Sinclair, his face registering no signs of irritation or surprise, removed the dress for a third time.
“What is this guy’s malfunction?” Cally groaned in exasperation.
“There’s no point in trying to stop him, Cally,” Victor explained. “You’ll give up long before he will. The undead never grow weary. Once they’re given a task, they will complete it no matter how long it takes or how arduous it might be.”
“Why are they here? And what’s this about packing our things?” Cally asked, turning to face her father.
“You and your mother are leaving New York.”
“What do you mean we’re leaving?” Sheila frowned.
“Cally is in grave danger. You must leave the city as soon as possible. I have one-way tickets to Sweden already booked—”
“Sweden?!” Cally yelped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I realize it’s far away, but you should be safe there.”
“Safe from what?” Sheila asked nervously.
Victor turned to face her, his manner grim. “Lilith knows that Cally is my daughter.”
“What?” Sheila gasped. “Are you sure?”
Victor nodded. “She threatened to go to her mother with the information when I said I was going to ground her for playing hooky from school.”
“How could she have possibly found out?” Sheila said.
Victor turned to Cally, fixing her with a stern gaze. “Has Lilith tasted your blood?”
Cally nodded. “We got into a fight at school,” she said sheepishly. “She bit me on the shoulder.”
“Well, there’s no point crying over shed blood,” Victor said. “What’s done is done. It’s only a matter of time before Lilith tells her mother the truth. The only reason she hasn’t done so yet is because she and her mother are not close.”
“Where in Sweden are you sending us?” Cally asked.
“There is a hunting lodge that belonged to my father, located twelve kilometers out of Kiruna, the northern-most city in the country. It’s actually in Lapland, near the Arctic Circle. I have arranged for servants loyal to the Todd bloodline to tend to you there. I will also arrange for tutors so that you are properly educated while you’re in seclusion.”
“How long will we have to stay there?” Cally asked.
“Ten, maybe twenty years. By that time, you should have sufficient expertise to protect yourself against Irina, given that you learn to master the Shadow Hand.”
“Ten years?” Cally wailed, a stricken look on her face. “But I like it in New York! This is so not fair. Just when I’m finally making friends at school and I get invited to the Grand Ball, I have to move to the North Pole!” She plopped down on the edge of her bed, tears welling in her eyes. “This is bullshit. I don’t want to move to Sweden. You can’t make me!”
“I’m not doing this to be mean, Cally,” Victor said gently. “I’m trying to save your life—and your mother’s.”
“Can’t you at least let me attend the Grand Ball before sending me away?” Cally pleaded. “Rauhnacht is this weekend. I’ll do as you ask if you’ll just let me go.”
“It won’t work. There’s no way I can publicly acknowledge you as my daughter. And the rules forbid girls from being presented unless they have a father or other male relative to introduce them.”
“I realize that, but I just thought maybe you could get someone to at least pretend to be my dad.”
Victor paused, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “You know, having someone else say you’re his daughter might make Lilith’s claims less believable.” He nodded. “Very well, I will arrange a surrogate for you. But you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone you’re leaving the country, understand?”
“Thank you!” Cally exclaimed, throwing her arms around Victor’s neck. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You’re the best father in the world!”
“Well, I’m glad at least one of my daughters thinks so.” Victor chuckled. “Go ahead and attend school tonight. But try to steer clear of Lilith as much as possible.”
“So she knew I was her sister all this time,” Cally said sourly, shaking her head. “And she still treated me like crap. And to think, I actually felt guilty for not liking her when I learned the truth. What a bitch.” She grimaced and gave her father an apologetic look. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” Victor said.
The car phone was ringing as Victor Todd climbed into his Rolls Tungsten. He tapped the communications panel of the LCD display built into the back of the front passenger seat, activating the car’s hands-free system.
“Talk to me,” he said by way of greeting.
“Victor? It’s Karl.” The disembodied voice that came through the Rolls’s sound system was that of Victor’s most trusted vassal, Baron Karl Metzger, who handled several of the Todd family’s investments.
“How’s the weather in Paris?”
“Much like New York, this close to Rauhnacht,” Metzger replied. “I was calling to see if you received the package I sent?”
Victor glanced over at the unopened padded envelope sitting on the seat next to him. It had been delivered to the penthouse just as he was leaving to retrieve Walther and Sinclair from the cold-storage warehouse. “I have it with me, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”
Although HemoGlobe was Victor’s primary business and moneymaker, he had long ago learned the wisdom of diversifying into other fields of endeavor. After all, a wise man doesn’t keep all his blood in one cellar. Over the decades he had sunk funds into numerous businesses, ranging in everything from farm implements to telecommunications.
“I just need you to look at them and give me your okay before I sign off on the new contract for the replacement. My son and I will take everything from there.”
“Very well.” Victor sighed. “I’ll take a look.” He picked up the envelope and opened it, pulling out the proof sheet.
He made a strangled, snarling noise as he saw the blond hair and ice-blue eyes of the model, and the photographs slid from his numbed hands and across the floor of the luxury sedan.
“Is something wrong, my liege?”
