Ric would leave the Inferno ready for a road show company of Guys and Dolls.

I hesitated at bill-paying time. Snow had promised Helena that anything Ric or she needed would be “on” the hotel.

Nope. I had three fat checks coming for my snoop work from Hector, the CinSims, and Howard Hughes. Technically, I’d also been hired by Snow to discover the identity of Loretta Cicereau’s ancient vampire lover boy, but I’d taken my blood money, and how. I charged the clothes to my credit card, glad I could put Ric in glad rags on my own ticket.

I circled the bar on my trip back upstairs and arrived to find Quicksilver waiting and my things packed in the same suitcase and sturdy sacks Godfrey had sent from Hector’s place.

Ric was standing with the doctor, a CinSim with a vague smudge of dark beard that lacked the brunet perfection of Ric’s dusky jawline.

“Do not bend, spindle, or mutilate this young man for the first day or so,” the doctor advised me. “You could still drill to China through that neck wound.”

Ric grabbed my suitcase, then my newly freed hand, and rushed after me and my crinkling shopping bags into my bedroom.

As soon as the door closed, he flung the hospital gown to the floor, standing as nude as Adam and almost as unmarked, except for having a navel.

“I finally caved and let those nosy nurses give me a frontal sponge bath, chica,” he admitted, “so I’m fit for new clothes.”

I dug out the underwear, not tighty whities and not boxers, but something smooth and close-fitting in between.

“What the hell are these?”

“ ‘Pagan’ briefs. European. Expensive.”

“Dios! Trust women to go for freaky underwear.”

He pulled them on and they were all they could be, from my viewpoint.

I’d looked him over good. No vampire tsetse fly or leech bite scars, just the faint silvery rays on his back. He paused to turn his head over his shoulder to the mirror and view his back in wonder while I pulled out and undid the packaging on his new ensemble.

The Holy Family was much appealed to, along with other saints and martyrs, but Ric was finally clothed in my selections and looked like a million dollars. For a Vegas gambling shark.

“Not bad for a speed run,” I said. “I wish Helena could see you now.”

“ Helena? My mother the shrink? She-? You-? Delilah?”

“I love you with your jaw dropped but we really, really want to leave here, pronto. I’ll explain it all once we’re at your place. Or mine?”

“My place,” he said absently, tying a perfect double Windsor in the pricey silver Italian silk tie.

Now I understood why he was the “freaking best-dressed Fed” I’d ever seen, as I’d told him when we’d met in Sunset Park. Now I realized why he always craved a silky skin of posh clothing.

It wasn’t vanity. It wasn’t snobbery. It was urban survival for someone who’d had to develop a skin of sandpaper way too young.

I smiled. Ric was busy asserting his druthers. Let the little things ease him back into his post-Karnak nightmare life. We’d handle the big things later.

WHEN I DROVE Dolly under the porte cochere of the nearby coach house at 4:00 P.M., Godfrey was waiting by the driveway.

How long had he been there? I wondered, primed to feel guilty about Ric’s and my late, leisurely lunch at the Bahama Breeze at the juncture of Howard Hughes Center Road and Parkway near Paradise and Flamingo. That’s where and when I explained my and Helena ’s hit-and-run cross-country trip. I even promised Ric a Vampire Sunrise soon.

My tale bemused and amused him. He was also too unquestioning. I realized Helena ’s therapeutic hypnotism had put her in the back of his mind so that I could remain up front to tend and pamper him. My respect for her tripled.

The restaurant was so very Vegas, and the piña coladas were almost as good as my homemade cocktails. They even allowed Quicksilver inside for a grilled steak kabob… as long as he ate it under the table and from my skewer.

When we reached the estate, Godfrey was unruffled.

“Good day, Miss, Master Quicksilver. Splendid to see you back, Mr. Montoya. I am posted here to take your belongings, Miss, and establish Master Quicksilver at the cottage. We presume you will drive Mr. Montoya to his place of residence. Should you require a change of costume, this bag will suit your needs.”

He took our paper shopping bags and handed another to Ric in Dolly’s passenger seat.

Quick jumped out of the backseat and ran to the top of the Enchanted Cottage’s semicircular stairs, barking once in protest at being left behind as I drove back out on Sunset Road.

Ric suddenly slapped his forehead with a palm. “Say. We need to pick up my Corvette.”

Omigod! I wasn’t about to stimulate bad memories by breezing past the Karnak ’s parking lot for a look-see. Maybe Ric’s gal pal, Captain Kennedy Malloy of the LVMPD, could check into that. I imagined a delicate and unpleasant conversation:

“And why can’t Ric Montoya deal with getting his own car from the Karnak parking ramp, Miss Street?” Malloy would ask in icy disbelief.

“He’s still recovering from my raising him from the dead,” I’d reply. “It’s best he doesn’t deal with the little things for a while.”

“And I am a ‘little thing’?”

Actually, like many women in authority, she was way more petite than I was.

No, asking Malloy to retrieve Ric’s car wouldn’t work. My best bet for that was my friends, the parking valet demons. They went crazy over vintage rides and Ric’s bronze Stringray was one, if not as venerable as my own Dolly.

I texted Ric’s home address to Hermie at the Karnak and requested the car’s “discreet” return to his home address garage. Ric must have parked the Vette on the Karnak grounds and demons had an infallible nose for Old Detroit metal. Foreign models just didn’t do it for them.

What I really needed to find out was what Ric’s mental wheels could remember.

“Worry about your ride later, hombre,” I purred in a kittenish way I’d picked up from late-night TV movies. “You look good in my passenger seat for now.” Was I turning into your usual manipulative fatal femme or not?

His hand smoothed the red leather interior. “I’d rather drive.”

“When you’re better.”

“I can get better?”

I grinned to hear that cheeky optimism back. Ric was pretty quick with the quips for a dead man. My hands tightened on the big steering wheel with the finger indentations sculpted on the underside. I had a lot of verbal tap-dancing on the truth ahead of me.

We soon reached his rambling house in an established Vegas gated community. I parked Dolly inside the courtyard, so Old Mexico. At Ric’s Alamo-massive dark wood front door I suddenly realized he’d been found naked. No house keys.

“Ah, we’re still missing your personal effects,” I told him.

“No problem.”

His fingers tapped out a pattern too quick to see on the security keypad. The heavy door jerked ajar as the system beeped. Ric’s short-term memory might be AWOL, but he recalled the important things. I was glad to be one of them.

The house was cool and dark, shuttered against the peak late-afternoon heat. We turned on lights as we went through the public rooms right to the bedroom and into the master bathroom beyond.

“Sorry, Del,” he said, yanking out the impeccable knot he’d only put into the new tie a couple hours before. “I really need a shave and a real shower. I feel like I’ve been through… I don’t know, been crawling through some rank slimy jungle for hours. Like my skin is crawling. Except for my back, of course.”

He lifted me to sit atop the long bathroom countertop and began to take off the clothes I’d just seen him put on. I was beginning to get why men went to strip clubs.