IT WAS LATE-MIDNIGHT-when I buzzed my gate open so Ric could park his car in the Enchanted Cottage driveway. I then stopped Dolly at the big house and told Godfrey I was home safe and thanks for sending Perry Mason to fetch me from the Gehenna earlier.

Hector Nightwine, of course, was glued to one of his surveillance screens as well as a classic film, so I was being polite and updating him at the same time.

Besides, it suited me to let Nightwine think Ric and I were settling down for a nocturnal reunion at the cottage. We were, but I had plans more radical than romantic.

Meanwhile, I deserved some R &R: Ric and Roll.

After I drove around to park Dolly, I found Ric sitting atop the semicircular steps leading to my front door. All the driveway lights were on.

At the bottom of the shallow stairs, Quicksilver sat in his alert "at ease" position, a furred statue in gray shading to silver and beige on his paws and face, blue eyes sky-clear. His upright ears and grave expression matched Ric's posture of calm watchfulness.

The only thing supernatural about this scene was the obvious truce that had been declared between my two devoted but overpossessive defenders.

Gosh. A boy and his dog. Aww. Made me very suspicious.

Ric rose to open Dolly's heavy door before I could gather my messenger bag from the red leather seat. Quicksilver was there just as fast.

"Really rough day earlier at the Gehenna, I take it?" Ric asked.

I leaned against Dolly's side. "Rough enough."

"I've got some things to report too, but it can wait until we unwind," Ric said.

Quick was not ready to roll over and snooze after being left out of the action all day. He padded backward and went belly-down into an excited play-bow. Our morning run had been interrupted, and how.

"We decided to get some exercise while waiting for you to drive around," Ric said. "The lights back here are bright enough."

He glanced at a stick lying on the flagstones beside the stairs. They'd been playing? Please!

I handed Ric my messenger bag. "Take this in then. I'll give Quicksilver some quality time out here."

Quick gave a sharp, impatient bark.

"You'll hear all about my commission at the Gehenna in a few minutes, both of you buddies," I told Ric.

Actually, this man-dog d��tente pleased and intrigued me. I needed time to digest it, as I did the Ric-Sansouci meeting. A lot of my assumptions had been kicked in the gut today. I couldn't believe that Loretta had tried to trick and use me and would happily risk Ric's life to get her dead vampire lover back and that Cicereau might not deserve quite the level of her vengeance.

"What are you up to?" I asked Quick as we sat together on the stairs.

Can a dog shrug? Quick turned his head to the side and scratched idly at his wide black leather collar. I owed him a classier neckpiece, but those silver discs on the collar had a way of shape-shifting like my silver familiar. I'd decided to leave bad enough alone.

Speaking of which, my silver familiar had split into two heavy silver wrist weights. Somebody hinting I'd neglected my resistance program since hitting Las Vegas?

Who'd had time to join a gym when she was serving as a supernatural punching bag? Yet I'd tied the treacherous Loretta up in knots and turned her dad into a client and Sansouci and Madrigal into my assistants.

I noticed at the morgue that Ric was looking and acting same-old despite his ordeal. Now he and Quicksilver were newly in tune. Life was looking good, even though I'd forgotten to refresh my sunscreen when I took Quicksilver to the park that morning. I could feel my face and arms prickling now. I would probably be shrimp pink for my intimate midnight supper with Ric.

I let Quicksilver into the cottage after typing the secret keypad code Godfrey had given me to disable the security and spy cameras inside the cottage.

I ambled inside after him, hoping for Enya on the sound system, a cool fresh drink and a hot fresh guy.

Instead I heard the roar of the crowd. Ric was planted in the parlor on the leather easy chair, feet up on the ottoman, watching some baseball game on the big-screen plasma TV. Quicksilver had plopped down beside him.

Men and dogs and chasing balls! Ric lifted a tall glass glittering with condensation. "Gatorade. Pitcher was on the kitchen counter. I assume you're going to change out of that adorable but slightly butch outfit."

Jeez. Woman comes home from a hard day of ghost corralling and the men of the cottage are too laid-back to pamper her.

I pounded up the stairs to find the hall mirror blacked out even from my reflection, and the resident "helpers" were in fine form. The wrist weights slunk down my own form, uniting in a garter just above one knee. In ten minutes I was out of my Emma Peel outfit and powdering my sun-pinked face and arms with the pale cooling mineral powder on the dressing table. Black Irish skins are too pale to tan, but we sure can burn.

A turquoise gauze halter jumpsuit hung from what I'd named the "designer brownie" hook. With bronze high-heeled sandals and a rhinestone bib necklace to enhance my d��colletage, I was ready to blow away my complacent males downstairs.

When I got back down, though, Quicksilver was nowhere to be seen. The mute TV was a reflective black glass mirror I avoided looking into. I didn't want to remember Lilith right now.

I entered the Victorian parlor to find Ric waiting for me by the fireplace with the anticipated drink. I blinked to see it was a Vampire Sunrise.

"I thought I had a 'smart' computerized house," he said, "but your funky cottage shakes cocktails, bakes popovers, twice-bakes potatoes, sears filet mignon just-right rare, and coddles cr��me brûl��e."

"It's enchanted, not funky." I sipped a stiff belt of my Vampire Sunrise, courtesy of the kitchen witch, and felt every muscle in my body and each brain cell in my head turn into an enervated noodle.

