Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives

Soul Stains: A Vampire Babylon Story by Chris Marie Green

A chill was trying to worm past her skin and deep into her bones, but Dawn Madison didn’t even shiver. She’d first learned how to handle the willies as a Hollywood stuntwoman, and her later “career” as a vampire hunter had taught her the rest, even if it’d been a while since she’d been in the hunting game.

“Something’s sure as shit here,” Kiko said, sensing her disquietude. The psychic PI was more than a foot shorter than her, a little person, former actor, and former hunter. Today he was garbed in his version of a business suit: cargo pants and a white dress shirt covered by a dark pea coat. Since their last and final hunt together, he’d grown out his blond hair a bit, grown back the soul patch on his chin.

The old Coconut Coast showroom was quiet now that the staff had wrapped up their post-show duties and left. With its faded burgundy velvet-curtain glamour, booth seats curled around scratched mahogany tables — your basic old school luxury and tackiness rolled into one — the Bahia Resort and Casino was one of those Vegas stalwarts on the north end of the Strip that cried out for a corporate takeover. But the owner, “Tigerman” Lee, had held on to it, even though the place had to be on its last legs.

They called him Tigerman, apparently, because of the gray sideburns he wore like feral slashes under his cheekbones. He may have been over sixty years old, but as he stood next to Kiko, he still seemed like someone Dawn wouldn’t want to mess with in a dark alley. Actually, he didn’t seem all that keen on her, either, what, with the marks on her face. Gifts from her final hunt.

His voice was a cigarette-hewn rasp. “The past two years, there’ve been a few sightings here in the showroom, but Gigi Calhoun’s more active backstage.”

A ghost haunting the Bahia.

Or maybe it wasn’t that at all, and that’s why Kiko, the PI, had come here — and why Kiko had brought in his old friend Dawn.

They’d already done their own background check on Gigi Calhoun. She was a secret vampire who’d sold her soul in preparation to recycling her declining Hollywood career after she’d “died” spectacularly in the auto accident that had supposedly decapitated her. With the help of the vampires and their servants, her body had sure looked headless enough to the Coroner and Medical Examiner; the Underground had fooled the press, fooled everyone into thinking she was dead and gone. Gigi’s legend grew as she wiled away her time Underground. But, unfortunately for her, Dawn and the team had wiped out the Hollywood hive before the actress and singer could complete her release cycle; that would’ve included plastic surgery, a name change, then reemergence Above as a similar star — but one who only used vampire Allure to remind everyone of the original Gigi Calhoun.

Tigerman’s gaze had taken on a longing softness, just like every other fan who’d nursed a fervent need to never see his idols die. “When Gigi first headlined here in the early Seventies, Vegas was like a woman just finding out how powerful she could be, wearing her neon like jewels she got from all the men buzzing around her. Gigi opened this place, sang and danced on this very stage. Then she…”

“Died,” Dawn said, going along with the lie.

Tigerman sighed.

“That’s why you think she came back here,” she added, “even in the afterlife? Because she had a special attachment to the Bahia?”

“I like to think so. And, pretty soon, ghosts might be all that’s left. Maybe I’ll even be one myself when they finally strong arm me into giving up this place.”

Kiko was wily enough to walk past Tigerman, “accidently” brushing his hand against the owner’s. He was trying to get a reading with his psychometric abilities while the elderly man’s mind was on Gigi.

When the psychic frowned, Dawn knew he’d come up blank.

“Why do you think Gigi waited so long to show up here after all these years?” she asked. “Why didn’t she come to the Bahia to hang out just after her death?”

“I thought that’s why you two were here — so you could ask her about that stuff. That’s what most of you paranormal types do, with your societies, right? But I don’t mind. Gigi’s been a draw, bringing us a little more business since word got out about her.”

Kiko wandered toward the stage, avoiding this subject. He’d told Tigerman that he was a garden-variety paranormal enthusiast, creating the impression that there’d be some free publicity from an article Kiko said he’d write for a trade journal.

