knew it was the most hateful and humiliating thing he could require.”
“Does the kiss pack a kick?”
“Like with a groupie? No. Not with me. And I don’t want to talk about it, any more than you’d want to reminisce about your enslavement to El Demonio Torbellino.”
Ric nodded. “I’ve just noticed some tension between you two.”
“True. Terminal lack of trust. Who’d put the stupid fairy-tale price of a kiss on rescuing a human from the vampire mob? Enough about that egomaniac. What did you learn from the film?”
Ric leaned back. I was thankful he’d moved past the dicey topic of Snow. “That Brigitte Helm was a hell of a performer. She was really just nineteen then?”
I nodded. “Ambitious kids today start on YouTube much earlier. She almost got the part in
“From Blue Angel to Mrs. Frankenstein. She had quite a range.”
“Brigitte did what the old soap operas promised. As Maria, and as old film trailers boasted, she ran the gamut of human emotion.
“I don’t get why they needed to create a robot to recreate it as an evil but human Maria under their control.”
“The robot was created to host the mad scientist’s lost love, Hel, who’d married the heartless CEO, then died bringing his son into the world. Rotwang abandoned his idea of re-creating his soul mate and used the robot to embody a programmable Maria he could use to bring down the bigwig, at the cost of destroying the workers too. The robot plot was probably a warning that factory work was making robots of us all. The theme is announced on the first screen. ‘The heart is the arbiter between the head and the hand.’”
“Not much heart in any world I’ve seen.” Ric sat silent as he reran the script of his life and I reran mine.
“The dreamer and the maker, the brain and the hands, need to meet inside us,” I said. “The dreaming-it-up and the making-it-happen parts. The head Wicked Witch of Wichita, Lily West, mocked her sister Lilah for believing that.”
“I don’t think she’s mocking much anymore, now that we’ve defeated the weather witches.” Ric took my hand. “You saved me when everyone else thought I was lost. I’ll never forget that.”
I couldn’t help thinking, saved him for what? An even worse threat?
“So,” he went on, gazing at the dark screen. “My altered silver vision”—he tapped his left eye socket where a brown contact lens obscured the new, mirror-bright iris—“brought the potent deposit of silver nitrate on the scenes featuring the Maria cyborg to independent existence here and now. How did El Demonio hope to use her?” Ric mused on. “How can we do that, and aren’t we as bad as him, or Snow, for being willing to?”
“We don’t have a choice. You called her off the screen. Now you need to bring out her better nature.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT HAD BEEN a long day for both of us. Only security lights and stars were shining down on the darkened Nightwine estate, so Ric and I parted with a chaste kiss on the stoop outside the Enchanted Cottage.
“How’re you going to get home?” I asked, suddenly aware of the logistics. “Your car must be in the Inferno Hotel parking lot.”
A screech of wheels burning rubber into my driveway turned my head. Ric’s bronze vintage Corvette was tooling up to my door.
“How?” I asked.
“Godfrey got his ‘cousin’ at the Inferno to contact your favorite parking valet.” Ric smiled and went to open the driver’s-side door.
“Manny!” I cried as the orange-scaled demon leaped out of the driver’s seat. “Ric must owe you a huge tip.”
Ric was already in the car and waved a single bill at Manny through the open window. I’d have chewed out the valet if he’d treated Dolly that way, but Ric didn’t seemed bothered by the roar of his car’s entrance. He liked to push the ’Vette around the same way.
Logistics remained on my mind. How was Manny getting back to his post at the Inferno?
I glanced at the slim vintage watch on my left wrist. Wristwatches were a trademark of mine, despite cell phones replacing them among the Android generation. I had a large collection from all eras and they were also a perfect undercover form for the silver familiar. As now.
If I pushed Dolly a little, and she pushed lesser vehicles out of her majestic way, I could make the time limit.
“I’ll drive you back to the Inferno,” I told Manny.
His eyelashes fluttered over his golden cat’s eyes. He had extraordinary long and lush eyelashes for a male demon. “A ride in the Queen. I could swoon.”
“Please don’t. I don’t want you shedding any scales on Dolly’s interior.”
Manny, more formally Manniphilpestiles, grinned. “No, ma’am.”
Parking valet demons in Vegas coveted Old Detroit steel. Manny always babied Dolly up the Inferno parking ramp because he knew I’d make Wiener schnitzel of his tail—the figurative
Dolly was parked under the porte cochere so I zipped inside for my keys. I returned to find Quicksilver in the back and Manny riding shotgun. Wow. Quick must like the friendly demon to cede his place to him. Quick could make faster work of Manny’s tail than I could.
Here’s a secret to making sure that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas: cultivate the hotel and casino staffs. Big shots and whales you have always with you and they come and they go, but the seemingly little fish are canny friends to have in a pinch.
“You drive like my aunt Zegaconphistia,” Manny complained as I floated Dolly onto Sunset Road. He still wriggled down into the red leather upholstery like a cat in a faux fur shop.
Soon the lights of the Strip were getting us tourist stares, but Dolly cruised up to the Inferno’s frenetic entrance unmolested. The moment I disembarked, Manny slid into the driver’s seat.
“I know. No more than fifteen miles an hour in the ramp. Still the best ride in Vegas.” He patted Dolly’s dashboard and moved away at barely above idle.
Quicksilver had leaped out to escort me inside, so we joined the throngs shuffling in. It was nine-ten p.m., the start of Snow’s break between the two nightly Seven Deadly Sins shows and I intended to have more than a word with him.
Quick got a lot of awed glances, but he was taken for a service dog. He had that all-business look about him, and his leather collar encouraged people to assume his thick gray body fur obscured a harness.
Of course, not everybody employed by the Inferno could be described as people.
One of them loomed into my path, a tall, sleek black woman wearing a short zebra-striped dress and fuchsia lipstick vivid enough to snarl traffic.
“Fresh from a garden party?” Grizelle asked in a put-down tone.
True, nineteen-forties daytime frocks had a frothy, innocent air.
“No dogs.” Grizelle’s face and voice were harder than granite as her luridly green eyes moved from my floral print to Quicksilver’s flashing fangs.
Snow’s security chief cherished a major hate for me, one part deserved and three parts not. But that one part had been a lulu.
“I intend to see Snow,” I said, scrupulously avoiding the verbs “want” and “need.”
