Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  “Oh, Nicky. This won’t hurt you. It’s just … water.”

  Nick’s dapper shoulders shuddered. “Poison! Nora.” His voice lifted to summon his wife. “I’m being poisoned.”

  “Hang on for a minute, Nicky dear,” she trilled from the other side of bar. “I’m coming, but Asta is being a perfect beast!”

  Quicksilver was not an Inferno bar regular, but he sensed when things were awry. He gave his yard-troll-at-the-cottage-door growl that was half-inquisitive and half-desirous of a snack.

  Nora came jerking around the bar’s other side in all her willowy high-fashion glory, up to an impudently tilted and veiled hat overshadowed by a large gray ostrich feather.

  Quicksilver leapt forward with a pounce and growl that indicated prey.

  I had no leash but my voice. “Leave kitty,” I ordered. It worked in Sunset Park, and here he’d stopped on a whisker although his discontented growl kept going and growing until the sound of a squalling baby rose to my ears.

  How odd for Quicksilver to carry on like a coyote pup.

  I looked down. Quicksilver was silent, but his blue-eyed gaze also fixed on something … a critter the size of a wire-haired terrier but with huge-clawed paws that churned the carpeted floor while a sound like an angry monkey grated through its fangs.

  My jaw dropped, then stood to attention again in amazed speech. “That’s … not … Asta.”

  “Of course it is,” Nora cooed fondly. “He’s just throwing a tantrum. Isn’t he, dear?” she asked Nick.

  No, it was a real “kitty,” sort of. And not a he. I recognized the white-and-black-striped coat of Grizelle’s white-tiger form, but now she was just a … baby, a fifty-pound cub with demonic green eyes staring straight at me as if ready to tear my heart out.

  For an instant, the fuzzy-wuzzy adorable black-and-white baby-tiger stripes morphed into short frothy white petticoats and blouse under a full-skirted black apron. The long gray claws became dark Mary Jane shoes on white-stockinged feet, and the cub’s face was surrounded by petite black pigtails tied with poison green ribbons. So cute it was scary! I stamped my Ed Hardy tattooed motorcycle boot at her, and Grizelle’s fierce, but truly “girly,” expression returned with a snarl to a tiger-cub likeness with the rest of her.

  What was going on here?

  Nick’s martinis turned to tap water? Awesome security chief Grizelle reduced to a leashed tiger cub? Nick and Nora not noticing the major family pet switch? What else was wrong at the Inferno Hotel?

  “Why didn’t you tell me Miss Street is trespassing again?” asked a resonant baritone that could strike twenty-five thousand people silent … or set them screaming mindlessly.

  I turned fast. The Inferno owner, operator, and rock-star mogul stood so close I almost got leather burns from his black jumpsuit. We could have gone on the Inferno stage with his cub and my dog as an animal act.

  Curiouser and curiouser, with neon on it.

  The suspected albino vampire’s skin and shoulder-blade-brushing hair were both as white as white could be, but he was not the usual milky monovision with a blindfold of dark glasses the only off-color note. Gone was his bleached-leather stage costume. Instead, his jumpsuit was dead black, as black as those signature sunglasses.

  “It’s our bar,” Nick’s voice came over my shoulder in a grumpy slur. “We were leashed here first.”

  “You tell him, Nicky.” Nora struggled to untwine the tiger cub’s lead from around her gray silk hose. Major snags to match the unsightly existing runs were in their future.

  “I believe you mean ‘leased,’” Snow corrected Nicky.

  I tried not to ogle Snow’s skintight Elvis-comeback black leather outfit although doing so came with my job as a paranormal investigator. As with his usual white leather jumpsuit, also borrowed from Elvis, this one was open to his navel like a red-carpet starlet’s dress.

  The black outfit was how I knew we were dealing with a CinSim of himself that Snow had commissioned. Simple for an albino. He was all white to begin with. The perpetual sunglasses that protected his light-sensitive irises were always black.

  He only had to have himself shot on a bit of rare surviving silver nitrate film.

  Then the image was impressed onto a fresh zombie 3-D body canvas through the Immortality Mob’s so-far-secret process. Las Vegas was the cusp where cutting-edge science and paranormal-fueled magic met … and was turned into pure old-fashioned profit. But only vintage silver nitrate film would work. Get ahold of a precious piece of it and …

  Prest-O Change-O, you had an exact reproduction, on cue, on tap, at Snow’s command. He’d bought and manufactured his dark double. He hadn’t grown his own in the mirror, as I apparently had with Lilith.

