I cannot tell you how long I remained a captive. Days, I suspect. My draperies were made of dark velvet, designed to keep out the light of day, and I was so bewildered by all Perfidia had revealed, I paid little attention to the passing of time, anyway.
Was that vampire really my mother? Why had she taunted me by attacking Billy, and then persuading him to escape, while I could only watch helplessly? What had I ever done to her to provoke such cruelty?
And-just slightly less distasteful-could Judge Legg really be my father? At least, as lawyer Alex Moore, I had won more of my cases than he had. But I'd never respected him, as a magistrate or as a man who'd always been full of himself. Had the Sisters encouraged my legal career-my male persona-as payback for the way he'd treated Perfidia? The Three P's must've been chuckling for years, knowing the magistrate was being held accountable in the courtroom, by a daughter he didn't know he had.
But the joke was on me. My professional guise was the very trick that damn vampire had turned against me, to convince Tripplehorn I was the wrong woman for him. And where was Billy now? I really couldn't blame him for leaving me. But I worried that Perfidia had left him so weak he was defenseless against disease. For all I knew he was already dead…
"I'm yours, Andrea. Take every fucking inch of me, and don't you dare expect me to stop!"
His voice filled the room as it had that first time we made love, not so very long ago, when I became Billy Tripplehorn's in every way that counted. I suddenly longed for him so strongly, for the feel of his body dominating mine, that my clit twitched and tremors went through my core. As though guided by some invisible, insatiable demon, my hand slithered down my bare belly to squeeze my mound. I told myself I was only lonely, taking the edge off my fears while I waited for someone to find me. But when my fingers slipped inside my slit, I convulsed immediately.
Heedless of the way my prison was shrinking, I rocked backward to prop my toes against the top corner bars. My moans echoed as my backside thumped against the floor. One hand wasn't enough: I held myself open with both thumbs while an eight-fingered strumming had me straining upward…clenching my eyes shut against a shattering orgasm.
"Billy! Oh Jesus, Billy, fuck me!" I cried. I knew damn well at least one set of undead ears was listening, but I was shamelessly-helplessly-driven by that primal power, until I lay limp and wet on the floor.
As I caught my breath, I shook with disgust-and then dismay. Perfidia's prison was now clinging so close it could've been a corset: it shifted every time I did, and bit into my bare skin like whalebone stays. There I lay on the floor, my knees bent back over my chest with my arms caught between them, and my fingers still splayed over my wide-open, very wet sex.
"Cerise!" I hollered, hoarse from my passionate outcries. "Cerise, are you there?!"
I held my breath to listen for the footfalls of the French maid, but heard only my own pulse.
"Justin? Jeremy?" I called. "PLEASE help me!"
The house was silent as a tomb. Indeed, I felt like I'd been locked into one, for now I didn't even sense the presence of the undead. It was as though the mansion itself had died when Billy left: everyone had wanted him, and now they'd either left to follow him…or bury him. Perfidia had left me in this position to get her last humiliating licks in while she and her decadent, spellbound staff claimed what had been rightfully mine.
I tossed restlessly on the floor-for how long? When I awoke, I glanced toward that tarot spread still floating a few inches from the wall, trying to puzzle out its meaning. But then, what did ANYTHING mean now? What did it matter which of those cardboard queens represented Pandora or Pink or even Lucy Legg? The final outcome, where the cloaked figure on the Five of Cups card mourned a great loss while the man in the Ten of Swords picture bled to death, had spelled out my fate to perfection.
I drifted back into fitful dreams…in my mind, I was reliving that confrontation with Perfidia, replaying her pointed, wicked words…reseeing the fangs that sank into Billy's neck. Without conscience or soul or remorse, she was. Hungry for power, living out her envious greed at my expense.
Was I an heir to such qualities? More to the point…was I part vampire? If Miss Pink had converted Perfidia at the time of my conception, nursing her with blood to sustain us both, did this mean I, too, was cursed? As the hours passed, this thought plagued me the most, until I was wallowing in my own damnation-and in the waste I could no longer hold, as well.
