Whatever agency had revived and moved the outfit, I’d never wear it again. Yet… the cottage had never before revealed the presence of a lady’s maid, although I’d glimpsed the kitchen witch and Woodrow, the grumpy garden gnome. Woodrow resented his new yard duty, cleaning up after Quicksilver. Almost three times the size of a small wolf, Quicksilver left a lot to pick up, so I was happy to have less to collect on our Sunset Park walks.

In a weird way, the Enchanted Cottage was soothing my stress by enveloping me in more magical services than I’d ever suspected it possessed.

Bemused, I dressed as it had suggested. The silver familiar ran up my torso in chain form, then whipped down my right arm to circle my wrist as a moonstone bracelet. I was so used to its body-surfing ways that I hardly felt its faint stirrings.

I eyed it askance. That Brimstone Kiss night, Snow had sworn it reacted only to me, despite having morphed from a lock of his hair. I still felt unclean from its connection to a supernatural blackmailer who’d demanded a trivial but humiliating sexual surrender.

Whatever I felt about Snow now-at the moment a noxious stew of anger, self-disgust, queasy gratitude, and confusion-I didn’t seem to have become addicted to the infamous smooch. I did not harbor an ungovernable desire for another Brimstone Kiss.

That was encouraging, especially since I’d learned the usual effect was every woman’s dream… multiple orgasms. Call me crazy, but that was an awful thing to have foisted on you by a man, or whatever, who’d never kiss you again!

At least I hadn’t suffered that reaction, that night or ever. Orgasms one at a time are plenty for me. Many women don’t ever get even one. At least I still felt only fury from the Brimstone Kiss fiasco, not any desire for a rerun like the idol’s addicted mosh-pit groupies.

The crawliest new emotion I could detect was my shame at having reacted to Snow’s stagy sexual magnetism enough to be putty in his hands for maybe a minute too long. After a puberty of fighting off punk vamps drawn to my undead looks, I’d always prided myself on independence and immunity to self-serving male lust.

I stared at the innocuous moonstone bracelet the silver familiar had become. Wait! I kept a strand of Achilles’ white hair in a locket.

Was there anything on earth purer to counter a lecherous rock star’s long lovelocks? Pure pet love from a Lhasa ’s floor-sweeping snowy coat? The breed had guarded Tibet ’s Dalai Lamas all these centuries, tough little warrior-terriers. I could use all the mojo I could contrive.

I dug through the bedroom chest that housed my jewelry until I unearthed the locket holding a coil of white hair curled behind lead-crystal glass.

I opened the locket, removed the crystal oval, and paused. Eyeing the bracelet, I touched the soft circle of hair inside the locket. This risked bridging two beings, two species, two states, life and death. I’d been chancing that a lot lately.

A whiplash of past emotion made me again mourn Achilles’ brave death in my defense. I lifted the hair to my Brimstone Kissed lips… a machine-gun blast of static shock numbed my mouth.

The lock of dog hair curled around my forefinger tight enough to cut off the blood supply. Then it spun down to my wrist to twine the moonstone bracelet as if seeking a mate.

Staring, I watched the original bracelet thin into a chain. A string of silver Lhasa apso heads appeared as dangling charms. The silver familiar had produced this particular charm before, but never so many.

Again, the silver reshaped itself faster than the eye could detect, this time into an old-fashioned charm bracelet loaded with keen little items, like the weapons in a game of Clue.

I turned on the small dresser lamp to inspect them all: doghouse, ball and leg iron with lock, binoculars, wishing well with bucket, violin, top hat, mummy case, shackles, globe, scissors, chariot, anchor, high-heeled platform sandal, fan, cannon, war helmet, chair, wolf’s head, and thimble.

Some of those charms seemed mighty relevant to me and my recent adventures. I shook my wrist and heard a cheerful jingle. I felt much better. Achilles’ hair-lock would be my own little watchdog on duty to ensure Snow didn’t retain any smidgeon of influence on the silver familiar.

I spotted my tiny Lip Venom case from the Prada bag downstairs returned to me on the dresser. I always carried the tingling lip gloss as a memory of how meeting Ric had sent me on the first girly shopping spree of my life. So not me.

Now the slick little container was a bigger mystery on its own. It was a physical object transported by a wandering CinSim, an object I’d unknowingly lost at what had become the scene of the crime against Ric… the vamp-infested underbelly of the Karnak Hotel.

Peter Lorre as Ugarte from Casablanca had somehow smuggled the lip gloss case to Rick Blaine at the Inferno, who then returned it to me as a message that my Ric was in danger. This was impossible CinSim behavior. Purchased automatons were incapable of free movement, free will, loyalty, or innovation, right?

Later I’d solve how the CinSims had violated their boundaries to smuggle me the lip gloss. Now I needed to get back to Ric, pronto. What if he woke up without me there?

I slipped the Lip Venom into a pocket. Dresses and pinafores had pockets in the forties. I grabbed a white crocheted clutch purse and headed downstairs to fetch my ID and usual items from the Prada bag.

Prada, Irma snorted. She was my inner voice and alter ego since early childhood. Irma acted as my older, more cynical sister in times of trouble, which were becoming a lot more frequent. You are getting so upscale girly, girl! The designer shopping bags probably belonged to Grizelle, doncha think?

I eyed myself in the hall mirror. Dressed in white from head to foot, with my pale complexion, I looked like a ghost.

As what persona, I wondered, had the Enchanted Cottage really chosen to dress me? A nurse eager to return to her patient or a bride aching to return to her groom?

Or the ghost of a woman with no soul since the Brimstone Kiss.

GHOSTS WERE FOR sissies, I’d decided.

Vegas had a lot more potent supernaturals to worry about.

Dolly awaited me under the porte cochere beside my cottage. I slid into the red leather driver’s seat and revved her powerful engine. Getting behind that giant pizza-size vintage steering wheel gave me the sense of power and direction I needed right now.

I tooled through the tepid evening dark to the Strip and up the fabled thoroughfare to the Inferno Hotel, a literal “hot spot” on the horizon. The sound of snapping, whipping flames under its main canopy was almost as rhythmic and soothing as the myriad fountains at the Bellagio.

My self-appointed parking valet, Manny, was demon-on-the-spot to take Dolly in hand. His orange scaly skin and gray-green teeth put off some tourists, but he adored classic cars. I was pleased to see that his Inferno uniform had arrived and he no longer wore the ancient Egyptian kilt and accessories of his former employer.

Had he still worn that Karnak costume, I might have lost it and strangled his scrawny orange throat for reminding me what had happened to Ric there.

“You all right, Miss Street?” Manny looked up from admiring the chrome-heavy dashboard.

“Sure. Fine.” Easy lies were all I was capable of in public yet.

“That awesome Grizelle has been checking the entry-way every twenty minutes. The Boss must want to see you bad.”

He winked as I blanched. I reminded myself that I did not want to see the “Boss” in any of his incarnations, especially hotel-casino mogul Christophe, my blackmailer and Ric’s rescuer. Talk about having mixed emotions.