Like a parent who leaves the keys to the Ferrari on the table. Just like in that old movie she used to watch when she was little when it would run on the USA channel . . . someone’s day off. The kid had crashed the Ferrari through the window. She wouldn’t do anything that stupid, of course. It was her own body. She had little time and had to use it wisely. She decided to take a bath, and walked upstairs.
Each of the ten bedrooms in the house had its own spacious bathroom, and Bobi Anne had allowed Bliss to help design her own. It was a pretty space: all warm travertine marble and flattering incandescent lighting. She turned on the faucet and filled the antique claw tub, squeezing in a generous dollop of her favorite scented bath gel. Then she quickly shed her clothes and climbed in, delighting in the soapy bubbles and the slick sensation of warm water running down her bare back.
Afterward she put on one of the fluffy Turkish robes her stepmother had stocked for the house, and went downstairs to the kitchen, where she asked the cook to make her lunch. She ate a cheeseburger, rare, the juices running out and mixing with the French mustard in a way that always made her happy she was a carnivore.
Only then did Bliss realize she wasn’t hungry in the real sense. The vampire sense. The old bloodlust was muted. The craving was gone. What did it mean?
She pushed the empty plate away and ran her hand through her hair. She would have to make an appointment at the salon as soon as possible. The Visitor wanted her to keep up appearances, didn’t he? Keeping up appearances was something that came naturally to Forsyth Llewellyn’s daughter.
When your father was a senator from New York, scrutiny was impossible to avoid.
CHAPTER 17
Mimi
Kingsley’s face was unreadable, and Mimi could stand it no longer.
“So? What? She’s gone to a Miley Cyrus concert? She’s written a cell phone novel? What does it say?”
He quieted her with a look and showed them the letter. One line, written in the same beautiful calligraphy. Phoebus ostend praeeo.
Phoebus was the name of the sun king in the old tongue, Mimi knew, and the rest was easy enough to understand.
“The sun shall show the way,” she said. “What does it mean?”
In answer, Kingsley folded up the note carefully and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
He has no idea, does he, Mimi thought. “Why would the Watcher take the trouble to send us a note but then have the note be nonsense?” she asked, annoyed. “And how did she know I was coming? And bringing a stuffed toy?”
“You forget. The Watcher can see into the future. If she was being held by Silver Bloods, as she surely was, she must have felt threatened enough to allow only the most cryptic of communications.”
“It’s a riddle. A clue,” Ted said suddenly. “A clue to her whereabouts. ‘the sun shall show the way.”
It was the longest sentence he had said in a year. Even Sam looked surprised to find his brother so garrulous. Kingsley nodded.
“Of course. Sophia always did say wisdom had to be earned.”
A riddle. Great. A year of tracking down the Watcher, and when they finally get somewhere, they find some kind of one-eyed sphinx blocking the path. Could it have hurt her to have written Am being held captive at 101 Favela Lane! Come soon and bring a Luna Bar! Or was that just too much to ask?
“You make light of trivial matters”, Kingsley sent.
“Just trying to keep things interesting”, Mimi telepathed in return. “And get out of my head. You don’t belong here.”
Meanwhile, the other Venators were deep in the glom, consulting their memories, trying to ascertain the meaning behind the words. Finally, Ted opened his eyes and spoke.
“There’s a bar not too far away called El Sol de Ajuste. The Setting Sun.”
“So?” Mimi said.
“It’s an old Silver Blood expression, the setting sun describes Lucifer’s fall to Earth,” Kingsley explained. ‘That could be it.”
Right, Mimi remembered. Lucifer was the Prince of Heaven. The Morningstar. It made sense that to the Silver Bloods, his doom was akin to the setting sun.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Mimi asked. “We’ve got a missing Watcher to find, and I don’t know about you guys, but I need a drink.”
CHAPTER 18
Schuyler
“There’s nothing to fear. Please don’t run from me again.” Jack’s breath was hot in her ear, and Schuyler felt each word as a caress. But his hands did not release their hold, his fingers gripped tightly around her arms.
“Let me go!” she said. “You’re hurting me.”
She gasped, even though, to her surprise, her tremors had lessened the moment he’d touched her. She felt his grip loosen, and part of her sagged a little that he had given in so quickly. That damnable, hateful part of her that missed his touch the moment it was withdrawn. She hugged herself, trying not to feel so abandoned. Why did she feel this way? She was the one who had spurned him. She was the one who had left. Jack was nothing to her now. Nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He looked at her carefully. “You’re trembling.”
“It’s just this thing . . . I get shaky sometimes . . . it’s nothing,” she said. She turned to face him directly. “Anyway, I’m not going back. I’m not going back to New York.”
To her surprise, Jack suddenly looked relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Is that why you’ve been running? Because you thought I was taking you back to New York? That’s not why I’m here at all.”
Now it was her turn to be confused. ‘Then why?”
“You really don’t know?” Jack asked.
She shook her head.
“You’re in danger here, Schuyler,” he said, looking around warily. ‘there are Silver Bloods all around. Can’t you feel them? Their hunger?” The minute he said it, she could feel exactly what he was talking about, that deep and consuming voraciousness, an unabated wanting.
So that’s what she’d felt at the party, a bottomless appetite of greed and sex and desire, that spellbinding siren call to depravity. It hummed in the background, like a noise you couldn’t make out but knew was there. Croatan. So she did have reason to be afraid. She had felt it.
Jack had backed her into a corner of the prison cell, and Schuyler was starting to feel claustrophobic in the small space. She knew instinctively that many souls had suffered and died in the same place she was standing now. She could feel the primal pain, an unmistakable sense of injustice. Back then prisoners were sent to the dungeons to die, rotting underground, never to see the sun.
How funny that the Conspiracy made humans believe vampires feared the sun, when the opposite was true. They had loved it so much they had been exiled from heaven because of their love of Lucifer’s light. Schuyler shivered as Jack continued to explain.
‘The party has been compromised. They’re here for you.”
“But why do the Silver Bloods even care about me? What’s so important about me?” Schuyler asked, trying not to sound petulant and self-pitying. Why her? She hadn’t chosen this. All she’d ever wanted was to be left in peace, but it was as if she had been born already a target.
When Jack answered, it was with the assurance and gravity of a much older presence, revealing a small glimpse into the very ancient creature behind the young vampire mask. What had Lawrence called him? Abbadon. The Angel of Destruction. The Angel of the Apocalypse. One of the most fearsome of Lucifer’s former generals.
“The cycles are the key to our existence; they guarantee our continued invisibility in the human world. According to the Code, the expression of each spirit is closely monitored and recorded. There are lists and rules that govern who is called up, and by whom and when. There was no record of Allegra being allowed to bear a daughter in this cycle. So the mere fact that you were born was already a violation.”