White Nights: A Vampires of Manhattan Novel

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “No. Sy is fine. Well – it looks as though he was given drugs to make him sleep, but the doctor’s here, and he says Sy will be fine tomorrow.”

  “Drugs?” Jack felt like knocking his head against the steering wheel. Mimi was talking so fast, what she was saying was garbled. She and Kingsley were out at a big event the night before, and didn’t check on the children when they got home because it was so late. And probably arguing, Jack thought.

  “I’m so sorry, Jack.” Mimi’s voice trembled. “We should have checked on them. But it was so late and I didn’t want to wake them up. All the doors were closed. And then we slept late this morning, and that’s why we only found out …”

  “Found out what? Was Lily given drugs as well? Has Catherine drugged our children?” Fury swirled up within him like a dark tornado.

  “Oh, Jack. It’s much worse. Catherine’s gone. And … and Lily’s gone. All we have here is Sy, and he doesn’t know anything. The last thing he remembers is drinking milk. But Catherine and Lily – we don’t know where they are. Catherine must have taken her somewhere.”

  “Taken her?” Jack was shouting. “Taken her? At night?”

  “Yes. While we were out. Kingsley’s on his way to Venator HQ now. He’s going to have every single Venator in New York searching the city. He’s already called, like, a dozen teams and all the night shift is coming back in to help. They’ll be all over it, I promise you. I swear. Oh, Jack! I’m so sorry.”

  “What time did you leave the apartment last night?” he asked, amazed at how calm his voice sounded when his insides were churning.

  “Around eight. We didn’t get home until three, maybe. And we didn’t find her missing until about twenty minutes ago. So Catherine has maybe a 12-hour start on us? Maybe more? Venators are checking the airports, of course.”

  “She could have driven to Canada,” said Jack. “Or flown pretty much anywhere before the Venators started checking. She could be anywhere in the world right now. Russia. Argentina. Nigeria.”

  “With Lily.” Mimi sounded sick. “Or worse …”

  She trailed off, but Jack knew what she was thinking. Catherine might have killed Lily, abandoned the body and then flown away alone to escape repercussions. But why? Why drug Sy to get him to sleep but kidnap Lily? If she wanted to destroy Schuyler and Jack, she could have killed both kids in their beds and fled alone. She was the only one in the apartment. Why remove Lily?”

  “One thing,” Mimi said. “We got a Venator team at once combing the neighborhood – they were nearby when Kingsley put out the call. On the sidewalk outside our building they found a child’s shoe. Patent leather, brand new, dropped in the gutter. I checked in Lily’s closet and that pair of shoes is missing. So is the pink party dress I just bought for her. Her pajamas are in her room – dumped on the floor. She got dressed, or Catherine got her dressed. Dressed up, in fact. She must have thought she was going out somewhere.”

  “Catherine’s stuff?”

  “She took a bag and a few things. It’s hard to tell, but I think she only took summer clothes. Her coat and boots are still here. She was prepared, though. It doesn’t look as though she was kidnapped as well. More like she was the one … oh god. Why did I trust her? Schuyler had that bad vibe from her, but I thought it was just Schuyler being over-protective and not liking someone because it was my idea. I would have sworn on Kingsley’s head that she was to be trusted. We know her, you and me, from another life.”

  “Vampires change, Mimi. Or else they don’t change. They don’t forgive and forget. They just harden with bitterness. She told me she wanted revenge for Louis’ death.”

  “What? That was two lives ago. And how does kidnapping your daughter achieve anything?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack, and he really didn’t. Maybe Catherine was trying to force his hand – to make him help her track down Louis’ killer in this life. Lily was the card she had.

  “That little bitch.” Mimi was fuming. “I can’t wait to smack sense into her when we find her.”

  “Where is she, Mimi.” It wasn’t a question. He knew Mimi didn’t know the answer. It looked as though his daughter had been kidnapped by the person they’d trusted to fight to the death to protect her. His lovely little daughter was the pawn in some centuries-old game, and Catherine was using her to blackmail them, to get her own way.

