He waved a cadaverous hand. "Back! You had your share during the turning. Now if Miss Street cares for a friendly lick from me-"

Ick. The sanitary issues alone were stomach-turning. Historically, he'd been famously vermin phobic. You'd think he'd still have serious inner conflicts about germs in his new state.

"I'm here on your business this time," I said.

We'd first met a couple of weeks ago, when I'd finagled myself in disguised as a nurse-the sexy fantasy sort found in Playboy magazine. Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner had more in common than initials. Hughes was supposedly the most powerful vampire still left in town, which doesn't say much for Vegas vamps.

"Too bad." Howard's watery dark eyes studied my face. "I could have made you a star."

When he'd been a playboy movie mogul, star-making had been the name of his game. His single success was busty Jane Russell, for whom the engineer-aviator had designed the world's first pushup bra. Come to think, maybe the old coot had earned a crack at immortality. He certainly was a Renaissance man. Pilot, inventor, unreal real estate tycoon, lech…

"A star?" I hooted. "Hector Nightwine's already taking a shot at it. I'll be doing featured cameos on his next TV series."

"Nightwine!" he snorted. "A minor, a very minor player. Still, my condition has certain limitations and I require agents to act on my behalf. I would like you to become one of them, Delilah Street."

"How do you know my name?" The last time I had been here, I had ducked out without any introductions.

His smile revealed teeth so ancient they all looked like fangs. "You are already gaining a reputation in this town. I assume anyone the Cicereau mob wants to assassinate is someone worth knowing. Or at least using."

"Ever the straight-talking billionaire," I said. "How do you know about my near-death experience at Cicereau's mountain lodge?"

"Cesar Cicereau thinks he's a rival, but I'm merely giving him the space to screw up. I have sources inside his organization. You look lovely in that python unitard with a Rome Beauty apple in your mouth. Delicious! Cicereau was a fool to let you escape him."

Holy Hugh Hefner, Catwoman! Irma whispered, this undead lech knows about your secret birthday-suit command performance at the Gehenna. He must have better intelligence and organization than you'd think.

"If you have Cicereau's operation wired then why do you need me on your payroll?"

His scraggly-haired head nodded regally. "This may take more legwork than my in-place operatives can handle. I want to know who shared that Sunset Park unmarked grave with Cicereau's daughter."

"You know who the dead woman was?"

"Yes, my tasty little runaway winesap. In today's Vegas, even the spider webs have ears. The creatures of the night's hearing can outdo the most advanced electronic bugs. Better, they can return to me with information."

Bats and wolves were associated with Old World vampires, but spiders? Wolves. Did Quicksilver have a gene susceptible to vamps? He was at least as much wolf as wolfhound. That might explain why he'd slept while I was being airlifted up, up and away by Dracula.

Then there was that spider-fey familiar of Madrigal, the house magician at Cicereau's Gehenna Hotel and Casino, Sylphia…

Thinking of creepy-crawlies made my pale Irish skin break out in gooseflesh.

"Nice." Howard ran a yellowed nail down my arm. I was undecided: did spooked women most titillate his inner mogul, playboy, or vampire?

Time to stop being terrified and deal.

"Okay, Hughes. You know that Cicereau's own daughter was in that grave, but you don't know who the guy was. We're assuming he was a vampire. Is that why you're so interested?"

"I wasn't a vampire myself at that time. No one believed in vampires then. But I did believe in the future of Las Vegas, although I didn't openly invest until thirty years later-in the seventies. Obviously, a lot was going on here in Vegas in the 1940s and 1950s that no one had a clue about until after the Millennium Revelation. I want to know who that slain vampire was. I want to know who put thirty silver dollars in the grave and why. The answers are worth a nice sum to me, Delilah Street, and I will keep my creatures' fangs off you if you achieve my objectives."

"Off me and mine."

"Not including Nightwine."

I shrugged. Hector was my boss, but something of a voyeur and an epicurean ghoul. He'd done quite well here since the Millennium Revelation and I suspected he could protect himself equally well.

"I don't know what you have against Nightwine, but he's not on my personal five fave call list."

"Nor anyone's. So, who is?" Hughes eyed me slyly. "I suppose that big bad doggie of yours."

I nodded. "How do you know about him?"

"He trashed the Lunatics. They're still whining about it. You think a domestic dog taking out a motorcycle gang of half-weres in a parking lot doesn't get on the weird-news Internet? And I suppose you'd want me to spare that big bad ex-FBI man."

How the hell did he know about Ric? I wasn't going to satisfy him by asking.

Meanwhile, the nurses had crowded closer, sighing while sucking air through their fangs. "Fox Mulder," they wailed hungrily.

Honestly, women in all forms are just too inclined to be groupies!

"Forget The X-Files," I told them. "That was fiction and is now only reruns and DVDs. Ric is real life." I eyed them all and then Hughes. "And I want him to stay that way."

"That certainly is something to bear in mind," Hughes noted.

"So… do you have any clues who the dead vamp might be, or who he might have been allied with?"

Hughes folded his age-spotted, blue-veined scrawny claws on the immaculate white bed sheet. It was like viewing leprous orchids in the snow. "I didn't come here to buy up the Strip until the seventies. So I have no clues. Not a one. That's your job, Delish Delilah. And keep in mind, if you fail to find out anything useful, all those no-fang concessions are off. Including on you."

He loomed up from the bed like a striking cobra, the IV stand at his side crashing over to spray both the nurses and sheets with watery pink blood.

I jumped back and off, streaking away through the outer chambers containing germicidal lights and sprays. The startled human-for-now attendants jumped out of my way. I banged through doors until I was in the truly deserted run-down part of the derelict hotel building.

Just what I needed: a notorious, undercover vampire as my first client.

Chapter Three

From my previous fact-finding mission here, I knew I had to get down ten floors and through a ring of decadent vampire druggie-guards to reach the main floor and exit the building.

My silver familiar, which had remained dormant around my throat all through my adventure with Hughes Tool and Vampire Company, crept down my right arm to curl around the bases of my fingers. The silver metal thickened into rings and then grew two-inch diamond-dusted spikes on each finger: the glitzy Vegas version of brass knuckles.

Well! How had Snow's unwanted gift known to produce the glittering knuckle spikes? They echoed the diamond-dust-embedded nail file points I'd used to hold off group-home, half-vamp bullies years ago. Eerie.

Snow had sent me the lock of his albino hair as a play on my name and his enigmatic powers. I couldn't resist petting it in memory of my lost white Lhasa apso's flowing coat. Like a striking serpent, the soft tendril of hair had morphed into a hard silver bangle on my arm with a permanent lock on me, unable to be sawn or burned off. Whether or not the silver familiar taunted me by migrating to various body parts and becoming simply decorative jewelry, changed into protective adornment or transformed into instant weaponry, I resented being protected at the cost of being invaded.