Virtual Virgin

Sansouci blinked, interpreting as fast as he could. “Thank you, Shez. I think you mean you’ll set up a tab, so I can patronize your gilded cobra heads daily for bloodwine. And your mummified patron is called ‘Howard Hughes’ in this incarnation.” He doubted Delilah knew how much he knew about all her contacts.



“Why do you wish to make this transformation of yourself, Sandsoozi?”



“I was once a Lord of the Slaughter myself.”



“Indeed. In what time or place or cause? You were not a god, as I am.”



“No, but I served one. I took the life and blood of his enemies in war, and called it just. Like you, I’d once wielded sacred oil and water during peacetime, but it was war that made my method of existence possible.”



Shez thought, then nodded. “I too would rather mash grapes and seeds than the heads of the damned unjust. Their blood as it spatters my lips tastes foul. I must brew much wine to banish the inadvertent sins that have tainted even so little of my flesh.”



“You can . . . taste who is damned from their blood?”



“A mere . . . what you say, side effect, like the inebriation that results from too much healthy wine. Forget the tablet. I like you. I wish to aid you in your quest to be worthy of the Mighty Delilah.”



“I didn’t say anything about my reasons.”



“You did not have to. Who does not aspire to She Who Frees a God? You are my guest whenever you choose to drink at Chez Shez.”



“Thanks.” Sansouci raised his glass of Blood Lite.



“It is good when gods and men can sit together and talk.” Shez nodded his head until the beaded ends of his heavy braided wig danced on his doughty shoulders.



Sansouci was getting mighty tired of feeling outclassed.



Chapter Twenty-four



NOW THAT MY dreams had ditched the alien abduction and examination mode, there was no place my subconscious could not go.



I woke up the next morning with a grab bag of horrible memories fading from my mind.



Dr. Frankenstein had me on his ancient Egyptian bloodletting stone slab again, only he was showing an unnatural interest in my toes . . . Loretta Cicereau and I were twin sisters in the mobster’s family photo from the 1940s, with a young, lanky Howard Hughes replacing Sansouci and Vida morphed into a busty Jane Russell. Only Cesar Cicereau was unaltered except for wolfish fangs. . . .



So when my old-fashioned white phone rang in the Enchanted Cottage bedroom I picked it up with relief, hoping Godfrey had dialed me from the main house with news I was to breakfast in the servants’ quarters, my favorite way to start the day.



It was indeed exactly that invitation. I sighed as I hung up the receiver and lay back. Godfrey and the maid, Molly, fed Nightwine’s occasional guests and Molly made popovers to die for.



I idly tested inside my lower lip for sore spots, but Sansouci’s “sampling” procedure had been alarmingly symptom free. A vampire bite that went down as smoothly as aged scotch was a thing to respect and fear.



My cell phone yodeled from the pocket of the leather jacket I’d used the night before. I hated to leave my comfy bed to hear anything that might interfere with a sunny, chatty breakfast with my favorite CinSims. I sighed again and rolled over to snag the bag without getting out of bed. In a moment the hopefully normal again little rectangle was clamped to my ear.



“Good you’re awake so early and rested up,” Ric’s voice boomed in my ear. “You’ll never guess who paid me a surprise visit last night.”



Uh-oh, Irma warned. We know a truckload of folks who could tell tales on you to Ric.



“Uh . . .” I said.



“You and Quicksilver would kill me if I didn’t share the pleasure of my unexpected company. Breakfast?”



“Um . . .” I was being really brilliant.



“I’ll swing by and we can decide on the place then.”



“Ah, Ric—”



But he’d hung up without giving me any clue to whom I’d be meeting besides him and where we’d be going and what I should wear.



I’d dropped last night’s outfit on the bed’s end. Since the wardrobe witch hadn’t had an invisible hand in selecting the clothes, they were still piled there. I checked the empty chrome dress-shop rack on the wall outside my bottomless closet.



Empty no more. From it hung a plain white shirt, a black “boyfriend” blazer, and gray boot-cut jeans.



Was I supposed to go as a CinSim?



I might sleep in a high four-poster bed under the cottage eaves, but the attached bathroom was high tech. I was sure it had more showerheads than Vida’s all-girl health club, and an infrared drying system that reminded me of the abandoned tanning beds at the now-defunct Rave Machine.



