The Van Alen Legacy (23 page)

Mimi suddenly understood that
Ambrose and Minerva could not do it themselves, but they very much wanted her to. She was young,
but she outranked them by far. She represented the house that had led this Coven of immortals for
centuries upon centuries.

The house that would now be
stripped of its power by the very ritual they were undertaking. She hadn’t thought about it until
today, but it suddenly hit home that they were just going to hand over the Coven to Forsyth
Llewellyn? Who was Forsyth Llewellyn anyway? Mimi scanned her memories.

A minor angel.
A minor deity.
A steward.
He was no Regis.

She could do this. She had
battled Silver Bloods and sent demons back to Hades. She would stand up when others could
not.

“The House of the Pure Blood
would like to render their objection to this proceeding,” she said clearly and
confidently.

“Objection?”
Seymour Corrigan looked confused.

“We say no.” Mimi
said.

“No?” Corrigan asked
again.

“No.”
More clearly this
time.

Forsyth, for his part, looked
composed.

“I just don’t understand why
we need to do
this’move
the spirit of the Coven to a new leader when my father is
still alive?” Mimi burst out. She took a deep breath. “Therefore I must object.”

“The White Vote must be
unanimous,” Warden Corrigan said worriedly. “We cannot move the Coven to Forsyth’s safekeeping
unless it is a unanimous vote by the seven families.”

He looked lost, while Ambrose
and Minerva looked relieved. Everyone else looked to Forsyth for guidance.

Mimi noticed that, White Vote
or not, he was already their leader.

“We shall stay the
installation as Warden Force wishes,” Forsyth said smoothly. “I have no desire to assume a role
that not everyone agrees is mine. And I too am distressed by Charles’s disappearance. We shall
wait.”

One by one they popped back
into the proceedings at the auction room. Mimi realized she was still holding her hand up, as she
had been in the glom.

The auctioneer gave her a
brilliant smile. “And Portrait de Femme (Francoise
Gilot
) goes to . . . the
beautiful young lady in the front row!”

She had just bought a
Picasso.

The fall semester at Duchesne
always unrolled in the same tradition, never wavering from a schedule of activities that had been
set a hundred years ago, or so it must have seemed to the students who were indoctrinated into
the soothing, predictable rhythms of cushy private-school life.

It started with the last week
of August first-year orientation, when incoming freshmen were mildly hazed by their final-year
tormentors with shaving cream pie, throwing contests in the cortile, water balloon fights from
the balconies, and an epic game of Murderer. On the final orientation day, there was a solemn
presentation of class rings and the singing of the school song, culminating in a decidedly
extracurricular after-hours party on the roof of the head boy’s house, when the first of the May-
December romances would blossom, usually between an “old girl” (what the school called female
seniors) and a “new boy” (a male freshman), and not, as one would think, the other way
around.

Bliss walked up the steps into
the main building, nodding to a few familiar faces. Everyone was still a little tan from a
Hamptons or Nantucket summer, the girls not quite ready to give up sundresses and sandals for
wool and plaid, while the boys wore their broadcloth shirts
untucked
and their ties
askew, holding their jackets over one shoulder with a rakish air.

Bliss had heard the Force
twins were also back at school. She would have to try to contact them as soon as possible. Mimi
and Jack had to help her. As she walked to the locker room, noting the names engraved on each
metal plate, she saw that Schuyler’s and Oliver’s names were missing. Facing the truth of their
absence made her sad. She’d found out finally what had happened to them, something about the
Conclave doubting Schuyler’s version of events surrounding Lawrence’s death, and how the two
teenagers had decided to run from the Venators rather than face judgment.

But somehow she hadn’t really
believed they would be gone. During the course of the day she half expected to see Oliver sitting
by the radiator in her AP European History class, or Schuyler looking up from her clay pots in
Independent Art. Bliss walked to her third class before lunch period, Ancient Civilizations and
the Dawn of the West. The first week of school was a shopping period, when students hopped from
class to class until they decided which ones they were going to register for.

The course had sounded
intriguing, a mixture of history and philosophy, studying the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. She
took a seat in the middle row, next to Carter Tuckerman, who always smelled like the egg
sandwiches he ate for breakfast.

The teacher was a newbie, of a
different type than the usual Duchesne faculty. Most of the teachers had been at the school
forever, and looked it. Madame Fraley taught French, and the students were convinced she’d been
at the school since the 1880s. (She probably had, since Madame was a Blue Blood.) Or else they
were recent college grads, kids who had somehow flubbed their Teach for America applications and
were stuck with a bunch of preppie brats instead of needy hardship cases.

This one was different. Miss
Jane Murray was an apple-cheeked sturdy woman of early middle age, with bright red hair and a
ruddy Irish complexion. She wore a plaid skirt and a yellow shirt with an argyle vest. Her hair
was cut in a blunt pageboy and her blue eyes twinkled when she spoke. Miss Murray (she wrote it
on the blackboard, and it was decidedly “Miss” not “Ms.” (She had gone to Miss Porter’s, and in
her mind a lady was not called by a buzzing sound) did not look like she had been around during
the dinosaur era, nor did she have that lost fearful look of the post collegiate.

“This is a mixed-class
elective, and it is seminar-style, which means I will expect my students to participate in
discussions and not just doze off or text each other. I don’t promise not to bore you, but you
may bore each other if you don’t bring your own thoughts and ideas to the table,” she said
brightly, looking around with a cheerful smile.

When the sign-up sheet came
around, Bliss decided to put her name down on the list, noticing that almost everyone in the room
had done so as well. Bliss could read the room’s reaction: Miss Murray was going to be a charming
new addition to Duchesne life.