A pinpoint of light appeared, in the shadows that clung like bats just beneath the ceiling. I was probably hallucinating-the next step toward insanity. And yet, as I squinted at that shimmer of brightness, it felt familiar to me. The house was so quiet my ears were ringing. The glimmer materialized into Pandora, resplendent in a gown of black satin that whispered with each step she took. Her midnight hair flowed over her bare shoulders as she smiled down at me.
I couldn't speak. I merely watched her, fearing another of Perfidia's evil tricks.
"That's ridiculous, Andrea. You know who I am. Now get up and tend to yourself, dear."
Oh, how I wanted to believe that melodious voice-wanted to believe I could obey! I despised being caught in this cage of humiliation, naked, with my legs splayed and my hands in an incriminating place! But my leaden muscles ached with the effort of just focusing on her.
"All right then, lie there in your own filth," Pandora said, obviously disappointed. "But tell me what Perfidia did. What she said. I can't undo her mischief if you don't help me, Andrea."
I blinked. If this truly was Pandora, the most ancient and powerful vampire at the orphanage, why did she need me to fill her in?
I choked on the dryness in my throat. My tongue tasted like I'd licked the floor. "She put me in this damn cage," I rasped, "and then she sucked Billy's blood."
Pandora's eyes didn't widen in sympathy, the way I expected them to. But then, maybe I was only hallucinating. Maybe she wasn't really there.
"And?"
"And she told me she was…my mother. And that Judge Legg fathered me," I went on with a hitch in my voice. "And she showed Billy the Alex Moore clothes in my armoire, to disgust him into leaving."
Pandora crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts. "Only away a day," she sighed, "and it's all gone to hell in a hand basket. Perfidia loves her parlor tricks. And she never fails to live up to her name, does she?"
I blinked again, forcing reason to return. If the root word "perfidy" referred to a lack of loyalty…
"Her magic is black-powerful-partly because you believe it is, Andrea," this more compassionate vampire continued. "While I'm sure you think yourself imprisoned by those bars, you must realize that if they move when you do, they aren't attached to the floor. So neither are you."
Talk about a thunderbolt. I struggled to stand, but got no farther than sitting up. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I-I don't understand-"
"You've been staring at that tarot spread, trying to puzzle out who did what, and to whom," she continued, gliding toward the cards. "But you know what, Andrea? These are made of paper. The only power they possess is the belief we invest in them. If you don't BELIEVE, their message is meaningless."
My jaw dropped. "But you constantly consult the cards! You taught me how to-"
"The tarot is only a tool, dear. Each card tells of a lesson, or situations that occur in every life. The cards have no magic-"
"Then how did Perfidia make them stay in that formation? An inch from the wall?" I blurted. My mind ached as badly as my body, for Pandora was teaching this lesson at my expense. Refuting beliefs I'd held almost as sacred as the myths I'd invented about the parents I'd never met.
"While it's true we vampires possess powers, there's a limit to what we can accomplish. Much depends upon how…suggestible our mark is." She smiled sadly, understanding my befuddlement. "You're an attorney, Andrea. Trained to reason your way out of difficult situations. Do you really believe cards can hang in the air this way?"
"Well, no! At least not until Perfidia-"
"Then tell the cards-out loud-that they are only paper. Tell them Perfidia no longer has any power over them. Or you."
I swallowed hard. Was Pandora asking me to traffic in the same satanic magic her partner had invoked? These damned iron bars…they HAD shifted with me, come to think of it.
I didn't know what to believe. If Pandora was telling me to divest those tarot cards of their power, was she hinting that Perfidia's other tricks were invalid, too?
"You! You're only paper! Only pretty, printed cards!" I stated as boldly as I dared. For all I knew, Perfidia was lurking invisibly, just waiting for such a challenge to drive a dangerous wedge between Pandora and herself. "Stop hanging there!"
I felt a mental push…probably assistance from Pandora. The cards shimmied, but they remained afloat.
Had I lived in the dark-in so many ways, out here beyond Redemption-that the light of hope couldn't redeem me? I breathed deeply, to fill the little room with my frustration. "Stop it right now! Perfidia put you there, but I don't believe in her power anymore!"
