Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

Snow lifted a hand. I sensed something behind me and turned. His security chief, Grizelle, was waiting with a small silver tray. Two Albino Vampire cocktails sat upon it.

She did the waitress dip. This six-foot-plus tall supermodel-type with a tiger-stripe pattern in her silken black skin who could shape-shift into a six-hundred-pound white tiger did the waitress dip to set the glasses on Snow's desk.

"Thank you, Grizelle." He lifted his glass and held it out for a toast. "If you were a wine, Miss Street, I would characterize you as 'cheeky and amusing, but also full-bodied and effervescent, to be drunk quickly, before it spoils'."

Well! "Those who can, invent. Those who can't, steal."

I referenced the yummy white chocolate Albino Vampire cocktail I'd created at his Inferno Bar on a whim to annoy him. The bastard had simply made it the house drink, charged a mint for it, and profited from my invention.

"I'd be willing to pay you a royalty for the drink, but it wouldn't be as lucrative as what Nightwine would give you for Lilith's onscreen use."

I had been about to sip my drink but stopped before I choked. "You know about his hopes for Lilith?"

"Lilith is a valuable commodity in this town, thanks to his forensics show empire. I know about everything of value and the value of everything."

"She is a human being."

He shrugged. "That's what you want to think. She's supposedly dead. As far as we know. That makes her no less valuable. Even more so. "

"As far as 'we' know?"

"Ask Nightwine to let you attend the filming of a CSI autopsy. They're always done on a strictly closed set. It'd be interesting to know if he'd let you see the process."

"I've already visited the city morgue, on your recommendation. Maybe I should ask to be a background autopsy tech on the show." I thought my voice had been scorching with sarcasm.

"Not a bad idea." Snow was too obviously enjoying a long swallow of my creamy cocktail. Vampires didn't drink "vine," but neither should they suck down white liqueur cocktails. "Nightwine would love to titillate his enraptured audience with those bright baby blues you share with Lilith glimpsed, say, behind the Plexiglas of a safety shield. Rumors would run wild that Lilith still… haunts… the autopsy set. Million-dollar publicity for the show, refreshes an aging concept. Brilliant! You can give Nightwine the idea and claim it was yours, a bit of return on the Albino Vampire. He'd even pay you for it if you play it right."

I knew better than to drop my jaw. Snow thought just like the ghoul I worked for.

Still, it was a good idea. I'd have a chance to get to know-and probe-the film crew about Lilith's turn on the steel table, and find out if there was any possibility she was alive then. And if she might still be.

I really didn't like the fact she was putting on a show in my mirror. Maybe I was wrong in concluding that only dead acts performed there. So I played my unexpected ace, something I'd concluded about Lilith.

"You knew Lilith before she was on CSI Las Vegas, before she was officially 'dead' or famous."

"Why would you say that?"

"The first time I visited the Inferno, you came up and swept me onto the dance floor. I don't dance."

"You do in my arms and maybe Montoya's."

I ignored his attempt to link himself and Ric. "You also said you'd been waiting for me."

"It's a line, haven't you heard? Maybe you didn't, in Kansas."

"You left out you'd been waiting for me 'all of my life'."

"Maybe it would be impossible for me to wait for you all of my life."

"What? Poor mortal me? You're right about that and I wouldn't wait a New York minute for you. So quit the song and dance, Snow. You're good at it, but I'm good at detecting lies and evasions. You thought I was Lilith. You already knew her, but you hid that fact from me. Why?"

"I hide a lot of things from you. Why shouldn't I?"

That I believed. "Guess I'll just have to find them all out."

"Break a leg," he said cordially. "Anything else I can do for you today, Delilah?"

I'd barely tasted my Albino Vampire and his glass was drained. I wasn't going to be shuffled off, so I leaned back, crossed my legs, and sipped my drink that he earned the money for.

"You don't seem surprised by my mentioning Lilith's possible survival, Snow. She was presumed dead when you laid that line on me."

"I never believe any presumptions of innocence or death in this town, not even my own. What I believe about Lilith's state of being is moot, however. Her only filmed presence was, alas, as one dead. Not that this is a fatal problem. If she was in CinSim form, I'd lease her for the Inferno. I have a private club on the Lower Circles where she'd be in red-hot demand."

Every word of his speech seemed to indicate that his eyes were following every last detail of my form and face for its reproduction of Lilith. His tone was seductive, possessive, as if he owned me because he had seen and knew of, or possibly desired, her. Or had had her, in the Biblical sense.

"Lease her? Or would you buy her, at auction, like a slave?" I asked, bluntly.

He drew back a bit, as if slapped. As I had intended. I wasn't a Snow groupie to be seduced by some sexy sweet talk. I had a lot of Our Lady of the Lake Convent School backbone.

Snow lifted a pale eyebrow over the smooth black top of his sunglasses. Mr. Spock on MTV. "Now why would you think… one could buy… CinSims… when leasing them…is so much more lucrative… for the parent conglomerate, ISFX-MS, Industrial Special Effects and Magic Show?"

Snow was acting far too easy-going at the moment. And if he thought aiming his sunglasses at my crossed legs was going to make me jump up like Miss Muffett and shriek away, he was in the wrong nursery rhyme.

I recrossed them, higher, and sipped more slowly. Hello, Sharon Stone. Not a vintage film shtick, but effective.

A smile visited his pale lips and settled in. He lifted his martini glass, full again.

Parlor tricks that Madrigal at the Gehenna could do with his eyes closed would not disturb me, I told myself.

"I'm not here about Lilith, poor self-destructive girl," I said. "I'm here about the boy. The young man in the Sunset Park grave. I thought you might know something. Apparently not."

I drained my Albino Vampire in one long swallow and stood.

Now he was left holding the drink and being run out on.

"I have no clue," he admitted, his tone suddenly direct, flat. "I'm counting on you to find one. Call me your first client in Las Vegas."

"On the same case? You forget I've had two others ask me to solve the riddle. Or don't they count?"

"So be it. I'll pay you well for your results anyway."

"In Albino Vampires?"

"They're on the house now, for you."

"For how long?"

"Forever, Miss Delilah Street. Forever."

Okay, that was truly creepy. What was creepiest was that I was sure he meant that. Did he mean that I was immortal? Or that he was? I knew from experience that Snow's afterthought gifts had bite.

What it did mean for now was that I could collect three fees if I solved the identity riddle.

I doubted that was ethical, even here.

Don't sweat it, Irma advised me as we left, sailing under Grizelle's short supermodel nose as if her impressive form was not even there. This town was always the capital of the con game they call Three-card Monte. We deserve three times what any one person would give us. We are a class act. And we are double trouble."

Or were we a triple threat? Maybe, if I could find Lilith alive somewhere, we would be someday.

RIC had "booked" me into an early interview at the Crimes Against Persons, a.k.a. capers, unit the next day.