Revelations

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Revelations

Blue Bloods 3

Melissa de la Cruz

For Mike & Mattie, always And for Stephen Green and Carol Fox, my "oldest" fans

The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.

—Robert G. Ingersoll

O you were a vampire and I may never see the light

—Concrete Blonde, "Bloodletting"

Now war arose in heaven,

Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven…"But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!"

—Revelation 12:7-12

The Battle of Corcovado

She looked up and saw Lawrence locked in a fierce struggle with his adversary. His sword fell to the ground. Above him loomed the white, shining presence. It was so bright it was blinding, like looking into the sun. It was the Lightbringer. The Morningstar.

Her blood froze.

"Schuyler!" Oliver's voice was hoarse. "Kill it!"

Schuyler raised her mother's sword, saw it glinting in the moonlight, a long, pale, deadly shaft. Raised it in the direction of the enemy. Ran with all her might and thrust her weapon toward his heart.

And missed.

One

On early and bitterly cold morning in late March, Schuyler Van Alen let herself inside the glass doors of the Duchesne School, feeling relieved as she walked into the soaring barrel-ceiling entryway dominated by an imposing John Singer Sargent portrait of the school's founders. She kept the hood of her fur-trimmed parka over her thick dark hair, preferring anonymity rather than the casual greetings exchanged by other students.

It was odd to think of the school as a haven, an escape, a place she looked forward to going. For so long, Duchesne, with its shiny marble floors and sweeping vistas of Central Park, had been nothing less than a torture chamber. She had dreaded walking up the grand staircase, felt miserable in its inadequately heated classrooms, and even managed to despise the gorgeous terrazzo tiles in the refectory.

At school Schuyler often felt ugly and invisible, although her deep-set blue eyes and delicate Dresden-doll features belied this. All her life, her well-heeled classmates had treated her like a freak, an outcast—unwanted and untouchable. Even if her family was one of the oldest and most illustrious names in the city's history, times had changed. The Van Alens, once a proud and prestigious clan, had shrunk and withered over the centuries, so that they were now practically extinct. Schuyler was one of the last.

For a while, Schuyler had hoped her grandfather's return from exile would change that—that Lawrence's presence in her life would mean she was no longer alone. But those hopes were dashed when Charles Force took her away from the shabby brownstone on Riverside Drive, the only home

she had ever known.

"Are you going to move or do I have to do something

about it?"

Schuyler started. She hadn't noticed that she'd been standing in a daze in front of her locker and the one above it. The bells signaling the start of the day were clanging wildly. Behind her stood Mimi Force, her new housemate.

No matter how out of place Schuyler felt at school, it was no comparison to the arctic freeze she weathered on a daily basis at the Forces' grand town house across from the Metropolitan Museum. At Duchesne, she didn't have to overhear Mimi grumbling about her every second of the day. Or at least it only happened every few hours. No wonder Duchesne felt so welcoming lately.

Even though Lawrence Van Alen was now Regis, head of the Blue Bloods, he had been powerless to stop the adoption process. The Code of the Vampires stipulated a strict adherence to human laws, to keep the Blue Bloods safe from unwanted scrutiny. In her last will and testament, Schuyler's grandmother had declared her an emancipated minor, but in a wily move, Charles Force's lawyers had contested its tenets in the Red Blood courts. The courts found in their favor, and Charles had been named the executor of the estate, winning Schuyler as part of the package.

"Well?" Mimi was still waiting.

"Oh. Uh. Sorry," Schuyler said, grabbing a textbook and moving aside.

"Sorry is right," Mimi narrowed her emerald green eyes and gave Schuyler a contemptuous look. The same look she'd given Schuyler across the dinner table last night, and the same look she'd given Schuyler when they'd bumped into each other in the hallway that morning. The look said: What are you doing here? You have no right to exist.

"What did I ever do to you?" Schuyler whispered, tucking a book into her worn canvas bag.

"You saved her life!"

Mimi glared at the striking redhead who had spoken.

Bliss Llewellyn, Texan transplant and former Mimi acolyte, glared back. Bliss's cheeks were as red as her hair. "She saved your skin in Venice, and you don't even have the decency to be grateful!" Once upon a time Bliss had been Mimi's shadow, happy to follow her every directive, but a trust had broken between the two former friends since the last Silver Blood attack, when Mimi had been revealed as a willing, if ineffective, conspirator. Mimi had been condemned to burn, until Schuyler had come to her aid at the blood trial.

"She didn't save my life. She merely told the truth. My life was never in danger," Mimi replied as she ran a silver hairbrush through her fine hair.

"Ignore her," Bliss told Schuyler.

Schuyler smiled, feeling braver now that she had backup. "It's hard to do. It's like pretending global warming doesn't exist." She would pay for that comment later, she knew. There would be pebbles in her breakfast cereal. Black tar on her sheets. Or the newest inconvenience—the disappearance of yet another of her swiftly dwindling possessions. Already she was missing her mother's locket, her leather gloves, and a beloved dog-eared copy of Kafka's The Trial, inscribed on the first page with the initials "J. F."

Schuyler would be the first to admit that the second guest bedroom in the Forces' mansion (the first remained reserved for visiting dignitaries) was hardly the cupboard under the stairs. Her room was beautifully decorated and sumptuously appointed with everything a girl could want: a four-poster queen-size bed with a pillowy duvet, closets full of designer clothes, a high-end entertainment center, dozens of toys for Beauty, her bloodhound, and a new featherlight MacBook Air. But if her new home was rich in material gifts, it lacked the charm of the old one.

She missed her old room, with its Mountain Dew-yellow walls and rickety desk. She missed the dusty shrouded living room. She missed Hattie and Julius, who had been with the family since she was an infant. She missed her grandfather, of course. But most of all, she missed her freedom.

"You okay?" Bliss asked, nudging her. Schuyler had returned from Venice with a new address and an unexpected ally. While she and Bliss had always been friendly, now they were almost inseparable.

"Yeah. I'm used to it. I could take her in a cage fight." Schuyler smiled. Seeing Bliss at school was one of the small reprieves of happiness that Duchesne afforded.

She took the winding back stairs, following the stream of people heading in the same direction, when out of the corner of her eye she saw the barest flicker and knew. It was him. She didn't have to look to know he was among the crowd of students walking the opposite way. She could always sense him, as if her nerves were fine-tuned antennae receptors that picked up whenever he was near. Maybe it was the vampire in her, giving her the ability to tell when another was close by, or maybe it had nothing to do with her otherworldly powers at all.

Jack.

His eyes were focused straight ahead, as if he never even saw her, never registered her presence. His sleek blond hair, the same translucent shade as his sister's, was slicked back from his proud forehead; and unlike the other boys around him, dressed in varying degrees of sloppiness, he looked regal in a blazer and tie. He was so handsome it was hard for Schuyler to breathe. But just as at the town house—Schuyler refused to call it home—Jack ignored her.

She snuck one more glance his way and then hurried up the stairs. Glass had already started when she arrived. Schuyler tried to be as unobtrusive as possible as she walked, out of habit, toward the back seats by the window. Oliver Hazard-Perry was seated there, bent over his notebook.

But she caught herself just in time and moved across the room to sit next to the clanging radiator, without saying hello to her best friend.

Charles Force had made it clear: now that she was under his roof, she would have to follow his rules. The first rule was that Schuyler was forbidden to see her grandfather. The animosity between Charles and Lawrence ran deep, and not only because Lawrence had displaced Charles's position in the Conclave.

"I don't want him filling your head with lies," Charles had told her. "He may rule the Coven, but he has no power in my house. If you disobey me, I promise you will regret it."

The second rule of living at the Forces' was that she was forbidden to associate with Oliver. Charles had been apoplectic when he'd discovered that Schuyler had made Oliver (her designated Conduit) her human familiar. "First of all, you are much too young. Secondly, it is anathema. Distasteful. Conduits are servants. They are not—they do not fulfill the services of familiars. You must take a new human immediately and sever all relations with this boy."

If pressed, she would grudgingly admit that Charles was probably right. Oliver was her best friend, and she had marked him as her own, had taken his blood into hers, and there had been consequences to her actions. Sometimes she wished they could go back to the way they were before everything became so complicated.

Schuyler had no idea why Charles would care whom she made her familiar anyway, since the Forces had done away with the old-fashioned practice of keeping human Conduits. But she followed the rules to the letter. As far as anyone could see, she had absolutely no contact with Lawrence, and had refrained from performing the Sacred Kiss with Oliver.

There were so many things in her new life that she could and couldn't do.

But there were some places where the rules did not apply. Somewhere that Charles had no power. Somewhere Schuyler could be free.

That's what secret hiding places were for.

Two

Mimi Force liked the sound of stilettos on marble. Her patent-leather Jimmy Choos made a satisfying click, click, clack that echoed across the entire lobby of the Force Tower. The shiny new headquarters of her father's media empire comprised several buildings in the middle of midtown Manhattan. The gleaming elevator banks regularly disgorged a crew of "Forcies"—the beautiful employees of the Force media organization—design editors, fashion editors, lifestyle editors, heading off to lunch meetings at Michael's or into town cars that would escort them to various appointments around the city. They were a well-dressed group, with similarly pinched faces, as if their perpetually busy schedules didn't leave them time to smile. Mimi blended right in.

She was only sixteen, but as she walked through the crowd, past the lobby and into the dark alcove that concealed an elevator that could only be accessed through a secret and irreproducible key, she felt incredibly old. She remembered when the Force Tower had originally been christened the Van Alen Building. For years it had stood as a mere three-story foundation, since its planned tower had never been built after the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Only last year did her father's company finally complete construction according to the old plans and christened the building with a new name.

Mimi looked around and discreetly sent a strong ignore-suggestion to anyone who might come near. She found the doorknob and pressed her finger against the lock, pricking it so that it drew blood. The blood analysis in the key lock was not the latest in security technology, but an antediluvian one. Her blood was being analyzed and compared to DNA files in the repository; a match would confirm that only a true Blue Blood stood at the gate. The blood could not be duplicated nor extracted. Vampire blood disappeared within minutes once exposed to the air.

The doors whooshed open silently, and Mimi took the lift down. What Red Bloods did not know was that in 1929, the building had been built to completion—except it extended downward instead of up.

The tower was actually a "corescraper"—a structure built underneath the ground, tunneling down to the planet's core, rather than up toward the sky. Mimi watched as the floors descended. She went fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred, then a thousand feet under the surface. In the past, the Blue Bloods had lived underground to hide from their Silver Blood attackers. Now Mimi understood what Charles Force had meant when he sneered that Lawrence and Cordelia would have the vampires "cringing in caves once again."

Finally the elevator stopped and the door opened. Mimi nodded to the Conduit at the desk. The Red Blood resembled a blind mole rat, looking as if he had not seen the sun in a long time. Rather like the false legends perpetuated about vampires, Mimi thought with amusement.

She could feel the wards, the heavy protections placed around the area. This was supposed to be the Blue Bloods' most secret and secure haven. Lawrence took great pleasure in the shiny, conspicuous new tower that had been built on top of it. "We're hiding in plain sight!" he'd chuckled. The Repository of History had recently been moved to several of the lower floors. Since the attack, the lair underneath the club had been abandoned. Mimi still felt guilty at what had happened there. But it wasn't her fault! She hadn't meant to bring any real harm. She'd just wanted Schuyler out of the way. Perhaps she had been naпve. No need to linger on that thought now.

"Evening, Madeleine," an elegantly dressed woman in a chic Chanel suit greeted her politely.

"Dorothea." Mimi nodded, following the old crone to the conference room. She knew that several members of the Conclave had not been keen on her admittance to the inner circle. They were worried she was still too young and not in command of her full memories, the entirety of the wisdom of all her past lives. The process toward a Blue Blood's complete self-actualization began during the transformation at fifteen, and continued until the end of one's Sunset Years (or approximately twenty-one years of age), when the human shell fully gave away, finally revealing the vampire underneath. Mimi didn't care what they thought. She was there to fulfill a duty, and if she didn't remember everything, she remembered enough.

She was there because Lawrence had come to the Force mansion late one night, soon after they'd returned from Venice, to speak to Charles. Mimi had overhead the entire conversation. When Lawrence had taken over as Regis, Charles had voluntarily resigned his seat on the Conclave, but Lawrence was urging him to reconsider.

"We need all our strength now. We need you, Charles. Don't turn your back on us." Lawrence's voice was low and gravelly. He coughed several times, and the smell of sweet tobacco from his pipe had filled the hallway outside her father's office.

Charles was adamant. He had been humiliated and rejected. If the Conclave would not have him, he would not have the Conclave. "Why do they need me when they have you, Regis," Charles spat, as if even saying it were distasteful.

"I will go."

Lawrence had merely raised an eyebrow upon discovering Mimi standing in front of them. Charles hadn't looked too surprised either. Finding a way through locked doors had always been one of Mimi's talents, even as a young child.

"Azrael," Lawrence murmured. "Do you remember?"

"Not everything. Not yet. But I do remember you…Grandfather," Mimi said with a smirk.

"That's enough for me." Lawrence smiled in a way that was not too unlike Charles's own. "Charles, it's decided. Mimi shall have your seat on the Conclave. She will report to you, as your representative. Azrael, you are dismissed."

Mimi had been about to protest, until she realized she had been glommed into leaving the den without her noticing. The old coot was clever. But nothing was stopping her from pressing an ear against the doors.

"She is dangerous," Lawrence was saying softly. "I was surprised to find that you had called up the twins to this cycle. Was it really necessary?"

"Like you said, she is strong." Charles sighed. "If there is battle ahead, as you want us all to believe, Lawrence, you will need her on your side."

Lawrence snorted. "If she stays true."

"She always has," Charles said sharply. "And she was not the only one among us who once loved the Morningstar."

"A grave mistake we all made." Lawrence nodded.

Charles said softly, "No, not all of us."

Mimi floated away from the door. She had heard all she needed to hear.

Azrael. He'd called her by her real name. A name that was etched deep into her consciousness, deep into her bones, her very blood. What was she except her name? When you were alive for thousands of years, taking a new moniker after another, names became like gift wrapping. Something decorative that you answered to. Take her name in this cycle, for example: Mimi. It was the name of a socialite, a flighty woman who spent her days maxing out credit cards and who cared only for spa treatments and dinner parties.

It hid her true identity.

For she was Azrael. Angel of Death. She brought darkness to the light. It was her gift and her curse.

She was a Blue Blood. As Charles had said, one of the strongest. Charles and Lawrence had been talking about the end of days. The Fall. During the war with Lucifer, it had been Azrael and her twin, Abbadon, who had turned the tide, who had changed the course of the last battle. They had betrayed their prince and joined Michael, kneeling to the golden sword. They had stayed true to the light, even though they were made of the dark.

Theirs had been a crucial desertion. If it were not for her and Jack, who could say who would have won? Would Lucifer be the king of all kings on a heavenly throne if they had not abandoned him? And what did they win anyway, but this endless life on earth. This endless cycle of reparation and absolution. For whom and for what did they make amends? Did God even know they existed anymore? Would they ever regain the paradise they had lost?

Had it been worth it? Mimi wondered as she took her seat at the Conclave, only now noticing the grumblings among her peers.

She looked to where Dorothea Rockefeller was staring. The shock almost sent her reeling. Inside the most protected, most secure haven of the Blue Bloods, and seated next to Lawrence in a place of honor, was none other than the disgraced former Venator, the Silver Blood traitor, Kingsley Martin.

He caught her eye and pointed two fingers in the shape of a gun in her direction. And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.

Three

Unlike most designers' showrooms, which were decorated in minimal, almost clinical style with hardly a floral arrangement to break up the dazzlingly empty white rooms, the showcase interiors that housed the Rolf Morgan collection resembled the cozy quarters of an old-fashioned gentlemen's club: leather-bound books lined the shelves, while squat club chairs and comfortable shag rugs were arranged around a crackling fire. Rolf Morgan had come to fame by selling preppie, old-boy style to the masses, his most ubiquitous creation a plain-collared shirt discreetly embroidered with his logo: a pair of crisscrossed croquet wickets.

Bliss sat nervously on one of the leather armchairs, balancing her portfolio on her knees. She'd had to leave school a few minutes early in order to make her go-see appointment, yet had arrived to find the designer running half an hour late. Typical.

She looked around at the other models, all bearing the same classic American good looks commonly found in a "Croquet by Rolf Morgan" ad: sunburned cheeks, golden hair, upturned button noses. She had no idea why the designer would be interested in her. Bliss looked more like a girl from a pre-Raphaelite painting, with her waist-long russet hair, pale skin, and wide green eyes, than the kind of girl who looked like she'd just finished a rousing set of tennis. But then again, Schuyler had just booked the show the other day at the first casting, so perhaps they were looking for a different kind of girl this time.

"Can I get you girls anything? Water? Diet soda?" the smiling receptionist asked.

"Nothing for me, thanks," Bliss demurred, while the other girls shook their heads as well. It was nice to be asked, to be offered something. As a model, she was used to being ignored or condescended to by the staff. No one was ever very friendly. Bliss likened go-see appointments to the cattle inspections her grandfather used to perform on the ranch. He'd check the stock's teeth, hooves, and flanks. Models were treated just like cattle—pieces of meat whose assets were weighed and measured.

Bliss wished that the designer would hurry up and get it over with. She'd almost canceled the meeting, and only a deep sense of obligation to her agency (and a slight fear of her model booker—a bald, imperious gay man, who bossed her around like she was his slave (and not the other way around) kept her rooted to her seat.

She was still unnerved by what had happened at school earlier, when she'd tried to confide in Schuyler.

"There's something wrong with me," Bliss said, over lunch in the refectory.

"What do you mean? Are you sick?" Schuyler asked, ripping open a bag of jalapeno potato chips.

Am I sick? Bliss wondered. She certainly felt ill lately. But it was a different kind of sick—her soul felt sick. "It's hard to explain," she said, but she tried. "I'm, like, seeing things. Bad things." Terrible things. She told Schuyler about how it had started.

She'd been jogging down the Hudson the other day, and when she blinked, instead of the placid, brown waters of the river, she'd seen it filled with blood—red and viscous and churning.

Then there were the horsemen who had thundered into her bedroom one night—four of them, on tall black steeds, behind masks; they looked foul and smelled even worse. Like living death. They had been so real, the horses had left dirty hoofprints on the white carpet. But the vision from the other night had been worse: bayoneted babies, disemboweled victims, nuns hanging from crosses, beheaded … It went on.

But the most frightening thing in the world?

Right in the middle of a vision, a man had appeared. A man in a white suit. A handsome man, with a crown of shining golden hair and a beautiful smile that chilled her to the bone.

The man had walked across the room and sat next to her on the bed.

"Bliss," the man had said, laying a hand on her head like a benediction. "Daughter."

Schuyler looked up from her tuna sandwich. Bliss wondered how Schuyler still had an appetite for normal food— Bliss had long ago lost the taste for it. She could barely stand to eat her rare-cooked hamburger. Maybe it was because Schuyler was half human. Bliss reached for a potato chip out of curiosity. She took a bite. It was salty and not unpleasantly spicy. She took another.

Schuyler looked thoughtful. "Okay, so some weird dude called you his daughter, big deal. It was just a dream. And as for all the other stuff—are you sure you're not just staying up too late watching Rob Zombie movies?"

"No—it just…" Bliss shook her head, annoyed at being unable to impart just how creepy this man was. And how it sounded like he was telling her the truth. But how could that be? Her father was Forsyth Llewellyn, the senator from New York. She wondered about her mother once again. Her father never spoke of his first wife, and just a few weeks ago Bliss had been surprised to find a photograph of her father with a blond woman who she'd always assumed to be her mother inscribed on the back with the words "Allegra Van Alen."

