I felt a chill in the super-cool air-conditioning. For the first time I detected a fruity scent of decay overlaid by a wave of bitter orange.

"What killed him?"

"Not who?"

"That's for me and Ric to find out."

"'What' may describe it better. There were thirty pieces of silver. Silver dollars. You were right. But only twenty-nine in the grave. The last one was in the jaws of the man, and he was killed with an axe. Spinal cord severed at the neck."

Now I frowned, and Bahr leaned close again. "One old world method of laying a vampire to rest forever. Coin in the mouth; head cut off, buried for eternity. Except you and Ric came along. You have the Kid's same…knack?"

"No," I said, a bit stunned by my instincts turning out to be true.

"Good. I find it rather creepy."

I sat stunned, then laughed! Trust a coroner to find dowsing for the dead "creepy." He was first and foremost a doctor, a scientist.

"We work together," he added. "He had to tell me how; otherwise, it would have hampered my reports. I'm surprised he let you in on his facility."

"You let me into yours."

"Ah." He nodded. "Anything else?"

"It was suggested to me that Ric's wooden dowsing rods could act as a sort of psychic stake."

"You mean kill, as well as find?"

I nodded.

"Interesting theory, but I doubt it."

"What do the police know?"

"Shot and axed. That's all they want to know at the moment. These Millennium Revelation changes have freaked out the criminal justice system. It's just been a few years; the laws are a patchwork that's being fought out in the courts. I hope I've been of service."

I stood. "Very much so, Dr. Bahr." I held out my hand for a shake and he took it in his big paw.

"Call me Grisly. All my friends do. Not that there are very many of them in my line of work."

I worked it through. Grisly/Grizzly Bahr. "Black humor gets us all through."

"You sound like you know a little of what I'm about, Miss Street."

I nodded.

"Bring Ric the next time you come. Not that I'm eager to share the riches, but he's spending too much time in Juarez. He needs a social life and less morbid atmosphere."

And then he laughed.

So did I, so I left.

Driving Dolly home from Pinto Lane, I had the white top down so the wind would freshen my hair and dispel the orange-scented decay of the coroner's facility.

That's when I noticed a huge billboard above the Strip advertising Madrigal's show at the Gehenna.

I'd seen lots of photos of the Strip featuring similarly huge billboards of Siegfried and Roy and one of their white tigers before Roy's tragic accident shortly after the Millennium Revelation. (White tigers are magnificent creatures but they don't hold the same allure for me now that I've seen Snow's shape-shifting bodyguard-cum-personal assistant, Grizelle.)

I'd probably driven by this and matching billboards a dozen times since coming to Vegas, never noticing the striking image of Madrigal posed with a delicate and fey familiar assistant on each brawny bare shoulder. What almost made me make Dolly shriek to a sudden stop was the image of my own airbrushed face behind the trio. And the words: Nightly: Miss Maggie, dead and alive, only at the Gehenna.

The frenetic Strip traffic flow doesn't allow for gawking, so I drove on, stewing. Why not paste up a giant Wanted: Dead or Alive! poster of me all over town? Every Maggie freak around would be hunting me everywhere. The Rococo lettering style actually read "Margie," but you had to look really hard to see that. I was sure Nightwine's non-CinSim lawyers would make hash of that dodge, but legal action could take years.

So it was up to me to provide some illegal action. I had to get that semi-CinSim of myself off the stage and the billboards and out of the Gehenna for good. Pronto! I gunned Dolly onto a side street and headed us overland to Nightwine's place. My place.

When I got there, Quicksilver was out and Ric still wasn’t answering his cell phone. I'd tried calling repeatedly to tell him the news from the coroner's office.

I left a message that I had business at the Gehenna. That worried me a little, both of them being out of touch, but I faced a bigger worry: Margie at the Gehenna. There was a slice of me still there and I had to get her out somehow. Right now!

While I paced the cottage living area, I noticed how sparkling clean everything was. I never caught my cleaning crew in action. The place was indeed enchanted, as Godfrey had said. I could use some enchanted good ideas about now.

Only one idea occurred. Could I sneak into the Gehenna's theater before tonight's first show, avoid Madrigal and his creepy-crawly assistants, and do something about Margie?

I went upstairs to change into black cat-burglar clothing, just in case.

I headed down the upstairs hall and turned off into my bedroom.

I stopped.

Walked back into the hall.

It was always in shadow, being an interior passage with no strong lighting source, so the mirror at the end of the hall was always murky, useless for checking how you really looked. You'd only get an approximation.

Only now I got…nothing. No image. No reflection. Nothing.

For a moment I stood frozen. I hadn't reflected in the silver tray at Snow's, either. The old legends said vampires couldn't reflect in a mirror, but that was then and the Millennium Revelation had rewritten the rules. I hoped so, because I definitely didn't want to be a vampire. Anything but that! Well, anything but a werewolf.

I went to the kitchen, got my flashlight, and returned to the hall. I turned on the strong beam and walked toward the eerily empty mirror. The flashlight reflected like the one-eyed headlight of a locomotive rushing toward a film camera.

But I didn't move a muscle, according to the mirror. I was invisible. Not there. At all.

I think my heart stopped at what that meant. Was I now locked out of my own medium, the silver-backed mercurial magic of a mirror?

Oh, my.

I'd come up nose-to-nose with the glass. It wasn’t the front-surface mirror Madrigal had showed me, the mirror that I'd been able to walk through with the assistance of his magical powers. Yet I couldn't see that this wasn’t that kind of mirror, because no matter how close I came, I saw nothing of myself. No reflection.

Because I had been separated from my reflection. My reflection remained behind at the Gehenna, just barely a material girl, a…zombie animated by Madrigal. My God, maybe that was my soul! It was me…certainly, a part of me.

I shuddered at the implications: yet another me out there, to be used and manipulated.

No way.

My fingertips felt the cold smooth surface of the mirror, even if the mirror didn't trouble to reflect them back. This was an enchanted cottage. The mirror must be enchanted too. Maybe I could use it.

I pressed my hot, anxious cheek to the icy surface. It was there. Only I wasn’t. Jeannie hid somewhere behind it. Margie could be there too, especially since she was a part of me.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the realest of them all?

"You," a voice whispered back to my unspoken question.

I stood there, shocked. Maybe I was hallucinating. The word conveyed no particular gender, and it sounded so distant that it echoed a bit.

I swallowed, playing this by ear, by my ear pressed to the cold glass. I thought I could feel a slight pulse, like a heart beating. Weird.

I pulled back. "Then let me see myself," I said aloud.

No answer, but my fingertips felt the icy glass warm beneath them. First fingerprints formed where I'd touched the surface, blackened whorls that looked like they'd been inked by an old-fashioned police process.

Behind the reflected fingerprints an image assembled bit by bit.