explained.



“Oh,” Ric said.



“Mr. Nightwine is eager to see you, Miss Street,” Godfrey told me, “but not Master Quicksilver. He fears competition for his favorite snacks.”



“Quick prefers the prime cuts you feed him from the kitchen anyway,” I answered. “Ric, why don’t you and Quicksilver get acquainted with one of Godfrey’s filling snacks while I pave the way with Nightwine upstairs?”



Ric nodded far more agreeably than I’d expected, so I left the trio and took the narrow back stairs to the level of Nightwine’s office. There I knocked lightly on the huge coffered door.



“Enter,” a robust voice commanded.



I did.



“Such a pleasure to see you back after your recent getaway, Miss Street. Sit.”



I did, crossing my legs, which allowed display of the half-off frou-frou shoe dangling from my instep.



Nightwine sighed with visual, vintage satisfaction. He loved feeling like a detective in a noir movie receiving a femme fatale client. Nero Wolfe, perhaps, given he too was a housebound man of size.



“What can I do for you, Miss Street? Everything running smoothly at the Enchanted Cottage? No rogue gnomes or pixies showing up?”



“Peaceful as ever.” I’d never told Nightwine that the hall looking glass had always acted more like a door than a mirror for me, but he probably knew. Someone had bought the Wicked Queen’s prop from Disney’s Snow White film. Who, if not Hector?



I had a bone to pick with Nightwine, but now was not the time to bring up touchy matters.



“I see the Cadaver Kid has escorted you here,” he noted.



“Ric was called that in his very early days with the FBI. It’s a dated term now, Hector.”



“But so colorful, Delilah.” He also loved it when our conversations evolved into first names, though they always defaulted back to more formal forms. “He would do very well as an actor in one of my CSI international franchises, perhaps CSI Chihuahua.”



I didn’t mention it sounded like The Dog Whisperer meets Criminal Minds. “I’m sure he’s not interested.”