WHEN THE STAKES ARE DEAD -- OR UNDEAD! Werewolf mobsters and vampires run Vegas, but that's yesterday's news for Delilah Street, paranormal investigator. What's truly fearsome is her bloody discovery of an undead evil rooted in ancient Egypt. Now, with her lover Ric fighting for life after a grim battle, the chips are down. But Delilah is a born winner who has never let a little danger throw off her game, and she's been learning fast since she came to Sin City. Her affinity for silver is making mirror-walking a real breeze, and being forced to accept the albino rock star sorcerer Snow's Brimstone Kiss has ramped up her powers to a startling new level. With the help of her trusty uber-wolfhound Quicksilver, not to mention the orange demon parking valet Manny, Delilah is determined to solve even more paranormal secrets, and hopefully save the few innocents left in town. But can Delilah win her high-stakes gamble for life and love against ancient gods and lethal supernatural odds? "Wonderfully written...a unique take on the paranormal." -- "New York Times" bestselling author Kelley Armstrong Carole Nelson Douglas, author of more than fifty fantasy and science fiction, mystery, mainstream, and romance novels, was an award-winning reporter and editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. After writing some bestselling high fantasy novels and SF thrillers, she imported fantasy notions into her Midnight Louie mystery series, which features a hard-boiled Las Vegas PI who’s a feline “Sam Spade with hairballs.” Her Irene Adler historical series made Carole the first author to use a woman from the Sherlock Holmes stories as a protagonist in the 1991 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. She’s won or been short-listed for more than fifty writing awards in nonfiction, sf/fantasy, mystery, and romance genres, including several from the Romance Writers of America and Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine, and the Cat Writers’ Association. In 2008, RT BOOKreviews magazine named Carole a “pioneer of the publishing industry. Carole and husband Sam Douglas, a former art museum exhibitions director and kaleidoscope designer, are kept as pets by five stray cats and a dog in Fort Worth, Texas. She collects vintage clothing, and does a mean Marilyn Monroe impersonation, and, yes, she does dance, but not with werewolves. As far as she knows. Carole Nelson Douglas Chapter One DEAD TIRED, I headed “home” in the early evening Las Vegas Strip traffic. Instead of sugarplums—or even three cherries in a slot machine window—other, far less delightful, images danced in my head. I was only two days of sleep deprivation past an endless night fighting Vegas’s hidden ancient Egyptian underworld of bloodthirsty supernaturals. My cup of nightmares was sure to runneth over for weeks with visions of zombie mummies, hyena carcasses, and vampires in eyeliner. Even worse would be visual reruns of Ric chained to a dungeon wall under the Karnak Hotel, victim of a vicious suck-fest. That was the ancient Egyptian vampire empire’s version of waterboarding as they sought the secret of his ability to raise the dead. Now my investigative partner was out of the Karnak’s supernaturally infested bowels and alive, barely, in a high-rise suite at the rival Inferno Hotel. In an hour, Ricardo Montoya had gone from the pit of Hell to the heavens, or the Vegas version of both. Following Ric’s and my separate life-threatening investigations at the Karnak, I was alive but iffy on the matter of my soul and sanity. Ric was in a coma—possibly more dead than alive—and possibly possessed of a more compromised soul than I was. I’d been too frantic to do anything but hover over Ric for hours and was finally heading home under doctor’s orders to “freshen up” before returning to his comatose side. Good advice. Getting myself together enough to drive my big black ’56 Caddy, Dolly, through brassy Vegas Strip traffic forced me to focus. My heart felt a faint ping of security when the Nightwine estate’s iron side gates opened automatically to admit us. After parking Dolly near the carriage house, I could hardly wait to enter my soothing rental digs and start to feel human again. In a city built on flash and flesh, un human seemed the dominant life, or death, form. I headed for the Enchanted Cottage, then stopped. Its Hobbity front door formed a gray wooden frame for something black-and-white and silver all over that stood before it, blocking my way. Yes, this “something” was also “someone” I welcomed seeing. My favorite CinSim. “Godfrey!” My voice quivered with mingled grief and joy. “My dear Miss Street,” he began in the brisk tones of that fine actor, William Powell, playing the ultra-competent My Man Godfrey in the 1936 romantic comedy film classic. “How splendid to see you alive and well and back on the premises.” Godfrey was my landlord’s butler and looked more than double my age. He was actually three or four time