  “Call me as soon as you know anything,” Jack told Mimi. “In fact, call every hour. We’re going to be crazy.”

  We. That was the next thing. Jack would have to drive to the Regis’ house and break the dreadful news to Schuyler.

  24 | Waterboarding

  It was Monday morning. Midsummer. Another blue sky for the longest day of the year.

  But Oliver didn’t feel sunny at all. His mind kept flashing onto Karin’s slight, prone form, her sheets splattered with blood. The dark pool in the middle where someone had stuck a knife into her gut. Her soft, pale hands limp. All she’d done was befriend Oliver and give him a place to sleep, and she’d ended up like the guy he met in Budapest. Murdered. Oliver brought bad luck with him.

  He brought death and destruction.

  He’d spent Sunday night in an old shed, finding himself a dark corner to sleep among rusted farm equipment, spider webs and a small boat with missing planks. It was one of half a dozen outbuildings for a house that also seemed empty, not far from the line of swishing trees that marked one of the many entries to the eternal-looking forest. He could have broken into the house itself, he guessed, but he couldn’t risk anyone arriving. This shed was just a repository for junk. Nobody was going to arrive at Midsummer and start polishing up an ancient tractor.

  The shed had just one cracked window, and was so smeared with grime the sun was having difficulty leaking in. Oliver had slept in worst places than this over the past year. Sometimes he wished he’d been the kind of adolescent who joined the Scouts and went camping. That would have prepared him for life on the run far better than all those years at a fancy Blue Blood school. Reading a compass, building a fire, sleeping rough, foraging in the wild: those were actual life skills. Life-or-death skills, in fact.

  Yesterday, after he found Karin dead, he’d had to think and act quickly – and cynically. Whoever had killed her was gone, most likely through the open window in her bedroom. Although he despised himself for doing it, Oliver had rifled through her bag looking for money and anything else he could use. No train ticket, not much money – but a phone, to replace the one that Christian may have taken, and enough cash to keep him going for a while. He’d flung open her cupboards and stuffed his small bag with nuts and crackers and cookies. The jam he’d been eating before he found Karin dead – Oliver considered throwing the jar in his bag. But its sticky redness reminded him too much of blood. Poor Karin’s blood.

  He had to get out of here. Whoever killed Karin might come back for him, or might have tipped off the police – or the Venators. Oliver had already been unjustly accused of one murder. He didn’t need another false charge to bring him down.

  The railway station. That’s where he needed to go. Oliver walked, head down, zooming past the wandering groups of tourists and visitors in town for Midsummer. He knew where the station was, and when it was in sight – just one busy intersection away – Oliver paused. He couldn’t just leave Karin there, rotting in her bed, for Anna to find when she returned from visiting her family up north. Anna’s number was listed in Karin’s contacts, but he couldn’t call her out of the blue. Hello, you don’t know me, and I didn’t do it, but your roommate was murdered this morning.

  Anyway, she’d just call the police and Oliver still had a strong enough allegiance to the Vampire world to know that Venators should check the crime scene first.

  The lights changed and Oliver crossed the road, trying to lose himself in the crowd on its way to the station. The ticket vending machines were easy enough to navigate, once he’d pushed the English language button and sorted out the notes taken from Karin’s wallet. A train
to Leksand, on the southern shore of Lake Siljan – that was the place Karin had mentioned. She was going there, and it made sense that the White Queen’s rave would be nearby. At least once he was there he could ask around. Staying in Stockholm made him feel hunted and claustrophobic.

  The next train was leaving in fifteen minutes, long enough for Oliver to buy a sandwich and a bottle of water, pretending to be a Midsummer traveler like everyone else. At a convenience store packed with people loading up with magazines and drinks, he bought a new SIM card, then made his way to the platform.

  With exactly three minutes left before the train pulled out, Oliver felt in his pocket for the crumpled receipt he’d kept, read the rounded numbers in Christian’s neat printing, and made the call.

  Without identifying himself, he gave Christian Karin’s address and told him to get a Venator team over there right away, before neighbors alerted the police.