Slowly, the cards dropped out of formation to hit the floor. The last three hovering were the Queen of Wands-supposedly me-and the Queen of Cups, which represented Pandora, while that Knight of Wands looked over at us.
"Get lost!" I cried. "You have no power over me!"
The cards dropped, separated from the rest of the scattered spread. The dreamy-eyed Queen of Cups landed slightly above Billy and me, as though to gently counsel us-but another mental nudge made me set aside my imaginings.
"Stand up, Andrea."
I grunted with the effort, but still those iron bars held me.
Pandora scowled down at me. "We've agreed your cage isn't attached to the floor. And do you really think those bars entered this room dancing to their own music?"
"Seeing is believing!" I blurted. I tried straightening my legs, but the bars didn't budge.
"Maybe believing is seeing. Never forget who got you into this predicament, my dear."
Believing is seeing? A point to ponder-but I had no patience for philosophical thoughts right now. Yes, Perfidia was the source of this trickery! She had made me believe- Ah, there was the rub: I'd allowed her wicked ways to overpower rational thought, because she'd driven Billy Tripplehorn away. When I declared to those iron bars that they were unable to hold me now-looking to Pandora for encouragement-the cage fell away. The bars slinked back to the nether regions of the house, like dogs with tails tucked between their legs.
I stood, grimacing at my stiff muscles and the smell of my filth. "I feel so stupid."
"Most people live in chains of their own making," Pandora replied quietly. "And now that I've banished Perfidia, I hope you'll never forget you hold all the keys you'll ever need, inside you, Andrea."
Was that virago who called herself my mother really done taunting me? I didn't dare ask. Pandora's expression suggested she'd made some irrevocable decisions about Perfidia, and perhaps about Miss Pink. As she gazed around my room, I sensed the beginning of an end.
"Is Perfidia really my mother?"
"Do you believe she is?"
I pushed no further. Pandora wasn't in the mood for straight answers.
"So…you've found another place?" I ventured. "Like you suggested before?"
"It's time." Sadness lined her lovely face before she put on a resolute expression again. "After all the years you've had to keep our secrets, you deserve your own life, dear. I'll make it as though the orphanage never existed-erase it from the face of the earth as well as from everyone's memory-and by then I'll be on my way. I deserve a fresh start, too."
Unspeakable longing welled up inside me and I rushed to hug Pandora, but she rose from the floor, beyond my reach. She hovered as an image without substance, her pale loveliness haunting me. An angel in black satin.
"But-but I'm worried that if I'm half vampire-"
"Have you ever heard of a HALF vampire, Andrea?" she chided in a voice that faded along with her image. "You'll have to do better than that, now that I'm not around. Let the dead bury the dead. Don't waste any time going…"
She disappeared with the end of her sentence.
I yanked back the draperies, hoping to catch a last glance at the woman I'd loved most in this world, but it was dawn. The light looked as weak as I felt, now that I'd awakened from the ongoing nightmare of my former life. Those tarot cards on the floor appeared pale and faded-as did my entire room, on this dreary winter morning.
But I was finally free! This I believed! I shivered, for the house had gone cold without Cerise to keep the fires going. Thoughts of a warm, leisurely bath downstairs had me wrapping my dressing gown around myself as I thumped barefoot down the stairs. Surely I could stoke the furnace to heat that water- Get out! NOW!
I held my breath to listen, but heard only dead silence. If Pandora was gone, and she'd sent Perfidia away, who had spoken?
Out of habit, I called to Cerise and her blonde cohorts, but now the silence was underscored by a dull rumbling in the bowels of the house. Tremors ran up my legs and terror sent me vaulting up two steps at a time to my room. The walls and floors were quaking now-I heard china crashing from the kitchen cabinets and pictures being dashed to the floor. Snatching an armful of clothing from my armoire, I hurried downstairs again. When the front door flew open, I raced outside into the cold.
