Masquerade (7 page)

T
he Van Alen mansion on the corner of 101st and Riverside had once been one of the largest and most majestic homes in all of New York. Countless generations of the family had entertained presidents, heads of state, foreign dignitaries, Nobel prize–winning laureates, as well as Hollywood royalty and the occasional flavor-of-the-month bohemian—artists, writers, and their ilk. Yet now it was a mere shadow of its former self: the cornices were chipped, there was grafitti on the side of the building, the roof leaked, and the walls were riddled with cracks, as the family had been unable to maintain its upkeep over the years. Schuyler dragged her suitcase up the steps and rang the bell. Hattie, her grandmother’s loyal maid, answered and let her inside. The living room was as dark and shrouded as when Schuyler had left. For years Schuyler and Cordelia had lived in only a quarter of the rooms in the vast house—kitchen, dining, and their two bedrooms. Everything else was locked and unused, which Schuyler had always attributed to Cordelia’s penury. Her grandmother kept almost all the furniture in the house under canvas sheets, windows were curtained, and entire wings of the house were off-limits.

Hence the mansion was akin to a musty old museum, filled with antique artifacts and expensive art objects that were hidden and kept under lock and key.

Schuyler made her way to her room, where Beauty greeted her with a cheerful and resonant bark, and only then did Schuyler feel like she was truly at home.

Now the only problem was what to wear. The invitation had stated White Tie, which Schuyler understood to mean long, formal gowns for the women. She dimly remembered Cordelia getting ready for the yearly Four Hundred Ball, donning a succession of stiff, Oscar de la Renta ball gowns with elbow-length opera gloves. Perhaps she would be able to find something in Cordelia’s closet.

She made her way to her grandmother’s bedroom. She hadn’t been inside since the fateful evening of the attack. She dreaded being in there, remembering how she had found her grandmother lying in a pool of blood. But she comforted herself with the knowledge that Cordelia had managed to survive the attack, and she had been able to bring enough of Cordelia’s blood to the medical center. They would keep it resting until the next cycle. Cordelia would return one day. She was not dead. She had not been taken by the Silver Blood.

“Looking for something, Miss Schuyler?” Hattie asked, popping her head in and finding Schuyler standing with her hands on her hips in front of her grandmother’s closet.

“I need a dress, Hattie. For the ball tonight.”

“Mrs. Cordelia had a lot of dresses.”

“Yes.” Schuyler frowned, removing several hangers and assessing the dresses that hung on them. They were very old-fashioned, with huge mutton sleeves or peplums. Several were very Reagan-eighties: shoulder pads that rivaled those on Alexis Carrington’s Nolan Miller originals on
Dynasty
. “I just don’t think these are going to cut it.”

“Miss Allegra had dresses too,” Hattie said.

“My mother? My mom’s dresses are still here?”

“In her room, on the third landing.”

Her mother had grown up in the same house, and Schuyler wished, not for the first time, that her mother was around to help her with her current dilemma. Hattie led her upstairs to the next floor, down the hallway, to a corner room in the back.

Schuyler’s heart beat in nervous excitement.

“It’s a shame about Miss Allegra,” Hattie said as she opened the door. “The room’s just like it was when she was eighteen. Before she eloped and married your father.”

The room was pristine. Schuyler was shocked to see that there were no cobwebs in the corners, or a layer of dust everywhere. She had expected a crypt, a mausoleum, but it was a bright and cheerful room, with crisp Italian linens on the bed and billowing white curtains on the windows.

“Mrs. Cordelia always insisted we keep it up. For whenever your mother wakes up.”

Schuyler walked toward the armoire in the middle of the room and opened one of its doors.

She reached inside and pulled out a shirt on a hanger. Valentino, circa 1989.

“Are you sure she had ball gowns?”

“She had a cotillion. She was presented at the Four Hundred Ball on her sixteenth birthday,” Hattie explained. “Chanel made the dress. It should be in there.”

Schuyler patiently went through each hanger. At last, in the farthest reaches of the closet, she found a black garment bag embroidered with the double-C logo.

She laid the bag out on her mother’s bed and unzipped it slowly.

“Wow,” Schuyler breathed, removing a carefully preserved dress. She held it up to the light. It was a gold dress with a tight, strapless corset bodice and a princess skirt with folds and folds of voluminous fabric.

She held it up against herself. It would fit, she knew it would fit.

When Schuyler entered the St. Regis Ballroom, the whole room stood still. The guests stared at her as she stood by the entrance, illuminated under the spotlight, uncertain about where to go next. A few gasps could be heard from the crowd.

Jack Force, for one, couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Like almost everybody in the room, for one brief moment, he had believed that Gabrielle, Allegra Van Alen, had returned to them.