Victor Todd did not answer but instead wrenched the LCD panel from its mounting and hurled it out the closed window of the speeding car and into the streets of Brooklyn in a spray of shattered safety glass.
Although virtually all his paying work was done with a digital SLR camera, Kristof still preferred to shoot at least one or two rolls of 35-mm film with his old Leica. While digital cameras were far more cost-effective and granted instantaneous knowledge of what shots were worth keeping, traditional film allowed him latitude in high-contrast situations, revealing a world of detail in the highlights and shadows that could never be coaxed from a digital file.
It was because of this appreciation for the inherent poetry of black-and-white photography and old-school optical lab techniques that Kristof had turned his second bathroom into a darkroom.
In the blood-red glow of the light, he watched as Lili’s face gradually appeared on the exposed print paper floating in the developer tray, like a ghost emerging from a fog bank.
As Kristof quickly transferred the print from the developer tray to the stop bath with a pair of tongs, then moved it to the fixer tray, he thought he heard someone moving around in his combination sleeping area/office/living room.
It was probably his assistant, Miriam. She was always forgetting something. Last time it was her purse. The time before that it was her laptop. Setting the timer for two minutes, he opened the door to the darkroom and stuck out his head.
“Miriam—is that you?”
He waited for a reply, but all he heard was silence. He shrugged and ducked back inside the darkroom as the timer went off. It must have been the building settling or the upstairs neighbors coming home.
He removed the black-and-white print from the fixer tray and placed it in the wash, swishing it back and forth with his tongs. As he looked down at the print f
loating in the distilled water, Kristof noticed for the first time what appeared to be a double exposure.
As he pulled the photograph out of the rinse tray and clipped it to the drying line strung across the bathtub, he could clearly see the outline of the Eiffel Tower superimposed over Lili’s face. But that was impossible. He’d triple-checked all his cameras before the shoot for light leaks and film misfeeds.
Kristof’s frown deepened even further when he discovered that the double exposure did not seem to affect either the clothing the model was wearing or the surrounding props and scenery. Although her features were still visible, it was as if she had suddenly been transformed into glass. How the hell was it possible for Lili to be the only thing affected in the entire frame?
Looking more closely, Kristof realized that the Eiffel Tower on Lili’s face was not the haphazard result of one exposure being taken atop another, but the simple fact he was looking through Lili’s head at what she was standing in front of, which just happened to be the fake window with its pretend view of the Eiffel Tower.
“What the—?” he muttered, snatching the print off the line.
Kristof turned around to discover he was no longer alone. Standing between him and the darkroom door was a tall man with dark hair gone gray at the temples, his eyes glowing like those of an animal.
“What do you think you’re doing with my daughter?” the intruder growled, flashing fangs as white and sharp as those of a wolf.
Kristof didn’t have time to explain, but he did manage to scream.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Two in the morning is the time when most reasonable people have long gone to bed and the unreasonable start to consider heading home. For the students of Bathory Academy, however, it means school is out and the rest of the night is their own.
For Lilith Todd, that normally meant spending the few hours before dawn partying with her entourage in the VIP room at the Belfry. As she exited the blood-red doors of Bathory Academy, Lilith spotted Bruno, her chauffeur, standing by the rear passenger door of the Rolls, stoically awaiting her arrival as he did every school night.
“To the club, Bruno,” she said with a toss of her head. Her smile disappeared on seeing her father in the backseat of the sedan.
“Daddy! What a surprise! I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know,” Victor growled. “You’re not going to the club tonight—or any other night.”
“Haven’t you forgotten our little agreement?” Lilith said testily. “You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, and I don’t tell dear mother about your little…indiscretion.”
“It would seem I am not the only one in this family guilty of being indiscreet,” Victor snarled, holding up the leather portfolio Kristof had given Lilith the night before. “Now get in the car!”
“Where did you get that?!” she gasped.
“From your bedroom.”
“How dare you go in my room without my permission?”
“Your room?” Victor said with a humorless laugh. “All that you have in the world is that which I have chosen to give you. Now get in the damn car!”
“Give it back!” Lilith cried as she tried to make a grab for the portfolio. “That’s mine. Kristof gave it to me.”
“How could this possibly belong to you?” Victor taunted, holding the portfolio just beyond his daughter’s grasp. “Kristof gave this to Lili Graves, not Lilith Todd.”
Lilith froze, a startled look on her face. “How did you know about that?”
“I know a great deal about ‘Lili’—or at least now I do,” Victor said. “After all, I do own Maison d’Ombres.”
Lilith gasped in disbelief. “You’re Nazaire d’Ombres?”
“No, Maison d’Ombres is one of my more recent acquisitions. Considering how much you and your mother spend on couture, I decided it might make for a profitable side venture.”
Lilith looked around nervously as the limo pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going? Back home?”
“No,” her father replied. “I thought we should visit a mutual business acquaintance first.”
They were two blocks from Kristof’s loft when Lilith saw the police barricades blocking the middle of the street. A weary cop was standing on the curb, alternately sipping coffee from a ubiquitous blue-and-white paper cup and talking into his two-way radio.
