Butterfly Kiss

Carole Nelson Douglas

The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

A veteran PI can never know his home turf’s dark side well enough, and I have padded the neon-lit Strip of Las Vegas and its byways and back-ways for a long time.

Vegas has always been known as Sin City, but the “Sin” part has gotten a lot deadlier since the Millennium Revelation at the turn of the twenty-first century revealed some of the bloodsuckers in Vegas were actually supernatural – vampires, and werewolves and zombies, oh my.

I admit that I am not au courante, so to speak, with all the varieties of crime and punishment on the paranormal side of the street, so I have made it my business tonight to find that nomadic subterranean pit of the dark side of sin called the Sinkhole.

I am not impressed. Sure, the full moon is putting on a show topside, so I must dodge werewolves in the street, but I find they are mostly living La Vida Loco after their nightly blood-thirsty runs and now are only running up bills in gin joints and casinos.

Midnight Louie is light on his feet and used to keeping a low profile – a very low profile – abetted by the fact that I am short, dark and handsome. My thick black pelt blends into the night, except for my baby greens, which can emit a demonic glow when the few street lights hit them.

My kind has had a bad rep since witches were burned at the stake. I find that useful in my work. In fact, a tourist couple happens to notice me and runs the other way, shrieking that I must not cross their paths.

Fine with me, folks. Your footwear bears an odour of bunions. Or is that “onions” from a zombie burger joint?

All around me echo the same sounds of merriment and debauchery you get in mainstream Vegas, interspersed with occasional screams, growls and moans.

Then I catch an aroma that perks my wing flaps and tingles my tail section.

Something feline and feminine this way comes, and it is not the shape-shifted leopard devouring a Happy Meal at the MacDungeon’s across the street.

The faintest brush against my shiny satin lapels reveals a pale feathery plume tickling the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.

Wow. This first-class dame is draped in luxuriant furs, cream with crimson tips, the breed colour called a flame-point. If the Sinkhole is the path to hell and this hot little number is on it, I am homeward bound!

“My name is Vesper,” she breaths in my perked ear. “I have not seen you in these parts before, Big Boy.”

Actually, I am. Big that is, and surely a boy. Perhaps some self-description is appropriate now that the action has turned romantic. First, I am twenty pounds of solid muscle. Check. Hairy chest, check. Concealed weapons? Check. Sixteen shivs ready to slash from my mitts and feet in a street rumble.

Best of all, I have – as they used to advertise sports cars – four on the floor and come fully equipped from the factory.

All this means I am ready, willing and able to take on any Sinkhole-dwelling humans or unhumans, and also, of course, any lone ladies requiring defensive and/or intimate manoeuvres.

While I am planning the evening’s escapades, the lithesome Vesper has diverted down a dim alley, only her flame-tipped train beckoning from around the corner. I hasten to follow her.

Now, any simpleton knows this is probably a trap. So do I. Not that I am a simpleton, although I am a simple fellow at heart. No, I figure I will find out what the lady really wants, and if it is a patsy, we will have a discussion. Either way, I intend to get to know her a lot better.

So I edge into the alley, my laser-sharp night vision kicking into full power.

Yup. Another flash of tail deep in the darkness. Classic. I slink along the dumpsters, ignoring the octopus tentacles writhing over the edges. This is no time for sushi.

Even the noise of the main drag has faded. I am invading No Man’s Land. Luckily, I am no man. I have almost caught up with the elusive Vesper when I stumble across the expected trap.

It forms an unseen barrier, less than two feet high and six feet long. I peer over it only to see Vesper’s eyes gleaming red in the reflected light of the street.

Hmm, I think to myself. We commune over a dead body. Whose? How? Why? I have my work cut out for me, I see.

Vesper hisses, baring long front fangs (so misnamed as “canine”) also gleaming red in the night light. True, neon is common in Vegas, and below it. However, this looks like the sheen of blood. Could Vesper have killed this man?

Gorgeous as she is, she is a domestic cat. I have almost killed humans in the pursuit of my cases, but I am remarkably strong and clever. I cannot believe this bit of fluff is homicidal.

Then I reconsider. Never underestimate the female of the species, any species.

I sniff along the victim’s upper torso and encounter a scent of . . . nothing.

The man is not only dead, he is not . . . um . . . how shall I put it delicately? He is not rotting.

Now that is a truly revolting turn of events! I do scent the odd combination of earthy odours. Either this gent wore an unusual cologne or . . . aha! My luxuriant whiskers follow the shape of a large, curved claw impaled near his heart.

Dainty Vesper certainly could not have wielded this large a lance.

By now someone has stumbled out of a nearby dive, leaving the rear door ajar enough to cast pale light on our tableau of three.

The deceased is indeed a young man. His dark hair contrasts a dead-white skin. He would be handsome if he had green eyes like mine, but his eyelids are closed. Vesper is rubbing back and forth on his black attire, shedding white hairs in her distress.

I realize that she has led me here. This man must have been her . . . companion. I dislike the word “owner” used in relation to my kind. I have been street smart and fancy free since I was a kit. True, I have a human female room-mate, Miss Temple Barr, a public relations expert and sometime crime-solver – with my immense help, that is – but it is a voluntary arrangement on both our parts.

Vesper releases a sad mew and tries to make like an ascot around the poor guy’s neck. I understand the bond between human and animal, but this is over the top.

“You must remove her,” a low, rasping voice says.

Easier said than done, I think as I whip around to see what human has arrived on the scene.

I can communicate in various ways with various members of the animal kingdom, but I do not speak to humans. This is not because I could not if I so wished, but, really, some of my kin have suffered much at their disloyal hands. I am not about to honour even the best of them with my voice.

As for the voice I heard, we three are still alone. No one has discovered us.

I stare at Vesper while she whines and buries her face in the dead guy’s neck and runs her dainty muzzle along his jawline. You would think she was a Silver Screen drama queen. I am not the sentimental sort, but realize that this distraught lady must not disturb the evidence on the body.

