Masquerade (14 page)

A
fter mastering the first principle of the glom, Schuyler had moved on to the second principle: suggestion. The second tenet was the ability to plant a seed of an idea in another mind. “It is how we push the Red Bloods to strive for excellence, art, and beauty,” her grandfather revealed. “We use the suggestion. It is a useful tool. Most people don’t like to think their ideas are not theirs, so we suggest them instead. If we did not, the humans would have never had the New Deal, Social Security, or even Lincoln Center.” Suggestion was even more complicated than telepathy. Lawrence explained that one had to do it subtly, so the human would not feel as if they were being manipulated. “Subliminal advertising was invented by one of our kind, of course, but when the Red Bloods discovered it, they immediately forbade its use. A pity.”

The night before, Lawrence had asked her to suggest something to Anderson. After several hours of Schuyler attempting to not only find the target signal, but to send something to it, Anderson suddenly stood up and said that he felt like a cup of tea, and did anyone else want one?

When he left, Lawrence looked over at his granddaughter.

“That was you, wasn’t it?”

Schuyler nodded. It had taken almost all of her strength to send one simple request.

“Good. Tomorrow we will move from afternoon delicacies to more important matters.”

The next day at school, the effort it had taken to perform the suggestion took its toll on Schuyler. As she walked down the back hallways after third period, she suddenly began to feel woozy. She swooned and would have tumbled down the back stairs, had Jack Force not been there to catch her.

“Hold on,” he said. “Are you okay?”

Schuyler opened her eyes. Jack was looking at her, concerned.

“I just lost my footing . . . I fainted.”

The girls on the stairway behind her exchanged knowing smiles. Fainting was a regular occurrence at the school, and a telltale sign of anorexia. Of course Schuyler Van Alen was suffering from an eating disorder. Everyone could tell the bitch was too skinny.

“Let me take you home,” Jack said, lifting her to her feet.

“No—Oliver—my Conduit—he can . . . and really, it’s nothing, just—I’ve been working too hard on the glom,” she said, half delirious.

“I believe Oliver is currently giving a presentation in English class,” Jack said. “But I can call for him if you’d like.”

Schuyler shook her head. No, it wasn’t fair to ask Ollie to take a bad grade just because she felt ill.

“C’mon, let me put you in a cab and get you home safe.”

Lawrence was writing in his study when Hattie knocked on the door. “Miss Schuyler is back, sir. It seems she had an episode at school.”

He walked down the stairs to find Jack Force holding Schuyler in his arms. Jack explained that Schuyler had fallen asleep in the cab on the way home. “I’m Jack Force, by the way,” he said as an introduction.

“Yes, yes. I know who you are. Just put her down on the couch, there’s a good lad,” Lawrence instructed, leading Jack into the living room. Jack placed Schuyler gently on a velvet-upholstered divan, and Lawrence covered her with an afghan blanket.

Schuyler’s skin was so pale it was transparent, and her dark lashes were wet against her cheek. She was breathing in irregular, tortured gasps. Lawrence put a cool hand on her hot forehead and asked Hattie to bring a thermometer. “She’s burning up,” he said in a tense voice.

“She fainted at school,” Jack explained. “She seemed all right in the cab, and then she said she felt sleepy, and . . . well . . . you can see.”

Lawrence’s frown deepened.

“She’s been working on the glom, she said.” Jack looked sharply at Lawrence out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes, we were practicing.” Lawrence nodded. He sat next to his granddaughter and gently inserted a thermometer between her parched lips.

“That’s against Committee rules,” Jack noted.

“I don’t recall you ever caring very much for rules, Abbadon,” Lawrence said. Neither of them had acknowledged their former friendship until then. “You, who stood with us at Plymouth at great cost to your own reputation.”

“Times change,” Jack muttered. “If what you say is true, then she has been weakened by your own hand.”

Lawrence pulled the thermometer out of Schuyler’s mouth. “One hundred and twelve,” he said matter-of-factly. A temperature that would certainly spell imminent death or permanent damage to a mortal. But Schuyler was a vampire, and it was still within an acceptable range for her kind. “A tad high, perhaps,” Lawrence pronounced. “But nothing a good rest won’t cure.”

A few minutes later, Schuyler woke up to find Jack and her grandfather looking at her keenly. She shivered underneath the wool blanket and pulled it around her shoulders tightly.

“My dear, has this happened before?”

“Sometimes,” Schuyler acknowledged softly.

“After lessons?”

Schuyler nodded. She hadn’t admitted it, because she wanted the lessons to continue.

“I should have seen this. The first time this happened— when you went into hibernation—that was several days after you chased me in Venice, was it not?”

