Misguided Angel (16 page)

The assembled group did not stir. It was almost as if they had expected it, and Deming soldiered on. "Her location was hidden by a masking spel , but after a thorough investigation, we were able to figure out where she was being held, and rescued her before the appointed deadline."

She continued. "I've gone over Victoria's file. According to the Warden overseers, Victoria arrived at the party at eleven p.m. After that she was never seen anywhere again. Otherwise the Wardens would have picked up on her glom signature when she left. Therefore, whoever took her was at that party, which means whoever did this was someone close to her as wel --someone from her inner circle. Someone from Duchesne. Someone she trusted."

"Deming wil be enrol ed as a senior at Duchesne," the Regent announced. "She wil infiltrate Victoria Taylor's close group of friends, those who had been at Jamie Kip's party on the night in question. As we do not want to cause unnecessary fear or panic, this must remain a strict undercover operation."

"I've got a question. How did you find Liling if her glom signature was masked?" Ted Lennox asked. Deming had met him the night before; he had picked her up at the airport with his brother.

"We sent a DeathWalker into the glom."

The room buzzed at this information. "A glom-induced coma? To hide the spirit trail? But the potential damage to the soul is . . ." Ted shook his head.

"You'd have to be real y crazy or real y brave to do something like that. Who'd you find to carry out such a risky operation?"

"I did it myself," Deming said cool y. It was either her or Dehua, and Deming had always been the stronger of the twins. She hadn't al owed her sister to take the risk.

The crowd murmured its approval. DeathWalkers stripped their immortal spirit to its very essence, and in doing so mimicked death. With no trace of her spirit in the glom, she had been able to go underneath the masking spel and find the physical location of the hostage.

The Regent tapped her lectern. "Are there any more questions?" She looked around. There were none. "I don't have to remind you that this information is classified to the Conclave and the Venator team original y assigned to the case. No one else in the Coven must know we are conducting an internal investigation. As far as they are concerned, the Conspiracy has taken care of the security breach posed by the online video. The mainstream world remains blissful y ignorant of our existence. Victoria's disappearance has been explained as a transfer to a Swiss boarding school. The Taylors have been alerted to the situation and are cooperating."

The meeting ended, and as Deming col ected her things, the Regent walked to her side. Deming was struck by Azrael's beauty. It was said among the vampires that only Gabriel e was lovelier, although it had been a while since Deming had seen her in the flesh. Deming had not been in cycle when Al egra was stil active. The Regent's translucent skin had the creamy freshness of youth, a radiant vitality in contrast to heavy sadness in her emerald green eyes. "You have everything you need?" Mimi asked. "How are the boys treating you?"

"Venator quarters are a dump. Just like back home." Deming grinned. "But I'l manage."

"Glad to hear. Remember, at school, I don't know you. So please don't take anything I do or say personal y."

"I'l try to keep that in mind," said Deming. She made for the door, but she got the sense that the Regent stil had something she wanted to say, so she stuck around.

Mimi waited until the room was completely empty to speak. "There's another thing. It's come to my attention that there are those among us who believe that as community we pose too much of a target. Venators loyal to me have discovered that Josiah Archibald and several other Conclave members are planning a coup to disband the Coven. They're going to shut down the Repository, move the House of Records underground, and take half of the registered families with them. I've let them think I don't know anything about their plans. But I need to find the kil er. If I can figure out who's behind the videos, I can regain their trust, calm the opposition, and make the Coven whole again."

Deming nodded. Mimi had not mentioned this when she'd debriefed her on the assignment, and it was a shock to learn the New York Coven was in such jeopardy. But then, no other Coven had lost as many immortal lives. "The blood spel that hit you--do you think the Conclave had something to do with it?" Deming asked.

"The Venators aren't completely certain yet; they're stil breaking down the mechanics of the spel . But right now it's our best guess that yes, it was intended to get me out of the way." Mimi bowed her head. "The Conclave had access to my Repository log. Somehow they found out I was planning to take down the wards."