The bell rang, and as Bliss
gathered her things, she overheard two girls talking animatedly as they jostled their way to the
door.

“
Omigod
, our
senior year is going to rock!” said Ava Breton.

“Totally!” squealed Haley
Walsh. ‘
the
best!”

Senior year is going to rock.
What a funny sentiment, Bliss thought as she followed them out of the room. These were the best
years of their lives. Good lord, hopefully that wasn’t true.

So far, Bliss’s adolescence
had, to put it frankly and literally, sucked. She’d moved to a new city, discovered she was a
vampire, fallen in love and lost her love, all in one crazy year. And now she’d spent the last
year possessed by a demon, who, by the way, was also her father, however that worked, she had no
idea.

The Visitor had been gone for
most of the week. And after Bliss had glimpsed the hellhole that was his mind, she was glad he
was away. His visions had given her nightmares.

She could hardly sleep without
thinking about what she had seen. Much worse, Dylan hadn’t come back after that fateful day. She
kept hoping he would suddenly show up somewhere, or else
take
her back to the
Cloisters, but there was nothing but silence. It was as if she
were
all alone in her
head again, and she knew that wasn’t the case.

School finally let out at
three, and Bliss went home. She entered the apartment and found Forsyth slumped at the kitchen
table, surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol, and a dazed-looking woman draped on the couch. He
was usually more discreet with his human familiars, and Bliss averted her eyes.

He jumped when she came in,
and his face looked ashen. He looked at her fearfully.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“What happened?”

As soon as she spoke, he
looked relieved. “Oh, it’s only you,” was all he said. Then he poured himself a pint of whiskey
in a beer glass and downed it in one gulp. For a vampire, he was curiously affected by alcohol.
Bliss gave him a look, then went up to her room and shut the door. She had homework to
do.

Jack was right. When Schuyler
and Oliver returned to New York, there were no Venators waiting to arrest them at JFK. Still,
neither of them was going to put their faith in the Conclave membership anytime soon. The plan
was to keep Schuyler’s return a secret, while Oliver would testify to the Conclave that Schuyler
had deserted him so he would be able to go back to his family. Hopefully the Elders would believe
him instead of handing him over to the Venators for a truth-telling session. It was a risk they
had to take, but Oliver was confident he could sell his story.

Oliver had not been too keen
on the idea of their pretend estrangement, but Schuyler had convinced him it was the only way to
secure their freedom in New York.

KennedyAirport was its usual
chaotic mess as they maneuvered their way through the bustling terminal, looking for the bus that
would take them to the subway.

“Welcome home.” Oliver yawned
and rubbed his stubble.

It had been a twenty-hour
flight from Sydney. Not fun in a too-small economy seat. The two of them had been squished in the
middle row of five seats, between a honeymooning couple on the left, who noisily kissed the
entire flight, and an adventure-tour-group on the right, who kept the stewardesses hopping with
their cocktail orders.

Once outside the terminal,
Schuyler took a deep breath and smiled. They had arrived in the middle of September, and the
weather was still mild, with just a faint tinge of cold in the air. Fall was her favorite season.
The hustle of the city, the limo drivers seeking their fares, the long line for yellow
cabs, the taxi dispatcher barking at everyone to hurry up.
It was good to be
back.

They checked into a
nondescript hotel by the West Side Highway, one of those big corporate institutions that
was
filled with weary business travelers. The room looked out into a light shaft,
and the air-conditioning was noisy. Nonetheless, Schuyler slept soundly for the first time in
months.

The next morning, Oliver
reported to Conclave headquarters with his story, pledging his life to the Blue Blood community
at large. Just as he’d predicted, once the Conclave got wind of what he was really offering
(money), no questions were asked.

He told Schuyler afterward,
back at their hotel, that the wardens didn’t even seem concerned about her disappearance, or
about enforcing any disciplinary action. What happened in Paris had changed the game. It had
forced the Conclave to reconsider its actions concerning Leviathan’s return. They had much bigger
problems to deal with, and they just didn’t care about her anymore. Or so it had
seemed.

“You ready to go, then?” he
asked. He had made an appointment for her at Dr. Pat’s clinic. Patricia Hazard was the Conclave’s
most trusted doctor and also happened to be Oliver’s aunt. “What did you do while I was
out?”

“Nothing.
I got
an egg-and-cheese and a coffee from the deli across the street. Then I read the Post,” Schuyler
told him. “It was heaven.”

Dr. Pat had redecorated. The
last time Schuyler had been there, the office had looked like the lobby of a very white, very
minimal, very modern hotel. This time the office resembled a bizarre but fabulous fun house.
There
were
crystal
vitrines
filled with glass eyes. There was a lounge
chair made out of stuffed animals that had all been stitched together; it was cute to the point
of craziness. Venetian mirrors lined the walls, and fur throws were folded over white sofas. It
still looked like a hotel lobby, but this time, instead of an ice queen, one expected Willy
Wonka
to appear.

“Hey, Dr. Pat, what happened
here?” Schuyler asked as she followed the good doctor into the examination room (which she was
glad to find still looked like a standard exam room).

“I got tired of all that
dry-cleaning. White is really hard to maintain.” Dr. Pat smiled. “Oliver, your mother wants to
know what you’d like for dinner,” she told her nephew before closing the door.

Dr. Pat had gone to their
hotel room the night before to give Schuyler a thorough physical examination, taking blood
samples, but she had asked Schuyler to come to the office for the results.

“So.
What’s wrong
with me?” Schuyler asked, hopping onto the table.