The Fire Woman, Dawn had started to call her. A seduction-postured temptress wrapped in a flame-red robe.
Dawn felt watched, just like she always did around The Voice’s collection of portraits.
There was a good reason for that, too.
They made their way down the dark hall to The Voice’s office, where the door stood open in dubious welcome. Inside, velvet curtains blocked the windows, books stood sentinel on the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and a magnificent TV surrounded by speakers reigned. There were portraits here, too, but oddly, one of the baroque wood frames enclosed a permanently empty field of fire. The rest of the pictures held the images of females, each of them looking like they’d been caught sliding their clothes off while webbed in an erotic fantasy.
Friends, Dawn thought. That’s what Breisi and Kiko called the women in the paintings. She’d discovered they were spirits, that the portraits were something like beds where they rested. Where they watched. Always watched.
As Dawn took a seat in a velvet-lined chair, the faint scent of jasmine crept over her, the perfume of these ghosts who had fought Robby Pennybaker right along with Dawn and Breisi that horrible night.
Skin alive with sensation, just as it always was in The Voice’s office, Dawn tried to relax. So many things confused her about being here: this new preternatural world, the raging impatience to find her missing dad, the strange ecstasy of what The Voice could do—and had done—to her body and mind.
Who was this man? she asked herself for probably the one thousandth time.
After the Robby incident, she’d done research, visiting an Internet café to bring up articles and images of Mr. Jonah Limpet—The Voice’s real name. She’d found rare photographs of a young guy who held a hand over his face to avoid being caught by the cameras. He had short, dark hair that curled slightly at the ends. His body looked tall and wiry under long, untucked shirts and khaki pants.
Wanting more, Dawn had delved further, finding out that he was the reclusive heir to a medical supply fortune, that he never left any of his houses except to travel between them under a veil of secrecy. His aged parents had passed away years ago, but he’d held the funerals on Limpet property, being so wealthy that he’d never even needed to step foot into the actual world.
How had Jonah Limpet gotten this way? And why had he closed himself off from everything but the Underground?
Dawn crossed her arms over her chest, preparing to block out his well-established hypnotic powers before he could get the jump on her. He liked being inside her, liked solving her, too, bringing her to physical climaxes while lapping up her emotions.
Thing was, she liked it. Hated it. Loved it.
Realizing that she was getting all repressed again, Dawn sighed, resting her hands on her lap. All her life, she’d shoved her emotions into an inner box, but lately, she’d been trying hard to keep herself more open. She needed to face what The Voice was, and more important, what he’d become to her.
Nearby, Kiko arranged himself on a settee, sitting bolt upright because of his brace. The sight pinched at her. She was used to seeing him plop into chairs, then collapse into a sprawled mess of comfort.
He caught her sad gaze, his jaw going tight. Dawn glanced away, knowing the last thing he wanted was pity.
“You said you had something?” she said to The Voice.
Now that they’d settled, the TV screen bloomed with color. The Voice had started his meeting in the usual way: silently, arrogantly, efficiently, and with succinct visual aids.
The screen sharpened to reveal a press conference, and a familiar one at that. Dawn had seen Marla Pennybaker’s announcement just days after Robby had encouraged his father to kill himself, then was finally exterminated himself. As the older woman stiltedly talked about her husband’s suicide—a true enough statement, except that it’d been brought on by the man’s refusal to join Robby in a vampire Underground that his son had never fully explained—Dawn evaluated Marla’s body language.
Garbed in a white silk suit, she seemed more put together than Dawn had ever seen her. Back when she’d engaged Limpet and Associates to find Robby, her face had been lined by grief and fear. Yet now…there was acceptance, like she didn’t remember the hell they’d all gone through.
Kiko grunted. “We’ve seen this, Boss. And it still looks like she’s reading from a script.”
“That would make sense if she was mind wiped by a vampire,” The Voice said. “I’ve seen this type of reaction many times, though it’s not noticeable unless one is searching for it.”