“Vesper, no!” the faint voice says. “I will not. Never. Anyway, it is not enough now, and this strapping fellow you have lured here is not sufficient, either.”

Midnight Louie not sufficient? For anything? I beg your pardon. I am the primo PI in this town and have been since before God made millenniums and the devil made brimstone. Well, so to speak.

“Go, you,” the voice commands me and follows up with a demeaning order, as if I were not Midnight Louie, PI. “Scat! And consider your hide well saved. Vesper means well but this is beyond the abilities of cats.”

I drop my jaw. And speak. I am not violating my vow to address no human being. This man is unhuman.

“You are still alive,” I tell my handsome corpse. “For a vampire.”

He coughs slightly. “Good. You hear my thoughts. My dying thoughts. My poor Vesper is offering her slender artery for my survival, but it is not enough. You must drive her away.”

“Someone has staked you so you cannot move,” I diagnose, on the right trail at last, now that I know the nature of the victim. The claw must be polished wood.

It is not every day – or night, I should say – that an investigator can interview the corpse, who is also a corpse-to-be even more.

“A long distance blow,” he answers. “I staggered here to escape more poison wooden darts just before the curse pinned me here like a bug.”

Vesper lifts her lovely throat and howls. “You good-for-nothing,” she accuses me. “You have neither blood nor brains to offer! Do something.”

“I am a professional,” I tell her. “Your fit of pique is not called for. And I am not about to trick some innocent tourist down this alley – although I could – so he or she can be drained to death.”

The vampire’s form stirs. “No, no. Not to death. I am a daylight vampire, the new breed designed to mingle safely with humans. I feed on a . . . circle of willing volunteers, a mere cocktail with each, one at a time. Only now, I have been immobilized and starved. I need more than a serial filling day by day. I need a full body’s blood. Keep anything human away. My will to survive could make me drain a person to death and make them a vampire . . . one without my scruples.”

I frown. “How many daylight vampires are there?”

“Only a few dozen, but the programme is promising.”

“Is it possible someone is trying to sabotage the movement by driving you to savagery or death?”

He gives a hollow, almost spectral laugh. “Even likely, but I do not have the time to explore that possibility, my feline friend. Can you . . . will you . . . look after Vesper when I am gone?”

Vesper emits an anguished screech and casts herself on the vampire’s chest.

What can I do but promise? Still, I know I am in no position to shepherd a vampire pussycat. I need help with this case, probably human help.

First, I stiffen my spine and judiciously pat down the fallen vampire. He is nicely dressed in silk-blend black from foot to, ah, neck, and well built as humans go under his fancy clothes. I find a couple of interesting objects in his sports coat side pockets.

One is a slick multifunction device the size of a credit card. My street-calloused pads manage to punch enough buttons to call up his client list of blood donors. This causes my eyebrow whiskers to lift. They are all female, all right, and one is a well-known performer on the Strip. I could make some tidy dough from the tabloids if I outed her erotic . . . tastes.

But that would be unethical. A plan is forming in my agile brain, but things are always complicated for a guy of my physical type.

“What is this?” I ask Vesper, rolling a ping-pong-ball-sized object I found in his pocket from one paw to the other over the pavement.

She leaps down to swat it away from me. “My toy.”

“Just a minute there.” I manage to pull it safely against my hairy masculine chest. “There seems to be something inside.” I perk an ear at a muted but frantic buzzing.

“My toy,” she repeats. “My master bought it for me.”

A tug of toy ensues, during which, thanks to my superior strength, the ball breaks in half like a perfectly split eggshell.

Well.

The buzzing, now loud enough to decipher, resolves into an indignant high-pitched voice, as the winged inhabitant gives us both what-for.

“It is a Whirr-away,” Vesper says. “My master hurls it for me to chase and find.”

“Hmm.” I trap a tiny wing under one curved claw. “I have eaten bigger mites than this by accident. This is no ‘toy’, Vesper, it is an earth-bound pixie. Very rare. Your master must treasure you indeed.”

“You would stoop to petty thievery while my master lies dying?”

“I would stoop to using your ‘toy’ for a much more serious purpose. What is your name, little fellow?”

“I am female,” the creature buzzes back at me.

“Is it true that pixies are allergic to silver?” A lot of supernaturals can be injured by silver.

I feel the tiny wing tremble against my pad. “Awful stuff. It burns my skin and if it ever enters my blood, I will die.”

“Then I imagine you could spot the stuff instantly, from a long ways away?”

Another shudder. “It is far too popular as human jewellery. I smell six women wearing it on the street out there.”

“What if the silver sprang from a lock of long white hair?”

The tiny human-like body leaps atop my mitt, pulling its wing free. “Changeling silver. That is different. Very rare and powerful. Almost non-existent in this realm.”

“What is your name?”

“Wasp-Wing.”

“I take it you can fly far and fast, Wasp-Wing.”

“Like bolt lightning. I have been leashed so as not to over-challenge the vampire’s feline companion.”

“I usually work with a human female on my cases,” I explain to all who listen, which is a fading vampire, a heart-broken vampire cat and my new pixie pal. “We need human help and I am thinking of a new partner this time who might just have the paranormal talent to do the trick. Fly topside, find the woman who wears changeling silver and bring her back, fast as you can.”

“That will depend on the woman,” Wasp-Wing rustles, vanishing like a dust mote against the neon-lit night.

“My toy will never come back,” Vesper mourns. “I always had to trap and fetch it.”

“Nothing wins over an ally more than letting it feel useful and challenged, Vesper.”

“You expect this silver-bearing human female to save my master?”

“At the very least, she can move the body.”

She strikes at me with fanned claws, but I easily dodge the blow. Those vampire claws may be toxic, for all I know.

“Calm down, Vesper. We all need help sometimes.”

“If my master cannot drink he will die,” she growls softly, curling up along his side.