T
he Four Hundred Ball, also known as the Patrician Ball, never wavered from the tradition set by its original organizers in the late nineteenth century, when the Blue Bloods first came into prominent position in society. The ten-course meal, with breaks in between for dancing, was set on $75,000-a-piece gold service—solid gold plates, gold flatware, and gold-crusted crystal goblets. Along the length of the four rectangular tables, with a hundred seats at each, was a pile of sand, and each place setting was set with a golden trowel. Guests were encouraged to “dig” for treasure—their parting gifts. The Committee had been able to convince sponsors to provide expensive, eye-popping jewelry set with rubies, sapphires, and diamonds as party favors. The Junior Committee, led by Mimi, had added a modern touch: “alphabet” necklaces from Me & Ro, intricate Peruvian peacock earrings by Zani, and the most coveted piece of the season, Kaviar and Kind’s diamond-encrusted shark-tooth pendant.

The menu was just the same as it had been on the night of the first Patrician Ball: a first course of Consommé Olga, then Filet Mignons Lili, Vegetable Marrow Farcie, followed by a roast duckling and sirloin of beef, accompanied by creamed carrots and parmentier potatoes.

Several towering ice sculptures depicting New York’s greatest momuments and institutions, including the new MOMA building, renovations funded by Blue Blood money, and the proposed Frank Gehry port, championed by none other than Senator Llewellyn himself, were arranged next to the bars that lined the room, and champagne flowed from hidden spigots in the ice.

Mimi barely touched her food, getting up from her seat to circulate among the glittering crowd. Every prestigious family in New York, all the old names were represented: the Van Horns, the Schlumbergers, the Wagners, the Stewarts, the Howells and the Howlands, the Goulds and the Goelets, the Bancrofts and the Barlows. Members of the clan who had remained in England were represented, as well as several more exotic branches. A vastly rich Blue Blood family who had splintered from the main group centuries ago and settled in what was now modern China had just arrived from Shanghai, a city that they had recently helped rebuild. Their sixteen-year-old twin daughters, two gorgeous long-limbed Chinese socialites, would be among those presented at the ball that evening.

But there was no family more respected or revered than the Forces. Mimi was a princess among her people, and she walked through them, accepting their admiration, their deference.

She looked for her brother. He had been by her side all evening but had disappeared between the fish and meat course. By all rights they should be doing this together. Tonight was the night the coven would recognize that they had found each other, and that when the time came, they would be renewing their immortal vows.

Where was he?

She cast her mind across the room, looking for his signal. Ah, there he was, by the head table, talking to a friend on the lacrosse team, Bryce Cutting. She saw him stop and look in her direction with a sudden, joyous smile on his face.

She smiled back and waved at him, but he didn’t return the wave.

Annoyed, she turned around—maybe he wasn’t looking at her after all?

And that’s when she noticed who was standing right behind her, at the top of the staircase, commanding the attention of the entire ballroom.

Schuyler Van Alen.

In a dress that even Mimi herself would die to wear.

Schuyler found her seat next to the dour parents of Aggie Carondolet. It was apparent that the Carondolets had felt slighted by their seating, and they hardly spoke a word to Schuyler except to inform her that they were truly sad about Cordelia. She found Bliss sitting by herself at the front table, and waved to her. Bliss waved back. “Come over,” Bliss mouthed.

She gathered up her gold skirts and walked over to Bliss’s side. The two girls hugged warmly.

“Sky, I have to tell you something—about Dylan,” Bliss said.

“Oh?” Schuyler raised an eyebrow.

“I think he’s . . .” but before Bliss could finish, a boy walked over and asked her to dance. “Sure.” Bliss shrugged. “I’ll tell you later,” she said to Schuyler.

Schuyler nodded. As she dejectedly walked back to her seat, she wondered what Bliss was about to tell her. Bliss was her only friend at the ball. What was Schuyler doing here, anyway? Why had she come? For Cordelia? For the Van Alen name? No. She had to be honest. And this was where the truth hurt. She had wanted to see Jack Force again. But it was agony.

There he was, attentively at his sister’s side, the two of them gliding through the ballroom, entwined at the hip. Jack keeping a hand on Mimi’s tiny waist. Schuyler had heard whispers from the Elders and the Wardens at the adjoining table . . . something about a bond . . . something about the two of them and an immortal vow.

The next course was served, roast squab and a cold asparagus vinaigrette. It looked delicious, but the food tasted dry and mealy on her tongue.

“Jack,” Mimi whispered softly in his ear as they made their way around the room. “It’s time.” Ever practical, she decided to ignore what she had seen earlier. Mimi was a master of self-deception. If something bothered her, she refused to even acknowledge its existence. In her mind, Schuyler Van Alen was a temporary, if annoying, infatuation.

But for Jack, the sight of Schuyler Van Alen had only served to ignite a feeling he had been repressing for months. A disquieting thought nagged at his conscience. Why did Schuyler affect him in such a powerful way? Was it the resemblance to Allegra? Was that all? Or was it something new . . . something he wasn’t prepared for and didn’t expect? He shook his head, disgusted and ashamed of himself. His rightful place was by his sister’s side. He would just have to act as if Schuyler did not exist.

“They are waiting for us to lead the quadrille,” Mimi said, and Jack dutifully escorted his sister to the dance floor, where three other young couples were waiting. It was part of Four Hundred tradition that the young who were going to be presented would lead in this dance, and the teens in the foremost quadrille were chosen because of their family’s hierarchy in The Committee. Aggie Carondolet would have been one of the dancers had she lived.

