Nightwine took my reticence for the affirmative, as I'd hoped.

"Very wise. A good dog and a good man are what a girl needs most in these perilous times."

"I thought you didn't like Ric."

Now he shrugged, a lot more impressively than I had. The shoulders in his burgundy brocade smoking jacket were mountainous. "Montoya's FBI, but at least he didn't stay in long. The Feds keep trying to close down my City of Dreams."

"City of Nightmares."

"As I said, my City of Dreams."

"I don't know why you're going all soft on me now that you're my landlord. You've always wanted me to find out who the guy in that Sunset Park double grave was. I've got a stake in your new vintage murder concept TV series. You were gonna make me a living-dead star, keep Lilith's mystique as a CSI's hottest corpse yet going. Remember? I couldn't do anything more dangerous in this town than get mistaken for Lilith."

"That's all true," he admitted. "I only fret because you're still new to Vegas. Good luck, Delilah. Do check in when you get back. Godfrey will be anxious."

"Right."

I left Nightwine's sumptuous office, Quicksilver at my heels, to find his man Godfrey lurking and listening in the hall. Godfrey's amiable, middle-aged starch went splendidly with his formal butler's garb. He escorted us down the back stairs to the kitchen exit with a monologue of warnings underscored by the castanet click of Quick's nails on the wooden stairs.

"The master means well, but underestimates the sturdiness of his employees, Miss. He is used to dealing with staff less, er, physically fragile than a mortal such as yourself. The Sinkhole is not fit for woman or beast. Mr. Montoya is not so accustomed to Las Vegas and its quirks yet that he would make a reliable guide. I knew a poor chap from Bangalore -"

"Godfrey," I said, "that sounds like the start of a naughty limerick." When we hit bottom at the large kitchen floored in big black and white marble squares like a chessboard, I turned to face him. "Besides, I know what I'm doing."

Godfrey's CinSim face and garb were all black and white and shades of gray. He was a blend of actor William Powell and the disguised rich-man-posing-as-butler from My Man Godfrey, a classic nineteen-thirties screwball comedy.

I knew that beneath the slick film image the heart of a zombie didn't beat, but Godfrey felt solid when touched and his fully human concern touched me.

"Godfrey, I have to learn to live in this pretty nasty world I've found myself in, just as you have. I'm not tied to any particular place, as most of you CinSims are. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

I nodded at Quick to follow me. We skedaddled out the back door, but not before Godfrey called after me, "Remember you're from Kansas. There might be some ruby red slippers somewhere to whisk you home in a pinch."

Poor Godfrey. He believed in movies almost as much as Nightwine did. It was only thirty yards across the cobblestone driveway to my digs. The sharp, reassuring sound of Quicksilver's nails still shadowed me. That dog was my fanged guardian metronome.

The place I rented from Hector was as cute as dimpled and spit-curled Betty Boop, the cartoon flapper. I fell in love again with my literal Enchanted Cottage every time I saw it. I considered it a real-life version of a vintage Disney cartoon cottage made for bluebells and bluebirds circling the front door, and sometimes they actually did.

Hector had added a lot of modern comforts, including a Jacuzzi and convection oven, but the cottage remained an unfolding origami magic show of kitchen witches, yard trolls and other usually invisible manifestations that came and went on their own quirky schedule.

Once home again, I caught up on the newspaper and current events and domestic chores that didn't get magically done by the shy household help before preparing an early evening snack.

"Better eat, drink up and be merry," I told Quicksilver. "We're going where you definitely don't want to consume anything you don't have to in self-defense."

I could soon hear him lapping up a tsunami at the kitchen water bowl while I changed into my impromptu Sinkhole outfit. As a TV reporter in Wichita, I wore business casual for the job. Here in Vegas I was going places where I needed clothes that would protect me from fang bites and claw burns.

I'd learned at an early age that bluff was the best disguise.

The use-softened black biker leathers I'd found at vintage clothes emporiums along Charleston would have looked Hell's Angels Goth with my black hair. Especially if I slapped on some vampire-red lip-gloss.

But after I struggled into the leather low-rise jeans, the knee-high boots, the spandex knit top and funky suede-fringed seventies vest, I pinned up my Black Beauty mane and pulled on my new short blond wig in the classic twenties/seventies Sassoon/so Neurotic Now bob that curves under your chin like twin scimitars.

The perfect disguise. Blonds were so plentiful in this town three hundred miles from Hollywood people literally couldn't see their faces for the façade. And the town sprouts wig shops like a transvestite creates female celebrity impersonations. Then I popped in gray contact lenses with no correction that obscured my morning-glory-blue eyes. Delilah, meet anti-Lilith.

The mirror accomplished the introduction. When the tall mirror ending the hall to the attic bedroom suite wasn't playing tricks and I wasn't in disguise, it reflected me in all my Snow White coloring and Lilith glory.

It was odd that the world thought Lilith, and therefore me, her double, beautiful. I'd always hated my dead-white skin and dead-black hair that reminded every vamp and half-vamp in the New Millennium universe that I came corpse-pale, just what they were looking for in a woman and a fast-food combo. I'd been fighting off vamp-boy bullies since puberty. It got so I'd rather fight than fornicate, even when I'd finally had a chance to do the latter.

I was making friends with my own image since I'd met Ric, though. His savvy, warm and winning personality and hot Latin blood were melting my Black Irish heart and hormones. I'd never had a boyfriend, only bad dates. I'd never had a lover or an orgasm. All that was past tense now and I'd wanted in the worst way to ask him to escort me to the Sinkhole.

Which is why I wouldn't. I don't like being dependent on other people. It only gets you hurt in the short run and makes you weak in the long run. Orphan's axiom. Dogs, on the other hand, offered unconditional love and unflagging doggy breath.

I slapped on some Lip Venom. I always carried the tingling, lip-plumping gloss because it made me feel lethal and viperish. Then I finished pinning on the wig with twenty copper-blond hairpins and was ready to go, except for donning the used cop utility belt I'd found in a pawn shop behind the Harley-Davidson souvenir shop and café.

It made me look hippy, but in a big baaad don't-mess-with-moi way. I kept the baton and heavy flashlight and added a couple kitchen knife hilts for show.

No cell phone. You could be identified by them. Las Vegas was full of dead zones, anyway. Nor did I have lots of relatives and friends to send pics of the infamous Sinkhole.

So where would I find the elusive Sinkhole, a notorious place where human and unhuman lowlifes did sex, drugs, armed robbery and grievous bodily harm to each other and any suicidal straights who wandered in?

I drove Dolly downtown near the crime district for starters. I wasn't worried about my flashy vintage ride even though it was hot enough to melt. It had its own special security system.

Soon after hitting town, Quicksilver had broken out a side window to escape the locked car and defend me from a half-werewolf biker gang called the Lunatics. The window was a one-off, long since vanished from even junkyards and online auto-part dealers. I mourned loudly about the impossibility of replacing the window when I got home and parked Dolly in the driveway of the Enchanted Cottage.