Bullshit. He and Dawn were only here to find out if Gigi was the last surviving remnant of the vampire Underground they’d destroyed in Hollywood. If she was, they’d deal with her.

Dawn felt her skin prickle on her right side. She waited for the heaviness in the middle of her own body to weigh her down, too, just like it had before she’d gone into self-imposed exile after the last Underground — the one in London — had been vanquished.

Rehab. That’s what her lover and companion, Costin, called it.

As a former vampire who’d been turned human again with the termination of her maker, Dawn knew just what it was like to feel the darkness as it tried to drag you under.

The chill came to her again, but this time, there was valid reason for it.

A curtain by the stage.

A hand that appeared briefly before disappearing behind the velvet, leaving it stirring.

Adrenaline rose in Dawn, leaving her heartbeat sharp and fast.

But no one else had seen. In fact, Tigerman left Dawn standing there as he caught up to Kiko, then began leading them backstage. Kiko slowed down to talk to Dawn, cocking his eyebrow as she sent one last look to that stilled curtain. Maybe she’d just been imagining things, if Kik hadn’t sensed anything amiss.

“Tigerman was closed off,” the psychic whispered to her. “He blocked out my touch reading.”

“Not everyone is open to them.”

“Bad guys never really are.”

As they followed Tigerman out a side door, Dawn’s skin kept crawling, and it wasn’t just because of what she thought she’d seen back in that showroom.

They’d agreed that Kiko’s hotel room was the best place to talk in private. Dawn perched on the king-sized mattress, opposite where the psychic was leaning against the dresser. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and didn’t much care for what she saw. Dawn didn’t look like a normal person, even with makeup covering the black marks on one side of her face — her very own physical manifestation of the anger in her soul. The splotches of red on the other side were a souvenir from the dying high master of the Undergrounds, who’d splashed her with his blood. Thank God they just looked like inexplicable tattoos.

“So how’re … things … right now?” Kiko asked.

“Things?”

“You know.”

Dawn shot him a sarcastic glance. “All we’ve done so far is tour the showroom and backstage. Things are cool.”

“But we’ll be going back to get readings with my equipment. I just wanted to see if you need … well, rest. Stuff.”

“Kik, this isn’t so bad when you consider that my days used to consist of slicing off vamp heads.”

“Are you sure that—” Kiko started.

“Hey — I won’t turn into a raging monster that’ll bite your head off because Costin’s not around to temper me.” She took a long breath and made herself relax. “Besides, before he got me to the airport this morning, he took care of me.”

Just like every morning, they woke up before sunrise and Costin had used his psychic energies to push back the dragon’s blood that always threatened to join with the vampire darkness inside her. With the death of her own maker, she’d gone human again, but the heaviness within had remained, growing in force and hunger until Costin had found a way to curb it. He kept the dragon away from the soul stain, because they feared a collision would resurrect the big master … in her.

“I’m sure you’re as mellow as ever, Deepak,” Kiko said, “but I’ll get you back to San Diego by tomorrow morning so you can be with Costin anyway. I just wanted your take on Gigi here.”

“If she turns out not to be a ghost, Costin’s gonna join us, you know.”

“Yeah.” Kiko didn’t sound happy. Not because he didn’t like Costin, but because if Gigi wasn’t a ghost, that’d throw a curveball into their new lives.

“Before Tigerman gave us the tour,” he continued, “I didn’t realize that Gigi has been appearing to everyone in her prime, just like she never aged a day past her supposed death decades ago. But I guess her looking that way would make sense if she’s a ghost now. I mean, there’ve been plenty of reports of spectral Elvises and Marilyn Monroes who show themselves at the peaks of their gorgeousness, before they went downhill.”

“So that proves Gigi’s a ghost, and not a humanized survivor of the Underground?”

