Bliss marched over. She had showered and changed into a slim-fitting Missoni dress with zigzagging stripes and high-heeled gladiator sandals. She took Schuyler by the arm and pulled her through the PR barricade, over the protests of the clipboard hellions. She led Schuyler into the main room, which was crowded with Duchesne kids angling for drinks at the bar, sprawling on couches, or dirty-dancing by the windows.
"Thanks," Schuyler said.
"Sorry about that. It's Mimi. I told her my parents were away and I was thinking of hosting a little get-together, and she puts together like, the MTV Movie Awards After Party."
Schuyler laughed. She looked around—there were go-go boys and go-go girls writhing in cages hung from the ceiling, and she recognized several famous faces in the mix. "Isn't that—?" Schuyler asked, noticing a peppy teen actress funneling beers in front of a cheering crowd.
"Yeah," Bliss sighed. "C'mon, let me show you the rest of the place. It doesn't usually look like this."
"I'd love to—but I have to do something first."
Bliss raised her eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I have to find Jack Force."
She had to find Jack. She had to tell him what had happened to her. They had barely spoken to each other since the night of the Informals, but she perceived he was the only one who would understand. She was fighting to hold on to the memory—already it was slipping—already she couldn't remember the exact details of where, why, or how it had happened—except for the eyes, eyes glimmering red in the dark, with silver pupils. Red eyes and sharp teeth.
But the Llewellyns' penthouse was like a house that magically expanded—everywhere you turned, there were rooms and rooms off innumerable hallways, with hidden treasures. Schuyler found an indoor lap pool, a fully equipped gym, and what looked to be a staffed day spa on the premises, complete with massage tables and essential oils, as well as a game room filled with old-fashioned carnival arcade toys, with mechanical fortune tellers and penny games, all of them in perfect working condition. She pushed a penny into a slot and removed her fortune.
YOU ARE A TRAVELER AT HEART.
MANY JOURNEYS AWAIT YOU.
She wished Oliver were there to see it.
"Have you seen Jack? Jack Force?" she asked everyone she bumped into.
She was told that he had just left, or was on another floor, or had just arrived. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere.
At last, she found him in an empty guest bedroom on the uppermost floor. He was strumming a guitar and singing softly to himself. Downstairs was the house party of the century, but Jack preferred the silence upstairs.
"Schuyler?" he said, without looking up.
"Something happened," she said, closing the door behind her softly. Now that she'd finally found him, all the feelings she'd bottled up came out. She was trembling, so scared that she hadn't even noticed that he'd divined her presence from sense alone. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Without thinking twice, she ran to his side and sat next to him on the bed.
He put an arm around her protectively. "What's wrong?"
“I was at a photo shoot today, and afterward, I was walking alone… and I was… I can't remember…" She struggled for the words. For the images. At the time, they were burned into her brain, yet it felt like she was grasping—reaching for them. She held on to the tendrils of the memory—something terrible had almost happened to her—but what? What words could convey what had happened, and why was her memory betraying her? "I was attacked," she forced herself to say.
"What?" He cursed. He shook her shoulders, then held her close. “By whom? Tell me."
"I don't remember. It's gone, but it was… powerful, I couldn't stop it. Red… red eyes… teeth… going to suck… here," she said, pointing to her neck. "I felt it, deep into my veins… but look, I don't have any puncture wounds? I don't understand."
Jack frowned. He kept his arms around her. "I'm going to tell you something. Something important."
Schuyler nodded.
"Something is hunting us. There is something out there hunting Blue Bloods," he said softly. "I wasn't sure before, but I am now."
"What do you mean, hunting us? Don't you have it backward? We're the ones everyone else needs to be afraid of!"
Jack shook his head. "I know it doesn't make sense."
"Because The Committee said we can't be kil—"
"Exactly," Jack interrupted. "They've always told us we live forever, that we're immortal and invulnerable, that nothing can kill us, right?" he asked.
Schuyler nodded. "That's what I was telling you."
“And they're right. I've tried."
"Tried what?"
"I've jumped in front of trains. I've cut myself. I was the one who fell out the library window last year."
Schuyler remembered that rumor—how some kid had jumped off the third-floor balcony and landed in the cortile. But she hadn't believed it. No one could survive a fifty-foot jump and live, much less land on their feet.
"Why?"
"To see if what they were telling us was true."
"But you could have died!"
"No. I couldn't. The Committee was right about that, at least."
"That night—that night in front of Block 122—you were hit by the taxi."
He nodded. "But it didn't hurt me."
"No." Schuyler nodded. So she had seen him fall underneath the taxicab's wheels. He should have died. But he had appeared on the sidewalk, whole. She'd thought she was just tired from the night, that her eyes were strained. But it had actually happened. She'd seen it.
"Schuyler, listen to me. Nothing can harm us… except—"
"Except…?"
"I don't know!" He folded his hands into fists in frustration. "But there is something out there. The Committee isn't telling us everything."
Jack explained that before the first meeting, the senior members of The Committee decided that they wouldn't tell the premature about the danger. That instead of warning everyone, it was best to leave them in the dark for now. It was enough that they would find out about their true heritage first; no reason to raise alarm bells where there might be none. Except that he hadn't believed them. He knew they were keeping something from them.
"They're holding something back. I think it's something that might have happened before, in our history. Something to do with Plymouth, when we first came here. I've tried to dig it up, but it's as if it's blocked from my sight. When I try to think about it, all I remember is a word. A message nailed to a tree in an empty field. It contained one word: Croatan."
"What's that?" Croatan. Schuyler shuddered, repulsed by the mere sound of it.
"I have no idea." Jack shook his head. "I don't even know what it is. It could be anything. It might be a place, I'm not sure. But I think it has to do with what they haven't told us about. Something with the power to kill Blue Bloods."
"But how do you know? How can you be so sure?" she asked him, alarmed.
"Because, like I told you, Aggie Carondolet was murdered," he said, looking intently into her deep blue eyes. Schuyler was silent. "And?"
"Aggie was a vampire."
Schuyler gasped. Of course! That's why she'd felt so empathic at the funeral. She'd known, somehow, that Aggie was one of them.
"She's never coming back. She's gone. Her blood—all of it—was drained from her body. Her memories, her lives, her soul—gone. Sucked out, just like we suck the Red Bloods," he said sadly. "Extinguished. Taken."
Schuyler looked at him in horror. It couldn't be true.
"And she wasn't the first. This has happened before."
Catherine Carver’s Diary
25th of December, 1620
Plymouth, Massachusetts