OF COURSE THE point in making a dramatic exit is not to be seen again. And to not look back.

That's the whole point of pride, too, and why it's a sin.

I walked into the kitchen. Not one laggard was left. They'd all faced and passed the night's surprise bogeyman with a lot less drama than I had-I, the founding mother of this exclusive club.

In fact, I hadn't passed him at all.

Nor had any of them approached me or slipped a billet-doux into my sweating palm to offer a tip on Lilith. I'd forgotten all about her until I tangled with Snow. And the groupie murder? I'd been too surprised by the hoopla to think about that, either, although I now had all their freshest email addies.

Evening score: Snow, 10; Delilah, 0.

The kitchen smelled of cola and punch rinsed down the stainless steel sink. The rear exit was an industrial-strength door with a push bar and bold sign, warning: EXIT ONLY.

I hadn't brought my messenger bag, just jammed my car keys into my low-rise jeans pocket. They were always a pain to worm out...

I eased the door wide with my back, bracing my feet to hold it open. Once out, I couldn't get back in. The story of my life in Las Vegas, in reverse.

While one hand was jammed alongside my right hip dueling jagged steel key edges, the big door slammed shut, ramming me in the rear. I hopped outside just in time to avoid crushing.

Nobody was outside to have pushed it. Not even the wind.

Attar of Rose's lime juice and older, uglier scents helped me spot a Dumpster tilting against the building's back concrete block wall like a grounded garbage scow.

Only a faint pink-gold glow made it back here from the front parking lot lights, giving the Dumpster the odd illusion it was outlined in mercurochrome neon.

That's Las Vegas, city of illusions and delusions.

I'd have to hike around the whole unappetizing rear area to get to Dolly up front, if I ever got her keys out. That's what I get for buying tight jeans to wear to Los Lobos werewolf disco someday with visions of Ric jamming his hands down my back pockets during the slow dances.

I didn't know which felt tighter, my jeans or my conscience, and I wore the same insecure mules as when the Bela Lugosi CinSim Dracula had hijacked me from the Enchanted Cottage. Then I noticed that one edge of the luridly lit rusted Dumpster was accessorized with a leaning human figure.

Quicksilver's loss came back with a double stab of regret. In Las Vegas these days seeing a "human figure" is no guarantee of anything. I could use a partner with serious nose and fangs right now.

Oooh-eee, Delilah, Irma joined in with gusto. You've managed to maroon yourself in dead-end limbo with who knows what. Maybe you'd have been better off in the front parking lot, down on your knees applying first aid to that Snow character's bare back with your tongue.

That's disgusting! Shut your mouth! I told her.

Irma had been getting on my nerves lately and I didn't need any help in that department.

I dug deeper for the keys, their spiky prongs my only weapon besides my wits, which had been AWOL lately. A shiver along my spine told me the still-hidden silver familiar was expanding its reach to act as either defensive or offensive weapon. I couldn't tell whether it was ashamed of me too, or just being sneaky.

I scuffed forward. Retreat in this city is certain death.

"Can I help you with anything?" I asked.

The likeliest suspect here was a wino hunting dregs in the tossed liquor bottles.

"You can help me with everything," a husky voice answered.

Wrong answer. It was too knowing, too challenging to be a stranger's voice.

"Did you send the message that you'd located someone I'm interesting in finding?" I asked. Was some anonymous groupie going Deep Throat on Lilith?

"Maybe. Depends on the message you got."

Why did I think a simple evening run to a Strip shopping center to meet rock-star groupies didn't require the presence of Ric, or the marines?

I cleared my throat. "I was after information on a murder of a Cocaine groupie at the Inferno. I don't suppose you'd know anything?"

"I know everything," the hoarse voice answered.

I bet. It sounded honed on sandpaper, neither male nor female, human nor unhuman.

The figure was slumped so close to the Dumpster side I couldn't tell if it stood on two legs or three, in shoes or boots, on cloven hooves or big, shaggy paws. The head was a spiky mystery that could be too much drugstore gel or demon spines. Today's street punks often resembled arcane night terrors of hundreds of years ago.