What I saw in the next few minutes astounded me. The mansion-a fixture on these hills since anyone in Redemption could remember-shuddered with a death rattle and fell into itself, followed by the orphanage behind it. Chunks of the walls disintegrated into dust before my eyes, and this grit sank through the surface of the earth. Within moments, the Sisters of Samaria Orphanage had not only disappeared without a trace, it was as Pandora had predicted: not a hint remained that this residence had ever existed.
I bit my lip, but it was too damn cold to stand there crying while the north wind whipped at my robe. As I stepped into my trousers, I wondered what Pandora had intended, dissembling her home so quickly-unless she was outwitting Perfidia and Pink. The evergreens whispered in the cold breeze, but offered no solace for losing the only home I'd known, along with all who'd ever lived there.
I could assume Cerise and the twins had followed Perfidia, at her bidding. I could hope the children had passed on into some painless oblivion where they'd never be plagued by questions-or unexpectedly ugly answers!-about their parents and what they were to make of their unloved lives. At least this way, they never became the lifeblood that literally kept the Sisters of Samaria going.
But here I stood on this windy hillside, with only the clothes on my back. The only man I'd ever wanted was gone. So were the three sultry vampires who'd raised me to be his woman, and had instructed Billy on becoming the perfect lover. For the first time in my life I was utterly alone. Except for a vague notion to quiz Judge Legg about his life with Perfidia, I had no idea what to do with myself now.
A whinny and approaching hoofbeats drew me out of my dumbfounded state.
"Dory!" I cried, rushing over to the dappled horse. "You poor thing-so frightened, and-"
She was haltered. I saw no wagon where the stable had once been, but I was damn glad Pandora had spared me this gentle animal. It was a hint, no doubt. A prompt from the vampire who was far, far away by now, that I was to get on with my life by riding away from this vanished estate. I swung onto Dory's back and we took off down that cold, winding road once more.
It was still dark enough that I could avoid contact with anyone by approaching my office from the alley. But Redemption was sleeping in: no lights in the jailhouse, no candles in the colored windows of St. Mary's, no glow in the magistrate's back bedroom. Even Etta's Pie Shoppe was dark-at an hour when the chubby proprietress would ordinarily be baking her pastries for the day. Virgil Furmeister would be waddling over for his morning coffee any moment now, only to discover there wasn't any.
That was his problem, however-and I didn't want to become a part of it. Ducking into my office, I locked the doors and kept the shades drawn. By candlelight I chose more coordinated clothing and applied the theatrical makeup that transformed me into the attorney everyone expected to see here. It seemed like weeks since I'd carried out any real business as Alex Moore. Seemed like half a lifetime ago that Lucy Legg had died and her daddy the magistrate considered me an accessory to Billy's crime.
It was time to confront the judge. If Billy was smart-if he was alive-he'd left Redemption. I had to set the record straight and clear his name, if only for the satisfaction of proving Harold Legg a fraud, to his face. After the unsettling events I'd witnessed these past few hours, I needed the closure of completing something legal, something logical and tangible, before I could decide where life should take me next.
Intuition nudged me to open my top drawer, and I found it-that murder confession Tripplehorn had supposedly written, which I'd filched from Furmeister's desk the day those "Gypsies" visited. In my years practicing law, I'd argued so many cases…kept so many records-there! I plucked a summation from my files, written by the illustrious magistrate.
Even a blind man could see the angular handwriting was an exact match. Had I thought of this simple ploy before, I could've saved us all a lot of grief…maybe by now Billy and I would be planning our future together. Maybe he wouldn't have overstayed his welcome, or learned the ominous secrets of those Sisters of Samaria…not to mention the one about Alex being Andrea.
But gone is gone. No sense sighing away my day in a haze of hindsight.
I spent the next several hours in the comfortable familiarity of my office, amid my books and files. As I decided how best to approach Judge Legg about the touchy subject of his wife, Perfidia-and did he even know he had a daughter by her?-I occasionally peered between my curtains to observe the other people I'd known all my life.
Nothing appeared different. No one exclaimed over the empty space where the mansion once sat; no one slipped a donation for the Sisters under my door, to remain the anonymous parent of a misbegotten child. The smoke from my chimney alerted people to my presence, but no one seemed to care.
