"What are you doing here?" I asked the Invisible Man, disgusted. Yes, he'd saved me from being torn into shreds by werewolf gangsters, but I'd hoped to meet some real Vegas unreals tonight.
"What am I doing here, doll? Seeing you in private," he smirked through the head wrappings.
We'd first crossed paths at the Inferno, and later the Gehenna, when he was truly invisible. He lived to pinch butt. I guess you can't blame a mad genius scientist who was probably a nerd when he became invisible in a 1933 film of his same name: The Invisible Man. Even the most depraved CinSim groupie, or CinSymb, wouldn't want to get it on with a celebrity you couldn't see.
"How do you manage to get around so much?" I asked. "The other CinSims are chained to their venues."
He paused to catch the eye of a passing half-werewolf waitress, the first obvious female I'd spotted, pointed to his empty glass, then in front of me. "I hope you like Old Fashioneds," he said. "I don't want that cute furry trick hanging around overhearing us while taking our orders."
"I've heard of the drink," I said. The cocktail had been out of fashion for more than half a century, almost as long as the Invisible Man. "You hang at the Inferno. Why was it necessary to meet here?"
He leaned close, whispering. "Christophe is a liberal master and I manage to get out on various missions for him, but this is a private meeting. Just you and me."
Mention of Christophe made me wonder what the silver ball and chain transformed from a lock of his albino hair was now. Aha! The token had subsided into a discreet locket around my neck. When I opened it, I found a tiny mirror version of my current disguise. I bet Snow would get a private kick out of seeing raven-haired me in platinum-blond guise!
Thinking about Snow always scratched my skin like invisible briars. I pushed those thoughts away along with the locket I snapped shut.
"Was following me when I was whisked from the Gehenna to Cicereau's lethal Starlight Lodge one of your assignments for Snow?"
"Not just every dame gets to call him that, you know," the Invisible Man answered, evading the question. "If you weren't alive and were a CinSim he'd have you doing hostess duty at the Inferno in a New York, New York minute for taking such a liberty."
So I thought about Christophe again. I had to. The silver locket on my breastbone stirred at the mention of his name and nickname. It crawled up my forearm to circle cozily around my biceps. What big ears you have, Snow.
All the better to hear you with, Delilah.
What big teeth, I thought, and then couldn't help adding. Bite me!
Wait! Was I issuing a smart quip or a death wish? It was hard to know the difference in this town.
"I don't know whether he's bad or good." The Invisible Man twisted a paper cocktail napkin in a gloved hand. "He-like your boss, Mr. Nightwine-does deal straight with us CinSims, though." I looked up from my alien accessory, surprised.
The fedora was nodding. "Yeah. CinSims know who our friends are. You, lady, are on the 'A List'."
"I-" Was surprised. Touched. Not sure I wanted to be in a category with Snow and Hector Nightwine, but, hey, I'd never had many friends. To be taken for one sounded…kinda cool.
The black leather glove had captured my hand just as the waitress dipped to put two murky orange drinks down before us.
"Have a fun evening, you two," she wished us, showing fangs.
Was her other half vampire? I wondered what kind of tip we could leave her. Blood or money?
And I really couldn't lead the Invisible Man on. He wasn't my type. Not that I have one. But now that Ric and I have been… wow! I do think about things like monogamy. Besides, he was middle-aged, squat and reminded me of Cesar Cicereau, the werewolf mob boss, at least physically. From my recall of his movies, as played by character actor Claude Rains, he was as sexually appealing as a demented toad. And that mad, disembodied laugh… Call me shallow, but a vintage character actor could never rev my melancholy Irish pulses.
Ric. Now we're talking different. There aren't a lot of Latino movie leads for reference, but think early Ricardo Montalban, pre-Wrath of Khan days, but with a lot of that fierce, sexy edge. Wrath of Khan, the Star Trek movie! Wrathman. Wrathbone.
I glanced at the Invisible Man. "Do I call you Dr. Jack Griffin or Claude Rains?"
"Either one. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Speaking as Dr. Griffin, I am brilliant, but quite mad from being invisible, and speaking as Mr. Rains, after all these decades stuck in the role, I am mad to take on other personas. Claude was claustrophobic and the black velvet suit I had to wear against black velvet to appear invisible for the film didn't help even my sanity. I find myself role-playing all over the map, and you will notice that I crave human contact, even of the rather crude sort. Being a Las Vegas attraction makes us CinSims part of a very exclusive twenty-first century Rat Pack, sometimes all in one package. Some of us can go country or pop. I brought backup." He nodded at a spot along the crowded bar.
And there was raven-haired Ricardo Montalban himself, lean and muscled in swashbuckler shirt and tight pants, in his Latin lover persona, not as the older (but still suave) Mr. Roarke of Fantasy Island. And decidedly not as the still-older and brutally wrathful Khan, a notable movie villain in his sixties with long gray hair. Still, you did not want to rile this man.
And…oh, my God, there was Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, also lean, both of mind and body, smoking a pipe and eyeing the cast of unhumans with eagle-sharp eyes from under his deerstalker.
I smiled at the Invisible Man's inviting two CinSims associated with the word "wrath/rath" on this outing. I'd have to find out where this unlikely pair was usually stationed before I left.
The Sherlock Holmes CinSim would never notice my Lilith lures, but Khan-to-be looked interested already. I'd rather flirt with the youthful leading man Montalban…maybe a water baby idyll, like he'd had with swim star Esther Williams in Neptune's Daughter. I was beginning to see the commercial appeal of the CinSims to the public. Fantasies fulfilled, from a casual meeting to a long, hot mating, only not in living color.
But… no thanks. I had the real deal. My deal. Ric. Whom I should have asked to escort me here, except I was trying to prove to him I didn't need him as protection. Or to prove it to myself. Who was I kidding?
Claude gestured for the two CinSims to join us. As they sauntered over, I eyed the rest of the clientele over the rim of the cloying drink. To us middle-class Kansans, they'd come across as the scum of the earth: gang bangers, bikers, low-rent muscle and hitmen, robbers and muggers, carjackers, sex and drug addicts. And those were just the humans.
I played the game of guessing which were the unhumans. There were enough CinSims here that some had to be CinSymbs. It struck me that today's Las Vegas was a city of strong dualities. Good/bad, lucky/unlucky, rich high roller/poor sucker, powerful men/weak but sexy women, faux/real and now, of course, alive/dead.