  “There’s been a murder and it’s suspicious,” he said.

  “Oliver!” Christian recognized his voice. “Don’t worry – we’ll get onto it right away. But where are you? You must tell me. Axel is very concerned.”

  “Have to go.”

  “Go back to the flat!” Christian said, and Oliver hung up without replying. He didn’t want Christian to hear the familiar “ding” of closing train doors, or the guard’s whistle. By “the flat” he assumed Christian meant the apartment in the bad suburb in which he’d locked Oliver. Or perhaps Christian had meant Karin’s apartment, so he could brief the Venators – and then, no doubt, be taken into custody. Neither was an appealing option.

  Oliver pulled Karin’s SIM card from her phone and dropped it onto the tracks. It was only a few hours, really, since he’d seen her hanging out with her swimming friends, happy and excited about Midsummer. Now she was dead, and he had her phone and money.

  In the crumbling shed, its atmosphere stuffy and reeking of manure and droppings, Oliver inserted the new SIM card into Karin’s phone. For the hundredth time he looked at the crumpled flyer she’d had stuck to her fridge. There was no point venturing out now, in broad daylight, when nothing would be happening until much later in the day – when the daylight would be lingering still, reluctant to creep away.

  Still, though the rave in the forest might be hours away, something about it – so near, so mighty – was calling to him. Perhaps it was because he sensed that Finn was somewhere close by. She was here, he knew it. He wanted to know it, wanted to be sure of it. But maybe he was just talking himself into it, because he was tired of being wrong, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  In the wrong life.

  The shed was getting hot. He’d got in by wriggling back a loose board and then squeezing in; this was pretty much his only ventilation now. It was just after noon. The heat of the day was too thick in here, too unbearable. The building felt as though it was baking in the sun. Oliver pushed his bag into a corner and covered it with an old towel stained with oil.

  He’d heard no noise from the main house, no cars driving up. Oliver pulled the loose board back and peered out, eyes blinking as they adjusted to the bright sun. He was thin these days, too thin; it was easy to slip out through the aperture formed by the loose board, even though he was more battered and bruised these days as well. His joints had taken a battering and once he’d been beaten up in Cairo so badly that his left arm still ached in the rain.

  The distance to the forest was further than he thought – his eyes playing tricks on him. And even when he reached the trees, he wasn’t there. Oliver could see this was a stand of trees separating one property from the next, not the beginning of the forest. He would still need to cross the back lawn and driveway of another big house to get to what might be the forest itself; he’d also need to climb a rocky bank, steep and exposed.

  “Hey!” Down by the water, two young guys were gazing up at him, barely visible through the trees. One called to him in Swedish. They sounded friendly enough – not ordering him off the property, at least.

  Oliver took a few steps in their direction, cushioned by pine needles. The guys were in their 20s, both in shorts and t-shirts. One of them was loading a case of beer into a small speedboat. The other stood on the tiniest of piers, bobbing a little when the breeze ruffled the lake.

  “Sorry!” he called, holding up a hand. If they were asking him what he was doing here, then hopefully an apology would do.

  “English?” one of the guys said, switching languages at once. “Want a ride?”

  “Where are you going?” Oliver asked, taking a few more tentative steps towards them.

  “Across there.” The beer guy, finished with his loading, was pointing to a distant point on the shoreline. “We need to get some petrol for the boat first, but that won’t take long.”

  “Quicker than walking,” said the other with a laugh. “We’re checking out the place for the big party tonight. You going?”

  “Yes,” said Oliver, and jogged towards them. A shortcut: he liked the sound of that.

  The guys were called Per and Nils, and they were about ten years younger than Oliver, with the breezy friendliness of young people who were popular, responsibility-free and didn’t have to pay for their own boats and cars. Oliver had known lots of people like this in New York, especially when he was at school. It was easy to be hospitable and generous when your parents paid all the bills. And if you were white, good-looking and walking around in the right neighborhood, or the right part of the Hamptons – well, you must be one of the in-crowd. Doors opened, favors were done. You could turn up anywhere in New York in a tuxedo, someone told him once, and if you’d dressed the part, nobody will turn you away, even without an invitation. The same happened here, he guessed. If you lived in one of these big houses along the lake, or were the guest of someone who lived there, people would offer you a ride in their boat. After all, you must be planning to attend the same party.