“If she isn’t an apparition, she’d resemble an old woman now, since all the Elite vampires went back to their real human ages when their maker died. Even if Gigi found another vampire to turn her recently, she wouldn’t look brand spankin’ young again.” Kiko seemed troubled. “I guess maybe I’m just lookin’ for reasons for her to be a ghost, because what if it ends up that Gigi did survive? And what if she’s not the only ex-Underground vamp running around?”

“We never did hear of her or some of the other Elite vampires after they turned human again and fled the L. A. Underground.” They’d thought those humanized vamps had committed suicide, just like all the others who’d found themselves un-beautiful and aged. “Maybe her soul stain never got to her, like it did with the others, and she made her way to Vegas.”

The soul stain — the curse of a humanized vampire in the dragon’s line. Dawn only knew this because she’d survived it, in spite of the marks her rage had brought out on her skin — badges that no other survivor had. Maybe that made her real special. Yay.

Her ex-vamp father and mother had gotten through their soul stains by dealing with the despair in their own ways, but…

Kiko said, “So what’re we going to do?”

His meaning was clear: if they found suicidal ex-vamps — remnants of the hunts — didn’t the team have a moral obligation to help them? Shouldn’t they deal with the damage they’d caused?

Dawn faced away from the mirror, where she could see the vague reflection of her “tattoos,” even when she wasn’t really looking.

Despite her obvious discomfort, Kiko persisted. “Like you said, Gigi could’ve been different from the other ex-vamps. Maybe she fought the soul stain because she had more to live for. Just like you did.”

“Or maybe she’s only a ghost.” It was as if the more often she said it, the better chances were that it’d be true. “We could just be seeing the first case of a soul stain causing a manifestation of grief.”

Kiko looked doubtful.

“Is it out of the question?” she asked. “Can’t extreme loss or tragedy bind a spirit to a place they loved or to an area where they need to right a wrong? I wonder if a soul stain did make Gigi commit suicide, then left behind something we can all see now.”

“And that’s why she’s here — because the Bahia represents her at her best, and that makes this a heaven for her.”

Dawn could picture how many other ex-vamp ghosts might have already appeared elsewhere, too, plunged into the deepest sadness from their stains as they haunted the earth.

Maybe ghosts weren’t a better option than humanized vamps, after all.

“Costin never mentioned it,” Kiko said. “He destroyed so many Undergrounds over the centuries, and he never saw something like this before.”

“He never stayed around to tend to the mental health of a master’s surviving progeny, Kik. He had to move on from one Underground to another as fast as he could.” God dammit. “This could be the first time those consequences have come back to bite one of his hunting teams in the ass.”

“Fuck a duck,” Kiko said.

Dawn closed her eyes. “Fuck a million ducks.”

A security guard allowed Dawn and Kiko into the showroom again, thanks to instructions left by Tigerman, who wasn’t very interested in watching the “ghosthunters”; he’d just told them to be done by the time the staff came in for a rehearsal of the showroom’s feature, Heat!, which was dark today. He’d also arranged for some employees who’d witnessed Gigi to be interviewed for the “article,” and they’d be here in about an hour.

Meanwhile, Dawn and Kiko wandered around backstage with an electromagnetic field detector and an ambient temperature gauge, but they found nothing ghostly. Then Kiko set about trying to capture some Electronic Voice Phenomena with his recording equipment.

As he worked, Dawn could hear her heartbeat, which felt like it was coming from the center of the earth, shaking the floor, pounding at her neck, temples. She waited for the skin on her right side, where the dragon blood marked her, to throb also, but it didn’t.

Don’t answer our summons, Gigi, she thought. Be dead. Stay dead.

Kiko guided Dawn away from the recorder because he wanted to allow Gigi some time alone with it, just in case she was a ghost who’d be reluctant to talk to them. Then they went out to the main showroom to sit in a booth, not talking much, until it was time for the interviews.

The subjects waited in the backstage area: “Roberto,” the emcee of the show, with his butterfly-collar shirt and smile-crinkled gaze; a fifty-something magician whose tamed country accent belied the name “Trevor Barkley”; his button-nosed, Bambi-eyed blond assistant Naomi; and an unsmiling, reedy theater usher who seemed coolly intrigued not only to be asked about a ghost, but to be interviewed about it by a soul patch-wearing little person, too.