I gingerly mount his chest, which of course does not lift up and down, and examine the weapon that pins him. It is not a toy either, but a curved claw two inches long. Small things can be potent, I know. Including pixies.

Perhaps ten minutes later, a shadow fills the alley opening, then a figure strides to our location and stands, hands on hips, feet astride, looking down. She is wearing low-rise blue jeans and a grey leotard top.

On her right elbow perches a tiny, glowing, winged figure.

“It is a good thing I brake for butterflies,” she says. “My windshield almost pulverized the pixie before I discovered what it was. Am I to understand I have been summoned to perform a ‘professional courtesy’ for another PI?”

“Nicely put,” I tell Wasp-Wing, although the woman cannot hear me.

Now that a human is on the scene, I am back to my usual handicap: my vow not to speak to the breed. Pixies, luckily, have no such principles and this one has been buzzing her head off since she landed on my colleague’s windshield.

The woman kneels beside the vampire, taking him for a fallen private investigator.

“Man, you are nearly gone,” she murmurs as Vesper jumps up to rub back and forth on her bent leg, white fangs gleaming.

I know what Vesper is thinking – she is hoping my hard-won assistant will trip over her onto her master and become instant fang bait.

He struggles, feeling the temptation, and manages to whisper, “Stay away.”

“No can do,” the woman says. “The pixie blabbed all. The name is Delilah Street. I am a paranormal investigator who has met a daylight vampire. I know your more-evolved type is mortally harmless to humans. We need to get you somewhere private.”

He struggles as her hand reaches for the claw dart in his chest.

“Bespelled!” Wasp-Wing whines a warning, hovering over Delilah Street’s fingers.

“No problem,” she says, jerking out the claw as if it was a mere thorn. “What is your name?” she asks the vampire.

His body still twitches from the stake’s removal. “Damien Abbott,” he gasps. “You planning my gravestone? A daylight vampire will not rise again, never fear.”

“You had better rise now or you will die, and these cats and the pixie seem unhappy about that, which is good enough for me. My blood is a bit off, human docs tell me, but I am the only oasis you have got going, pilgrim. Can you take just enough to walk a few feet?”

“I am stronger unstaked, but my control is shaky.”

“I will have to trust it. I have never been vampire-bit. A minor withdrawal does not put me on the road to turning, Damien, but just a sip, pretty please.”

“You are not my client.”

“No, you are mine now.” She extends a brave, bare wrist to his lips. “As the Wicked Stepmother said to Snow White, whom I happen to resemble, ‘Come, bite.’”

She is right. In the faint light I see her skin is almost as pale as the vampire’s and her hair as dark. I never thought I would live to see a smart dame inviting potential disaster, but I have heard Miss Delilah Street is the nervy type. I position myself to take a big chomp out of the guy’s private parts if he should overimbibe, and I can see his eye-white glisten as his gaze shifts to the threat I pose.

Miss Delilah Street shudders a pixie shiver and then all is silent and still in the alley until Damien jerks his head aside.

“I did not feel a thing,” Miss Delilah says.

“I secrete an initial drop of anaesthesia.”

“In fact,” she adds, purring a little like Vesper, who was now kneading her master’s arm, “you remind me of my daylight vampire acquaintance, who is quite a sexy guy.”

“I secrete an aphrodisiac as well.”

“Oh.” She jerks back, then moves behind him and bends to get an arm under his shoulder. “Upsy-daisy. Does my blood have any special effects?”

He lurches upright and actually cracks a smile. “It is a bit on the effervescent side. You enjoy your champagne, Delilah?”

“I am the Cocktail Queen of the Inferno Bar from time to time,” she quips. “I invent ’em more than drink ’em. Come on, you had the smarts to get darted just feet from the back of Wrathbone’s Bar. I called ahead for a private room.”

“You are confident. What about –?”

“The cats are following.”

“No, the, the –”

Miss Delilah Street looks down at me. Wasp-Wing had curled back into her ball, which I had rolled shut. Right now the lot was in my mouth, in my live prey carry, which would not dent a cotton ball.

“Who do you think told me your location? Handy little thing.”

“Wasp-Wing is my cell phone, and Vesper’s companion.”

“Worry not. Your pocket-rocket pixie is safely stowed. Midnight Louie’s custody is the safest place for it.”

“You know this alley cat who has designs on Vesper?”

“Yup. He is a primo private eye, although I am surprised to see him walking on the wild side down here. He is not as young as he used to be.”

I beg your pardon! I bare my fangs. But Miss Delilah Street is too busy planning her next move to pay any attention to mine.

“Get inside,” she tells the temporarily revived vamp, “where I can nail the dart-thrower and save your undead life.”

Miss Vesper pauses on the threshold, flaunting her fantail in my face to bring me to a sudden stop.

“So you are a notorious figure in the Overworld?” she says.

I sigh and let Wasp-Wing’s carrier down to roll into the room beyond. “I do cut a wide swath,” I say, striking a duellist’s pose with my foreshivs extended.

“All you have done for my master is hang around me.”

None are so unappreciated as the subtle. I step aside to permit the lady to enter first.

Wrathbone’s is a rather rowdy venue, I have heard, with armed skeletons decorating the walls and a clientele that runs from adventure-seeking tourists to celebrity zombies to werewolf mobsters to vamps and narcs.

This room we have entered, however, is rather luxe, with an inner sanctum, i.e., bedroom.

“Perfect,” Miss Delilah declares, ushering our wounded vamp onto the bed within. “You might as well husband your resources in your usual field of operations.”

“I have only so many minutes before I will need more than your compromised blood to keep conscious, much less . . . viable,” he warns.

“Relax,” she tells him as Vesper rushes to claim what must be her usual spot on the bed. I well recognize the instinct. My Miss Temple has only one significant other (at a time; there are two vying for the prime spot), but that is another story in another place and time.

