"Glad you can take the lost sheep in hand. First, Miss Bo Peep, point me to a computer."

Her head lashed back to me, white dreadlocks whipping against her black velvet cheeks. "You presume."

I said nothing, but my silver familiar loosened a string of rhinestones from my belt and whipped it around her tabby-shadow-patterned bare black forearm.

Her glossed lips snarled, but she backed down. "Use the one in the boss's office. I believe you know the way. It's empty."

"Fine. And, Nicky-" I turned to find my dapper ally looking a more than a little dead-white around the gills. "Please send me an Albino Vampire there. Snow said they were on the house. Eternally."

Grizelle glowered at Nicky. Nicky shrugged. Behind them, Rick Blaine glowered at his half-empty Brimstone Kiss glass, then eyed Grizelle with manly appreciation. Grizelle glowered at Rick.

I figured it was a draw all around and headed through the dancers and then the wandering crowds and the casino to Snow's office far behind the main floor.

The cell phone was in my metal mesh vintage purse, an unlikely partnership of technology and style, of current events and past fashion.

Despite its cool, metal sheath, it felt like a hot potato in my hand.

It felt heavy beyond the few ounces it weighed.

It felt like a matter of life and death that might mean the world to me.

HOW did the human race accomplish anything before the Internet became the fountain of all knowledge-good, bad and unreliable?

I tended to think these heavy thoughts because I was sitting in the tufted white leather chair behind Snow's desk, accessing the Internet from his desktop. What extremes of evil might be found on it with some adept snooping on my part?

But I was here to deal with grave matters of my own, not the state of Snow's soul.

Getting on Groggle always made me feel like I was cheating on a test in school. It was sinfully easy to bone up on any subject in a half hour or so. Obviously, I needed to research ancient Egyptian culture to get a handle on just what the Karnak was and what might be going on there.

First I confirmed that no Egyptian pharaohs had been named Kephron or Kepherati, and no royal twins ever had jointly ruled the Upper and Lower Kingdoms.

The sixty-four million-dollar question about the lavish managerial setup at the Karnak was who, or what, the over-devoted head pair were. Were they actual surviving ancient Egyptians hiding out? Were they deluded wealthy modern wannabes? And what were they doing in Las Vegas?

People today, fascinated by the richness and beauty of tomb treasure and the royal lifestyle, might think progressing to the afterlife was a high-end adventure tour. Not so. It was terrifying, Groggle revealed. The Egyptians didn't have things like The Book of the Dead and The Book of the Netherworld for nothing

According to one reputable-looking Web source, the spirit went to a Hall of Judgment, which sounded a lot like the two Kephs' reception chamber. After passing seven gates, the wandering corpse had to face the judgment of Osiris, god of the netherworld, in a weighing of the heart ceremony in the presence of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, and the whole darn Egyptian set of forty-two gods. The heart was the only organ left in the body just to star in this final ceremony. A Weight Watcher's fear of the weekly scale was puny by comparison.

Could Las Vegas be the eternity that lurked beyond the ancient Egyptian river journey of the dead? Were there so many Egyptians here at the Karnak because they'd been crossing over for centuries? The royal twins' reception hall was beneath the surface of the desert. An entire Egyptian necropolis and city could lurk under all this Nevada sand, a secret Area 51 for aliens from Earth's past inner space, rather than outer space.

I kept skimming some of the hundreds of Web sites on Egyptian customs and beliefs, looking for a reason for the Kephs being in the here and now. I played hooky too, taking a detour to museum sites, comparing the loot there to what I'd seen in the netherworld at the Karnak hotel. Even if it was reproduction, the Karnak stuff was worth millions.

A Web page about the tomb of Tutankhamun reminded me of the attack hyena that shared the young pharaoh's cute modern nickname, King Tut. I gazed on color photos of the boy ruler's impressive mummy case, tomb furnishings, the gold and lapis lazuli, the exquisite collars and bangles.

Talk about a vintage treasure trove! Art Deco style was influenced by the art and artifacts Howard Carter discovered in Tut's tomb. I loved that period, but Art Deco furniture would never fit in the cozy late-forties atmosphere of the Enchanted Cottage.

But the gold, piles of it, was beautifully wrought. And the tall gold lily in the pot, maybe five feet high…There, found in King Tut's tomb, was the duplicate of the pair of artifacts flanking Keph and Keph's paired thrones!

I opened my cell phone and took my first gander at the photos I'd managed to take surreptitiously while a guest of the royals. Yup, the same paired artifacts.

I went back to the Web site, eagerly reading the text beside the online photo.

The weird dangling forms I'd seen both online and at the Karnak were Imiut fetishes!

So what were Imiut fetishes? A stuffed or decapitated animal skin tied by its tail to a pole which was, in turn, inserted into a flower-pot-like stand. The skin, usually from a leopard or a bull, was sometimes wrapped in bandages. Its tail often ended in a papyrus flower. In some depictions, the skin dripped blood into the pot. Gruesome!

The ones in Tut's tomb and the Karnak throne room were stylized, gilded versions.

The fetish was originally connected with a god named Imiut-"He Who is in His Wrappings," wrappings as in "mummy." He eventually became an aspect of Anubis, the jackal-headed god who evolved into the gatekeeper of the underworld and who protected the dead as they journeyed there. Anubis wasn't so much a death god as a god of dying and therefore associated with embalming and funerals. He was also the patron of lost souls and therefore…gulp!…orphans.

We have a patron, Irma crowed.

I sat back in Snow's cushy chair, sipped the Albino Vampire Grizelle had sent, and then huffed out a sigh. My shoulders ached, not just from being hunched over a computer screen but from holding up the slippery silk velvet of my vintage gown, which wanted to become an off-the-shoulder style. Who knew sedentary scholarship could be so wearing?

I drank deeper of the Albino Vampire to unchain my brain and relax my shoulders. The alcohol had an immediate effect of loosening my inhibitions and opening my mind. I leaned toward the weird onscreen image again. Something about these ghoulish and oddly undecorative decorative objects had bothered me from the moment I spotted them. It had been suspicion at first sight.

They simply weren't grand and gorgeous enough to flank pharaonic thrones.

Like I'm an expert in Egyptian funerary objects. Still… I studied the dangling beheaded object. It gave me the creeps and seeing a pair of them placed so close to those entwined twins creeped me out even more.

Headless skins were hardly an elegant accessory for a throne room. Keph and Keph had intentionally placed symbols of… embalming…next to their thrones?

Reading further, I found the blue lotus-the lily topping the golden pole-closed nightly only to reopen with the morning sun and was a symbol of rebirth. So a symbol of dead flesh combined with one of renewal…could this odd object embody a ritual by which the dead were returned to life?

I wanted to pound my head to jolt out the fugitive thoughts rattling around the far reaches of my brain.

Were Keph and Keph flanked by evidence that they had been buried but still lived? Did they flaunt the Imiut fetishes that were meant to entomb them for eternity as banners to show what fate they had escaped to enjoy a double undead life hereafter? To show they now lived forever? Immortal undead… vampires?