- Beth investigates the death of model from a mysterious overdose. Mick tracks down a friend for Joseph. What he finds is a vampire who creates a drug from Vampire blood.
- Beth isn't happy about her current assignment covering a fashion designer's "exciting new collection," but her ennui changes when model Renee Beresford suddenly drops dead. Even more interesting is when Josh shows up with LAPD Lt Carl David in tow to investigate the crime scene, a crime because Renee's death is the third O.D. this week from a drug they've not been able to identify. From one of Renee's model friends, Beth learns that Renee was frequenting Club Valis, so Beth gets dolled up and pays the club a visit. She learns that the club has an upstairs VIP room, but the gatekeeper won't admit her because she isn't pre-approved. Beth's contact at the morgue reveals that Renee's blood had a lot of silver in it and that they removed a microchip from her hand. Sure that the microchip was Renee's "pre-approval card", Beth pockets it when the diener isn't looking.
Mick has an investigation of his own going on. Josef has asked him to find Delores Maxford Whitaker, "Lola" to her friends. A centuries-old vampire, Lola recently showed up, took $1 million from Josef, and then disappeared again. Josef wants his money and his reputation back. After doing a little sleuthing on the internet, Mick learns that Lola recently purchased a ton of silver from Allied Metals, not an unusual purchase in itself but suspicious because silver is deadly to vampires. The silver was shipped to a storage facility in downtown L.A. When Mick goes snooping around the facility, he comes upon a vampire's burned and silver-ridden body stuffed into a storage drum. He takes the body to his friend at the morgue. An autopsy reveals that the vampire was soaked in silver, his blood drained, and then his body burned.
As Mick and Beth are leaving the morgue, they run into each other. They exchange information about the cases they are working on. and, when Beth tells Mick about Club Valis and the silver found in Renee's body, Mick thinks that the two cases might be intertwined and that Lola may be involved. After helping Beth to implant the microchip in her hand, they agree to meet at Club Valis. Mick is first to arrive, so he hangs around the public dance floor. When Beth arrives, she heads for the VIP room. This time, the scanner picks up her microchip and allows her to go in. Unfortunately, the scanner also calls up Renee's picture, so the gatekeeper alerts the owner, who just happens to be Lola.
Once inside the VIP room, Beth is handed a small vial with some sort of black, crystalline substance in it. She pockets the vial, but Lola confronts her and says that the Black Crystal should be consumed there. Beth stalls by saying that she's waiting for someone. Just when it looks like Lola isn't going to take that for an answer, Mick shows up. Suddenly, the club is raided by the cops, and Josh sees Beth with Mick. Angry and more than a little jealous, Josh chastizes Beth, asking her how this looks. "Like I'm a good reporter who got to a drug source before the D.A.'s office," is Beth's reply. When Mick takes a vial of Black Crystal back to Josef and explains that it is vampire blood and that humans are getting high on it ("Apparently the high is us!"), Josef asks Mick to crack this case lest the cops do it and expose the vampire scene.
Meanwhile, Beth has taken some of the Black Crystal as "research for my story." In her high state, she walks to Mick's apartment and tries to seduce him, but Mick resists, taking Beth into a cold shower instead. When she finally comes down off the high, she goes to Josh's office to apologize. While there, she learns that drug toxicology has been unable to identify anything illegal in Black Crystal, so they have made a deal with the gatekeeper. They have him wired and ready to raid the warehouse. Beth calls Mick to tell him about the raid. "If there's anything there you don't want to find, you should get there first," she tells him. Mick raids the warehouse himself, finding dozens of vampires immobilized in silverbaths. Lola rushes him, and in the tussle that follows, Mick knocks Lola into one of the silverbaths. Just as the cops arrive, Mick blows up the factory. [Full synopsis by BJ Kuehl]
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