  Cheater.

  I wondered what immortal bit of lost vintage filmmaking had been sacrificed to Snow’s desire for a double and his deal with the Immortality Mob, not to mention what poor dead schlub got to power the mogul’s needs.

  You might get the idea that I didn’t like Snow, but you’d be wrong.

  I despised his cheesy rock-star appeal to the “weaker sex” and myself for having to deal with him. If he wasn’t an albino vampire rumor made him, he was some variety of potent supernatural. Finding out exactly what was number one on my bucket list.

  There was no arguing that Snow wasn’t the Darkside darling and an American idol. His pale skin was also as muscular as Michelangelo’s major-hot statue of a naked David duplicated at Caesars Palace. I could see why, when Snow’s pelvis was onstage working his white Fender Stratocaster guitar like a giant screaming electric fig leaf, mosh-pit groupies swooned.

  But why was the CinSim Snow coming out to play when Snow was still in town?

  Was this part of the Inferno “haunting”?

  Meanwhile, Nick was showing off for Nora by wobbling up to Snow’s black cowboy-booted physique and going nose to nose. Nick’s film-white finger tapped Snow right between the pecs, dead center of the Jack Frost scars etched like lace and lightning bolts on his bare chest that were either souvenirs from the finger of God casting him down from heaven or souvenirs of some evil entity shocking him back to life in the heart he didn’t have. My theory anyway.

  “Those ‘leases’ that confine all us CinSims are leashes,” said Mr. Charles. “And we don’t like it. We’ve got a right to roam, like any Micky Mouse cell phone.”

  Snow’s broad shoulders and schooled torso-twist literally shrugged off Nick.

  “How you can stay drunk on plain water I’ll never know, Mr. Charles,” he said. “Your lovely wife is having trouble controlling the family pet, as usual, only the pet in question is a juvenile version of my security chief, which is not as usual.”

  CinSim Snow knew the score, yet no one noticed but me. He turned my way. Wearing bootheels, I was almost Nick Charles’s six-foot height. Snow still towered.

  “You’re the investigator, Miss Street. May I suggest you do your job?”

  He walked away from the bar area, the crowds parting as if sensing the passage of the Invisible Man. Once offstage, Snow’s secret mojo allowed him to move around the hotel-casino floor unrecognized by the masses. I looked up at the jumbo HDTV high above. The Seven Deadly Sins were rocking out in an instrumental frenzy, no lead singer/guitarist in sight.

  The sound was muted, but they were performing live.

  I think.

  Back to the family Charles. “You’ve changed your ensemble tonight,” I told Nora.

  “Of course.” Her voice lilted with good humor. “Snow purchased the rights to my extensive wardrobe as well as me.” She did a fashion-model twirl. “Otherwise, my bar duty would get boring, for me and for the clientele.”

  “But why the hat obscuring your sophisticated-lady face?”

  “Can you keep a secret?” Nora turned her back on me, encouraging me to come around for a girlfriend conference.

  When I faced Nora and her several-layered veil again, she lifted it for a sneak peek.

  Gasping, I saw tha
t Nora’s elegant pencil-thin eyebrows had blossomed into furry Brook Shield caterpillars. Her mascara had run, giving her eyes the spiked, drawn-on look of a circus clown.

  “It’s a surprise new look,” she said with a winsome smile.

  “Are you girls done?” Nick peered over Nora’s shoulder while she hastened to lower her veil. “I have a phenomenon to report, dear ladies. My keen suspicions have been raised. Would you care to look where I direct, Miss Street?”

  I turned again to face the bustling casino with the jumbo HDTV screen high above. The Seven Deadly Sins were rocking out with Black CinSim Snow in place as their lead singer.

  “Just look there.” The contents of Nicky’s martini glass almost overran one rim as he pointed.

  “All the groupies are going nuts. So?”

  “Exactly my opinion of ‘groupies,’” Nick declared. “We didn’t have them in my day. They sound like a variety of aquarium fish,” he said carefully, “fish” being a difficult word to enunciate in his perpetual but charming sloshed condition.