Had Alex Moore been erased from their memories when the orphanage disappeared? Would the magistrate recall who I was? Pandora should've given me more details before she left! But she probably knew I could only handle a few adjustments at a time, now that I'd witnessed the magnitude of her vampire magic.
Just after dusk I stepped out for a breath of air. The wind had died down, and Redemption had settled into its evening routine with the closing of its shops. Since I couldn't go home to eat, and no restaurants served an evening meal, I considered my options as I walked along. I could invite myself to dinner with friends, but I wasn't ready to explain my situation. And what if they didn't remember me?
As I came to Redemption Cemetery, something drew me toward the mortuary- some morbid sense that answers awaited me there. Lord, how I hoped I wouldn't find Billy laid out on that table, pale and lifeless…with puncture marks like Lucy Legg's!
The memory of Miranda Dammet's embalmed body, naked except for those galoshes, should've steered me clear of the undertaker's lair. The wind whipped my overcoat-another sign I shouldn't rush in where the quick and the dead parted ways. Yet the glimmer of light in the cellar window drew me like that proverbial moth.
I licked my lips nervously. I told myself I could ask Nat Dammet if he'd seen or heard anything unusual of late-just making polite conversation- One peek, and I forgot about conversation. What I saw in the mortician's work room was anything but polite.
Muted notes from a Victrola reached my ears, to accompany some very strange dancing. I could've gone the rest of my life without seeing the sheriff's hairy, buck-naked bulk-but to watch Virgil Furmeister swaying in the arms of the equally bare magistrate nearly turned my stomach.
Yet there they were, fuzzy bellies rubbing, fleshy thighs brushing on the downbeat of each measure as they waltzed around the mortician's work table. Dammet sat on the dais with that abomination who was once his mother, his fingers drumming against her buckles. He, too, was nude-quite a nice specimen, compared to the other two-and he was fondling that blunt nub his mama's knife had left him. When his glance went between their legs mine followed, but I looked quickly away. Those old goats sported ramrod peckers! I sensed they'd soon be at each other-and that this wasn't their first time.
Then a flicker of pink caught my eye, and I bit back a laugh. There in the dimness, where Dammet prepared the dead, a very lively vampire appeared-but only in her spirit guise. She straddled the sheriff's head, lifting her little-girl dress of pink gingham to tease Judge Legg with a look at her pussy. When she slid lower, Harry moved in to kiss her slit-and instead planted a hot one on Virgil's lips. Virgil, who appeared as entranced as the magistrate, kissed back-probably thinking he, too, was sampling the girlish vampire's assets.
Miss Pink switched quickly from one male face to the other, so fast they couldn't follow her. Her lips formed alluring words, while her lithe body undulated with the music. These men were marionettes on Pink's strings, because both old fools believed whatever she'd told them. They deserved to be dancing with each other on this cold winter night while the undertaker looked on.
I slipped through the door and closed it quietly behind me. Dammit, I had matters to discuss with the judge! And maybe I could plead my case more easily because I'd caught him in this compromising position. He and Furmeister were still kissing, but Nat Dammet spared me a glance.
"Well, well, Counselor-what brings you out on such a frigid night?" His gaze went up and down my overcoat. "I've often admired your taste in clothes and wondered if the man beneath them would have the same…taste. So to speak."
"You'll never know," came my tight reply. "Rumor has it you do unthinkable things to people who…get laid on your table, and I didn't come here to find out."
Dammet's hand stilled on his impish dick. "That, Mr. Moore, is slander. I'll see you in court if you think-"
"I think it's a pretty fair call," I asserted, my voice rising to catch the attention of the others. "I have it from a reliable source that you were screwing Lucy Legg while you prepared her body for the funeral. This same person said Lucy's neck had been broken-"
The magistrate's head swiveled away from Pink's pert little breasts.
"-and saw two very suspicious puncture wounds, perhaps made by a vampire."
Everyone froze. The candlelit sanctum got deadly quiet. Miss Pink's eyes flashed her anger-and I had to admit my enthusiasm had run amok. But then she relaxed; saw the potential for having more fun at everyone else's expense. For who would find her guilty of being a vampire and live to tell about it?
