Carole Douglas - Silver Zombie

My Black Irish–pale complexion had made high-SPF sunscreen a constant companion even in a come-and-go sunshine state like Kansas. Sunglasses were my constant accessory too, partly to hide the fabled baby-blues I share with my elusive double, Lilith Quince, but I put Lilith out of my mind before she drove me out of it instead.

Hector’s description of sleazy businesses took my Strip walk toward downtown and the last surviving, nonimploded hotel-casinos of the town’s fifties and sixties heyday, when the Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., ran wild in Vegas instead of werewolf mobsters.

After weaving almost to the streetlamps to miss a steamy tourist array of sun-baked Goth and punk leather, I spotted a stunning gold-and-ebony sign above a shop frontage.

CHEZ SHEZ, the gilt letters read, just as I’d recommended.

“Chez”—pronounced as in “the wonderful one-horse shay”—was French for “house of.” “Shez” was short for “Shezmou,” the ancient Egyptian name for “vengeful, beheading demon under-god who’s got great hands for neck-twisting as well as wine-pouring and massage.”

The line of women wasn’t blocks long, but they did almost kick me to the curb, literally. I’d been dodging ill-intentioned Jimmy Choos since Sheena, the weather witch at WTCH-TV in Kansas, so I simply hopped and skipped around them to the front door, which was manned by … a woman.

Of my acquaintance.

She was also one don’t-cross tiger of a female, Grizelle, Snow’s shape-shifting security chief at the Inferno Hotel.

Right now she was all woman, six-foot-three of ridiculously high-priced and small-sized designer suit and stiletto heels on a velvet-black frame. Her skin was moiré black taffeta, subtly marked with the shadow of tiger stripes. Little-known fact: all spotted and striped cats have skin to match. Grizelle in human form was almost as formidable as her six-hundred-pound white-tiger self. Her eyes were jungle green and her manicure was vampire red.

I’d worn my air-sole sneakers for my Strip stroll—the silver familiar was so ashamed of my unfashionable look it was hiding out as a toe-ring—so I was more pipsqueak than usual measuring up to her. But height is attitude, not altitude.

So I showed some.

“New job as a shop doorman, Grizelle? Was Snow so miffed by your last foiled attempt to stop my Inferno comings and goings that he fired you?” I taunted. “Naughty, naughty kitty. Maybe I can put in a good word for you with Nightwine Productions, Inc.”

“I don’t do door duty anywhere,” she answered. “I was just leaving after I saw the low-rent party hanging around inside. Seeing as you ’re entering, I’ll stick around awhile longer.” She fanned the taloned fingers of her right hand.

“Delilah,” said a deep male voice from within.

I promptly did a do-si-do around Grizelle’s statuesque presence and doffed my sunglasses. I still had to blink for several seconds to see in the comparatively dim interior.

What I saw was tall, dark-haired, and not unhandsome, but unfortunately, it was not my indebted demigod, Shezmou.

“Sansouci,” I said with surprise. “Fancy finding you here. Needing a manicure? Or just a good chiropractic neck adjustment?”

I’m no squirt, but most men of my acquaintance flirt with six-foot-something. Now—between the head muscle for both the werewolf mob and Snow’s hellish Inferno operation—I was feeling distinctly outgunned.

Yet intrigued.

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” I commented, switching my gaze from Sansouci to Grizelle like a nervous, well, gazelle. She scared me a lot more than he did, perhaps because I’d done her boss wrong in a very big way.

The pause became what you could call pregnant.

Grizelle tossed her mane of spangled dreadlocks that much resembled an Egyptian wig. I wondered if Shezmou had seen her yet. They’d make an awesome power couple.

“The doors are barred for now,” Grizelle told me. “You can gawk a bit and then you should leave. I’m here for a private business conference with the owner.”

“Me too.” Sansouci’s wolfish grin looked really rakish on a closeted vampire, trust me. “I represent the Gehenna werewolves,” he continued, “but I have time to show you and the little lady around.”

He had a gift for irritating in stereo.

“Oh?” I said. “You’ll want to include me. I can show you around. Shez and I are business partners. Where is he?”

“Shez is male?” Grizelle sounded both surprised and condescending.

She eyed the polished chrome, copper, and gold metallic walls and shelves of semiprecious stone jars. A similar display of gilded wine bottles topped an ebony-and-turquoise bar on another wall.

“I should have guessed,” she added.

“I wouldn’t call Shez a ‘girly man’ to his face,” I warned her.

Looking around without engaging my reflections too much, I saw a surprisingly modest space, part bar and part boutique, just as I’d envisioned, but unattended. I smelled the pine, sesame, and almond oils used in Shezmou’s potions, though not the castor oil, thank goodness. Methought Chez Shez needed a more fashion-forward signature scent. Time for that later.

Then a glass-beaded curtain behind the counter shimmied and remained swaying like a belly dancer’s skirt at the entrance of a slight young woman wearing nothing more than a mahogany spray tan, a tissue-thin strapless white-linen sheath, and an Urban Decay “smoky eye” to die for.

The curtains’ colored beads echoed the red, blue, and green glass on wide ancient Egyptian collars. Their gentle clicking reminded me of the waist-circling, oversize rosaries the older nuns at Our Lady of the Lake convent school had worn … and the sound of the millions of flesh-eating beetles occupying the Karnak underworld.

“Are you Mr. Mou’s one p.m. appointments?” the girl asked. Her eye-whites dazzled as her focus darted between all three of us.

Mr. Mou? Irma interjected. The quick start-up forced our foreign friend Shezmou to employ one of the dimmer bulbs on the marquee.

I was inclined to cut the young woman slack. She was barely twenty, not a ripe old lady of twenty-four like me.

“Mr. Souci?” she inquired hopefully, nailing the only man in the room.

“At your service,” he said smoothly. He knew no other way to deliver a line to a female. “You can call me ‘San.’”

Oh, please! Irma was hopping annoyed, and so was I. The girl was going into standing swoon mode at one glimpse of Sansouci’s deep-set green eyes and one sentence from his even deeper hypnotic voice. Vampire, dearie, and the kind that feeds on women.

“Ms. … Gray Zelle?” She next fastened a hopeful hazel eye on me, since I looked a lot less dangerous than Grizelle.

I stepped politely aside.

The young woman took one look at Grizelle’s haughty carnivore expression and fastened her gaze on me again for dear life. “And you are?”

“Ms. Street, but you can call me Delilah. What’s your name?”

“Fawn Schwartz.”

“Well, Fawn, I am Mr. Mou’s silent partner.”

“You’re, uh, talking.”

“‘Silent partner’ is a business expression. Shez wants to see me first. Alone. Trust me.”

Sansouci raised an eyebrow. Grizelle lifted a sneering upper lip to showcase her carnivore canines. I was glad to ditch the pair when Fawn parted the clicking curtains and I ducked through. Irma and I.

The shop front looks promising but could use some hipper upgrades, she told me.

At this point, merchandising was hardly my main concern. If Christophe, aka Snow, and Cicereau were battling for an interest in Chez Shez, I wanted to make sure they had to deal with me, which both would loathe. I had a feeling the real silent partner in this setup would like that just fine.