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FEBRUARY 10, 1872
MARRIAGE ANNOUNCEMENT

INVITATIONS HAVE BEEN ISSUED for the marriage of Miss Caroline Vanderbilt, daughter of Admiral and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and Alfred, Lord Burlington, on Thursday evening, February 24, at six o’clock, at the home of the bride elect’s parents, 800 Fifth Avenue. The Reverend Mr. Cushing of this city will officiate. Miss Vanderbilt will be attended by her younger sister, Miss Ava Vanderbilt, and the Marquis of Essex will act as best man. There will be a reception after the ceremony. The bride’s family is prominent in society, and among the eight-hundred invited guests will be the governor of New York and the mayor of this city. Lord Burlington is an exchange broker, doing business in London and New York, and is the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. The bride and groom will then leave for an extended tour of the Indian subcontinent.

T
he boy stood precariously on the railing of the balcony off the third-floor library. When the weather was warm, the balcony was nicknamed “Club Duschene” since students routinely took their lunches there, tanning, rolling up jeans into shorts, girls unbuttoning their blouses as low as they dared, and boys going as far as to take off their shirts. But it was the middle of January, and the windows that led out to the balcony were usually locked. Not today. Today, someone had opened the window, letting an arctic blast inside the library, and that someone was now outside, balancing on a slim, four-inch iron rail. Jack was on his way back from the music building when he came upon a lively crowd gathered in the cortile, the courtyard behind the main school. He saw Schuyler slip through the side entrance, her face lined with concern as she spoke to her friend Oliver, the Red Blood.

He tore his eyes away from her, wishing he were the one she would turn to for comfort, and looked up to where several people were pointing, and noticed the boy. He was a freshman, a Red Blood, and he stood on the railing with a blank, dazed look on his face.

“Jump!” Soos Kemble screeched, collapsing in giggles.

“What does he think he’s doing?” another girl asked, horrified and titillated at the same time.

Jack noticed that the crowd was amused by the situation. Half of them were eagerly, if unconsciously, rooting for the boy to fall. Classes would be canceled for the rest of the day for sure.

“C’mon! Get it over with! I have a Pre-calc quiz I don’t feel like taking this afternoon!” someone called.

In one corner, hidden behind a hedge that surrounded a stone bench, Jack’s supersensitive hearing picked up the sound of Kingsley Martin, the new boy, laughing with Mimi.

“Make him do a pirouette,” Mimi said.

Kingsley waved his hand, and the boy on the ledge executed a ballerina turn. The crowd gasped. But the boy landed on his feet. He looked shocked at what had just happened, almost as if he had no control. . . .

No control . . .

Jack glanced sharply at Kingsley. He knew in an instant what was happening. Kingsley was using the glom to control the boy’s mind, as a puppet master would pull the strings.

At Committee meetings, they had been told there would be strict punishments for using their powers on the Red Bloods without provocation. Jack felt a deep rage rise within him. The stupid, arrogant fool. Kingsley was going to put them all in danger.

“Release him!” Jack commanded, holding up a palm, his eyes shooting daggers at Kingsley.

The crowd turned to see who was causing the scene.

“Aw, we were just having a bit of fun, mate,” Kingsley said, and with another flick of his wrist, the boy stopped turning.

The boy screamed to find himself alone on top of the balcony. He wobbled; his left foot slipped off the edge. . . .

“Martin! Bring him down! NOW!”

“If you insist,” Kingsley said, looking bored already. The boy regained his balance and safely stepped off the railing onto the terrace.

“Modo caecus,”
Jack whispered, sending a blinding spell over any of the humans who had congregated, to make them forget what they had seen.

“That was foolish and dangerous, not to mention cruel and petty,” Jack said, confronting Kingsley. He had never felt so angry in his life. And to see Mimi standing there next to him was even worse. Was he actually jealous? Or was he just angry and disappointed to find his sister engaging in such low behavior?

“Stop being a spoilsport, Force,” Kingsley said. “No harm done, eh?”

“Yeah, Jack, get off it,” Mimi said. “It’s just a frosh. Nothing would have happened.”

“That’s not the point, Mimi,” Jack said. “The Wardens will hear of this.”

“Oh, the Wardens.” Kingsley laughed. “Listen, why don’t you come after me yourself ?” he taunted. “Or are you too much of a Red Blood lover you’ve forgotten your Blood is blue?”

