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 me and my mammary artifact back."
Hughes's webcam revealed a buxom vampire nurse behind him rattling his IV pole to hang a fresh bag of sterilized blood before the image faded.
"He is a strange creature," Shez noted, "and by rights I should have twisted his fanged head from his stringy neck, but he is not of my people and has been most accommodating to me and my arts of the wine and oil press."
"You're a god in hiding from your should-be worshippers. And it's he's."
"If you had to recite hieroglyphics aloud, you'd sound most artificial also."
"Agreed, partner. Speaking of 'greed,' it's time to meet the high-end Strip mouthpieces."
"These 'mouthpieces' are a variety of musician?"
"Very much so. The music of coins."
I preceded Shez through the Glass Curtain, but I fear that Grizelle and Sansouci stood to attention only when the Lord of the Slaughter stepped into the showroom.
Grizelle growled, and for a shocked microsecond shifted into her white-tiger form.
"Meet my business partner, Shezmou," I said while she corrected her impulse. "He's the genius behind the vintage wines, scents, and oils this establishment offers the Las Vegas attraction world."
Shez shook his bewigged, glass-bead-swagged, and braided mane, and growled godlike approval.
Sanscouci muttered, "Holy Seared Shitakes. This is a Clash of the Titans."
He edged my way, arms folded on his chest, while the two larger-than-life types eyed each other like enemies and lovers. "Starting your own harem with Bijou Boy there, Street?"
"Jealous, Mr. Souci?"
Sansouci winced. "What I do for my boss. What's with the guy's albino kilt? And I don't get 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 sample any bottle he pleases, but he should not drink the massage 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 modern and hip - "the nightclub set." He regarded me quizzically. I supposed that he'd been watching TV in his spare time at the roomy laboratory Hughes had provided atop the Karnak Hotel. "Night ... stick. Does that not mean, ah, the police?"
I realized then that Shez had first met me wearing my used cop duty belt with the attached billy club. I'd left all that fighting gear home. Perhaps a mistake, I thought, 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 are my specialty," Shez answered, being far more provocative than he knew.
Beside me, Sansouci growled in his turn. "I'm supposed to get 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."
I hadn't meant to flirt, just to make Sansouci feel better. That was an Our Lady of the Lake convent school girl-graduate problem. We always wanted to make everyone feel better ... in an abstract, selfless, spiritual way. Not a good ploy with vampires.
Sansouci was about as spiritual as a machete.
"You don't want to talk 'points' with me, Delilah, without being ready to deliver." He flashed a grin broad enough to showcase the strong white canine teeth he usually kept under lip and key. "That why Shez calls you Deliverer?"
Mistake. Another one.
Trying to distract Sansouci to give Shez and Grizelle some one-on-one time, I'd upped the sexual and homicidal tension in the shop so you could cut it with a diamond saw. I guess Shez hadn't been off a pillar for a millennium too many.
I was just a mortal wearing loose tee and shorts, the tourist uniform.
By comparison, Grizelle was prime Las Vegas Strip showgirl with a Siegfried and Roy pedigree. She was the modern equivalent of a Vegas goddess, much as I hated to admit it.