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"Usually hosts don’t show up as foreplay"

"So we talk Forget Snow’s visions ofus in-house dependents On to Metropolis What did you think of the movie?"

"I didn’t stick around to see it"

"What? I sed my pride and sent you up there specifically to see the complete, uncut edition It’s vital you see it now that Her Serene Silverness has i on its et herded into his penthouse theater for a long, aard sit-doith hi my every reaction Plus, he had the robot there and she, uh, came on to me"

"What?"

"She sort ofwakes up when I’ain, calculating how he can use that fact and me andit His penthouse has this vast semicircular screen and theater house with only six seats in the place Kinda sad I think he was expecting you to be there too"

"Well, here’s to doing the unexpected So you left?’

"Right I wanted to thoroughly check out the ‘CinSim experience’ at Inferno areas other than the very public bar before Ithe Silver Zo picture, you need to see the uncut filo, and you just blew the one opportunity on the planet to do that"

"You saw it I can rely on your reporter savvy"

"Secondhand won’t cut it here The Silver Zombie responds only to you You need to know her inside and out"

Ric winced "Not that intilanced at his suit coat, crumpled on the floor "There’s no blood at all there Or on me Satisfied?"

"Yes, but I did see it at the ti river of blood"

"Is that the Styx?"

"No The Phlegethon"

"Ick That sounds like soh up"

"The nam,’ and Hell was supposed to be icky in those days Dante wrote in his own Italian Tuscan language, not the usual Latin, and he used GreekWhere we escaped from was not part of the Inferno Hotel’s Dante theme attractions"

"We were deposited in the real Hell?"

"Maybe we’ll figure it out if we discuss larger issues, like why and how you tried to contain Loretta Cicereau and how and why she got loose to track h the Seventh Circle of Hell You’ve never explained much about your solo adventures at the Gehenna Hotel I respect your right to conduct your own investigations, as I do ether then Now that my hide is on the line, Del, I need full details"

So I explained that the Gehenna housefey he’d found on their own His human touch banned them from Feyland, so they’d become eternally attached to him

"Oh, yeah" Ric nodded "I’ve seen the billboards He’s the muscleman illusionist and those two Tinker-Bell types are his tiny assistants"

"They may look ‘Tinker-Bell,’ but they’re venoal Cicereau had caughtaround his hotel andthis is where my mirror-twin, Lilith, co role on one episode of CSI V, Vegas Our glass-coffin-ready looks and her lack of clothing e ide Cicereau wanted to build a al with me as the hot new naked corpse from the CSI franchise"

"I’ve seen some of that, but the quality was so bad I never realized it was supposed to represent you What nonsense!"

"What? You don’t think I’d hed and ran his palm down my arm "I’m screwed no matter how I answer that question Why would you want to?"

"I didn’t So as ‘nonsense’?"

"That show’s crime scene procedure isn’t authentic Technicians don’t act as detectives So tell al’s fey assistants helped me escape from the Gehenna because they wanted me away from their hter coirls to bind Loretta Cicereau in Madrigal’s main ht back as a killing machine of mismated bone and patchwork flesh, into a reflection of Loretta on the empty air outside Cesar Cicereau’s penthouse floor"

Ric et it Loretta’s reanimated dead love was the mystery meat at the coroner’s facility when I et out of the fey stir you put her in, and why’s she so pissed at me?"

"For one, she wants me to knohat it’s like to have a lover offed Also, she bla her and her varave in Sunset Park They had a horrible death--"

"Don’t we all risk that?" Richis tortuous tiyptian–theure in the rescue party--Sansouci, Snow, and Grizelle, the Inferno security chief--was certain Ric had passed the point of death e finally found him I still refused to believe my secondhand Brimstone Kiss had revived him when I hadn’t been able to pound a heartbeat back into his chest and had given him a passionate farewell kiss The usefulness of the so-called Kiss of Life had been debunked years ago, and that wasn’t what I was trying I wasn’t a ht I could save Peter Pan if I clapped h I did believe in fairies if they were the terrifying fey

But so Ric back to consciousness