“I saw Gigi first,” Roberto said, as he sat on one of the vanity tables in the large common dressing area. Behind him, bulbs lined a mirror, and Dawn could see hair plugs dotting the back of the emcee’s scalp. “Gigi was on those steps leading to the stage, just as bold as life.”

He pointed at the stairs to their right, and everyone looked, as if expecting to find her there.

Much to Dawn’s gratitude, they didn’t.

Kiko asked, “How do you know it was her?”

“No mistaking Gigi Calhoun,” Roberto said. “I’m her numero uno fan.”

The magician’s assistant, Naomi, cleared her throat, and Roberto chuckled.

“Okay. Maybe I share that honor.”

Naomi smiled at him and picked up a brunette wig behind her, starting to comb it out. In spite of her attempt at humor, frown lines decorated her forehead.

Kiko asked, “Could you see Gigi’s face? Tigerman said she appears with her hair half-hiding her features. Her dress and gloves cover the rest of her.”

Roberto had that dreamy fan expression — he was in Gigi-land, and Dawn wondered if his love for the star had been strong enough to conjure up a ghost.

“I’ve been a fan since I was old enough to watch old movies on TV,” he said. “I know my Gigi.”

Dawn asked, “How long did she stay?”

“Not long. She walked to the top of the stairs, then turned right once she got to the stage. It was during a show, and I was—”

The magician broke in “—flirting with the showgirls while you waited for your next cue?”

Everyone else but Naomi laughed, and Trevor slid her a grin, as if he liked teasing her about Roberto having a wandering eye. She didn’t seem as amused, and Dawn guessed that there was probably something hearts-and-flowery between the numero uno fans.

“As I was saying,” Roberto said, “I was able to run up those stairs pretty fast, but Gigi was gone.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“I saw her in the back of the showroom about a month ago,” Naomi said, “while Travis and I were rehearsing a new trick on stage. When I said something, Travis thought he saw her, too.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.” The magician settled back in his chair, all fading boyish good looks. “The lights were in my eyes. You should ask Victor about it, though.” He nodded to the usher. “He’s seen Gigi more than anyone.”

In response, Victor just shrugged. Dawn narrowed her eyes at him.

“How many times?” she asked.

“Three.” He had a voice as dry as a half-drunk martini. “She comes and goes.”

So nonchalant. “You see a lot of ghosts?”

Victor’s attention seemed focused on the pseudo-tattoos that Dawn’s makeup barely covered. She didn’t flinch. Let him stare.

“If Gigi has decided to hang out with us,” the usher said, “I say let her be.”

“I agree,” Trevor the magician said. “I was even hoping to put her in my act.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Classy.”

Travis grinned at the rest of them. “Gigi was never shy about publicity, from what I hear. She’d be a boost for all of us. A draw. God knows we need the PR.”

Ah, the sweet stench of show biz, Dawn thought. She’d grown up in Hollywood, so she knew it well. It smelled just like piles of bloodstained money.

As Kiko went on to question them about details — how solid did Gigi’s form seem? What were the exact times and dates? —Dawn realized that there wasn’t much of a pattern to her appearances.

When showgirls and other staff began to arrive, Dawn and Kiko’s time was up. Tigerman had invited them to watch the rehearsal — a few tweaks to a rain forest number featuring the statuesque young ladies in towering diamond-shower headdresses, and not much else. Dawn and Kiko had asked to watch from backstage, since Gigi had been seen here the most.

They stood out of the way while the topless showgirls quickly moved past them on their way to the stage. Since Dawn wasn’t much for boobs, she lost interest early, wandering down to the common dressing room and finding a quiet corner in front of a darkened dressing station. She should call Costin and update him, but she was dreading it. He’d hoped to live the rest of his life with her in peace, not picking up the pieces from former Undergrounds.

