He tilted his forehead against mine and cupped the sides of my face so we were enclosed in our own secret communion, breath mingling between us, warm and intoxicating.

“It wasn’t a dream, was it, Delilah? Somehow you kissed me whole again.”

“Yes.” I inhaled his breath and wafted it back into his mouth on that long sibilant sound, like a sigh. I’d tell him about the Resurrection Kiss later.

“You see ghosts in mirrors, you turn my oldest pain into pleasure, what else on earth can you do, Delilah Street?”

“Love you,” I said.

Our kiss right then was a vow. We felt nothing more extraordinary than accelerated human heartbeats. How we both appreciated that. I especially felt relieved. No way did I want to keep passing on Brimstone Kiss side effects.

“So where the hell are we?” Ric asked as our lips parted. “What happened and where are my frigging clothes?”

I hesitated. His clothes were probably rags in the deepest bowels of the Karnak Hotel. To explain that, I’d have to spin an incredible yarn about rogue CinSims, vivified dragons, carnivorous hyenas and zombie mummies, Egyptian vampire warriors, and the sacred and profane underground rivers of Vegas.

Even a man who could dowse for the dead wouldn’t buy this whole scenario until he had time to get oriented.

“Look, my dear hombre,” I told him. “We’ve been in big trouble and ended up depending on the kindness of Christophe at the Inferno. Until now you were in the healing hands of a doctor and a group of no-nonsense nurses.”

“The day shift, you must mean,” he qualified. “I think I can wrap the night nurse around my little finger and big-”

I fanned my fingers over his mouth before I got too interested in what he was going to say.

“Serious professional nurses, Ric. You need a doctor’s permission to leave here. I’m sure he’ll check you pretty soon and dismiss you. Meanwhile, give me your sizes, amor, and I can have this fun clothes shopping spree for you in the hotel galleria.”

“Yeah?” He frowned again. “The left side of my neck really throbs.” His fingers patted the square gauze patch. “What happened there?”

“We’re in a suite at the Inferno,” I said, going back to his first and easiest question. “Some bad operators got hold of you but we got you back.”

“And they kept my clothes?”

“Right. It’s a long story, Ric. You need to sit down with something bracing besides me and hear it step by step. Wouldn’t you be more effective dressed than wearing an air-conditioned, string-tied, sissy hospital gown when you tell those sponge-bearing, bath-hungry nurses that you’re fine and to buzz off?”

He thought about it-the exposure of a hospital gown’s open rear slit combined with his back phobia-and nodded.

“Don’t spend too much, chica. I doubt you’ll get what I would.”

“Oh, no worry. I’ll just load up on Elvis T-shirts and Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. Cheap, fast, and they show off your legs. That’s so you.”

“Delilah!”

I quick-kissed him good-bye and escaped before he could ask too many more questions.

While I dashed into my bedroom to snag my handy messenger bag, a morning nurse came out from her bedroom. I asked her to call the doctor, saying that Ric was awake and restless.

Then I skedaddled, telling Quicksilver to watch on the way out and keep an eye out for Grizelle. I winced to think of how Snow’s potent Brimstone Kiss had boomeranged to put the risen Ric in mortal danger from Snow’s shape-shifting bodyguard.

That’s another reason I wanted Ric ambulatory and out of here. I didn’t want either of us depending on Snow’s “hospitality” now that he had a bitter personal reason to hate us both. A man who can raise a centuries-dead dragon from its ashes may not be a master vampire but he sure was something dark that decent folks should frown on.

I tried to make my passage through the hotel a low-profile slink. I was doing fine until I had to cross the casino area to get to the shopping arcade called Beelzebub’s Boutiques. That was the Inferno Hotel, a relentless theme park of evil.

A small pale dog came yapping after my heels.

That so reminded me of my lost Achilles that I played the sucker and paused to look.

This dog was taller than a Lhasa. It was a curly-haired white dog with gray touches on its forehead and perked ears like a center-parted toupee. I recognized the wire-haired terrier with a sinking heart and a soft “Damn.”

“Asta? What are you doing here?” I asked fruitlessly.

The dog danced around me once, then bounced a few steps away and paused so I would follow.

He wasn’t Lassie but I knew exactly where he wanted me to go.

I gave up and followed Asta back to the Inferno Bar, where his master, Nick Charles, debonair detective possessed of the best pencil-thin mustache of his era and the Inferno house CinSim, held forth.

Nicky stood beside a willowy woman with a side-parted thirties hairdo in tight Marcel waves. The curls broke into adorable fluff at her sharp chin line. She more leaned than sat on a bar stool. She had thin arched eyebrows and wore a chic, dark, slim day gown bowed and ruffled around the shoulders.

I would kill for that dress, and then I’d have to kill again to be thin enough to get into it.

“Delilah,” Nicky greeted me, with a devilish arched eyebrow.

He took me aside to mumble in my ear. “Are you by any chance responsible for my new condition of domestic bliss here at the Inferno Bar? It does cut down on my cigarette-lighting for attractive women tourists.”

I sighed to indicate my plea. “Guilty.”

And I had three times the reason to plead guilty. I’d talked Snow into giving Nicky his two CinSim better halves a while back. Here was walking, bouncing, barking evidence that Snow had lived up to his word. Great, I’d just condemned him to Living Hell. Although it may have been his natural element.

Lighten up, Irma told me. The Family Charles makes a helluva better Inferno Bar attraction than Nicky feeling low-down and solo. You think the guy tourists won’t flock to witty, winsome Nora like the dames go for Nicky? And that Asta is too cute for words. Snow owes you for peerless marketing moxie. Again.

I’d just let his probably immortal back be sliced to chopped liver to restore Ric’s. The pure profit motive wasn’t enough to overcome Snow’s enmity now. Interesting to contemplate what physical torture he would consider sufficient repayment. And now he knew my weaknesses…

Still, I doubted he’d use Ric against me. The lead singer of the Seven Deadly Sins had too much pride. No, it would be between him and me only and it would not be pretty. Perhaps not even survivable. For me. Snow wouldn’t want scars for scars. He’d want what I most feared he did. My soul.

“Why the glum face, Miss Delilah?” Nick Charles coaxed me. “Here’s a fresh Brimstone Kiss. It’s the new In drink.”

I couldn’t help recoiling.

“Ah, too fiery a concoction even for its inventor, but just the thing to loosen the tongue of my pal, Rick Blaine. We’re fellow film barflies from way back. I quite agree. I prefer dry and subtle. Speaking of which, you have favorably impressed the CinSim Consortium. You definitely ought to be in pictures.” He winked.

That reminded me. The Inferno’s infernal floating mirror-ball surveillance cameras would soon pinpoint my whereabouts. Better keep moving if I didn’t want to be zapped with Seven Deadly Sins lightning.

I blew a farewell kiss to Nick and Nora. Asta, who was now perched on a bar stool, wagged his stubby tail. The trio made a sophisticated film still in living black and white.

I kept on a direct line for the Devil’s shopping zone.

Once there I could window-shop the world’s finest clothing brands for my baby. Nothing too good for his rehabilitated back or my sensitive fingers.

I found a shop selling Zimmerli Swiss men’s “furnishings.” “Pagan style” briefs in finest cotton, a red silk iridescent shirt, silver satin tie, dove gray sport coat, and charcoal slacks.