The Van Alen Legacy (25 page)

The studio was located in one
of the shabbier buildings, as Schuyler had wanted, and it was very small: if she stood in the
middle of the room, she could almost touch all four walls with her fingertips. The apartment came
furnished with a hot plate, a microwave, and a futon that rolled into a corner. The lone window
opened up to a view of the light shaft. Still, it was better than living in a hotel. It was New
York. It was home.

“Are you sure about this?”
Oliver asked.

Schuyler had entered the
building wearing the hippie-mom mask, and she felt her features relax back into her own as soon
as he had closed the door.

“You don’t have to stay here,
you know. My dad has a place downtown, for when he works late. You could stay there,” he told
her.

“I know it’s not as nice as
your house. Or even my old one,” Schuyler said, looking through the empty cupboards and finding
little black plastic roach motels in the corners. “But I don’t think we should be seen together
at all. We can’t jeopardize your status in the Coven.”

The house on 
Riverside Drive 
was a mere cab ride away. Hattie
would be there with her homemade pot roasts, and Julius to show her card tricks. But she could
not go back. Not yet. She knew the minute she stepped through the doorway, the Conclave would
know. She had no idea how she knew this, but she felt it instinctively and knew she was right.
She had to keep away. They might not be interested in her right now, but she had a feeling that
would change.

She felt safer in the studio
already. Already she felt she was Skye Hope, not Schuyler Van Alen. She and Oliver had decided it
was a name a former flower child would give her offspring. Plus, if people called her by a name
she was used to answering to, there was less of a chance Schuyler would slip up.

Alexander Hamilton High was
the local public school, and they had accepted Schuyler’s last-minute registration with no
questions or complaint. Oliver had pushed for one of the other private schools: Nightingale,
Spence,
Brearley
. But even he had to agree it was too dangerous. Those institutions
were crawling with Blue Bloods. At Hamilton High, there would be little chance of anyone from the
Conclave finding out she was there. The elite might give lip service (and donor money) to their
commitment to public education but never went so far as to actually send their children there.
For the Conclave to believe the story of Schuyler and Oliver’s estrangement, Oliver would have to
return to Duchesne without her.

But she would have to continue
her education somehow. What had Lawrence always said? School was more than academics; an
education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one’s
personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity,
understanding the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person, vampire or human to
succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also
need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.

“Are you sure there isn’t
another reason I should be here with you?” Oliver asked.

But she didn’t want to answer
him right then. She was still sorting out her feelings, starting to wonder if maybe her mother
could be right. If maybe love was something you had to fight for, no matter what the cost. She
didn’t want to hurt Oliver. She would rather die herself than see him suffer. But she needed time
to think.
Alone.

“I’ll be okay; I’m in New
York, see, the shaking, it’s gone,”

Schuyler said, raising her
hands to her face in wonder. Had she simply been homesick, as Dr. Pat had said? That her blood
had called to her own kind? Was that all it was?
Truly?
That she was close to a
coven once again?

“Good,” Oliver said. “Well.
You have my cell. You can call me anytime. You know that.”

“I’ll miss you,” Schuyler
said. “I already miss you.”

But they had to do this, to
keep the other safe.

“Well. Have fun,” he said
reluctantly, and with one final hug, he was out the door.

As she unpacked the groceries,
she noticed Oliver had left his mail among the stack of papers for Schuyler’s new
apartment.

There was a thick white
envelope stuck in the middle of the bills and magazines. It didn’t have a stamp, which meant it
had come directly from someone in the Conclave.
They always hand-delivered their
correspondences.

It was an invitation to a
bonding, Schuyler saw, and without having to check, she knew that the address embossed on the
back would be the Force town house.

The Starbucks at the corner of
Fifth and Ninety fifth had closed, so Mimi had to walk a few more blocks to
EuroMill
, a fancy new coffee “boutique” that had recently opened. The
EuroMill
had taken the gourmet coffee culture to a new level. They had a fat binder
where a customer could choose the bean, the roasting, even the way the flavor was “extracted”
(hand-drip, siphon, French press, or “solo”). The place resembled an art gallery: white walls
with square blackboards, the coffee grinders and espresso machines polished to a gleam, mirroring
the artwork on display.

“How can I help you?” the
nose-ringed barista asked.

“La Montana, slow clover,”
Mimi said, meaning she wanted a cup of the El Salvador roast through the no-sediment French
press. “
two
of them.
To go.
Oh, and one of those,” she said, pointing
to a chocolate croissant behind the glass display.

A sharp whistle drew her
attention. At one of the middle tables, among the writers typing on laptops and the
private-school crowd angling for their breakfast lattes, sat the rest of her former Venator
team.

“Hey, guys,” Mimi said with a
smile. Had it only been a month since the four of them had battled Brazilian drug gangs and
Silver Bloods in the jungle?

She was gifted with a rare
grin from the Lennox boys, who soon took their leave. Ted slapped her on the back,
even.

“Force.”
Kingsley
nodded. He kicked the chair next to him away from the table so she could sit down.

“Let me guess. Café con
leche
?
Four sugars?”
Mimi smirked as she tried to still the butterflies
in her stomach.

They hadn’t seen each other
since landing in New York. What happened in Rio stayed in
Rio
,
wasn’t
that how the saying went? If she’d thought Kingsley would seek her out afterward, she’d been
wrong. What did she care anyway? It hadn’t mattered back then, and it sure didn’t matter
now.

