Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

They nodded listlessly, not entirely convinced, rolling the teardrop-shaped candies in their hands. Their color choices weren't visible to me.

One said, "Hey. I think I'll start a Web site and discussion group on this."

"Say," I followed up, "I hope we can attract more Cocaine fans. You ever talk to some online? Lilith, for example?"

"Oh, sure. Lili's a deep-down fan," said one, nearly stopping my heart.

"She's hinted she's a Have," a second woman chimed in.

Oh. No. That was me chiming in mentally as I jumped to hear Lilith spoken of so matter-of-factly. Lili? I could see how the nickname would evolve. And I would be "Lilah."

There was something eerily twinlike about those diminutives, even if I hadn't now known that Caressa Teagarden and her twin sister were named that from birth. I shivered as if someone was walking over Lilith's grave, and mine, and the damned cutesy silver "kisses" jewelry chimed some more.

Could there have been two abandoned infants left in different places? While I followed that thought, my reluctant prey drifted away after some quick good-byes.

I put the sign-up sheet in my Baggalini, cleared away the trash and loaded the brandy snifters in Dolly's trunk.

Lili. A twin sister named Lili. I choked up as I locked the door. I'd been alone so long it was scary to think I hadn't been born to be a solo act.

Hey, kid, Irma said, you got me all these years. You don't need some upstart with a cutesy, kissy name. Who d'ye think you are? Delilah and Lilith Street, the Mary Kate and Ashley Olson of the supernatural set? Chill.

Right. I didn't need two of me to get in trouble. Their "Lili" was not my Lilith and even my Lilith was a phantom, a filmed delusion. Or maybe not.

Quick was guarding Dolly in the drive-through area out back. The shopping center night lights only covered the parking area up front. It was odd that Snow's side was the light and my side was the dark. What an ironic role reversal.

I took a handful of the dark kisses out of the snifter. It was even more ironic that I was probably thinking of Snow as often as the most infatuated groupie. For quite the opposite reasons, of course.

Dolly started on the first turn of the ignition key. Quick leaped in the open window to ride shotgun, his tongue already lolling out in joyous anticipation of the wind rippling his fur all the way home to the Enchanted Cottage.

At least somebody was having a good night.

Working with the Snow groupies was wearing. They were so bloody single-minded.

About 8:00 p.m., I kicked off my mules and settled down with a glass of Beaujolais in the cottage parlor, brooding about Lilith. The more I chased her in the real world, the more remote she seemed. Maybe my handy-dandy magic mirror was the way to go after her. Chase her in Mirrorworld and run her down.

I checked my cell phone: no messages and Ric was not answering. His meeting at the Luxor must have run late, big time.

So I sipped and simmered, feeling both tired and wired, an unpleasant blend of emotions caused by inactivity.

When a knock came on my sturdy Hobbit door, I set down my wine glass and jumped up, ready to rake Ric over the coals for being AWOL. Then I planned to fan some intimate embers fast. I was not only getting used to physical affection, but craving it.

"Where have you been?" I demanded, sweeping open my arched door and resolving to make him wait for a more welcoming greeting… at least a minute.

"At the main house, of course," Godfrey said. "May I come in?"

I shut my mouth and nodded, standing back.

"Master Quicksilver?"

"Out on his nightly run."

"Sorry for descending on you with no notice," Godfrey said, sleeking the sides of his hair back with his palms.

Short notice or not, his formal butler's attire was impeccably as black and white and as unruffled as his demeanor. Did CinSims sleep? And, if so, did they dream of animated stuffed sheep?

The sight of Godfrey's dapper, pencil-thin mustache and wavy black hair, formal air, and usually twinkling gray eyes always filled me with fondness. Those eyes were darkly sober now. A CinSim, being a white, black and silver entity, couldn't turn pale. If one could, I would say Godfrey was as white as a ghost right now.

"What's wrong, Godfrey?" I checked the mantel clock keeping company with Achilles' dragon vase and Caressa Teagarden's ring. It was almost midnight.

"So sorry to intrude, miss, but my, er, cousin at the Inferno has managed to convey a rather alarming message."

CinSims had doubly convoluted relationships, since they were both actor and role. William Powell's delightful embodiment of Dashiell Hammett's tippling playboy detective, Nick Charles, was leased to the Inferno Bar. His definitive leading role from the 1930s screwball-comedy film, My Man Godfrey, held forth as "our man Godfrey" at Hector Nightwine's estate.

"How did you get Nicky's message, Godfrey?"

"Ah, you know. The blower. The horn."

"The telephone?"

"Righty ho."

"I thought Nick couldn't leave the bar area."

"Bars always have phones. Don't they?" Asked with innocent duplicity.

I gave up on nailing down CinSim communication modes. "What's so urgent?"

"He had a message from another CinSim, a displaced person, in fact. That poor fellow is somewhat mentally garbled from deserting his post. This… ah, errant CinSim had been contacted by yet another seriously-rogue CinSim. Now the second chap is at the Inferno Bar and desperately needs to see 'a raven-haired beauty with blazing blue eyes'."

"Nice snow job, Godfrey." CinSims from earlier eras were gallant flatterers of women, I'd discovered. I was beginning to like it, but not believe it. "And, of course, Nick Charles immediately thought of me."

"He is a rather fine judge of both female pulchritude and gin."

"Pulchritude, Godfrey?"

"An old-fashioned term, I admit. I hesitate to call a lady of my acquaintance a 'hot number' to her face, although my cousin Nick Charles never would. But then, that's the Gilbey's talking."

"So Nicky suggests I toddle out in the middle of the night to go see this fuzz-brained CinSim at the Inferno Bar."

"There is no 'middle of the night' in Las Vegas, miss. It's the town that never sleeps."

"Okay. I'm at loose ends, anyway. What's this wandering CinSims's name?"

"Oddly enough, Rick. With a 'k'."

That perked me up. "You sure it isn't the real Ric without a 'k'?"

"We CinSims are as real as rain, Miss Street." I'd never heard Godfrey sound so stiff. "At any rate, should you choose to see this fellow, cousin Nicky advises-and I quote-that you 'crack out your swankiest evening gown and dancing slippers'. Apparently the muddled CinSim is quite a ladies' man and, as Nick, not Rick, said, 'A gorgeous dame might unzip his lips and his amnesia'."

"Despite the comic relief with the flattery, you think this is serious, don't you, Godfrey?"

"I have never known my detective cousin to be so urgent. He actually sounded sober."

"Good grief! I'd better zip over to the Inferno to rendezvous with this mysterious amnesiac. That happen often to CinSims?"

"Certainly not. Our minds are even sharper than our components' faculties, thanks to, er, multiple influences." His brow wrinkled. "Being jerked untimely from our environments may, however, cause some damage. What will you do?"

"Dress to the nines and drive to the Inferno to dazzle this Rick into sanity and spilling whatever beans his black-and-white-head contains."

Manny the demon actually admired my sleek flanks in midnight-blue velvet instead of Dolly's slick black Detroit metal ones when I arrived at the Inferno and left her for valet parking.