Ric hung back momentarily so we were following the other two.
“You sure this group feed is okay with the resident CinSims?” he asked. “And what about Hector Nightwine? Doesn’t he have a spying fetish and the high-tech toys to indulge it?”
For the first time I considered that this might not simply be a visit from a vacationing buddy Ric had reconnected with during our recent Wichita road trip.
“Tallgrass is here on business?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Molly’s blueberry jam is primo.”
“All right.” Ric pulled me close. “After breakfast, though, I want to take Tallgrass for a spin on the Strip.”
“Dolly always likes to show off. Why is Tallgrass here?”
“Not you and Dolly. I need a jaunt with just him and me,” Ric said. “I want him to see the real deal when it comes to world-class entertainment venues and the works of superhuman moguls.”
“He’s not a hick,” I pointed out.
“CinSims are a new breed of being. When I was a kid, I used to think I just needed to stop the zombie trade to end all the evil on earth. I thought on that happy day that all the CinSims should be unchipped, unplugged, retired to a refrigerated warehouse, buried, or whatever. Now I’m seeing it’s not that simple. We’d both miss Godfrey. It’s great that Tallgrass can meet a CinSim who’s not a public curiosity, but who holds an actual position, right here and now.
“So,” Ric stood back to let me follow Tallgrass and Quicksilver into the Nightwine kitchen. “Bring on breakfast.”
Fine. I was thinking I might want to be off on my own for the day anyway.
Chapter Twenty-five
BLUEBERRIES AND POPOVERS and Vienna sausages, oh my!
We breakfasted family style in the kitchen while scents of fresh coffee and fried bacon incited our appetites. Godfrey, with his apron donned over his shirtsleeves, was still formal yet breezy. Molly prepared and helped serve everything as they waltzed around each other with the cheery efficiency of long-time employees.
While I’d think nothing of Nick Charles holding a scarlet cocktail in his pale silver-screen hand at the Inferno Bar, to see Molly’s monotone flesh tones deliver platters bearing fluffy yellow clouds of scrambled eggs and ruffled ribbons of red-brown bacon strips to our table felt a bit odd.
Everything was scrumptious, especially the airy popovers with butter and blueberry jam filling every crevice.
Quicksilver had long gotten used to CinSim food servers. He provided entertainment while chasing and gobbling dozens of short Vienna sausages around a huge pewter tray on the floor.
Afterward, the four of us gathered a moment in the courtyard before Ric and Tallgrass took off in the ’Vette.
“I like these CinSims,” Tallgrass said. “Why didn’t this Nightwine bigwig join us?”
“He’s a hermit,” I said. “Godfrey and Molly tend his few needs and he treats them very well.”
“Other than chipping them in place,” Ric noted.
Tallgrass shook his head. “Those Emerald City CinSims fresh from the farm didn’t seem happy, or even quite all there.”
Ric answered before I could. “Godfrey’s alter ego at the Inferno Hotel, Nick Charles, explained that it takes a while for CinSims to take hold on a placement.”
“Nick Charles?” Tallgrass sounded impressed. “The elbow-bending gent detective from the old movies? That guy was a hoot.”
“We’ll stop in and see him. We can order one of Delilah’s Brimstone Kiss cocktails there.”
“‘Brimstone Kiss.’ That sounds like real firewater, Miss Delilah.”
“Rick Blaine from
“It’s a lot early for booze, Ric,” Tallgrass said, “but anything Humphrey Bogart goes for is good with me.”
So off they went. Quicksilver barked once and ran around the cottage to the back. I suspect he had pestered Woodrow, the yard troll, into playing fetch with him.
I returned to the cottage to start a find-and-interrogate list.
With Ric doing the town with his mentor, now was a perfect time to delve into the pesky question of who might have fathered me. I didn’t want to introduce Ric just yet to the idea that my mama was a vampire. Encountering Vida in the absurdly long-lived flesh had tweaked more than my overdeveloped curiosity bone; it had quadrupled my fear factor.
I came up with a long roster of hair-raising prospects for Daddy Undearest, starting with Cesar Cicereau, Vida’s werewolf sugar daddy.
I’d already tackled number two on the list, Sansouci, the werewolf boss’s involuntary enforcer and indentured vampire stud.
Also on the Gehenna Hotel roster, I could list the indentured house magician with the twin fey accomplices, Madrigal. An unlikely suspect, but he’d been there when Vida and Loretta had owned expiring life spans. I smiled to think that Cesar Cicereau just couldn’t kick the women out of his life without their coming back . . . and back.
Moving on, there was the pre-vampire Howard Hughes, buying up Vegas properties in the sixties and growing more isolated and phobic every day, aiming to hang on to his empire by being turned vampire.
And I couldn’t eliminate Vegas mover and shaker Hector Nightwine, another film and media empire force, so eager to provide me with room, board, and constant surveillance. Although imagining Hector fathering anyone except by test tube was a disturbing vision.
Finally, there was Snow, mystery supernatural, age and aim unknown, but way more invested in me and the future than any Vegas figure of the past was, including Vida.
All of them could have been around long enough to sire me. All had offered me opposition, attempts to make me play prey to their predator, and had claimed to have my best interests at heart, or to sell me on the idea that their best interests were also mine.
All of them radiated the various degrees of lust from knee-jerk pseudosexism to something much more personal that came naturally to being a power on a guy’s playing field like Las Vegas. Two didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. One was likely an ice king in Hell. One I actually liked.
I’d found my way to Vida, so it was time to connect her to all the usual suspects and find what had made the two and two that became me and Lilith. I didn’t expect to unbuild Rome in a day, but I expected to find some unexpected possibilities.
So I donned my general-purpose spandex black-leather leggings, a trapeze-shaped turtleneck thigh-long top that hid my pared-down version of a cop’s duty belt under it, and ballet flats covered with suede gaiters to the knee. I had to wear something vintage as a lucky charm.
The familiar obligingly tarnished to black with faint rainbow highlights and formed a chain-swagged steampunk epaulet on my left shoulder.
I was a either a vain cat burglar or a woman not worth the trouble of tangling with.
QUICKSILVER SURVEYED MY new look, and then sat in front of Dolly’s massive chrome grille, refusing to move.
“No,” I said. “Nix. This is a solo mission. It’s investigative, not dangerous. I don’t need an escort.”
I had to circle way around him to get to the driver’s seat, and then he leaped into the passenger side through the open window. We had a stare-down, but I finally pulled onto Sunset Road with him still installed, feeling good and guilty.
Not much later I reluctantly left him guarding Dolly in a low-rent parking garage so I was able to join the women slipping into the shade of the Chez Shez royal awning to buy lotions and bath oils. They lined up two deep
