perfect undercover form for the silver familiar. As now.
If I pushed Dolly a little, and she pushed lesser vehicles out of her majestic way, I could make the time limit.
“I’ll drive you back to the Inferno,” I told Manny.
His eyelashes fluttered over his golden cat’s eyes. He had extraordinary long and lush eyelashes for a male demon. “A ride in the Queen. I could swoon.”
“Please don’t. I don’t want you shedding any scales on Dolly’s interior.”
Manny, more formally Manniphilpestiles, grinned. “No, ma’am.”
Parking valet demons in Vegas coveted Old Detroit steel. Manny always babied Dolly up the Inferno parking ramp because he knew I’d make Wiener schnitzel of his tail—the figurative and literal one—if he didn’t.
Dolly was parked under the porte cochere so I zipped inside for my keys. I returned to find Quicksilver in the back and Manny riding shotgun. Wow. Quick must like the friendly demon to cede his place to him. Quick could make faster work of Manny’s tail than I could.
Here’s a secret to making sure that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas: cultivate the hotel and casino staffs. Big shots and whales you have always with you and they come and they go, but the seemingly little fish are canny friends to have in a pinch.
“You drive like my aunt Zegaconphistia,” Manny complained as I floated Dolly onto Sunset Road. He still wriggled down into the red leather upholstery like a cat in a faux fur shop.
Soon the lights of the Strip were getting us tourist stares, but Dolly cruised up to the Inferno’s frenetic entrance unmolested. The moment I disembarked, Manny slid into the driver’s seat.
“I know. No more than fifteen miles an hour in the ramp. Still the best ride in Vegas.” He patted Dolly’s dashboard and moved away at barely above idle.
Quicksilver had leaped out to escort me inside, so we joined the throngs shuffling in. It was nine-ten p.m., the start of Snow’s break between the two nightly Seven Deadly Sins shows and I intended to have more than a word with him.
Quick got a lot of awed glances, but he was taken for a service dog. He had that all-business look about him, and his leather collar encouraged people to assume his thick gray body fur obscured a harness.
Of course, not everybody employed by the Inferno could be described as people.
One of them loomed into my path, a tall, sleek black woman wearing a short zebra-striped dress and fuchsia lipstick vivid enough to snarl traffic.
Ooh, our favorite fashion-forward shape-shifter is here, Irma warned.
“Fresh from a garden party?” Grizelle asked in a put-down tone.
True, nineteen-forties daytime frocks had a frothy, innocent air.
“No dogs.” Grizelle’s face and voice were harder than granite as her luridly green eyes moved from my floral print to Quicksilver’s flashing fangs.
Snow’s security chief cherished a major hate for me, one part deserved and three parts not. But that one part had been a lulu.
“I intend to see Snow,” I said, scrupulously avoiding the verbs “want” and “need.”
“Besides,” I added, “Asta the wire-haired terrier is acting out just fifty feet away at the bar.”
“He’s a CinSim. Your dog is not.”
Quick growled so deeply it sounded like he had laryngitis. He’d taken a hunk out of Grizelle’s hide once when her inner white tiger had attacked me.
“No dogs,” she repeated.
“I’ll leave him with Asta, then. I’m sure you’ll report my visit to Snow before I can reach the elevator.”
Quick and I walked on, his growl still rumbling in his throat.
He peeled off at the bar, though, sitting beside Nick’s stool where all the gathered lady tourists and CinSims started cooing at Quicksilver for being so big and strong and having such great hair. You’d think he was a Fabio CinSim, perish the thought. Thank God that had been a color film era.
The private elevator was waiting for me, doors ajar. I whisked up sixty-some stories fast enough to make my ears pop.
The elevator door opened on the penthouse foyer and rooms decorated like the interior of a giant ice sculpture snowflake, all white and silver and cold. Against this dazzling background stood Snow, up close and way too personal in his onstage outfit of skin-tight white leather open to the navel above a jeweled fly, the only color in the entire scene. I was amazed there wasn’t a follow spotlight on it. Then I realized there probably was when he was onstage.
“Was it necessary to ruffle Grizelle’s fur?” he asked.
“No, but it was fun.”
“I have a feeling this visit