Allegra was Schuyler's mother, New York City's most famous comatose patient. If Allegra was her mother, did that make Schuyler her sister? Although, vampires didn't have family in the Red Blood sense: they were the former children of God, immortal, with no real mothers and fathers.

Forsyth was merely her "father" for this cycle. Perhaps that was the same with Allegra. She'd refrained from telling Schuyler her discovery. Schuyler was protective about her mother, and Bliss was too shy to claim a connection to a woman she had never even met. Still, she'd felt a kinship to Schuyler ever since she'd found the photograph.

"Do you still get those—you know, blackouts?" Schuyler asked.

Bliss shook her head. The blackouts had stopped at about the same time the visions had begun. She didn't know what was worse.

"Sky, do you ever think about Dylan?" she asked tentatively.

"All the time. I wish I knew what happened to him," Schuyler said, picking apart her sandwich and eating it one section at a time: bread first, then a scoop of tuna, then a bite of the lettuce. "I miss him. He was a good friend."

Bliss nodded. She wondered how she could broach the subject. She had been keeping a huge secret for too long now. Dylan, whom everyone had given up for dead, who'd been taken by a Silver Blood, who'd completely disappeared…had come back, crashing through her window just two weeks ago and telling her the most outrageous stories. Ever since the night he had returned, Bliss didn't know what to believe.

Dylan had to be completely mental. Crazy. What he'd said that night. It just didn't make sense, but he was convinced it was the god's honest truth. She could never talk him out of it, and lately he'd been threatening to do something. Just that morning he'd been seriously unhinged. Raving. Shouting like a maniac. It had been hard to watch. She'd promised him she would…she would…what would she do? She had no idea.

"Bliss Llewellyn?"

"Here," Bliss replied, standing and tucking her portfolio under her arm.

"We're ready for you. Sorry for the wait."

"Not a problem," she said, giving them her most professional smile. She followed the girl into an airy room in the back. Bliss had to walk what seemed like the length of a football field to reach the small table where the designer was seated.

It was always like this. They liked to watch you walk, and after you said hello, they'd ask you to just turn around and walk again. Rolf was casting for his Fashion Week show, and seated next to him were his team: a tanned, blond woman wearing dark glasses, a thin effeminate man, and several assistants.

"Hi, Bliss," Rolf said. "This is my wife, Randy, and this is Cyrus, who's putting the show together."

"Hi." Bliss offered her hand and shook his firmly.

"We're well acquainted with your work," Rolf said, taking a cursory glance at her photographs. He was a deeply tanned man with salt-and-pepper hair. When he crossed his arms, his muscles bulged. He looked like a cowboy, down to his custom-made alligator boots. That is, if cowboys got their tans in St. Barth's and their shirts made in Hong Kong. "In fact, we're pretty sure you're the girl for us. We just wanted to meet you."

Instead of putting Bliss at ease, the designer's friendliness made her even more nervous. The job was now hers to lose. "Oh, um, okay."

Randy Morgan, the designer's wife, was the quintessential "Morgan girl," down to the windswept hair. Bliss knew she had been Rolf's first model, back in the seventies, and still occasionally starred in some of the advertising campaigns. Randy pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and gave Bliss a brilliant smile. "The brand is going in a different direction for the show. We want to set an Edwardian mood—old-fashioned romance. There's going to be a lot of velvet, a lot of lace, maybe even a corset or two in the collection. We wanted a girl who didn't look too contemporary."

Bliss nodded, not quite sure what they were getting at, since every other brand that had booked her in the past thought she had looked "contemporary" enough. "Do you want me to walk or … ?"

"Please."

Bliss headed to the back of the room, took a deep breath, and began to walk. She walked as if she were walking in the moors at night, as if she were alone in the fog. As if she were a bit lost and dreamy. And just as she hit the pivot marker, the room spun and she had another vision.

Like she'd told Schuyler, she never had blackouts anymore. She could still see the showroom, as well as the designer and his team. Yet there it was: seated in the middle between Rolf and his wife was a crimson-eyed beast with a silver forked tongue. Maggots were crawling out of its eyes. She wanted to scream. Instead she closed her eyes and kept walking.

When she opened her eyes, Rolf and his team were clapping.

Apocalyptic visions or not, Bliss was hired.

Four

"I missed you." Oliver's lips against her cheek were warm and soft, and Schuyler felt a sharp ache in her stomach at the depth of his affection.

"I missed you too," she whispered back. That was true enough. They had not been together like this for a fortnight. And while she wanted to press her lips against his neck and do what came naturally, she stopped herself. She didn't need it right now, and she was wary of doing it because of how it made her feel. The Caerimonia Osculor was a drug—tempting and irresistible. It gave her too much power. Too much power over him.

She couldn't. Not here. Not now. Later. Maybe. Besides, it wasn't safe. They were in the supply closet off the copy room. Anyone could walk in and catch the two of them together. They had met, like they always did, in between the first and second bell after fourth period. They had all of five minutes.

"Will you be there…tonight?" Oliver asked, his voice husky in her ear. She wanted to run her fingers through his thick, caramel-colored hair, but she restrained herself. Instead she pressed her nose against the side of his head. He smelled so clean.

How had they been friends for so long without her knowing what his hair smelled like? But now she knew: like grass after the rain. He smelled so good she could cry. She had failed him in every way. He would never forgive her if he truly understood what she had done to him.

"I don't know," Schuyler replied, hesitating. "I'll try." She wanted to let him down as gently as she could. She looked into his genial, handsome face, his warm hazel eyes flecked with brown and gold.

"Promise," Oliver's voice was cold. "Promise." He pressed her tightly against him, and she was surprised at his strength. She had no idea humans could be just as strong as vampires when the occasion arose.

Her heart tore. Charles Force was right. She should keep away from him. Someone was going to get hurt, and she couldn't bear to think of Oliver suffering because of her. She wasn't worth it. "Ollie, you know I—"

"Don't say it. Just be there," he said roughly, and let go of her so quickly she almost lost her balance. Then he was gone just as fast, leaving her alone in the dark room, feeling strangely bereft.

Later that evening Schuyler zipped through the dark rainy streets, a blur of silver in her new raincoat. She could take a cab, but there were none to be had in the rain, and she preferred to walk—or rather, glide. She liked to flex her vampire muscles, liked how fast she could be when she set her mind to it. She'd walked the entire length of the island like a cat; she'd moved so quickly she had stayed dry. There was not a drop of wet on her.

The building was one of those new dazzling glass apartment buildings designed by the architect Richard Meier on the corner of Perry Street and the West Side Highway. They gleamed like crystal in the dark foggy twilight. Schuyler never got tired of looking at them, they were so beautiful.

Schuyler slipped inside the side doors, relishing the vampire speed that rendered her invisible to the guard and the other residents. She passed on the elevator, preferring to use her otherworldly talents and run up the back stairs, taking the steps four, five, sometimes ten at a time. In seconds she was in the penthouse.

It was warm in the apartment, and the streetlights below illuminated everything inside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. She pressed the button to automatically draw the curtains. They'd left them open again, exposed—amazing how their secret hiding place was located in one of the most visible buildings in Manhattan.

The housekeeper had set out logs for the fireplace, so Schuyler made a quick fire, easy as pushing another button. The flames rose high and licked at the wood. Schuyler watched it burn; then, as if seeing her future in the flames, put her head in her hands.

What was she doing here?

Why had she come?

It was wrong, what they were doing. He knew it. She knew it. They had told each other it would be for the last time. As if they would be able to bear it. She was both ecstatic and sorrowful at the prospect of their meeting.

Schuyler busied herself by emptying the dishwasher and setting the table. Lighting the candles. She hooked up the stereo to her iPod, and soon Rufus Wainwright's voice echoed through the walls. It was a song of yearning—their favorite.

She contemplated a bath, knowing her robe was hanging on a hook in the closet. There was so little evidence of their presence in the place—a few books, a set of clothes, a couple of toothbrushes. This was not a home, this was a secret.

She looked at herself in the mirror—her hair was mussed and her eyes were bright. He would be here soon. Of course he would. He was the one who had insisted.

The designated hour passed, yet no one arrived. Schuyler tucked her knees against her chest, trying to fight the rising tide of disappointment.

She had almost dropped off to sleep when there was a shadow on the terrace.

Schuyler looked up expectantly, feeling a mixture of anticipation and a deep and abiding sadness. Her heart was racing a million miles a minute. Even if she saw him every day, it would always be like the first time.

"Hey, you," a voice said. And a boy appeared from the shadows.

But he was not the one she was waiting for.

AUDIO RECORDINGS ARCHIVE:

Repository of History

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:

Altithronus Clearance Only

Transcript of Venator report filed 2/1

Schuyler Van Alen: Noticeable alienation from peers. Prefers the company of her Conduit, human male: Oliver Hazard-Perry. Survivor of two possible Silver Blood attacks. Will continue to monitor, yet am convinced it is unlikely she is the guilty party.

Bliss Llewellyn: Interesting case. Complains of headaches, dizziness, "blackouts." Perhaps side effect of transformation? Was discovered drowning in Central Park lake night of 11/28. Managed to rescue subject without revealing cover.

Madeleine Force: Possesses significant dark power and displays flagrant disregard for rules, especially those concerning human familiars.

UPDATE ON DYLAN WARD: Long Island team reports subject sighted fleeing the Ward house on Shelter Island. Have sent reinforcements to bring him in.

Five

The meeting was convened in regular fashion. The secretary took roll. All the old families were represented, the original seven (Van Alen, Cutler, Oelrich, Van Horn, Schlumberger, Stewart, and Rockefeller) had grown to accommodate the Llewellyns, the Duponts (represented by a nervous-looking Eliza, who was the late Priscilla's niece), the Whitneys, and the Carondolets. This was the Conclave of Elders—the gathering of the Blue Blood elite. This was where the decisions for the race, for the future of the clan, were made.

Lawrence welcomed them to the first spring session with a hearty greeting, and began to run through the agenda items: the upcoming fund-raiser for the New York Blood Bank, the latest news on blood-borne diseases and how they would affect the Blue Bloods, how their trust accounts were doing—Blue Blood money was invested heavily in the stock market, and the latest downturn had caused several millions of dollars to disappear.

Mimi was beside herself. Lawrence conducted the meeting as if nothing were amiss, as if a traitor weren't sitting next to him. It was maddening! It had been Kingsley who had called the Silver Blood, Kingsley who had arranged the attack at the Repository, Kingsley who had been the mastermind behind the cover-up, and yet there he was, seated at the table as if he belonged.

On the surface, the Conclave was as calm and placid and nonplussed as ever, although Mimi could detect a slight unease, just the faintest whiff of discord within the ranks. Why didn't Lawrence say anything? The old coot was babbling about the sub-prime market and the recent disastrous events on Wall Street. Ah, finally…Lawrence turned to Kingsley. An explanation at last.

But no. Lawrence matter-of-factly declared that Kingsley had a report to file, and ceded the floor to the so-called Venator, a Truth-Teller, a member of the vampire secret police.

Kingsley acknowledged the table with a grim smile. "Elders…and um, Mimi," he began. He was just as wickedly handsome as ever, but since he had been unmasked as a Venator, he looked older. No longer the rebellious youth, but serious and somber in a dark coat and tie.

Several members of the Conclave exchanged raised eyebrows, and white-haired Brooks Stewart had a coughing fit that was severe enough for Cushing Carondolet to pound him on the back several times. When the ruckus subsided, Kingsley continued without comment.

"I bring grave news. There is a disturbance on the South American continent. My team has detected ominous signs that point to a possible infractio."

Mimi understood the word from the sacred language— Kingsley was telling telling them of a breaking. But a breaking of what?

"What's been going on?" Dashiell Van Horn wanted to know. Mimi recognized him as the inquisitor during her trial.

"Cracks in the foundation of Corcovado. Some reports of disappearances of Elders of that Conclave. Alfonso Almeida has not returned from his usual sojourn in the Andes. His family is concerned."

Esme Schlumberger snorted. "Alfie just likes to get lost in the wilderness every year. Says it keeps him close to nature. It doesn't mean anything."

"But Corcovado—that is troubling," said Edmund Oelrich, who was now chief warden since Priscilla's death.

"With what we know of the Silver Bloods—how one was able to infiltrate the Repository itself—anything could be possible," Kingsley said.

"Indeed," Dashiell Van Horn agreed, lowering his half-moon spectacles.

Lawrence nodded. "You all know, of course, of the rumors that the Silver Bloods fled to South America before they disappeared. The Blue Bloods kept north, and some believed the Silver Bloods headed south to regroup. Of course, we have never had any evidence of this. …"

Several members of the Conclave squirmed visibly. Ever since the attack at the Repository, they had to acknowledge that Lawrence, the former outcast, had been right all along. That the wardens had willfully ignored the signs, had stuck their heads in the sand like a group of ostriches, too fearful to accept the truth: the Silver Bloods, the demons of myth, their ancient foe, had returned.

"We didn't have any evidence until now." Kingsley nodded. "But it looks as though Lawrence's suspicions were correct."

"If Corcovado is compromised, I cannot stress how grave a danger we are in," Lawrence said.

"But there have been no … deaths?" asked Eliza Dupont in a timid voice.

"None that we know of," Kingsley confirmed. "One of the young, a Yana Riberio, has also been missing. But her mother thinks she has absconded with her boyfriend on an impromptu weekend in Punta del Este," he said with a smirk.

Mimi kept silent; she was the only member who had yet to contribute to the discussion. In New York, there had been no deaths or attacks since the night at the Repository. She felt frustrated that she couldn't remember why Corcovado was so important—obviously everyone else on the Conclave knew why, but she didn't. It was annoying not to have come into her full memories.

The word meant absolutely nothing to her. And she would never ask anyone what it meant either—she had way too much pride. Maybe she could get Charles to illuminate her, although it seemed that ever since his resignation from the Conclave he had little interest in anything save sitting in his room, poring over old books and photographs, and listening to muffled recordings on an old eight-track.

"As the attack on the Repository has shown, the Silver Bloods are no longer a myth we can choose to ignore. We must act quickly. Corcovado must hold," Lawrence declared.

What on earth was Lawrence talking about? Mimi wished she knew.

"So. What is the plan?" Edmund inquired. The atmosphere had shifted. Distress at Kingsley's presence had transformed into distress at the news he had brought.

Kingsley shuffled the papers in front of him. "I'll be joining my team in the capital. Sao Paolo is a rats' nest. It will make a good hiding place. Then we'll make for Rio on foot, check out the situation in Corcovado, talk to some of the families."

Lawrence nodded. Mimi thought he was going to dismiss the meeting, but he didn't. Instead he removed a cigar from his shirt pocket. Kingsley leaned forward with a lit match, and Lawrence inhaled deeply. Smoke filled the air. Mimi wanted to wave her hands and remind Lawrence of the Committee's no-smoking rule, but she didn't dare.

The Regis regarded the table with a stern eye. "I am aware that some of you are wondering why Kingsley is here today," Lawrence said, finally addressing the question burning in everyone's mind.

He took another puff from his cigar. "Especially concerning the evidence shown at the blood trial. However, I have since learned that the Martins, and Kingsley in particular, are innocent. Their actions were justified by the mission they were given by the former Regis. For the protection of the Coven, I cannot disclose any more information about this."

Her father! Charles had something to do with it—but why wouldn't Lawrence tell them what it was?

"What mission?" Edmund demanded. "Why was the Conclave kept in the dark about this?"

"It is not our place to question the Regis," Forsyth Llewellyn reminded sharply.

Nan Cutler nodded. "It is not our way."

Mimi could see the table was neatly divided in two: half the members were indignant and anxious, while the other half were prepared to accept Lawrence's statement with no question. Not that it mattered. The Conclave was not a democracy; the Regis was an undisputed leader whose word was law. Mimi trembled with barely suppressed rage. What happened to the Conclave that had condemned her to burn just a few months ago? It wasn't fair! How could they trust a "reformed" Silver Blood?

"Would anyone care to formerly lodge a dissent?" Lawrence asked casually. "Edmund? Dashiell?"

Dashiell bowed his head. "No. We have put our faith in you, Lawrence."

Edmund gave a grudging nod.

"Thank you. Kingsley is once again a voting member of the Conclave, with full Venator status. Join me in welcoming him back to the fold. Without Kingsley, we would not have known about Corcovado so early."

There was a smattering of applause.

The meeting adjourned, and the Elders divided into whispering groups. Mimi noticed Lawrence talking in hushed tones with Nan Cutler.

Kingsley walked up to Mimi and put a light hand on her elbow. "I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about what happened. The trial and all."

"You set me up," she hissed, shaking off his arm.

"It was inevitable. Still, I'm glad to see you're well," he said. But his tone of voice indicated that her well-being didn't matter to him in the slightest.

Six

Theboy stepped into the light, his face illuminated by the fire. He looked the same—the same sad eyes, the same mess of black hair. He was wearing the same dirty T-shirt and jeans that Schuyler remembered him wearing the last time she'd seen him.

"Dylan! But how? What happened? Where have you been?" She ran to hug him, an ecstatic smile on her face. Dylan! Alive! He was not expected, but he was very welcome. She had so many questions to ask him: what happened the night he disappeared? How had he escaped from the Silver Bloods? How was it possible that he survived?

Yet as soon she got close to him, she realized something was very wrong. Dylan's face was grim, angry. His eyes were unfocused and bordering on hysteria.

"What's going on?"

Lightning-fast, Dylan pushed Schuyler with his mind, a telepathic shove—SLAM!—but Schyler was faster and ducked the mind-blow.

"Dylan! What are you doing?!" She held up her hands as if to shield herself, as though she could protect herself with a physical barrier.

SLAM! Another one. This time the suggestion was to throw herself off the balcony.

Schuyler choked, her brain feeling like it might explode from the pressure it was fighting.

She fled to the terrace, not able to stop the suggestion from taking over her senses. She looked over her shoulder. Dylan was right behind her. He looked manic and cruel, as if possessed by some malicious force.

"Why are you doing this?" she cried, as he sent yet another wrenching, agonizing command.

JUMP!

Yes. She must comply, she must obey—JUMP!—yes, she will, but if she is not careful, and she has no time to be … she could lose her footing…she could…Oh God, what if Lawrence is wrong? What if she isn't immortal? She is half human after all…What if she doesn't survive? What if, unlike the other Blue Bloods, the cycle of sleep and rest and reincarnation doesn't pertain to her. What if this one life is all she has? But it is much too late to worry about that now—she has no choice. JUMP! She can't see where she's going, she is flailing and scrabbling for purchase…He's right behind her, so she's going to…

She leaps from the terrace, flying…

No time, no time to scramble for another ledge, no time to grasp a rail…The sidewalk looming…

Schuyler braced herself for impact and landed on her feet. On her boots. THUD. Right into the middle of a stylish mob huddled in front of the Perry St. restaurant. New Yorkers abandoned to the elements because they smoked.

And in a flash, Dylan was right behind her. So fast, he was so very fast…

Then a powerful coercion took over: this was no mere suggestion—this was a control-lock. Crushing. This was what Lawrence had told her was the little-known fifth factor of the glom. The Consummo Alienari. Complete loss of one's mind to another.

For the Red Bloods, alienari meant instant death. For the vampires, it wrought irrevocable paralysis—the mind taken over so that one's will was completely subsumed. Lawrence had told her that taking the blood and the memories of fellow vampires, performing the Caerimonia Osculor on their own kind, was not the only thing Silver Bloods were known for. They had many other tortures and tricks up their sleeve. They did not drain all of their victims; some of them were left to live because they were more useful to the Silver Bloods as pawns.

