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I heard my victio by the rowls

I was blocked from the door My only exit would have to be reflective

The slab of lasses awaited me, but I needed a door out of darkness and into infinity and a light that would put the ar aficionado Cicereau’s office was filled with tabletop lighters It would be sweet to use the fat-cat olf’s affectations to escape his security guy

I fuhter embedded in a marble miniature of the Gehenna and cocked and depressed the lassware, the silver ice bucket, the ure I saw Green Eyes behind ainst the solid wood door I e"Come back"

Chapter Forty-Two

I moved as I always did, because I chose to, beyond thethrough a sheet of ice as gossaonfly like, I darted along silver tunnels I traversed alu ducts, into a chill headwind I , because the ducts were too square to allow for an upright hu through half-set Jell-O

I broke through a thin blue skin and was suddenly facing , except for the cellophane afterbirth coating of the front-surface e and not happy

Then I noticed that my double didn’t wear a fa itself into the hair at the back of ht, but not out of mind Creepy Still, I appreciated its loyalty and discretion

"This is insane," I told Madrigal "I can’t do this"

"No" He e aroundus up fore and aft

A terrycloth robe dropped onsullenly froed into the heavy e

"It’s not Lilith," I said

"No And it’s not you either It’s your reflection in the mirror"

"Reflections don’t peel off into their own personas"

"You already have one double whose existence you never suspected Maybe this explains Lilith"

"She was real enough to fool a caal lifted one of my reflection’s hands It was limp, lifeless "Only a reflection, as I told you Without ic?"

His attention was all on Del 20 "Um-hmm I do have some that isn’t bound"

"Then maybe you did all of this It isn’t my ’ith mirrors’ at all"

I did so not want it to be al turned so fast his dreadlocks whipped his own cheeks "It’s time for you to leave"

"I think so too"

I had a lead to pursue in the real world a real, weird, solid lead!

Cicereau’s daughter was the dead body

If the Sunset Park deaths went back to the Werewolf-Vampire War in the forties, my romantic Romeo and Juliet idea was rave represented betrayal, and what could those young lovers have betrayed but "both their houses?" House Werewolf and House Vaic irl had seeuy had imprinted on Ric somehow Certainly their passion had affected us both Me, mostly Ric, I could tell, was not sexually retarded in the slightest It’s not fair, Ire!

If I could prove all this, Nightould have a terrific supernatural cold case to present on CSI V I’d have solved ain, and Ric would well, he’d have the satisfaction of knoho his dowsing rod had dug up Andinforest cri, Sylphia and Phasia spun down to the stage floor on their eerie bodily-fluids-al turned to "

I nodded to the stage wings "I don’t need to get Quicksilver"

He aiting just out of the audience sight lines, a happy doggie smile on his face to see me back in this location

"Here are her clothes" Sylphia threw the jogging shirt, shorts, and shoes at me

Wow Everybody wanted me out of the Gehenna but Cesar Cicereau

I joined Quick in the wings to don the clothes, sitting on the cold stage floor to pull on my socks and shoes A cold silver circle under one sock toldnoric show and return to creepy Nightwine Manor and Sunset Park!

I finished tying the shoelaces and then eyed the pallid naked ie of myself a bit nervously She stood beside the prop cabinets, inert as athat behind, this shadow ofa voodoo priestess have a hank of your hair and an envelope full of fingernail clippings and then slip off to Hell with theal came over to us, squatted, and addressed us both "This is the one opportunity for you to escape with no one the wiser I can anih to fool an audience This spares you unwanted exposure, Del, gives Cicereau what he thinks he wants, and gives me the time to plan my our own escape"

"But who or what are you?"

The ician who doesn’t need to waste ti your questions The route out of here will be hard You and the dog ainst your natures as that is"

Quicksilver’s hackles rose at the news of our partners in flight "It’s the only way," Madrigal said He slapped his awesoe and agenda any longer"

Why not? I was used to being unwanted

Our escape hatch was exactly that: a hatch in the stage wall, about the size of an oven door It was fine for Phasia and Sylphia, and even ht squeeze for Quicksilver, even if he belly-crawled

I didn’t like to see a proud dog like Quicksilver crawl, not to ht corners he’d have to turn in the building’s extensive ating a great pyramid’s narrow alleyways between secret chah the hotel’s public areas?"

