"I'm especially concerned about a related issue: some of the resurrected dead have even been peeled off the silver screen, the black-and-white movies whose images were filmed on silver nitrate. Do you know what travesties like this mean, Miss Street? They're taking Bogey out of Casablanca , Bette Davis out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and selling their soul-less selves as cheap tourist attractions. Some are even being prostituted."

I leaned back in my chair. "Godfrey?"

"Wonderful actor. Classic portrayal. Surely you recognized him from My Man Godfrey? William Powell in the title role. Nineteen thirty-six. Perhaps the greatest screwball comedy ever made. A socialite played by Carole Lombard picks up a Depression-era hobo during a scavenger hunt. He becomes her family's servant, also their therapist. He's really a wealthy man and, of course, there's a romance. Powell was Dapper Personified in that part. I am honored to have him running my household. You would not believe what nasty, demeaning use such a fine vintage performance could be put to in the local brothels had I not snapped up Godfrey for my major domo."

I gasped. Godfrey was already a pal and my inside man at Castle Nightwine. He did not deserve servitude as maitre d' in a brothel!

"I see you feel a bit of my pain, Miss Street."

"How can someone rip off vintage film characters?"

"Ah. By exploiting a long-misused population among the dead. Can you guess?"

I couldn't and shook my head. This was a lot of reel life to absorb, especially when I still didn't fully trust the source.

"You see…" Nightwine said, leaning back almost half-horizontal in his reclining leather chair.

The extreme position made my nerve endings jump. I didn't like seeing even Nightwine in such a vulnerable position, although I understood it was calculated to earn my trust: harmless old grandfather leaning back to tell grandbaby a story.

"Zombies, my dear," he announced.

"Not my favorites."

"No one's favorites, or they wouldn’t have been abused as slave labor for so many centuries in so many corners of the earth. They are the secret behind the construction of the pyramids, you know."

"The pharaohs used zombie labor?"

Hector nodded somberly. "That was in primitive times. Today the technique of overlaying a cinematic character on a zombie began forty years ago as part of an experimental 'black' project backed by a beloved kiddie animation movie company. Now it's a common, if concealed, reanimation project taken over by the immortality mob gone rogue. No one, nothing, is sacred or safe. Supernatural thugs of all descriptions harry anyone, including those who ask questions, as you have been doing."

"The immortality mobs?"

"That's what I call them. They came up in the usual mob businesses. Murder, Incorporated. Racketeering. Running supposedly-victimless crime kingdoms."

"You mean drugs, gambling, and sex for sale?"

"Exactly. But once the Millennium Revelation occurred, it literally opened up a whole new field for the mobsters: grave-robbing on a massive scale. Then they hijacked the film reanimation technology, cornered the market, and put their new slaves to all sorts of low uses for entertaining gullible tourists. Philistines!"

"Who are these mobs?"

"Their kingpins are hidden, naturally, but there are three major corporate forces in Las Vegas today. They're called the Triad. The Magus, Gehenna, and Megalith hotel-casino consortium, offensively adding up to a classic Las Vegas brand name, M-G-M. Then there's the Babel, Bedlam, and Brighton group known as the "killer Bs. And the Thebes, Delphi, and Byzantium, the tri-cities. A new wild-card player is the Inferno, currently the hottest single hotel-casino on the Strip."

I was blinking by then because I was new in town. It was an international playground, and none of these names meant much to me. All we had in Kansas were a few Indian casinos and the occasional reanimated medicine man.

"Don't you worry, my dear. You need have nothing to do with these yobbos. All I have in mind for you is some genteel Nancy Drew, Brenda Starr level sleuthing and reporting."

Nancy Drew? Brenda Starr? Hector was from the Stone Age.

The Ice Age, my friend Irma's interior voice kicked in, but humor the lascivious old slug. You'll be working again and maybe you'll learn more about Lovely Lost Lilith.

Maybe? I damn well would.

“Well?" Godfrey asked, sounding way too anxious for such a cool character in such formal clothes.

Quicksilver, on his chain, and I stood in the driveway, gazing on our new digs.

The place had a separate entry gate. Hector's joint loomed like Manderley behind it, grand but totally separate, a mountain behind a molehill. This was indeed a "cottage": one story, with a storybook roof of thick-piled green shingles that mimicked the thatch roofs of, say, the Shire. Or Forever England. Or Disneyland.

Rose bushes, climbing ivies, and tall spears of larkspur and hollyhock surrounded the stone walls, wafting an earthy, sweet scent a supermodel would have killed to call her own and bottle.

But it was all mine for a reasonable monthly rent. A half-circle of brick steps led up to the iron-hinged wood door. Mullioned windows peeked out from the riotous foliage.

"Well?" Godfrey asked again.

"I'll sure whistle while I work here," I said. This was my little lost Wichita house, only six times better. My throat swelled almost shut with emotion.

"Here is the key." Godfrey planted a credit-card-size oblong of plastic in my palm.

He chuckled at my expression. Nobody had ever much chuckled at me in my life, and I liked it.

"Master Nightwine is thoroughly high-tech," Godfrey went on. "He simply adores the illusion of low-tech. Hence my humble employment."

"There's nothing humble about you, Godfrey, but the manners."

"Precisely so, Miss."

He handed me a plain white card with seven numbers written on it, and then leaned close to whisper in my ear. That pencil-thin mustache tickled. Scratch getting one for Ric.

"This is the code that disables and reinstates Master Nightwine's surveillance cameras at this location. In case…Master Quicksilver is entertaining the ladies some night."

Quick whimpered and licked me anxiously on the wrist. I couldn't always read dog language, but apparently he didn't like being used as an excuse.

We all three knew who wanted to control whose privacy.

"Very good, Godfrey. You are the perfect man's man, and the even more perfect woman's man."

He bowed. "I should warn you that Master Nightwine's fascinations with all things vintage and filmic extends to the inanimate as well."

Darn it! Godfrey talked too much like a college professor sometimes. I tried to translate his message.

"You mean, he collects film things as well as people?"

"Exactly, Miss."

"You mean…things like my new residence?"

"Exactly, Miss. You are indeed quick-witted. I would refer you to a mid-nineteen-forties film featuring a fine actor-friend of mine named Robert Young. It was called The Enchanted Cottage."

"And just what was enchanted about it, Godfrey?"

"Oh, my. I may become…unmanned. It is an old-style romantic fantasy. Unabashedly sentimental."

"I've read a few romantic fantasies." And had never believed a one.

"Not of your era, Miss. A facially scared World War Two veteran, Robert, meets a young but plain woman played by Dorothy Maguire. Only inside the enchanted cottage can the beauty of the inner selves they see in each other shine through."

"A fantasy indeed."

"But most affecting."

"I'm no longer affected by fantasies, Godfrey."