Running Hot

SEVENTEEN

She did not need to hear the key played in order to find the right note. She was La Sirène. Endowed with perfect pitch, she plucked the A out of thin air and launched straight into the Queen of the Night’s second aria.

The elegant, acoustically precise practice room had been designed and built for her by her current lover. Newlin Guthrie, a billionaire who had made his fortune by inventing any number of boring computer gadgets and high-tech security software programs, had spared no expense in the construction. The room was on the second floor of the Mediterranean-style villa he had purchased for her shortly after she drew him to her with her Siren’s talent. The lovely mini palazzo was perched above the bay in Sausalito and offered stimulating views of San Francisco.

She had chosen the florid “Der Hölle Rache” for the very private performance on Maui for two reasons: The first was that it was good practice for her role in the upcoming production of

The Magic Flute. The second reason was that it was ideally suited to her unique talent. The challenging high F, the note that hardly any sopranos could sing full voice, was one of the few that allowed her to project and focus the specific wavelengths of psychic energy required to interfere with certain critical neurological functions of the human brain. Glass had been known to shatter when she sang that note; people had died.

Besides, when you set out to kill a man, you could hardly go wrong with a song that had a title that translated as “The Revenge of Hell Cooks in My Heart.” She had learned long ago that the music chosen for a performance—especially one of her unique

private engagements—had to be right. Art was all about the communication between artist and audience.

She had not planned on going to Maui. In a week she was scheduled to sing the Queen of the Night at the opening of the new opera house in Acacia Bay. The engagement, arranged by dear Newlin, was critical to the rejuvenation of her career. Things had not been going well since that dreadful night at La Scala two years ago when the claque had dared to boo her.

But when her sister had called and begged her for a favor, she had been unable to refuse. Damaris was family, after all, the only family she had.

Daddy didn’t count.

Nevertheless, she was annoyed to find herself preparing to board a plane for Maui on such short notice. It was not as if she did not have a great deal to do between now and opening night. Furthermore, she knew that the only reason Damaris wanted her to give this particular performance was because of

Daddy.

Personally, she despised the father who had shown up out of nowhere to claim his daughters. How on earth Damaris could care for a man whose only contribution to their lives had been to ejaculate into a glass vial and deposit the result in a sperm bank was beyond her.

Daddy could keel over tomorrow as far as she was concerned. In fact, she often fantasized about giving one of her private performances just for him. The problem with that little scheme, unfortunately, was that Damaris would very likely guess the cause of death and have a fit. There was another issue, as well.

Daddy had his own psychic talent, and it was lethal.

Although the Maui trip was an imposition, she was starting to look forward to it in spite of herself. Successful performances of any kind always gave her a euphoric sensation that was impossible to achieve in any other way. For hours afterward she felt gloriously powerful. But there was nothing like the absolutely dazzling rush that followed one of her special

private performances. Following those engagements, she knew what it was like to be a true goddess. The sensation of immortality sometimes lasted for days.

She had been twenty-three years old, at the very start of her career, when she first discovered the ultimate power of her talent. Her singing had always been special, of course. Mother had planned her future before she was born, having chosen the sperm donor with great care, not for his particular psychic ability but for the strength of his raw energy.

Descended from a long line of sensitives herself, Mother had studied the complex laws of psychic inheritance with attention to detail. Everyone was endowed with some degree of talent, but at the lower end of the scale—the so-called normal end—it usually appeared in the form of a murky sense of intuition that an amazing number of people either took for granted or willfully ignored.

But there were others, those who were gifted with a considerable degree of psychic power: too much to be overlooked or suppressed. When that talent was strong enough to register at level five or higher on the Jones Scale, it tended to differentiate into specific, more narrowly focused types of abilities. It was a given that when it came to the most powerful talents, no one got more than one. Mother had explained that it was some sort of evolutionary law, nature’s way of preventing the creation of super predators.

Mother had also understood that certain talents, including the near mythic Siren talent, were dominant and sometimes gender-related traits. Historically all Sirens had been female, probably because only females—musically trained females at that—could hit the so-called money notes, the glorious, almost surreal high D’s, E’s, F’s and even G’s that were the only ones capable of focusing a Siren’s particular type of psychic energy. Not all coloratura sopranos were Sirens, by any means, but all true Sirens were capable of singing the coloratura repertoire, provided they had been trained.

Mother had also comprehended another one of the complicated laws of psychic genetics: When a strong dominant trait such as the Siren talent was enhanced by the power of almost any other type of talent, the result was an even more powerful Siren. Hence Mother’s choice of sperm donor.

Singing and music lessons had begun before La Sirène could walk.

“You will be more famous than Sutherland or Sills or Callas,” Mother had assured her. “You have the power to become the most brilliant soprano of your generation, perhaps of any generation. The talent is in your bloodline.”

She had, indeed, skyrocketed to fame and stardom but not without having to overcome a few obstacles. The first serious glitch had been an ambitious young rival who had shown up at that important audition in her twenty-third year. The creature had walked off with the title role in the production of

Lucia di Lammermoor even though it was obvious that she could barely pop off the E-flat in the Mad Scene, let alone embellish it with the high F the way La Sirène could. The rumor that the untalented bitch was sleeping with the wealthiest and most influential backer had spread quickly. It certainly explained a few things.

La Sirène had known for some time that it was theoretically possible to kill with her voice. Her mother had told her that some of her female ancestors had done just that. Nevertheless, she never quite believed it, not until the night when she cornered the bitch in a practice room backstage and sang the Mad Scene the way only she could sing it.

The autopsy had revealed the cause of death as an aneurism. Very tragic, promising young singer cut down on the brink of what could have been a spectacular career, blah, blah, blah. But the show must go on. And it did, with the hot new coloratura soprano who would soon be known as La Sirène in the role of Lucia.

Come to think of it, maybe the Maui engagement wasn’t such an imposition, after all. She always sang her best in the days and weeks following one of her private performances. The Voice needed to be exercised to the fullest extent occasionally in order to remain flawless.

The performance in Acacia Bay had to be perfect.