  The ace detective tattled on. “I saw our mutual friend, Mr. Snow.”

  “Friend? Speak for yourself.”

  “I am trying to, Miss Street, if you will deign to listen. At the end of the earlier show, I saw Mr. Snow bend down to present the groping groupies with handsome white silk neck scarves of the type that go so well with my tux.”

  I didn’t need more CinSim wardrobe notes, or to know about Snow’s throwaways to his fans now that he no longer bestowed the notorious Brimstone Kiss for some mysterious reason.

  “I saw,” Nick Charles went on, “less than an hour ago, the entire mosh pit and our mutual sponsor, dressed all in white like a bride, as usual. I saw the whole k-k-kit and ka-Boodles disappear in a f-f-flash of fire.

  “I swear.” He held his bare right palm upright like a witness in court.

  I held up a hand for Nicky’s martini glass. How weird to see the clear glass and the liquid inside take on subtle colors as the object left CinSim possession for my custody. I sipped.

  Still just water. Flat, dull water. Nick Charles’s vision of mosh-pit hell had not been the Boodles talking.

  But if the “real” Snow and his closest fans had been kidnapped, where were they? And how would I get there? Things were so truly topsy-turvy here at the Inferno that it gave me a bold new idea.

  “Nora, will you watch Quicksilver while I take ‘Asta’ for a walk?” I held my hand out for the dog leash.

  She seemed startled by the idea, but the writhing tiger cub actually rubbed its furry sides back and forth on my calves as I took custody of its lead.

  Luckily, my body suit prevented any touchy-feely contact between me and Snow’s shape-shifting security chief now stuck in baby white-tiger form. Grizelle and I would only touch each other if it was hand-to-claw combat, and once, recently, it had been.

  “Asta is chipped to stay here at the bar,” Nick warned me.

  Grizelle sure wasn’t. From the loud purr that ended in a squall like a human infant’s, I knew she badly wanted out of here and onto the real Snow’s trail, too.

  I nodded at Quicksilver to tell him he was the Asta substitute for now. Since he and Grizelle had tangled, too, I knew he’d enjoy supplanting her. He adored CinSims.

  Just then, a drunken tourist wearing a Michael Vick T-shirt hurtled toward Nora, reaching for her veil.

  “Let’s see the famous face, pretty lady.”

  Uh-oh. Wrong logo. The tipsy tourist saw the whites of Quick’s fangs instead. Quicksilver had far more guardian chops than the missing Asta.

  Meanwhile, I had a case of hotel haunting to solve.

  On the huge screen, the camera panned across the jumping, squealing groupies. One wasn’t moving, so I focused on the still center of the mayhem. Oh. I was targeting my exact image—Lilith, my double-trouble sister from mirror-world. I spun to face the mirror behind the bar that reflected the exact same scene. For only this split-second moment, I could use it.

  “I don’t know if shapeshifters can survive breaking the mirror barrier,” I muttered as I leapt toward the image of myself, my hand curled tight around the tiger cub’s leash.

  Grizelle answered with a fierce growl. She bounded through the mirror, turning into liquid quicksilver ahead of me, a circus tiger breaking through a paper drum-skin.

  I hated to perform my disappearing act in public, but most tourists were eyeing the HD screen, and the CinSims would never betray my trade secrets.

  How does a quantum leap through a quicksilver mirror backing feel? Imagine passing through oily dark lightning. Then four paws and two feet landed hard on the black floor of what seemed an empty soundstage.

  * * *

  Not quite empty.

  In the farthest darkness, a disturbing spotlit tableau boiled with motion three hundred feet away. If you’ve ever seen a close-up of maggots infesting a corpse on a crime forensics TV show, which I can guarantee you have, that’s what the brilliantly lit postage-stamp-size scene recalled.

  I started forward at a gallop, baby Grizelle leaping alongside me like a … well, like a gazelle. I had to wonder how a major beast felt being so totally downsized, and could understand the shapeshifter’s fury. The distant mob scene disturbed me, too.

  As we closed on the action, I realized we were viewing the dark backs of about fifteen young women shoving, pushing, even climbing each other to make contact with a … white marble statue set against a black stone wall.

