Virtual Virgin

leave our own matters hanging.”

“Such as . . . ?” I began, still wondering how I could explain my freaky mirror-trek to California and a maybe- vampire mother.

“Dealing with Snow’s astounding offer of sponsorship, what’s best for the Silver Zombie, and how much danger raising her put me in from Vegas bigwigs will just have to wait,” Ric said impatiently.

I yawned. He didn’t know I’d been to the West Coast and back already that very early morning. “I agree. We don’t want to jump on Snow’s bandwagon without plenty of research. It’s okay, Ric. We’ll check in tomorrow.”

Besides, Snow wasn’t the only one worried about Ric.

We cooed our good-byes and I rolled over to sink into that most luxurious of feelings, a long nap in a sunny room.

I should have been wondering what was up with Ric and his government contacts, but my mind was on a maternal vampire—mine!—and recalling how I’d stumbled to find mother substitutes in my early years.

Discovering an apparent vampire mother also ramped up my growing anxieties about Ric, worries about his soul I’d buried under a white-knuckled dedication to his physical survival.

When an unadoptable orphan—whose closest thing to a mother most of her life was shared with Mr. Spock (and look how he turned out)—is all grown up and has an intimacy “issue,” who’s she gonna call on?

As usual, I was more comfy with film people than the real “family” folks in my life . . . like some hard-hearted group home supervisor.

Spock’s human mother, as played by Jane Wyatt on Star Trek, was formerly the mother on Father Knows Best, so she had to put up with a lot of male domination in her day. She remained my model of mature sweet reason. God knew I could use such a woman in my life.

The vamp in California was not my role model.

Our life was way simpler when you were still a virgin early last spring and had nil intimacy, much less other issues, Irma popped up to remind me. So who’s our go-to gal now? Helena Troy Burnside has my vote. She’s only a long-distance phone call away, or we could video conference.

“No Skype,” I told Irma. Helena had spotted only Lilith lurking in my psyche. “If she finds out about you, I’ll be certifiable in her book and no fit, uh, partner for her foster son. You are not going share any screen time with me. Who do you think you are, Irma . . . Lilith?”

Come on, Helena’s an open-minded lady.

“She’s my lover’s foster mother, Irma. It would be embarrassing to look so green in front of her, and I don’t want her to worry about Ric.”

If you didn’t lock me out when you’re gettin’ down with Mr. Yummy Montoya, I’d be all you’d need to advise you, girlfriend.

“I seldom have luck locking you out totally, but keep your comments to yourself right now.”

I drifted off into dreamland and a sleep level they call “fitful.”

A couple hours later I woke up, knowing exactly the right person to call for a spontaneous meeting and an emergency consult. I just needed to wait until it got dark so no one would know about it.

And Irma was back then too.

You’re gettin’ out your black leather motorcycle jacket, mama? I do wanna go where you’re going. What kinda shrink digs in-your-face?

“It’s not a shrink in the traditional sense,” I told Irma. “And you’re gonna love the leggings, if you could see them,” I said, firmly slamming the door of my mind shut on her.

I tossed the jacket down on the bed after a try-on. Vegas nights did cool down at times, not in summer so much, but I was after effect, not comfort. I wasn’t content to leave my appearance to the wardrobe witch tonight and waved away the Goth T-shirt she’d produced on the hanger rack next to my closet door.

My black leggings had tiny skull studs down the sides that coordinated with the buckles on the ankle-high genuine motorcycle boots. That was Goth enough. I shrugged into a white ruffled shirt that would suit a pirate or Mrs. Peel. Then I buckled one last buckle, or swashbuckle, a black leather collar around my neck.

A savvy reporter knows how to dress up or down for the assignment.

My role on this occasion? I was a would-be bad girl going to a bad part of town to meet up with a big bad player. I was glad even Quicksilver wasn’t around to give tails up or down on my look.

No sooner had I buckled the bad-girl collar than the familiar curled around it as a gleaming circlet alternating studs with spikes. At least it felt at home. Too bad Quicksilver wasn’t purse pooch material; now our collars matched. I was glad that thought reminded me to take a wrist wallet for essentials. The top of my right hand already bore my homemade tattoo.

I firmly refused to even think of Jane Wyatt, Helena Troy Burnside, or Irma and her reaction, grabbing the jacket and heading out to my date with Mr. Wrong.

HE’D PICKED THE place since this meeting needed to be secret even more on his account than mine.

Now that I stood in front of the off-downtown location too close for comfort to the nomadic Sinkhole, I regretted my agreement. The giant bunker that passed itself off as a nightclub squatted on a parking lot that stank of spilled four-dollar-a gallon contraband gas, beer and stomach contents. The place boasted a big charcoal-gray metal door guarded by three hulking CinSims, all duplicates of six-foot-seven James Arness as the Thing.

They weren’t terribly articulate beyond Argggh, but one held up an infrared device to scan the membership ink on my hand.

I’d downloaded the spider-on-a-skull logo from the club Facebook page—so much for social networking trumping security measures. Then I duplicated it in the invisible ink formula I’d heard about from my pal at the city morgue, coroner Grisly Bahr himself. Murder victims turned up regularly with the club’s reentry imprint on their decomposing skin, visible only under black light. Classy place.

I breezed by the Three Arghmigos. Inside, screaming guitars and pounding drums easily drowned out any editorial comments from Irma. The scene was Rave Machine meets Vegas motorcycle club. My vision adjusted to the combo of stuttering off-and-on strobe lights and that stripper-bar staple, black light that made white skin and shirts, like mine, gleam the same electric blue as my eyes. I spotted other women present with lots of glitter on eyebrow-raising places, but they were all way less dressed than I was, if you didn’t count ankle-to-eyebrow body ink.

I’d wanted to be instantly visible to my interviewee in this crowd, but my signature look was immediately mobbed by dudes in biker chains. These growling urban werewolves were hoping for an impending full-moon night out to howl while they could still have human intercourse, in both senses of the word. Before I had to impress a few more dents in their gypsy leathers, they peeled away right and left as if Moses was coming along putting a long straight part in the Red Sea. My source was here and announcing himself.

“Bitchin outfit,” Sansouci said when he alone stood before me, the other guys skedaddling history.

I recognized vampire fight mode. He seemed taller, wider, stronger, wilder. His eye whites caught the black light too, gleaming blue as he elbowed away the competition.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Sansouci asked, shifting down into the usual merely intimidating Vegas muscle mode again. He steered me through the crowds in his custody and bent down so he could admonish and question me through the high-decibel rock band wailing from every wall.

“When you set this meetup, I wondered,” he said. “You doing crazy-ass things is my greatest entertainment form in the world entertainment capital. Montoya know you’re off your monogamy leash?”

By then, we’d reached one of the luminous giant skulls suspended on chains at various heights around the vast dark space. I’d checked out the setup on the Spider Skull Bar website, so wasn’t surprised when Sansouci steered me to a swaying skull booth a couple feet off the floor.

Entering it was like stepping up into Cinderella’s pumpkin coach from Hell. Sansouci’s hand under my elbow boosted me inside. We were scooped onto a semicircular red velvet “booth” as our weight swung the skull’s jaws snapped shut. The macabre capsule whisked up over the dancers’ heads to rock gently in the dark.

Whee, Irma managed to blurt.

Whee, indeed. My stomach did that involuntary adrenaline swoop you get from Ferris wheels or sexual attraction. At least I recognized both sides of “thrill” now.