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Meet Me, Delilah Street

EVERYONE HAS FAMILY issues, but my issues are that I don’t have any family My new business card reads "Delilah Street, Paranorator," but my old personal card could have read "Delilah Street, Unadoptable Orphan"

I was supposedly named after the street where I was found abandoned as an infant in Wichita, Kansas (I guess I should just thank God and DC Coled (the drinking person’s search engine) the World Wide Web for Delilah Streets and not a single bloody one of theavethat is catnip to vae twelve I was fighting off aspiring juvie rapists with retractable fangs and body odor that irl

My growing-up years of group homes are history now that I’ the paranormal beat for Wichita’s WTCH-TV--until the station’s jealous weather witch forecaster forced ator in wicked, as icked, of course, long before the turn of the twenty-first century brought all the bogeyends out of the closet and into hu with vamps and half-weres and all-olf mobs and celebrity zo toere si turned into an i able topanic attacks (Whoever thought someone would aim for the missionary position?) Position hadn’t been an issue until recently and neither had sex, until I finally found a uy Ricardo Montoya--aka the Cadaver Kid He’s tall, dark, handsome, Hispanic, and my twenty-four-hour partner Scratch this one off the list Phobia solved I am now fully adjustable and ready to rock and roll

And, three, tracking down Lilith Quince--e--to find out if she is a twin, double, clone, or si autopsied on Criht in Wichita brought me to Sin City in the first place

Lucky me, Lilith became the most desirable corpse ever featured on the internationally franchised show When that CSI episode made Lilith Quince into a macabre international sex symbol, it inadvertently made me, Delilah Street, a wanted woman And not necessarily wanted alive, but as the naked and dead ie of another woot ca out in a nostril that held a tiny blue topaz stud like ie," becaie dolls and ie still pictures, outtakes, andit--dead or alive One olf mobster almost did already

At least a the eas’s Sunset Park just after I hit town and just before the town hit me back, hard

I discovered more than Ric and corpses in Sunset Park I found an ally who has heavenly blue eyes and is seriously gray and hairy That’s , Quicksilver He’s a wolfhound-wolf cross I saved fro, claw, and wars--especially since Achilles, my valiant little white dust- after biting a va to bite on-decorated jar on my mantel Lhasa apsos are a Tibetan breed, Grasshopper, so I haven’t given up the ghost on hiht be of interest It’s in the Enchanted Cottage on the Hector Nightwine estate Hector rents the place to me cheap because, as producer of the uilty of offing my possible twin on national TV Hector doesn’t really have a conscience, just a profither for his enduring financial benefit

The only thing Hector and I have in coe is a setting from a 1945 movie of that name and I suspect it’s supplied with the wicked steph it’s been s in it besides s in my brave neorld are the CinSi fresh zoally imported from Mexico with classic black-and-white fil "live" personas are wholly owned entertainas enterprises

Hector and Ric blame the mysterious Immortality Mob for the brisk business in zombie CinSims, but can’t prove it even exists Hector wants to wrest the CinSims from the ally imported zombies It’s personal--he was forced to work in the trade as a child

I’d like to help theative TV reporter used to crusading against human and unhuman exploitation My own freedoht repellent factions bent onlife after the Millennium Revelation literal Hell

Luckily, I have sosilver--from the silver nitrate in black-and-white fil silver to eneral

Which re lock of hair frooes by three na his Seven Deadly Sins band in the persona of Pride, and "Snow" to his intimates He seems to considerofwhite lock of Snow’s hair he’d sent as asilver familiar no jeweler’s saw or torch can remove from my body Since it transforms into different pieces of often-protective jewelry, it’s undeniably handy at times I consider it a talisman-cum-leech

That attitude sums up my issues with the rock star-hotelier, who habitually enslaved groupies with a onetime mosh pit Brimstone Kiss

Then I discovered why those post-concert kisses are so bloody irresistibleand Snow forced e for his help in saving Ric fro vamped to death This kiss-off standoff between us is not over

Nons a prized new CinSilass coffin like Snow White, only she’s a silent filin saint, part sexy silver robot, and part Babylonian love goddess Wouldn’t you knowthis Three Faces of Eve babe ill endanger all our lives

Not to worry I’m on the case I’ve been called a "silver medium," but I won’t let anyone defineevery dirty supernatural secret in Las Vegas, if necessary, to find out who I really aood in hborhood

Chapter One

THE CADAVER KID isn’t such a kid anymore and he isn’t in the FBI anyuest lecturer with an attentive audience

And there’s still a cadaver on tap And it’s horny

Death and sex, that’s where it’s always at in criht-foot-wide screen displays a decomposed human corpse that would ray, black, and beige tones don’t offer the graphic punch of color The photo was obviously shot at night Still, the grinning skull shows a pair of s back from where the hairline would start

Welcome to post–Millennium Revelation crime scene issues It’s not just who the corpse du jour is, but what

I’ at the back of the roonificant other I’d been introduced as a "consulting partner" when the senior agent in charge had escorted us in He’d found us quite the "drah, and I’ my dullest TV reporter navy-blue suit, chosen to blend in here, but e’re a duo my Snow White looks are the crea