The familiar disliked getting wet so it morphed into a banana clip to hold up my hair. I liked the effect so much I told it to “stay” as I would Quicksilver, not expecting obedience, as I didn’t with Quicksilver.



Surprise. It remained in place, allowing me to keep the tumbled curls down the back of my head effect. I grabbed some fresh underwear, dressed, and jammed my feet into boot-style mules, ready to greet whosoever or whatever showed up with Ric in my driveway.



As a last thought, I used the bureau mirror to tease the curls forward on my neck, realizing how accustomed I’d become to hiding what I refused to call hickeys. Loathsome word. And maybe deed. Sansouci’s admitted self-interest didn’t mean he’d lied about what dark and dirty things Ric’s little quirk might lead to.



I glowered at the idea, glad to see my image mimic my emotions. No Lilith here. I didn’t so much as glance in the hall mirror when I left. I’d had quite enough of my so-called kin for a while.



Clattering down the stairs, I met Quicksilver grinning and panting at the bottom. He knew he was invited, wherever we were going. With whomever. I could always stop at the mansion’s kitchen door and take a rain check on the (sob) homemade popovers.



Ric’s Corvette was already idling in the driveway, as throaty as a movie queen. Quick perked his ears and I raised my eyebrows when we saw that Ric wasn’t the only figure unkinking a tall frame to exit the low car and greet us.



“Tallgrass!” I IDed his companion with welcome disbelief. “What lured you out of Kansas?”



Ric’s former FBI mentor hitched up the belt under his belly to match his standing position as he adjusted his straw cowboy hat into its groove in his thick black hair. Otherwise he was lean and well-done, his Native American skin seamed with sun and wind and wisdom.



Quicksilver rushed to greet him with a nudge of noses, paws momentarily braced on his shoulders like a bear’s. Both were pretty prominent in the nose department.



“So where are we all going for this breakfast outing?” I asked Ric when Quick put all fours back on the driveway. “In that car?”



“You and the dog can take Dolly.”



“I propose we take a stroll across the courtyard instead. Godfrey and Molly can lay out a spread for us all. Quicksilver’s welcome there, unlike in most restaurants.”



Ric looked from me to Quick to Leonard Tallgrass. “You’d have a chance to see some well-established CinSims at work,” he told his friend. “The ones you saw in Wichita were fresh out of the film canister.”



“Sure.” Tallgrass winked at me and Quicksilver. “If these two didn’t have blue eyes, they could almost pass as those black-and-white movie escapees. I sure didn’t know CinSims can cook.”



“They can do anything humans can do,” Ric said. “And when it comes to human and unhuman trafficking and the sex trade, that can be a big problem.”



So we moseyed over to the back door, an appropriate verb since Tallgrass and I both sported boots of a sort.



Ric hung back momentarily so we were following the other two.



“You sure this group feed is okay with the resident CinSims?” he asked. “And what about Hector Nightwine? Doesn’t he have a spying fetish and the high-tech toys to indulge it?”



For the first time I considered that this might not simply be a visit from a vacationing buddy Ric had reconnected with during our recent Wichita road trip.



“Tallgrass is here on business?” I asked.



“Yeah.”



“Molly’s blueberry jam is primo.”



“All right.” Ric pulled me close. “After breakfast, though, I want to take Tallgrass for a spin on the Strip.”



“Dolly always likes to show off. Why is Tallgrass here?”



“Not you and Dolly. I need a jaunt with just him and me,” Ric said. “I want him to see the real deal when it comes to world-class entertainment venues and the works of superhuman moguls.”



“He’s not a hick,” I pointed out.



“CinSims are a new breed of being. When I was a kid, I used to think I just needed to stop the zombie trade to end all the evil on earth. I thought on that happy day that all the CinSims should be unchipped, unplugged, retired to a refrigerated warehouse, buried, or whatever. Now I’m seeing it’s not that simple. We’d both miss Godfrey. It’s great that Tallgrass can meet a CinSim who’s not a public curiosity, but who holds an actual position, right here and now.



“So,” Ric stood back to let me follow Tallgrass and Quicksilver into the Nightwine kitchen. “Bring on breakfast.”



