You look…He sent.
I know….
They had gone back to their old habits of talking without speaking Jack letting his sister into his every thought, his every memory.
His eyes glazed over. She could see what he saw through his eyes, and she knew he was remembering that first night as well. She could see the cloudless Venetian sky, their footsteps light and quick over the bridge. She could see herself through his eyes, an eternity youngerhow young they had been then at the dawn of the world, before the wars, before the dark.
How did you find…is it the same one?
No, sadly that dress is gone to the Tiber river.…Silk does not keep a thousand years, my darling. This is a new one, for a new bonding.
"But not yet," Jack blurted.
Their shared vision disappeared, and Mimi was annoyed to find herself wrenched out of a very pleasant memory.
"No, not yet," Mimi allowed. They would not be bonded officially until their twenty-first birthday. According to vampire law, the bond—the holy matrimony between vampires was an immortal vow, but the ceremony could not be performed until they were of age. The two of them were obligated to renew their bond in every cycle, although this was the first time that they had been born as twins to the same family, confusing matters due to pesky human laws. But no matter. They were vampire twins, which had a different meaning among their kind. It meant their souls had twinned in heaven, where they had pledged their love.
The bond could not be performed until they had both come into their full memories and mastered their powers. Vampire twins sometimes spent cycles looking for each other, and bonded couples had to be old enough to be able to recognize the latest reincarnation of their spouse in a new physical shell.
She knew that in the entire history of the vampires, there was only one couple that had forsaken their bond. Gabrielle as Allegra Van Alen had forsaken Michael, Charles Van Alen Force, in this cycle. She had married—married—in a church, a holy sanctuary, had said the words, had pledged her troth to a human! To her human familiar! And look what happened…Gabrielle trapped in a coma forever, caught between life and non-death. Condemned to eternal silence.
"But why wait?" Mimi asked. "I've known who you were ever since I could see. And you know who I am now.”
Mimi was referring to the night in her father's study when Jack's memories had finally rushed back, allowing him to finally see what was right in front of him all along. They were two who were one. She was his. For eternity.
"I love you, you know," Mimi said. "You make me crazy, but God help me, Jack, I do.”
Jack bent his head so that his nose was buried in Mimi's hair. It smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine, and he inhaled deeply.
"I love you too," he replied.
"My God." Trinity said, with a sharp intake of breath.
Mimi and Jack slowly parted from their embrace and looked to see their mother standing at the open doorway.
"Mimi, you are only sixteen. And that is certainly not a dress for a sixteen-year-old," Trinity accused, her voice shaking.
"Should I remind you I am centuries older than you, `Mother'?" Mimi sniffed. She was coming of age now, the memories flooding back, and Mimi did not want to have to play at being Red Bloods anymore, with typical nuclear family dynamics.
"Charles," Trinity said. "Control your children."
"Mimi, you look beautiful," Charles said, kissing his daughter on the forehead. "Let's go.”
Trinity scowled.
"Come, darling, it is time to dance," Charles said soothingly, taking his wife's hand and leading her out of the room.
"Shall we?" Jack asked, holding out his hand.
"We shall." Mimi smiled.
And together the Force twins walked out, arm in arm, to the party of the year.
TWELVE
A few blocks away, in an altogether different penthouse the Llewellyns' outlandish triplex, nicknamed "Penthouse des Rêves" due to its awesome, if surreal, extravagance Forsyth Llewellyn was standing in front of a secret compartment behind the shoe closet. He quickly turned the knob on the vault two clicks to the right, then three clicks to the left, and stepped back as the five-inch stainless steel door swung open.
"Daaaad, what's this all about?" Bliss asked, standing beside him. "I'm supposed to meet Jaime in the lobby at eight." She was holding Miss Ellie, her Chihuahua, in her arms. Miss Ellie was her canine familiar, named after her favorite character, on Dallas, of course.
