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I’M NOT FAMOUS for following instructions I left Quicksilver at ho on an Awesoet known around Vegas as a dog and his girl It was too easy in post–Millenniued by the company you keep

Besides, I had more than a clue about who the new "in" entrepreneur in toas … and who had helped set hienius of me

Even a low-end Strip address takes cash money

The moon’s intensity may wax and wane, but the sun is pretty ht hours, spreading warm vibes and skin cancer as the tourists soak it up from under funny hats, their white-crealasses

My Black Irish–pale coh-SPF sunscreen a constant colasses were my constant accessory too, partly to hide the fabled baby-blues I share with my elusive double, Lilith Quince, but I put Lilith out of my mind before she drove me out of it instead

Hector’s description of sleazy businesses took , nonimploded hotel-casinos of the town’s fifties and sixties heyday, when the Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Saas instead of olfalmost to the streetlamps to miss a steamy tourist array of sun-baked Goth and punk leather, I spotted a stunning gold-and-ebony sign above a shop frontage

CHEZ SHEZ, the gilt letters read, just as I’d recommended

"Chez"--pronounced as in "the wonderful one-horse shay"--was French for "house of" "Shez" was short for "Shez de as well as wine-pouring and , but they did al ill-intentioned Jimmy Choos since Sheena, the weather witch at WTCH-TV in Kansas, so I simply hopped and skipped around them to the front door, which was manned by … a woman

Of er of a fe security chief at the Inferno Hotel

Right now she was all woh-priced and sner suit and stiletto heels on a velvet-black frame Her skin was moiré black taffeta, subtly er stripes Little-known fact: all spotted and striped cats have skin to match Grizelle in human forer self Her eyes were jungle green and her manicure was vampire red

I’d worn my air-sole sneakers for my Strip stroll--the silver fa out as a toe-ring--so I was ht is attitude, not altitude

So I showed some

"New job as a shop doorman, Grizelle? Was Snow so s and goings that he fired you?" I taunted "Naughty, naughty kitty Maybe I can put in a good word for you with Nightwine Productions, Inc"

"I don’t do door duty anywhere," she answered "I was just leaving after I saw the low-rent party hanging around inside Seeing as you’re entering, I’ll stick around awhile longer" She fanned the taloned fingers of her right hand

"Delilah," said a deep male voice from within

I promptly did a do-si-do around Grizelle’s statuesque presence and doffed lasses I still had to blink for several seconds to see in the comparatively dim interior

What I saas tall, dark-haired, and not unhandsood, Shezmou

"Sansouci," I said with surprise "Fancy finding you here Needing a ood chiropractic neck adjustment?"

I’m no squirt, butNow--between the head muscle for both the olfdistinctly outgunned

Yet intrigued

"I didn’t know you two knew each other," I coaze froazelle She scared me a lotin a very big way

The pause becanant

Grizelle tossed her yptian wig I wondered if Shezmou had seen her yet They’d make an awesome power couple

"The doors are barred for now," Grizelle told awk a bit and then you should leave I’m here for a private business conference with the owner"

"Me too" Sansouci’s wolfish grin looked really rakish on a closeted vampire, trust me "I represent the Gehenna olves," he continued, "but I have time to show you and the little lady around"

He had a gift for irritating in stereo

"Oh?" I said "You’ll want to include me I can show you around Shez and I are business partners Where is he?"

"Shez is

She eyed the polished chroold metallic walls and shelves of seilded wine bottles topped an ebony-and-turquoise bar on another wall

"I should have guessed," she added

"I wouldn’t call Shez a ‘girlyaround without engaging ly modest space, part bar and part boutique, just as I’d envisioned, but unattended I smelled the pine, sesah not the castor oil, thank goodness Methought Chez Shez needed a nature scent Tilass-beaded curtain behind the counter shi like a belly dancer’s skirt at the entrance of a slight young woany spray tan, a tissue-thin strapless white-linen sheath, and an Urban Decay "smoky eye" to die for