Mimi thought the quadrille was just a fancy name for square dancing, but she enjoyed it even so, as Jack led her through the cross-over, the balance, and then the circle eight, ending with the four ladies’ grand chain, which placed her in the front of the group, as it should be.

After the dance, the Blue Blood teens remained frozen in their position in the middle of the dance floor, waiting to be formally presented to the assembly, called out by their current and true names by the Regis.

“Dehua Chen,” was called, and one of the imperial Chinese beauties stepped forward.

“Known to our people by her true name, Xi Wangmu.”

The Angel of Immortality.

“Deming Chen.” Her sister was called next. The two of them were identical in their serene, otherworldly beauty, with skin the color of toasted milk; silky-straight, ebony-black hair; sexily slanted almond eyes; and an incongruous splattering of freckles across their button noses.

“Known to our people by her true name, Kuan Yin.”

The Angel of Mercy.

Several other Blue Blood teens were called, rounding out the former heavenly pantheon.

At last, a lone spotlight was shone on the Force twins. Mimi gripped her brother’s hand tightly.

“Madeleine Force.” Mimi stepped forward, her chin held high.

“Known to our people by her true name, Azrael.”

The Angel of Death.

“Benjamin Force.” Jack bowed his head.

“Known to our people by his true name, Abbadon.”

The Angel of Destruction.

The twin Angels of the Apocalypse. This was their immortal destiny. This was their place. The clan’s most powerful vampires after the Uncorrupted. Lucifer’s former lieutenants, who had turned their backs on the Prince of Heaven after the Fall. In Rome, they had hunted and slain the Silver Blood spawn. Only by their strength had the Blue Bloods survived the millennia.

Jack smiled at Mimi, and they both bowed low to the coven.

They had their work cut out for them.

T
he coffee had been served in its golden carafes, and dessert—the traditional Waldorf pudding along with peaches in chartreuse jelly, as well as chocolate and vanilla éclairs and a light-as-air meringue cake topped with Amaretto whipped cream—had been served and (lightly) consumed. Powdered cheeks were pressed against powdered cheeks in good-bye. A wonderful time had been had, it was agreed, and a ridiculous amount of money had been raised, breaking records from last year, even. All around the St. Regis Ballroom, Mimi’s text messages were being delivered. For select vampire teens, the evening had just begun.

After-party. Angel Orensanz. Midnight. Masks A Must. No Text. No Entry.

There was a buzzing through the crowd by the cloakroom and the elevators among the invitees, as well as cries of confusion and disappointment among those who had not received the text.

“Are you going to change?” Bliss asked Mimi, following her out the door.

“Are you crazy? I’m going to wear this dress until they pry it off my cold dead body,” Mimi joked. “Come upstairs. We have the best selection of masks.”

Mimi was in high spirits. The ball had been a blast and all, but now it was time to par-tay.

Schuyler walked out to the sidewalk, hugging her black fur coat, an old one of Cordelia’s, around her shoulders. She found Julius, her grandmother’s driver, waiting patiently for her by the curb in the old Crown Victoria.

“Where to?”

She was about to say “home” when her phone buzzed. Oliver, for sure. Nope. It was a text message from a blocked number.

Directing her to Angel Orensanz, the abandoned synagogue on the Lower East Side. Masks a must? What was this all about?

“Did you get the message?” Cicely Appelgate called excitedly from the next car over. Cicely was part of Mimi’s crew, and Schuyler wondered why she was bothering to talk to her.

“Uh, yeah.”

“See you there!” Cicely said gaily. “Great dress, by the way!” she added admiringly. “My mom said it’s definitely vintage Chanel.”

So that was it. Sometimes it seemed to Schuyler that high school was so silly. If you dressed a certain way, or looked a certain way, or had the “right” things—like a designer handbag, or the newest cell phone, or an expensive watch—your life was much easier. Schuyler never had any of those things. Cordelia had been strict with her allowance, and she had always been the kid in secondhand sweaters and items from last year’s clearance bin.

But the dress, and the fact that it was from a respected and expensive design house, had changed Cicely’s perception of her. For the evening, at least.

“Home, Miss Schuyler?”

She had promised to call Oliver the minute she left the party. She had told him that she was only going to stay for a few minutes and depart soon after dinner, but it was already eleven thirty. He would be jet-lagged, Schuyler thought. He’s probably passed out in front of the television by now.

The text message must be for the party downtown that other kids at the ball were talking about—the buzz about Mimi Force hosting some kind of bacchanal that evening. Should she go? What could it hurt? Besides, if Mimi was there, that meant Jack would be there too. She thought of how handsome he’d looked in his coattails, and the way he’d stared at her when she’d entered the party, his green eyes boring into hers. Not too long ago, he had been the one who was hell-bent to find out the truth about the Silver Bloods, but he had backed off all of a sudden. But maybe there was still a chance she could convince him to join her in her fight. Since her grandfather had refused to help, she was now adrift. But with Jack at her side . . . She made up her mind.

“Let’s go home, Julius, but just for a minute,” Schuyler decided. “I just need to pick up something. A souvenir from Venice. Then we’re going downtown.”