Just as promised, Mimi had set Bliss up with Jaime Kip. It was a total friend-date. Jaime had absolutely no interest in Bliss, and vice versa. In fact, it was Jaime who had suggested they meet in the St. Regis lobby since they were both attending with their families. Bliss got the distinct impression Jaime had asked to be her escort for the sole purpose of getting Mimi off his back. Mimi could be quite pushy when she wanted to be.
Bliss crossed her arms and looked around at her stepmother's enormous dressing room. It never failed to impress guests during the ritual house tour. The "closet" was easily two thousand square feet. It had a step-down Roman bath lined with travertine marble and was equipped with dancing showerheads along the side, so that you bathed in the midst of a fountain. There was an endless hallway of mirrors that masked a series of compartments that housed five thousand items of designer clothing, which had been catalogued and archived by BobiAnne's personal assistant.
Too bad so much of what was inside was, in Bliss's opinion, vulgar and tasteless. BobiAnne had never met a marabou-trimmed leopard-print poncho that she didn't like.
BobiAnne was absorbed in her own toilette, and Bliss could hear her stepmother's gravelly laugh echo around the dressing chamber as she gossiped with her two stylists.
Bliss looked at herself in the infinity of mirrors. She had decided to wear the green Dior after all. Her father and stepmother had simply gasped when they saw her.
"My dear, you are so beautiful," BobiAnne had whispered, clasping her stepdaughter in her bony arms made stringy by too much Pilates. It was like being hugged by a skeleton.
BobiAnne was forever praising Bliss's good looks to the heavens, and disparaging her own daughter's rather plain appearance. Jordan, who at eleven was too young for the ball, had peeked in while Bliss was getting dressed and rendered her own judgment. "You look like a slut.”
Bliss had thrown a pillow at her sister's retreating back.
After showing her parents the dress, her father had taken her aside and led her to the safe.
He pulled open several of the suede-lined drawers custom-made to BobiAnne's exact specifications. Bliss could see the sparkle of her stepmother's many diamond tiaras, necklaces, rings, and bracelets. It was like the inside of Harry Winston. In fact, rumor had it that when the Texans had moved to Manhattan, the senator's wife had cleaned out the vaults at all the major diamond merchants in order to celebrate their ascendance in the city's social realm.
He pulled out a long black velvet box from a bottom drawer.
"This was your mother's," he said, showing her a massive cushion-cut emerald set in a platinum necklace. The emerald was as large as a fist. "Your real mother's, I mean. Not BobiAnne.”
Bliss was struck silent.
"I want you to wear it for this evening. This is an important time for us, for our family.
You will honor your mother's memory with this jewel," Forsyth said, clasping the necklace around his daughter's neck.
Bliss knew little of her mother, only that she had cycled out early for an unknown reason.
Her father never talked about her, and Bliss had grown up understanding that her mother was a painful subject. There was little to remember her by, and what few photographs remained were washed-out and faded, so that her mother's features were almost indistinct. When Bliss asked about her, her father only said to "channel her memories," and that she would meet her mother again if time allowed it.
The dog in Bliss's arms went berserk, snapping and growling at the stone.
"Miss Ell
ie! Stop!”
"Silence!" Forsyth ordered, and the dog jumped from Bliss's arms and high-tailed it out the door.
"You scared her, Daddy.”
Bliss looked at the emerald, which had nestled itself inside her cleavage. It was heavy against her skin. She didn't know if she liked it or not. It was so big. Had her mother really worn this?
"The stone is called the Rose of Lucifer, or Lucifer's Bane," the senator explained with a smile. "Have you heard the story?”
Bliss shook her head.
"It is said that when Lucifer fell from heaven, an emerald fell from his crown. The emerald was called the Rose of Lucifer, the morning star. Some other stories even call it the Holy Grail.”
Bliss absorbed the information quietly, not knowing what to think. Her mother owned a jewel linked to the Silver Bloods?
"Of course," Forsyth said, shaking his head, "it's only a story.”
At that moment, BobiAnne entered the room wearing a frightful Versace dress that looked like metallic vinyl siding spray painted on her body.
"How do I look?" she asked her husband sweetly. Bliss and her father exchanged a glance.