She separated the two old buzzards by climbing into the judge's arms as though it were her favorite cradle. Then she winked at me. "Proceed, Andrea," she mouthed. Gleefully anticipating how this scene would play out, Miss Pink released us all from our suspended animation.
"That does it, Moore. You're stark raving mad if you believe in vampires," Judge Legg blurted. "My dear Lucy was brutally murdered by Billy Tripplehorn, whom you then whisked out of town. That's aiding and abetting, Mr. Moore! Makes your client appear more guilty, and implicates you, as well. I'm taking you off this case!"
"Fine-because you can't try Billy for murder! Here's the proof that you falsified his confession!" I replied, pulling the two papers from my pocket. "Miss Lucy tried to trap Tripplehorn into marrying her, because she was carrying YOUR baby and saw no other way out! And when Billy escaped with me, you didn't want your dirty little secret revealed. So you wrung her neck!"
The magistrate's face went crimson, like he might keel over, while Virgil and Nat got wide-eyed and quiet. So Pink whipped things up a notch.
"I think we need a reenactment!" she crowed, materializing into a solid, sprightly little girl who jumped down from the judge's arms. "Let's pretend this table is the church-and Virgil, you can play Billy. Nat, you stay put. You and your mama can tell us if this whole nasty affair really happened."
The mortician looked peeved about being a mere witness, but when the vampire lifted her pink gingham skirts, pulled down her matching panties, and wagged her ass at the deputy, Nat Dammet's gaze became as steady as his mama's. Harold Legg stood apart, as though caught in Pink's web: I suspected all of them had been in her sway since before I'd arrived, for they now seemed oblivious to my presence…willing to perform at the wiggle of her finger.
"The way I heard it, Lucy lured Billy Tripplehorn into taking her from behind-in the alley between the church and the courthouse!" the vampire began in her little-girl voice. "And he got so excited, there in front of God and everybody, that his big ole dick lifted her off the ground! Show us how it happened, Virgil. You saw it, same as I did!"
The deputy's enthusiasm made up for his lack of acting ability: like a ram in rut he plowed into Miss Pink. While I knew the wily vampire was floating of her own accord, her impassioned whimpers made it seem realistic. As the toes of her patent leather shoes left the floor, Judge Legg stiffened in more ways than one.
"Oh Billy, Billy, please fuck me!" Pink mewed, grasping the table leg so she could pump backwards. "It's nearly five, and if Daddy sees us-"
On impulse, Nat Dammet grabbed the lid from a nearby brass canister and banged it with his palm-WHANGGGG! WHANGGGG!-to imitate the chiming of the courthouse clock.
"-he'll be so mad at his little girl, he'll beat me, Billy!" the vampire wailed. She jerked her head, signaling me. "But no! You can't leave me, Billy! Just because that lawyer-"
I caught my cue and had to obey the force that drove me into this drama once again. "Come with me, Tripplehorn!" I cried, grabbing Furmeister by the arm. "Miss Lucy wants to get caught, and she wants to catch YOU! She's nothing but trouble!"
The deputy protested. His cock made a wet, popping sound as it slipped from that pretty little slit-but like the rest of us, he was following the script Miss Pink directed.
As Dammet put his all into the fifth and final chiming of the clock, the magistrate came to life. Roaring forward, he grabbed the girlish vampire so she doubled over his arm, and began spanking her bare backside with the wrath of a daddy challenged.
"You filthy little whore!" he wheezed between slaps. "Thinking you could leave me for that piece of alley trash! I'm going to blister your butt until-"
"Not any more, you're not!" Miss Pink twisted deftly within his grasp, to face him. "I won't live with your baby growing inside-"
We gasped when the magistrate's hands encircled Miss Pink's neck. He shook her, caught up in a nasty chant, his complexion devil red. "Never knew when to quit-always sassing your daddy, until-goddammit, Lucy-"
"Harold, let her go, for chrissakes! You're killing her!"
It was Nat's voice that brought the melodrama to a halt. Miss Pink landed with a grimace against the table's edge. The judge took a step back, but he-like those Old Testament patriarchs he resembled-looked more righteous than wrong.
