Since before Sansouci had been sent to get me. And where was the handsome nondog, anyway?
I sighed, audibly, surprised when a monocled English gentleman in a tweed suit, bearing a silver-headed cane, stopped to address me.
“Pardon me, miss. Perhaps you can help me catch and unmask a foul vampire. I’m a Scotland Yard detective, but I’m quite lost among all these odd, loud, milling people.”
Would Sherlock Holmes hesitate? Could I throw him Sansouci?
He was all in subtle shades of gray from his eyes to his lips to his tweedy Norfolk jacket, another CinSim, yet
The scales were falling from my eyes (and also from the trilling woman’s voice above all the Vegas hotel hullabaloo).
I needed to get to Cesar Cicereau, fast, which meant I had to snag a conventional elevator ride to the penthouse level. I streaked through the crowd, watching the top-hatted vampire offering to escort a troop of local Boy Scouts into the wood. Not good.
In the concourse in front of the elevators, people were pushing toward every lit Up arrow, chattering and checking their fanny packs for cash and credit cards.
The melee was so huge and loud that the haunting singer could no longer be heard. No one even noticed the Hunchback of Notre Dame grinning down at me as he swung back and forth against the bank of elevators like the weight on a grandfather clock’s pendulum.
At last I’d battled my way into an up elevator all the way to Cesar Cicereau’s forty-third-floor penthouse. And he was the one who wanted this appointment.
A carved wood tree design on the mirrored elevator car walls made riders feel claustrophobic, as if their reflected image and the frame of trees extended into infinity. Since I’d been known to mirror-walk, I kept a firm grip on myself to avoid being drawn into Wereworld.
The elevator opened on the foyer to Cicereau’s penthouse.
This high, the soprano was coming in loud and clear, singing “My Blue Heaven.” I rather doubted it, having visited here before.
Two half-were bodyguards bracketed the elaborately carved wooden doors to Cesar Cicereau’s personal lair. They had frozen at man height in transition to wolf. I imagined the chatty wolf from “Little Red Riding Hood” would look like them—hairy, predatory beasts with snouts like crocodiles standing on two shoeless feet but otherwise clad.
These weren’t the fully human Cicereau pack members who usually faced the public. These were Cicereau’s paw-picked bodyguards, the weres who never fully reverted to human for some reason, like the half-were biker gangs on the Vegas streets.
In fact, I wished I were facing a tormented, self-hating werewolf like the Larry Talbot persona actor Lon Chaney Jr. had pioneered. The 1941 classic horror film
But, no, it was the big boss I needed to see. No one half human.
“The boss is expecting me,” I said.
The guards eyed me for a long moment.
My adventures had finally made me look the part of the accused witch and Gypsy girl, Esmeralda. I was rumpled and bruised, with my ballerina-length taffeta skirt as ragged and bedraggled as my shoulder-length hair.
Their elongated lips curled. “The boss don’t entertain skags like you.”
“Skags like me can save his hairy ass. Tell him Delilah Street is calling.”
They reared back as one recognized me. He clawed at his buddy’s furry forearm to impart a fearsome message.
“This is the dame who killed that Frankenstein dude who plunged out the boss’s windows.”
“He was dead to begin with,” I pointed out. “Unless you yearn for the same condition, either let me pass or announce me. I won’t touch a hair on your matted bellies, but Cicereau wants to see me.”
Their handlike forepaws clawed at their shaggy, upright ears as the soprano reached the top of her four- octave range and held the note for an eternity. I could see the fur around their jaws was scabbed with blood. The high-pitched sound of music really did torment the poor misbred creatures.
“Please,” I added.
My alto-pitched voice must have been soothing. They panted in doglike relief and opened the doors for me. Or maybe nobody here said “please” without begging for his life.
“Forty-three stories, dude,” one whispered to the other behind my back. “A wild-woman. Almost as merciless as the boss.”
That was a bad rap, but any reputation in this town can’t hurt. The creature I’d tricked into that suicidal leap had already torn apart several tourists and even a few werewolves. Like the real Frankenstein’s monster, he had been more of a victim of his makers than bad to begin with. I’d done what was necessary to save lives, even supernatural half-lives. That didn’t mean I wasn’t sorry I’d had to do it. Hopefully, this assignment would have a happier ending, but I doubted it.
I knew the suite’s layout from my previous visit, especially the paired guest bathrooms bracketing the entry hall like guard wolves, so that welcome and not-so-welcome guests could clean off blood and gore, coming and going.
Inside, I felt nervous. Outside, I acted like the Girl Who Had Offed Frankenstein’s Monster. Inside, I was just another mob hireling.
Cicereau sat ensconced on a lavish spread of Swedish modern furniture, all woodsy and leather. He was wearing furry earmuffs and clutching an icepack to his head. The moon was recovering from being full, but Cicereau still looked like he had a hunting hangover.
I’d considered the Hunchback of Notre Dame a grotesque figure at first, but Cicereau, although totally human in his nonwerewolf form, was a sort of human toad whose broad, rapacious face lacked half the intelligence I’d seen glimmering in the mostly mute Hunchback’s one eye.
“Street. So you’re really here,” Cicereau crowed. “And so is the screeching siren I want you to eliminate. About now the sound of your scream after my men hurl you through the window would be worth the momentary overriding of the screaming Mimi in my hotel.”
“Wronged women do seem to have it in for you,” I commented. “I need some information before I wrap up this case.”
“Really? You plan to wrap up something besides your own life and career?”
“You recently invested in some new CinSims, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but none who sang. My accountants say I need to up the main-floor attractions. I’m old-school. I think a couple thousand rooms, a big theatrical show, a shopping mall, a bunch of bare boobs here and there, and a casino crammed with gaming tables and machines should do for the stupid tourists.
“And do you know what those CinSim things cost? They’re leased, like freaking vending machines. What a racket. Worse than that freaking supernatural soprano. You pay over and over for the product, like any sucker who visits Vegas. Not Cesar Cicereau. I figured out how to beat the Immortality Mob at its own game.”
“Let me guess. You leased the Man of a Thousand Faces.”
“Well, that’s exaggerating what the dead dude has to offer, but yeah, that particular deal was attractive. The CinSim people assured me that this Lon Chaney actor would be a freaking chameleon. At least ten for the price of one.”
“I’ve never heard of a CinSim being leased to play multiple roles. It could turn the actor underneath the characters schizophrenic.”
“Stop the schmancy-fancy words. ‘CinSim’ is hard enough for my electronic dictionary. I’m experimenting with the Gehenna’s tourist attractions, okay? I happen to think this CinSim craze isn’t here to stay, but I’ll try something now and then if it seems to fit my theme. I mean, this guy is the whole freak show put together: the Hunchback, the Phantom, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, whatever. He’s got the monster chops down, and I like that.