Fine. I was thinking I might want to be off on my own for the day anyway.



Chapter Twenty-five



BLUEBERRIES AND POPOVERS and Vienna sausages, oh my!



We breakfasted family style in the kitchen while scents of fresh coffee and fried bacon incited our appetites. Godfrey, with his apron donned over his shirtsleeves, was still formal yet breezy. Molly prepared and helped serve everything as they waltzed around each other with the cheery efficiency of long-time employees.



While I’d think nothing of Nick Charles holding a scarlet cocktail in his pale silver-screen hand at the Inferno Bar, to see Molly’s monotone flesh tones deliver platters bearing fluffy yellow clouds of scrambled eggs and ruffled ribbons of red-brown bacon strips to our table felt a bit odd.



Everything was scrumptious, especially the airy popovers with butter and blueberry jam filling every crevice.



Quicksilver had long gotten used to CinSim food servers. He provided entertainment while chasing and gobbling dozens of short Vienna sausages around a huge pewter tray on the floor.



Afterward, the four of us gathered a moment in the courtyard before Ric and Tallgrass took off in the ’Vette.



“I like these CinSims,” Tallgrass said. “Why didn’t this Nightwine bigwig join us?”



“He’s a hermit,” I said. “Godfrey and Molly tend his few needs and he treats them very well.”



“Other than chipping them in place,” Ric noted.



Tallgrass shook his head. “Those Emerald City CinSims fresh from the farm didn’t seem happy, or even quite all there.”



Ric answered before I could. “Godfrey’s alter ego at the Inferno Hotel, Nick Charles, explained that it takes a while for CinSims to take hold on a placement.”



“Nick Charles?” Tallgrass sounded impressed. “The elbow-bending gent detective from the old movies? That guy was a hoot.”



“We’ll stop in and see him. We can order one of Delilah’s Brimstone Kiss cocktails there.”



“‘Brimstone Kiss.’ That sounds like real firewater, Miss Delilah.”



“Rick Blaine from Casablanca loved it,” I bragged.



“It’s a lot early for booze, Ric,” Tallgrass said, “but anything Humphrey Bogart goes for is good with me.”



So off they went. Quicksilver barked once and ran around the cottage to the back. I suspect he had pestered Woodrow, the yard troll, into playing fetch with him.



I returned to the cottage to start a find-and-interrogate list.



With Ric doing the town with his mentor, now was a perfect time to delve into the pesky question of who might have fathered me. I didn’t want to introduce Ric just yet to the idea that my mama was a vampire. Encountering Vida in the absurdly long-lived flesh had tweaked more than my overdeveloped curiosity bone; it had quadrupled my fear factor.



I came up with a long roster of hair-raising prospects for Daddy Undearest, starting with Cesar Cicereau, Vida’s werewolf sugar daddy.



I’d already tackled number two on the list, Sansouci, the werewolf boss’s involuntary enforcer and indentured vampire stud.



Also on the Gehenna Hotel roster, I could list the indentured house magician with the twin fey accomplices, Madrigal. An unlikely suspect, but he’d been there when Vida and Loretta had owned expiring life spans. I smiled to think that Cesar Cicereau just couldn’t kick the women out of his life without their coming back . . . and back.



Moving on, there was the pre-vampire Howard Hughes, buying up Vegas properties in the sixties and growing more isolated and phobic every day, aiming to hang on to his empire by being turned vampire.



And I couldn’t eliminate Vegas mover and shaker Hector Nightwine, another film and media empire force, so eager to provide me with room, board, and constant surveillance. Although imagining Hector fathering anyone except by test tube was a disturbing vision.



Finally, there was Snow, mystery supernatural, age and aim unknown, but way more invested in me and the future than any Vegas figure of the past was, including Vida.



All of them could have been around long enough to sire me. All had offered me opposition, attempts to make me play prey to their predator, and had claimed to have my best interests at heart, or to sell me on the idea that their best interests were also mine.



All of them radiated the various degrees of lust from knee-jerk pseudosexism to something much more personal that came naturally to being a power on a guy’s playing field like Las Vegas. Two didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. One was likely an ice king in Hell. One I actually liked.