Schuyler nodded. She remembered what Dr. Pat had said:
Sometimes it’s a delayed reaction.

“I have figured out why you are so weak,” Lawrence said. “I chastise myself for not realizing the problem earlier. It’s simple. By exercising your vampire powers, your blue-blood cells are working overtime, and since your red-blood cells aren’t high to begin with—because of the mixed nature of your blood composition—your energy flags. There is only one solution to keep your blood counts in the normal range. You must take a human familiar.”

“But I’m not even eighteen,” Schuyler protested, citing the age of consent for the Sacred Kiss. “I was kind of planning on waiting.”

“This is serious, Schuyler. I’ve already lost your mother to a coma, I don’t want to lose you as well. While you possess certain special powers that vampires your age wouldn’t even dream of having, in many ways, you are also much weaker than the average Blue Blood. You cannot escape from the progress of the transformation, but you can control some of its more adverse effects. You
must
take a familiar sooner than eighteen. A human boy. For your own sake.”

Jack cleared his throat, and Schuyler was surprised to see him there. He had been so quiet during her grandfather’s lecture. “I think I’ll take your leave, Lawrence. Schuyler.”

The door to the room opened just as Jack was about to exit.

Oliver Hazard-Perry stood in the doorway, looking flustered at seeing Jack. “I heard Schuyler had to go home from school. I was worried, I came as soon as I could.”

The three vampires looked at him, all with the same thought on their minds.

Oliver was a human boy. A Red Blood. And Schuyler needed a familiar. . . .

“What?” Oliver asked, when no one replied. “Do I smell or something?”

I
t was time to try her plan. The roses had been the last straw. It was not only that—her brother was becoming bolder and bolder in his pursuit of the half-blood. He hardly ever tried to disguise the fact that he lingered in hallways outside Schuyler’s classroom, or had taken to hanging out in the library at school or the Repository to catch a glimpse of her. Mimi had even caught the two of them shamelessly flirting in public! The other day a friend told her she had seen Jack actually walk out of the school with Schuyler in his arms! Not that Mimi even believed that one. Mimi drew the pentagram as the book had instructed, with a small white chalk on the pale blond hardwood floor. Then she placed the necessary ingredients together in a small steel bowl on her dressing-room table: verbena leaves, bay leaves, a cluster of tiger lilies, marjoram, a toad heart, and a bat wing. The array looked out of place among the many crystal bottles of perfume and expensive French lotions.

She lit a candle and drew a flame from it with a stick of rosemary. She blew out the candle as directed and threw the burning herb into the bowl.

A tall, violet flame erupted.

Mimi glanced at herself in the mirror and was surprised to find that the room, which only moments before had been filled with afternoon sunlight, was now pitch black, save for the light shooting up from the bowl.

Her hands trembled slightly as she opened a small, glassine envelope that contained Schuyler Van Alen’s hair. She shook out the contents and held it in her hand.

The book instructed her to throw the hair into the flame, while saying the words that would vanquish her enemy. Mimi closed her eyes and tossed it into the fire.

“I, Azrael, command the spirits. Annul the power of my rival.

“I, Azrael, command the spirits. Annul the power of my rival.

“I, Azrael, command the spirits. Annul the power of my rival.”

“MIMI!” The door flew open. Charles Force stood at the entryway. With a wave of his hand, he extinguished the bright violet flame.

Mimi opened her eyes and gasped. She tried vainly to wipe off the traces of the pentagram with her foot. “I was just curious,” she explained. “The Committee never lets us do anything. . . .”

He walked over to her side and poked a finger into the burning embers. “It is understandable. We are made from dark magic—we who are condemned to walk the earth forever. But these incantations are very strong. If you do not know how to control them, they can control you. That is why it is forbidden to the young until you are ready.”

Charles picked up the book on her desk. “Where did you get this? I know. The Repository. But this is kept under lock and key. It is a dangerous book for those who are not yet of age.”

He tucked the book under his arm. “Darling, why don’t you find something else to do with your time?”

When her father left, Mimi picked up her white princess phone and dialed a familiar number.

“Kingsley,” Mimi asked. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, baby, what’s on your mind?”

“You know that thing you said? About calling up a Silver Blood from the Dark?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“
T
here’s something different about you,” Kingsley said, one afternoon while they were supposedly doing homework in Bliss’s bedroom. “Supposedly” because that’s what Bliss liked to think was going to happen, but Kingsley always had other ideas. BobiAnne insisted that Bliss leave the door open to her room whenever she had a boy over—that was one of her rules. But BobiAnne wasn’t there that afternoon. It was her weekly spa appointment, and she would be gone for hours. Jordan was at ballet rehearsal, which ran until midnight. Bliss was alone in the apartment, save for the staff, who were on the first floor, far away in the servants’ wing.