Schuyler felt a heaviness as the force of the alienari settled in … she was about to succumb; so much easier to surrender rather than to fight…she felt herself weakening under its hold…What would be left of her if he succeeded? She thought of her mother, alive but not alive, would that be her fate? She was woozy on her feet, swaying; it would be over soon. But then she found something in the dark effluvium—like a tail, the tail of the glom—and she was able to isolate the signal, able to figure out which part was trying to control her, and she twisted it around, like wrestling an alligator—flipped it on its head—and soon she was taking over, and she was bending it to her will, and—

Dylan is screaming—he is the one in pain—he is the one backed up against the wall, unable to move while her mind holds his in her grasp. She can feel it, can feel her dominance taking over, greedily exulting over its triumph. She is squeezing him—his entire being—with her mind. It is like a vise—

She is killing him…

Soon he will no longer be himself…but an extension of her will…

Until…

"SCHUYLER! STOP!"

"DON'T!"

"SCHUYLER!" A roar.

Her name. Someone was calling her name. Oliver. Telling her to stop.

Schuyler released her hold, but not completely. She was still holding out her hand, and twenty feet away, Dylan was pinned to a wall. Held there by her mind. He was gurgling. He couldn't breathe.

"PLEASE!" It was a girl's voice this time. Bliss.

There. She let go.

Dylan sagged to the ground.

Seven

Blissran as fast as she could. She had seen the whole thing. She was in the cab and she'd seen it all: Schuyler's jump, Dylan coming after, the chase, the reversal. She'd witnessed Dylan's anguish and Schuyler's mastery.

Oh God, don't let her have killed him.

"Dylan!" Bliss kneeled by his side. He lay facedown on the sidewalk, so she turned him over gently and took him in her arms. He was so thin…just skin and bones underneath a T-shirt. She held him tenderly like a baby bird. He was damaged and pathetic, but he was hers. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "Dylan!"

When she'd arrived home after her go-see appointment and he wasn't there to meet her as they'd planned, she'd known immediately that something was wrong. She called Oliver and told him to meet her at the Perry Street apartment building as soon as he could. Dylan had been saying all along he was going to do something, and now he had. Luckily, Bliss knew where to find him because she knew Schuyler's secret and where she was going to be that night.

Dylan opened his eyes. He recoiled when he saw Bliss, and then turned to Schuyler and snarled in a deep, booming rumble, "Argento Croatus!"

"Are you insane?" Schuyler asked, Oliver standing by protectively. She couldn't believe her ears. Dylan had just called her a Silver Blood. What was going on? What had happened to him? Why did his voice sound like that?

"Dylan, stop it. Sky—he doesn't know what he's talking about," Bliss said nervously. "Dylan, please, you're not making sense."

Dylan spaced out, his pupils dilating rapidly as if a flashlight were shining in his eyes. Then he started laughing in a high-pitched squeal.

"You've known he was back and you didn't tell me," Schuyler said, and the accusation hung in the air between them.

"Yes." Bliss took a sharp breath. "I didn't want to tell you because…" Because you would tell the Conclave. You would have them take him away. And yes, he's changed. He's different. He's not the same. Something awful and unspeakable has happened to him. But I still love him. You understand, don't you? You, who wait in an apartment for a boy who does not arrive.

Schuyler nodded. The two of them understood each other without speaking. It was the vampire way.

"Still, he can't be like this; we've got to get him help." Schuyler moved closer to the two of them.

"Don't touch me," Dylan snarled. Suddenly, he leaped to his feet and grabbed Bliss by the throat, his bony fingers pressing violently on her pale neck.

"If you're not going to help me, then you're one of them," he said menacingly, tightening his grip.

Bliss began to cry. "Dylan…don't."

Schuyler lunged toward Dylan, but Oliver restrained her. "Wait," he said. "Wait—I can't let you get hurt again…"

Meanwhile, Dylan pushed Bliss further and further with his mind, his fury relentless, his power only more frightening in its recklessness. Bliss dropped to her knees. There would be no telepathic gymnastics on her part.

Now it was Schuyler's turn to scream. Schuyler's turn to beg him to stop.

Dylan took no notice of them, and stroked Bliss's cheek with his other hand. He leaned in, his mouth on her neck. Schuyler could see his fangs appear. They were about to draw blood.

"No…Dylan…please," Bliss whispered. "No…"

"Let me go." Schuyler shook Oliver off her. Bliss watched as her friend frantically prepared an incantation that would break Dylan's hold.

But just before Schuyler could send the coercion, Dylan's shoulders shook and he sank to the ground of his own volition, abruptly releasing his victim. Bliss crumpled to the floor, violet imprints from his fingers blooming on her neck.

Dylan put his head between his knees and sobbed.

"What the hell just happened?" he cried, and finally his was a voice Bliss recognized. For the first time that evening, Dylan sounded like himself.

Eight

"Try it," Mimi said, holding a spoon on which a gelatinous mound quivered. "It's delicious."

Her brother looked suspiciously at the appetizer. Gelйe of sea urchin with foamed asparagus did not sound good. But he took a bite manfully.

"See?" Mimi smiled.

"Not bad." Jack nodded. She was right as always.

They were seated in a private banquette in a restaurant located in the gleaming Time Warner Center. A restaurant that was, for the time being, the most expensive and most celebrated restaurant in Manhattan. Getting a reservation at Per Se was akin to getting an audience with the pope. Near impossible. But that's what Daddy's secretaries were for.

Mimi liked the new mall, as she called it. It was shiny and glossy and slick, just like the Force Tower. It smelled thrillingly expensive, like a new Mercedes. The building and everything in it was a paean to capitalism and money. You couldn't spend less than five hundred dollars for a meal for two at any of its four-star restaurants. This was post-boom, seven-figure-bonus New York, the New York of financiers and ready-made billionaires, the New York of brash hedge-fund jockeys with shellacked trophy wives flaunting their liposculpted physiques and couture hair extensions.

Jack, of course, hated it. Jack preferred a city that he had never even experienced. He waxed nostalgic about the legendary days of the Village, when anyone from Jackson Pollock to Dylan Thomas could be found wandering the cobblestoned streets. He liked grit and dirt and a Times Square that was known for its hustlers and three-card-monte dealers and underground juice bars (since strip clubs couldn't serve alcohol). He couldn't stomach a New York that had been taken over by the likes of Jamba Juice, Pinkberry, and Cold Stone.

He had been prepared to despise the precious, sixteen-table restaurant in the middle of what was essentially a shopping mall. But as each course appeared—caviar and oyster sabayon, white truffles generously grated over slippery tagliatelle noodles, marrow over the richest Kobe beef—Mimi could see he was beginning to change his mind. Each dish consisted of a mere handful of bites, just enough to excite the senses and leave them panting for the next gourmet fix.

They had walked in that evening to find the place crawling with Blue Bloods, which was somewhat unexpected since vampires only ate to amuse themselves; but apparently even those who did not need sustenance appreciated having their taste buds tickled. A couple of Elders, emeritus members of the Conclave—Margery and Ambrose Barlow—occupied a corner table. Mimi saw that Margery had fallen asleep again, as she had between each course. But the waiter, who looked like he was used to it by now, simply shook her awake each time he delivered something new to their table.

"So how was the meeting?" Jack asked casually, putting down the spoon and nodding to the busboy that he was done.

"Interesting," she said, taking a sip from her wineglass. "Kingsley Martin's back."

Jack looked surprised. "But he…"

"I know." Mimi shrugged. "Lawrence wouldn't explain. Apparently there's a reason, but it's much too important to share with the Conclave. I swear, he runs that thing like it's the seventeenth century. It's a farce having 'voting members.' He doesn't ask our opinion on anything. He just does what he wants."

"He must have good reason for it," Jack said, his eyes lighting up as the waiter brought new delectables. He looked disappointed to find it was just a dollop of potato salad. Mimi frowned as well. She was expecting gastronomic fireworks, not a picnic dish. But one bite changed her mind. "This is … the…best potato salad … in the world." Jack agreed, as he busily devoured his.

"This is nice, isn't it?" Mimi said, indicating the room and the view of Central Park. She reached across the table and took his hand.

Almost getting killed in Venice was probably the best thing to have happened to their relationship. Faced with the prospect of losing his twin forever, Jack became the soul of devotion.

She still remembered how he'd held her the night after the Blood Trial. His face had aged overnight with worry. "I was so afraid. I was so afraid of losing you."

Mimi had been moved enough to forgive his transgressions. "Never, my love. We will be together always."

After that, there had been no more talk of Schuyler. Even when the little rat had moved into their home, Jack remained cold and indifferent. He never spoke to her, he barely even looked at her. As far as Mimi could tell, secretly probing his mind when his guard was down, he never thought about Schuyler at all. She was simply an irritating houseguest. Like a blemish you couldn't erase.

Maybe she had accomplished what she'd wanted after all. She hadn't been able to get rid of Schuyler, but the attack had succeeded in securing the love of her vampire twin.

"Butter-poached lobster," the waiter murmured, silently setting down two new dishes. "So I was thinking, we might as well invite everyone to the bonding," Mimi said, in between bites. Jack grunted.

"Oh, I know. You like the old-fashioned way, just the two of us in the moonlight, blah, blah, blah. But remember Newport? Now that was a party. And you know, having the Four Hundred at a bonding is the way to go now. I heard Daisy Van Horn and Toby Abeville just got bonded in Bali. It was a 'destination bonding.'" Mimi tittered.

Jack signaled the waiter for another bottle of wine. "You know, most Red Bloods these days wait until their thirties to wed. What's the rush?" he asked, regarding with supreme satisfaction the seventh—or was it eighth?—course: a bowl of chilled pea soup.

"Well, my blood is blue, my friend." Mimi curled her lip. True, the Red Bloods they knew did wait a ridiculously long time for their bondings, but those were mere earthly weddings. Humans broke their vows every day with no consequence. This was a celestial situation. While it was tradition for vampire twins to bond on their twenty-first birthday, Mimi saw no reason to wait until then, and there was nothing in the Code that said they couldn't do it earlier. The sooner they said their vows, the better.

When the oaths were exchanged, their souls would mold to each other. Nothing could come between them. They would become one in this lifetime, as they had in all their others. Once the bond was sealed, it could not be broken for the cycle. Schuyler would become nothing more than a distant memory. Jack would forget whatever feelings he had for her. The bond worked in mysterious and irrevocable ways. Mimi had seen it in lifetimes before—how her twin would pine for Gabrielle (who was now Allegra Van Alen in this cycle) in his youth, but once he said his vows, he would not even remember her name. Azrael would be the only dark star in his universe.

"Shouldn't we graduate from high school first?" Jack asked.

Mimi didn't listen. She was already planning to get fitted for her bonding dress. "Or I don't know, maybe we could elope to Mexico, what do you think?"

Jack smiled, and continued to eat his soup.

Nine

It occurred to Schuyler that the last time she was at the Odeon, she had been with Oliver and Dylan. It was just over a year ago—Dylan had recently transferred to Duchesne, and Oliver's driver had taken them downtown. They had wandered the streets, in and out of shops and bookstores and record stores, poking in apothecary jars and getting their palms read by a gypsy woman on the sidewalk. Then at the end of the day, they'd trooped into the restaurant, into one of the comfortable, cracked-leather red booths and had eaten moules frites while Dylan ordered beers with his fake ID and told them stories about being kicked out of every prep school in the northeast corridor.

Dylan was telling them a new story now, Bliss sitting quietly by his side.

He was telling them about what had happened to him.

Now that he wasn't trying to kill her, Dylan didn't seem so scary, so … crazy and unfocused. Now he just looked too thin, like a cat left out in the rain while its owners were on vacation. His eyes were hooded, and there were black bruises on his cheeks. His skin looked jaundiced and he had cuts—little cuts everywhere on his forearms, as if he'd walked through glass. Maybe he had.

Oliver put an arm around Schuyler. After what just happened, he had gone beyond caring who would see them together. And for once Schuyler agreed. She liked his hand there. Liked feeling protected. Her mind drifted to the empty apartment on Perry Street. But she made herself focus on Dylan.

"I don't remember much, really. I ran away, you know. I went to the old Ward House, on Shelter Island … I took some refuge there. But the beast caught up with me eventually. I don't remember much of what happened, but I managed to get away again, and this time I got some help.

"Venators," he continued in an awed tone. "You know about them, right?"

They nodded. They also knew that one had been sent to Duchesne. Bliss told them about how Kingsley Martin was back. Her father had been at the Conclave meeting that afternoon. But Schuyler didn't pay attention to the news; she wanted to know what had happened to Dylan.

"Anyway, they let me stay with them, they took care of me while I was recuperating. One of the SB's got me pretty bad in the neck. But the Venators said it was all right, that I hadn't been 'corrupted,' you know…'turned' into one of them. Anyway"—he looked at Schuyler warily—"I overheard their conversations…how the Conclave had finally discovered who was the Silver Blood among us, and they said—"

"They said it was me, didn't they?" Schuyler asked, taking a french fry off Oliver's plate.

Dylan didn't deny it. "They said it was you, that you were the one. The night at The Bank. The last thing I remember was hanging out with you, Schuyler, and they said you were the one who'd attacked me."

"Do you believe that?" she asked.

"I don't know what to believe."

"Do you even know who she is?" Oliver demanded. "I mean, I'm glad you're back and all, man, but you're talking smack. Schuyler is… Her mom is…" Oliver was so angry he couldn't finish.

"Do you know the story of Gabrielle?" Schuyler asked.

"A little," Dylan admitted. "Gabrielle, the Uncorrupted, who was bonded to Michael, Pure of Heart. The only vampires who didn't sin against the almighty. In this cycle, Michael's name is Charles Force. So what?"

"Gabrielle is my mother," she told him.

"Show him," Bliss urged.

Schuyler pushed the large man's watch she wore on her right wrist. Pushed it up the same way she'd seen Charles do it the night she had accused him of being the Silver Blood. How funny that now she had to resort to clearing her name in exactly the same way.

Etched in her skin, just like on Charles's, was the mark. It was raised, as if burned there, a sigil. A sword piercing clouds.

"What is it?" Dylan asked.

"The mark of the Archangel," Oliver explained. "She's a Daughter of the Light. There is no way she's a Silver Blood. She's the opposite. She's what they fear."

Schuyler touched the mark. It had always been there, since she was born. She'd thought it simply an odd birthmark, until Lawrence had pointed it out.

Dylan stared at the mark. It shone. He crossed himself. He looked down at his plate of steak frites. "Then who were they—the Venators who helped me?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Oliver smiled thinly. He tapped the table in front of his friend. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

"I know exactly who they were. They were the Silver Bloods."

AUDIO RECORDINGS ARCHIVE:

Repository of History

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:

Altithronus Clearance Only

Transcript of Venator report filed 2/15

DYLAN WARD UPDATE: Subject has been interrogated and released.

Transcript of interrogation destroyed in accordance with Regis Mandate 1011.

Ten

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" Bliss looked around the dirty hotel room. She'd never been inside. Dylan had always insisted they meet in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel itself had seen better days. It was dilapidated and falling apart, one of the old New York landmarks with a literary and scandalous past. The Chelsea was where a heroin-mad Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed Nancy Spungen, where Dylan Thomas died an alcoholic. It was also the place that inspired Bob Dylan's "Sara" ("Stayin' up for days at the Chelsea Hotel…") and where Allen Ginsberg penned some of his poems.

She walked around the room, peering out at the rainy street through the blinds. The first night he had returned to her, she'd been shocked and happy to see him. She'd never truly believed he was gone, but it was still mind-blowing to find out he was alive.

That night she'd begged him to stay nearby, but he had insisted on this hotel. He felt safer downtown he said, and had shuddered at the thought of spending another night in one of those five-star plush hotel suites the Conclave had trapped him in while he was being investigated for Aggie Carondolet's death.

The night he'd returned, she'd wanted to be close to him, to feel his body next to hers. She'd felt a closer kinship to him knowing he was like her, a vampire, than a mere Red Blood she could suck dry. Before he'd left, they'd had…not quite a relationship, but more than a flirtation. They'd been about to start something…She still remembered the taste of his skin, the feel of his hands underneath her shirt.

But Dylan hadn't shown any interest in picking up where they'd left off. While he'd never rejected her outright, she still felt rebuffed romantically. That first night, she had tried to put her arms around him, and he'd hugged her impatiently, quickly letting go as if touching her repulsed him. He'd demanded they go seek Schuyler and confront her, and Bliss had spent hours talking him out of his plan. They had argued, and she had marched him to this hotel, where he had been holed up since…

In this dirty, smelly suite. Didn't they have housekeeping? Why was this allowed? Newspapers stacked waist-high, empty cans littered about, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.

"Sorry for the mess."

She took a seat on the corner of a plaid sofa that was covered with the remains of the Sunday Times. She suddenly felt so tired. She'd been waiting for him to come back, dreaming about it for so long—and now he was here, but it was nothing at all like she'd imagined. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong. He had tried to hurt Schuyler; he had tried to hurt her.

As if he knew what she was thinking, Dylan spoke. "Bliss, I don't know what came over me back there. You know I would never…never …"

Bliss nodded curtly. She wanted to believe him, but the strength of his force of will on her mind still throbbed. He had done this to her, cut her with a knife—a mental one, but that did not diminish the sharpness of its blade.

Dylan sat next to her on the couch and pulled her to him. What was he doing? Now he wanted to kiss her? Now he wanted them to be together? When he'd done nothing but make her believe he didn't want that?

She had to agree with Schuyler and Oliver. Dylan was dangerous. He had changed. Was he corrupted? Was he turning into a Silver Blood? He'd taken Aggie, hadn't he? After their meeting at the Odeon they had placed Dylan in the back of a taxi, and Bliss had had a quick, whispered conference with Sky and Ollie.

"He can't be alone."

"I'll stay with him," she'd promised them.

"Be careful. He's not the same."

"He's not sane."

"I know," Bliss admitted.

"What are we going to do?"

"We'll figure it out. We always do." That was Oliver. Always optimistic.

And now here she was, in this dirty, smelly room, with the boy she'd once loved so much her heart had ached for months after his disappearance.

Dylan peeled off his jacket. It was a nylon one, a light beige windbreaker, the kind they sold at warehouse stores where you could buy tires in the same aisle as your underwear. She dimly remembered stuffing a bloody leather jacket in the trash. Whatever happened to that? Incinerated.

She stiffened as his hand grazed her arm lightly.

"What are you doing?" she asked, wanting to be angry but feeling a rushing, queasy excitement instead. He was so different from the Red Blood boys she'd had. Mimi was right—there was something about being with your own kind that got the blood flowing in a different way.

He nuzzled her cheek. "Bliss…" The way he said her name, so softly, so intimately, his breath warm in her ear.

"Stay with me," he said. Before she could even halfheartedly protest, he had deftly maneuvered it so they were lying on the couch, her knees underneath his, his thighs pressing against hers, his hands entwined in her hair, and she was running her hands all over his chest—he'd gotten scrawny, but there was a hardness to his muscles that hadn't been there before—then his tongue was in her mouth…and it was so sweet…She could feel the tears behind her eyes slipping down her cheek, and he was kissing those away too…God, she had missed him…He had hurt her, but maybe you only hurt the ones you love?

He fumbled for the hem of her shirt, and she helped him lift it up; he buried his face in the hollow beneath her neck, and then suddenly he jumped away, as if burned.

"You still have that thing," he said, leaning as far back as he could, pressed up against the other end of the couch, away from her. "Palma Diabolos …" He was speaking in a language she could not understand.

"What?" she asked, still dizzy from his kisses. Still feeling drunk with his scent. She looked at where he was pointing.

The necklace. Lucifer's Bane. The emerald hung in a chain over her heart. Somehow she had never returned it to her father's safe. Somehow she had gotten into the habit of wearing it everywhere.

It comforted her to know it was there. When she touched it, she felt…better. Safe. More like herself.

Dylan looked stricken. "I can't kiss you with that thing around your neck."

"What?" Bliss pulled her shirt back over her head.

He continued to look as if he'd been poisoned. "You've been wearing that all along. So that's why I couldn't … I knew there was a reason." Then he was babbling again. In a different language. This time it sounded Chinese.