"Very pretty, darling," her father said with a frozen smile. "Shall we? The car's waiting.”
In front of the hotel a phalanx of photographers had gathered, and a swelling crowd of curious onlookers were being held back by security gates and a legion of New York's Finest. As each black town car pulled up to the entrance, flashbulbs exploded in a cacophony of staccato bursts.
"Here we go," BobiAnne exclaimed joyfully as she stepped out of the car and leaned on her husband's arm.
But the paparazzi were only interested in Bliss.
"Bliss! Over here! Bliss! One for me! Bliss—this way!”
"What are you wearing?”
"Who made that dress?”
A few of the photographers and reporters were polite enough to ask the senator and his wife what they thought of the party, but it was obvious Bliss was the main attraction.
There were only ten steps from the curb to the hotel entrance, but it took Bliss a good half hour to get there.
"It's madness," Bliss remarked, looking pleased when she finally arrived in the pink and gold lobby and found her date waiting impatiently by the front reception table.
The St. Regis Ballroom had been transformed into a twinkling winter wonderland: the crystal chandeliers were hung with softly beaded strings of rhinestones, and glorious American Beauty roses bloomed everywhere, from the soaring, six-foot-tall centerpieces (so heavy that the tables had to be reinforced) to the massive garlands on every archway. A snow-white carpet on the marble floor led the way from the front reception room into the ballroom proper.
"Senator and Mrs. Forsyth Llewellyn," the herald announced as the politician and his wife appeared at the top of the stairs. A spotlight shone on them, and the percussionist played a dramatic drumroll.
"Mr. James Andrews Kip. Miss Bliss Llewellyn." The four of them walked slowly into the party.
The two fifty-piece orchestras faced each other across the expanse of the ballroom, playing a serene waltz as the Blue Bloods displayed their finery—the men dashing and suave in their tails, the women preternaturally thin and impossibly stylish in their couture ball gowns. It was a magical sight. The Committee had really outdone themselves this time. The whole ballroom was filled with a dazzling, white brilliance: the antique crystal chandeliers shone, and the terrazzo floors gleamed.
Jaime deposited Bliss at her table, saluted her, and promptly disappeared for the rest of the evening. So much for that. Bliss found Mimi standing with her parents at the front of the reception line.
"Wow, look at that!" Mimi said, zeroing in on the necklace immediately. "What a rock!”
"It was my mother's," Bliss explained. She told Mimi the legend of Lucifer's Bane.
Mimi took the emerald in her hands, stroking its glacial coldness. Once she touched it, she was transported back to that final battle, flashes of the black day, trumpets sounding in the distance, Michael with his flaming sword, the banishment, and then the cold. The cold…waking up immortal on earth and dying to feed.
"Oh." Mimi's eyes glazed, her hand still cupping the stone. And then she dropped it as if it had burned her.
Bliss was startled. She knew something had happened to Mimi, the flash of insight, the memory spike when she had touched it. And yet when Bliss touched the stone herself, nothing happened. It was just a dead piece of jewelry. Lucifer's Bane. It gave her shivers.
"It's the Heart of the Ocean," Mimi cracked. “Just promise me you won't throw it off the deck of the Titanic.”
Bliss tried to laugh. But the stone, fifty-five carats, weighed heavily on her skin.
Rose of Lucifer. Lucifer's Bane. The Prince of the Silver Bloods, his most precious possession, hung around her neck like a noose. She shuddered. Part of her wanted to rip it off her throat and throw it as far away as she could.
THIRTEEN
The Van Alen mansion on the corner of 101st and Riverside had once been one of the largest and most majestic homes in all of New York. Countless generations of the family had entertained presidents, heads of state, foreign dignitaries, Nobel prize-winning laureates, as well as Hollywood royalty and the occasional flavor-of-the-month bohemian—artists, writers, and their ilk. Yet now it was a mere shadow of its former self: the cornices were chipped, there was graffiti on the side of the building, the roof leaked, and the walls were riddled with cracks, as the family had been unable to maintain its upkeep over the years.
