He slammed something down hard on his massive wooden desk.

“Don’t thank me. I do have my spies on the set. I heard you expressed some interest… no thanks, please, my dear Miss Street. I know you are the sentimental sort.”

He prodded something across his desktop. I recoiled at first, thinking it might be one of his repugnantly anonymous edibles.

No. It was ultramodern, a solid block of Plexiglas the size of a notepad square. I leaned close to comprehend it. A clear cube with something inside, something embedded.

I blinked.

I saw my hand, bloody-nailed but flaunting the most perfect manicure I would ever sport. My face and blue eyes lurked behind it through a futuristic plastic veil. My long red fake forefinger nail was just barely touching the maggot atop the exotic flower, glistening like Renaissance mother-of-pearl. These parts of me were from a film still, a photo.

The orchid and the maggot-Lord, that sounded like an antiromance novel’s title!-were preserved in plastic, now eternally frozen in 3-D, like those encased desert scorpions and tarantulas sold in tourist shops across the Southwest states.

“This is the numbered First,” Nightwine said, his voice trembling with triumph, “of a limited edition of a million pouring out of the Mexican workshops. Fast work, eh? All yours, Delilah, for a very good job. Thanks to you, the Maggie franchise lives!”

I pushed myself out of the heavy chair and picked up the slick square. Its contents were only a reproduction. As in lost wax jewelry casting, the original models, floral and insect, were sacrificed to make the mold.

Nightwine was rerunning his footage, drooling.

He didn’t notice me leave his office.

Thank God.

Who would believe this hardened group-home orphan who had refused to cry for herself from toddlerhood on had been brought to the brink of shedding a tear for a dead maggot?

THAT EVENING I managed to pay another low-profile visit to the Inferno. Although the nurses had reported regularly to my cell phone that Ric was still comatose but “building up strength,” I needed to check on him. At least daily. And discreetly.

I did not want to see, or be seen by, Snow, either in rock idol or CEO guise. That meant I’d be wise to avoid his associates, like the house watchcat Grizelle and even my dear friend detective Nick Charles at the Inferno Bar.

I picked 11:30 P.M., when Snow was finishing up his second show and Grizelle was nearby to beat off the nightly Brimstone Kiss groupies if the usual security couldn’t handle them. I wore touristy garb from a cheap Strip souvenir shop: loose cotton slacks and gaudy white T-shirt, fanny pack, and billed cap screaming VEGAS! in living sequined color.

Not even the Invisible Man was around to pinch my scuttling butt as I made for the rear freight elevators, then switched to the main ones. I arrived unobserved except by the cruising mirrored security balls that only reported overt oddities.

Outside the bridal suite accommodations where Ric was building iron-rich blood while Helena ’s psychedelic “spell” kept his mind and emotions in healing suspended animation, I paused.

Hmm, Irma noted. It’s more than odd that no one is questioning our surreptitious comings and goings. I smell conspiracy. Is everyone pretending you’re pulling the wool over their eyes because you’re such a sad case these days? You are becoming the pity fuck of the whole damn Inferno Hotel staff, girl!

That hurt.

Although Irma had always told me the truth when no one else would, I shrugged off her concerns. What mattered was getting Ric through this and figuring out how to protect us both in the future.

In post-Millennium Revelation Las Vegas? Sure it was an impossible dream. So was what Ric and I had, and I was determined we would have again: life, love, and a plan to kick supernatural ass.

AS I’D HOPED, Ric had stablized since Helena had “bewitched” him. He was off all IV drips and functioning normally, though still in a deep sleep most of the time, especially at night. Even the nurses weren’t on during the graveyard shift from eleven to seven, the one still on duty told me.

“He’s looking good,” said the heavy-set brownette, name tag “Inez.” “I leave at eleven so if you wanta take over on your own, chica…”

She must have taken letting-go lessons from Helena Troy Burnside. I didn’t need further encouragement. I approached Ric’s bedside as softly as a cat over the plush gold carpeting. God, I hadn’t been kidding myself thinking of him as a sleeping prince.

The color had crept back into his skin. Its golden brown shade only made the black of hair and eyelashes and beard stubble look more dramatic. My hormones surprised me with a surge so strong I didn’t know myself. Oh, baby, you have come a long way.

The blood-infusion IV pole was gone, leaving Ric totally unattached to tubes.

Oooh, I could attach to him mucho plenty, me on top of the poor sick man and administering play CPR. Delilah! Control yourself. Irma was keeping quiet. This was my libidinous moment. And then, the demons of doubt flailed me. Maybe the Brimstone Kiss was too potent to unleash on a live guy. Maybe it would reverse itself, and Ric’s state of recovery.

From loving lust I plunged back into self-doubt.

Rats. It wouldn’t hurt to sit with the sick and look.

I AWOKE, SENSING a nightmare.

Not mine, for once.

Ric was murmuring and stirring under the covers.

I’d fallen asleep bent over in the bedside chair, my arms and head braced on the bed, even my casual clothes feeling tight and sticky.

Ric’s hands and feet began twitching, as Quicksilver’s will during a dream. I thought of checking with the nurses but remembered the double doors were locked, keeping us in and everyone else out.

If Ric was about to be scared conscious, I wanted to be there the moment he opened his eyes.

I turned on the bedside table lamp, the warm light putting his features into relief, like a sculpture. The small LED clock read four in the morning. I put a hand on his upper arm, but the muscle twitched away at my touch.

His limbs began flailing as he turned and coiled into the light bed coverings, moaning now, as if from remembered pain. It had to be that. The memory of pain. His body wounds were healed. Even the gaping neck wound was finally closing, the nurses had said.

Ric wrenched himself around on his side, facing away from me, the silly string ties of the hospital gown pulled loose, baring his welt-scarred back.

Gentle bed-table lamplight became a vicious spotlight illuminating the rutted surface of a blasted moon. I reached forward to pull the gown closed, sparing him even my eyes. He reacted by spinning onto his stomach. I caught my breath.

Just as I slept only on my stomach to fend off my nightmare memories of being pinned on my back by something alien, Ric must have trained himself to sleep on his back to hide the thick whip scars from any bed partner.

He’d failed to be vigilant once with me. Now, in a half-conscious state, he was exposing his whole back… not only exposing it but reliving the wounds that had disfigured it.

His back muscles twitched as if writhing under the cut of the braided leather bullwhip wielded by a cowardly bastard. A child being beaten mercilessly by a grown man.

“Ric, Ric,” I whispered, trying not to wake him but to prod him into a comforting defensive posture again. Concealing the scars, even unconsciously, would make him feel more secure. I couldn’t bear watching his body relive that brutal punishment.

I crawled up onto the bed, but could do nothing. He was thrashing too wildly. I couldn’t cover him or soothe him. I could simply witness the pantomime of the invisible whipping, only one of many he’d endured as a boy.