Quiet. The cameras. No talking about Limpet and Associates allowed.
“I’m just chatting about your new girlfriend.” Dawn took warped pleasure out of Eva’s probable reaction to Frank moving on without her. “I don’t care if the vamp gets offended.”
“Dawn.” He’d used the un-nickname, which meant he was pretending he could discipline her. “She’s your mom.”
She reared back. “You’re sticking up for her?”
He looked away, and the bottom fell out of her world.
“Tell me you haven’t forgiven her.”
“I…” Frank shot another glance to the camera, but Dawn could tell it was only so he wouldn’t have to talk.
“Goddamnit.” She laughed bitterly. “She’s tooled with your mind. What do they call this…the Stockholm syndrome?”
“She’s the woman I fell in love with.”
The woman who’d driven him to drink with her death, the woman who’d haunted him with her senseless “murder.”
“She must’ve done a number on you to even have you thinking of forgetting everything she put you through.”
“Yeah, she has.” Frank held up a finger and pointed to his head. “She’s tried to get inside the whole time, ever since that night I thought I saw someone who looked like her and followed them into the Bava nightclub.”
She remembered what The Voice had told her about Frank’s last contact: he called me from what I now think to be Bava and said that perhaps it was time for you to come out here and fulfill your place, Dawn. Yet before he could continue, the phone went dead, and I didn’t hear from him again.
“You saw Eva there.” Dawn got to her knees. “She mind screwed, then captured you.”
“I didn’t gain consciousness for a while. I don’t know where she took me—somewhere cold and dark—but then I fully woke up here, in chains.”
“Getting you back was her first project. She told me she wants the family together again.”
“And she’s serious. Hell, is she ever serious.”
They both glanced up at the cameras.
“She’s a vampire.” If Eva’s betrayal wasn’t enough to turn him against her, maybe this would be.
Her dad only nodded, face unreadable.
“Doesn’t that mean anything?” There he was: simple Frank, good buddy to everyone, doofus supreme. So easy to take advantage of.
“Hey, I know what’s at stake,” he whispered. “Do you?”
“Obviously, I know a lot more about it than you do.”
“She’s going to turn both of us, that’s why she’s revealed herself to you, Dawnie. There’s no going back now. That’s why you’re locked in a room with me. We belong to her.”
Belong? Damned if she did. Eva had given Dawn up years ago. No late claims on these goods.
Frank continued. “I realized what was going on from the second I regained consciousness, and I was prepared to make life easier for myself. She didn’t take the time to win me over the way she did with you, but—”
“That’s ’cos she knew you’d fall for her again. She knew you’d still be a sucker, Frank.”
“We’ve got history, damn it. A man and wife…”
Agonized, he bowed his head, turning one cheek away from her. All Dawn wanted to do was remember how badly she’d yearned to find her dad; she wished she could just go to him now and hold him like any other daughter would. But he wasn’t making good choices—as usual. He’d disappointed her, especially with a woman like Breisi waiting for him.
Then Dawn noticed a faint redness on his neck.
Her own neck flashed heat, and she held a hand to it, not knowing why.
Suspicion about Frank crept in slowly. No. He couldn’t have allowed Eva to…
“Like I was saying.” His voice sounded dredged. “I didn’t do too bad for myself down here. Except for keeping her out of my head, I stopped fighting her. Damn it all, back in the day she just about ruined her career to marry me, Dawnie. And the less I fought, the more chain room she’d parcel out. I even got a TV. She told me just how much she wanted a family again, how much she missed you, too.”
Dawn wouldn’t dwell on that last part; she was just happy Frank had been mind blocking Eva. “You didn’t want to escape?”
“More than anything. To you and…” His gaze went soft, but when he glanced at a camera, he hardened up again. “…other people outside. Part of me wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t.”
“Does that mean the other part of you is on board with this whole wonky family-reunion idea?”
He gave her a look that said, Aren’t you? Don’t you want what we never had?
Dawn didn’t react, instead forcing him to continue with her jaded silence.
“She’s been having me sleep during the day while she works, then she’ll wake me up when the sun goes down. Every night, I’ve screamed at her out of pure frustration. Every goddamned night.”
The lightbulb went on. Kiko had always gotten the best readings from Frank’s T-shirts after dusk. Was it because of this nightly upheaval?