As Victor powered down the rear window, the acrid stink of heavy smoke wafted into the limo. “Excuse me, Officer,” he said politely. “But what seems to be the holdup?”
“There was a fire in an apartment building up the street here,” the policeman replied, pointing in the direction of Kristof’s. “It was burning pretty good for a while, but it looks like they finally got it under control. We have to keep the block sealed off because of the fire trucks.”
“Oh, dear,” Victor said. “I do hope no one was hurt.”
“The EMTs hauled off some guy who lived there for smoke inhalation. Photographer or something. The fire started in his darkroom.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Victor said as he closed the window. He turned to look at his daughter, who was glaring at him with undisguised hatred.
“Don’t you dare hurt Kristof!” she said, her voice trembling in both fear and anger.
“My dear, if I wanted to kill him, he would already be dead. You needn’t concern yourself over the photographer’s well-being, if for no other reason than that he’s needed for the Maison d’Ombres launch campaign.
“I assure you, he is unharmed. However, I did take the liberty of erasing all memory of you—or should I say Lili Graves—from his mind. I’ll leave it to Metzger and his son to mind-wipe the others who may have come in contact with you. As for the fire, it was never meant to kill Kristof, just destroy all physical evidence of Lili Graves’s existence.
“I have no idea what you were trying to prove with this idiotic stunt of yours, but praise to the Founders I was able to nip it in the bud before it was too late! Lilith, do you have any concept of what you risked doing this?” Victor asked, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Do you realize how close you came to being dragged away by the Crimson Guard and publicly executed as a traitor to the Blood? The moment someone recognized your face in a magazine or on a billboard and reported it to the Synod, the Lord Chamberlain would have signed your death warrant without any hesitation. I cannot believe a child of my issue could do something so incredibly stupid!”
“But you didn’t have to do it like this!” Lilith sobbed. “You could at least let me keep Kristof!”
“No, I couldn’t,” Victor said grimly as he reached inside the portfolio. He pulled out a black-and-white print and showed it to his daughter.
Lilith’s face blanched and her hands began to tremble even more than before as she stared at the Eiffel Tower outlined against her face as if etched in crystal.
“By becoming involved with Kristof, you not only risked calling attention to the existence of vampires, but you jeopardized your marriage to Jules as well. If Count de Laval ever finds out about these pictures, he will negate the contract between the families.”
“But I didn’t have sex with Kristof,” Lilith protested.
“That’s not the point!” Victor snapped. “As a member of the aristocracy, you’re expected to show both wisdom and tact. What you’ve done is not only recklessly selfish, but self-destructive as well. Those are qualities that can spell disaster to even the most powerful house. By the Outer Dark, what patriarch in his right mind would allow his heir apparent to become bound to a bride capable of such childish idiocy?
“While you may not be my only daughter, you are the one who bears my name. Since I have no sons to continue the House of Todd, I’ve worked hard to ensure that our family’s genetic legacy and bloodright isn’t usurped by weaving it into the tapestry of one of the most influential and powerful aristocratic families in the world.
“I want to get three things straight between us. First, you will cease making attempts on your sister’s life�
��.”
“Did she tell you I tried to kill her?” Lilith snarled. “What a sniveling little snitch. And she’s not my sister!”
“Very well, then you will cease making attempts on your demi-sister’s life. Second, if you so much as whisper Cally’s name around your mother, I swear by Tanoch the Stormgatherer, I will take these photographs and turn them over to the Synod myself! And last, but most importantly, if you ever try to blackmail me again, whether you’re my heiress or not, I shall destroy you.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Lilith replied, trying to hide the quaver of uncertainty in her voice.
“Wouldn’t I?” Victor said coldly. “I didn’t get where I am today without being willing to shed the blood of my kin. And as you know, I do have another daughter….”
Cally sat and stared at the dressmaker’s dummy Granny had given her for her thirteenth birthday. Save for a couple of minor embellishments here and there, Cally was pretty much finished with her evening gown for the Grand Ball. And in her opinion, it was every inch as kick-ass as the designer gowns Melinda and the twins had paid thousands of dollars for. Take that, House of Dior!
If someone had told Cally a month ago that she would be a debutante at the Rauhnacht Grand Ball, she would have laughed. But here she was, less than forty-eight hours away from making her social “debut” to New York City’s Old Blood elite. And as usual, she found herself with conflicted emotions.
While she was excited by the pageantry and ritual of it all, another part of her was distressed by the fact that she was participating under false pretenses. Not only was she claiming to be the daughter of a man who was not her father, but she wasn’t even a true-born vampire. Then again, what did it matter? She was leaving for Sweden the moment the ball was over.
It was hard to believe that within seventy-two hours she would be on a snowmobile, headed into the Arctic Circle. After a lifetime spent in the hustle and bustle of New York City, she might as well be going to the moon. The idea of not looking out her window and being able to see the bridge and the lights of the city was almost too much to bear. And who would tend her grandparents’ grave once she was gone? She hated to think of Granny’s headstone becoming as weathered and unkempt as those residents of Rest Haven who no longer had visitors.
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