She looked up, into the mirror. Her eyes, which had gained clarity during this past year of rehab, were shaded again. It was almost like she could see straight to her dormant soul stain.

Just as she was about to look away, she caught a flutter of movement in back of her—

Red.

A dress?

She whipped around, her pulse pounding and, at first, her mind refused to believe what it was registering.

A person … a … thing. One eye barely visible under a curtain of red hair. Shoulders hunched, gloved arms curved by its sides.

All of Dawn’s hunting instincts came screaming back, and she flipped open her jacket, going for the silver-bullet loaded revolver she’d strapped on, just for this case.

No time to get Kiko, so she grabbed a tube of lipstick from a nearby table and scribbled on the mirror: Gigi!

Then she drew an arrow toward the spot where she’d seen the vision. On her way, she caught the eye of Roberto, who was laughing with a showgirl.

Dawn yelled over the music. “Tell my friend where I am!”

She saw him spy the note about Gigi on the mirror. Then she thought she saw … anger?

She didn’t have time to think about his expression as she darted toward the dark nook where she’d last seen the vision — the superstar who’d already disappeared into the dimness.

Her revolver drawn — dammit, would bullets do anything to ghosts? —Dawn entered what seemed to be a maze of wooden pillars, but they faded as it got darker … and darker.

Please be a ghost…

Still, even if that’s what Gigi was, Dawn knew this wouldn’t be the end of it. They’d have to see if they needed to help put Gigi at peace.

To put all of them at peace…

A sound in front of her … a door opening, the hinges yelping … weak lighting…

Dawn sucked in a breath because, right there, solid as could be in the soft illumination, was a woman, half her face revealed under all that falling hair. But this close up, there were wrinkles on her skin. And her expression…

Twisted. Her mouth, pulled down, like gravity had tugged on it and wouldn’t let go. She seemed to be forming a word.

Or maybe she was just smiling—

Something crashed into Dawn and, as she hit the floor, her forehead banged against wood, leaving her gasping under the weight of a body, her world going black over the hazy image of a nightmare in red.

As Dawn came to, she barely heard the voice through the fog in her mind.

“Are you here to kill me?”

Husky. But the tone seemed whittled down from its former glory: thinner, an imitation of seduction. The words were slurred, too, like they were coming at Dawn through a filter.

Fighting the needled pain in her temples, Dawn forced her eyes open. It took an instant for the room to come together, so the smell got to her before anything visual did.

Blood: coppery, strong.

She jerked, and that’s when she realized that she was sitting slumped, her back to a wall. As her vision slowly cleared, her stomach roiled.

There were three of them confronting her — people wearing surgical masks, just like cops at a crime scene would, the material coated by Vapo-Rub or something to block the smell. They hovered, stared. Dawn already knew who two of them were because she and Kiko had interviewed them.

Roberto, with his slicked emcee hair and butterfly-collar shirt. Naomi and her Bambi eyes. Also, a dark-eyed man Dawn had never seen before.

Her pulse was racing, but she told herself to calm down because she could already feel the dragon’s blood marks on her right side shifting, like they were connected to her shuddery wariness.

Breathe, she thought, going to that place she’d found in rehab. Right away a sense of control eased through her. It smoothed out her heartbeat first, then everything else.

She’d be fine. Kiko would be down here soon.

But then she remembered she’d hadn’t told anyone but Roberto where she’d been going.

The female voice came again from behind the wall of humans.

“Are you here to kill me?”

Still dizzy — there was a pounding bump on her head from her fall — Dawn tried to answer, but the stench in the room made her gag instead.

Naomi’s voice was muffled behind her mask. “We know who you are now. She just told us.”

She. Gigi.

Roberto added, “You’re one of the hunters who took it all away from her.”

He backed away from Dawn, revealing the movie star right behind him: the vision in the red dress, red gloves, red hair. She was dressed like a younger version of herself, but Dawn could see how her skin was withered, her one visible eye droopy. An appalling mockery of the young movie star.