Kingsley raised his cup to
hers. “Back to school, I take it?
Senior year?”
He teased. “You know, it’s a funny
thing . . . I never did go to high school. I mean, not in any real sense. The first time I went
was when I got assigned to the Duchesne case.”

“Don’t tell me you miss it,”
she joked. She wondered how old Kingsley was. Silver Bloods were like
Enmortals
,
they were free of the cycles. They didn’t age, almost as if they were frozen in time. She knew a
little about Kingsley’s history: he had been corrupted by a Silver Blood in Rome, but had been
forgiven by Michael himself and welcomed back into the Blue Blood community.

“Maybe a little.
The little announcements at the start of the day.
All that peer counseling.
Very self-actualizing.”
He grinned to let her know he was making fun, but not making
fun of her.

The barista yelled from the
counter.
‘Two clovers?”

“That’s mine” Mimi said,
collecting her order. Some things didn’t change: even if this was no Starbucks, the coffee still
came in a cup the size of a pitcher. “I should go or I’ll be late,” she told Kingsley.

She picked up her satchel and
swung it over her shoulder, holding the two drinks in a cardboard carrier.

“I heard about the bonding,”
Kingsley said quietly. He put down his coffee cup and signaled to the waitress for
another.

“Forsyth told you.”

“Indeed. He explained that
since Charles is still MIA, he’s giving you away.”

“So? What of it?” she
challenged.

Kingsley smiled sweetly.
“Nothing.
I just wanted to congratulate you. You’ll make a beautiful
bride.”

Now it was Mimi’s turn to
blush uncharacteristically. She didn’t know what she had expected.
Him to plead with
her?
To ask her not to bond with Jack?
Ridiculous.
Impossible.
Kingsley was exactly like her: selfish, dangerous,
unable
to follow rules. Had she wanted him to feel something for her when she felt nothing for
him?

She stared at him, her cheeks
slowly burning. He returned her gaze steadily.

“Dude, I don’t know why I even
bother,” Mimi said, and she left, storming out of the café.

A year ago, when Mimi had
returned from Rio to New York, there had been no time to even think about the bonding. Everything
had been canceled immediately. It wasn’t the right time, and after what had happened, she and
Jack were too shell-shocked to think of it. Deposits were lost, her gown taken to storage. A week
later she had confronted him about his little affair with the half-blood, and they had
reconciled. In any case, Schuyler had ceased to be a problem: the little wench had left New York
and Jack. She was following in the footsteps of her mother, headed to some sad tragic end, Mimi
hoped.

But instead of Schuyler’s
absence leading to a deeper relationship, the two of them being alone together at last had caused
an estrangement between them. But this time it was Mimi who had withdrawn. She didn’t want to be
second choice. She didn’t want Jack to be with her only because he couldn’t be with the person he
truly loved.

Jack in her arms was nothing
but a Pyrrhic victory. Mimi wanted him to love her and to mean it. But every day, it appeared he
was doing the same thing he always did: paying lip service to their bond, placating her fears
with lies, while his eyes betrayed the deeper truth: that his heart still belonged to
another.

And so she had escaped. She
had joined up with the Venators. She had left him. See how well he would do without her. She
wanted him to miss her. She wanted him to miss her so desperately he would understand exactly how
much she meant to him. She thought that if she left, he would realize the error of his ways, and
discover the deep bond between them. She might as well have stayed home.

Nothing had changed. Jack had
gone his way and she had gone hers. When she had told him about Forsyth’s request, he had
accepted the new date of their bonding without comment. He would bond with her. But he would find
no joy in the process: the groom as dead man walking. She was tired of it.

She found Jack standing at the
corner, his messenger bag slung across his broad shoulders. He really needed a haircut, she
thought.

“Here you go.” She handed her
twin his coffee.

“Thanks.”

They walked to school, their
steps easily matching the
other’s
. Even after a year away, they fell in line
together. In a weird way, they would always be bonded even without the official
ceremony.

“Here’s your croissant.
Probably not as good compared to Paris, right?” Mimi asked.

Jack took a bite. “It’s okay.”
He shrugged.

When she’d mentioned Paris,
his lips twitched, like they did whenever he was upset.

But for the first time in a
very long time, Mimi couldn’t care less about what was bothering him.

“Where r
u?
miss
u. am back & want 2 c u.
sky”

Bliss read her text. Her thumb
hovered over the reply button, but in the end she put her phone away. No. She wasn’t safe to be
around. She didn’t want any more of her friends to suffer because of her.

“Sorry,” she said, when she
noticed Miss Murray looking in her direction.

“Glad you decided to join us,”
her teacher said with a stern smile. Bliss didn’t need to be told twice. Ancient Civilizations
had quickly become her favorite class, and she didn’t want to miss any of it. It was like a
particularly good program on the History Channel, except without the cheesy reenactments. In the
past few weeks they had covered such diverse and fascinating topics as Etruscan feminism (those
Etruscan chicks ruled, literally), Egyptian funeral rites and the four types of love according to
the ancient Greeks (from platonic to passionate), and how the ideas related to the birth of
Western culture.

Today the topic was the reign
of the third emperor of Rome. Caligula. When Miss Murray had handed the assignment to Allison
Ellison last week, there had been much tittering. Most of the class was familiar with a certain
movie that played on cable. Or if not, like Bliss, they knew the basics of the emperor’s
reputation: sexual perversity, insanity, cruelty.