Poor Miss Vesper must share her master’s accommodations with . . . several usurpers. I hasten to the anteroom and Miss Delilah’s side. She has seated herself to scroll through our host’s social register.

“Seven women,” she mutters, “one for each day of the week, and all at staggered times. Six Thursday; nine am. Friday; noon Saturday; three Sunday; six Monday; nine pm. Tuesday. And midnight tomorrow: Wednesday.”

She eyes my attentive presence. “Our vampire is a creature of habit, which makes him easy to target. I wonder if daylight vampires ever actually sleep.”

I settle on my belly, forearms wrapped and abutting in my “wise mandarin” pose. Any minute now I would be calling Vesper “Grasshopper”, were she not reclining in the bedroom.

“What is today’s nine pm client, Corrine, besides late?” Miss Delilah asks herself, and me. “Is she at their usual rendezvous? Or does she know she need not bother? Why not text her to come here?”

“Now,” she tells me, “that done, it is high time for an interview with the vampire.”

I appreciate being kept abreast, so to speak, of the proceedings, and accompany her back into the adjoining bedroom. Vesper reclines beside her enervated master, although the crimson velvet bedspread is my main attraction. I would look terrific on it and my black coat would add a formal touch nestling next to Vesper’s dazzling white one.

Damien probably looks tasty to human females, with his white silk shirt open to allow the wound to heal, and his black-suited form long and lean against the plush fabric.

I assume Miss Delilah Street must be thinking the same thing, because I hear her catch her breath.

“Shades of Sansouci,” she murmurs mysteriously.

“I had no idea the Sinkhole had places like this,” Damien says lazily.

“Vegas has always sold seduction,” she answers.

“You realize I need to get back on my feeding schedule soon. Your blood is strangely soothing and exciting at the same time, but I took only what I needed to get to a safe place.”

“I know all that. One of your ladies is en route.”

“My nine pm? Corrine? Good. She has a calm nature. No hysterics from her.”

I can see Miss Delilah register that at least one of his ladies is hotheaded.

Speaking of hot-headed ladies, Damien lifts a pallid hand to stroke Vesper’s little pink ears, earning a slit-eyed purr. Pitty-pat goes my heart.

Miss Delilah sits on the foot of the bed. I see Damien’s shoes have been slipped off and he is in stocking feet, like Vesper and myself.

“Tell me about your clients,” Miss Dee says. “I know their names and appointment times from your BlackBerry.”

He shuts his eyes to save strength to talk, and perhaps to picture the seven mistresses on whom his undead life depends daily.

“Corrine is a widow who deeply loved her husband and wants no other spouse. Midnight belongs to Violet, a goth girl who is dying to live the part. Dawn brings Petra, a career woman with no time for human love. Nine in the morning is Tess’ time. She is an artist. Noon means I lunch on Suzanne, a retired nurse who enjoys ministering to the needy. At three, Nelda arrives for tea and sympathy. She has multiple sclerosis, but is doing well now. The ancients thought bloodletting beneficial for disease. Sunset falls when Vyrle comes. She is a chorus girl and finds our activity energizing.”

Miss Delilah snaps Damien’s BlackBerry shut and rises. “I will admit your nine pm appointment when she arrives.”

“Corrine.” He smiles, relieved. “What a lovely person.”

It is hard to pull myself away from the vision that is a red-velvet reclining Vesper with her pink nose and ears and very sharp white teeth. I could certainly spare a little blood for a rendezvous with a hot tamale femme fatale . . .

Miss Delilah shuts the bedroom door and pulls a Mama-san chair with a huge round rattan back against the wall and sits. It provides an impressive background for her white skin, black hair and morning glory-vivid blue eyes. She would make one gorgeous blue-eyed black cat.

“The only thing to do, Louie,” she addresses me as I arrange myself formally at her feet, “is to put each of Damien’s ladies to the test. I urgently texted them all to come here. We must find out where hatred hides behind their vampire-loving exteriors, because that surely was the motive.”

Hatred of Damien? I wonder. Or someone jealous of his attachment to his other lady friends? Human emotions get so messy when it comes to sex. My kind avoids that sort of trap thanks to a little inborn thing called “heat”.

The door to Wrathbone’s opens to admit a roar of laughter and the reek of booze, smoke and blood. In walks Miss Corrine. I see right away that Miss Delilah Street is dumbfounded. Me too.

Miss Corrine is at least sixty, which can mean well preserved these days, but still silver-haired and sedately respectable. One would not imagine her in abandoned intimacy with a vampire, but life is like that and it takes a lot more to surprise Midnight Louie.

“Who are you?” Corrine demands suspiciously. “I know it is nine-thirty. I was not on time for my nine o’clock, but he was not there . . . ”

“I am Damien’s . . . agent. I am afraid that he has been injured –”

Corinne ingests a gasp of horror.

“– and he needs a full measure of replacement blood at once. Perhaps a client would be willing to . . . give all to save him. As you know, a future eternal life as a daylight vampire would not be insurmountable.”

“Oh, no! How terrible. Poor Damien. He is a dear, but I have several grandchildren. Surely my usual allotment would help?”

“Not enough fast enough.”

Miss Corrine glances to the closed door and shudders. “I am so sorry. I live for my grandchildren. They need me. Several are in half-vampire, half-human families. I cannot give them up.”

“I quite understand. Would you mind waiting at the reserved table outside the door? Damien’s other clients are arriving. One may make the ultimate sacrifice and save him. Or . . . he may wish to bid you goodbye.”

“I do not know . . .”

“Drinks, of course, are on the house.”

“The others are coming? I know nothing about them. We have never met.”

“Now is your opportunity.”

It looks as if Miss Delilah Street knows females almost as well as Midnight Louie does. I have never seen a one who did not want to at least eyeball a romantic rival. Or maybe do her in. Or their common object of affection.

No sooner has Miss Corrine, the widowed grandmother, departed than another knock comes.