But she looked human enough…

Lipstick blurred Gigi’s mouth, one side of it limp, like she’d suffered a stroke.

“I saw you Underground,” she slurred. “Eva’s daughter. You killed my master.”

No sense in denying that. “Me and my friend are here to help, Gigi. That’s all.” Dawn’s words … they were just as slurred as the star’s. “All the rest of the vampire Elites in the Underground … we weren’t sure what happened to some of you after you turned human and ran away.”

“The others killed themselves, right in front of me.” Gigi’s voice was ragged. “They couldn’t live after you made us ugly. Mortal.”

The soul stain — it’d made the Elites’ loss of youth worse, hadn’t it?

“You’re the only one left?” Dawn asked.

Gigi’s sideways mouth dipped as she whispered, “I think so.”

Collateral damage, Dawn thought, as there was with all wars.

Bile inched up her throat. All of them were just the smoking aftermath of a war.

“The weight,” Dawn finally said. It was hard to talk because of the smell. “How did you survive the weight in your soul when others didn’t?”

Gigi started, then rested her gloved hand over her chest. It only confirmed to Dawn that the soul stain really was there.

“It stays with an ex-vamp,” Dawn added, “as if you never deserved to be human again anyway. It destroys.”

Her voice choked off, and it wasn’t just because of the charnel house odor.

Roberto adjusted his slipping mask as he walked closer to Gigi. “You can tell her, darling. Tell her what kept you going after you turned human again.”

Dawn had already assumed that the masked people around her were servants. The star was still the queen who held court, just like in the Underground. But with the way the old, grotesque woman glanced at Roberto, Dawn could see that there was an imbalance of power here.

Things weren’t the same as they’d been in Hollywood…

At Gigi’s hesitation, Roberto sighed, as if resigning himself to speak for her. “Naomi and I were so happy to get jobs at the Bahia, because Gigi used to work here. We collected old dresses of hers, even put up a web site…”

The numero uno fans exchanged fond glances.

“And, what do you know,” Roberto went on. “While Gigi was Underground, waiting until she could resurface, she’d kept tabs on all her press — which she still got, even if she’d been dead for a few decades. Servants would print out reports for her and bring them below ground, where she’d read about the continuing devotion of her fans. She was so close to her release date. Did you know that? She’d waited such a long time…” He swallowed. “It’s only natural, when she turned back human, that she tracked us down, using our site information. She knew we would still love her, no matter what misfortunes she’d endured.”

So the undying devotion of fans had kept Gigi alive this long. Maybe the other stars hadn’t connected to that — remembered that in their urgent anguish — as this star had.

Dawn focused on the third man, still silent under his mask. Still wary, as if he expected her to attack him. She didn’t feel her revolver on her, and she was sure they’d taken the other weapons she’d strapped on, too. The knife. The throwing blades she hadn’t used in such a long time.

Roberto turned toward Gigi, who’d lowered her head, as if in shame.

“When she came to us,” he said, “she was a gray, shriveled thing, wearing a ripped evening gown. I found her backstage one day, watching us. At first, we thought she was a street person who’d wandered in, but…”

“But,” Naomi finally said, “Roberto recognized her. And after she told us what she’d been through, it just broke our hearts. She never said it outright, but we knew she’d want us to look at her as if she was just as beautiful as she’d always been. So we took care of her, dressed her in her favorite outfits, fed her, adored her.”

Like their own Gigi doll, Dawn thought. A fan collectible.

“She never wanted to come home with us, though,” Naomi continued. “She likes it at the Bahia, so we made a home in this old storage room. Steve—” she nodded at the third man— “ is another fan who helped with the web site. He’s her guardian now. I’m afraid he overreacted when he found you chasing Gigi.”

Steve didn’t give any sign that he’d heard or was even a part of the conversation. He just kept staring with those dark eyes at Dawn.

