The young woman hid the locket in her tight fingers and turned away, vanished.

I turned to retrace my steps in the void. Walking out of the mirror meant walking into a shiny black curtain. I was back in the hallway, cold and shivering, dizzy, unable to focus. The more time I did in Mirrorland, the more my body paid.

I was sad to leave my first mirror friend with no more intimate a name than my soubriquet from the old song. "Jeanie with the light brown hair."

Still, I had what I needed most, the bone boy's name. Krzysztof. Now I only needed to find out who he'd been and for how long.

Chapter Nineteen

Now that I had two dead chicks and a guy to investigate, I was alternating between my paying and personal case loads.

With a big fat new clue in my quiver, it was time to concentrate on the Sunset Park case. Bad timing, though. My usual three days of menstrual agony hit me hard, as if the mirror was punishing me for teasing a secret out of it.

I wasn't about to run with Quicksilver in the park, but I'd always worked through menstrual cramps with a stiff upper lip, so late that afternoon I donned my pseudo-cop clothes and duty belt. Quick and I shared a roast beef sandwich snack in the kitchen before going out to get Dolly on the road.

I was going trolling in blond disguise again, this time on the Las Vegas Strip opposite the glittering sprawl of the Gehenna hotel and casino.

I needed updated info and insight on the werewolf owner, Cesar Cicereau, and wanted more specifics on magic, mirrors and me. Before I'd escaped Cicereau's pack of hit-werewolves at Starlight Lodge and before mi amor, Ric, had obliterated a bunch of them with his silver-bullet-spitting Uzi, Cesar had hoped to mount my head and hide on his hunting lodge walls. Was I still a wanted woman? I should be able to find out from an inside man. Madrigal, the indentured magician I'd been forced to work with briefly, who had first abetted my Adventures in Mirrorland, might just be him.

After valet-parking Dolly at the hotel-casino opposite, the towering Babel, and hiking to the Strip, I paused to admire the Gehenna's façade, an angular forest of glittering verdigris and copper glass towers. Only someone who knew the owner for a werewolf would realize the colors suggested a forest at sunset, both the tranquility of nature and the hot blaze of blood at the end of the hunt.

Since a couple of Cicereau's goons had abducted me from Sunset Park to first bring me here and I'd escaped the hotel through the vast bowels of its service systems, I wasn't sure where to enter.

Quicksilver growled softly beside me, recognizing our former prison.

"You can't go inside," I told him. "You were with me on my previous visit and the boss man's men would recognize you."

His wolfish ears perked and angled at my every word. Almost-humanly expressive pale blue eyes seemed to pick up my meaning instantly and reject it. He whined his frustration, but when I said, "Stay," he sat on the hot sidewalk.

I hated to disappoint Quicksilver. He'd saved my life more than once. And I'd saved him from Haskell's bullets. We were partners.

So I told him to nap under a high-riding pickup truck and waited until he drag-tailed to the spot and circled to lie down. I also adjusted my street-cop utility belt sagging with various nasty tools of the trade.

With my black leather pants and motorcycle boots, a short-sleeved black shirt, and kiddie souvenir gold "shield," I looked enough like one of the city's numerous security personnel to pass for a hotel security guard. The outfit was hot for Vegas, but you can't have naked cops, and I wasn't about to don the seriously non-serious khaki shorts real Vegas cops wore. I needed all the gravitas I could muster.

I fluffed my chin-length platinum wig and adjusted my aviator-style sunglasses, then joined the tourists taking the escalator up to the bridge over the Strip.

Las Vegas heat in early summer can singe your eyelashes off, but it's dry heat and you don't have to worry about anyone seeing you sweat. The black leather belt was old enough to squeak in the dry air, announcing my presence with a nice air of gunslinger.

By the time I pulled open the huge copper door handle of the Gehenna, I was still dry. I plunged into the hotel's dark, icy interior, leaving my sunglasses on and waiting for my eyes to adjust to the extremes in light.

I hadn't bothered to wear my gray contact lenses today, not expecting to deal with anybody who'd recognize my natural baby blues.

At least, I hoped I wouldn't have to.

A major problem was weaving my way through the mammoth hotel's public areas to the theater, far at the rear, and its even more distant backstage area. The casino area was right off the main lobby. Once I worked my way through the crowds there, the chime of slot machines masked the jingle-jingle-jingle of the belt's attached handcuffs.

These cuffs were the real deal, not another handy-dandy manifestation of the form the silver familiar had taken in the Sinkhole. I'd stopped and bought a pair at a sex toy shop on the way to the Gehenna. Hey, this is Vegas! There are way more of those than cop shops. I'd also picked up a couple of canisters of pepper spray at a sporting goods store.

Checking above for surveillance cameras, I noticed automated birds twittering away in the canopy of stained glass leaves above the gaming tables. Clever. The small barn owls with the 360-degree swiveling heads must be mechanical cameras. Their unblinking yellow-glass stares were capturing the images of every passing person.

It was hard not to bump into tourists who stopped unexpectedly to coo about the "cute" animated birds in the faux foliage. Right, cute. Those eye-in-the-sky birds had probably X-rayed their clothes down to the skivvies and recorded their credit card and driver's license numbers and their retinas.

The weight of my police duty belt and its array of defensive weapons had taught me the law enforcement swagger. That walk kept the tourists respectfully out of my path and the real security guards subtly nodding to me as I moved deeper into the behemoth of a building.

Illuminated signs guided me through a couple blocks of casino. Near an arcade of pricey shops, the theater entrance beckoned with a marquee framed in the usual round light bulbs. The house would be "dark" yet, until the 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. shows. I pushed through the blank door.

"Hey," said a voice behind me. "It's closed."

I turned to face a security guard dressed like a Robin Hood merry man.

"I know. I'm on an errand for the boss. He left his Blackberry here."

The guard was a young guy, jumpy. Not good. So I blathered on.

"I'm just saving Sansouci the bother, but if you want to bother him to check, it's okay by me." I hit the word "bother" twice, ominously.

"Ah… no. That's fine. We don't need to bother Mr. Sansouci. You go get it."

"Thanks, bro." I waved him toodleloo and ducked into the absolute dark inside, grinning. As I'd guessed, the staff knew Sansouci was no one to trifle with. Not that I hadn't tried, the last time I was here, with middling success.

Now, the magician Madrigal I could handle, if I could only find the guy.

I walked down a raked aisle between rows of seats, finally doffing the sunglasses and letting my eyes acclimate until they could focus on the "ghost light" to the left of the stage far below. It's an old theater tradition to leave one light on so anyone coming in doesn't trip over all the technical equipment in the wings.

Given that Madrigal was something of a real magician, I didn't trust that one small burning bulb a bit.

The stage seemed deserted, but I walked slowly up the access stairs at the side of the house. Madrigal had an exclusive contract with the Gehenna, perhaps for eternity. None but he used this stage, none but he set it up.