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"And you?"

"It may suit me very much, as you do, Delilah Street" He lifted his Albino Va used"

"No one does, youme for a Brimstone Kiss"

"Not damn likely"

"No, merely certain" Those cold white lips drew in more of my own creation, the Albino Vampire cocktail "Check with the coroner on the boy’s body It wouldn’t hurt to cultivate the coroner, as only you can You’ll be seeing a lot of him from now on, one way or another"

Chapter Fifty-One

As usual, Snow had iave away The next day I looked up the address of the coroner’s office Most as still called its headwith dead bodies a coroner

An online map site showed the Clark County Coroner’s office located on a two-block-long street north of busy Charleston Boulevard, the east-west street that also featured a lot of vintage shops, I noticed as Dolly and I cruised along Charleston with the top down

I figured I’d need fresh air coue

Pinto Lane was not far froas Convent school I was re Miss Dolly these days! My vintage Caddy was as long and black as a hearse, but the red interior and white ragtop gave her a jaunty rather than a funereal look Still, I could se trunk, if I wanted to

S dead bodies made me think of Ric I didn’t know if he’d be proud or annoyed that I was taking the investigation by the horns and waltzing right over to interrogate the coroner hiave , but without official credentials, I wasn’t sure that nerve alone would work

The low-profileon the outside I made out the name, Grady Bahr, Coroner

Dolly dwarfed the other cars and vans in the lot I slah the glass door into a lobby that looked like a dentist’s office waiting roo woman at the walk-upeyed ured Business Brazen would work on coroners as well as rock stars

"Delilah Street, PI," I said "I’d like to see Dr Bahr"

Darn, I needed to run soe coraphics for me

"You don’t have an appointativeup"

"I’m sorry, Miss Street, but the coroner is a busy official You can’t see the coroner without an appointuy who had enough rusty-gray eyebrow hair to go to Halloween parties as a caterpillar couple peeped through

"Fortunately, Miss Street, I can see you via the lobby surveillance calasses eyedthe sweet silver ankle bracelet of dangling skulls Oh, Snow "Coht in I have a few moments It’s fine, Stephanie"

Stephanie rolled her eyes at having her pronounceh the door

Dr Bahr was a big, vital man in the expected white lab coat; he bustled et a chance to seeinto a wheeled leather chair "What totally inappropriate information did you want frorinned back

We grinned at each other like a pair of jolly death heads I’d run into his type before: late le the ladies but nized we could deal

"I need information on the old murder in Sunset Park"

"Hmm Now that’s a sensitive case"

"I helped find the bodies"

"You?" He was looking suspicious for the first time

"And Ric Montoya"

The eyebrows reached for the sky "So you’re an associate of the Cadaver Kid? Why isn’t he here?"

"We’re not married, Dr Bahr," I said coyly "He’s been in Mexico a lot lately"

"What else is new?" His ht with indecision, then the flat of his hand slapped the bare conference table "All right I’ll anshat I can, but if one word appears in or on the media-"

"Off the record, I swear"

"Can’t be too careful We had to shield all our s froas?"

I shook my head "Kansas"

"You’d be aet a hold of a piece of celebrity bodies"

"Nothing aht Ask away"

"The age of the skeletons �C "

"Dead and buried and left alone for sixty-five years or so That’s a good record for undisturbed graves in Vegas, especially now that all the supernaturals are coe at death, IShe was about seventeen He maybe twenty"

Her Romeo and Juliet, yes!

"And they weren’t killed the same way"

Bahr herded his caterpillars into a unibron "No No did you know to ask that?"

"Just a suspicion"

"You have good suspicions, Miss Street, is it?" He leaned around the conference table corner to eye risly taste in jewelry"

"I thought grisly was up your alley"

"And down"Okay, since you suspect so darn onna make it easy for you Normally I’d take you on a tour of the facility first We have an outstanding decaying corpse rooe system"

"I don’t have time for the Grand Tour Maybe another day I want to know about the thirty pieces of silver, the ga chip, and the causes of death"

"You were there" He was impressed "That’s all top secret But there were twenty-nine pieces of silver scattered over the bodies"

"Twenty-nine? Was the ga chip supposed to be thirty?"

