Virtual Virgin

“Or maybe the mob is the defeated vampires of seventy years ago in corporate clothing. Sansouci, along with Big Bad Howard Hughes, makes two closeted vamps operating aboveground in Vegas. I know you’ve found the Gehenna muscleman a handy information source, but a vampire could turn on you, or turn you, any time.”

“No. Sansouci’s got a constant blood supply. He’s Sir Sipalittle-a-lot.”

“Huh?”

“Vamp tramp pipeline. He’s a gigolo with a string of willing clients, all donating just enough blood to make it exciting for them and sustaining for him.”

“Good for him, as long as he stays true to the harem. I don’t want anyone sucking on your neck besides me.”

His lowering head nudged my chin back as kissing lips and tasting tongue forged a trail from the hollow of my throat to under my left ear.

While my heartbeat did a startled sprint, in the dark shadow of my hair he imprinted a love bruise on my ultrawhite skin. It burned almost but not quite too much. Put me on an edge I couldn’t resist.

Despite my lifelong fear of vampire bites—or maybe because of it—my body throbbed with liquid heat in all the right places. Ric almost never broke the skin, but these moments alarmed as much as they excited me. He pulled away, kissing my lips almost as long and hard, and ran a hand down my torso that had surged against his with a will of its own.

“You’ve really got to let us get back to cases, chica.”

As if I’d started it again.

Really, now that I was out of my overaged virgin box, I was still freaked by how easily men spotted that and how much I was getting to like it. I was facing a whole new world most other people had long visited by my age of twenty-four, commonly called “carnal knowledge.”

Loretta’s ghost had once claimed credit for Ric’s and my instant sexual connection when we met and dowsed together in Sunset Park. She told me her and Krzysztof’s passion had leaped to us, and in this new paranormally quirky world, she might have had a point.

Thoughts of undying undead love were too morbid, or personal, for me. I pulled away from Ric, reluctantly becoming investigative reporter again.

“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.”