Bliss put her shirt back on. He was incredible. She'd been a total idiot. Okay, so maybe she'd promised Schuyler and Oliver she'd keep an eye on him, but it wasn't like he was a danger anymore. He knew Schuyler wasn't a Silver Blood. Plus, he was old enough to take care of himself.

She certainly wasn't going to stay here one second longer. She was humiliated. She had no idea how he really felt about her. He ran hot and cold. One minute he was ripping her clothes off, and the next minute he was cringing away from her as if her body were the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen. She was tired of this game.

"You're leaving?" Dylan asked as she gathered her things and headed toward the door.

"For now."

He gazed at her sadly. "I miss you when you're gone."

Bliss nodded as if he'd just told her something innocuous about the weather. Dylan could take his hangdog eyes and his sexy voice somewhere else. She just wanted to be alone.

Eleven

"Last call, guys," the waitress informed them "Another Campari?" she asked Oliver.

He rattled the ice cubes and emptied his cocktail glass in one gulp. "Sure."

"Anything for you?"

Schuyler considered another glass of Johnnie Walker Black. She used to hate the taste of whiskey but lately had developed a liking for it. It was fiery and sweet and succulent—the closest thing you could get to the taste of blood. Oliver had once asked her to describe what it tasted like, since he didn't see the appeal. To him, blood tasted metallic and faintly sweet. Schuyler explained that vampires tasted blood with a different sense—it was like drinking fire.

Hence, her newfound love of whiskey.

"Sure, why not," she told the waitress. It wasn't like it was going to get her drunk. Although Oliver looked like he was well on his way. He'd come into the habit of fortifying himself with alcohol whenever they got together. Sure, he wasn't drunk when they were together at school—but those abrupt reunions were so brief it didn't matter. But she noticed whenever they spent a substantial amount of time together, he was always a little buzzed.

The waitress returned with two cocktail glasses filled to the brim. It was way past midnight, and the only people left in the place were groggy-eyed clubkids getting breakfast after a late night spent at velvet-rope champagnalias, or groggy-eyed clubkids getting breakfast before an early-morning stint at after-hours lounges where no alcohol was served and the clientele preferred their highs to be chemical ones.

Oliver sipped his cocktail through a red straw. She found it endearing how he liked sweet things. Oliver hated beer and all the usual trappings of what he called "el jocko-Americano." Somehow the girly drinks made him more manly, in Schuyler's eyes. He wasn't afraid to be himself.

It was so nice to finally hang out with Oliver in public. She couldn't very well sink her fangs into him with other people around. Lately, whenever they were alone, it hovered in the air, an expectation on his part, and Schuyler had missed their easy friendship. She relaxed in his company.

"Why do you drink so much around me?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

"I'm offended. You think I'm a lush?"

"A little."

"I don't know." He looked up at the ceiling instead of looking at her directly. "Dude, you scare me sometimes."

Schuyler wanted to laugh. "I scare you?"

"Yeah, you're all—vampire superwoman. You could have really done some damage to him, you know." Oliver grinned, although Schuyler knew he was more troubled than he let on.

"He's fine," she snapped. She didn't really want to dwell on what could have happened back there. She had had Dylan in her grasp. She had felt his mind bowing to hers. Had felt all his memories screaming to be let free. And she had wanted nothing more than to crush all of them—silence all their voices. She'd had it in her power to do so. It was a sobering thought, so she took another sip of her drink.

"He's not fine," Oliver said. "You know we have to tell Lawrence about him, don't you? They'll have to do something about it. He's showing classic signs of corruption. Delusions, hysteria, mania."

A busboy cleared their table and gave them the eye. Schuyler knew they should leave, the staff was ready to go home. But she wanted to linger with Oliver just a while longer. "How do you know all this?"

"I did my reading. You know, the stuff Lawrence told us to look up?"

Right. Schuyler felt guilty. She had been remiss on her vampire lessons. Lawrence had been using Oliver to keep her abreast on her studies. She should be concentrating on refining her strengths, on sharpening her skills, but instead she'd been distracted. The Perry Street apartment…

"Do you think Dylan was lying to us?" she asked.

"No, I think he thought he was telling us the truth, as much as he knew. But he's obviously been manipulated." Oliver cracked ice cubes in his mouth. "I don't know if I believe he ever really got away from them. I think they let him go."

Schuyler became silent. They had let him go so that he could finish the job he'd failed at before. Dylan had attacked her—twice—before he'd suddenly disappeared. They'd chosen him because he was close to her, was one of her best friends. She couldn't deny it: someone wanted her killed. She wanted to share this realization with Oliver, but kept it to herself. He worried about her enough.

Oliver glanced at the bill and put down his credit card. "So, how are things over at the Death Star?"

"The same." Schuyler smiled, although she felt sick enough to throw up. It was hard to see Oliver and not hate herself because of what she was doing to him.

"So…" Oliver sighed. Schuyler knew where this was going and wished once again that she hadn't made him her familiar.

"So?"

The waitress returned with the credit-card slip and hinted that if they stayed any longer they'd have to leave through the back entrance.

Oliver pocketed his card and tried to take another gulp of his already empty drink. "I was on my way to meet you at the Mercer when Bliss called. She said you were down here, on Perry Street. I thought that was kind of odd, since we'd agreed we'd meet at the Mercer, as usual, but she said she was positive you'd be there. What were you doing in that building anyway?"

Schuyler wouldn't look him in the eye. "Modeling thing. Linda Farnsworth has a place for the models to crash there. Bliss and I go there sometimes to hang out with a couple other girls. I didn't realize the time. I'm sorry I kept you waiting."

"Well, um, since we didn't get to meet like we'd planned, do you want to…"

It was easier to rebuff him this time, since she'd already made her decision earlier. Schuyler shook her head. "No, I've got to be back for the curfew. I'm late enough as it is, and if Charles finds out—"

"Fuck Charles." Oliver flicked a toothpick across the table so it landed on the floor. "I mean, God, sometimes I'm so tired of all this shit."

"Ollie—"

"I just want us to be together," he said, looking at the ceiling again. "I mean, I know it's not possible. But why not? Why should we follow the old laws? Why should anyone care anyway?" he railed. "Don't you want us to be together?" he challenged, an edge to his voice.

Schuyler was moved to take his hand in hers. "I do, Ollie, you know I do." He was her ally, her partner-in-crime, her conscience and her comfort.

Oliver's face transformed into a look of utmost happiness and satisfaction. He smiled at her then, and Schuyler hoped with all her heart that he would never find out the truth.

Twelve

It was late when Mimi and Jack finally wobbled out of Per Se. The bill for their meal was in the four-figure range, not that Mimi was surprised. She was so used to paying exorbitant prices for everything in her life, she sometimes complained when she discovered something was cheaper than she'd expected. "What do they think, that I'm poor?" she sniffed. "That I can't afford FIJI Water?"

Jack chided her for her extravagance. "It's the mistake of the nouveau riche, you know, believing that having a lot of money is the same as having an infinite amount of money."

Mimi stared at him incredulously. "Did you just call me nouveau riche?"

Jack barked a laugh as they got on the elevator. "I guess so."

"Bastard!" Mimi pretended to be terribly offended. "Our money is so old it's drawing social security. Bankruptcy's out of the question. We're flush."

"I hope so. Didn't you say Lawrence reported a huge dip in earnings? And I've listened in on the latest investor appraisals. FNN is down several points. It's not good news."

She faked a big yawn. "Don't bore me with details. I'm not worried."

They walked out into the night. Across the street, horses hitched to hansom cabs awaited clueless tourists. It was cold—the last dredge of winter. Vestiges of the most recent snowstorm remained in the form of yellowy, cracked ice on top of garbage bins and the sidewalks.

Jack raised his hand, and a sleek black Bentley as large as a hearse pulled up to the curb.

"Home?" Mimi asked as she slid into the seat.

Jack leaned over, his arm resting on the edge of the door. "I'll see you there in a bit. I told Bryce and Jamie I'd meet them at the club."

"Oh."

He bussed her cheek. "Don't wait up, okay?" Then he shut the door and rapped smartly on the window. "Take her home, Sully."

Mimi waved at him through the tinted glass, her good mood evaporating as she watched him walk across the street to catch a cab headed downtown.

"Home, Miss Force?" Sully turned around.

She was about to nod. She was tired. Home sounded like a good idea. Though she was a little piqued that she had to go home alone. She toyed with the idea of following him, but Jack had been so devoted of late…There was nothing to suspect … He always met Bryce Cutting and Jamie Kip at the club…silly boys. And besides, she'd been watching him like a hawk in the past few weeks, ever since Venice, and had felt guilty because she had found nothing. What was she so worried about anyway?

But she had to be honest with herself. She was worried. "Not yet, Sully. Let's see where he's going."

The driver nodded. He'd heard this request before.

"Make sure he doesn't see us."

The car trailed the cab heading south on the West Side Highway. Block 122 had closed, and the new hot club of the moment, the Dante Inn, was located farther downtown, in the West Village, in the basement of one of those new glass buildings right off the highway. Mimi remembered Jack telling her how the family had bought an apartment there, as an investment. The place was currently being rented out to some celebrity.

The cab pulled up to the entrance, a velvet rope hooked between two fire escape railings and guarded by a tall man in a black greatcoat. The Dante Inn was a smaller venue, less flashy than Block 122, but even more exclusive. Jack got out and disappeared inside.

Mimi leaned back happily. "Okay, let's go." She watched as a white limousine drove up in front of them. God, people were so tacky. And Jack was calling her nouveau riche?

She tried to see if she could recognize the rowdy people from the limo—that one had to be a famous actor, because he was wearing a trilby hat like a moron—when she saw something else: someone emerged from the shadows and slipped inside the main doors to the building. A figure in a silver raincoat, with dark hair.

No.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be Schuyler Van Alen. Could it? Of course it was.

Mimi felt her heart clench. It was too much of coincidence. Jack was in the club that was located in the basement of the same building Schuyler had just entered.

It couldn't be. Her mind raced; had she missed something? But he had been so indifferent, so cold to Schuyler. He couldn't still be infatuated, could he?

He doth protest too much.

Mimi was never a big fan of Shakespeare, not even during his lifetime, but she remembered the important lines. This was definitely the winter of her discontent.

She knew, without having it confirmed, that no matter what kind of front Jack put up to the world, what kind of lies he told her, there was a secret place in his heart that she could not read or fathom. A secret place that was devoted to someone else. A secret place inhabited by Schuyler Van Alen.

Strangely enough, Mimi did not feel betrayed, or stricken, or devastated. She merely felt a heavy sadness. She had tried so hard to help him. She had tried to keep him loyal to her.

How could he act with no fear of reprisal? He knew the laws as well as she. He knew what was at stake. He knew what he could lose.

Oh, Jack. Don't let me have to hurt you. Don't let us be estranged in this way. Don't make me have to hunt you down.

Thirteen

"I thought you'd forgotten."

Schuyler smiled as she removed her raincoat and hung it on the hook. She had just entered the apartment with her key. A key she kept on a silk ribbon around her neck. She never took it off, for fear that it would be stolen. She'd entered the building in the normal fashion. Had a polite word with the guard. Headed up in the elevator, exchanging pleasantries with the neighbors. Cooed at their baby bundled inside a fleece-lined thousand-dollar stroller. Pretended she was just like them. No more vampire tricks for one evening.

"Have you been waiting long?" she asked.

"I just got here."

He was standing against a column, his arms crossed in front of him. He was still wearing the same white shirt from that morning, a little crumpled at the end of the day, and he had loosened his tie, letting it fall to the side. But he was still golden and gorgeous. His sea green eyes danced with amusement and desire. Jack Force. The boy she had been waiting to see all evening. The boy she had been waiting for all her life.

She wanted to run to him—to skip, giggling into his arms—but she savored the way he was looking at her. She could drown in the intensity of his gaze. And she had learned a little about seduction in the last few weeks they had been together.

Had learned that it was sweeter when she made him wait.

So she took her time, removed her shoes, brushed her bare feet on the carpet, and let him watch her.

Outside of this place, they could be nothing to each other. He would not even allow himself to look at her. He could not afford it. So she wanted him to enjoy himself, to look at her as much as he liked.

"Get over here," he growled.

And then, at last, she ran—leaped into his arms, and together they crashed against the wall in a tight embrace. He lifted her with graceful ease, covering her body with kisses.

She tightened her legs around his torso and bent over, brushing his cheek with the tendrils of her hair.

Jack.

She felt liquid in his arms. Pressed against him, his heart beating wildly in time with hers. When they kissed, she closed her eyes and saw a million colors bursting in the air, glorious and alive. He smelled earthy and lush, warm and brutish. It had been a surprise: she'd assumed he would smell like ice—like nothing—and she liked that he smelled coarse and real. He was not a dream.

She knew that what they were doing was wrong. Lawrence had warned her that vampire bonds should not be broken. Jack was sworn to another. She had promised herself to stop, but she had also promised Jack she would always be there for him. They were so happy together. They belonged to each other. Yet they never spoke about the past or the future. Only this existed, this little bubble they'd made, this little secret. And who knew how long they had?

When she was in his arms, she felt sorry for Mimi.

It had started right after she'd settled into that palace of gilt and marble the Forces called home. The place was part fortress and part Versailles. There were rooms and anterooms filled with magnificent antiques polished and theatrically lit on display. Oceans of expensive fabric swathed the windows, and a silent crew of servants moved around the house, dusting, cleaning, offering its occupants tea or coffee on silver service trays.

She had sat on the princess bed in her designated room, kicking at the battered trunk that was the only remnant of home she'd allowed herself to bring. Lawrence had promised that he would get her out somehow, that she would return to her rightful home soon. He knew Charles would not allow him to have contact with her, so they had agreed they would use Oliver as a (she smiled a little) conduit between them.

Lawrence had driven her to the Forces' town house himself. Had helped carry her bags to the front door, where a gloved butler took over. Too soon, her grandfather had left, and Schuyler was alone again.

Charles had given her a quick tour of the house: the sparkling Olympic-size pool in the basement, tennis courts on the roof, the gym, the sauna, the Picasso room (so called because it contained one of the two mural-size black-and-white studies of the masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). He'd told her to make herself comfortable, to avail herself of everything in the kitchen. Then he'd laid down his rules. Schuyler had been too angry and annoyed to do more than dumbly nod at everything.

So she'd decided to kick her trunk. Stupid trunk. Stupid trunk with the broken lock. Stupid ugly trunk that was one of the few things she'd kept that her mother had owned. It was an old Louis Vuitton traveling valise, the kind that, when stood upright and opened, revealed a mini wardrobe. She kicked it again.

There was a soft knock on the door, and then the door was pushed open.

"Do you think you could…um…keep it down a bit? I'm trying to read," Jack said, looking bemused.

"Oh! Sorry." She stopped kicking the trunk. She'd wondered when she'd see her cousins. The complicated ties of vampire families still eluded her, but she knew that she and Jack weren't technically blood-related, even though Charles was her uncle. Someday she'd have to ask Lawrence how it all shook down. "What are you reading?"

"Camus," he said, holding up a copy of The Stranger. "Have you read it?"

"No, but I like The Cure song. You know, the one that's based on that book?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

"I think it's on Three Imaginary Boys. Their first album. Robert Smith, he's a big reader too. Probably an existentialist like you," she teased.

Jack leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, regarding her thoughtfully. "You hate it here, don't you?"

"Does it show that much?" Schuyler asked, pulling the long sleeves of her sweater over her hands.

He chuckled. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry."

He put the book down on a vanity table. "It's not so bad."

"Really? What's good about it?"

"Well, for one, I'm here," he said, coming over to sit next to her on the bed. He picked up a tennis ball that had rolled out of her trunk. She'd brought it to practice her vampire lessons. Lawrence wanted her to concentrate on the ability to move objects in the air, something she had yet to master. Jack threw it in the air, catching it deftly. Then he put it down. "Unless, you know, you want me to go."

He was sitting so close to her. She remembered how she'd run to him the first night she was attacked, how passionate he'd been about discovering the truth about Croatan, and then how deeply he'd disappointed her when he'd brushed her aside. And then she remembered something else. Something she couldn't stop thinking about ever since she'd drawn Mimi's blood and absorbed her memories.

"You were the one—that night of the masquerade ball— it was you who…" Schuyler whispered, and in answer to her question, he kissed her. The kiss was the third one they'd exchanged (she kept count), and as he breathed into her and cupped her face in his broad hands, everything in her life up until then seemed secondary and ordinary.

There was nothing to live for but this pure, heavenly sensation. The first time they'd kissed, she had glimpsed Jack's memories of a girl who looked like her but was not her. The second time, she'd had no idea he was the one behind the mask, but this time it was just the two of them. Jack wasn't kissing someone he thought he'd known before, and Schuyler wasn't kissing someone she didn't know. They were simply kissing each other.

"Jaaaack! Jaaaaack!"

"Mimi," Jack said. He disappeared so fast out of the room it was as if he had turned invisible.

When Mimi poked her head into Schuyler's room, she was sitting by herself kicking the trunk again. "Oh. You. Have you seen Jack?"

Schuyler shook her head.

"By the way, don't get too comfortable around here. I have no idea why Father wants a little creep like you around, but here's some advice: keep out of my way."

Later that night, Schuyler had received two different welcome presents: someone had short-sheeted her bed, and there was a book slipped under her door. A copy of The Plague by Albert Camus. Inside the book was an envelope, and inside the envelope, there was a key.

From then on, Jack never acknowledged her presence at the house or at school. But he had more than made up for it later.

"Where'd you get this?" Jack asked, tracing a cut on her forehead with a light finger. They were lying on the thick shag carpet, gazing at the remnants of the fire.

"Oh. It's nothing. Banged my head," Schuyler said. She didn't want to tell him about Dylan just yet. "Were you followed?"

"Yes. But I made sure she left before I got here," he said. His voice was sleepy, and she nestled in the crook of his arm. The streetlights were the only light in the room, but she could see him clearly in the dark. His perfect profile, as if sculpted in marble, glowed like a candle. "You?"

"No."

In reality she had not checked. She had been too busy talking Oliver into leaving. Too busy and too excited. Because she had known, hadn't she? She had known Jack would be there, waiting for her, as she had waited for him earlier.

But yes, next time she would be more careful. They would both have to be.

Fourteen

Bliss arrived late to the Lexington Armory. The Rolf Morgan show was scheduled to start at nine in the evening, and she was supposed to be there by six for hair and makeup, but it was already half past eight. She hoped the designer wouldn't kill her, although he'd probably already written her off, and she'd arrive to find some other model wearing the black-lace corset dress she was supposed to wear that evening.

She hadn't meant to be late, but her latest vision had left her disoriented. She'd been brushing her teeth, and when she looked up at the mirror, the same handsome man in the white suit from her dreams was looking back at her.

"Jesus!"

"Hardly." The man laughed as if it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. His hair, Bliss realized, was the exact color of molten gold. His eyes were as blue as a clear morning sky. There was a smell in the room of lilies in the spring, but it was a cloying smell that masked something rotten. Like how her stepmother, BobiAnne, smelled when she put on too much perfume after leaving the gym instead of showering.

Bliss decided she would be brave. "Who are you?"

"I am you."

"I'm going crazy, aren't I? Why are you here?" Bliss turned off the faucet and tried to steady her breathing. "What do you want?"

The golden man in the white suit reached into his coat pocket and removed an old-fashioned pocket watch that hung from a gold chain. "Time."

When Bliss looked up at the mirror again, he was gone. She'd spent the next hour staring at the glass, waiting for him to appear again. Only when she'd finally wrenched herself away did she realize she was running so late.

But when she checked her cell phone, there were no angry messages from her model booker, no anxious harangues about how the designer was having a fit because she wasn't there. She was doubly confused to find the entrance to the show completely empty, save for a few miserable-looking fashion victims shrouded in black, being held behind police sawhorses. This was fashion week?