And why was my armed duty belt locked in Dolly's truck? Was it because I didn't want to scare the Snow groupies? Or did I just not want to look "hippy" in a former Weight Watchers venue? Or was I just sexist enough to think that a bunch of women weren't dangerous?

Could I actually be hoping that Snow was still hanging around to taunt me further?

You gotta resolve that bipolar thing you got going, Irma suggested throatily.

"I know," I snapped aloud at Irma.

"You know who I am and why I'm here?" the figure growled back. "I don't think so, Delilah the Dog Slayer."

How did-? Never mind, it was exactly the right thing to make me wince and lower my guard. "Who are you?"

"You'd never guess in a thousand years, and certainly haven't in twenty-four."

"So you know how old I am. So what? It's public record."

"I'm not."

A scrape of leather sole on back-alley grit warned that the figure had stepped away from the Dumpster and toward me.

The stiletto of light that edged the hulking metal caught the stranger in its glare, cutting a foot-wide swath across a death-pale cheek down to the black-leather-booted calf opposite me. I recognized the footwear.

Mine.

Studying the opposite figure, I recognized pieces of my height, hair, build.

"The late, great Lilith, I presume," I managed to spit out past the rapid hip-hop rhythm of my heart. "I'd heard you might be here tonight. Why show in person only now?"

"You were getting too close."

"And the Dumpster? How could you be sure I'd exit through the rear?"

Even as I asked the question, I wished I'd been wearing Lilith's version of my ass-kicking motorcycle boots to use them on my own rear. Snow. He'd been stationed at the front to drive me out the back.

Was I really that predictable? More important, did Snow work for Lilith or vice versa? I waited for Irma to chime in with theories and further critiques, but she kept mum.

"The Dumpster," Lilith answered slowly, like a Big Sister spelling it all out to the middle-grader, "is 'our place.' It's where everyone else thinks I am you and you know I'm not."

"Did Snow grab that security tape showing you in my clothes clobbering his groupie to protect you?"

"You think he'd protect you?"

"If it suited his purposes."

"Which are?"

"Dubious. He did give me a copy of the security recording of the scene. Much as you might like to have me taken for a murderer, you only knocked out the groupie. She was strangled later."

"That still leaves you a suspect."

"Unless I can prove you're still alive and at large."

"Is that why you've been snooping around the CSI V autopsy set?"

"Or are you not dead, but Undead and still looking for victims? Why did you wear the same D��j��-Vous outfit I did that night?

"I might have, like, gone to D��j��."

"In a pig's eye! You went there in its dressing room mirror. You copped my clothes, my look, even as I was putting them all together. Just to put the blame on me? Was that why? Still, how could you know that the groupie would accost me inside the Inferno Hotel? Did you follow her to the Dumpster after that? She must have thought you were me and tried to steal another 'souvenir' of the hair Snow had touched."

"So many questions, Delilah. You really were a TV reporter in the boonies like you claim."

"Kansas isn't 'the boonies,' it's the heartland, and I was a pretty darn good reporter there."

There was light enough to see Lilith roll her eyes, flashing as vivid blue as my own.

"Oh, come on!" she said. "You've got to admit Vegas has a much better and badder class of supers. This is the Big Time, kid."

"I'm not used to being talked down to by my mirror."

"Liar!" It was an ugly accusation but she seemed to be laughing at me. "You get lots of back-talk through mirrors, including from the bad little werewolf girl. And speaking of mirrors, yes, that's where I get most of my Delilah-brand rags, not from any fancy costume shop, not even D��j��-Vous."

She'd confirmed my guess at least.

"So," I said, "if you see me in my hall mirror, you cop my look? Why didn't you let me see you do it sooner?"

"I don't do it very often. Your 'look' is too hicksville. All that vintage stuff. At least your hot Hispanic guy upped the temperature of your wardrobe." I saw her slap the flat of her hand on her jeaned butt, jutted out to catch the light.

I shrugged. I wanted to know the how and why of Lilith's very existence, not her fashion opinions.