The entering woman wears an expensive navy power suit and high-heeled pumps. Her skirt and hair are short but sleek. She is a handsome forty-five but already consulting the Rolex on her wrist.

“Petra, I assume,” Miss Delilah says.

“The message said Damien needed me. That is some role reversal. I have had an amazingly long day. Damien knows I start at seven am and go until whenever. He is the only thing that relaxes me, but once a week is all the time or blood I can spare. What is the ‘emergency’?”

“He is dying.”

“Oh. Is that possible? He is, you know, immortal. And unbelievably durable in bed, I might add. Are you another client?”

“His agent. He needs an entire blood replacement. I am sure the woman who volunteers would find the intensity ecstasy.”

“Impossible. My schedule.”

“Would you pause for a drink at the reserved table outside, then? He would wish to say goodbye if none of his other clients can accommodate him.”

Petra eyes her glittering watch. “‘Other’ clients. He never would say a word about them.”

She also falls for the cocktail table gambit and leaves.

I rub against Miss Delilah’s leg to express my approval as we await the next woman.

The next knock announces a thirty-something woman sporting a long red braid down her back. Her tie-dyed leggings are turquoise and emerald under an oversized batwing tunic bearing the motto “Arty Party”.

“Oh, gosh,” Miss Tess Tampa says when told the situation. “Damien is the sweetest, sexiest thing and our sessions really free up my creativity. The whole point of our arrangement is no strings. A performance artist cannot be tied down to, like, rules. Vampires have lots of tiresome rules. Sorry.”

“You did religiously keep the nine am meeting slot,” Miss Delilah observes.

“Nothing else was religiously kept once I got there, though.” Wink.

News of the drink table has her heading towards it with a “sorry” shrug I do not buy.

The following knock is tentative and the opening door admits a human version of Wasp-Wing, a petite woman with brown hair in a wispy cut.

“You must be –” Miss Delilah begins.

This one speaks too fast and too much to hide her nerves. “Nelda. I have never been to the Sinkhole before. It was . . . hard to find.”

“That is the point. But you did it. You were brave.”

“Well, for Damien. He has done so much for me.”

“I hear your MS is in remission.”

“Yes, my parents are so overjoyed. If they knew what I had been doing these past two years . . . I was so afraid. I mean, I never . . .

before. But Damien is so gentle and kind. I feel like a new person each time.” She blushed. “How can I help him?”

She listens to Miss Delilah, sinking onto the chair near the door.

“How,” Miss Nelda asks, “could he go without blood for so long? I know . . . there are others.”

“That is a very good question, Miss . . . ?”

“Livingstone. Nelda Livingstone.”

“You came . . . ah, your usual appointment is at three p. m.?”

“Yes. We have tea and talk and . . . lots of time. Such a wonderful break in my day.”

“And what do you do during your day?”

“I am a computer tech at the Inferno Hotel. I will have to change to the night shift now, though.”

“Are you saying you are willing to give Damien all the blood in your body?”

Her hands twist on her lap. “To save his life, yes.”

“It is an undead life.”

“Oh, he is far more alive than most people I have met in my so-called ‘real’ life. Is he in there?” She rises and heads for the bedroom door. “I should start now. I know what it is to feel weak and like your whole body and mind are deserting you. I am very strong now.”

“Yes, you are.” Delilah Street manages to step in front of the determined young woman. “This must be done carefully, not impulsively.”

“But why delay? His existence –”

“We must give all the clients a chance to volunteer.”

“All?”

Miss Nelda seems stunned, as if she had forgotten the others. My sincerity meter registers one hundred per cent. She thought only of Damien and their relationship, and had from the first.

Miss Delilah is not ready to end her serial interrogations, though.

“Nelda, you can finally meet the others at the reserved table beyond these rooms, share a glass of wine. The situation does not need to be addressed until, oh, midnight.”

“But why wait? I could at least start him on the road to recovery.”

I rise to stand before Miss Nelda, who is giving Miss Delilah a push-to-push resistance.

“Damien’s wishes must be consulted,” Miss Delilah says.

“Oh.” The idea wilts the slender young woman’s starchy resolve. “You mean he might choose another to join him for eternity. I . . . I had not considered that. Of course. I will wait outside. Whatever he . . . Damien . . . wants. Needs.”

She leaves in the same shocked condition as she had arrived.

“One,” Miss Delilah says triumphantly. “She truly loves him. Whether it could turn the other way, I doubt. Yet strong love can breed stronger hate.”

Me, I am not a huge believer in what humans call “love”. Cupid is not my middle name. My usual stoic expression must appear dubious because Miss Delilah Street deigns to look down at me.

“I appreciate your adding your not inconsiderable weight to keeping Nelda’s determined feet from heading right for Damien.”

Another knock, followed quickly by a louder one. We peek out the open door to see two very different women arriving at once.

Va-va-voom! One is certainly my cup of sizzle on the hoof. The other is as different as she could be.

Ms Goth Girl struts in first, almost as tall as Miss Delilah, wearing high-heeled black patent leather boots laced down the back in scarlet. Her hair is a Bad Witch Glinda fall of artificial red, her stockings striped and her torso corseted.

“The name is Violet,” she announces. “Where is my handsome vampy boy? I hear he needs some physical therapy and I am the gal to give it to him.”

“I am his agent,” Miss Delilah lies again. “And who is this?”

“I do not know,” Violet huffs. “Some mundane broad.”

“Young woman,” the second lady answers for herself, “dressing over the top does not give you licence to talk over the top. I am Suzanne. I am a nurse. And I can certainly minister to the needy better than you.”

“Violet,” Miss Delilah says, “you are the midnight client and Suzanne has the noon slot.”

“Whatever,” Violet says with a shrug. “Damien loves me best. Show me to him and let the games begin.”

Suzanne steps in front of the buxom goth girl. She has curly brown hair and must be fifty to Violet’s twenty-two but her wiry frame is steel and so are her grey eyes.