Jack blushed to the roots of his fine blond hair.

“You Forces—or whatever your call yourselves these days—would be nothing without my family, without the sacrifices we made,” Kingsley said darkly. He turned on his heel and started to walk away. “Any time you want to eat your words, Force, you know where to find me.”

“Jack, it’s just a joke,” Mimi said, trying to mollify her brother.

“Drop it,” Jack said, shrugging off her hand from his shoulder.

He walked away quickly, and Mimi followed him, a cross look on her face. “Jack, wait, c’mon.”

But Jack didn’t turn around. His ears were burning from embarrassment at lashing out like that in public. Had that been wise? He’d had to stop Kingsley, hadn’t he? Or was he just being humorless like his sister had said? And anyway, what was Kingsley talking about? What sacrifices had the Martins made?

He would have to ask his father about this.

O
liver had saved her a seat next to his in Chem lab. He handed Schuyler her goggles, and she put on her lead apron. “What are we doing today?” she asked, fitting the goggles over her nose. Oliver was already wearing his. The whole class looked like a team of welders. Across the room, Mimi loudly complained that the goggles gave her an ugly red mark on her nose, but no one paid much attention. “Making candy again?” Schuyler asked. Oliver checked the Bunsen burner and turned it on slowly, so it emitted a small, red flame. “Yup.” In the past, Duchesne had had one of the most inventive and charismatic science teachers on the subject. In fact, Chem lab was so popular among the students that both juniors and sophomores were allowed to take it as an elective. But Mr. Anthony, the boyish, enthusiastic, and recent Yale grad, had been discharged from the school over winter break due to an unfortunate affair with one of his students, who had gotten pregnant. Mr. Anthony was fired, and the student expelled. This was not Degrassi Junior High, after all. This was Duchesne.

Which was all well and good, except that with Mr. Anthony and his advanced, yet exciting, lab experiments gone (last semester they had turned copper into gold, or at least gold plate), the students were stuck with boring old Mr. Korgan, whose syllabus included a series of experiments each duller than the next. Calculating density. Determining the composition of water. Identifying a solution as acid, base, or neutral. Yaawwwn. Mr. Korgan was so slow that for two weeks the class was involved in creating a chemical reaction in hydrogen and fructose—otherwise known as turning sugar and water into candy.

Schuyler was ready to place a beaker filled with water above the burner, when Mr. Korgan announced they were going to do something different that day.

“I would like you to—
cough
—switch lab partners every week. The class has grown very disruptive of late and so I must—
cough
—separate you from your friends. Will the partner on the left please step down to the next table, and so on, and we will keep this rotation every week.”

Oliver and Schuyler looked pained. “See you after class,” Oliver called as Schuyler collected her things and moved over to the next table, where Kingsley Martin was standing.

If anything, the large plastic goggles on his face only served to enhance his beauty by highlighting how nothing could put a damper on his good looks—not even bug-eyed plastic shades. Kingsley could wear polyester pants and a Groucho mustache and still look hot. Schuyler hadn’t seen much of Kingsley since he arrived, although she had heard all the raves about him, and had witnessed his arrogant performance at the cortile that morning.

“Shame about your grandfather,” he said as a greeting.

Schuyler tried not to show her shock. But then, Kingsley was a Blue Blood. His parents were probably high-ranking members of the coven.

“He’ll be all right,” she said tersely, waiting for the water in the beaker to boil.

“Oh, I’m sure. I just wish I were there to see Lawrence and Charles battle it out. Just like the old days.”

“Uh-huh.” Schuyler nodded, not wanting to get into the conversation. She hadn’t even told Oliver about Lawrence’s return. She felt superstitious about it. What if The Committee just sent him back to Italy posthaste? Then there wouldn’t even be anything to tell.

“Tell me, are you still hung up on that boy?”

“Excuse me?” Schuyler asked, holding a test tube.

“Nothing.” Kingsley shrugged innocently. “If that’s how you want to play it,” he said teasingly.

When Kingsley wasn’t looking, Schuyler studied his profile. He had been at the Four Hundred Ball, she’d heard.

Could he—could he have been the boy behind the mask she had kissed at the after-party? Schuyler subconsciously put a hand over her lips. If he was the boy she had kissed, did that mean that even though she found him repulsive, there was actually something about him that she found attractive? Oliver was always quoting from Foucault, saying that desire stemmed from revulsion.

