Charles Force was gone. Charles Force was a dead end. He had disappeared, taking his secrets with him.
She would have to discover the Van Alen Legacy on her own.
CHAPTER 12
Schuyler
The Baron de Coubertin was dressed as Attila the Hun in full battle armor, with a bow and arrow in a quiver slung over one shoulder, along with a shield and a throwing spear. On his head he wore a pointed metal cap over a wig of long black hair. His long beard was also fake.
He approached with a terrifying frown on his face and tapped Schuyler on the shoulder. “La contesse voudrait que vous me suiviez, s’il vous plait.” The countess would like you to follow me, please. Then he turned abruptly on his heel. Schuyler and Oliver began to walk together behind him, but the baron stopped them.
“The countess grants a meeting only to Miss Van Alen,” he said in perfect English, looking sternly at Oliver as if he were a nuisance. “You will stay here.”
Schuyler nodded over Oliver’s protests.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you after,” she said. ‘don’t worry.”
She felt stares from the other guests turned their way. Who was the baron talking to? Who are those two? They were becoming conspicuous. They needed to melt away before anyone noticed them.
“Don’t worry? But then I would be out of a job,” Oliver said, raising his eyebrows.
“I can handle it,” Schuyler insisted.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Oliver sighed.
He squeezed her bare shoulder. His hands were rough and callused from travel and work. They were not the soft hands of the boy who used to spend his afternoons in museums. The Oliver whom Schuyler had known had never stayed in anything less than a five-star hotel in his life, let alone the fleabag hostels where they now found themselves residing. She had seen him argue the price of instant noodles in Shanghai, haggling over five cents.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised, then murmured softly so the baron could not hear. “I have a feeling this is the only way I’m going to get to see the countess.”
“Let me talk to him again; maybe he’ll listen to me,” Oliver whispered, looking from the baron to Schuyler. “If anything happens?”
“I won’t be able to live with myself,” Schuyler said, finishing his sentence. She removed his hand gently. “I’m scared too, Ollie. But we agreed. We have to do this.”
Oliver gritted his teeth. “I don’t like it,” he said, glaring at the baron. But he let her go.
Schuyler followed the baron out of the courtyard and into the main hall of the palace. He led her through an enfilade, a series of rooms all in a row, past the library and the many function rooms. At the end of a long hallway, he opened a door to an anteroom and led her inside. It was a small room, tiled with gold mosaics, empty save for a red velvet bench in the middle.
“Arr’te.” Wait.
He left, and the door locked behind him.
Schuyler looked around. There was another door in the back of the room. That one must lead to the countess’s office. Schuyler could feel the wards in place, guarding the room. There was no way out except for the two locked doors. One of Lawrence’s lessons had been to sense the invisible protections in one’s surroundings so that you could figure out how to get out of them. Escape was ninety percent preparation and ten percent opportunity, he liked to say.
Schuyler waited for what seemed like hours alone in the small chamber. The room was completely insulated from outside noise. She couldn’t hear anything from the party. At last the door opened.
“Baron de Coubertin?” she called.
“Try again.” The voice was heartbreakingly familiar.
No. It couldn’t be. Schuyler felt paralyzed. It was as if the past were taunting her. Someone was playing a sick joke. There was no way he was here. The one person in New York whom she had tried so hard to forget . . .
Jack Force stepped inside. Unlike the other revelers, he was dressed simply, all in black. A Venator’s uniform. His platinum hair was cut short, in military fashion, making his sharp aristocratic features look even more striking. He moved with a natural grace, stalking the edge of the room like a dangerous animal circling its prey.
How handsome he was’she had forgotten. Or maybe she had only imagined she had forgotten. They had not seen each other since their last night at the Perry Street apartment. The night she had told him she loved another. How it hurt to see his beautiful face, so grave and serious, as if he had aged a lifetime in a year.
The hurt was like a physical pain, a longing that she had repressed, suddenly flaring up again: bright and red and angry, surprising in its intensity. An impossible wanting: a hole in her heart that yearned to be filled.
No. Stop. Don’t go there. She was furious at herself for feeling this way. It was wrong, and incredibly disloyal to the life she had lived for a year. A betrayal to the life she and Oliver had built together. If only there was something she could do about her heart. Her wildly beating, treacherous heart. Because all she wanted to do was run into Jack’s arms.
“Jack,” she breathed. Even saying his name was difficult. Was it so terrible that she had wanted so much to see him again? God knows she had tried to stop thinking about him, had banished all thought of him to the darkest corner of her mind.
Yet he was always there: in her dreams, she always went back to the apartment above the city, to that spot by the fire. You couldn’t stop yourself from dreaming, could you? It wasn’t her fault. That was the annoying part. However much she wanted to, her unconscious always pulled her back to him.
To see him, living, breathing, right here in front of her was like a direct assault on everything she had tried to hold on to during her year-plus in exile. She had convinced herself that her love for him was dead and buried, locked in a treasure chest below the sea, never to be reopened. She had made her choice. She loved Oliver. They were happy, or as happy as two people could be with a bounty over their heads. Jack was not hers to love, and never had been. Whatever they had once meant to each other was no longer. He was a stranger.
Besides, he was bonded now to his vampire twin, to Mimi, his sister. It didn’t make a difference how Schuyler still – regrettably, felt about him. It just didn’t matter. He was already bound to another. She was nothing to him, and he to her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, because he was just looking at her in silence, even after she had said his name.
“I’m here for you,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line.
Then Schuyler knew. Jack was here on behalf of the Conclave. He was here to take her back to New York.
Back into custody. He was here to take her back to face the Inquisitor for sentencing. Innocent or guilty, it did not matter, she knew what the verdict would be, they had turned against her. Jack was one of them now. Part of the Conclave. The enemy.
Schuyler backed into the opposite wall, toward the other door, knowing it was useless. The wards, the protections in place meant there was no way to go but up and out. She would have to try it. Take a running start on the wall and jump high enough so that she would crash through the glass. Jack noticed her eyes flick toward the ceiling.
“You will destroy this room if you attempt it.”
“What do I care?”
“I think you do. I think you love the H’tel Lambert as much as I do. You are not the only one who used to play in its gardens.”
Of course Jack had been here before. His father had been the former Regis. The Forces had probably stayed in the same guest wing as she and Cordelia. But so what?
“I’ll do it if it’s the only way. Watch me.”
Jack took a step toward her. “I’m not your enemy, Schuyler. No matter what you think. You’re wrong. That way is lost. There is a protection you don’t feel, one that Lawrence did not teach you about. You will shatter against the glass. And I will not have any harm come to you.”