“Look and listen, Missy. Damien is not a bone and a hank of hair to be fought over. He is a sick man and, as a nurse, I am best equipped to help him. I always was.”

“Interesting,” Miss Delilah notes. “Suzanne, you always considered Damien ill and your relationship like nurse and patient?”

“For heaven’s sake, the man has a blood disorder.”

Violet rolls her eyes. “He is a vampire, baby. Get real. That makes him a sex machine. That is what you craved, not some namby-pamby nursing fantasy.”

Miss Delilah takes them both by the upper arms. “All his clients cherished a fantasy Damien fulfilled in many different ways. The question is, will you give him all your blood and your mortal life to keep him meeting with you, and the others?”

“Hey,” Violet says, shaking loose. “I am in it for hot sex and the make-believe. Let her empty her veins; they look cold enough.”

“Ah.” Suzanne hems on the way to hawing. “My real patients need me with such a nursing shortage, and the hospitals do not allow even daylight vampires on their staffs. Conflict of interest. Sorry.”

Miss Delilah keeps their upper arms in custody and gives them the joint bum’s rush while I silently cheer her on. Miss Midnight and Miss Noon equally disgust me. Not even a tremor of concern for Damien. Or his bereft Vesper. Or little Wasp-Wing. Maybe they do not know about his dependents, but tough. I bet he knows about theirs.

“One more,” Miss Delilah said, peering out the door at the assembled women. “And here she comes, I think. Last but clearly not least.”

I am curious enough to jump off the side chair and peer through my temporary partner’s bejeaned legs.

Miss Delilah probably brushes six feet in her stilettos, but she is wearing low-heeled mules now and the oncoming female is likely six feet barefoot. She catwalks through the door in an off-the-shoulder red spandex top and Capri pants. She strides into the room on wooden platform sandals that tie around her ankles. Her hair is a blond ponytail that falls to where her tail would start were she feline, literally as well as figuratively.

“Vyrle, the six pm appointment, I presume,” Miss Delilah says.

“Who are you?”

“The name is Delilah Street. I am helping Damien with his condition.”

“Which is?”

“Terminal.”

“A dying vampire? That is a new one.” Vyrle hungrily eyes the closed bedroom door. “I can bring him to life again.”

“So can anyone who will sacrifice all her, or his, blood to Damien and live as a vampire for ever.”

“Not my ambition.”

“What is your ambition?”

“To earn fifty thou a week at the Karnak Cleopatra spectacular show, and I am doing that. Damien was one of my daily pre-show energy-pumping techniques. And that alley cat is sniffing my shoes! Scat! Sultans have bid hundreds of thousands for a one-time onstage-used pair.”

Eeuw. My nose retreats in haste. There are shoe fetishes, like women’s high-heel collections, and then there are creepy shoe fetishes, which this lady’s wealthy fans indulge.

Besides, I have learned all I needed to know. My first impression from her overbearing perfume has been confirmed by her stinky feet.

The nose knows. This Vyrle dame is the dart thrower, live and in person. All I need now is a way to tip off Miss Delilah.

But my partner seems to be following her own line of inquiry. “So you would not renounce all that fame and fortune to save Damien? If you were a vampire you would get to bleed your admirers physically as well as financially.”

Vyrle snorts her disdain and tosses her ponytail so haughtily I am tempted to leap up, tangle my shivs in it and pull hard.

When Miss Delilah mentions the reserved table and the free drink while she checks Damien’s condition, the Karnak high-kicker amazes me by accepting the offer.

“Excellent,” Miss Delilah tells me, or the room, or just herself after Vyrle sashays out. “All our suspects are corralled for the denouement. Now to approach our would-be victim again.”

Hot dog! As tragic as the situation could become, I will be able to feast on Vesper’s beauty again.

Inside the bedroom, Damien lies, the usual pale and wan.

Miss Delilah arranges herself on the foot of his bed. “We have a candidate for your full revival.”

“My clients came when you called?”

“To a woman. Every one. They are a varied bunch.”

He smiles faintly.

“And some seem to owe more to you than you to them. Are you tamed predator or prey?”

“Neither, I hope. I am fond of all my clients, each in her own way.”

“Well, one of them is not fond of you. Midnight Louie has tagged the dart thrower for me, and you.”

I may swoon. I am actually being given full credit for my sleuthing powers. What a novel experience! I must work with this wonderful lady more often.

Damien frowns. “You know the motive?”

“Jealousy.”

“How? I see them separately. They never meet.”

“Now they have.”

He winces.

“But none of that matters. I have found one who will happily give blood and be turned for you.”

“That is amazing. I would never ask that of anyone.”

“She volunteered.”

“Was it Violet? I would think she would be thrilled by the opportunity.”

“She was not, alas. The goth stuff is a pose, not a true vocation.”

“Vocation?”

“The word surprises you?”

“It is just an . . . odd way to put it.”

“I never mind being odd.”

“Then,” he says, “it must be Corrine. A sad, lonely woman with no hope of a human romance after losing her beloved husband. She would make a loving daylight vampire.”

“So you consider your role therapy as much as a survival and sexual exercise?”

“There must be more than just sex for any relationship to endure, no?”

“I am asking what you think.”

“I could not do what I do, give passion, if I had no compassion.”

“Alas, not everyone is like that. Not every woman. But you will be pleased to know that your secret enemy is not an ordinary woman.”

“If Violet and Corrine are not willing to become vampire, it must be Suzanne. She is the soul of tenderness.”

Miss Delilah Street smiles. “Your expectations do you honour, Damien, but then it is always about honour for you, is that not true?”

“What little honour one can find in these days,” he mutters.

“Such an honourable man for a vampire. So methodical. One would almost say . . . canonical.”

Can a vampire turn pale? At that moment Damien’s bloodthirsty skin seems whiter than Vesper’s fur, than the bedlinen, than bone and fang.

