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“I’m not as visibly valuable as the Inferno Hotel’s other CinSims. Nick and Nora Charles are chipped t
o the Inferno bar with that darn dog, Asta. The noir CinSims have their own custom sets on the Limbo level. The bordello CinSims like Errol Flynn and Marilyn Monroe inhabit the Lust level right below.”
Mention of Limbo and Lust “levels” didn’t faze me. The Inferno sat atop a re-created Nine Circles of Hell.
“I’m just an off-balance oddball,” Dr. Jack said, “as I was in my film life. Mr. Mad Scientist, always considered more smart and crazy than sexy. An invisible CinSim gets no recognition. You, at least, put up with me. I thought you even really liked me.”
He sounded pouty now.
“I like you fine. At the Inferno Hotel, not in my bedroom.”
“That’s what I broke even my long-distance bonds to come and tell you. Things aren’t fine at the Inferno Hotel. It’s haunted.”
“The house muscle, Grizelle, is tiger enough to handle it.”
“My dear lady. Grizelle is … no longer … what she was. No one or nothing at the Inferno is.”
“What’s new about that? Snow is just doing his usual control-freak act.”
“Snow’s no longer in control. Look at me!”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, sure, Miss Street, I like to give girls at the bar the occasional fanny pinch, but when did I get into serial assault on asses? Tonight. Then, heading here, I almost ended up way down the freeway in Laughlin. All us Inferno entities are possessed. Haywire. Any minute, the news will hit the thousands of tourists trekking in and out of the hotel. And now Snow’s nowhere to be found.”
“Small loss,” I muttered, shaken despite myself. “Since when am I backup security for the Inferno?”
“It’s all so horribly wrong, Miss Street. The slot machines are spitting out razor blades. At the Inferno bar, your white-chocolate Albino Vampire cocktails are pouring out as dead dark as Black Russians. The ‘perfect film wife,’ Nora Charles, has runs in her silk hose, and hubby Nick Charles is out of gin!”
Dr. Jack’s last complaint alarmed me the most. Thirties booze-hound detective Nick Charles running out of Boodles was like the film Casablanca running out of doomed lovers. Sheer travesty.
While I stood there wondering what suit of armor I should wear to a cursed Las Vegas hotel, my casement window slammed open again. This time the cause was all too visible.
A huge wolfhound-wolf-cross dog with vampire hearing and fangs and a bloodhound sniffer—wanted to know who’d been tipping over his water dish and messing with his rescuer from a fate worse than death … euthanasia. I grinned approval at his superdog two-story jump. No need to play nice and use the first-floor doggie doors tonight.
Quicksilver’s bounds abused my bedspread again. He landed by the upended bowl, skidded through the spilled water, and scented the unseen intruder. As I stepped away from confining Mr. Elusive, Quick leapt with paws extended at the exact shoulder height to pin the Invisible Man to the wall.
“Thanks, partner. Keep him busy while I get ‘decent.’ And no peeking,” I warned Jack Griffith, “even if you are a doctor.”
“I’m not that kind of a doctor and Rin Tin Tin here seriously needs a manicure. Ouch!”
“I know. He likes his nails long, and I don’t ever argue with that muzzle.”
* * *
Living in an Enchanted Cottage has its benefits. I slipped into my endless closet, still wondering what to wear to an unspecified widespread haunting, and closed the door. A hovering pixie made herself into Tinker Bell so I could see in the dark.
I sighed. Deeply, madly, truly. Snow and I had cherished a heavy-duty mutual loathe-hate relationship since I came to Las Vegas several months ago in search of my double, my possible sister, Lilith Quince. She was my mirror image, and mirrors had turned out to be my medium after the Millennium Revelation pulled back the curtains on the supernaturals coexisting among us.
Call me one weird sister, but I wasn’t high on bailing out the Inferno, or its owner. I’ve never been into male sex symbols. I’m not talking about the planet Mars with the provocative little arrow. Blatant onstage booty calls for screaming female fans and profit insult my intelligence. Elvis would have swiveled in vain. Justin Timberlake would have to get his screams and squees from some other chick.
Cocaine, aka Snow, played Pride incarnate as lead singer in his Seven Deadly Sins band. He ended each show by enslaving his mosh-pit groupies with a post-concert Brimstone Kiss that had them swooning and coming back again and again—and never getting another smooch.
What a racket to sell tickets. The least he could do was sleep with the poor lovesick fans, but he never did, just teased them and left them panting.
Jerk!
This was not about Snow, I reminded myself while squirming into the steel-studded vampire-fighting catsuit I owed to the Inferno security wardrobe. The shiny black fabric was supernatural Kevlar, suppler and stronger than leather and up to facing down any unknown but wayward supernatural capable of turning an entire hotel and all its contents … well, upside down.