Where was the mad carnival of editors and photographers, celebrities and stylists, the fashionable and the fashionably distressed, crowded around, elbowing each other, pushing and shoving to get into the Rolf Morgan show? Rolf's show was the biggest ticket of the season and the hardest invitation to score. And yet, here it was, thirty minutes before showtime and there was hardly anyone around.

She found a lone minion, a production assistant wearing a black T-shirt with ROLF MORGAN emblazoned on the chest, and asked to be directed backstage.

The Armory housed the 69th Regiment of the National Guard, and several soldiers in dress uniform saluted her as she entered. The building was cavernous, and encased in glass cabinets lining the walls were hundreds of firearms and munitions. She followed the directions through a grand atrium, a space as large as an airplane hangar, which was set for a runway show. There were rows of bleachers leading up to the ceiling, and a stage had been set up at one end, where a band was tuning up.

During rehearsals, Rolf had explained that the models would walk on a giant runway suspended above the stage, and Bliss looked forward to the challenge.

She entered the makeshift backstage and was flummoxed to find that instead of the usual frenzy of preparation, thrumming with the adrenaline of fear and excitement, the mood was completely relaxed. She found Schuyler reading a magazine in a nearby chair, her hair pulled back into an extreme ponytail high on her head, her face already runway-ready, with dark kohl smudges lining her blue eyes, and her lips painted a pale, rosy gold.

She was glad to see her friend; they had yet to talk about what had happened the other night. Both of them had been avoiding the subject, almost as if they were embarrassed. She hadn't seen Dylan since then, although he had left her enough messages on her phone, asking for forgiveness and beseeching her to visit him. She had deleted them all.

As for Schuyler, since that evening she had floated around Duchesne in a cloud. Bliss knew Schuyler was seeing Jack, and she couldn't help but be jealous of her friend's newfound happiness. Sure, it sucked that they couldn't be out in public together, because of Mimi and all. And yeah, it totally blew that Jack was basically betrothed to someone else. But still, Bliss could see Schuyler was in love, and her love was returned. It was more than she could say about Dylan and her.

"Where's everybody?" Bliss asked. "There's no one outside even."

"Oh, hey." Schuyler put down the latest issue of French Vogue. "Yeah, it's closed. Show isn't starting until midnight, if we're lucky. They told everyone to go away and come back."

Bliss slumped into a nearby seat. "Are you serious?"

"Is this your first time walking for Rolf?" another model asked, overhearing their conversation. Bliss recognized her as Sabrina Sorboba, the Eastern European giantess, who was the current designer darling.

Bliss nodded.

"He's always late. Last year Brannon Frost actually left the show without seeing it, she was so annoyed to be kept waiting," Sabrina told them. Brannon Frost was the Blue Blood editor of Chic, the most powerful fashion magazine in the world. Brannon snaps her fingers, and suddenly everyone's wardrobe is out of style. Snap! Volume and pouf. Snap! Wasp-waists and skinny pants. Snap! Shifts and round heels! Snap! Crochet and platforms! Snap!

"Midnight? That's in three hours!" Bliss complained. What were they supposed to do, just wait around? She noticed some of the models were playing cards, although most were on their cell phones and BlackBerries.

"Champagne?" Sabrina offered, lifting a magnum of Laurent-Perrier and pouring two glasses for Bliss and Schuyler without waiting for an answer. This was the answer to waiting: drink, smoke, and wait. As a concession to the latest are-models-too-thin scandal, there was a delusory spread of stale crackers and moldy cheese to provide "healthy" foods for the girls. As if! Models lived on fumes: smoke and air.

"Anyway, because of what happened last year, this time they called all the editors of Chic, Mine, and Jeune and told them to go get a drink or dinner and come back later."

Bliss nodded. "So who're those people outside, then?"

"Nobodies."

Figured. Of course all the important people would be warned, but as for the lesser echelons, they had to fend for themselves. She tucked her bag underneath the counter and was about to ask Schuyler a question, when a harried man— finally someone who looked and acted like they had to put on a show in a few hours—burst into the models' waiting room.

"Bliss! There you are. We need you in hair and makeup."

Bliss flipped through the latest issue of Arena Homme, smoked a few cigarettes, and drank too much champagne while a curt hairstylist and his equally tense assistant teased and brushed her hair into a huge billowing creation, and a mellow makeup artist slathered on the spackle. It always amazed her how little effort modeling was. All she had to do was sit there. Then she had to stand. Then walk. That was it. Of course, one had to be breathtakingly beautiful to make it all "work." Still, it wasn't enough to be jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The best models had a certain air of languor and mystery that was innate to their personalities. There was only one Kate Moss, after all.

When the beauty team was satisfied with their work, two eager design students, who were part of the large volunteer army that shouldered the actual physical labor and made fashion week happen, accosted her next. "We have to get you into your first outfit. Rolf wants to see it."

The two students helped Bliss into the tight black corset dress. One of them pulled and tied the ribbons in the back while the other helped Bliss into a pair of ankle-length velvet boots that crisscrossed in the front. The dress hugged every curve, and the peekaboo black lace lent the dress a smoky sexiness. The corset bodice dipped so low in the front, Bliss blushed at how much of her skin was exposed.

"What's that?" one of the students asked, pointing to the shining emerald necklace nestled in her cleavage.

"It's mine."

"I don't know if Rolf is going to like it," the other student said hesitantly.

Bliss shrugged. She didn't care what Rolf wanted. She would never take it off.

Fifteen

At exactly five minutes to midnight, Mimi and Jack Force entered the Armory to a torrent of flashbulbs. Mimi leaned on Jack's shoulder, pulling her fluffy zebra-striped sable coat closer and hiding behind a pair of extra-large sunglasses, as if the excess of photography could harm her.

"Watch it," Jack said sharply to an overeager paparazzo who came a little too close and jostled Mimi.

"Mimi! Right here," a young publicist wearing a headset said, sweeping them into the main room and leading them quickly through the fashionista sea to the very first row. "We're a minute to go-time. You're here next to Brannon."

The room buzzed with excitement, every seat in the house was full, every celebrity was accounted for (Mimi was one of the last), and even the aisles were full of the black T-shirt-wearing volunteers who crept out from backstage and into the main room to watch the action. Onstage, the band thundered through a raucous alt-rock anthem.

Mimi preened for the cameras, shrugging off her fur coat and flexing her calves so that her legs would look thinner. She had no envy for the models; they would only be photographed for the clothes on their backs. Whereas the dizzying crowd surrounding her and yelling her name were taking her picture because they were interested in her.

"You're really enjoying this," Jack teased.

"Mmmm." For the past week she had concealed her rage so well she thought she deserved an Oscar. But she couldn't even bear to look at her twin. That liar, that traitor. He was risking everything for a dalliance with the half-blood mongrel. She could see through his solicitousness and realized how well he had snowed her for so long. The bastard was only pretending to be in love with her, while he concealed his real feelings.

The worst part of it all was that she couldn't even hate him. She loved him too much and understood his flaws too well. Hating Jack would be akin to hating herself, and Mimi had too much self-esteem to wallow in that particular misery.

"Mimi! Darling!" Randy Morgan, the designer's wife, suddenly swooped down upon them and effusively kissed her on both cheeks. "You must come backstage and wish Rolf good luck!"

Mimi allowed herself to be led to the traditional bow-and-scrape with the designer. The designer, of course, would be the one doing the bowing and scraping. Mimi was one of his biggest clients.

She left Jack and picked her way through the crowd. Rolf greeted her with a bear hug and a shower of compliments. Mimi accepted the homage and generously wished him a good show. She said hello to several other Blue Bloods from her social circle: Piper Crandall in an atrocious yellow dress, and Soos Kemble, who complained about being relegated to the second row. Mimi spied a few uppity Red Bloods as well. Lucy Forbes cooed over Mimi's new Rolf Morgan ensemble that the designer had messengered over just that morning for her to wear to his show. Then she spied the object of her hatred across the room.

Schuyler was letting her dressers fuss over her outfit: a ruffled blouse and a slim-cut riding jacket, velveteen riding pants and high boots. Mimi thought to herself she would buy the outfit if Schuyler weren't the one wearing it.

Without hesitation she walked over to Schuyler. Maybe she could nip this thing in the bud; maybe there was still hope that nothing would come of Jack's stupid little flirtation.

"Schuyler, you have a second?" she asked.

Schuyler sent her handlers away, and the two of them drifted over to a quiet corner. "What's up?"

Mimi decided to get right to the point. "I know what's going on between you and my brother."

"What do you mean?" Schuyler tried to look calm, but Mimi could sense her alarm. She was right. Goddamnit she was right. The wretch didn't even try to deny it. The two of them were together. How far had it gone? Mimi's heart dropped. She had told herself she would never feel jealous of the annoying little mutt. But Schuyler's defiant face made her feel otherwise.

Schuyler didn't look chastened, or weak, or embarrassed. Gone was the whimpering half-blood who jumped when you said "Boo!" Gone was the girl with the unrequited crush on the great Jack Force. Mimi saw Schuyler very clearly. She looked like a girl who was confident in love. A girl who knew she held his heart in her hands. For a moment Mimi intensely wished the Silver Blood had dragged Schuyler facedown into hell.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing to Jack?"

"What are you talking about?"

Mimi clutched Schuyler's upper arm tightly. "Think of your mother. Why do you think Allegra's in a coma? Why do you think she's immortal but won't die? She is useless and destroyed. Do you want that for him?"

"Don't bring my mother into this," Schuyler warned, shaking Mimi off. "You don't know anything about my mother."

"Oh, but I do. I have lived much longer than you." Mimi's face changed, and for a moment, Schuyler saw flashes of all the women in history Mimi had been: the Egyptian queen, the French noblewoman, the hardy Pilgrim, the Newport hostess—all breathtakingly beautiful, all with the same cold green eyes.

"You don't understand the bond," Mimi whispered, as around them the designer and his team were making final corrections on all the clothes. "Jack and I are one and the same. Taking him away from me would be like ripping off his skin. He needs me. If he renews the bond, he will grow stronger, his memories will be whole. He will flourish."

"And if not?" Schuyler challenged.

"You might as well reserve a spot for him in that hospital my father keeps visiting. This is not some silly high school game, you stupid girl." This is life and death. Angels and demons. The bond is law. We are made from the same dark matter, Mimi thought but didn't say. She saw that Schuyler could not, or would not, understand. Schuyler was a newborn. She had no comprehension of the rigors of immortality. The harsh and absolute ways of their kind.

"I don't believe you."

"I didn't expect you to." Mimi looked exhausted. "But if you do love him, leave him, Schuyler. Release him. Tell him you don't want him anymore. It's the only way he'll let go."

Schuyler shook her head. Around her, the models were lining up, and Rolf was pinning a hem here, tucking in a pleat there. Outside, the lights had gone black and the show was about to start. She let one of her dressers snip an errant thread from the sleeve of her riding jacket. "I can't do that. I can't lie."

Mimi took a sip from Schuyler's glass of champagne without asking. "Then Jack is lost."

Sixteen

Last year during his fall presentation, Rolf Morgan had made the audience walk down the runway while the models sat on front-row seats and pretended to take notes. The gimmick had charmed the fashion press so much he was keen on trying out another fun twist. This year the show would be run backward, starting with the designer's bow and the grand ball gowns and ending with casual sportswear.

As the band played a thundering rendition of "Space Oddity," Rolf ran out onto the stage to thunderous applause. He returned bearing a bouquet of roses, beaming and energized. Schuyler watched as Cyrus, Rolf's spastic show runner, led Bliss to the front of the line. The black lace corset dress was meant to be the showstopping finale, and therefore, in the backward equation, the opener. Schuyler gave Bliss an encouraging wave. She knew her friend was still slightly intimidated by the catwalk, and Bliss looked like a nervous colt, her hands quivering slightly as they rested on her hips.

Bliss returned a few minutes later, a broad smile of relief on her face. "It's madness out there!" she gushed to Schuyler before being whisked away to get changed for her second outing.

Schuyler returned Bliss's smile, thinking she would be glad when it was over, when she could finally put on her own clothes—a certain men's Oxford shirt that was her current favorite, over a pair of black leggings and cloven-hoof boots that she'd picked up at a resale shop.

The girls in their gothic prom dresses had exited the catwalk, and Cyrus motioned her to the front. She was next. "Remember, when you get to the end, one pose, two pose, BAM! And then come back."

Schyler nodded. She took a deep breath and walked onstage. Stepping out onto the catwalk was like stepping onto the moon. You went from the grungy reality of backstage, surrounded by chatter and safety pins and a heroic mess of clothing racks and raided accessory bins, to the bright white lights of the stage and the blinding flash of a hundred cameras.

The atmosphere was electric, a noisy cacophony of hysteria reserved for the best rock concerts—the hoots and cheers from the back row energizing the band to play faster and louder, and the models to assume their haughtiest faзades. Schuyler never even noticed the grim-faced editors or the tarted-up celebrities in the front row; she was too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and not making a fool of herself.

She found the marked spot at the end of the runway and snapped the required poses, turning left and rotating her hip forward, and turning right soon after. And just as she was about to do an about-face to turn back, her mind opened to an urgent, forcible sending. It was an incoherent, savage hatred. The unexpected intensity was enough to stop Schuyler in mid-step, and she staggered from the weight of it, tripping over her heels and causing members of the front row to gasp audibly.

Schuyler felt disoriented and broken. Someone—or something—had savagely entered her mind. She recognized it immediately as a manipulation, but this was stronger and more evil than what she had experienced with Dylan. It was an unforgivable trespass, and she felt violated, naked, and terribly afraid. She had to get out of there.

There was no time to make a proper exit. Schuyler leaped from the stage, landing in the middle of the photographer's pit. She knew exactly where she had to go now.

"Sorry!" she told one unlucky shutterbug whose foot she had crushed.

She flew through the crowd, to the confusion of the crew and the delight of everyone else, who thought it was all part of the show.

From backstage she heard, "Hey! Where does she think she's going? Get back here!"

Tomorrow there would be a tabloid story about the model who had run off the catwalk at the Rolf Morgan show, but Schuyler wasn't worried about the media or her model booker or Rolf right then.

What was that? she thought, her heart feeling as if it would explode from fear as she ran up the West Side Highway, moving faster than traffic would ever allow. Who was that? The sickly, defiled feeling diminished slightly the moment she arrived at the shabby old brownstone on Riverside Drive. It didn't look as run-down as it used to, thanks to Lawrence's recent renovation. Its stone steps were newly swept, the graffiti on the doors had been painted over, and the gargoyles had been restored to their former dignity.

When she entered her grandfather's study he was bent over, packing a file of papers into a leather attachй case. He had aged in the month they had been separated, Schuyler noticed. His leonine hair was streaked with gray, and there were new lines around his eyes.

Lawrence was an Enmortal, a rare vampire who did not rest, did not go through the regular cycle of reincarnation. He had kept his same physical shell for centuries. He had the ability to look as young as Schuyler, but that evening he looked as if he carried the weight of a thousand years. He looked, for the first time since Schuyler knew him, ancient. He did not look like a man from the twenty-first century. He looked as if he had been there when Moses had been put in a basket and sent down the river.

"Schuyler, what a pleasant surprise," he said, although he didn't look surprised to see her.

"Where are you going?" she asked in response, when she saw his battered valise strapped and packed, next to the desk.

"Rio," he said. "There's been a massive earthquake; have you seen the news?" Lawrence asked, motioning to the television that had recently been installed in his office. The cameras showed a city engulfed in flames, entire buildings collapsed into piles of debris.

Schuyler said a quick prayer at the sight of the devastation. "Grandfather, something happened to me. Just a few minutes ago." She described the sensation, the feeling that she was in the presence of an incredible malice. It was only for the briefest moment, but it was enough to feel polluted in every pore of her being.

"So you felt it too."

"What was it?" Schuyler shuddered. "It was…repulsive," she said, even though repulsive was too weak a word for the inchoate hostility she had experienced.

Lawrence motioned for her to take a seat while he continued to look through his papers. "In your reading, have you come across the chapter on Corcovado yet?"

"I know it's in Rio. … In Brazil," she said hesitantly. She hadn't made much headway on Lawrence's assignments. It was silly of her, but she felt her grandfather was partly to blame for her living situation, and in petulance she had dismissed his suggestions to brush up on her Blue Blood history. He had pressed her to read copies of ancient, formerly forbidden texts—the history of Croatan that had been expunged from the official records until now.

If Lawrence was annoyed, he didn't show it. Instead he explained patiently, like the university professor he had once been. "Corcovado is a place of power, a source of energy, a primal bivio from which we vampires draw our strength on Earth. Our immortality stems from a harmonic connection to the primordial essence of life, a gift we have retained even after our banishment."

On screen, the camera showed the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer looming over the city on its pedestal on Corcovado Mountain. Schuyler marveled that it was still standing while buildings all around the city had been reduced to rubble.

"The earthquake. The sending I experienced. It's connected, isn't it? Is that why you're going?" she asked, knowing she was right.

Her grandfather nodded but would not elaborate further. "It is best if you do not know exactly how."

"You're leaving tonight, I take it?" Schuyler asked.

Lawrence nodded. "I'll meet up with Kingsley's team in Sao Paolo first. Then we head to Corcovado together."

"And the Conclave?"

"They are understandably concerned, but it is best if they do not know too many details of my trip. You know my doubts about the Conclave, what Cordelia and I always suspected."

"That one of the great families has betrayed us," Schuyler said, watching as her grandfather meticulously arranged his necktie. Lawrence always dressed formally for every occasion.

"Yes. But I do not know how. And I do not know why. Of course, our misgivings have never been confirmed, and certainly we have never had any evidence of such a betrayal. Yet the latest attacks confirmed that somehow, one or more of the Silver Bloods survived, and have returned to prey on us. That perhaps the Dark Prince himself still walks this earth."

Schuyler shuddered. Whenever Lawrence spoke about Lucifer, she felt as if her blood had turned to ice. There was evil embedded even in his name.

"Now, Schuyler, I must bid you good-bye."

"No! Let me come with you," Schuyler said, rising from her seat. That dark, terrible, hateful animosity. Her grandfather couldn't face that thing—whatever it was—alone.

"I am sorry." Lawrence shook his head and slipped his wallet into his coat pocket. "You must stay here. You are strong, Schuyler, but you are very young. And you are still under my care."

He drew the blinds and put on an old raincoat. Anderson, his Conduit, appeared at the door. "Ready, sir?"

Lawrence picked up his bags. "Do not look so disappointed, granddaughter. It is not only for your sake that you must remain in New York. If there is one thing I can do for your mother, it's keep you safe from harm, and as far away from Corcovado as possible."

AUDIO RECORDINGS ARCHIVE:

Repository of History

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:

Altithronus Clearance Only

Transcript of Venator report filed 2/28

«Muffled recording. Two distinct voices are heard: Venator Martin and Charles Force, Regis.»

Venator Martin: She has taken the bait.

Charles Force: Are you perfectly sure?

VM: Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that she will attempt to perform the Incantation Demonata.

CF: But a mere child to dabble with such dark magic. Perhaps if you could reveal her to me….

VM: You know I cannot speak her name until it is confirmed at trial, Regis. But do not worry, I will not allow her to complete the spell.

CF: But you must.

VM: Excuse me, Regis? I do not understand.

CF: It is a test, Venator. The Incantation must be performed. If she fails, you will take up the blade and draw your own blood.

VM: The Committee knows of this? The Conclave approves?

CF: Do not worry about the Conclave. This is my business. The Venators are loyal to me, are they not?

VM: But Regis-the Incantation. Are you sure?

CF: I am. When the time comes, do it. On my order.

