Jack.
His eyes were focused straight ahead, as if he never even saw her, never registered her presence. His sleek blond hair, the same translucent shade as his sister's, was slicked back from his proud forehead; and unlike the other boys around him, dressed in varying degrees of sloppiness, he looked regal in a blazer and tie. He was so handsome it was hard for Schuyler to breathe. But just as at the town house—Schuyler refused to call it home—Jack ignored her.
She snuck one more glance his way and then hurried up the stairs. Glass had already started when she arrived. Schuyler tried to be as unobtrusive as possible as she walked, out of habit, toward the back seats by the window. Oliver Hazard-Perry was seated there, bent over his notebook.
But she caught herself just in time and moved across the room to sit next to the clanging radiator, without saying hello to her best friend.
Charles Force had made it clear: now that she was under his roof, she would have to follow his rules. The first rule was that Schuyler was forbidden to see her grandfather. The animosity between Charles and Lawrence ran deep, and not only because Lawrence had displaced Charles's position in the Conclave.
"I don't want him filling your head with lies," Charles had told her. "He may rule the Coven, but he has no power in my house. If you disobey me, I promise you will regret it."
The second rule of living at the Forces' was that she was forbidden to associate with Oliver. Charles had been apoplectic when he'd discovered that Schuyler had made Oliver (her designated Conduit) her human familiar. "First of all, you are much too young. Secondly, it is anathema. Distasteful. Conduits are servants. They are not—they do not fulfill the services of familiars. You must take a new human immediately and sever all relations with this boy."
If pressed, she would grudgingly admit that Charles was probably right. Oliver was her best friend, and she had marked him as her own, had taken his blood into hers, and there had been consequences to her actions. Sometimes she wished they could go back to the way they were before everything became so complicated.
Schuyler had no idea why Charles would care whom she made her familiar anyway, since the Forces had done away with the old-fashioned practice of keeping human Conduits. But she followed the rules to the letter. As far as anyone could see, she had absolutely no contact with Lawrence, and had refrained from performing the Sacred Kiss with Oliver.
There were so many things in her new life that she could and couldn't do.
But there were some places where the rules did not apply. Somewhere that Charles had no power. Somewhere Schuyler could be free.
That's what secret hiding places were for.
Mimi Force liked the sound of stilettos on marble. Her patent-leather Jimmy Choos made a satisfying click, click, clack that echoed across the entire lobby of the Force Tower. The shiny new headquarters of her father's media empire comprised several buildings in the middle of midtown Manhattan. The gleaming elevator banks regularly disgorged a crew of "Forcies"—the beautiful employees of the Force media organization—design editors, fashion editors, lifestyle editors, heading off to lunch meetings at Michael's or into town cars that would escort them to various appointments around the city. They were a well-dressed group, with similarly pinched faces, as if their perpetually busy schedules didn't leave them time to smile. Mimi blended right in.
She was only sixteen, but as she walked through the crowd, past the lobby and into the dark alcove that concealed an elevator that could only be accessed through a secret and irreproducible key, she felt incredibly old. She remembered when the Force Tower had originally been christened the Van Alen Building. For years it had stood as a mere three-story foundation, since its planned tower had never been built after the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Only last year did her father's company finally complete construction according to the old plans and christened the building with a new name.
Mimi looked around and discreetly sent a strong ignore-suggestion to anyone who might come near. She found the doorknob and pressed her finger against the lock, pricking it so that it drew blood. The blood analysis in the key lock was not the latest in security technology, but an antediluvian one. Her blood was being analyzed and compared to DNA files in the repository; a match would confirm that only a true Blue Blood stood at the gate. The blood could not be duplicated nor extracted. Vampire blood disappeared within minutes once exposed to the air.
The doors whooshed open silently, and Mimi took the lift down. What Red Bloods did not know was that in 1929, the building had been built to completion—except it extended downward instead of up.
The tower was actually a "corescraper"—a structure built underneath the ground, tunneling down to the planet's core, rather than up toward the sky. Mimi watched as the floors descended. She went fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred, then a thousand feet under the surface. In the past, the Blue Bloods had lived underground to hide from their Silver Blood attackers. Now Mimi understood what Charles Force had meant when he sneered that Lawrence and Cordelia would have the vampires "cringing in caves once again."
Finally the elevator stopped and the door opened. Mimi nodded to the Conduit at the desk. The Red Blood resembled a blind mole rat, looking as if he had not seen the sun in a long time. Rather like the false legends perpetuated about vampires, Mimi thought with amusement.
She could feel the wards, the heavy protections placed around the area. This was supposed to be the Blue Bloods' most secret and secure haven. Lawrence took great pleasure in the shiny, conspicuous new tower that had been built on top of it. "We're hiding in plain sight!" he'd chuckled. The Repository of History had recently been moved to several of the lower floors. Since the attack, the lair underneath the club had been abandoned. Mimi still felt guilty at what had happened there. But it wasn't her fault! She hadn't meant to bring any real harm. She'd just wanted Schuyler out of the way. Perhaps she had been naпve. No need to linger on that thought now.
"Evening, Madeleine," an elegantly dressed woman in a chic Chanel suit greeted her politely.
"Dorothea." Mimi nodded, following the old crone to the conference room. She knew that several members of the Conclave had not been keen on her admittance to the inner circle. They were worried she was still too young and not in command of her full memories, the entirety of the wisdom of all her past lives. The process toward a Blue Blood's complete self-actualization began during the transformation at fifteen, and continued until the end of one's Sunset Years (or approximately twenty-one years of age), when the human shell fully gave away, finally revealing the vampire underneath. Mimi didn't care what they thought. She was there to fulfill a duty, and if she didn't remember everything, she remembered enough.
She was there because Lawrence had come to the Force mansion late one night, soon after they'd returned from Venice, to speak to Charles. Mimi had overhead the entire conversation. When Lawrence had taken over as Regis, Charles had voluntarily resigned his seat on the Conclave, but Lawrence was urging him to reconsider.
"We need all our strength now. We need you, Charles. Don't turn your back on us." Lawrence's voice was low and gravelly. He coughed several times, and the smell of sweet tobacco from his pipe had filled the hallway outside her father's office.
Charles was adamant. He had been humiliated and rejected. If the Conclave would not have him, he would not have the Conclave. "Why do they need me when they have you, Regis," Charles spat, as if even saying it were distasteful.