  The obscured figure we neared was not all white now. Telltale blots of red dappled the object of the assault. My emotions sickened to see a rerun in progress of what I’d only witnessed at the bitter end … my partner Ric Montoya’s multiple fang-marked body after a whole freaking vampire empire, including vampire tsetse flies, had feasted on him. I had to stop this.

  Closer still, a frantic Grizelle and I bounded, our charging footsteps muffled by the tiger’s pads, my ridged-rubber boot soles, and the attackers’ deafening shrieks.

  Now I was close enough to read the backs of the attackers. Backs? Read? What were they? Living billboards? What was I missing? Oh, the women were wearing T-shirts with messages that echoed their shouted words. And those words were becoming clear and scarily familiar.

  “You can’t whip us up, then just stop,” peeved female voices taunted.

  “How does it feel to be ‘snowbound’?”

  “Yeah. Like we were, Cocaine.”

  “We want what’s coming to us … the Brimstone Kiss.”

  I skidded to a stop. Oh, no. The figure pinned by the ravenous horde was no hunk of unfeeling marble. It had to be Grizelle’s boss and my so-unfavorite Vegas mogul.

  The seething, clawing harpies using the real Snow for a climbing wall shouted “Come on, Cocaine, give,” and “Snow up a storm for us,” as well earthier online endearments I also recognized, like “Ice Prick.” Or so the rumor went.

  Only my hard grip on the leash kept fifty pounds of snarling tiger cub from scaling the T-shirted human torsos ahead of us. Now I knew what these attackers were, not the relentless ancient tormenters who’d savaged Ric but modern fangirls gone bad. Even fifteen women, crazed enough, can make a mob.

  Groupies were indeed Nick Charles’s schooling “fish” … if you thought “piranha.”

  “Grizelle,” I ordered, “velvet paws and fangs only. They’re paying customers and fans. The boss would not want them hurt, no matter what. Got it?”

  The tiger cub’s white muzzle lifted in grudging acknowledgment. I hoped she didn’t take it out of my skin later, when we were all back to normal, which I swore we would be. All of us, even Snow and the groupies.

  Was I still missing something? Maybe I was being naïve, and Snow liked this scene. I had no time to overthink anything. Even my silver familiar jumped ship, abandoning its cool double-handcuff bracelet form. It split to rocket up one arm, across my shoulders, and down to the other wrist so fast I hoped I’d just sensed hot metal burns.

  When I looked, my
wrists were circled by cuff bracelets. The pair was etched with serious monster designs, snake-pit-tangled shapes I couldn’t name. Sea monster, kraken, giant squid? Both cuffs trailed silver-chain tentacles—more than the average octopus—say nine per wrist.

  I was literally “armed” with my own matched set of heavy metal cat-o’-nine-tails. Could I whip community ass now …

  The familiar had become such an intuitive part of me, I’d almost forgotten it had been spawned by my unintentionally touching a lock of Snow’s albino hair, and he might be murderously goaded to revenge at the moment.

  Would the familiar, no matter how lethal the form, still obey my “prime directive,” think first and do no harm unless about to be harmed? Yeah, I’m a pacifist kick-ass chick. So sue me, but expect to pay court costs.

  My only option was wading into the frenzied fans’ midst, jerking anonymous arms and shoulders away from the prey while Grizelle nipped the heels of their churning feet.

  Only Grizelle and I knew the worst part of this assault scene, a damning secret that made me squirm with sympathetic pain for a man, or whatever, I despised.

  Only we knew the mauling groupies were pressing Snow’s eternally wounded back—damaged because of me—to the hard stone. He was bound between pain and humiliation like a mythical demigod in Tartarus, the Greek abyss below even Hades, and the mother of all hells.

  Whatever breed of immortal Snow was, I knew he was vulnerable—or even human enough—to bleed. I’d never seen but often envisioned the raw, meaty mess my driving compassion for my lover, Ric, had made of his back. I hadn’t known it, but every lash scar my lips fresh from an extorted Brimstone Kiss had erased on Ric’s skin had appeared as a fresh welt on Snow’s several hotel stories away.

  Vegas after the Millennium Revelation was the kind of naughty world where one good deed would exact at least another bad one in exchange. Ugly speculations were occurring to me in fractured seconds.

  My God. What if these spellbound women were no longer just berserk groupies, what if this sinister hotel-wide change also had made them into vampires?