Dee wasn’t listening. She’d pulled a silver bejeweled phone out of her enormous bosom and was stabbing at it with a crimson talon. “Get me Dee Vine,” she told it, and paused for a beat. “Don’t give me that! Tell her to stop primping and answer the damn phone!” There was another pause and she rolled her eyes. “Dee Vine, my ass!” she told me. “She ought to call herself Dee Crepit; the bitch has to be going on sixty. No amount of makeup is going to hel—lo Dee, you gorgeous thing . . .”

My stomach grumbled plaintively, a counterpoint to the throbbing in my skull. My last meal had been breakfast with Mircea and that had to be . . . I wasn’t even sure. A long time ago. I started looking for my shoes.

“Well, I don’t know, do I?” Dee asked. “The only other person here is some wino in wrinkled sweats . . .”

I looked down at myself and then glared up at her. She made a kissy face at me but didn’t apologize. I found one shoe under Francoise’s bed, but the other was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished like a sock in a dryer.

Dee grumbled into the phone some more and then clicked it shut. “They moved the rehearsal and didn’t bother to tell me.” She watched me crawling around the floor. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find my other shoe.” I held up the one I’d located and she snatched it with a little cry.

“Oh, my God. That’s a Jimmy Choo Atlas gladiator sandal!”

“Uh-huh.” Sal had picked them out. They were a little flashy, but at least all the straps had kept them on my feet. Otherwise, my bruises would have been joined by some seriously lacerated soles.

Dee lifted the sandal delicately, holding it up to her face. The patent surface was looking a little battered after its recent adventures and mud caked the heel, which had lost its end cap. She stroked its side softly. “Oh, my poor, poor baby.”

Once upon a time, I’d also taken an interest in fashion, as much as my limited budget allowed. But lately, I was more interested in whether I could run in a pair of shoes than in whose name was on the box. And I’d never cooed to my footwear.

“It’s just a shoe,” I said impatiently.

She hugged it to her huge chest, glaring at me. “People like you shouldn’t be allowed to own fashion.” She stuck a massive calf up on the bed, a long nail pointing at her shiny red platform. “See these? Four years old and not a scratch. And they’re off the rack!”

“It’s been a rough day.”

She shook her head hard enough to almost dislodge the wig. “That’s no excuse. We’ve all been there, but you take the designer shoes off and then you puke.”

“I’m not drunk!”

She was too busy petting the shoe to listen. “I could so work a pair of these.”

I eyed her maybe size fourteen foot. “I don’t think they come in your size.”

“Oh, please. What’s a little blood? I’d bind my feet up like a geisha if I could afford—”

“Well, I’d trade them for a pair of Keds and a good meal,” I muttered, and looked up to find huge fake eyelashes fluttering in my face like a pair of angry moths.

“You would?” Dee asked, a little breathless.

“Yeah. If I don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to—”

She gave me a shove and I stumbled back into the wall—and kept going. I fell down what felt like a water slide except with no water. In its place was a blur of color and a roar of sound—and then I was tumbling head over heels into an alcove. It had rough wood floors, stucco walls and a pay phone with an out of order sign.

Something taupe and muddy lay right in front of my nose. I grabbed it. “My shoe!”

“My shoe,” Dee said, stumbling out of the wall behind me. She plucked it out of my hands. “Keds and a meal—that was the deal, right?”

“Yes, but . . .” I stared at the wall we’d just fallen out of.

“There was a portal in my room!”

“No kidding.” Dee peered out of a set of red velvet drapes in front of the alcove.

“Why?!”

“Because it used to be a nightclub with undead performers,” she threw over her massive shoulder. “How do you think they got them in and out? Walked them through the main casino floor, so they could munch on a few tourists in passing?”

I scowled. “You can’t go around telling people this kind of stuff. You just met me. I might be a norm for all you—”

“Scrim.”

“What?”

“The whole group, Dee Vine, Dee Licious and me. We’re all Scrims.”

“What difference does that make?” Scrims were just mages who didn’t produce much magical energy. They varied in ability, from those who weren’t very good at magic to those who couldn’t even cast a simple spell. Like the Misfits, they weren’t popular in the magical community, but they weren’t locked up because nobody viewed them as a threat.

“Scrims can detect magic,” she said impatiently. “We’re like bloodhounds on a scent, drawn to it like queens to fashion. Speaking of which, those bitches I work with would kill for these shoes. Literally—I’m talking a stiletto to the neck. We have to be careful.”