A random thought flew into her head: what if the boy behind the mask had been
Oliver
? There had been Red Bloods at the party . . . and Oliver hated being left out of anything fun. He would have been able to find out about it, she was sure. Had she felt drawn to the boy in the mask because he was her best friend? Had they kissed? Was that why he was so nice to her lately? Treating her with so much tenderness?

She peeked across the room at him, watching him grimace as Mimi Force, his lab partner, burned the fructose so that it melted into a sickeningly sweet–smelling disaster.

If she had kissed Oliver, did that mean they were more than friends now? Would they have to start dating? Was she even attracted to him? She looked at his chestnut hair flopping over his eyes, and thought of how, in Venice, she had wanted nothing more than to taste his blood. Did that equal attraction? And who knew how he felt about her?

Schuyler placed the perfectly molded candy squares on the table, and caught the eye of another boy across the room.

Jack Force. Her stomach immediately tied up in knots.

Suddenly Schuyler knew she was just kidding herself. She might toy with the idea of liking Kingsley or Oliver. But really she knew she nursed a not-so-secret hope about the identity of the boy she had kissed: she wished for one name and one name only.

Jack.

W
hen Schuyler arrived home from school, Lawrence still had not returned. She asked Julius to bring her grandfather’s luggage up to Cordelia’s room. It looked forlorn and lonesome in the entryway. Hattie had prepared supper, and Schuyler took a tray up to her room, eating her meat loaf and mashed potatoes in front of her computer. Cordelia would never have allowed such a thing. Her grandmother had been vigilant that Schuyler eat dinner properly at the table every night. But then, Cordelia wasn’t around to enforce her rules anymore. Schuyler fed Beauty scraps from her plate as she checked her e-mail and made a halfhearted attempt to finish her homework. Afterward, she brought her tray down to the kitchen and helped Hattie load the dishwasher. It was after nine o’clock. Her grandfather had been gone for more than twelve hours already. How long could the meeting have lasted?

Finally, at a little past midnight, Lawrence’s key turned in the lock. He looked exhausted. The lines on his face were haggard. Schuyler thought he looked as if he had aged several decades.

“What happened?” she asked, alarmed at his condition. She flew up from the window seat where she had been dozing. The living room, removed of its heavy drapes and covers, was a surprisingly comfortable place. Hattie had lit a fire in the hearth, and Schuyler couldn’t get enough of the river view.

Lawrence set his crushed fedora on the rack and sank into one of the antique couches across from the fire. Dust flew as he shifted in his seat. “I do think Cordelia could have put some money into keeping this place a little cleaner,” he grumbled. “I left her with quite a nest egg.”

Cordelia had always given Schuyler the impression that they had run out of money, and what little they had went to financing the bare necessities: Duchesne tuition, food, shelter, the skeletal staff. Anything aside from that—new clothes, money for movies or restaurants—was grudgingly parceled out dollar by dollar.

“Grandmother always said we were broke,” Schuyler said.

“In contrast to how we lived once, surely. But we Van Alens are far from bankrupt. I checked the accounts today.

Cordelia invested wisely. The interest has been collecting interest. We should be able to bring this house back to where it should be.”

“You went to the bank?” Schuyler asked, a little startled.

“I had to run a number of errands, yes. It’s been a long time since I was in the city. Marvelous how the world has changed. One forgets that in Venice. Ran into several friends. Cushing Carondolet insisted I dine with him at the old club. I’m sorry, I would have come back earlier, but I had to find out what Charles has been up to in my absence.”

“But what happened with The Committee?”

Lawrence took a cigar out of his pocket and carefully lit it. “Oh, at the hearing?”

“Yes,” Schuyler said impatiently, mystified by Lawrence’s casual attitude.

“Well, they brought me into the Repository,” Lawrence said. “I had to speak in front of the Conclave—the coven’s highest leadership. Wardens, Elders. Enmortals like me.” Enmortals were vampires who kept the same physical shell over the centuries, who had been given permission to be exempt from the cycle of sleeping and waking, otherwise known as reincarnation.

“Never seen such a sorry bunch,” Lawrence said, pursing his lips in distaste. “Forsyth Llewellyn is a senator—did you know that? Back in Plymouth he was just Michael’s lackey. It’s a disgrace. And completely against the Code. It wasn’t always so, you know. We have ruled before. But after the disaster in Rome, we agreed that taking positions of power in the human sphere was forever out of the question.”

