But whose solid ground?

Dracula slowly loosened his custody, but kept his hands on me, now both gloved-how did he do that?-in a waltz position. Did every supernatural in Vegas want to cha-cha-cha with me?

Listen, pal, Irma tried to tell him, these Irish gams only do jigs, not waltzes with weirdoes. She was wrong about that; I'd waltzed with Snow, weird only in the ancient demonic definition of word. He was the sexy longhaired rock-star owner of the Inferno Hotel and purveyor of the "Brimstone Kiss," an after-show perk he bestowed on groupies who became enslaved at one touch of his ice-white lips. Rumor had it he was an albino vampire, the obverse of my current partner. Both of them were deeply unwanted on my dance card, even though Snow's lock of white hair-turned-silver-familiar was still guarding my throat.

Dracula swept me into a stately gliding circle. "A little movement warms the blood after a chilling night flight."

That line was almost worse than his classic "I do not drrrink…vine."

"I'm not dressed for the Creature Feature Cotillion," I told him. "Let's go see the Master."

"He is not so civil… and dashing as Dracula."

"But he is the Master, right? You don't want to cut him out."

Dracula's face gleamed with anticipation. Then the calculated look faded. "I live only to serve. For now."

Master, whoever he was, had better watch his front, especially the carotid arteries.

Despite the probable danger, this outing was fascinating to an investigator. I considered CinSims as animated movie posters, in a way, able to walk and talk, but that was it. If I'd thought about it, they could do a lot more or they'd never be in demand at brothels. Although I'd heard that some human sex partners could be pretty lifeless…

Luckily, I'd lost my virginity right here in Sin City, with a guy who could tease an orgasm out of a corpse. I was only slightly harder to win over. During those literally magical minutes, Ric and I had accidentally tapped the borrowed emotions of the Sunset Park lovers killed during their most ecstatic moments. A little paranormal passion by proxy had not hurt one bit.

But I didn't know that CinSims could freaking fly! And with me along. Apparently, if the CinSim was gifted with paranormal skills in the originating film, those abilities carried over to the zombie reincarnation. That made the rumors of a brewing CinSim insurrection pretty scary. I mean, think: Godzilla loose on the Strip.

"I must leave you," Dracula announced dramatically, bowing to kiss my hand. "My task is done."

With that he walked to the end of the flat roof and jumped off.

"Wait!" I ran to the edge, seeing mostly dead black below, with a smattering of streetlights and signs.

Then I spotted the large humped figure rushing straight down like a beetle, just as Jonathan Harker described his host's creepy manner of egress from his Transylvanian castle in Bram Stoker's classic novel. I watched Dracula's form become one with the dark street below. And where, pray, was I to go?

The usual answer to that in an uncaring world was, "To Hell!"

And in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, it was all too often the literal truth.

Chapter Two

I explored the roof on foot, vertical and a slave of gravity again, thank God.

The surface tar was overlaid with gravel. Occasional air-conditioning units poked up in knee-high hummocks just the right height to trip me in the dark. They were humming away, so the building was in use and occupied.

I circled until I found a larger hummock, the sort of inset entry you find to a storm cellar in Kansas. What it was in post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, I hadn't a clue. It could have been the low road to a crypt.

Okay. What does the alert investigator do? She walks down into the dark and finds out.

Mules, do your duty! Irma offered a small cry of encouragement to my footwear. Iam so glad we are not wearing your Wicked Witch of the West spike heels for this outing.

Listen to the born spike freak, I sassed her back. You'd wear heels to a golf course.

The steps were steep and I hadn't thought to bring along a high-beam flashlight. What woman would expect Dracula to dump her off in the dark like undelivered mail, without even one courtly swipe at her circulatory system?

But once on level flooring, my humble mules were able to shuffle me into a vaguely lit area. The metal door to the service stairs was chained shut with a sign reading Building Condemned: Do Not Use affixed with rusted screws. A search revealed no other access but an air conditioning shaft grille. Spotlighted by a distant neon sign, I could see it was enameled white, but now grimed a dusky gray. I was able to shake it free after further loosening the screws with my fingernails. What shoddy maintenance work! Probably hadn't been inspected in decades.

I set the grille aside and crawled in headfirst. The shaft ran straight, turned, then dropped what felt like four feet and ran straight again.

There was no use cursing the darkness. The only way to enter or leave this building was via down.

I gulped, cheered by the absence of cobwebs pushing over my features like an unwanted, unseen veil. Then I stopped. And wondered why there were no cobwebs. Oh. Maybe I wasn't the only intruder to use this route.

Investigation work was already losing its glamour.

Then I heard voices.

No, I am not Joan of Arc. I am a simple Kansas girl turned loose in the big bad city. And I am a PI. So, onward toward the voices. Another ten feet and I could hear giggles echoing off the hollow aluminum shafts. Giggles?

Definitely female voices, those cloying, phony tones I hated from the girls at Our Lady of the Lake Convent School. Girls who had power and tried to pretend they didn't. Voices I'd heard, once out of high school, directed almost exclusively at men. At powerful men they aimed to seduce.

Seduction had been against my religion…until I'd met Ric here in Vegas. And he'd been the seducer. No, we'd both been seduced, by love and death and lust and dust six feet under in the desert.

I paused, wishing I had my dowsing partner with me, only Ric dowsed for the dead. I was afraid he'd rind some where I was headed now. Those voices echoed as if in a vault. A burial chamber. Great. I wished Quicksilver was with me. I almost wished Dracula was with me, but he, wisely, had split.

When in doubt, advance.

At last, some light leaked into my square metal tunnel. I crawled right into another grille, my nose flat against the metal.

I could look down. A little. I saw a lot of white and began to recognize the location.

Oh, no! The 1001 Knights Hotel. Not here! Not him again! What had I done to deserve this?

At that moment a tremor ran through the shaft, like a boiler deep below going postal. Probably the periodic hiccough of the condemned building. The grille gyrated off its loose screws. I was shaken into it, past it and down the rabbit hole into the white light.

Luckily, unlike Alice, I landed on a bed. Unluckily, there was someone repellent in it. Several someones.

Scarlet-painted worm-lipped women in white scattered at my descent.

The desiccated scrawny figure of an old man in cerise satin pajamas stayed put to aim his lecherous death's head grin at me.

"Howard Hughes," I said, scrambling off the high hospital bed and its stiff white linens. "What an unexpected…meeting."

"Hmm," he said, "I liked you better in white."

His "nurses" regrouped around the hospital bed, licking their lips at me.

I had nowhere to go. Howard's mandarin-long fingernails scratched his sparsely haired chest, drawing blood. The vampire nurses sighed in unison and, with fangs descended, came uncomfortably closer.