"Or thirty-four pieces of silver if you count the pancaked bullets"

"Silver bullets?"

"Yes, ma’am" He leaned close to whisper "You don’t seem too surprised"

"Her The bullets were for her"

He nodded

"And the rowth showed hie of the bone would have better come from a cataco 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 worlda vampire to rest forever Coin in the mouth; head cut off, buried for eternity Except you and Ric ca You have the Kid’s same knack?"

"No," I said, a bit stunned byout 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 foreether," 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 letelse?"

"It was suggested torods could act as a sort of psychic stake"

"Youtheory, but I doubt it"

"What do the police know?"

"Shot and axed That’s all they want to know at the es 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 outpaw

"Call me Grisly All my friends do Not that there are very h Grisly/Grizzly Bahr "Black huh"

"You sound like you know a little of what I’ Ric the next tier to share the riches, but he’s spending too much time in Juarez He needs a social life and less hed

So did I, so I left

Driving Dolly home from Pinto Lane, I had the white top down so the ould freshen e-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 sifried and Roy and one of their white tigers before Roy’s tragic accident shortly after the Millenniunificent creatures but they don’t hold the same allure for uard-cum-personal assistant, Grizelle)

I’d probably driven by this and as, never noticing the striking ial posed with a delicate and fey familiar assistant on each brawny bare shoulder What ale of htly: 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 ofie," but you had to look really hard to see that I was sure Nightwine’s non-CinSial action could take years

So it was up to et that see 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 hie that I had business at the Gehenna That worriedout of touch, but I faced a bigger worry: Margie at the Gehenna There was a slice of ht now!

While I paced the cottage living area, I noticed how sparkling clean everything was I never caughtcrew in action The place was indeed enchanted, as Godfrey had said I could use soood 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 soe 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 alwayshow you really looked You’d only get an approxie 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 va but a olf

I went to the kitchen, got ht, and returned to the hall I turned on the strong beaht reflected like the one-eyed headlight of a loco toward a fil 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 ic of a lass It wasn’t the front-surface al had showed h with the assistance of his ical powers Yet I couldn’t see that this wasn’t that kind ofof myself No reflection

Because I had been separated from my reflection My reflection reirl, a zoal My God, maybe that was my soul! It was me certainly, a part of me

I shuddered at the implications: yet another ertips felt the cold smooth surface of the mirror, even if the mirror didn’t trouble to reflect thee 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 soie 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 sed, playing this by ear, by ht I could feel a slight pulse, like a heart beating Weird

I pulled back "Then let ertips felt the icy glass warerprints 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 iray nails claws A vague, two-legged shape Then a fanged, terrifying face, half pale flesh, half gray fur with gleareen eyes backlit by carnivorous yellow

Thea olf version ofme with a supernatural shape-shifter inside it

I pulled lue I really wasn’t this appalling vision! I pulled harder My flesh see raw pink spots Had the ed into an acid pool that had eaten offsound, the ertips felt as raw as open sores Had there been any decent light in this hallway, I probably would’ve swooned to see the daed out in the saers had touched

Blue-white hands ca the mirror’s surface like Saran Wrap Those cool blue hands were the color of Madrigal’s front-surface glass Now the entire , skinned fingertips into it, as into ice water

I felt a bracing tingle, and then she assembled before my eyes, in the mirror, my severed self, naked where I was clothed, serene where I was battered, soothing where I was agitated

When her full figure was visible, I stepped away and broke our contact

Her silhouette wavered, flashed through a rapid-fire of alterations froirl of Sunset Park, and ended by reflectingas I did now

I stepped even farther back, exhausted

Soe of me-made-flesh existed at the Gehenna anymore All those expensive billboards would have to be painted over

Madrigal’s act would be all Sylphia’s and Phasia’s again

Cicereau would be furious

Nobody would be able to explain it

Not even erous mission to accomplish onsite at the Gehenna

I had to break back into Cicereau’s office to copy the photo of his dead daughter That would be proof enough of the old-tihtwine, andback in shouldn’t be a problehost ofnightly It was still five hours to show tiie, I’d be in and out of there in a heartbeat