Seventeen

When Bliss was growing up, her family lived in one of those mega-mansions that were ubiquitous in River Oaks, a wealthy Houston suburb. Their house was the epitome of "Texas Excess," at twenty-eight thousand square feet. Bliss used to joke that it should have its own zip code. She had never felt comfortable in it, and preferred her grandparents' rambling ranch in the wilds of West Texas instead. Despite their Yankee roots, her family was considered Lone Star aristocracy—their money made in oil, cattle, and well…mostly oil. The story the Llewellyns liked to tell was how the family patriarch had scandalized his upper-crust family by dropping out of Yale to work at an oil field. He'd quickly learned the ropes, buying up thousands of acres of oil-rich land to become the luckiest oil baron in the entire state. Was it luck or due to vampire ability, Bliss wondered now.

Forsyth was the youngest son of the youngest son. Her grandfather was a rebel who'd stayed East after boarding school, married his Andover sweetheart, a Connecticut debutante, and raised their son in her family's Fifth Avenue apartment, until bad luck on the stock market sent the family back to the Texas homestead.

Her grandfather had been one of her favorite people. He'd retained his Texan drawl even after his years in the Northeast, and he'd had an ironic, saucy sense of humor. He liked to say he didn't belong anywhere and therefore belonged everywhere. He was nostalgic about his life in New York, but he'd dug in and took over the family business when no one else wanted the ranch, preferring to move to the glass metropolises of Dallas or San Antonio instead. She wished Pap-Pap had stuck around; what was the point of being a vampire if you had to live a human-length lifetime anyway, and then had to wait to get called up again for the next cycle?

Bliss had grown up among many cousins, and until she moved to New York and turned fifteen, had always assumed there was nothing particularly special or interesting about her. Perhaps it was a willful ignorance. There had been signs, she realized later on: her older cousins hinting of "the change," furtive giggles from the already initiated, her father's rotating secretaries who, she now understood, served as his human familiars. It just recently occurred to Bliss how odd it was that no one ever spoke of her real mother.

BobiAnne was the only mother she'd ever known. Bliss had an uneasy relationship with her tacky, over-protective stepmother, who showered Bliss with affection while ignoring her own child, Bliss's half sister, Jordan. BobiAnne, with her furs and diamonds and ridiculous decorating schemes, had tried too hard to replace the mother Bliss had never known, and Bliss couldn't hate her for it. On the other hand, she couldn't love her for it either.

Forsyth had married BobiAnne while Bliss was still in the cradle, and Jordan had been born four years later. A silent and strange child, who was pudgy to Bliss's willowy form, pasty to Bliss's ivory complexion, and difficult in comparison to Bliss's easygoing temperament. Yet Bliss couldn't imagine life without her younger sister, and displayed a fierce protectiveness whenever BobiAnne would tease or insult her own progeny. For her part, Jordan adored her sister when she wasn't mocking her. It was a normal sibling relationship—full of spats and bickering, and yet bolstered by a faithful and abiding loyalty.

One always took the most important things in life for granted, Bliss thought, when a few days after the fashion show she took a taxi to the uppermost reaches of Manhattan. She directed the driver to the Columbia-Presbyterian hospital.

"Are you family?" inquired the guard at the reception desk, pushing forward a visitor sheet for her to sign.

Bliss hesitated. She touched the photograph hidden in her coat pocket for luck. It was similar to one her father kept in his wallet, a copy of which she'd found in a jewelry case and now held in her hands.

"Yes."

"Top floor. Last room at the end of the hallway."

She wished she had someone to accompany her, but she couldn't think of anyone she could ask. Schuyler would certainly demand an explanation, and Bliss would not be able to provide a reasonable one. "Um, I think you and I might be sisters?" just sounded too preposterous.

As for Dylan, Bliss had shoved all thoughts of him to the back of her mind. She knew she should check up on him, especially now that he'd stopped trying to contact her, but she was too angry and humiliated to return to that awful room at the Chelsea Hotel. The strange tics she'd observed: the guttural speech, the high laugh, the strange babble of languages only made her more fearful of him. Bliss knew it was wishful thinking, but she couldn't help hoping that maybe things would just go back to normal. She'd promised Schuyler and Oliver she would deal with it—turn him in to the Committee and the Conclave—but so far she kept finding excuses not to. Even if she'd decided not to be attracted to him anymore, she couldn't find it in her heart to rat on him either.

She had other things to worry about, even though she knew she wasn't going to find any answers at the hospital. Allegra was in a coma, after all. And it was useless to try bringing up the subject with her father.

All her life, Bliss had been told that her mother had died when she was young. That "Charlotte Potter" had been a schoolteacher her father had met during his first political campaign, when he'd run for state congressman. Now Bliss wondered if Charlotte Potter had ever existed. Certainly there were no wedding albums, no trinkets, no heirlooms to indicate any such woman had ever been married to her father. For the longest time she had assumed it was because BobiAnne did not want reminders of the former Mrs. Llewellyn.

She didn't know anything about her real mother's family, and with her acute vampire memory, could go back to the time when she'd first asked her father what her real mother's name was. She was five years old, and her father had just read her a bedtime story. "Charlotte Potter," he'd told her cheerfully. "Your mother's name was Charlotte Potter.

Bliss had been charmed. "Just like Charlotte's Web!" she'd squealed. And her last name was just like the woman who wrote all those books on her shelves, Beatrix Potter.

More and more, Bliss suspected that her father had just made it up. The other day when she'd mentioned the name to Forsyth, he had simply looked blank.

Bliss walked to the end of the hall and found the room. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.

Allegra Van Alen's room was as cold as a meat locker. The woman slumbering in the bed did not move. Bliss approached the bedside tentatively, feeling like an intruder. Allegra looked peaceful, ageless, her face unlined. She was like a princess in a glass coffin: beautiful and still.

She thought that when she finally saw Allegra she would sense something—know for sure whether she was related to her or not. But there was nothing. Bliss touched the necklace hidden underneath her shirt for comfort, then reached over to hold Allegra's hand, feeling her papery skin. She closed her eyes and tried to access her past lives, her memories, to see if she had any knowledge of Gabrielle.

In flashes she would catch a glimpse of someone who looked familiar, who might have been her, but Bliss wasn't sure. In the end, the woman in the bed was as much a stranger as the nurse in the hallway.

"Allegra?" Bliss whispered. It seemed presumptuous to call her "mother." "It's me. I'm…Bliss. I don't know if you remember me, but I think you might be my …" Bliss suddenly stopped short. She felt a pain in her chest, as if she couldn't breathe. What was she doing here? She had to go. She had to leave immediately.

She was right; she would find no answers here. She would never know the truth. Her father would never tell her, and Allegra could not.

Bliss left, troubled and confused, still seeking answers to questions she kept in her heart.

She did not know that when she left the room, Allegra Van Alen began to scream.

Eighteen

Committee meetings never started on time, so Mimi didn't worry when her conference call with her bonding planner ran a little longer than she'd planned. Ever since Lawrence had been installed as Regis, the meetings had less and less to do with social planning and fund-raising and more to do with, in her opinion, totally redundant vampire lessons.

Edmund Oelrich, the doddering senile goat from the Conclave who was the new chief warden, didn't run as tight a ship as the late Priscilla Dupont, and was completely ignorant of the fact that if they wanted to secure the right honorary chairs for the annual spring gala for the ballet in May, they should have sent feelers out a few weeks ago. As it was, all the former First Ladies were already unavailable, and the governor's wife was immersed in her husband's latest scandal. At this rate they would have to settle for the mayor's girlfriend, who wasn't remotely fashionable or at all interested in doing social work under the guise of social-climbing.

Mimi entered the library room at Duchesne, found a seat in the back, and tapped on the Bluetooth device attached to her ear as an excuse for not greeting her friends. She thought the Committee's lessons were a complete waste of time. She'd been adept at all her skills since transformation, and it galled her that other vampires were so slow. Today they were supposed to learn more about mutatio, the ability to change into the elements: fire, water, air. Mimi sighed. She had been disappearing into a fog since she was eleven. She had "developed" early, as they say.

"Sorry, could you repeat that again?" she asked, shaking the tiny silver receiver wedged in her ear. "You think we could have it at the White House? No?"

The firm she'd hired, Elizabeth Tilton Events, had recently orchestrated a five-day extravaganza in Cartagena, wherein Don Alejandro Castaсeda, the Blue Blood heir to his father's sugar-and-beverage fortune, had been bonded to his vampire twin, Danielle Russell, a recent Brown graduate. Mimi and Jack had represented the family, and Mimi had been a little miffed when the talk at the rehearsal dinner was about how extraordinary everything had been. The best man had announced that "the next bonding will have to be on the moon, since no one else is going to top this!"

Mimi was sure going to try.

"Darling," Lizbet Tilton cooed. "I'm sorry, but with the new administration, the Rose Garden is out of the question. I don't think we contributed enough to the campaign. But there has to be somewhere else you'd like to have it."

"What about Buckingham, then? I'm sure my father can call in a favor."

Lizbet laughed heartily. "Sweetheart, what century are you in? Have you got your lifetimes confused? Even though you're a Royal, that branch of the clan has never forgiven us for leaving. Besides, they're terribly strict these days. Even Charles and Camilla had to get married off-site."

Mimi pouted. "Well, I guess we could do it in on the island," she said, noticing that Schuyler and Bliss had just entered the room. Mimi sent a quick suggestion and caused Schuyler to suddenly trip. Ha. Someone sure wasn't doing their occludo lessons. Schuyler's mind was as open as a wound.

"You mean your dad's place in Sandy Cay?" Lizbet asked. "That would be fabulous." The Forces owned their own private island in the Bahamas. "Everyone could jet down for the weekend, and if they don't have wings we could charter a plane. We just did that for Alex and Dani in Colombia."

Mimi so did not want her bonding to be just like anyone else's.

"What about Italy?" Lizbet suggested. "One of the ancestral palaces? You guys still have that place in Tuscany?"

"Um, no. Not Italy. Bad memories?" Mimi chided, glaring at the group that was staring at her. The chief warden and the rest of the senior committee had finally arrived, and lessons were about to commence.

"Right. Sorry."

"You know," Lizbet said thoughtfully, "with all the hoopla of everyone getting bonded everywhere, no one has done a five-star New York bonding in decades."

"Here? Just at home?" Mimi frowned. That did not sound special at all.

Up front, Edmund Oelrich was shuffling papers at the podium and greeting the well-preserved women who made up the senior committee.

"Saint John the Divine is a fabulous Gothic cathedral. You could wear a train longer than Princess Di's. And we could get the Boys Choir of Harlem. It would be properly angelic."

Mimi considered the suggestion. It was indeed a beautiful church, she told Lizbet, and they could have the reception at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum afterward. Charles was a museum trustee and had been particularly generous that year. She waved to Jack, who had just come in the door. Her brother joined her and gave a quick smile.

"Who are you talking to?" he mouthed.

"So, we're on the same page here? Saint John's? And then the Met?" Lizbet was asking. "And you did say you wanted to invite the whole Four Hundred, yes?"

"Done and done!" Mimi said with satisfaction. She put away her phone and smiled at her brother. Now that she knew his secret, she noticed that he looked everywhere in the room except toward the corner where Schuyler was sitting.

Schuyler's sidekick, that equally annoying human Oliver, arrived soon after. That was another travesty—letting humans into their exclusive meetings. Charles would never have allowed it during his tenure. But Lawrence had made it clear he expected the Conduits to undergo their own training as well, and what better way to learn about their calling than to join the Committee.

Mimi sensed Jack tense by her side. Oliver had kissed Schuyler on the cheek. That was interesting. She used her vampire sense to zero in on Oliver's neck. She spotted the telltale bite marks immediately. They were undetectable to the human eye, but glaring to the vampire sight. So. The little half-blood had made her best friend her familiar.

Well.

It gave Mimi an idea. If Schuyler wasn't going to give up her pathetic little liaison with Jack, then maybe she could be forced to.

Oliver could prove useful.

Mimi would have to act fast. She'd told Lizbet she wanted her bonding to take place in three months.

Nineteen

Unlike Mimi, Bliss enjoyed the Committee's new agenda. She liked discovering and using her vampire abilities, instead of merely memorizing boring facts about their history, or stuffing envelopes and critiquing caterers for extravagant events that she didn't look forward to attending. Lessons got her blood pumping. She was thrilled to find herself adept at some of the more difficult tasks, like the mutatio, for instance.

The senior committee had asked the younger members to arrange themselves into groups of two or three while they practiced the delicate art of metamorphosis.

"All vampires should be able to change into smoke, or air, or fog; although most of us can transform into fire and water as well. As you might be aware, The Conspiracy saw to it that the false legends about our people perpetuated in Red Blood history are based on a modicum of truth." Dorothea Rockefeller, their guest lecturer, chuckled as she said this. The Conspiracy was a great source of amusement to the Committee.

"They also thought it might be suitable if the humans were led to believe that our kind can only transform into bats or rats or other creatures of the night. That way the Red Bloods would be lulled into a false sense of security during daylight hours. And while it is true that those of us who have the ability to shape-shift may choose these rather repulsive physical shapes, most of us do not. In fact, our lady Gabrielle chose a dove as her mutatus. If you are one of the few who can transform at will, you will find a shape that suits your abilities. Do not be surprised when it is one that you did not expect."

Bliss was one of the lucky few. She found she could switch from girl to smoke and back again, and then tried out other forms—a white horse, a black crow, a spider monkey— before settling into the shape of a golden lioness.

But Schuyler simply stood in the middle of the room, getting more and more frustrated with each failed attempt. "Maybe it's because I'm half human," she sighed when yet another try at forcing her matter to change into a different configuration resulted in her simply falling onto the floor, still herself.

"Hey, what's wrong with being human?" Oliver asked, watching with fascination as Mimi Force transformed herself into a phoenix, a column of fire, and a red serpent in the space of three seconds. "Wow—she's good."

"Show-off," Bliss hissed. "Don't worry about her. And stop laughing, Ollie. You're distracting Schuyler!" Bliss tried not to be too smug about her success, but it was satisfying to know that Schuyler wasn't great at everything.

"Look, here's what you do. You're supposed to visualize your goal. You have to be the fog. Think like fog. Let your mind go blank. Can you feel it—a wispiness—it starts in the edge of your skin, and then …"

Schuyler obediently closed her eyes. "Okay, I'm thinking fog. Golden Gate. San Francisco. Little cat feet. I don't know…it's not happening."

"Sshhhh," Bliss admonished. She could already feel the transformation begin, could feel all her senses shift, could feel her very being disappear into a soft gray cloud. She was having fun imagining how she could use this new talent, when she had another vision. It hit her with a bang. The starkness of the image was like a punch in the gut.

Dylan.

If he'd looked merely disheveled before, he was worse now. His clothing was in tatters, his shirt ripped to shreds, his jeans torn, and his hair wild. He looked like he hadn't eaten or slept in weeks. He was standing in front of the school gates, shaking the bars and raving like a madman.

"What's wrong?" Schuyler asked immediately when Bliss stumbled.

"Dylan. He's here."

That was all she needed to say.

The three of them ran out of the Committee meeting, ignoring the curious faces of the other members, leaving the library, and running down the stairs. Their vampire speed meant Schuyler and Bliss arrived at the gates ahead of Oliver, who was gasping as he tried to keep up with them.

Duchesne was located on a quiet corner of Ninety-sixth Street, on Prep School Row. Since it was mid-afternoon, the streets were practically deserted, save for a nanny or two pushing a stroller toward the park.

The boy who stood in the middle of the sidewalk violently shaking the gates looked like a prophet from a bygone age, a throwback to a time of preachers and pontificators, when ragged men warned about the End Of The World. There was almost no sign of the teenage boy who had wanted to grow up to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix and had been the instigator of countless pranks.

"ABOMINATION!" he thundered when he saw them.

"It's my fault," Bliss cried, already close to tears at the sight of Dylan. "I know I promised I was going to tell the Conclave about him, but I couldn't. And I didn't check up on him … I left him and I ignored him … I wanted him to just go away. It's all my fault."

"No, it's mine," Schuyler said. "I was going to tell Lawrence, but—"

"It's all our fault," Oliver said firmly. "We should have done something about him, but we didn't. Look, we've got to get him out of here. People are going to start asking questions," he said as an elderly woman walking a poodle crossed the street and shot a puzzled look in their direction. "We don't want the police involved."

Dylan suddenly lunged toward them, clawing through the bars and gargling in a language they didn't understand.

Schuyler just barely ducked his reach. "We've got to get to him before he uses the glom on us again."

Bliss immediately transformed into the golden lioness. She was a sight to behold—a stalking, ruthless creature. She leaped over the gate and padded up to Dylan, who raged at her. "Devil spawn! TRAITOR!" he hissed.

Bliss cornered him against the iron bars and bared her teeth. She reared back on her hind legs and shoved him with her giant golden paws. Dylan cringed and whimpered, cowering with his hands over his head.

"She's got him!" Oliver yelled, motioning to Schuyler to move toward Bliss's right flank.

Schuyler ran to Bliss's side. She looked Dylan in the eyes. Saw the rage, anger, and confusion there. She wavered. This was no monster. This was a wounded animal.

But Oliver had no qualms. "SCHUYLER! DO IT! NOW!"

"Dormi!" she ordered, and waved her hand in front of Dylan's face.

Dylan slumped and fell to the ground. Bliss turned back into herself and knelt by his side.

"He'll sleep until he is commanded to wake up," Schuyler told them.

Oliver knelt beside Bliss, and they were able to make a makeshift straitjacket from Dylan's sweater. The lines on his face slowly smoothed away. Asleep, he looked docile and peaceful.

"We've got to turn him over to the Committee; this has gone on long enough," Oliver said. "I know you don't want to, Bliss, but it's best for him. Maybe they can help him."

"They don't help Silver Bloods—they destroy them. You know that," Bliss said bitterly.

"But maybe…"

"I'll take him to my father," Bliss decided. "I might be able to plead his case with Forsyth. Get him to show Dylan some mercy because he's my friend. He'll know what to do."

Schuyler nodded. Forsyth should be able to deal with Dylan. Meanwhile, the Llewellyns' Rolls-Royce pulled up to the curb. They bundled Dylan into the backseat and strapped him in next to Bliss.

"He'll be okay," Schuyler assured.

"Yeah," Bliss said, even though she knew that none of them believed it anymore. The car pulled away, and she raised her hand in good-bye. Oliver returned the wave, while Schuyler simply looked stricken. Finally the car turned the corner and she couldn't see them anymore.

When Bliss arrived at Penthouse des Reves, her family's extravagant triplex apartment on the top of one of the most exclusive buildings on Park Avenue, BobiAnne was consulting with her astrologer in the "casual" sitting room. Bliss's stepmother was a big-haired Texan socialite who was dripping in diamonds even in the early afternoon. Bliss's half sister, Jordan, was doing homework on a nearby coffee table. The two of them looked up in surprise at Bliss's entry.

"What on earth?" BobiAnne cried, leaping from her chair at the sight of her stepdaughter and the bound, unconscious boy.

"It's Dylan," Bliss said, as if that would explain everything. She was frightfully calm as she addressed her family. She had no idea how they would react at the sight of him, especially since he was so dirty. BobiAnne had a heart palpitation when someone forgot to use a coaster or left sweaty handprints on the Japanese wallpaper.

"The boy who disappeared," Jordan whispered, her eyes round and frightened.

"Yes. There's something wrong with him. He's…not quite all there. I have to tell Dad." Bliss confessed to everything—Dylan's unexpected return, how she'd hid him in the Chelsea Hotel—and gave them the Cliff's Notes version of his previous attacks. "But we're all fine," she assured. "Don't worry about me. Help him," she said, gently setting Dylan down on the nearest chaise longue.

"You did the right thing," BobiAnne said, pressing Bliss to her chest and smothering her with her perfume. "He'll be safe here with us."