“I may not have . . . long,” he says. “Yet I find even this half-life too precious to lose.”

“Cheer up.” Miss Delilah Street is displaying a shocking amount of insensitivity to the dying man, even if he is vampire. “You have a saviour, remember?”

“Must you put it that way?”

“Yes, indeed. I will end the suspense. She is Miss Nelda Livingstone – ironic last name, yes? – and she is wholly willing to give you every last drop of blood and die and live again as a vampire.”

“Nelda! She has faced the most pain of them all! It cannot be Nelda. It will not be Nelda. I would rather perish.”

“Then she will be condemned to a living death, for she loves you. I now see you clearly love her. There is no reason you should not be joined in eternal matrimony.”

“God, no!”

“God, yes!” Miss Delilah Street says, leaning so close to Damien that Vesper leaps up and hisses. “What were you, and where were you, when you were bitten into a vampire?”

His waxen hands try to ward off her burning blue eyes and biting voice. I recognize a fellow truth seeker at her most ruthless.

“It was long ago. Centuries,” he says.

“When, Damien?”

“The twelfth century.”

“You must have been young,” she notes.

“Thirty-four.”

“Where?”

“England,” he admits.

“Where in England, Damien? You know you cannot lie.”

“At Gracethorn Abbey.”

“You were bitten at an abbey?”

“Yes.”

“Turned there?”

“Yes!”

“You were a monk there?”

No words issued from his whiter-than-death face.

“Damien?”

“I was . . . the abbot.”

Of course, think I. Damien Abbot.

Miss Delilah Street jumps up. “Vesper. You out. Midnight Louie, see to it.”

We felines obey as one, as if demons were on our tails.

Miss Delilah, in fact, strides out hot on our heels. She jerks open the door to Wrathbone’s, admitting the noise of merriment and anger and passion and debauchery.

“Nelda, you are needed inside. Quick!”

Miss Delilah slams the outer door shut and locks it after Miss Nelda comes running in, white-faced herself, straight for the open bedroom door, which Miss Delilah shuts firmly after her.

Then she unlocks and opens the outer door and approaches the nearby table.

“It is all right,” she tells the assembled clients of Damien Abbott. “Thank you all for coming and your time. You may go now. We will be in touch. Damien will be fine.”

Amid the buzz and wondering and questions, Miss Delilah retreats and shuts herself in with Vesper and me.

Even a hardened street sleuth like me has to wonder – or not wonder at all – what is going to happen in that red-velvet-spread bed?

Miss Delilah Street folds her arms over her highly sufficient chest and keeps an eye on the outer door. I recognize top-alert guard duty from when my mama used to take us kits out to learn the ways of the world.

I would not want to try to pass Miss Delilah Street right now.

How she knows we will get an unwelcome visitor, I do not know. Me, my shivs are already primed.

The door breaks open and shatters to nothing, filled by a fury straight from hell. The noisy occupants of Wrathbone’s are silent and frozen behind it, as if caught in a huge glass ball, like WaspWing. The hovering pixie shrills once and vanishes. Vesper growls like a tiger and stands shoulder to shoulder with me.

I eye our invader. It is Vyrle, only she is now seven feet tall and her hair is a floor-length cloak of fluttering, snapping, sparkling red and yellow and black flames that surrounds her figure and snarling elongated face – eyes, nostrils and lips slanted upwards in an expression of evil incarnate.

The only recognizable things about her are the telltale wooden platform shoes, currently sprouting sharp claws two inches long. I would not rub my muzzle there at the moment.

“I thought you got the message,” Miss Delilah Street says. “You are not welcome here.”

“He is mine!” the deep yet eerily feminine voice tolls like a bell. “Mine.”

“Not at the moment.”

“Mine for centuries, stolen from me, from my palaces under the hill, from my court, from my company.”

“History does not support your claim.”

The creature’s bereft cry creates a crack in the invisible glass ball of frozen reality behind her. “He was almost mine, before a vampire gypsy turned him. I assumed a foul, stumbling, stinking form here and sought for two years to lure him to the Sinkhole, where my powers can flower. That human female is with him now and weak and soft and powerless.”

“But I am not.”

“You! You are nothing but a meddler.”

Midnight Louie has been called such a thing before, by those who underestimated me. I hope that Miss Delilah Street is being underestimated too. I know better than to interfere. Sometimes it is wiser to be Zen than kung fu.

I notice something glitter at Miss Delilah Street’s right wrist. The finest silver chain . . . changeling silver. It could harm Wasp-Wing if not undercover and under control. Are Vesper and I going to be treated to a manifestation of the infamous silver familiar born from the long lovelock of the Inferno Hotel’s albino rock star owner, Christophe? Who knows what powers he commands? Not anyone in Vegas.

“When meddling is successful in my world,” Miss Delilah Street purrs at this horrific entity, “they call it ‘case closed’. Get out of here.”

A roar and shattering echoes all around us, Vesper and I cling together, clawing our shivs into the floorboards to stay put, our coats rippling. Nice.

“I am queen,” our invader declares.

I notice the fine silver chain is spinning and turning on Miss Delilah Street’s wrist as if her bone and body were a loom. A glittering web is churning up her arm and shoulders and down her other arm, shining like the full moon.

Vesper’s and my pupils become slits, as against the morning sun.

Vyrle’s engorged furious figure spits thorn darts and daggers in a blinding blitz from the cold flames of her cloak of many colours.

Miss Delilah lifts her arms across her body and above her head unfolding lacy silver metal wings that look as delicate as cracked crystal. The queen’s weapons stop, fall into nothing as her final wail peaks and fades and the glass behind her cracks from side to side and she vanishes into the bluster and rowdy noise and commotion that is Wrathbone’s.

Nothing is left behind but her wooden platform spike shoes, which I had rubbed my face against to draw attention to the thorn nubs that pocked them. Miss Delilah Street’s powers of observation and deduction are all that I could wish for in a temporary partner.

