"There's something different about her," Schuyler whispered to Oliver as they walked out of the inn.
"Yeah, she's even more cranky now," Oliver cracked.
Schuyler turned back to look at the cross old woman again, and noticed that she had a mole underneath her chin from which a few stray hairs had sprouted. And yet the old woman who had spoken to them earlier had not been afflicted with such a mole, Schuyler was sure of it.
FIVE
Mimi looked at her vibrating cell phone as she exited her AP French class.
Am I on the list?
Another text message. It was the seventh one today. Could everyone please calm down?
Somehow, in less than twenty-four hours, the news that the fabulous Mimi Force was planning an after-party to the Four Hundred Ball had gone out to the entire New York City teen vampire elite. Of course, Mimi herself had told Piper Crandall, the biggest gossip in the school, and Piper had made sure everyone knew exactly what was going down. There was a secret location. The Force twins were hosting. But no one would know if they were invited until the night of the event. Sheer social torture!
Just say Y or N!!!
She deleted the text without replying.
Mimi walked down the back staircase at Duchesne that led to the cafeteria in the basement. As she passed by, several Blue Blood teens tried to capture her attention.
"Mims…heard about the after-party…Great idea, do you need any help? My dad can get Kanye to DJ," offered Blair McMillan, whose father headed the largest record label in the world.
"Hey, Mimi, I'm invited, right? Can I bring my boyfriend? He's an RB…Is that cool?"
Soos Kemble wheedled.
"Hey, sweetie, just making sure you got my RSVP…" Lucy Forbes called out, blowing Mimi an exaggerated air kiss.
Mimi smiled graciously at all of them and put a finger to her lips. "I can't say anything about anything. But you'll all find out soon enough.”
Downstairs in the cafeteria, underneath the gold baroque mirror that hung across from the fireplace, Bliss Llewellyn picked listlessly at her sushi roll, as if it were a particularly distasteful specimen. Mimi was supposed to meet her for lunch, and she was late as usual. Bliss was glad of the reprieve, since it gave her a chance to lose herself in the events of the night before.
Dylan. It had to be him. The stranger in the park who had saved her from drowning. Bliss had to believe he had survived the Silver Blood attack. Perhaps he was now in hiding, and maybe he would be in danger if he revealed his identity. Like a superhero, she thought dreamily. Who else would have sensed her distress? Who else could have swum through the cold waters of the lake to reach her? Who else could have been so strong? Who else could have made her feel so safe?
Bliss hugged this information to herself like a warm blanket. Dylan was alive. He had to be.
"Not hungry?" Mimi asked, sliding in next to her.
In answer, Bliss pushed away her tray and made a face. She shoved all thoughts of Dylan out of her mind.
"What's all this about an after-party everyone's been harassing me about? No one believes me when I tell them I have no idea what's going on. You and Jack are throwing some kind of bash after the ball?”
Mimi looked around to make sure no one could overhear, and only when she was certain they were beyond earshot did she speak. "Yeah, I was going to tell you about it today.”
She filled Bliss in on the details. She had secured the perfect spot—an abandoned synagogue downtown. There was nothing Mimi enjoyed more than advocating a night of debauchery in a once-sacred space. The Angel Orensanz Center was a neo-Gothic building in the middle of the Lower East Side. It had been designed as a synagogue in 1849 by a Berlin architect who modeled it after the cathedral of Cologne. Mimi wasn't the only New Yorker who liked to throw over-the-top extravaganzas in the space: the center had already played host to several fashion shows during Fashion Week, which was how she got the idea in the first place. Mimi didn't care about points for originality she only cared about being where the action was, and right now, desecrated synagogues were hot.
"The inside is a mess," Mimi said gleefully. "There are like, rotting columns and exposed beams…It's like a beautiful ruin," she whispered. "We're going to light the whole place with tea light candles no electric lights at all! And that's it, no other decor. The place has enough atmosphere. It doesn't need anything.”
Mimi ripped out a sheet of notebook paper from her binder and passed it to Bliss. "This is who I'm thinking for the party. I wrote it down during my French quiz." Mimi was enrolled in AP French, but the class was a joke. Once her vampire memories resurfaced, she had discovered she was already fluent in the language.
Bliss looked down at all the names. Froggy Kernochan. Jaime Kip. Blair McMillan. Soos Kemble. Rufus King. Booze Langdon.
"These are all Committee members. But not even all of the Committee members," Bliss noted.
"Exactly.”
"You're not inviting Lucy Forbes?" Bliss asked, aghast. Lucy Forbes was a Blue Blood senior, and Head Girl of the school.
Mimi wrinkled her nose. "Lucy Forbes is a drip. A goody-goody." Mimi had had a vendetta against the girl ever since Lucy had reported that Mimi had abused her human familiars by feeding on them without adhering to the forty-eight hour rest period mandate.
They went down the list, Bliss proposing a name and Mimi rejecting it.
"How about Stella Van Rensslaer?”
"Freshman! No frosh at this shindig.”
"But she's going to be inducted next spring. I mean, she is a Blue Blood," Bliss argued.
All the names of potential Blue Blood vampires were available to Committee members so they could watch out for their younger brethren, the way Mimi had taken Bliss under her wing earlier that year.
"Ugh. No," Mimi said.
"Carter Tuckerman?" Bliss proposed, thinking of the friendly, skinny boy who spent Committee meetings taking copious notes as secretary.
"That geek? No way.”
Bliss sighed. She hadn't seen Schuyler's name on the list either, which bothered her.
“And what about…you know…`significant others,' the familiars?" Bliss asked. Blue Bloods used the term "human familiar" to describe the reliant relationship between the mortal and immortal races. Human familiars were lovers, friends, vessels from which the vampires drew their greatest strength.
"No Red Bloods at this party. This is like the Four Hundred Ball, but even more exclusive. Vampires only.”
"People are going to be really upset about this," Bliss warned.
Mimi smiled her cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. "Exactly.”
SIX
The Venice Biennale was located in several overlapping pavilions, so that visitors wandered through a long series of darkened rooms, searching as video installations crackled to life in unexpected corners. Faces projected on vinyl balls expanded and contracted, shrieking and giggling. Flowers blossomed and withered on the screens. A rush of Tokyo traffic sped by, claustrophobic and threatening.
When Schuyler and Oliver had first arrived in Venice, Schuyler had been fired up with a wild, almost feverish, energy. She was relentless in her search, dogged and determined. But her enthusiasm had flagged when it became clear that finding her grandfather in Venice would not be as easy as she had assumed. She had come with nothing but a name—she didn't even know what he would look like. Old? Young? Her grandmother had told her Lawrence was an exile, an outcast from the Blue Blood community. What if all those years of isolation had led to madness and insanity? Or worse, what if he was no longer alive? What if he had been taken by a Silver Blood?
But now, after seeing the Professore's room, she was filled with the same fierce hope as when she had first arrived. He is here. He is alive. I can feel it.
Schuyler drifted from one room to the next, scanning the dark places for a sign, a clue that would lead her to her grandfather. She thought most of the art was intriguing, if somewhat overwrought, with just a hint of pretension. What did it mean that a woman kept watering the same plant over and over again? Did it even matter? As she looked at the video, she realized she was the same as the woman, trapped in a Sisyphean task.