Twenty

Spring in New York was a mirage. The city turned from brutal winter to brutal summer with barely a gap in between. After the winter snows melted, there would be a few days of rain, and then the sun would shine mercilessly, turning the city into one big sauna. Like her fellow residents, Schuyler prized what little spring they had. As she walked across Ninety-sixth Street with Bliss after school, she smiled when she noticed the first fragile buds of the season. However much her life had changed, she could still count on the tulips to blossom in Central Park.

She picked off a tiny yellow flower from a nearby bush and tucked it in her hair. Duchesne was starting to unwind in its last few months before summer vacation. The seniors had all received their college acceptances, and teachers held half their classes in the outdoor courtyards.

Bliss told her that Dylan was being taken care of—and not in a bad way. Forsyth had been more than sympathetic to Dylan's situation. The senator had told her there might still be hope for him, even if he had been corrupted, since it took a long time for a Blue Blood to turn into a Silver Blood. There might still be time to halt the process. Forsyth had put him in a place where he could be observed and rehabilitated.

"Basically, he's in rehab," Bliss explained as they walked past the familiar landmarks of the neighborhood, dodging a group of scowling Nightingale-Bamford girls in their blue-and-white uniforms. "You know how Charlie Bank and Honor Leslie had to go to Transitions last year? And everyone thought it was because of drugs?" Bliss asked, naming two Duchesne students who had disappeared from school for months at a time.

"Uh-huh." Schuyler nodded.

"Well, they weren't druggies. Their transformations were freaking them out. They were having delusions, they couldn't separate the past from the present. They were attacking humans, violating the Code. So they were sent away to deal with it. Rehab's a good cover, don't you think? The humans think they're there to dry out, which I guess is true in a way."

It always amazed Schuyler how the vampires found a way to disguise their real lives by integrating into regular human society, but Bliss explained it was actually the other way around. "Apparently, the Mayo Clinic, Hazelden, and all those famous rehab centers were founded by Blue Bloods. They had to start catering to human problems when it became fashionable to go. You think he'll be okay?" Bliss asked.

Schuyler didn't want to give Bliss any false hope, but she thought it would be cruel to say otherwise. "I'm sure they'll try their best."

Bliss sighed. "Yeah."

They made plans to go visit Dylan in a few days, and Schuyler said good-bye at Eighty-sixth to catch the Fifth Avenue bus.

All week she had forced thoughts of Mimi's warning from her mind. Was Mimi telling the truth? Was she putting Jack in danger? She had wanted to ask Lawrence about it, but she had been too ashamed. What had her grandfather told her? You must have noticed he is drawn to you. Thank goodness you are not drawn to him. It would spell disaster to both of you.

How could she tell her grandfather that he was wrong. That she did return Jack Force's affections. That she was weak and pathetic when Lawrence believed she was so strong. She could not. She told herself she couldn't bother him with such a silly thing as her love life anyway, while he was out there dealing with a problem as grave and serious as the possible destruction of the very essence of the Blue Bloods' existence. She was starting to worry about Lawrence. There hadn't been a message from him in days.

Her grandfather had been wary of using the normal means of communication, and once he'd arrived in Rio had relied exclusively on telepathy to get in touch and let her know everything was okay. So far he'd only complained about the weather (steamy) and the food (too spicy). He hadn't addressed the problem of Corcovado, and Schuyler didn't know if that was good or bad.

There had been no opportunity to ask Jack about his sister's dire predictions either. They had been unable to meet since the night of Dylan's attack. Mimi, Schuyler knew, was taking up all of his free time.

When she arrived at the town house, Jack was in the living room, speaking to his father. Charles was in his bathrobe. The former leader of the Blue Bloods now spent his days in his study. He didn't even look as if he had showered that day. Schuyler felt pity and annoyance. He had caused her so much heartache. She'd had to avoid everyone she loved because of him. She'd believed his threats, but lately it looked as though Charles was only a threat to himself. But then she realized if Charles had not dragged her to his home, maybe she and Jack would never have had the chance to find out just how much they truly liked each other.

"Hey." Jack smiled. "You're back early."

"I made the bus this time," she said, setting her school things down on a nearby table. She still didn't feel comfortable in their house, but on the other hand, she was tired of tiptoeing around the place as if she didn't belong there.

"Hello, Schuyler," Charles grunted.

"Charles," she said coldly.

The former Regis tightened the belt on his robe and shuffled off to his den, leaving the two of them alone.

"Is she here?" Schuyler asked, looking around the opulent space that was the Forces' living room. Decorated in lush, French-Victorian style, the room was closely packed with rare antiques, jaw-droppingly familiar museum-quality art, and sumptuous fabrics. Her senses told her that Mimi was not around the premises. But who knew.

"No. She's at some sort of tasting," he replied.

Schuyler sat next to him on a gilded velvet "kissing chair" dating to the sixteenth-century and so named because a couple had to sit side-by-side and facing each other. "Jack." She looked at his face. The face she loved so much. "I want to ask you something."

"Shoot," Jack said, stretching his legs out in front of him and loping his long arm over the edge of the chair so that his fingers rested lightly on her shoulders. She tingled at his slightest touch.

"Is it true that the bond between you and—"

"I don't want to talk about the bond," Jack said, cutting her off and withdrawing his arm. His face turned cold, and for a moment she saw a flash of his true nature, saw the dark angel that he was. The angel who had wrought destruction in Paradise, the one who would sound the trumpet to the Apocalypse when it came. His was the face of Abbadon, the enforcer, the hammer blow, the most dangerous soldier in the army of the Almighty.

"But I want to know—"

"Shh." Jack turned to her and pressed a hand on her cheek. "Let's not…"

"But Mimi…" Just as Schuyler said her name, she sensed a presence at the front doorway. Mimi was home, or just about to be. Quicker than a blink, or at maximum vampire speed, Schuyler left the living room and ran to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

When Mimi entered mere seconds later, carrying several shopping bags with her, she found Jack reading a book by himself.

Schuyler and Jack weren't alone again that evening. The entire family gathered for their mandatory dinner a few hours later. Once a week, Trinity Burden, their mother, required that the children be home to join their parents for dinner. Schuyler had once dreamed of a nuclear family, of a life that included a loving mother, an attentive father, and siblings who would tease each other over the meat and potatoes.

Of course, the Forces were nothing like this.

Meals at home were served in the formal dining room, on a table so large and intimidating, each person was seated a good two feet away from the other. Each entree was served by a butler on a silver tray, and the menu never varied—it was always French, it was always rich and complicated, and it was always perfectly delicious. Yet Schuyler missed Hattie's no-nonsense slapdash cooking, and longed for simple, unpretentious servings of macaroni-and-cheese or a pot roast that didn't require a red-wine reduction and an accent to pronounce.

Conversation was stale or nonexistent. Charles continued to be lost in his own world, while Trinity tried to engage the twins in perfunctory chatter about their lives. Jack was courteous while Mimi was simply curt. At least someone other than Schuyler thought these dinners were a farce and a waste of time.

"So, Jack and I have an announcement," Mimi said, when the dessert course arrived, a flaming peaches jubilee. "We've decided on the date of our bonding."

Schuyler tried to compose her face but found she could not help staring at Jack, who looked as impassive as ever. Their bonding! So soon…

Mimi reached out to hold her brother's hand in hers.

"It's a little early, don't you think?" Trinity asked, looking concerned. "You have a lot of time."

Yes, Schuyler thought. Lots and lots of time. Possibly forever.

Charles coughed. "Remember that age is an illusion among us, Trinity. You are starting to think like a Red Blood. The sooner they bond, the stronger they will be. A toast is in order. To the twins."

"To us!" Mimi crowed, clinking her glass against Jack's. The crystal rang like a deep booming bell.

"To the twins," Schuyler whispered. She sipped but found she could not swallow the wine in her glass.

Later that night as Schuyler dreamed, she received a message from Lawrence. The sending was easier in the dream state, he explained. It was not as shocking to the senses, and asleep her mind held no distractions. "Corcovado secure. All is well."

Twenty-one

Hiring Lizbet Tilton was the best decision she could have made, Mimi thought, congratulating herself on her savvy. Lizbet ran a very tight ship, and in short order the venues were locked in on the requested dates, contracts drafted, budgets balanced, deposits made. Earlier that afternoon Trinity and Mimi had gone over color schemes and menus with the caterer and the interior designer. Everything was operating like clockwork; although you'd think it was the doomsday clock, the way Jack was acting.

"Do you know what this is about?" he asked, meeting Mimi in Trinity's sitting room the next evening.

Their "mother"—Mimi always thought of the word in air quotes, since Trinity was as much her mother as Jack was her brother—had requested their presence before dinner. She had intimated that she wanted to talk to them about something important concerning their bonding.

"I have a feeling." Mimi smiled. She ruffled Jack's hair, and in return he put a hand on her waist and drew her close to him. They had always been affectionate, and even though she was aware of his continuing duplicity, she could not harden her heart against him. Jack hadn't agreed to bonding so early in the cycle, but on the other hand, he hadn't done anything to stop it either.

Perhaps the dalliance with Schuyler was simply that. Jack was just using her as an amusement. A side dish. Mimi certainly understood. She had found a tasty new familiar, and had been so voracious in her appetite she had almost killed the boy the other day. He would be all right; nothing that rest and a week away from a certain blond vampire couldn't cure.

Mimi looked around with approval. Trinity's home office was famous among her set for being the most lavish and impeccable. Hung on the velvet walls were life-size portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century aristocrats by Vigйe-LeBrun and Winterhalter. There was an Erard piano in the corner—the very same one Chopin used to compose his etudes. The bonheurs du jour, a small, elegant writing table where Trinity wrote her one-word thank you cards ("Bravo!" was her usual exhortation after attending a friend's dinner party) was originally commissioned for the Grand Trianon.

Mimi decided that when she came into her massive inheritance, and she and Jack bought their own place at 740 Park, she would hire the same decorator.

A few minutes later, Trinity entered the room holding two long ebony boxes embossed with gold filigree. Mimi's senses shifted, her memories racing, and she suddenly knew why they were there. "But where's Charles?" she cried. "We can't do this without him, can we?"

"I tried, my dear. But he won't leave his study. He's just…" Trinity shook her shoulders ever so slightly. Mimi understood that her mother adhered to a rigid code of etiquette. As distressed as she might be about her husband's condition, she would never admit to it or show any outward display of exasperation. She was a woman who was fundamentally unequipped to make a scene.

Charles's deterioration since losing his position as Regis of the Coven was something that the Forces never spoke about. It baffled and troubled them, but there was nothing they could do about it. They assumed Charles would simply snap out of it one day. Meanwhile, the company and all its holdings was run by a highly efficient board of directors, who had stopped inquiring as to whether their chairman and founder would ever attend another meeting.

"It's all right," Jack assured his twin. He too knew what was about to happen and couldn't disguise the excitement in his voice. "We don't need him."

"Are you sure?" Mimi asked, looking disappointed. "But without the Archangel's blessing …"

"They will be just as deadly," Jack soothed. "Nothing can change their power. Their power comes from the two of us." He nodded to Trinity. "Shall we begin, Mother?"

In answer, Trinity bowed her head. "I shall be honored to perform the rite." She closed the door quietly and dimmed the overhead lights. The boxes on the coffee table emanated a soft, hazy glow.

"I regret my hastiness in judging the precipitancy of your bonding. I was wrong, forgive me. It is perhaps only that I am saddened that I myself can no longer be bonded to my twin."

Mimi knew Trinity's story. Trinity was Sandalphon, the Angel of Silence. She had lost her twin to the Silver Bloods during the battle in Rome. Trinity had married Charles only in the Red Blood sense when his twin, Allegra, had broken their bond. It was a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Trinity mourned the angel Salgiel's passing still.

Trinity opened the cases. Nestled inside were two swords holstered in jeweled scabbards. Swords that would be worn underneath their garments at the bonding. Swords that they would now be allowed to use in the fight against the Croatan.

She picked up the first sword still in its scabbard and turned to Jack. "Kneel, Abbadon."

Jack stood up from his chair and walked to stand in front of Trinity. He knelt before her, his head bowed low.

Trinity raised the sword above her head. "With the authority of the Heavens vested in me, I, Sandalphon, confer upon you all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto as the true owner of Eversor Orbis."

World-Breaker.

She then tapped Jack's right and left shoulder with the sword. "Rise, Abbadon of the Dark."

Jack rose with a grim smile on his face as he accepted his sword. Trinity smiled proudly. Then she turned to Mimi.

"Kneel, Azrael."

Mimi took a moment to get in position, due to her high heels. Trinity picked up the second sword and once again raised it over her head.

"With the authority of the Heavens vested in me, I, Sandalphon, confer upon you all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto as the true owner of Eversor Lumen."

Light-Destroyer.

Mimi felt the sword tap her lightly on both shoulders. Then she stood up with a broad smile on her face. She turned to Jack, who nodded. Together the twins unsheathed their swords and lifted them aloft, pointing them to the Heavens.

"We accept these weapons as our divine right. Forged in Heaven, cast on Earth, they are our attendants in our search for Redemption."

Trinity joined them as they finished the litany of the Swords.

"Use them only in direst need.

"Keep them hidden from foes.

"Strike only to kill."

While they had received their swords at every bonding over the centuries, they had not been truly unsheathed in millennia. The Silver Bloods had been vanquished, or so they had believed. Mimi looked with wonder at the shining weapon in her hand. She remembered its weight and the sharpness of its blade. Remembered the terror it had once wrought in her enemies.

She noticed how Abbadon was holding his delicately, lovingly. One's sword was an extension of one's self. Unique, irreplaceable, unforgettable. Vampire swords changed shape and color and size. When needed they could become as wide as axes or as narrow as needles.

At the bonding, she would wear it on her hip, under the silk petticoats that would give her dress its shape.

Trinity turned the lights back to their full brightness. "All right, then." She nodded as if they had just finished talking about something small and trivial instead of having completed something wondrous and life-changing. In the afternoon light, with the sound of taxicabs zooming down the avenues and the metallic beeps from Trinity's fax machine (receiving yet another copy of a press clip in which she had been written up), it was hard to imagine the world as full of primitive, hidden dangers. How to reconcile a world with instant-messaging and twenty-four-hour news channels with the world of steel and blood.

But that is what their people did: they evolved, they adapted, they survived.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Jack asked, as they took leave of their mother and went their separate ways.

"You betcha." Mimi nodded, tucking the ebony case under her arm. She ran up to her room and shoved it in the back of her closet behind a rack of shoes.

She was late for Pilates. If she was going to be the most beautiful bride the Coven had ever seen, she'd better haul ass to her trainer's studio right away. She had arms to sculpt.

Cordelia Van Alen Personal File

Repository of History

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:

Altithronus Clearance Only

May 9, 1995

Dear Forsyth,

As you know, I have deeply appreciated your steadfast loyalty and friendship to the Van Alen family. It troubles me that we have been estranged of late due to your decision to run and hold a Red Blood office in direct violation of The Code. While I am not convinced you made the right choice, I respect it.

I am writing to beseech you to change your mind concerning your decision not to bring the new spirit of the Watcher into your family.

I must insist that you reconsider. We need vigilance more than ever, and the wisdom of the Watcher to guide us on our way. I fear Charles and his arrogance will bring nothing but doom to our people. Forsyth, I appeal to your friendship. Take the Watcher and your family. As a safeguard against the forces of the Dark.

Your friend, Cordelia Van Alen

Twenty-two

Transitions Residential Treatment Center was located in a sprawling multi-building campus in upstate New York. Oliver had offered to drive Bliss and Schuyler, since he had recently gotten his license along with a hot new Mercedes G500. The boxy custom-made silver SUV was his latest source of pride.

Schuyler was glad to get away. She'd been feeling guilty about what had happened to Dylan, how much they'd failed him by neglecting to alert the Conclave about his condition as soon as possible. Hopefully the Elders would know the best course of action. Bliss told them her father assured her that Dylan would come to no harm at their hands and would be given the best treatment possible, but she wanted to see it with her own eyes—they all did.

In the backseat, Bliss fluctuated between being kind of bummed and being a little too cheerfully manic, Schuyler noticed. She'd been morose and silent when they left, probably worried about Dylan and what condition they would find him in, and Schuyler was glad when halfway through the trip out of the city Bliss perked up and began to jabber energetically over the GPS.

"Peanut M&M's?" Bliss offered, leaning over with a large open yellow bag.

"No thanks," Oliver said, keeping his eyes on the road.

"Sure," Schuyler agreed. It was funny how the Committee couldn't predict everything: even though they were vampires they hadn't lost their taste for candy.

It was pleasant to leave Duchesne, if only for a day. Everyone at school knew all the details of Mimi and Jack's upcoming bonding already (or at least the Blue Bloods did) and couldn't stop talking about it. The others just thought the Forces were throwing a fabulous party that they weren't invited to again, and in a way their assumption was correct. Schuyler was sick of hearing about Mimi's dress and how this bonding compared to all the past ones in their shared history. Piper Crandall constantly reminded everyone that she had been a bondsmaid for Mimi three times already.

It was depressing to think that Jack and Mimi had been together for such an incomprehensibly long time. She almost couldn't believe it and didn't want to think about it right then, and busied herself by playing with all the buttons on the shiny new dashboard computer. "Dude, this is like, the most luxurious army vehicle in the world. Check this out! This is the button that launches the M-15s," she joked.

"Careful, that's the red button that destroys the world," Oliver said gamely, following the GPS's robotic instructions as he steered the car over the George Washington Bridge. Traffic was light on the highway.

It was the first time they'd cut school all semester. Duchesne students were allowed several cuts per year; the school was so progressive that even rebellion was written into the curriculum. Some kids, like Mimi Force, pushed this policy to its limits, but most didn't even take advantage of it. The school was filled with overachieving strivers who would sooner stay in class than blow a chance at getting into an Ivy. Every day counted.

"You guys know that this could ruin my GPA," Oliver complained as he looked over his shoulder to change lanes and get ahead of a Honda that was tooling around below the speed limit.

"Relax for once, will you?" Schuyler chided. "All the seniors have been cutting since they got their acceptance letters." Oliver could be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes. Always following rules. He was a total nerd when it came to academics.

"Yeah, aren't you legacy at Harvard anyway?" Bliss asked.

"College seems like such a weird thing, doesn't it?" Schuyler mused.

"I know what you mean. Before we found out about the Committee, I thought I might go to Vassar, you know? Major in Art History or something." Bliss said. "I kind of liked the idea of studying Northern Renaissance art, and then working in a museum or gallery."

"What do you mean 'kind of liked'?" Schuyler asked.

"Yeah, you don't think that's going to happen anymore?" Oliver asked, flipping through the radio stations. Amy Winehouse was singing about how she didn't want to go to rehab ("No! No! No! No!"). Schuyler met Oliver's eyes, and they smiled.

"You guys, that is so not funny. Turn it off or change it," Bliss admonished. "I don't know. I kind of don't think I'm going to college. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a future," she said, twisting her necklace.

"Oh shush," Schuyler said, turning around so she could talk directly to Bliss while Oliver found something more appropriate on the satellite radio. "Of course you're going to college. We all are."

"You really believe that?" Bliss asked, sounding hopeful.

"Totally."

Conversation dropped to a lull after a few minutes, and Bliss drifted off to sleep. In the front seat, Schuyler chose the music, Oliver letting her DJ this time. "You like this song?" he asked, when she settled on a station playing a Rufus Wainwright tune.

"Don't you?" she asked, feeling as if she'd been caught red-handed. It was the same song she and Jack always played. She thought she could get away with listening to it in the car. Oliver had a bit of an emo streak in him. She liked to tease him that his musical tastes ran toward music-to-off-yourself-by.

"You'd think I would, right? But I don't."

"Why not?"

Oliver shrugged, looking at her sideways. "It's like…too blubbery or something. Ech."

