And there was raven-haired Ricardo Montalban himself, lean and muscled in swashbuckler shirt and tight pants, in his Latin lover persona, not as the older (but still suave) Mr. Roarke of Fantasy Island. And decidedly not as the still-older and brutally wrathful Khan, a notable movie villain in his sixties with long gray hair. Still, you did not want to rile this man.

And…oh, my God, there was Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, also lean, both of mind and body, smoking a pipe and eyeing the cast of unhumans with eagle-sharp eyes from under his deerstalker.

I smiled at the Invisible Man's inviting two CinSims associated with the word "wrath/rath" on this outing. I'd have to find out where this unlikely pair was usually stationed before I left.

The Sherlock Holmes CinSim would never notice my Lilith lures, but Khan-to-be looked interested already. I'd rather flirt with the youthful leading man Montalban…maybe a water baby idyll, like he'd had with swim star Esther Williams in Neptune's Daughter. I was beginning to see the commercial appeal of the CinSims to the public. Fantasies fulfilled, from a casual meeting to a long, hot mating, only not in living color.

But… no thanks. I had the real deal. My deal. Ric. Whom I should have asked to escort me here, except I was trying to prove to him I didn't need him as protection. Or to prove it to myself. Who was I kidding?

Claude gestured for the two CinSims to join us. As they sauntered over, I eyed the rest of the clientele over the rim of the cloying drink. To us middle-class Kansans, they'd come across as the scum of the earth: gang bangers, bikers, low-rent muscle and hitmen, robbers and muggers, carjackers, sex and drug addicts. And those were just the humans.

I played the game of guessing which were the unhumans. There were enough CinSims here that some had to be CinSymbs. It struck me that today's Las Vegas was a city of strong dualities. Good/bad, lucky/unlucky, rich high roller/poor sucker, powerful men/weak but sexy women, faux/real and now, of course, alive/dead.

Chapter Fifteen

So far the Sinkhole had been the usual guy venue: alcohol, cigarettes and 3-D TV sports, plus a few rough-looking women lined up at the bar.

Now I was mesmerized by the famous personas heading toward the Invisible Man's table, two CinSims familiar from my pre-teen reading and cable TV-watching days.

Basil/Sherlock was looking as bored and unhappy as Mr. Spock at a picnic, but Ricardo/stock Latin lover character was eyeing the crowd. His eyeing got more personal the nearer he approached.

"Why did you want to meet me here anyway?" I asked the Invisible Man as our new companions joined the table.

He leaned nearer to whisper even more softly…and put a leather glove on my knee. "It's the only place in Vegas that isn't monitored by the powers that be or the police. That's why it moves around. It's the only place CinSims dare assemble, and are tolerated as free agents."

"Are you free agents?" I asked, glancing at all of my Three CinSim Stooges: Sexy, Asexual, and Horny. Snow White never had it so good.

"Shhh!" The Invisible Man eyed the unsavory ranks of supernaturals and debased humans surrounding us. "It's to everybody's advantage to keep a safe zone private. That doesn't mean that very bad things don't happen in the Sinkhole. They simply are not official business in the rest of Vegas."

"What entertainment venues host our new friends here?"

"Entertainment," Holmes spat. "Certainly not."

"These two are…privately owned. Like Hector Nightwine's man, Godfrey."

"Owned, not leased?"

The fedora nodded.

"How does this happen?"

"The…purveyors announce auctions. All interested parties are free to bid."

"This smacks of outright slavery." Which was exactly what I'd suggested to Snow, and which he'd denied vehemently.

"Viva Miss Delilah," Montalban hailed my indignation in his silken tequila voice. "It is even worse than the studio contracts I signed when I first came to Hollywood from Mexico. Those old time moguls were bastards, but at least they loved making movies. Our current masters only love making money."

"CinSims have been legally declared intellectual property," the Invisible Man explained. "Our base material is anonymous and the actors who played us are, in most cases, dead-"

"And if some are not?" I asked. "After all, people are extending their life spans in some form or other, or being revivified all the time, if they're rich enough."

"The studios, or whatever legal entity has succeeded them, get a royalty, as do the actors or their estates. But since a CinSim is a true amalgam, the courts have ruled, so far, that we are a new creative entity and belong to those who cobbled us together from the dead and the flickers of vintage film strips,"

"You sound almost proud of your unique status," I told the Invisible Man.

"Why not? I was and am still typecast as a mad scientist. I salute what science today has done to blur the lines between art and technology, and even life and death, to preserve what were mere half lives as whole lives."

Montalban was meanwhile eyeing my butch leather outfit. "This is most unfeminine," he said, caressing the next words. "No scarlet silks, no ruffles, no jewels." His autocratic tone softened. "But I like it. I like it very much."

"Who is your… master?" I asked.

"Mistress," he corrected smoothly. "I was won by a woman, of course."

Whoa. My inner girlfriend, Irma, spoke up for the first time on this expedition. "Does she rent him out, do you think? I'd share with you, even though you won't with me."

I rolled my eyes at no one in particular. Dealing with two "Rics" was beyond my modest experience of a social life. Still, I could see that my Ric, less suave and more direct, shared that certain sexy something with the young Ricardo Montalban.

"What about Sherlock?" I asked Claude, since the great detective was keeping aloof from the conversation.

"He won't say who commands his services," Claude admitted, leaning close to whisper. At least this time he had something interesting to say as well as another squeeze of my knee to execute. "But don't let his attitude fool you. He's here to learn the ways of the Sinkhole and to use them in the future."

"When the CinSims rebel," I guessed.

"Shhh! We trust no one here. I wanted to tell you in this safe zone that your escape from Cesar Cicereau's hit squad has infuriated him and his lieutenants and soldiers. Rumors abound that his organization "bungled' an operation. That's the first kiss of death in mob circles. We CinSims have our ways of learning things. That's why I called you here."

"You don't have information for me on who the Sunset Park male victim is?"

"No. I know you're after that secret even though identifying the female victim nearly got you torn apart by werewolves. Trouble is, word of that showdown in the mountains is arming the opposition too. Cicereau's people, and werewolves, have IDed your boyfriend, Ric. They're not happy with him gunning down their muscle with silver bullets. He should be wary too. Those of us CinSims who've preserved a sense of self and free will can help you, but we are sadly few."

He glanced at our table partners. "And you can see we are limited by the roles in which we were preserved."

Which meant that we had young skirt-chasing Montalban to deal with, not the seasoned actor who projected The Wrath of Khan on movie screens more than thirty years later. It also meant that Sherlock Holmes was present in the brisk, ultra-effective form of Basil Rathbone's 1940s portrayal, not the mercurial eccentric that Jeremy Brett portrayed to great acclaim forty years later.