“We didn’t intend to make her a legend again,” Roberto said. “Not this way — with her as a ‘ghost.’ But then we realized that this is what Gigi needs — a legend that keeps growing. So we make up stories about seeing her. But sometimes…”

“Sometimes,” Naomi added, “Gigi gets out on her own.”

The old woman kept peering at the ground.

“Just like another Underground,” Dawn said, her voice a rattle. They were keeping Gigi alive because that’s what fans needed. Fans who could never let go.

Across the room, Gigi finally raised her face, meeting Dawn’s gaze. Darkness filled her eyes, and Dawn saw the mortification of a captive.

Are you here to kill me?

The woman’s question took on a whole new meaning, and deep within Dawn, she felt the burden — the sorrow and confusion after everything Gigi loved had been taken away and gnarled into an existence she’d never expected.

Her admirers loved her, and it had kept her going, all right. But these fans loved her too much.

Naomi abandoned the circle to stand next to Gigi, leaving a bigger hole that revealed the source of the room’s stench.

A half-gnawed corpse hanging from a series of pegs driven into the wall, its face chewed, its stringy hair matted with gore, its entrails squiggling out of its bared stomach.

Dawn gagged again. Then the dragon’s blood jerked on her skin, under it, as if it was yelling that she didn’t need anyone to rescue her from this. She didn’t need anything but what she had inside of herself — the power and anger she’d quieted within herself in an effort to keep the blood away from her soul stain. She couldn’t allow the dragon to join with the darkness to resurrect itself within her.

She sucked in breaths, thought of ocean waves. Thought of Costin, who’d always kept her in control.

Breathing.

Breathing.

“One thing we know for sure,” Naomi said, “is that Gigi’s going to stay happy. And we’ll do anything — anything — to make sure she’s always that way.”

The gutted body next to Naomi told Dawn the rest. Gigi, the ex-vampire, still liked her blood, and Dawn might just be her next meal if the fans could find a way to cover up their own hunting. And her fans would always indulge her, just as long as she kept touching them with her stardust.

While Naomi kept petting Gigi, the star watched Dawn, as if she was pleading with her.

Then Gigi spoke. “The only time I’m not watched is when I can escape to the theater, but they always catch me…”

“Gigi,” Roberto said soothingly, “we’re just keeping you safe.”

Dawn kept sucking in the diseased air, not only to calm herself, but because she’d heard the agony in Gigi’s tone. Felt the despair, just like it was her own.

As it scraped through her, from her awakened dragon-blood skin down to her soul, something consumed the room like a flash and bang of lightning, obliterating Dawn’s vision.

Then it all went into fast-forward.

Nothing but a field of white from the flash bomb — footsteps … running …

It was Kiko — shoving a gun into her hands while Dawn heard Naomi, Roberto, Steve, and Gigi calling out to each other in their own temporary blindness. She could hear him cocking a pistol while Dawn’s vision gradually turned to color, then solid images, again.

The first thing her gaze latched onto was her partner. “Don’t move,” Kiko said, aiming at the fan club, cool and collected. They’d dealt with a hell of a lot worse on hunts.

The devotees had their hands up, but Gigi…

Gigi was turning around, toward a table where Dawn’s confiscated weapons lay.

“Stop moving!” he yelled. Then to Dawn, “Are you okay? A showgirl saw you and I—”

“Gigi’s not a ghost,” Dawn said. “She’s human.”

Kiko looked sick about that. But Gigi had heard Dawn, too, and her gaze drifted to the corpse on the wall, then back to Dawn and Kiko.

Human? she seemed to ask.

Gigi was already reaching across the table for Dawn’s revolver. Dawn felt like her own soul was lead, an echo of what was in Gigi, and she couldn’t call out for the star to stop because she knew what would make the ex-Elite truly happy now.

Knew all too well.

Before anyone but Dawn understood what was happening, let alone why, Gigi shoved the barrel into her mouth.

Later, Dawn could have sworn that a smile appeared on Gigi’s ravaged face in the half-second before she pulled the trigger.