Mimi braced herself. She was next.
Warden Corrigan coughed.
“What say Domus Fortis Valerius Incorruputus. House of the Pure Blood, of the Uncorrupted, of the Valiant and the Strong, Protector of the Garden, Commander of the Lord’s Armies? What say you?”
That was Michael’s line. Gabrielle’s line. The Van Alen line, now bastardized by the Force name. Mimi raised her voice.
“We say . . .” She wavered. She thought of Minerva Morgan’s uncertainty. Ambrose Barlow, who was so old they had all thought he was senile. And yet he had brought in that piece of paper. Had brought it to her. They were counting on her. An anonymous note, but an important one. They were right. They could not discount its message.
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.
CHAPTER 39
Bliss
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.
CHAPTER 40
Schuyler
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.