“I got a haircut,” Bliss offered, looking up from her German essay. She knew that wasn’t what Kingsley was after. Ever since the double-bouquet delivery, Kingsley had been harassing her to find out the identity of Bliss’s so-called “mystery man.”

“No, that’s not it.” Kingsley smiled. He was stretched out on her bed like a lazy cat, his black hair so long that it curled onto his shirt collar. His notebooks and binders were scattered around him, including that dark leather-bound book he was always reading. But in the past hour, he had done absolutely no homework and instead had been needling her all evening.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bliss said stubbornly.

“I think you do,” Kingsley drawled. “It’s written all over you.”

“What?”

“You did it. You took a human during your little vacation or photo shoot, whatever you call it.
Vou drank hees blaad
,” Kingsley said, affecting a Transylvanian accent. “Whoever gave them the idea that we were some provincial hicks from Eastern Europe was brilliant.”

“So what if I did?” Bliss asked.

“Oh, goody. Now we’re getting somewhere. Did you like it?”

“You’re not jealous?” Bliss asked.

“Jealous? Why would I be jealous?” Kingsley looked shocked. “I don’t think you understand—it’s like being jealous of your hairdresser. Familiars perform a service, that’s all. We don’t get emotionally attached to them.”

“We?”

“You know what I mean.”

Kingsley walked over to Bliss’s side and began massaging her back. “C’mon, relax. . . . Are you still having those flashbacks? Those blackouts?”

Bliss nodded.

“Did you try doing what I suggested?” he asked.

She shook her head. She was too scared to do what he had proposed.

“Well, you should, it works. Worked for me.” Kingsley’s fingers kneaded her sore muscles expertly, and Bliss was soon swooning under his touch. It was like being hypnotized. . . .

Red eyes with silver pupils, and a voice that whispered in a hiss . . .

Soon . . .

Soon . . .

Soon . . .

The beast had come again, chasing her down mazelike corridors. She felt its hot, foul breath on her cheek. She was trapped against a corner, and she could not wake up. She looked it in the eye. Do it, do it, she thought. Do what Kingsley said.

Talk to it.

What do you want?
Bliss asked.
I demand a palaver.

The crimson eyes blinked.

When Bliss woke up, she found she had scratched herself in fear. There were ugly red bruises all over her arms.

But Kingsley had been right. It had worked. The beast had gone.

Schiz•o•phre•ni•a (n.) Greek for “Shattered mind.” Mental disorder characterized by impairments in the perception of reality. Persons having schizophrenia suffer from auditory delusions, visual hallucinations, disorganized speech (incoherence), disorganized behavior (crying frequently).

Continuous sign of disturbance must occur for more than six months in order for the patient to be diagnosed as such.

—
Dictionary of Mental Disorders
,
American Academy of Mental Health Professionals

T
he Mercer had been Oliver’s idea. He’d nixed Schuyler’s room or his, thinking it would be too weird to do “it” in the same place where they had spent so many innocent hours reading magazines and watching television. So he’d booked a suite at the downtown hotel. He had convinced her to have a few drinks with him in the library bar before they went up to the room. “You might not need a drink, but I definitely do,” he’d said. Schuyler watched patiently as Oliver downed one Manhattan after another. Neither of them said much. The library bar was off-limits to non-hotel guests, and the two of them sat in a private corner. The only other patron was a movie star giving a magazine interview across the room. The movie star had her feet on the couch and she was laughing too loudly, while the reporter looked nervous and starstruck. A small silver recorder sat on the cocktail table between them.

“All right, let’s do it,” Oliver said, pushing away his half-finished third drink.

“God, you look like I’ve asked you to go to war,” Schuyler said, as they walked toward the elevator.

The one-bedroom suite had a stunning view of downtown, and was decorated with a hip modern edge: dark Makassar ebony furniture, lamb’s wool throw pillows, black epoxy floors polished to a high gloss, an onyx bar that glowed from within, a flat-screen television, and stainless steel walls that looked cold to the touch but actually felt smooth and warm, like butter.

“Cool,” Schuyler said as she sat on one edge of the king-size bed, while Oliver sat on the other.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Oliver asked, sitting forward and putting his face on his hand.

“Ollie, if I don’t, I’ll pass out in a coma and I won’t ever wake up. This morning I couldn’t even get out of bed.”

He gulped.

“I hate to ask you this—but it’s just, I don’t know, I don’t want my first time to be with someone I don’t even know, you know?” She’d told him about what had happened to Bliss in Montserrat. “And you’re my best friend.”

