The Van Alen Legacy (3 page)

She felt a mixture of awe and
sadness as she followed the hushed crowd through the gleaming marble halls. Awe at the beauty of
the place, which had been built by the same architect who had designed the Palace of Versailles,
and displayed the same gilded moldings and baroque flourishes, and sadness because the building
reminded her of Cordelia. She could sure use some of her grandmother’s brusque tenacity right
then. Cordelia Van Alen wouldn’t think twice about crashing a party to get what she wanted,
whereas Schuyler had too many doubts.

The party that evening was
called A Thousand and One Nights, in homage to the extravagant Oriental Ball thrown at the
residence in 1969. Like that party,
tonight’s
would feature dancing slave girls,
half-naked torchbearers, zither players, and Hindu musicians. Of course, there would also be a
few modern additions: the entire cast from a Bollywood musical would perform at midnight, and
instead of having
papier-mache
elephants at the entrance, a pair of real Indian
elephants had been borrowed from a traveling Thai circus. The pachyderms would be carrying riders
under golden canopies.

The newspapers had already
nicknamed it The Last Party.
The party to end all parties.
The party that
would mark the end of an era.
The last night that the fabled building would house
royalty.

Because the H’tel
Lambert had been sold.
Tomorrow it would no longer be home to the surviving family of
Louis- Philippe, the last king of France. Tomorrow the property would belong to a foreign
conglomerate. Tomorrow the chateau would fall into the hands of developers who were rich enough
to have met its steep asking price. Tomorrow it would be divided up, or renovated, or made into a
museum, or whatever the conglomerate had planned for it.

But tonight it was the scene
of one last grand
Bal
des Vampires: Parisian Blue Blood society gathering together
one final time in a celebration worthy of Scheherazade.

“Cordelia told me Balzac made
a pass at her once, during a ball here. She was a
deb
then, in an earlier cycle,
before she became my grandmother,” she told Oliver as they made their way down into the vast
basement kitchens, where modern stainless-steel appliances were installed next to medieval
hearths.

“She said he was pretty drunk.
Can you imagine?”

“One of France’s leading
lights hitting on an eighteen-year-old girl?” He smirked, pushing open a swinging door.
“Totally.”

The party was in two hours,
and they found the cooks angrily yelling at each other, the whole kitchen in a flurry of hurried
preparation. Steam was billowing from giant industrial- size vats, and the place smelled of
sizzling butter, smoky and delicious.

“What are you doing here?” the
head chef demanded when the wait staff arrived.
“Allez, allez, upstairs with
you?”

The chef had a brief argument
with the staff director, but in the end they agreed that the servers could help the grounds crew,
and Schuyler and Oliver were separated.

Schuyler was sent outside,
where she found the elephant trainers explaining to the actor and actress playing the King and
Queen of Siam how to manage the beasts. Looking to be useful, she set about lighting candles,
smoothing down tablecloths, and arranging the floral centerpieces just so. All around her, the
courtyard was a cacophony of noise, with performers and acrobats jumping off the roofs, musicians
tuning up, and dancing slave girls giggling at the half-naked male models. Finally all the
candles were lit. The tables were set. Every thing was ready. One thing was for sure. This was
going to be some party.

She found Oliver polishing
glassware at his station.

“Remember, meet me at the
bottom of the staircase after your first round,” Oliver whispered, trying not to attract too much
attention from the other servers. “I’ll look out for you.” They had been ordered by their
superiors to turn off their cell phones, not that it mattered since neither of them was able to
get a signal. No cell phone towers were allowed on the exclusive part of the island.

Schuyler nodded. They had
their assignments: she would be part of the team responsible for welcoming guests with trays of
champagne the minute they alighted from the boats. Oliver would be upstairs, working the back
bar.

“And, Sky?
It’ll
be all right. She’ll have to see you.” He smiled. “I’ll make sure of it.” His bravado endeared
him to her even more. Dear, sweet, kind Oliver, who had left everything he loved in New York to
save and protect her. She knew he was just as afraid as she was, but he wasn’t going to show
it.

Tonight’s plan was a long shot
at best. She didn’t even know if the Countess of Paris, the evening’s hostess and the
soon-to-be-former owner of the H’tel Lambert, would remember her. Much less offer them the refuge
they so desperately sought. But she had to ask, for her sake and for Oliver’s. And if she ever
wanted vengeance on the demon
who
had killed her grandfather, she had to
try.

The European Conclave was her
last and only hope.

Stepping into someone’s
subconscious is like discovering a new planet. Everyone’s internal world is different and unique.
Some are cluttered, stuffed with dark and kinky secrets pushed to the edge of their minds, like
racy underwear and handcuffs shoved in the back of a closet. Some are as pristine and clear as a
spring meadow: all hopping bunnies and falling snowflakes. Those are rare. This guy’s psyche
looked pretty standard, and Mimi chose a neutral environment in which to interrogate him, his
childhood home. A suburban kitchen: white tiles, Formica table, clean, orderly,
ordinary.

Kingsley pulled up a stool
across from Frat Boy. “Why did you lie to us?” he asked. In the glom the Venator looked fiercely
handsome. The glom did that to vampires: made them look even more beautiful than they already
were.

“What are you talking about?”
the guy asked, a confused look on his face. ‘
show
him.”

Mimi found the memory and
played it on the television set on the kitchen counter.

“You remember this night?”
Kingsley asked as they observed Frat Boy step out onto a hotel balcony and watch a tall man
carrying a child-size bundle out of the resort gates. “You remember this man?”

Jordan Llewellyn had been
missing for over a year. The eleven-year-old girl had been kidnapped from her hotel room at the
same time the Conclave was being slaughtered at a party by Silver Bloods.