"I don't think you killed that groupie," I charged, sounding like not killing someone was a bigger crime than doing it. Lilith really turned my head around and my sanity inside out.

"You don't picture yourself-myself-doing it?" she asked.

"No. I know you didn't leave her dead. You might have a notion who did, though. You saw her last."

"Always the unimpassioned investigator, Delilah. You'd think my personal appearance here would rustle up a little sisterly emotion."

"Don't dodge the question, Lilith. Makes me think you do know an answer."

"Maybe it was that creepy guy who was after you."

"That covers a lot of guys in town, unfortunately, from the Lunatics gang to Cesar Cicereau. Given your earlier description of Ric, I assume you're leaving him out of that sweepstakes."

"Definitely. How soon you forget your enemies. I mean that crooked cop who's been slowly rotting off his humanity one private part at a time."

"Haskell! He was there? Why?"

"He knows when you've been sleeping. He knows when you're awake-"

I shuddered at her sardonic words. Lilith was right: like the song also said, you better watch out. In today's Las Vegas, even Santa Claus could be a monster and Haskell certainly was capable of stalking me.

Or her, even before I'd come to town.

Just the mention of Haskell's name sent a flutter of likely scenarios through my mind on fast-forward: he'd seen the groupie groping me inside the Inferno that night and... figured she was hot and fair game for him? Or... Haskell had killed the woman after Lilith repulsed her, mistaking Lil for me and hoping I'd get blamed.

Because... Haskell and I had tangled in Sunset Park when I'd first hooked up with Ric (in a purely professional sense). Or, even worse: maybe he'd known and loathed Lilith and took me for her right off. If Snow knew her, she'd had a history in Sin City before I ever came here after seeing her "autopsied" on CSI V.

My head was beginning to hurt from calculating all the possibilities.

For sure Haskell would have known where to find the security camera and obscure it while he murdered the groupie. He'd never expect Snow to steal the damning tape of me/Lilith confronting the woman for his own reasons.

I had to recalculate the timeline, and find out where Haskell was when the groupie was killed. His arresting me as the killer certainly confirmed Lilith's story that he'd been around the murder scene that night.

Something came speeding down the service road, something behind Lilith. A four-footed shadow like Quicksilver's bounced off the Dumpster side. The metal banged, a huge, hollow drum.

My heart echoed it as I leaped back from the passing stray animal, hitting hard against the steel door that wouldn't let me retreat. The impact triggered a security alarm with a shrill, banshee scream, not unlike my nerves.

My shadowy double was blending into the darker part of the night.

"Lilith! Wait! I need more info. If you know who really killed the woman behind the Inferno, I need-"

"Sorry, Delilah, I don't stick around for line-ups."

The shadow was already melting into the crux at the eternal juncture of dark ground, walls, night, desert, vision, despair.

"Lilith! You need to be cleared as much as I do-"

"If anyone besides you believed in me, that is," the raw voice mocked from the dark. "Anyone official. Sure you're not hallucinating, Delilah? You hear voices, don't you? Why can't you see visions? They'll burn you at the stake yet. But not me. Not me."

The last word came whispered from above, below, nearby, at a deep, dark distance.

So close. Lilith cutting though the night and my doubt like a razor caressing a throat in a cul-de-sac. Not a mirror image. Real. Raw. Unfathomable.

I was surprised that I was shaking all over, from my key ring to the silver familiar on my wrist jingling away like Santa's sleigh bells.

Lilith was real. Light-shy as a vampire. Taunting. Bitchy.

But she was real and she'd been willing to meet me one-on-one-on-two. I lunged away from the steel door I'd jolted that was still unleashing a siren of sound.

Screaming Hell! While I was standing there, stunned stupid about facing my CSI double, a live (or at least un-dead) Lilith, who must have already known for sure I existed, had wisely bolted.

I should too. Talk about dropping the existential ball when it was almost in your hands and tucked under your arm.

I took off running, bouncing off the Dumpster side like the running dog, angling away from the slice of parking lot light, skidding on things I didn't like to think about.

There was one more thing I hated thinking about even more.

Snow at the front door, Lilith at the back.

Were they working together, against me?

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