Miss Delilah fists her hands on her hips as a silver tinsel rain evaporates into the air around her. She is bare of all jewellery.

“Good riddance! What a witch!”

She bends to pick up a shoe, running her finger along the newly clawed platforms.

“We are seeing her true ‘sole’. These have sprouted acacia thorns like the one that skewered Damien. I had my suspicions when I removed the clawed dart from Damien, but you detected the strong acacia scent of Vyrle’s wooden platform shoes in their harmless guise,” she tells me. “Many plants have both benign and malign applications. The thorn tree is used in perfumes, medicines and herbal preparations. It is also protected by the Fey, who can use its poison qualities, as you sensed. You and I and little vampire Vesper have just met the Dread Queen of the Fey, Louie. I guess a cat may look at a queen, after all, and rat on her too.”

“Ooh,” Vesper purrs in my ear. “You are much better than you look.”

That is more than somewhat promising.

* * *

By now the bedroom door has opened and the bedazzled lovers are creeping out.

“We heard a kind of mewing out here,” Nelda says, brushing back her hair with a blush.

All that storm and fury. Were they dead to the world!

“Not to worry,” says Miss D. “I was just shopping for a new pair of shoes.” She waves one. “You will not be seeing the imposing and possessive Vyrle any more, Damien. You may be a vampire, but she was not of this world.”

“She was the one who staked me with a claw?” he asks.

“Wooden, from the acacia tree.”

“How did you know?” Nelda asks, shuddering. “Also about my deepest secret feelings?”

“The deduction process was simple. If someone hates Damien enough to kill him softly and slowly, someone must love him enough to make that would-be murderer jealous.”

“Of me? Or of my . . . companions?” Damien asks.

“Of you all. Of us all, humans and unhumans. Vyrle is something else, something greedy and merciless. Fey. She almost had a handsome abbot in her power at Gracethorn Abbey centuries ago, but vampires are immune unless they venture into a former Fey touch-point, like the Sinkhole.”

“Miss Street,” he says, “grateful as I am for your detective and matchmaking talents, you assembled all my appointments. I could have sipped from the innocent five you dismissed tonight. We will have to continue as usual anyway, and find Nelda clients in addition.”

“Call it a couple’s practice.” She shrugs. “Look, Damien, I go for long-term satisfaction on my cases. Even humans would rather drink deeply of life than sip it up in instalments.”

Damien remains silent, but I do believe he blushes. Fresh blood will do wonders.

Miss Delilah adds, “To keep from killing your victims, you gave up centuries of celibacy to become a daylight vampire. If you can’t be celibate, you can at least have a life partner, and Nelda will benefit from being a daylight vampire. Research shows vitamin D in sunlight is good for people with MS, which is not a blood-related malady. Come on; you and Nelda have too much love and compassion not to share it with others. You can live on love.”

Nelda nods. “I lived on two hours a week. Now I have eternity.” She smiles seductively over her shoulder – nervous Nelda! – and returns to the bedroom.

Damien is torn, but lingers to question my partner more.

“I was pretty out of it, but what did you mean in the alley when you first arrived and said you ‘brake for butterflies’?”

I give Vesper a lick and a promise to keep her attention and wait for the Divine Miss D to answer the vamp. I have been wondering about that myself.

Miss Delilah Street smiles. “To understand, you need to know about Dolly.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Sort of. She is four thousand pounds of shiny black Old Detroit metal and wears chrome like Mae West draped herself in diamonds.”

“A car?”

“Oh, please. She is a 1956 Cadillac Biarritz cream puff I got at an estate sale when I was on a scholarship in college. She can outrun a Porsche and outmuscle a Hummer.”

“Kind of like you,” he says with his own smile.

Nice fangs. Shiny and white. I always admire a guy with good grooming.

“Maybe. Anyway, when your messenger pixie, Wasp-Wing, came barrelling straight for me and my ‘changeling silver’, on the Strip, she got caught in Dolly’s slipstream and almost crashed on the windshield, except that she looked like a butterfly, and I always avoid hitting them.”

“You have my thanks, but I remain curious as to why.”

Miss Delilah folds her arms and cocks her head. I smell a reminiscence coming on.

“Before I found Dolly and could drive myself,” Miss Delilah Street says, “I was on a road trip with some college classmates heading for an out-of-town basketball game. A monarch butterfly hit the windshield. It got caught in the windshield wipers, its wings totally intact. They fluttered there at sixty miles an hour, looking alive.

“I asked the guy driving to pull over so we could at least free it. The monarch had to be dead, but those wings were so alive as they fluttered, so beautiful and miraculously whole.

“He would not even slow down. We would be ‘late’ for the precious ‘game’. Sick at heart, I watched those wings flutter and kiss the windshield as if performing a dance just for me for forty damn miles.”

“But the butterfly was dead,” the vampire says. “Why would you care?”

“It was still beautiful, and so alive in its way.”

“That story says something remarkable about you, Delilah Street.”

“It says something remarkable about you.”

He gets the point and nods. Humbly.

“I have secretly hated my lot in undead life all these centuries,” the vampire confesses. “Even when I could convert in recent years to sipping human life rather than taking it. I divorced myself from feeling, as you had to while you watched, the sole attentive audience, while the butterfly wings did their fatal danse macabre. But you are right. The imitation of life is life in its way.”

He turns to regard the doorway to Nelda. “I hated the idea of her losing and wasting her precious life on loving a dead thing, but you say love is immortal.”

“I say to each his and her own,” Miss Delilah Street answers. “Should I leave Midnight Louie with Vesper, or return him to his usual haunts along the Vegas Strip?”

“I say we should leave it up to them,” he says with a smile while Wasp-Wing dances above everyone’s heads in excitement like a butterfly, expecting many interesting future fetches.

I nuzzle Vesper’s perfect pink nose. I say that Damien Abbott is one stand-up vampire.