The curtains’ colored beads echoed the red, blue, and green glass on wide ancient Egyptian collars Their gentle clicking re, oversize rosaries the older nuns at Our Lady of the Lake convent school had worn … and the sound of thethe Karnak underworld

"Are you Mr Mou’s one pirl asked Her eye-whites dazzled as her focus darted between all three of us

Mr Mou? Irn friend Shezmou to employ one of the dimmer bulbs on thewoman slack She was barely twenty, not a ripe old lady of twenty-four likethe only man in the room

"At your service," he said smoothly He knew no other way to deliver a line to a female "You can callannoyed, and so was I The girl was going into standing swoon reen eyes and one sentence from his even deeper hypnotic voice Vampire, dearie, and the kind that feeds on women

"Ms … Gray Zelle?" She next fastened a hopeful hazel eye on erous than Grizelle

I stepped politely aside

The young wohty carnivore expression and fastened her gaze on ain for dear life "And you are?"

"Ms Street, but you can call me Delilah What’s your name?"

"Fawn Schwartz"

"Well, Fawn, I a"

"‘Silent partner’ is a business expression Shez wants to see me first Alone Trust me"

Sansouci raised an eyebrow Grizelle lifted a sneering upper lip to showcase her carnivore canines I was glad to ditch the pair when Fawn parted the clicking curtains and I ducked through Ir but could use sorades, she toldwas hardly my main concern If Christophe, aka Snow, and Cicereau were battling for an interest in Chez Shez, I wanted to make sure they had to deal withthe real silent partner in this setup would like that just fine

The fluorescent-lit er than the storefront Shezrape press, the sinewy ar with enough sweat to put him in a well-oiled Mr Universe contest Given the new fe men these twenty-first-century days, as a product front man he was a Name Brand born

At the click of the bead curtains his bewigged head turned He gave the huge cheesecloth wad of grapes one last wring and wiped his reddened hands on a piece of white linen One would be reminded of an ancient housewife, if one wished to commit suicide and say so

"You are welcome," he addressed me, "O Deliverer of Shezmou, to ht, and I, Shez our roles as my own nature must also move from wine to balm, and eternal death to eternal life"

Gods require lots of wordy preamble, so I just smiled and nodded

If I hadn’t noticed that Sheze on a Karnak Hotel subterranean pillar included actual wrist and ankle chains to keep him inanie His captivity had ensured that the Egyptian va any Afterlife yptian vampires?

Yup, they were the only ancient culture to have no bloodsucker y Yet, sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC, the probleh that even the royal line was tainted Many high-rankingTut’s, had been severed before wrapping to ensure no aard resurrections here on earth

Alions offer a "separate and save" option for the Afterlife Not the Egyptians under secret vayptian culture froze in ti on their own in perpetuity and occasionally sa stray latter-day huod, or demon, isted off the heads of the dayptian Hell With him in chains, vampires had centuries to create and re-create their own thirsty breed unchallenged

All those deathless big bad va the Underworld beneath the Karnak Hotel and Casino I knew so they didn’t, not even their twin brother-sister pharaohs A big bad as strings from atop the Strip hotel, and he had twenty-first-century ambitions Luckily, he and I had an uneasy butSo I had an unseen ally here

"I was not expecting to receive the hty Delilah," Shezmou said

Ric had adroitly i withoff Sath I’ strands

"I thought two others of the Upperworld also sought audience?" Shezhty Shez culture, vah-school Shakespeare play dialogue

Shez grinned at ood that you are wise enough to pour sweet oil on odhead"

Oh, my lord! Irma said Did that sound tacky And hot

"Now I practice a modern profession," Shezmou’s Darth Vader baritone continued "I must seem … ordinary to conduct commerce So speak as if I were your … equal Just between us"

"Sure, Shez"

His grinned widened "You enjoy that, Delilah"

"Sure do, Shez"

"I observe that se men around"

"Your huender"

"Do not I know it"

"If Iin the Upperworld, cultivate contractions"

"I a with such matters is my little brother Bez’s profession"

Bes, rechristened "Bez" by Ric and od of randy sex and … subsequent childbirth Logical, these Vulcans and Egyptians

"Don’t you know it," I repeated Shez’s earlier phrase in a more casual way "And I’m not a woman in childbirth, either"

"No, you are … ah, you’re slih for your sex"

"You’re shortly going to meet a female almost as tall as you, Shez"

"Am I?"