Ric finished me off by standing behind me and massaging my bared shoulders.

"Mija," he whispered into my overheated ear, "the Inferno bridal suite is cushier than cardinal sin but I like Casa Delilah a lot better."

"You're really all right?"

"The doctors say I won't be able to join you and Quicksilver in a five-K run for a while, until my blood and stamina build up, but otherwise, I'm fine. What about you?"

"Hungry."

He whisked me and my drink to a small table in the corner set with all the aforementioned dishes in peak hot and cold condition.

While we enjoyed our romantic dinner for two, a couple dozen questions ran through my head. I imagine Ric had three dozen. I decided to take the Red Bull by the horns.

"Sansouci is right," I said as we finished our creamy desserts.

"He certainly seems cozy with women of my acquaintance."

"Woman, singular. I had no idea until tonight that your starchy homicide captain had a weakness for vampires."

"Are you crazy? Kennedy Malloy hates all things supernatural and Sansouci is Cicereau's head goon, a werewolf."

"So everyone thinks." I leaned forward over the last of my drink, the scarlet grenadine at the bottom. "I discovered that he's a vampire and not just any vampire."

"Vampires are vampires." Ric watched me carefully. "Aren't they? And what's he doing fang-in-fang with the werewolf boss?"

"Sansouci's not a werewolf. He's a vampire hostage. It all goes back to the mob war for Vegas in the nineteen forties. The werewolves beat out the human mobsters from Chicago and L.A. as well as a vampire organization with French roots, of all things.

"When Cicereau's daughter played Juliet to a vampire Romeo, all the supernaturals feared an 'unnatural' alliance and the possibility that half-human Loretta could produce vamp-werewolf offspring. Each side, werewolf and vampire, agreed to their deaths and exchanged hostages to ensure that the status quo stayed in play: Werewolves lucky seven, Vampires zero. That was more than seventy years ago and it's held so far, although our discovering the Karnak vampires could put a real kink in the balance of power."

Ric sat back, stunned. "I feel like I've been out of action for a year. You've dug up an amazing amount of dirty supernatural secrets since you hit town."

"I was an ace paranormal TV reporter in Wichita, remember? We're very thorough in the Midwest."

I leaned forward again. "Seriously, Ric, when we found those sixty-year-old murdered bones in Sunset Park, we hit the mother lode for every hidden influence in Las Vegas. The minute that happened it became all about raising those dead bones. Cicereau's daughter, Loretta, began appearing in my mirror, playing the victim and seeking my sympathy and help."

"So she's a very vengeful ghost?"

"Yup, and the Karnak vampires have been in hiding for decades, centuries, maybe millennia. Now they're hungry to raise really old vampires, not the modern variety like Sansouci, whom they consider degraded."

"Just how degraded is Sansouci?" Ric asked, a possessive male gleam in his dark eyes.

"You mean to Kennedy Malloy, or to me?" I asked, demure.

"Delilah, don't tease."

"He may seem tame, but I have a long history of not trusting anything with fangs except my dogs. I'm using Sansouci as a source, not vice versa. He's a new breed of vampire, one the vamp mob of the forties had hopes could eventually go mainstream in society. They'd been working on that strain for almost a century, even before the mob war for Vegas, which they lost."

"A mainstream vampire? How?"

"You saw it. Sansouci gets around 24/7. He's not handicapped by having to hit the dirt for twelve out of every twenty-four hours. He takes his blood in small harmless doses from consensual humans. Yeah, exclusively female. Wouldn't you? Kinda grazes, the way women on diets are encouraged to consume."

"Delilah, you're being wicked!"

"Glad you think so, Montoya," I purred. "I'd like a really rich nightcap upstairs when all this major revelation stuff is over.

"But," I added, going for an even better gleam in his eye.

"Yes?"

I got serious, knowing he was right that I'd been leaning too much on Sansouci as a snitch.

"First, I think we have to find out what's happening at the Karnak since the other hotel owners raided them on our behalf."

"You're talking a return raid of two," Ric said.

"You all right with that?" Like I didn't know.

"Totally."

"The twin pharaohs aren't going to take this lying down like royal mummies in their caskets. And I want Quicksilver along. The royals keep a semisupernatural pack of really wicked hyenas. We need Quick's supernaturally superb canine-lupine senses of smell, hearing, and sight. The Royal Twits will never expect us to rush back in where humans would fear to tread."

Ric paused, looking at me as if I'd grown a second head. "And here I thought you'd be too protective to want me to go back."

"I figure you'd go back anyway. Better with me and Quick. I remember the lay of the land and he can smell it. Besides, he's major PO'ed about being left out of our adventures recently."

He eyed the dog, lying alertly by the parlor fire. "He's been jealous of me. Of you."

"That's why he's so good at his job." I couldn't tell Ric quite yet the dog had recently taken on a six-hundred-pound tiger for him, for me.

"You want the love or a first-class partner?" I asked.

"I want to go for both."

"Quick," I said.

The wolf-dog clicked over on curved nails.

"Shake," I said, just kidding.

Trained dogs did those tricks. Quick didn't.

He jerked his fanged snout in Ric's direction, then mine, and howled until all the hidden cottage pixies or whatever squealed and fled the building.

They'd be back, and so would Ric, Quick, and me.

In the best-case scenario.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***