Schuyler dragged her suitcase up the steps and rang the bell.
Hattie, her grandmother's loyal maid, answered and let her inside.
The living room was as dark and shrouded as when Schuyler had left. For years Schuyler and Cordelia had lived in only a quarter of the rooms in the vast house—kitchen, dining, and their two bedrooms. Everything else was locked and unused, which Schuyler had always attributed to Cordelia's penury. Her grandmother kept almost all the furniture in the house under canvas sheets, windows were curtained, and entire wings of the house were off-limits.
Hence the mansion was akin to a musty old museum, filled with antique artifacts and expensive art objects that were hidden and kept under lock and key.
Schuyler made her way to her room, where Beauty greeted her with a cheerful and resonant bark, and only then did Schuyler feel like she was truly at home.
Now the only problem was what to wear. The invitation had stated White Tie, which Schuyler understood to mean long, formal gowns for the women. She dimly remembered Cordelia getting ready for the yearly Four Hundred Ball, donning a succession of stiff, Oscar de la Renta ball gowns with elbow-length opera gloves. Perhaps she would be able to find something in Cordelia's closet.
She made her way to her grandmother's bedroom. She hadn't been inside since the fateful evening of the attack. She dreaded being in there, remembering how she had found her grandmother lying in a pool of blood. But she comforted herself with the knowledge that Cordelia had managed to survive the attack, and she had been able to bring enough of Cordelia's blood to the medical center. They would keep it resting until the next cycle. Cordelia would return one day.
She was not dead. She had not been taken by the Silver Blood.
"Looking for something, Miss Schuyler?" Hattie asked, popping her head in and finding Schuyler standing with her hands on her hips in front of her grandmother's closet.
"I need a dress, Hattie. For the ball tonight.”
"Mrs. Cordelia had a lot of dresses.”
"Yes." Schuyler frowned, removing several hangers and assessing the dresses that hung on them. They were very old-fashioned, with huge mutton sleeves or peplums. Several were very Reagan-eighties: shoulder pads that rivaled those on Alexis Carrington's Nolan Miller originals on Dynasty. "I just don't think these are going to cut it.”
"Miss Allegra had dresses too," Hattie said.
"My mother? My mom's dresses are still here?"
"In her room, on the third landing.”
Her mother had grown up in the same house, and Schuyler wished, not for the first time, that her mother was around to help her with her current dilemma. Hattie led her upstairs to the next floor, down the hallway, to a corner room in the back.
Schuyler's heart beat in nervous excitement.
"It's a shame about Miss Allegra," Hattie said as she opened the door. "The room's just like it was when she was eighteen. Before she eloped and married your father.”
The room was pristine. Schuyler was shocked to see that there were no cobwebs in the corners, or a layer of dust everywhere. She had expected a crypt, a mausoleum, but it was a bright and cheerful room, with crisp Italian linens on the bed and billowing white curtains on the windows.
"Mrs. Cordelia always insisted we keep it up. For whenever your mother wakes up.”
Schuyler walked toward the armoire in the middle of the room and opened one of its doors.
She reached inside and pulled out a shirt on a hanger. Valentino, circa 1989.
“Are you sure she had ball gowns?”
"She had a cotillion. She was presented at the Four Hundred Ball on her sixteenth birthday," Hattie explained. "Chanel made the dress. It should be in there.”
Schuyler patiently went through each hanger. At last, in the farthest reaches of the closet, she found a black garment bag embroidered with the double-C logo.
She laid the bag out on her mother's bed and unzipped it slowly.
"Wow," Schuyler breathed, removing a carefully preserved dress. She held it up to the light. It was a gold dress with a tight, strapless corset bodice and a princess skirt with folds and folds of voluminous fabric.
She held it up against herself. It would fit, she knew it would fit.
When Schuyler entered the St. Regis Ballroom, the whole room stood still. The guests stared at her as she stood by the entrance, illuminated under the spotlight, uncertain about where to go next. A few gasps could be heard from the crowd.
Jack Force, for one, couldn't take his eyes off her.
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