"Do you think they were involved in Victoria's abduction?"

"No. Of course not. But they used it as an opportunity to attack me."

"Can I ask how you deflected the blood spel ?"

The Regent sighed. "I'm not sure myself. As far as our doctors can tel , it just passed through me--neutralized on impact. As if I were wearing a bul etproof vest."

"Whatever it was, you were very lucky. I've seen victims of blood spel s. It's not pretty," Deming said, sparing Mimi the details: the scraping of remains, the consequent blood burning that was a mercy, since the immortal spirit had been blasted into nothingness. Blood spel s were nasty little devices, a way to harness the glom and unleash its effects on one person, targeting the molecules in the vampire's blood. "Anyway, Coven disbandment seems a rather radical proposition," she observed.

"They're trying to get rid of me because they know I would never al ow it," the Regent said, looking up with her eyes bright. "Every vampire for himself? No more cycle births? Don't they remember what it was like before? If Charles was here they would never even attempt something like this."

"Don't worry, I'l find your kil er," Deming said, putting a hand on Mimi's arm.

"Good." The Regent had a covetous look on her that Deming didn't ful y understand until she realized that Mimi was jealous of her. Jealous that Deming had been able to save her hostage, whereas Mimi had fal en short--and as punishment, her Coven's very foundation was imperiled. It was surely not what she had wanted to accomplish when she had removed the wards.

"It wasn't your fault, what happened to Victoria," Deming said. "You shouldn't blame yourself. Don't worry. I won't fail. I never have."

Mimi shook her hand. "Make sure that you don't. What the Elders don't realize is that if they succeed in disbanding us . . . there is a very real possibility that we wil never rise again."

TWENTY-SEVEN

The New Girl

The room she had been assigned was a smal one that faced the shaft, so that the window opened to a view of a brick wal, five feet away. In Shanghai she had command of a top-floor penthouse, although pol ution in the city was so bad she almost had the same view there as here: a gray darkness. The Lennox brothers, who lived on the top floor, had offered their help, but she had refused them for now. She worked better alone.

Deming grabbed her bag and left the building, planning on taking the subway uptown. The pressure on her to deliver was intense, but she savored the chal enge. There was nothing she liked more than a zero endgame, especial y since she had no intention of losing. Col eagues in Shanghai had cal ed the Chen twins arrogant, but she didn't see it that way. The twins were different from the rest. Like the legendary Kingsley Martin, they did whatever it took to get results. They were cold and ruthless, and would stop at nothing to get to the truth. Which was why the Coven had felt comfortable in sending one of them to New York, since they got to keep the other.

This was her third embed mission since becoming a Venator a year ago (she and Dehua had taken advantage of the new rules regarding recruitment, and like the Force twins, had joined up early), and she prepared herself mental y for the day to come. Until Liling Tang's abduction, the Asian Coven's biggest headache had been human rights abuses--too many vampires draining their familiars to ful consumption and leaving a trail of Red Blood corpses in their wake, or else using memory wipes a little too liberal y, so that humans became mental y impaired. Right now her sister was in the rural countryside, tracking down a
probrae spiritus
, a vampire who was using the glom to give the local human population nightmares.

The Duchesne assignment was more akin to what they had pul ed at the International School, when they had been brought in on the kidnapping case.

Liling Tang had run around with a sophisticated expatriate crowd, shunning the usual clique of rich kids from the Communist aristocracy. Her friends had been Blue Bloods from around the world, and her kidnapper a European transfer. The crime had caused the Chinese Conclave to consider seceding from the global vampire community, but so far they had elected to remain loyal to New York.

Deming was wel aware that Duchesne was unlike your typical American high school--there were no cheerleaders prancing about in tiny skirts that barely covered their behinds, no hulking footbal players stalking the hal ways, no show choir geeks, no threat of slushie facials (perhaps she had just watched too much American television), but the moment she stepped through its ornate double doors, she found it was just like everywhere else.