"Yes Before that, I want to make sure you’re properly represented I assume your boss … er, overlord, has a link to the storefront"

"Yes A link, as in a chain, only this chain is eestured to a twenty-five-inch flat-screen yptian workmanship

I sat on the zebra skin X-bench (sorry about that, ancient zebra) and awakened the co Stripside sloppy today, hes’s shrunken face mouthed into a fish-eye webcam lens "What do you think of my new shop concept?"

"That it’s ed He’d had himself made into a vadoaunt look of pained disappointure

"She who thinks is clever," Hughes chanted "He who does owns the world"

"Come on, Howard You know this concept--and Shez’s enthusiasm for it--is ?"

"I expect you to provide one"

"Forty percent for Hughes Tools and Tchotchkes"

"So like you to overreach, Mr Hughes Ten percent"

"Thirty"

"Twenty," I said

"Twenty-five to e, nicely symbolic," he cackled "And only fair I am an old, old man"

"And ever were and alill be"

Hughes’s blasted face wrinkled with a rather charive you the world"

"‘I’ll’ We’re teaching Shez speech with contractions today Better for the future talk shows"

"Always on top of things, Delilah Speaking of which, you walked off with my priceless film artifact, the first cinematic Cleopatra’s coiled brass serpent bra"

"Yours and welcome to it back I’d rather wear the push-up bra you invented for Jane Russell All that heavy metal is cold"

"Like your cold heart, perhaps? Oh, all right Twenty percent to hes’s webca his IV pole to hang a fresh bag of sterilized blood before the ie creature," Shez noted, "and by rights I should have twisted his fanged head froy neck, but he is not ofto me and od in hiding from your should-be worshippers And it’s he’s"

"If you had to recite hieroglyphics aloud, you’d soundof ‘greed,’ it’s tih-end Strip mouthpieces"

"These ‘mouthpieces’ are a variety of musician?"

"Very much so The h the Glass Curtain, but I fear that Grizelle and Sansouci stood to attention only when the Lord of the Slaughter stepped into the showroorowled, and for a shocked er form

"Meet my business partner, Shezenius behind the vintage wines, scents, and oils this establishas attraction world"

Shez shook his bewigged, glass-bead-swagged, and braided odlike approval

Sanscouci muttered, "Holy Seared Shitakes This is a Clash of the Titans"

He edged er-than-life types eyed each other like ene your own harem with Bijou Boy there, Street?"

"Jealous, Mr Souci?"

Sansouci winced "What I do for et this boozy beauty parlor concept"

"You haven’t sampled his wines yet"

Shez’s divine super-sharp hearing whipped his impressive head our way "Mr Souci may sae oils"

Sansouci’s almost-emerald eyes rolled like Quicksilver’s when he heard me try a ridiculous command, like "Stop"

"I do not sell beer," Shez went on, "although I could brew it The two gold taps at the end of the bar are a special house brew, ideal for"--Shez frowned, striving to be ardedTV in his spare tihes had provided atop the Karnak Hotel "Night … stick Does that not mean, ah, the police?"

I realized then that Shez had firstmy used cop duty belt with the attached billy club I’d left all that fighting gear hoht, as I eyed the three deadly paranormals in the room with little mortal unarmed me and poor Fawn Schwartz

"The Police is a music icon," Grizelle purred to Shezmou "You seem new to our entertainment-centered world I could introduce you to the Seven Deadly Sins rock band at the Inferno Hotel tonight"

"Rocks I know from my native soil and sins arefar more provocative than he knew

Beside et his attention away from that sleek Inferno cat-woman? Cicereau had no idea he had any competition"

"I’m a partner in this operation," I told him "You can make points with me"