as our social workers here in Wichita did thirteen years ago."
Gulp, Irma whispered. And she doesn't even know about me.
"Gulp" was right. I was sitting with the two people in the world whose respect I most wanted.
Ric laid his arm across the back of my chair, standing and drawing me up beside him.
"Thanks for your cooperation, Mrs. Haliburton, but warnings are unnecessary. I've found in my FBI work that files are sealed more often to protect the holders, not the subjects."
Helena was checking her mini-netbook. She looked up and nodded. "Mission accomplished."
Ric escorted me to the door, opened it for his foster mother, and ushered us into the hall.
"She's shaking, Helena," Ric told his onetime therapist in a furious undertone.
"Don't let that harpy frighten you, Delilah," Helena consoled me. "Little people like to make big threats." She took my other arm. "Now, Ric tells me you've invented another fascinating cocktail, the Brimstone Kiss. I know where you got the idea for that one." Helena smiled and added, "Let's find a well-stocked bar that can make it, where we can munch on a sinfully caloric bar menu."
She could make happy talk; it wasn't her secret file that was heating up her personal computer.
Ric knew how to calm my nerves. He let me drive again, with Helena in the passenger seat while he and Quicksilver occupied the rear.
Ric searched his phone screen. "Here's the place for us. The Petroleum Pavilion on Polo Drive. Delilah's cocktails always use exotic and expensive ingredients," he explained to Helena, about to pass me the GPS.
"Dolly and I don't need that high-tech aid," I said. "Any description of the physical neighborhood?"
"Um," Ric said, "the usual waterfront, probably a lake, near an exclusive gated community, riding stables, the ubiquitous golf course designed by the world's finest over-paid landscaper - hey!"
His recital broke off as Quicksilver whapped the cruising sunglasses off his snout and leaped out of the convertible, running ahead of Dolly on the street.
"I don't have to squint at some tiny screen in the sun like a vampire in extremis," I told my passengers. "Quick loves to find lost golf balls in Sunset Park. I'll just tail him as he follows his world-class nose."
"HOT DAMN! - BRAND CINNAMON schnapps," Helena mused over our glasses in the mahogany-paneled, crystal-lit bar.
"How," she persisted, "did you come up with such off-beat ingredients for your Brimstone Kiss, my new favorite drink, Delilah?"
Blush modestly ... not. Helena was a psychotherapist whose already acute insights could pick up random visualizations from people's minds and subconscious after the Millennium Revelation. I did not want Ric's onetime "mother" glimpsing my forced interlude with Snow. She even knew who and what he was. Well, the albino rock star - hotelier part, anyway. Nobody really knew what brand of "super" Snow was.
"I'm self-blocked, Delilah," Helena assured me, already betraying that I was an easy read at the moment. "Believe me, I can feel the heat between you and Ric without any amplification, and I couldn't be happier for the both of you."
What luck that she couldn't tell my mental reruns right then had been about Snow.
I consigned thoughts of that bastard to the Inferno Hotel's subterranean Nine Circles of Hell attractions and explained.
"The Brimstone Kiss concept begged for a liquor brand with a 'hot' taste and name. I think Vegas pretty much twenty-four/seven these days, and it is truly Sin City now."
"I saw that on my brief visit," Helena said. "So ... this is an ultra-Goth cocktail with a sweet undercurrent of innocence lost."
"You could write ad copy in today's Las Vegas," I agreed with a forced smile.
In the middle of our granite-topped table sprawled a platter of tomatoes and mozzarella, crab-stuffed mushrooms, and angel-winged shrimp, a post-Revelation delicacy discovered in the deep sea. Food definitely took the edge off my nerves.
Ric and I slipped into feeling triumphant and mellow, while Helena was scanning her screen between bites and sips.
"Okay," she said finally. "I've got the gist of the files."
"Should Delilah be shaking in her pump heels?" Ric wondered. "They're really not her style."
"Not," Helena said, "unless she has multiple tattoos." She turned the screen toward us.
"Me? Tattoos?" I demanded.
"Ric?" she consulted him.
He liked playing with the idea, and my skittish state. His eyes warmed as they met my startled expression.
"Tattoos? Oh, not a one, Dr. Burnside. I swear." His hand slipped under my social services' bun to caress the "love bruise" on my nape. "I don't like the idea of anybody or anything else, especially a