There was a rigid separation of the wheat from the chaff, the cool from the dorky, the beautiful from the not. The popular kids, Victoria's friends among them, congregated in the outdoor courtyard before the first bel : the girls with enviable figures, sleek hair and blinding teeth, holding giant Parisian tote bags as backpacks, surrounded by handsome boys, tousled and dreamy-looking, their jackets and ties askew, as if they had rol ed up to school straight from bed. This was the in-crowd, the charmed circle, the Blue Bloods--this was the group Deming was meant to join.

It shouldn't be too hard, Deming thought. She did not have any false modesty about her looks: she knew she was pretty, with her straight black hair that fel al the way down her back, coffee-colored skin, her wide eyes and button nose, her slim boyish build. Plus, she had a lot of experience being "the New Girl." Her cycle father was an industrialist with many holdings al over the world, and the twins had been educated in London, Tehran, Johannesburg, and Hong Kong. She knew how to get along with people, how to make them like her.

Al Committee meetings, Junior and Senior, were postponed for the time being, as the Wardens were too busy strengthening the wards around the Coven after the Regent's impulsive action. No one even knew how badly the Regent had exposed them to their enemies and what the repercussions would be. No wonder the Conclave had lost its faith in its leader. No wonder the future of the Coven was on the brink.

It was too bad the meetings had been canceled indefinitely. It would have been an easy way to mingle with the group without being noticed. Deming looked at her schedule. Her first class was The Spirit of the Self, a humanities elective for upperclassmen. Whoever had planned the school's curriculum was certainly given to al iteration: she could have taken Debating Decisions (ethics), Movement and Motion (a dance class), or From Barriers to Bridges (an English class, to Deming's surprise). Whatever happened to plain old History or Algebra or Art?

She had chosen the class because three of her top suspects were enrol ed as wel , and took a seat next to Francis Kernochan, whom everyone cal ed Froggy, one of the two boys last seen with Victoria Taylor at Jamie Kip's party. Froggy certainly didn't look like someone keeping a terrible secret.

The boy had an open, amiable face, hair an unfortunate shade of orange, and from the slouch of his rounded shoulders alone, an easygoing demeanor.

Not that it meant anything. The Blue Blood boy from Guizhou who had drained twenty-four familiars to death had the face of an angel.

"Excuse me," she said, as her messenger bag brushed the elbow of the girl seated on her other side.

"Are those chopsticks?" the girl asked. Deming looked up to see a pretty strawberry blonde sizing her up. Piper Crandal . Suspect Number Two. As Victoria's best friend, she was the one who would have the most reason to harm the girl. In Deming's experience, it was always those closest to us who also wished us dead.

"That's so cool," Piper told her.

"Thanks." Deming's hand reflexively went to pat the long black hair she wore in a messy bun on the top of her head, secured with elegant sterling-silver chopsticks, the current trend in Shanghai. They weren't any old chopsticks either: they had been forged by the master, Alalbiel, and when joined together they formed her sword,
Ren Ci Sha Shou
, Mercy-Kil er.

"I love your watch," she said, pointing to Piper's wrist. "Is it vintage?"

"An original Cartier, from when Louis stil made them." Piper smiled. "Funny how Red Bloods think you can't take it with you. I've had this watch for almost two hundred years."

"It's gorgeous," said Deming, who didn't need to use the glom to know the road to female friendship was paved with flattery. Why use the glom when common sense and insight into human (and vampire) behavior was available? Too many Truth Seekers had become lazy and dependent on telepathic tricks. They had lost the ability to think without them.

"Maybe I'l let you borrow it sometime if you teach me how to wear my hair that way," Piper said.

"Anytime," Deming said. "I'm Deming Chen." As part of her cover she had rol ed into Duchesne wearing the latest fashions, and noticed Piper looking approvingly at her expensive handbag.

"Piper Crandal . I know who you are. We got the Conclave memo that you had transferred here. Where are you staying?"

"My uncle's a Venator and he has some rooms on Bleecker."

"Tragic." Piper shook her head. "They haven't fixed up that place since like . . ."