The windowless entrance was disturbingly unlabeled. I could be entering a sex or a fight club. The clientele could be gay or straight or blended. Human or unhuman. Or blended.
Hey, these motorcycle boots were made for riding, so they're going to walk wherever they want to. Attitude is all. I'd learned that in the group homes.
After taking off my fake badge (but leaving on my police belt, around here it would probably just be taken as fetish fashion), I approached the blank door and kicked it a few times, then stood to the side.
It opened, a long black gun barrel sticking out.
"You going to use that thing or just think about it?" I asked in a husky tone.
A man's head came peering around the door's edge.
I pushed the door with all my weight and caught gun-barrel and gunman's neck in the crack and pressed for dear life. Mine.
"I'm here to see a man about some business," I said. "You think I might do that?"
Sputtering curses, he eyed my motorcycle boots and tight leather pants through the crack, then my mirror-shaded eyes and angel-white hair. I'd learned from the Snow mystique.
"Ah, yeah. Our clients like your breed of cat."
Hmm. Would that be biker chic, tough chick, or ambiguous human/unhuman stock? Guess I'd have an opportunity to find out inside. I showed the doorman a lot of teeth-either a smile or a feral grin, you choose-and eased in when he opened the door.
Inside was totally smoky. It smelled like a pot factory cheek-by-jowl with a cigar bar. Very guy. I sighed internally to see some eyes that shone green, gold and silver in the half-light. Lots of unhumans here. Lots of bad boys. Where was my particular bad boy?
I started swaggering around the room, hunting. I felt so undercover. It would have been fun if it hadn't been so dangerous. Finally, in one of several booths along the perimeter, I spotted my prey. He was sitting alone nursing… an Albino Vampire.
My eyes opened wide behind the mirror shades. I'd invented that drink at Snow's Inferno Bar. Why was the muscle for a rival hotel-casino owner downing such a girly cocktail in this haven of testosterone?
I approached as quietly as I could.
"Sit down," Sansouci said, not looking my way. "Order you one?"
When I said nothing, he hefted the white cocktail in its martini glass and added. "I figured this would tell you where I was sitting. The drink is getting legendary at your hangout, the Inferno Bar. Order one. The cretins here will stop thinking I've lost my edge and realize I was just using it to troll for a hot babe."
Damn! He'd caught me tailing him, and worse, guessed who I was, wig and all. I sat.
"How did you spot me?"
"I didn't."
Before I could follow up on that mystifying comment, a barmaid in a black leather frilled apron and cap appeared. "Um, sir or whatever?"
"Scotch. Straight up," I said for simplicity's sake.
She wriggled away, exposing a short bustle of white eyelet.
"Amusing," he said, eyeing my outfit. "Your boyfriend know you're out on your own?"
"Boyfriend?"
Sansouci put his fingers to his temples, as if massaging a headache. "Don't be cute. You're too clued in for that after the showdown last full moon at the Starlight Lodge. You should know the cast and denouement of every bad scene in Vegas goes out on the CinSim telegraph. So what's your deal here? I'm listening."
"You're not going to call out the canines?"
"Lupines. No."
"Why not? You let me be taken off to Starlight Lodge to be eaten."
There was a pause. "That's not the way I'd like to see you eaten."
"So. You're a sexist pig among wolves." As a career woman, I always deflected sexy talk on the job. Although there didn't seem to be much point any more.
"I like you, Delilah. I like your looks and your style. You don't want to hear it, one of us can leave."
"'Like'. You allowed to do that a lot working for Cicereau?"
"You think?"
"No. Listen, you know I'm taken. I might like you, though, under other circumstances."
He smiled around the edge of the Albino Vampire. "That not lying stuff is a weakness. You're not above seducing me a little to your side."
"Not now. But that's all show and no go."
"I know." The waitress dropped the scotch in front of me. Sansouci gave her a twenty-dollar bill, told her to keep the change, and switched our drinks. "I have a weakness for 'show'. What do you want?"
"I need to know about Cicereau's history."
"Why?"
"A dead girl."
He went quiet. "You're just a girl yourself, you know." His voice was morose. So maybe he was physically thirty-five, a decade older than I. Plus a few more decades supernatural time. Just how long were werewolves living now, as opposed to then?
I bit my lip. I was such a faker.
"But with guts," he added.
This time I went quiet.
"You really want to dig up all that old stuff?" he prodded.
"No. But I have to."
"Why?"
"She's asking me to."
He reared away from me, his head against the high booth backboard. "Who?"
"That's one thing I need from you. Her name. I call her 'Jeanie'."
"Like in a lamp?"
I shook my head. "Like in the old song about the girl with light brown hair."
"Yours isn't light," he said, leaning forward, speaking fast and low, "but black as night. If you were a werewolf, you'd be almost impossible to see on a midnight run."
"If I were a werewolf I would have changed with all the mobsters at Starlight Lodge last full moon. You'd make a handsome werewolf, though." I nodded at his own black hair stroked by dramatic strands of silver.
His smile had an odd edge. "Thanks. So you've imagined me in lupine form."
"Why didn't I see you when I was running for my life from the pack?"
"Cicereau doesn't reward his lieutenants that way, only the soldiers."
"Was killing his daughter and her lover back in the forties a job for the lieutenants? For you?"
He took a long swallow of his drink before answering. "She was sleeping with the wrong supernatural."
"A killing offense?"
"Not…usually. Maybe just marking, or maiming if Cicereau was in a bad mood."
My questions were making Sansouci uneasy. He twisted on his bench seat.
"Her lover was vampire." I made it a statement.
His fingers turned the low thick glass in front of him around and around. "Yes."