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it’s supplied with the wicked stepmother’s mirror from Snow White. Although it’s been mum about my degree of “fairness” so far, I do see things in it besides me.

The most complex beings in my brave new world are the CinSims. Cinema Simulacrums are created by blending fresh zombie bodies illegally imported from Mexico with classic black-and-white film characters. The resulting “live” personas are wholly owned entertainment entities leased to various Vegas 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 mob’s control into his. Ric aches to stop the traffic in illegally imported zombies. It’s personal—he was forced to work in the trade as a child.

I’d like to help them both out, and not just because I’m a former investigative TV reporter used to crusading against human and unhuman exploitation. My own freedom is threatened by various merciless and sometimes downright repellent factions bent on making life after the Millennium Revelation literal Hell.

Luckily, I have some new, off-the-chart abilities simmering myself, most involving silver—from the silver nitrate in black-and-white film strips to sterling silver to mirrors and reflective surfaces in general.

Which reminds me of one more sorta sidekick: a freaky shape-changing lock of hair from the albino rock star who owns the Inferno Hotel. The guy goes by three names: “Christophe” for business; “Cocaine” when fronting his Seven Deadly Sins band in the persona of Pride, and “Snow” to his intimates. He seems to consider me one of them, but no way do I want to be.

While thinking of my lost Achilles, I made the mistake of touching a long white lock of Snow’s hair he’d sent as a mocking gift. The damn thing became a sterling silver 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 irresistible . . . and Snow forced me to submit to his soul-stealing smooch in exchange for his help in saving Ric from being vamped to death. This kiss-off standoff between us is not over.

Now Snow owns a prized new CinSim, another gal famous for being confined in a glass coffin like Snow White, only she’s a silent film hottie who’s part virgin saint, part sexy silver robot, and part Babylonian love goddess. Wouldn’t you know my partner, Ric, is responsible for raising this Three Faces of Eve babe who will 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 define me or my world, or stop me from exposing every dirty supernatural secret in Las Vegas, if necessary, to find out who I really am, and who’s being bad and who’s being good in my new Millennium Revelation neighborhood.

Chapter One

THE CADAVER KID isn’t such a kid anymore and he isn’t in the FBI anymore either.

Yet here he stands in Quantico, Virginia, a guest 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 criminal matters.

Behind the Kid, an eight-foot-wide screen displays a decomposed human corpse that would make any CSI TV show producer proud.

Its muted gray, 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 small, ramlike horns, two ribbed ridges growing 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’m sitting at the back of the room, the Cadaver Kid’s anonymous but proud significant 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 “dramatic pair.”

This is my partner’s solo show, though, and I’m happy to play wallpaper. I’m wearing my dullest TV reporter navy-blue suit, chosen to blend in here, but when we’re a duo my Snow White looks are the cream in Ric’s rich, Latino coffee-bar coloring.

Besides, he looks so great in the foreground.

Ricardo Montoya left the FBI in his midtwenties for freelance consulting work and landed a reunion lecturer spot before he’s even pushing thirty, but he’s cool with