The Van Alen Legacy (16 page)

“Very good.
Very good.
And my brother?”

Forsyth removed a bottle of
scotch from underneath his desk and poured two shots into crystal glasses.

“Say the word and Leviathan
will strike. The girl is within his reach. It will be easy enough for him to infiltrate the
party. By the way, you may find this amusing: my sources tell me that Charles was unable to get
an invitation to the ball.”

“How fortunate that the
schism still holds.”
The Visitor nodded, sounding very pleased. “I could always count on
my dear sister to harbor such a long grudge. It works to our favor.” The Visitor downed the
scotch in one fluid motion.
“And my other sister, Sophia?”

“Alas, she refuses to divulge
information about the Order. She swears she does not know. You know, after a year with
Harbonah
, she might just be telling the truth.”

“I see.”

“The good news is Kingsley and
his
team are
still in the woods. They’ve been misdirected for months, with no idea
they were sent on a useless mission.”

“Kingsley,” the Visitor
snorted. “
that
traitor. We’ll deal with him soon enough.”

“What shall we do about
Sophia? Do we continue to hold the Watcher?” Forsyth asked.

“No.” The Visitor ran a finger
over the rim of the empty glass, making a small, high-pitched sound. “If my sister truly does not
know the identities of the Seven, then she is nothing to me. I grow bored of her stubbornness.
Take her away. Kill her.” His words had a rash, impulsive cast to them, but there was something
else that had made Bliss feel suddenly frightened. When the Visitor had called Sophia ‘sister’,
an image had come to her mind: Jordan.

Was the Visitor speaking of
Jordan? And if so, did that mean Jordan was still alive? Where? How? Bliss could feel herself
starting to get agitated. She had to calm down. She wanted to hear more . . . She had to . . .
She had to find out . . .

But it was too late. She was
tossed out of the light and back into the cold, alone and helpless to do anything about what she
had heard. What was going to happen in Paris? Why had they wanted Charles Force to go there? And
Sophia
?,
was that Jordan’s real name? What did the Visitor have planned for her? And
who was the girl Leviathan was after?

Was there anything she could
do to prevent any of it? Or was she going to be doomed to know that the end of the world was
coming, and yet be completely helpless to do anything about it but watch from a front-row
seat?

She’d kicked the door so hard
it had clattered to the floor, making a tremendous noise. But afterward, all was silent. There
was no reply to her challenge. Mimi crept up against the doorway, feeling along the edge of the
wall for a light switch. When she turned it on, she saw that she was standing in a filthy mess;
everything in the place was ransacked and disorderly.

“Um, like,
ew
?”
Mimi said, making a face at Kingsley, who in turn was surveying the squalor with a flinty stare.
Mimi held her nose and tried not to breathe. “What is that?” she asked, almost choking. It
smelled sweet and rancid.
Like something left to rot.

Kingsley shook his head. Mimi
decided she didn’t really want to know. She could hear the Lennox brothers breaking down the
other door. They edged around the explosion of clutter.

There was something
pathological about the scope of the disaster, from the upturned sofa, where someone had hacked at
the cushions, leaving a mess of feathers everywhere, to every drawer in every table and bureau
being wrenched open, contents spilling out onto the fl
oor
. There were empty bottles
and newspapers scattered all around, remnants of food, plastic wrappers, dirty paper plates, a
half-empty bag of M&M’s, unopened cans of Red Bull.

Something about the disarray
looked familiar. Mimi realized she had seen it before; the Force’s town house had been
burglarized a few years ago, and her
parents
rooms had been ransacked in just this
manner: everything turned over, upside down, everything picked through. She remembered how odd it
had been to see Trinity’s jewelry box in the middle of the bed, broken and empty, among the
jumble of clothing and old family photographs that the thieves had unearthed from the closet.
This was the same: the methodical way every item in the room had been assessed and discarded.
Someone had been looking for something. Kingsley signaled to Mimi to keep moving, and they
continued to inch along the hallway. They found two bedrooms, both just as messy and overturned
as the rest of the house. Sam and Ted came in from the kitchen.

“Anything?”
Kingsley asked, still holding his weapon at the ready.
“Nothing, Cap.”

“This isn’t that old,”
Kingsley said, picking up a paper bag with the McDonald’s logo. “It’s still warm. Eyes up,” he
said, ordering them to stay sharp.

Mimi continued to look around.
During their burglary in New York, the thieves had made off with four million dollars worth of
her mother’s diamonds. But the robbery hadn’t been the worst of it. She remembered how violated
she had felt, to think that strangers had been in their house. One of them had left a coffee cup
on the dining room table, leaving an ugly ring on the wood.

It wasn’t so much the loss of
the stones, although Mimi had been upset not to inherit the jewels, it was the principle of the
thing: to know that someone had been in your space.
An uninvited, unwelcome someone who had
used your house as their own personal playground.
There had been a muddy footprint on her
headboard, cookie crumbs on the white rug, a smear of chocolate (Mimi hoped it had been
chocolate) on her silk bedspread.

The police had come, taken
fingerprints, and filed a re-port, not that anything ever came of it, of course. Charles had said
most of the jewel thieves dealt with the black market, where pieces were broken down, the stones
disguised and laundered through the system, sold to shady dealers on

. Luckily, insurance had covered most of the
damage, as well as the stones, so there was no real financial loss, just sentimental value and a
nagging feeling of injustice.