The shadowy room again got quiet. Virgil Furmeister looked flummoxed by the emotions that had flown around us like rabid bats-not only because of the Judge's behavior, but because the childlike redhead Legg had spanked couldn't keep her fangs back.
The mortician turned paler than one of his corpses. "Gentlemen, such information can't go beyond this room," he rasped. He was inching in my direction, his fingers flexing. "Had I known, Harry, that you-well, if Moore spreads this around town, that you killed-and that you were here tonight dancing with Virgil-my reputation will be-"
"Reputation?" I brayed. I pointed at the lifeless woman who would forever smoke that stogy wearing nothing but buckle-up boots. "Hell's bells, Dammet! We all know you offed your own mother, as revenge for when she whittled your pencil. You're not exactly as white as the snow you wrote in-and neither is Judge Legg!"
It was the wrong thing to say. I escaped by slamming the door on the slender male hand that would've grabbed my sleeve. The anguished cry that followed came not from the pain of crushed fingers, but out of mortal terror. I peeked through the window in time to watch that pigtailed vampire attach herself to the judge's jugular, and then stepped away.
I crossed town at a brisk walk, no longer hungry like I was when I'd left my office. I entered my quarters and fell back against the door, as though I could shut out the events I'd just witnessed, along with their tragic ramifications. All this because my lust for Billy Tripplehorn had gone awry- But no! Why was I not surprised that, as soon as I was seated, a demure redhead materialized to sit on the edge of my desk? She now wore a gown of rose brocade trimmed in nipple-pink fur-and she was only one of three biting reasons my life had rushed headlong beyond my control. I was homeless, I was alone, I was horribly confused. And I was not happy about how things had been manipulated lately!
"I suppose you left a mess for some poor unsuspecting soul to find, when they go looking for those three-"
"Andrea, your insensitivity appalls me!" Pink fidgeted with the rose above her ear, fighting a grin. "Actually, I told the deputy to write a glowing obituary for the magistrate, who died of heart failure. And I said Dammet should provide a funeral like no one in Redemption has ever seen. I left them too damn scared to do anything else."
"You could've staged your little play after I asked the judge about Perfidia being-"
"His wife and your mother?" Those eyes rolled with the sarcasm only an eternal adolescent can show. "Honestly, Andrea! How can you think she'd submit to a horny old goat like like Harold Legg? Falling for Billy Tripplehorn must've really scrambled those lawyer brains of yours!"
"But then," she said with added with a wistful sigh, "everything changed when Billy came…and came…and…"
That part was accurate: those vamps had become so competitive with Billy in their midst, they splintered off into separate forces, determined to outdo each other. So now the orphanage was gone, along with Pandora. And Perfidia had told me some gawdawful lies-if I could believe Miss Pink, whose appetites always got the best of her.
Who could've known what a difference a man could make? All because I'd found the one I wanted.
"I know you're wondering," she said in her high, childlike voice, "so I'll admit I killed Lucy. She was going to die a painful death at the hands of her perverted daddy anyway. But mostly, I didn't want Billy going back to her, when he ran from the mansion that first night. I wanted YOU to have him, Andrea! Because you deserve him. And because I knew you'd…share him with the rest of us."
"Well, that won't be happening," I stated, shooing her off my desk. "It was a mistake to bring him to the house, and now that he's left me again, I'm leaving well enough alone. I advise you to get on with your life, Miss Pink. Just like I am."
I swiveled my chair toward the file cabinet behind me, resolute in proving I could live without this vampire and her companions, thank you. I'd come to love them-mostly-for they were the only family I had, but I was ready to make my own way without their interference. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Behind me, I heard the rustling of her dress and felt the breeze from the door she didn't need to open. "Believe what you like, Andrea, but you'll be trying to find me within the week. I know where Billy Tripplehorn is."
Of course I turned around to gawk at her! But she'd evaporated, leaving the door wide open in her wake. Only her disembodied voice remained.
"He's one of us now, you see," she finished with a giggle. "Billy has a lot to learn, but who wouldn't want him for a student?"