"What do you mean?" Schuyler asked. "Blubbery?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, I just feel like love isn't supposed to be so … angsty, you know? Like, if it works, it shouldn't be so tortured."

"Huh," Schuyler said, wondering if she should change the station. It seemed traitorous to play a song that reminded her of another boy. "You are so unromantic."

"Am not."

"But you've never even been in love."

"You know that's not true."

Schuyler was silent. In the past month they had performed the Caerimonia twice. She knew she should take other familiars—vampires were told to rotate their humans so as not to tax them—but she'd been able to go longer than she'd thought without a feeding. And she had resisted taking other humans, not quite sure that Oliver would approve.

But Schuyler didn't want to think about their relationship—friendship—whatever it was. After Oliver's passionate outburst at the Odeon, it hadn't come up again. She wanted to diffuse the tension she was starting to feel in the car. "Bet you can't even name one romantic movie you like," she teased.

She felt smug when a few minutes went by and Oliver was still unable to name one romantic movie he could profess to enjoy.

"The Empire Strikes Back" Oliver finally declared, tapping his horn at a Prius that wandered over the line.

"The Empire Strikes Back? The Star Wars movie? That's not romantic!" Schuyler huffed, fiddling with the air-conditioner controls.

"Au contraire, my dear, it's very romantic. The last scene, you know, when they're about to put Han in that freezing cryogenic chamber or whatever? Remember?"

Schuyler mmm-hmmmed.

"And Leia leans over the ledge and says, 'I love you.'"

"That's cheesy, not romantic," Schuyler argued, although she did like that part.

"Let me explain. What's romantic is what Han says back. Remember what he says to her? After she says 'I love you'?"

Schuyler grinned. Maybe Oliver had a point. "Han says, 'I know.'"

"Exactly." Oliver tapped the wheel. "He doesn't have to say anything so trite as 'I love you.' Because that's already understood. And that's romantic."

For once, Schuyler had to admit he was right.

Twenty-three

When Bliss woke up from her nap, Oliver and Schuyler were snapping at each other in the front seat. "What're you guys arguing about now?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Nothing," they chorused.

Bliss accepted their reticence without question. Those two always kept secrets from her, even when they didn't mean to.

"Okay, I guess we can stop for lunch, then," Schuyler finally said. Ah, so that was what it was about. Those two fought about everything. It had gotten worse since Oliver had become Schuyler's familiar. They acted more like an old married couple than before. On the surface, at least, they pretended their friendship was exactly the same. Which was just fine with Bliss; she didn't know if she could really stand any Schuyler-Ollie PDA.

"I'm just saying we're not going to do Dylan any good by going hungry." Oliver shrugged.

They pulled into a rest area, joining weary travelers at the vending machines and the food court.

Oliver observed that one of the novelties of growing up as city kids was that they were all addicted to suburban fast-food chains. While none of them would ever even consider going to a McDonald's in Manhattan—those places were basically ad-hoc homeless shelters—once they were out of city limits, the rules changed, and no one cared to eat expensive panini sandwiches and precious organic green salads. Bring on the supersized meals.

"God, I feel sick," Bliss said, sipping the last of her milk shake.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Oliver declared, crumpling the wrapper of his greasy hamburger and wiping his hands with several napkins.

"It's always fun to eat this stuff. But afterward…" Schuyler agreed, even though she was still picking at the fries.

"Afterward you always feel like you're going to hurl. Or that your cholesterol count just skyrocketed," Bliss said, making a face.

It was quiet when they climbed back into the car and felt the soporific effects of their heavy meal. A half hour later, the GPS blared "EXIT ON THE RIGHT IN FIVE HUNDRED METERS," and Oliver followed the

signs up the ramp and down the road to a parking lot. They had arrived.

The rehabilitation center grounds were immaculate. It looked more like a five-star resort, where celebrities went to hide after a lost weekend, rather than a high-priced treatment facility for floundering vampires. They saw a group practicing tai chi on the lawn, several others performing yoga poses, and clusters of people sitting in the grass in a circle.

"Group therapy," Bliss whispered as they made their way to the front door of the main building. "I asked Honor what it was like here, and she said there's a lot of past-lives-regression therapy."

They were greeted at the entrance by a slim, tanned woman in a white T-shirt and white pants. The effect was less clinical and more fashionable—like a New Age ashram.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked in a friendly manner.

"We're here to visit a friend," Bliss said, who had become the de facto spokesman for the trio.

"Name?"

"Dylan Ward."

The counselor checked the computer and nodded. "Do you have permission from the senator to visit this patient?"

"I'm, uh, his daughter," Bliss said, showing the woman her ID.

"Great. He's in the north campus, in a private cottage. Follow the path out the door, you'll see signs." She handed them visitor stickers. "Visiting hours are until four. The cafй is in the main building. It's International Day—I think it's Vietnamese. You guys like pho?"

"We already ate," Oliver said, and Bliss thought she sensed a hint of a smile in Oliver's words. "But thanks."

"It seems nice here," Schuyler said as they walked through the greenery.

"The Committee does do a good job, I'll give them that. Nothing but the best for the vamps." Oliver nodded and put on a pair of dark sunglasses.

Bliss couldn't believe how calm and organized everything was. This was where they put troubled Blue Bloods? Maybe she'd made a mistake in hiding Dylan for so long. Maybe they really could help him here. She began to feel less strained and more optimistic. Several patients waved to them as they passed.

Dylan's room was one of the nicer cottages, with a white picket fence and rosebushes growing by the windows. A nurse was sitting in an anteroom.

"He's sleeping. But let me see if he'll take visitors," she told them. She disappeared into the main room, and they could hear her talking in a soft, gentle voice to Dylan.

"He's ready for you." The nurse smiled and indicated that they were welcome to go inside.

Bliss exhaled and didn't realize she was holding her breath all this time. Dylan certainly looked better. He was sitting up in bed, there was color in his cheeks, and he didn't look as thin or haggard. His black hair had been cut so it didn't fall in lank strands on his face, and he was cleanshaven. He looked almost like his old self, like the boy who played air guitar during chapel just to annoy the teachers.

"Dylan! Thank God!" she cried. She was happy to see him looking so much healthier.

He smiled at her pleasantly.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

Twenty-four

"The past can sometimes blind us from what is happening today," the chief warden said to begin his lecture. "It is why we were in denial about the Silver Bloods' existence for so long. Because our past had told us they were no longer a threat. Because the past had blinded us to their existence. We had forgotten what the early days in our history were like. We had forgotten about the Great War. About our enemies. We had become soft and contented. Gorging on Red Blood and getting fat and lazy and ignorant."

A fine thing to say when your waistcoat strained at the buttons, Schuyler thought. It was yet another Monday. Yet another Committee meeting. A tedious one too, since they wouldn't be practicing mutatio today.

Sitting beside her, Bliss and Oliver looked just as bored as she felt. The visit to Transitions had been greatly disturbing to all of them, affecting Bliss the most. Schulyer didn't know what they expected to see, but they certainly hadn't expected to find Dylan's memories and personality erased completely.

Sure, Dylan didn't seem like he was about to knock them out with a mind-blow or start spouting off accusations about one of them being Satan's minion, but he didn't seem at all like himself either. It was as if he were a different person altogether. He was amiable, pleasant, and totally dull.

None of his doctors were around to answer any questions, and the nurse wouldn't tell them anything except that Dylan, as far as she could tell, was "fine." He was dutifully going to all the therapy sessions and making "progress."

Schuyler knew Bliss blamed herself, but there was nothing they could do. None of them had any idea how to fix whatever had happened to Dylan. She had tried to console Bliss as much as she could. She knew how terrible she would feel if she had seen Jack that way. If he ever looked at her as if he didn't know her at all. And yet, that was exactly what was going to happen once he was bonded to Mimi. He would forget about Schuyler completely, forget about what they meant to each other.

Schuyler tried to pay attention to what Warden Oelrich was saying. It was important information, but she had no patience for it right then. Seated right in front of her were the Force twins. She had watched them enter the room together, feeling resentful at the sight of Jack laughing at something his sister said.

Although, of course he had to pretend. The atmosphere at the town house was frenetic with bonding preparations. Different packages arrived every day, and many people came to call. Mimi's bonding planner, Lizbet Tilton, had arrived with a whole crew of photographers, stylists, florists, and "aural-landscape artists" (her exact words for the DJ who was to take over after the orchestra signed off at two in the morning) for Mimi to approve.

Schuyler felt sick just listening to them talk about the event. Not only because the event in question would take Jack away from her forever, but because the way Mimi was acting, you'd think no one had ever been bonded before. The upcoming ceremony did have its advantages—Mimi was so busy that the petty thievery and malicious pranks had finally ceased.

Sometimes Schuyler missed Jack so much she felt a hollow ache in her belly that felt like it would never be filled. She wished he didn't have to hide the way he felt about her. She had to remind herself that it was all an act, but sometimes his indifference seemed so real it was hard to console herself with memories of their private meetings. Sometimes it felt as if her memories were merely fantasies, especially when she saw him in the hallways at school, or when he barely acknowledged her presence in his own home…

Until another book was slipped under her door, a signal that it was safe for them to meet. The last one had been a slim book of poetry. John Donne. That night she had smiled and teased him about his old-fashioned taste. He had asked her what kind of poetry she preferred, and she told him.

Up by the lectern, Edmund Oelrich continued his lecture. "One of the tricks of the Croatan is to use illusion to manipulate its foes.

"You must not fall for the trick of the eye. You must use your internal sight to be able to see what is truly in front of you. Use the animadverto and your past memories to make a truly informed decision."

He asked Mimi to hand out papers for that week's reading assignment. Mimi glided around the room passing out the stapled sheets. When she got to Schuyler's table she deliberately knocked all of Schuyler's books to the floor.

"Oops!" she said disingenuously.

Schuyler picked up her books with a frown. She'd had enough of Mimi for all eternity. She wondered how the other vampires put up with it. If she had to spend the rest of her lives dealing with that witch, she would gladly let the Silver Bloods take her.

She was still glowering as she skimmed the reading. Then her eyes widened. At the top of the page she read: Vampire Bonds, A History.

Several members snickered out of titillation and embarrassment, and Schuyler found herself blushing. She noticed Oliver paging through the document with a thoughtful air, while Bliss was doodling in the margins.

The chief warden cleared his throat before addressing his audience again. "I wanted to talk today about vampire twins. At your age, there is a lot of interest in this topic, and I thought I would end this meeting on a more pleasant note. You are familiar with the bond. Each of us has a twinned soul that was formed in our heavenly past. Through the centuries, we spend each cycle searching for our twin so that we may be bound to one another once again in a new lifetime."

All the color drained from Schuyler's face as she listened to the warden's words.

"Sometimes it is hard to recognize our twinned spirit in a different physical shell. Or, as in some lonely cases, one's twin has not been called up for the same cycle again and again, and thus becomes lost in time. There are stories of lovers who have looked for each other in vain throughout the ages, never finding their twin."

Right in front of her, Mimi began to massage the back of Jack's neck.

"However, these are very rare cases. Since there are only four hundred of us, it is not too difficult to find each other. This happy reunion usually results in a short courtship and a public presentation at the Four Hundred Ball. The bond must be renewed during each cycle. Renewing the bond renews the spirit of life that flows in our veins. It is one of the ecclesiastic mysteries. But perhaps the bond is where all the legends about true love and romance in this world come from.

"The Red Bloods even have their own name for it: 'soul mate.' They've taken many of our traditions and practices for their own. Their wedding ceremony is directly derived from our vampire communion.

"Finding your vampire twin is one of the happiest and most fruitful phases of one's cycle. I know several of you have already found yours, and I congratulate you. The bond is an integral part of our lives. It nourishes and strengthens us. We are incomplete without our twin; we are half of ourselves. Only when we find and bond with our twin spirit do we come into our full memories and into our full potential."

Schuyler didn't need to hear or read anything more. She looked over at Mimi and Jack. Saw how the light played off their fair, platinum hair, how beautiful and still and remote the two of them looked sitting together. Saw with new comprehension how the two of them complemented and balanced each other in every attribute: Mimi's glibness softened by Jack's eloquence, her aggressiveness checked by his temper. They were two halves of the same person. A matched pair. Schuyler felt instinctively that there was part of Jack that would always remain inaccessible to her; there was an otherness to him that she would never be able to reach.

She knew that it was rare for twinned spirits to be born in the same family in a cycle, but it was not unheard of, and had been less of a problem in the past, when pharaohs and emperors routinely married their sisters.

In the event that it did happen in the modern age, there was a spell that kept the Red Bloods from noticing anything strange. Mimi Force would still be Mimi Force after the bonding, except the Red Bloods would assume it was because she was Jack's wife and not his sister. Memories were easily changeable, the truth malleable.

Schuyler saw Jack turn to Mimi with a soft look on his face. For her part, Mimi simply glowed.

All at once Schuyler felt a deep and aching sadness. It was hopeless to think she would ever have a chance of real, lasting happiness with Jack.

There has to be a way, she thought desperately. There has to be a way to break the bond and be free to love whomever you want.

There is.

She started. For a moment she had thought she'd heard Jack's voice in her head. But she didn't hear it again. Still, she knew it had happened. She had not imagined it. She felt lighter all of a sudden, and more optimistic.

There had to be hope for the two of them still.

Twenty-five

Bliss never understood Schuyler's infatuation with Jack Force and wished her friend would give up that particular ghost. Nothing good could ever come out of it. Even though Bliss was a new member of the Committee and was just starting to accept the ways of their kind, she'd always understood one thing: you didn't mess around with the bond. The bond was serious stuff. Nothing would ever separate Jack and Mimi; nothing was ever supposed to come between them. It was impossible to even think otherwise. Bliss thought Schuyler had always taken it too lightly, which was odd for a girl whose very own mother was the first of their race to break her bond and live (if you could call that living) with the consequences. But as they say, love is blind.

But she didn't say "I told you so" after the lecture. Bliss wasn't that kind of friend. Neither of them spoke as they left the Committee meeting. Oliver had excused himself quickly, leaving before the meeting had even been dismissed, while Schuyler was moody and silent on the walk home from school. Bliss didn't ask her if she still met Jack at that downtown apartment—a secret that Schuyler had spilled innocently one day, several months ago, when she'd told Bliss about the key she'd found in an envelope with an address slipped underneath her door. The next day, when Schuyler had come to school flushed and dreamy, Bliss had put two and two together.

Bliss blamed Jack Force. He should know better. He had access to the wisdom of his past, whereas Schuyler was a new spirit, as blind and dumb as a Red Blood, really. He should have just left Schuyler alone.

Both of Bliss's parents were home when she arrived, which surprised her. BobiAnne usually had her cellulite treatments at this time, and Forsyth was supposed to be in Washington for the week. She put her key in the sterling-silver dish on the front table and walked down the main hallway, drawn by the quarreling voices.

It sounded like Forsyth and BobiAnne were screaming at each other. But Bliss soon realized it was just her vampire hearing that made it seem that way. In reality, they were whispering.

"Are you sure you had completely secured it?" That was BobiAnne, sounding more agitated than Bliss had ever heard her before.

"Positive."

"I told you to take it away."

"And I told you that wouldn't be safe," Forsyth snapped.

"But who would take it? Who would even know we had it? He hasn't even realized it's missing. …"

There was a hollow laugh. "You're right. He's a wreck. He's finished. All he does is weep and pore over old photo albums, or listen to old tapes. Trinity is beside herself. It's pathetic. There's no way he knows."

"So who, then?"

"You know my suspicions."

"But she's just a girl."

"She's more than that. You know that."

"But how can we be sure?"

"We can't be."

"Unless…"

Their voices faded, and Bliss crept up the grand staircase to her room. She wondered what they were talking about. It sounded like they had lost something. Her mind flashed to the necklace she was wearing. She had never returned it to her father after the night of the Four Hundred Ball. But he had never asked for it back either. It couldn't be the necklace, because BobiAnne had seen her wearing it the other day and commented on how well it went with her eyes.

She put away her things in her room and picked up her phone. Dylan had been on her mind all day after the visit. She couldn't believe he didn't even remember her. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry when she thought about him. Bliss changed out of her school clothes and put on something comfortable. She padded into the kitchen, where she found Jordan doing homework on the island counter.

"What's wrong?" Jordan asked, looking up from her books. The kid was in all honors classes—something Bliss hadn't achieved until the vampire blood kicked in.

"Nothing." Bliss shook her head.

"It's about that boy, isn't it? Your friend?" Jordan asked.

Bliss sighed and nodded.

She was relieved when her sister didn't press her to talk about it. Instead, Jordan broke her bar of Toblerone in half. It was Jordan's favorite candy, and she hoarded it in her room because BobiAnne was forever haranguing her about her weight.

"Thanks," Bliss said, taking a bite. The chocolate was sweet and delicious as it melted on her tongue. Bliss was touched. Her little sister had tried to make her feel better in the only way she knew how. "You need help with anything?" she asked, as a way to say she appreciated the thoughtful gesture.

"Nope." Jordan shook her head. "You're hopeless at math anyway."

"You've got that right." Bliss laughed. She zapped the remote toward the small plasma television hanging over the counter. "Is this going to bother you?" She asked, flipping through the channels.

"Nah."

Bliss finished the chocolate and watched television while Jordan continued to work on her math problems. When Forsyth and BobiAnne entered the kitchen a few hours later to rally the family to dinner, they found the sisters still sitting quietly together, side by side.

Twenty-six

An emergency Conclave meeting had been called, and at the end of it Mimi was surprised to find Bliss waiting outside the doors. "What are you doing here?" she asked, slinging her gym bag over her shoulder. She'd been in the middle of a two-hour cardio session before heading to the Force Tower. She hadn't had time to change or look presentable. Her hair was still sticking to her sweaty forehead.

"Forsyth picked me up from school, and when he got the summons, he brought me with him," Bliss told her. "What's happened?"

"Your dad didn't tell you?" Mimi hesitated, using a terry-cloth wristband to wipe the dampness on her cheek.

"Something to do with a golden sword?" Bliss asked.

Mimi shrugged without confirming Bliss's guess. She was especially annoyed with Bliss, whom she'd always assumed to be more of an also-ran rather than a homecoming queen in the grand scheme of things. Yet the city's machers and arbiters of fashion couldn't seem to get enough of the russet-haired Amazon. After opening the Rolf Morgan show, Bliss had booked more advertising campaigns than ever. Her face was everywhere—on billboards, on top of taxicabs. She was inescapable.

Mimi would forgive sudden fame and glory—God knows that's what everyone in New York was after—but she couldn't forgive Bliss for choosing sides, especially since it was the wrong one. Everyone at school knew Bliss and Schuyler were besties. Mimi found it insulting that Bliss, a girl who wouldn't have had a social leg to stand on in Duchesne without Mimi's blessing, had turned her back on the in-crowd to hang with the ragged little group of misfits.

She didn't want to share her information, but the opportunity to lord her insider status over her former friend was too much for Mimi to resist. "It's Michael's sword," she explained. "The Blade of Justice."

"What about it?"

"It's missing. Charles called the meeting as soon as he discovered it was gone." Mimi had arrived at the Conclave to find her father at the head of the table. Charles had been furious. He was certain someone on the Conclave had taken it, and had begun the assembly by accusing several members of robbery.

Bliss looked around at the Elders, who were leaving the meeting in whispering groups. "Why is it important?"

"Duh. Don't you remember? It's the Archangel's sword. It's only one of two in the world. Gabrielle has the other, of course—you know, Allegra—but no one knows where it disappeared to when she went AWOL. It's been lost for decades. But Charles's, Michael's … he kept it in a blood-lock in his study. But someone broke in. It's gone. He's sure the Croatan have it," Mimi explained. The blood-lock was the most powerful security the Blue Bloods had in their arsenal. Only the blood of an Archangel could open the case. It was an impossible puzzle. With Allegra in a coma, there were no other suspects.