There it was, the question I'd hoped to avoid. I couldn't confess that the attorney and the orphanage overseer were one and the same-and of different genders. Nor could I explain how, while trying to save him from Judge Legg's execution, I had brought him over the threshold of another potential death. The time passing between his question and my answer only pointed up a situation more incriminating than he could imagine, but as I struggled for an explanation, things got even worse.
The other door-the carved, gilt-edged entryway to the Sisters' crypt-suddenly flew open. Pink glared at us with all the venom of a diva whose beauty sleep had been disturbed, shaking her disheveled head with unmistakable menace.
"How dare you accost our Andrea with these accusations?" she demanded. "Curiosity is one thing, Mr. Tripplehorn, but we Sisters of Samaria won't tolerate such impertinence."
Was that the glint of twin incisors I saw? I held my breath as the redheaded vampire stepped from her lair, leaving the ornate door open behind her. Just as her pale pink negligee barely concealed her curves, her wicked grin didn't disguise a deadly intent.
"Come with me, Billy," she whispered, crooking her finger at him as she riveted him with her gaze. "It's time you learned about the power of Pink, big boy."
Chapter 6: Miss Pink Prevails
I could not believe my eyes! By crooking a come-hither finger at Billy, beckoning him into the Sisters' sanctuary, Pink was breaking a cardinal rule the Three P's had established back when they acquired this house! No one-not even the servants and I-was ever allowed beyond that gilt-edged door into the sanctum where they slept. Justin, Jeremy and Cerise stepped closer to me as I strained against the mink-lined arms of the heated massage machine which held me fast. They, too, realized the fatal consequences if Billy Tripplehorn obeyed the sloe-eyed vampire.
Pink, however, had tuned in to my mental distress. She flashed me a knowing glance before continuing to seduce the handsome young man who already knew more than he should.
"Curiosity killed the cat, Billy," she murmured in a seductive voice. Her alluring body appeared fluid beneath the film of her pink negligee; like the ebb and flow of the ocean, her breasts and hips shimmied in a primal appeal to his manhood. Locks of auburn hair fell in disarray around her pearlescent shoulders, and the rose she always wore teased him with its disheveled petals. All Billy could do-all any of us could do-was gawk at this fallen angel and feel her power overtaking us.
"But then-you've always considered yourself smarter than the average pussy, haven't you?" she purred, taking the slightest step backward toward her lair. "I must admit you've already figured out more than most could have, concerning those unslept-in beds upstairs. But following such hunches comes with a price-and it's my duty to be sure you can pay it, Mr. Tripplehorn. We won't allow just any man to romance our Andrea, after all."
I bristled, for I knew damn well this little performance had nothing to do with my feelings for Billy! It was all about the power of Pink…the childlike charm that beguiled with smiles and sunshine she could only recall from bygone times as a mortal adolescent.
Billy's scowl resembled my own. "I never asked to come out here to the-"
"Ah, but twice you've accepted the invitation! Andrea's, and now ours," Pink pointed out in a voice that sliced like a razor. "You could have stayed in town and answered to the magistrate about Lucy's death, after all. But here you are."
If he realized Pink had just revealed my double identity, Tripplehorn gave no sign. He was too immersed in the shimmering vision of promiscuity before him to concentrate on the finer points of a relationship attorney Alex Moore should never have begun.
Billy turned to glance fleetingly at me-and again I saw those dark eyes spinning like coffee stirred in a cup. She already had him in her thrall, but she-cats like Pink just loved to tease the living daylights out of their prey before they ate it.
"I'm not a total monster, however," she crooned, leaning against the door frame so her pert breasts bulged above the bodice of her nightgown. "So I'll give you a choice. Another chance at salvation, since you know so little about it."
I cringed at the little pink tongue wetting her lips. The other shoe was about to drop, and she offered Billy no real choice at all. The vamp had already claimed her prize by appealing to Billy's rampant male ego-even larger and more prodigious than the cock now straining against the union suit he'd wornto bed.
"And what might that be?" he challenged, raking the dark waves back from his forehead. "The same sort of choice you gave Furmeister when you locked him in his own cell and stole the key?"
Pink's grin conceded a point in Billy's favor, but she wavered not. "You can come upstairs with me, to that unsullied bedroom that awaits our night of pleasure, and I'll forget your prying into our private affairs," she replied with an arch of one eyebrow. "Or, you can enter where no man has gone before, and never leave. Uncovering the rest of our secret comes with serious consequences, Billy-much like Adam and Eve getting expelled from the Garden for eating that apple. A little learning is a dangerous thing."
And a twenty-year-old who's full of himself is more dangerous yet. It didn't matter to this young stud that Miss Pink hinted he was in peril, for hadn't he escaped Lucy's clutches, and then been rescued from her father's? He still believed his fate was in his own hands, and that death couldn't touch him!
How I wished for such innocence again myself.
So, as he took that first fateful step toward her-toward the door to his doom-I prepared myself to follow him into the crypt. After all, it was my doing that Billy had come to this crossroads; my own lust that had led him down this primrose path into a nest of ruthless women whose hunger for him would never die. They could string him along for decades, in a state of limbo like they'd induced in our blonde house boys, or by converting him to their own dark, eternal cult. Either way, Tripplehorn would never truly be mine again. And I had no one to blame but myself.
My heart lurched in my chest as Billy stepped through that door, entranced.
At once the twins freed me from Perfidia's machine, and, along with Cerise, they hurried behind me to that gilt-edged portal marking the no-man's land hidden beneath this ancient home. There they stopped, however. Perfidia and Pandora had trained them so tightly, I knew they would never overstep this boundary between the living and the undead. I, however, slipped silently over the threshold to behold the fate that awaited Billy…and possibly to share in it.
Pink knew I was there, of course. She had no doubt planned it this way.
"Before I train you to come every time I call, like the panting pup you are," she was saying breezily, "let's get a few formalities out of the way. Just so you know exactly who you're dealing with."
While the sight of three ornate caskets resting on porcelain pedestals came as no surprise to me, Billy was rubbing his eyes as though the cool, shadowy dimness was playing games with his vision. The center casket of sleek ebony undoubtedly belonged to Pandora-just as the one which now yawned open to reveal its lining of quilted silk the shade of baby's skin would be Miss Pink's.
At the far side of the dusky room rested a box that resembled an oversized rectangular emerald: Perfidia would naturally prefer a bed the color of jealousy and deceit…the color of her catlike eyes. Through its translucent green walls, her reclining form remained visible even though the light of day never invaded this chamber. This implied that she could see through the sides of her bed when she awakened…was perhaps watching Pink beguile Billy while I lingered in the pale light near the doorway.
While this serene, scented chamber fascinated me, I knew better than to forget my wits while viewing the Sisters' resting place. The only light came from the flickering sandalwood candles in wall sconces at the rear of the room, and the dim glimmer of the white porcelain pedestals when they caught light from the hallway. My skin prickled and my pulse quickened; my head swam with a disorienting sense of claustrophobia like I'd seldom felt. Billy Tripplehorn and I, as mere mortals in this mysterious lair, were all but powerless here.