Mimi’s parents had had the
whole apartment repainted that night and over the weekend. The housekeepers put every thing to
rights. Once the insurance check came in, Trinity had kept Harry Winston and several auction
houses on their toes. After a few months, Mimi had completely forgotten about it: life went
on.

But seeing the momentous mess
the Silver Bloods had made took her back to that awful night.
Charles looking ashen,
Trinity tearing up a bit, and Jack punching his fist into a couch pillow.
Mimi had taken
one look at the rape and pillage of their beautiful home and declared, “I’m getting us a suite at
the St. Regis.”

What could they have possibly
been looking for here? Mimi wondered. This was a shack in the middle of the jungle. What on earth
could it possibly have that was of any value to anyone? And where was Jordan? If they had taken
her here, why were they looking for something? Mimi knelt down and rummaged through the disorder,
trying to make sense of things. She pushed away a pile of rotten cardboard and unearthed a
strange pattern on the carpet.

Footprints.

Small ones.

Leading toward or coming from
the bathroom. Mimi entered the small space. This room had also been turned upside down, the cheap
plastic shower curtain pulled off the rings,
a
mountain of towels in the bathtub,
the mirror over the sink smashed to
bits’there
was blood on the glass. There were
signs of struggle, the remnants of a fight. . . .

Mimi pushed the towels around.
There was something here. . . .

Hidden underneath the fallen
shower curtain . . .

Mimi pushed the crumpled
plastic off with her foot, her heart beating. . . . Could it be . . . With trembling hands she
picked away the piles of broken glass and removed the pile of dirty towels.

There was a small, dead body
in the bathtub, wearing dirty flannel pajamas. No. No. No. No. No. NO! They were too late;
she´d
felt it.
They´d
been walking in a fog, too slow . . . They were
too slow. . . . But still, she
didn´t
want to believe it. NO!

“Kingsley?” she cried. She
didn´t
want to be by
herself
when she turned the body over.

She was used to being alone.
She had been alone for much of her life. Her grandmother had not advocated the current hovering,
anxious practice of modern helicopter parenting. There had been no one from home to watch the few
school plays she was in, no one to cheer her on from the sidelines at the Saturday soccer games.
It had been sink or swim with Cordelia: no risk of drowning from too much attention.
Schuyler´s
childhood looked lonely from the outside: no siblings, no parents, and
until Oliver came into her life, no friends.

But here was a secret:
Schuyler
hadn´t
been lonely.
She´d
had her painting, her drawing, her
art, and her books. She liked being alone. It was company that flagged her; she had no idea how
to make casual chitchat, or how to interpret and emulate the fluid social gestures that drew
people together. She was forever the Little Match Girl at the window, shivering out in the cold.
But while people scared her, she had never been afraid of the dark.

At least, not until
now.
The darkness that surrounded her was absolute: so complete, even vampire sight was
useless. She hid in a tunnel until the screams and sounds of the skirmish subsided, fading into
blackness. She should have stayed; what had she been thinking? Why had she left him there alone?
She had left Oliver and now Jack. But she had had no weapon; she had nothing. Jack had wanted her
to run, and so she had. “Jack? Jack?” she called, her voice echoing down the length of the
tunnel. “Are you all right? Jack?”

There was no
answer.

The silence was even more
unsettling. It was so quiet she could hear the sound of rain falling somewhere above the
catacombs, could hear the drip-drop-drip of every trickle that fell through the cracks in the
walls and hit the floor. She hugged herself tightly, unsure of what to do. Her shoulders ached,
and it felt as if her muscles were frozen. So this was what it was to be afraid of the dark.
To be afraid and alone in the dark.
Schuyler called
Jack´s
name for
what seemed like hours, but there was no answer. There was no sign of the Silver Bloods either,
but that
didn´t
mean anything. Maybe they had withdrawn, only to return later. She
didn´t
want to think about what might have happened to Jack. . . . Could they have
taken him? Was he destroyed? Lost? Broken?

Jack was gone. No. Schuyler
shook her head even though she was only arguing with herself. There was no way he could have
fallen. Not him. Not that dazzling fearsome light that he was. No. She had seen his true form and
it was awesome to behold.
A pillar of fire.
A thousand magnificent suns
burning with flames the color of the deepest night.
Terrible and wonderful and more
frightening than anything she had ever seen. No!

He will return for
me.

She believed it. She looked
around at the maze of tunnels. She had no idea where she was, or where she had come from. You
could get lost in here for centuries, Schuyler had told Jack.

That’s the idea.

What am I doing? I’m such an
idiot. The intersection! It was the only natural place. What had Charles said?
The
intersection.
The place where they cannot cross.
All the tunnels led there.
Where was it? She couldn’t see, so she felt along the wall. There was an opening. She felt
another.
Two tunnels.
A fork in the road.
She would have to choose.
But which?
She felt along the grain, trying to sense something. If she could not
see, maybe she could smell. . . .

It had smelled clean in here,
she remembered thinking. She had expected the underground cavern to smell moldy, like a damp
towel that had been left too long on the floor. But when she and Jack had first disappeared into
the catacombs, she had been surprised to breathe fresh air. This one, she thought. This one
smells just a bit fresher, as if maybe it would lead to more fresh air, maybe to the stairs that
led upward and out. She made a decision. She walked into the dark tunnel, with only her
fingertips as her guide.

It felt as if she had been
walking in the dark for miles, but her nose had not failed her, the air had cleared, and from far
away she could see it . . . a light shining in the darkness. Jack. It had to be Jack.

Finally she reached the
intersection.

But the light was from the
torch Jack had been carrying before they were attacked.