Melissa MacNeal - Beyond Redemption

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.