“Look, I just want a sandwich—”

“It’s all about you, isn’t it?” she hissed. “This is an act of mercy. I have a friend who can restore these babies to their proper glory but I have to smuggle them past the hags. Oh, shit! There’s one now!”

Dee snapped the curtains shut and started stuffing the shoes down her already overpadded front. She’d just finished when the curtain was snatched back to reveal a tall, gaunt person in a black see-through body stocking, sequined pasties and black satin hot pants. “She” had purple lipstick, purple feathers on her long, fake eyelashes and the pale, expressionless face of the overly Botoxed.

“That look went out with the eighties,” she drawled, staring suspiciously at Dee’s now ultrapointy breasts.

Dee draped an arm around my shoulders. “Darling, meet Dee Ceased—”

“Dee Vine!” the woman snapped.

“Careful with the emotion, love. Your forehead might fall off.”

Someone laughed and edged in around the ample space left by Dee Vine’s scrawny form. The newcomer was a seven-foot-tall African-American in a blond wig, her ample curves spilling over the top of a full-length red-sequined dress. “That’s what I was telling her. Then we can call her Dee Composed.”

That won her a glare from her costar. “Like you’ve never had work. You’re over forty without a line!”

The newcomer ran hands in opera-length, red satin gloves down her curves. “And it’s all natural, baby. Ain’t you heard? Black don’t crack.”

“Are we gonna get this rehearsal on or not?” Dee Vine demanded. “This dump opens in two days!”

“I’m going to grab a bite first,” Dee Sire told her, pushing me through the miniscule opening between the two queens.

“Another few pounds and what’ll be cracking around here is your ass out of that dress!” floated after us as we emerged into a dark club.

The theme seemed to be Wild West saloon, with a long bar, clusters of round wood tables, sawdust on the floor and a couple of old-fashioned swinging doors. We stepped through them into the middle of a ghost town. Or at least Dante’s idea of one.

Most of the casinos in town were trending away from Vegas’ overly kitschy roots, but not here. Dante’s had a vested interest in maintaining its reputation as the home of the wild, the wacky and the tacky. The more the scarier; that was Dante’s motto.

The overall theme of the casino had begun as various versions of hell, as evidenced by the lobby. But over time, that had pretty much devolved into a hodgepodge of all things supernatural. The more there was to distract the eye, the less likely that anyone would notice that not all of the “acts” were fake.

Nowhere was that better realized than on the casino’s main drag. Wooden sidewalks creaked and groaned mysteriously, even when no one was on them. There were hitching posts every so often for ghostly horses that only showed up in the darkened windows of the stores they faced. There was a water tower at one end with a hanged man dangling from it, turning gently in a nonexistent breeze. And the sky overhead was constantly dark, except for a few fake bolts of lightning flashing occasionally.

Of course, this was Vegas, which meant the old wooden shops had been slutted up with neon signs featuring glowing cacti, dancing martini glasses and tap dancing skeletons. There was one advertising “Drag on the drag” outside the saloon we’d just exited. And there were tourists everywhere.

“Look at this!” Dee was indignant. “I wouldn’t wait in those lines for seventy-five percent off at Saks, much less a Tombstone Taco.”

“I don’t care. Right now, anything I can put in my mouth is fine.”

“Oh, honey, if only you were a boy,” she sighed, and pulled me into the madhouse of Main Street.

It was not only busier than usual, it was creepier, too. Along with the tourists in bright colored tees and the Dante’s employees in costumes and face paint were a large number of pale, elegant observers watching the melee through jaded eyes. The senators’ servants had arrived in force and midnight was lunchtime. And the street was a walking buffet.

“This is ridiculous,” Dee said as people kept trying to pose with her. I guess they thought she was one of the costumed performers who appeared here and there for photo ops. Only they were dressed in a gothic version of Old West attire, not Dee’s glittery bow ties.

“You know, I could just call room service—”

“No way. A deal’s a deal.” She spied an opening in the throng and towed me through.

We ended up at the Last Stop train station. It was a steakhouse filled with conductors wearing white face paint, with deep black circles under their eyes and wild Beetle-juice hair. Among others, the menu featured Punched Ticket Porterhouses, Terminated T-bones and No Return Rib Eyes. The smell was enough to make my stomach complain loudly, but the place was hip deep in people and the line snaked around the corner.