(I have a soft spot for dogs—especially since Achilles, my valiant little Lhasa apso in Wichita, died from blood poisoning after biting a vampire who was trying to bite me. Achilles’ ashes rest in a dragon-decorated jar on my mantel, but I haven’t given up the ghost on him.)

Oh, the location of that mantel might be of interest. It’s in the Enchanted Cottage on the Hector Nightwine estate. Hector rents the place to me cheap because, as the CSI franchise producer, he’s presumably guilty of offing my possible twin on national TV. Hector doesn’t really have a conscience, just a profit motive. He’s banking on my finding Lilith or becoming her for his enduring financial benefit.

The only thing Hector and I share is a love of old black-and-white films. The Enchanted Cottage duplicates a setting from a 1945 movie. A shy-to-the-point-of-invisible staff of who-knows-what supernaturals run the place, and I suspect it’s supplied with the wicked stepmother’s mirror from Snow White. Although it’s been mum with me so far, I do see dead people in it.

The most complicated beings in my brave new world are the CinSims. Cinema Simulacrums are created by blending fresh zombie bodies illegally imported from Mexico with classic black-and-white film characters. The resulting “live” personas are wholly owned entertainment entities leased to various Vegas enterprises.

Hector and Ric blame the Immortality Mob for the brisk business in zombie CinSims, but can’t prove it. Hector wants to wrest the CinSims from the mob’s control into his. Ric aches to stop the traffic in illegally imported zombies. It’s personal—he was forced to work in the trade as a child.

I’d like to help them both out, and not just because I’m a former investigative reporter crusading against human and unhuman exploitation. My own freedom is threatened by various merciless and sometimes downright repellent factions bent on making life after the Millennium Revelation literal Hell.