“Sky, you know I’d do anything for you. But this is against the Code. Conduits aren’t allowed to be familiars to their vampires. We are supposed to be objective. It’s not part of the relationship. Things like the
Caerimonia
, it complicates things, you know,” Oliver explained.

When Schuyler had first asked Oliver a week ago if he would consider becoming her human familiar, he had told her he would think about it. The next day, he hadn’t brought it up, and Schuyler assumed he was too polite to tell her no, so he was just going to act like she’d never asked him at all. Several days went by, and neither of them mentioned it. Schuyler was beginning to think she would have to find an alternate solution. But that morning, she had found an envelope stuffed into her locker. It was from the Mercer Hotel, and held a plastic door key for their suite. “See you there tonight,” Oliver had written. “Chomp! Chomp!”

It wasn’t as if Schuyler didn’t have mixed feelings of her own—she hated putting Oliver in this position—but she felt she had no choice. If she had to take a familiar, at least she would take one who was, forgive the pun, already familiar to her. And she’d felt drawn to Oliver since Venice. Maybe that was a sign it was going to be all right. That this was something that was supposed to happen.

“Just say the word, Ollie, and we won’t do it, okay?” she offered, her hands gripping the edge of the bed, pulling out the sheets from their corners.

“Okay. Let’s not do it,” he said promptly. He sighed and lay down on the bed, waving his arms over the downy comforter. His long legs dangled from the edge but his torso was totally horizontal. He closed his eyes, as if the prospect was simply too much to bear, and put his hands on his face again, as if to shield himself from something.

“Do you mean it?” Schuyler asked a little fearfully.

“I don’t know,” Oliver groaned behind his hands, which were now folded over his mouth.

“It’s just, you know, I’ll be really careful, if you’re scared, I mean. You have to trust me.” She was still sitting upright so that her words were spoken to the wall of windows, while Oliver seemed to be talking to the ceiling.

“I trust you,” Oliver said in a strained, sad voice. “I trust you with my life.”

“I know it’ll change our relationship, but we’re best friends. It can’t change that much, can it? I mean, I already love you,” Schuyler said. Every word she said was true, she was very fond of Oliver. She couldn’t imagine life without him.

She turned around to look at him. Oliver had removed his hands from his face and opened his eyes. She noticed how his chestnut hair framed his handsome face, and how his neck looked inviting under his stiff Oxford collar. “Don’t you love me?” She knew she was being manipulative, but she couldn’t help it. She needed Oliver to say yes. Otherwise . . . who would she do it with?

Oliver tried not to blush and couldn’t quite meet Schuyler’s eyes. He lifted himself to a sitting position once again. “All right,” he said, almost more to himself than to her.

Schuyler moved closer to him and leaned against his body, and with a few small movements, she was sitting on his lap. “Okay?”

“You’re heavy,” he teased, but he was smiling.

“Am not.”

“All right, you’re not.”

“You’re cute, you know? I mean, really cute. Why do you spend all your time with me? You should date,” she said matter-of-factly as she brushed the hair out of his hazel eyes. They were the kindest eyes she had ever seen, she thought. She would always feel safe with Oliver.

“Yeah, me, date.” Oliver laughed. He put his arms around her waist.

“Why not? It’s not unheard of.”

“Yeah?” Oliver asked.

“Uh—” But Schuyler didn’t finish, because Oliver was putting a warm hand on her chin and drawing her toward him, and soon they were kissing. Soft, tentative kisses that turned more vigorous as they opened their mouths to each other.

“Mmm . . .” she sighed. So this was what it was like. Kissing Oliver. It wasn’t anything like she’d imagined. It was better. It was as if they were made for each other. Schuyler pressed herself against him, and Oliver put his hand through her hair. This was new. This was a turning point. Then she started kissing his chin and his neck.

“Sky . . .”

“Mmmm?”

Suddenly, Oliver pushed her away, took her hands from behind his back, and abruptly shoved her off his lap.

“No,” he said, panting heavily. His cheeks were aflame with embarrassment.

“No?” Schuyler asked, not understanding. It seemed like it was going well—this was what was meant to happen, wasn’t it?

“No.” Oliver stood up and started pacing. “The Sacred Kiss means something. It did to your mom. And you know what? You’ll have to find another guinea pig. I’m not going to do it out of obligation.”

“Ollie.”

“Don’t, Schuyler.”

He never called her Schuyler unless he was really mad.

Schuyler shut up.

“I’m going. I can’t be with you . . . You’re not yourself.” Oliver said, putting his coat on and slamming the door of the hotel room as he stormed out into the night.