"Of course I can," Madrigal said, "My tricks of legerdemain could even keep you out of plain view as hotel-casinos have the most advanced, pervasive surveillance systeh to betray me if Cicereau’s technicians should happen to spot it in a randoone, thanks to your mirror-silver substitute Your furred faht If they ask later, I can always say that the dog ran away They never liked his presence anyway"

Quicksilver growled at this, whether fro the hatch ere clearly about to vanish into, or recognizing Madrigal’s slight

"Okay," I said On second thought, I wanted Quick with me when my life was in Phasia’s and Sylphia’s tiny cross-species hands

Madrigal pounded the rusted-in handle open Phasia and Sylphia were gloor’s black vacant ging clothes left my knees and elbows exposed to scrape metal

Quicksilver took a last deep inhalation of !) and we disappeared, head and tail, froal’s little world

The ly spacious, perfectly suited to hands and knees work I suppose the extensive air-conditioning syste

Great So now I could fret about crawling right into the face of sos all around us, as if ere in a haunted house

Phasia and Sylphia stopped frequently as the hidden network of ducts intersected It was truly freaky to see Phasia extend her long thin tongue to "sniff the air for human traces She could have had a fine future in X-rated movies Not that Sylphia was any slouch

She spit out web and dropped over black edges on a viscous thread, returning to nod and lead us forward again

Of course, Quick’s long curved nailssound, which echoed until our party sounded like an advancing arressed, the clack and clatter and groan and sputter of sooverpowered any sound one of us could ress stopped when I ran into Phasia and Quick into me because Sylphia had frozen With our silence, we heard a strident cacophony like eighteen hosts

Phasia’s snaky tendrils twined around ue tastedvibrations rather than speech "The central chae of the journey will bypass this, but you hts illuh to see the door to another hatch

"You can take this route to the outside," Sylphia said

"Is it safe?" I asked

"Safe enough for your breeds"

And if ent tue compactor, ould ever knohat had happened to us?

I eyed the round et it open?"

Phasia’s Victorian doll’s face registered conte serpents that fanned out around the round door, fastened on, and twisted

There yawned another black hole to nothing, but I was growing pretty tired of our escort service

I shrugged and eyed Quick He looked like a dog that was h the hole and pushed off with my hands, Alice down the rabbit hole There was no lost kitten ahead ofwas hard behind me We whirled away, riders on a water-park slide that wasn’t wet or in a water park

Curiouser and curiouser

We landed together in a cloud, a cloud that sent, and perfume, and sweat, and precious bodily fluids If I sent and confusing scents was hitting Quick’s super-sensitive nose

I actually stifled a squeal as we plummeted to a stop It had been rather fun Then I blinked at the artificial daylight that was pressing down on raine headache

It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and deteriant Dumpster-sized bin at the back of the Gehenna, surrounded by towels and bed linens We’d left the sinister hotel that had held us prisoner by a laundry chute

Actually, struggling out of all that siant bin’s edge onto the inner service courtyard’s asphalt surface was the hardest part of our journey out of the hotel

Quicksilver and I finally stood on the Strip sidewalk, buffeted by packs of tourists pushing trails up and down the fahts, the Gehenna’s signage stood out Live and in person! it truie, as You’ve Only Glihtwine for a necrophiliac creep That was before I’d met Cesar Cicereau, mob boss and hotelier and father of one of the dead bodies in Sunset Park

So as the guy whose grave sweet Jean froe irlish heart and body? I kinda wondered that about myself too

Who had made her own father want her dead?

And who had made it possible for olves to live on like vampires, eternally?

Ric knew a lot about olves and maybe vampires, and maybe more about me than I felt comfortable with That could be because I wanted soh there was a lot about Ric I didn’t know, and ht never know

Oh, well Hell! Yeah, literally