Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

I tripped down the stairs (you can do that only in Disney movies) and ran to the front door, where a man in a chauffeur’s cap waited like Godfrey.

The Lincoln Town Car also awaited, the discreet celebrity choice. Godfrey would never endorse the ostentation of a limo.

Ric was waiting inside.

“Hombre,” I said, “you rock me,” as I sank into the backseat and his arms.

And we were off to see the wizard and his mysterious unveiling. Maybe he’d even reveal just what kind of supernatural he was.

“I’M IMPRESSED,” RIC said.

“By what?”

“You know just where the penthouse elevator is at the Inferno. I had to hunt it up.”

“But you’d used the Nine Circles of Hell elevators when I caught up with you.”

“Before that, I mean,” he explained, “when I checked out Christophe’s personal setup before I investigated his entertainment section.”

“It’s good you’ve at last had a chat with him, man to man. Or whatever he is.”

“He does play the mystery card, doesn’t he?”

“So you went from the penthouse to the Lust level? Anything he said?”

“I visited the Inferno Bar too, to check with Godfrey’s alter ego, Nick Charles, and company. That Asta is cute, not to mention Nora, but Quicksilver, of course, is Serious Dog.”

“You are the thorough investigator. We’d better plan for a second act tonight,” I told him as the elevator arrived and swallowed us up. “This announcement and celebration is scheduled for the break Snow has between evening stage shows. It’s just a stop before we move on elsewhere to party hard.”

“Okay. Time to flaunt our fine feathers and for some bubbly and a toast to the latest Christophe triumph, and we’re off to where . . . ? The Venetian?”

I nodded happily.

“I’m not moving in with Christophe,” Ric whispered in my ear. “Trust me.”

“One thing about that facedown in the desert. What does El Finado mean?”

“What?” Ric mocked. “You’re not keeping up with your Spanish dictionary?”

“El Demonio’s real men, the actual human vermin, were chanting that as they perished.”

“Did they? I was in my own Zen place then. They must have gotten the gender wrong. You know Spanish has masculine and feminine words.”

“Sí, señor.” I copped a feel of the Spanish masculine.

“Del.” He laughed and swung his hips back. “The elevator has a security camera. Concentrate on your Spanish grammar until later. El Finado is like El Muerto . My culture doesn’t fear death and the dead as Anglo culture does. We personalize concepts like Death.”

“Like El Muerto is Death, our guy with the scythe, only he’s got the grinning skull down cold.”

“Right.”

“So if El Muerto is Death, who is El Finado ?”

“A corpse. The corpse. That’s what a corpse is called.”

Oh. My heart stopped.

Maybe I was La Finada . That’s what the dying men would have called out if they were addressing the femicide army. Or maybe not. Some words don’t have a feminine version in Spanish.

The elevator spit us out into the White Zone.

Snow wasn’t immediately visible, as he usually was, like Godfrey. I felt a ping of unease as Ric and I moved into the main room. Maybe everybody was finado , and it had all happened while we were riding up in the sixty-story elevator.

I’d expected a murmuring, champagne-swilling crowd and waiters skating by with appetizers and Appletinis. The place was as silent as a tomb, a gorgeously designed and posh tomb, but deadly quiet nevertheless.

The penthouse was . . . deserted. I was walking through a dream.

“There’s one thing I envy Christophe,” Ric admitted. “I love the view from here.” He swept me to the window wall.

Far down the Strip I spotted the huge lit billboard for Madrigal and the fey girls. Once it had advertised the iconic big cat magicians Siegfried and Roy, a sad reminder of how even decades of Vegas headlining could vanish in one tragic moment. Nothing lasted.

“It’s a shame,” Ric said, “that huge construction next door is blocking our view.”

“I’m amazed Snow would tolerate that kind of infringement. I guess somebody paid a bunch of billions to smuggle their new concept against the Inferno.”

“Let me tell you, the Lust level right here is pretty spectacular. What? Delilah, I’m saying you should take a stroll down there, chica . Discover what, or who you find. It’s pretty illuminating.”

I knew I should give him heck for that when I heard the elevator arrive.

We turned.

Another couple entered the foyer.

Grizelle and . . . Snow in full white leather rock-concert regalia.

Ric took a deep breath next to me. He’d never seen Snow’s raunchy rock uniform up close and Grizelle was wearing a strapless sheath of magenta sequins that showed lots of her black skin with its glistening pattern of charcoal gray tiger stripes.

They made a spectacular pair. Both tall, she black and runway-beautiful. He platinum blond-on-blond.

“This is it?” I demanded.

I looked around, then realized why the place felt so deserted. No Silver Zombie was plunked against the wall like a family suit of armor.

But the bar, I saw, now boasted a silver ice bucket on a tripod and a bottle of Cristal champagne. And four flutes full of bubbly all in a row.

“This is it?” I asked again.

I was right. Ric and I were the show break.

“Grizelle,” Snow invited his security chief-cum-arm-candy.

She plucked up two of the flutes to give to me and Ric. Seeing the haughty shape-shifter fetch was worth about ten cents.

Snow ambled to the window, Tallgrass style, a champagne flute in his pale, ringed hands.

“You’re here for the birth of a billboard,” he said, nodding to the Strip scenery.

Even as he spoke, of course, there appeared a Times Square scrolling–light billboard, with a scarily larger-than-life-size image of Snow prerecorded with audio that was piped onto the Strip and into the penthouse.

Way to hold a press conference, dude! I downed some champagne.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the filmed Snow far below but way larger than life announced. “I give you the Inferno’s newest expansion and Vegas’s most dazzling must-see, must-go-to venue, the Metropolis. ”

Half the view outside the window shifted, crumbled, sank, as if the earth had set on the moon. A total reverse of reality.

The massive construction framework next to the Inferno melted as the concealing curtain it really was—painted with a faux facade—fell like a finished Christo building wrap.

Behind the curtain towered a golden glass and metal skyscraper surmounted by a five-tiered horned-roofed Babel, all from the silent film, Metropolis , except it was maybe sixty-five stories high.

What an astounding, instant Dubai architectural-excess sort of monument. This was definitely Ric’s and my week for seeing giant icons in the sky, and I for one was sick of it.

“There it is,” Snow said. “My new Metropolis Tower. Casinos, nightclubs, five-star dining venues below, lavish suites above. All yours, Montoya, except for the profits, of course, which you’d never take anyway. Below the pinnacle, a Vegas landmark that is protection in itself. Above, your own penthouse, a floor for the Silver Zombie. Utter security. A headquarters for your new crusades. Every technological and magical investigative tool you can imagine. You’re King of the World.”

Ric turned to pin down Snow with a hawkish gaze. “And you’re not overlord of it? You’re not even on the premises?”