  Oliver wasn’t well-dressed today, but Per and Nils didn’t seem bothered. There were different rules in summer, maybe, and different rules for foreigners. They probably thought he was a Goth.

  The boys turned the boat away from the destination they’d indicated, because, they told him, the nearest gas dock was in Leksand.

  “It won’t take long,” Per assured him, the boat tilted back so far and traveling at such speed that the wind was whipping his words away.

  “Have a beer!” Nils shouted, but Oliver shook his head. Going into Leksand again made him nervous. There’d been a lot of people getting off the train there, a lot of people in the streets, a lot of traffic clogged up with holidaymakers and honking groups of revelers. It looked like a pretty lakeside town, but there were way too many chances there of running into someone. Who, Oliver wasn’t sure. But the place was sure to be crawling with Venators.

  At the dock Per leaped out to deal with the pump, and Nils settled back with a beer, asking Oliver genial questions to which Oliver tried his best to reply in the vaguest way. He was staying with some friends, he said, who were borrowing a house from some Swedish friends – he didn’t know the Swedish people’s names.

  “Probably the Lunds,” Nils said. “They go to their place Morocco every Midsummer. I don’t know why!”

  He roared with laughter and Oliver tried to join in. Laughing about nothing much – he remembered that as well from his previous life. The main thing was to not care too much about anything, to always fit in. There was something oppressive, he’d always thought, in all that forced jollity. Nobody wanted to be the one who didn’t get the joke.

  Per had finished pumping gas, it seemed, but was preoccupied trying to get two girls on the dock to join them. Oliver wished they could leave. He just wanted to be gone, away from Leksand and all the crowds, and near the site for tonight’s party.

  “This is the White Queen’s rave, right?” he asked Nils. “The big party tonight.”

  “So I hear,” Nils said, cracking open another beer. “Apparently it’s going to blow our minds.”


  Oliver suspected that Nils’ mind would be blown long before midnight if he kept drinking at this rate.

  Per clambered back into the boat, unsuccessful in persuading the girls to join them.

  “That’s my cousin and her friend,” he told Oliver, reversing slowly from the dock. “She said they’re staying at the Siljarna Inn and there’s some weird woman in an upstairs room who keeps looking out the window then ducking out of view. It’s like she’s a spy or something.”

  “A spy!” Nils began roaring with laughter.

  “I said to them that maybe she’s the White Queen.” Per spun the wheel, turning the boat around. “That’s why she’s hiding up there – until tonight, when they carry her in. You know, for the big surprise.”

  “Hiding where?” Oliver asked, craning his neck to look back at the dock, and the flower-decked wooden inn standing near it.

  “Right up the top – hey! There she is!”

  A woman’s face appeared in the attic window of the inn – dark eyes, blonde hair. For the briefest moment Oliver willed it to be Finn. To find her at last: that was why he was here. The woman looked at him, staring down at him with a sort of horrified recognition. He realized, heart thundering, that he knew her too.

  It wasn’t Finn. It was Araminta Scott, one of the Venators in New York. She must be part of the team here to track him down.

  And now she’d seen him.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Per. “Please, fast as you can. How fast can this boat go, anyway?”

  “Man, you have no idea!” Nils hooted, and they sped away, water spraying in their wake.

  25 | Missing

  Lukas and Pernilla’s chic guests were assembled in the garden for the Midsummer lunch feast, but Schuyler wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted nothing to do with anything anymore, because she couldn’t have a second’s peace until there was word about Lily. She and Jack were frantic. Beyond frantic: wild with rage and fear. Schuyler wanted to kick holes in the flock-papered walls of their bedroom and snap the twig legs of the elegant side tables. How dare Catherine kidnap their daughter?