Schuyler nodded. Cordelia had told her as much.

“And they’ve kicked out the Carondolets from the Conclave, Cushing told me all about it. Because he had proposed a
Candidus Suffragium
.”

“What is that?”

“The White Vote. For the leadership of the coven,” Lawrence said, kicking off his banker’s cap-toes and waving his stockinged feet in front of the fire.

“But I thought Michael—Charles—was Regis. Forever.”

“Not quite,” Lawrence said, flicking his ashes into an ashtray he had removed from his jacket pocket.

“No?”

“No. The coven is not a democracy. But it is not a monarchy either. We had agreed that leadership can be questioned if the coven feels the Regis has not led us properly. So the White Vote is called.”

“Has there ever been a White Vote?”

“Yes.” Lawrence sunk so low into the chair that only the smoke from his cigar was visible. “Once, in Plymouth.”

“What happened?”

“I lost.” Lawrence shrugged. “They banished Cordelia and me from the Conclave. Since then, we have held no power on the council. We bowed to their rule, and later on, around the time of the Gilded Age, we decided we had to separate.”

“Why?” Schuyler asked.

“Cordelia told you we suspected that a high-ranking member of the Conclave was harboring the Silver Blood. I thought it would be safer for her if I disappeared for a while, so I could continue our investigation without The Committee knowing about it. We thought it was clever of us. But alas, it meant that I was not here when Allegra succumbed to her heartsickness. Or when you were born. And my work so far has been fruitless. I am no closer to confirming my suspicions than I was before.”

“But what happened—why did they let you go free? I thought you were exiled.”

Lawrence chuckled. “So did they. They had forgotten I went into exile
voluntarily
. I don’t think any of them ever expected me to come back. They didn’t really have much of a choice. I havn’t broken any rules of the Code. There was no reason to prohibit my return. Still, because I have been gone for so long they demanded that I testify.”

“Testify to what?”

“Oh, to promise not to question the Coven’s leadership as I had once done. You know, call for another White Vote. They even reinstated my position on the Conclave, as long as I promised not to bring up the Silver Blood menace again. According to Charles, the Croatan threat has been contained, if it ever existed at all.”

“Just because no one’s died in the last three months,” Schuyler said.

“Yes. They are blind as usual. The Silver Bloods are back. It was just as Cordelia and I had warned, so many years ago.”

“But everything else is all right, then,” Schuyler said happily, not caring about the Croatan threat for the moment. “You’re back, and they can’t do anything about it.”

He studied the fireplace sorrowfully. “Not quite. I have some bad news.”

Schuyler’s smile faded.

“Charles has informed me he is making plans to adopt you.”

“What? Why?” Charles Force—adopt her? What gave him the right? What kind of sick joke was this?

“Unfortunate as it is, he is, nonetheless, your uncle. When Allegra, his sister, revoked their bond and refused to take him as her partner in this cycle, he turned his back on the Van Alen family. Actually, he did everything he could to destroy this family. To destroy your mother. He could never forgive her for marrying your father and giving birth to you. He hardened his heart against her. He even changed his name.”

Schuyler thought of the many times she had found Charles Force kneeling by her mother’s bedside. He had been her mother’s constant visitor, and she had overheard him begging Allegra for
her
forgiveness.

“Hence, he is your last living blood relative, aside from me, of course. But there is no record of my existence in this cycle—in fact, according to the papers, I’m legally dead. I died in 1872. Thank goodness for Swiss banks. Our accounts are merely numerical codes, otherwise I would not have been able to touch them. Charles has decided that I am not fit to raise you. He wants to raise you himself.”

Her uncle. Cordelia had intimated as much, and yet Schuyler had refused to acknowledge this fact of her twisted family tree. “But they can’t . . . I mean, he’s not . . . I don’t even know him.”

“Do not worry, I won’t let that happen. Allegra would want nothing more than to keep you away from him,” Lawrence said.

“Why does he hate you so much?” Schuyler asked, a glimmer of tears in her bright blue eyes. Lawrence had finally returned, and again the forces—or make that, the Forces—were conspiring to take him away from her. Schuyler thought of what adoption might be like: having to live with Mimi and Jack, her cousins. Mimi would
love
that, she was sure. . . . And Jack, what would he think?

“‘They will be divided, father against son, son against father,’” Lawrence said, quoting from Scripture. “Alas, I have always been a disappointment to my son.”