The Venators had scanned the
mind-memories of everyone at the hotel who was there the night the little girl had disappeared,
every guest, every staff member, from security guards to the chambermaids, with no luck. The
Llewellyns
had been too traumatized to be of much help.
Which was
understandable, but still useless.
No one knew anything, no one remembered anything.
Except for the guy sitting in front of them now.

“You told us you saw
something. That you saw this man when you stepped outside for a cigarette that night,” Kingsley
said. ‘
this
man does not exist. You lied to us.”

“But I don’t smoke,” Frat Boy
protested. “I don’t remember this at all. What is this? Who are you?” In the bar, Mimi could see
that he was starting to stir. They didn’t have much time.

“Why did you lie to us? Answer
the question?” Kingsley barked. For months they had tracked down every man who had stayed in the
hotel who fit the description Frat Boy had given them. They had chased down marketing executives,
businessmen on holiday, tourists and locals. But nothing of significance had turned up. After the
better part of a year, they began to wonder if they were chasing a ghost, a phantom, a mirage.
The whole team was frustrated and on edge. Just yesterday the Conclave had ordered them to give
up the mission and return to New York. Jordan was gone, case closed. But Kingsley decided they
needed to pay their witness another visit.

“Let me rephrase this: who
told you to lie to us?” Kingsley asked.

“Nobody . . . I don’t know
what you want me to say . . . I don’t remember that night. I don’t even remember you guys. Who
are you? What are you doing in my mom’s kitchen?”

“Why were you in Rio?” Ted
Lennox asked mildly, playing good cop.

“A buddy of mine was getting
married. . . .” he slurred. “We were there for the bachelor party.”

“You went all the way to Rio
for a bachelor party?
You?”
Mimi scoffed, peering through to the real world, looking
down at his prone form sprawled on the table. The guy looked like the farthest he ever traveled
was the corner 7-Eleven.

“Hey, I lived in New York not
too long ago. I was a banker. We always went away whenever anyone got married. Thailand. Vegas.
Punta Cana. But then I lost my job and had to move back in with my parents. Don’t be a hater
now.”

“Laid off “? Sam Lennox
asked.

“No . . . just . . . I don’t
remember things that well anymore. I took a leave of absence and haven’t gone back. Something
wrong up here,” he said, knocking on the side of his skull with a worried look on his
face.

Come to think of it, something
about the witness did seem odd. Mimi remembered Frat Boy differently. The guy they had questioned
a year ago had been much more articulate and alert, much cockier. She had found it strange that
they had tracked him down in the boondocks. She had assumed anyone who stayed at such a fancy
hotel also came from a fancy place.

“He’s not lying,” Sam said.
“Look at his prefrontal cortex. It’s clear.”

“He doesn’t remember that
night,” Ted agreed.

“Bring it up again,” Kingsley
said. ‘
this
doesn’t make sense.”

Mimi pulled up the memory for
a second time. The four of them watched it intently. It was the same: the tall man, the bundle,
the cigarette. But Sam was
right,
his prefrontal cortex showed the guy wasn’t lying
when he said he didn’t remember it.

“Oh, dear lord.
How could we have missed this? Look at this. Force! Lennox! Look?” Kingsley said, magnifying the
edge of the picture.

Then she saw what Kingsley
saw: a slight tear on the border of the guy’s memory. It was like a seam that had been repaired.
It was so fine, and so well done, you would never even notice it. Whoever had done this was good.
You needed to be majorly advanced in the glom to pull this
off .
A false memory
expertly weaved into a real one.
Enough to have fooled a team of Venators for the better
part of a year.
Imprinting false memories on Red Bloods was very dangerous. It could mess
people up: turn them into raving lunatics, unable to distinguish fact from fiction. Or turn a big
city banker into a slacker who lived with his parents.

“Let him go.” Kingsley said
wearily.

Mimi nodded. She released her
hold on his mind, and the four of them stepped back into the real world. Their witness was
slumped over the table, snoring.

This was no suspect. This was
a victim.

Every day since that morning
on the mountaintop in the middle of Corcovado, the hunchbacked mountain, Bliss had to ask
herself
three important questions.

Who am I? Where am I? What
happened to me?

She’d started the practice one
day not too long ago when she’d woken up to find she couldn’t remember why she was so sad. Then
the next day, she couldn’t remember whether or not she was an only child. But what really scared
her was the day she’d looked in the mirror and thought she saw a stranger. She had no clue
who
the girl with the red hair was. And that’s when she got the idea to ask herself
the three questions every morning.

If she didn’t take the time to
remember who she had been, then the Visitor would take over completely. And the real Bliss
Llewellyn, the girl who had once failed her driving test in an old 1950s Cadillac convertible,
would be no longer. Not even this half-faded memory of her that lingered in a small corner of her
brain.

So.
They were in
the Hamptons. It was morning. She was getting up for breakfast; her servant was calling for her.
No; not her
servant
?her
father. ‘
servant
?
was
the Visitor’s word for Forsyth, not hers. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes she would find she
could hear the Visitor so clearly. But then a door would slam, and she would be on the other
side, in the dark again. The Visitor had access to her past, to her entire life, but she had no
entree to his. His conversations with Forsyth were behind a closed door, his thoughts hidden in
shadow.

A part of her was relieved
that the Visitor did not talk to her anymore. She dimly remembered that there had been little
conversations between them once, but those had ceased. Now there was just silence. She understood
it was because he didn’t need to communicate with her any longer to assume control. He used to
take over during her blackouts, but now he did not need them to do what he pleased. He was in the
driver’s seat. Still, she wasn’t exactly abandoned on the side of the road, either. She had
answered the first question successfully, hadn’t she?