CHAPTER 15

Schuyler

The look on Jack's face when she broke the glass was a mixture of shock and pride, but Schuyler only allowed herself a quick glimpse. She had to stop thinking about him and concentrate on what she was doing. She had leaped out of the room and into the sky, landing on a trellis and jumping off the roof to the ground. She was running outdoors, in the middle of the party, a blur of pink to the party guests.

It was past midnight and the festivities had taken a darker turn, that moment at every unforgettable gathering when it seems anything and everything is available to anyone and everyone. There was a raucous feeling of wild abandon in the air, as the Bollywood stars shimmied and shook, their bellies undulating in serpentine curves, and a hundred drummers on wooden-barrel dhol drums beat a steady and seductive rhythm.

Schuyler couldn't put a finger on it, but there was something almost sinister about how hypnotic the music was, its attraction bordered on menacing. Listening to it was like being tickled too hard, when the tickling stopped being funny and became a form of torture, and the laughter unwelcome and uncontrollable.

She burst through a line of bhangra dancers, cymbals clanging, and knocked down one of the costumed stilt-walkers, barely missing a crew of torchbearers standing guard by the perimeter.

But everywhere she went, he was right behind her.

"A heartbeat away. Schuyler!"

She heard his voice clearly in her mind. Jack would use the glom on her. It wasn't fair. If he had said her name out loud, maybe she would forgive him, but to know that he was in her mind, that it came as easily to him as before,  unnerving.

She ran past tiger tamers and fire-eaters, past a group of drunken European nobles fat with blood, their human familiars left to swoon by the river walls. This wasn't a party anymore, this was something else. Something evil and depraved... an orgy, a paean to monstrous indulgence, pernicious and wicked. And Schuyler couldn't help but feel that there was something ¨C someone, egging everyone on, right to the edge of disaster. And still she could hear Jack's footsteps, light and quick behind her.

In a way the chase invigorated her: running so fast, using her vampire muscles and exerting them in ways they had never been used, by god he was fast! But I am faster, she thought. "I can outrun you, Jack Force. Just try; you'll never catch me."

"I can and I will."

Schuyler closed her mind to the glom as Lawrence had taught her. That would shut him out.

There had to be somewhere she could hide. She knew this place. Cordelia had left her here for hours when they visited, and as a child she had explored every inch of its sprawling grounds. She knew every crevice, every secret hiding place, she would lose him in the residential wing, there were so many camouflaged closets and clandestine compartments, she ran back inside the castle through the servants' entrance.

While she ran she sent a message of her own through the glom. "Oliver!"

"Oliver!"

She tried to locate his signal "Oliver!"

But humans were not as sensitive to the glom's twilight communications. Oliver had never been able to read her mind, let alone speak to it directly. And while they had tried to practice building the mental bridge that tied a vampire to its human Conduit, they had faltered in their exercise. They were young, and a bridge took a lifetime to build, like the one between Lawrence Van Alen and Christopher Anderson. Maybe in fifty years they would be able to communicate telepathically, but not now.

She had to find Oliver. He was probably sick with worry. Probably pacing the party, ignoring the fireworks, drinking too many cocktails to steady his nerves. He had given up so much to be with her. Of course he would tell her it was his duty, his very destiny to live and die by her side. But still she could not stop feeling that she was a burden to him, that she had brought too much on him, had fated him to live in an endless chase. He had given her everything, his friendship, his fortune, his life, and all she could give in return was her heart. Her fickle, foolish, guilty, unreliable heart. She hated herself.

A terrible thought struck her: What if they had gotten to Oliver first? They wouldn't hurt him, she thought. Just let them try... If anything had happened to him... She did not want to think about it.

As she ran through the hallway, everything suddenly went black. Someone had turned off all the lights in the palace. She had a feeling she knew who that someone was.

Fine, but like you, Jack, I can see in the dark. She found the door that led to a secret staircase that led down to the basement, past the kitchens, and into the lower dungeons, a relic from an earlier century. Not many knew that the H'tel Lambert had been built on the ruins of a medieval castle, and that the castle's foundation hid layers of secrets.

Oh god, please don't let that have been a skeleton I just stepped over, Schuyler thought as her sandaled foot landed on something that crunched in a disturbing way.

She could see the outlines of the steps, ruined and steep, down, down, she had to go down... She had to get away.

"Oliver!"

Nothing.

She would have to send for him later somehow.

Because she was there at last. In the very lowest depths of the dungeon, in the solitary prison cell that had housed who knows how many prisoners, who knows how many miserable souls behind its iron bars. He'll never find me here.

She felt dizzy and light-headed, and her whole body was trembling uncontrollably as she stepped inside.

And fell straight into the arms of her former love and current pursuer. Jack Force.

His grip was like a vise. His voice was colder than the air around them.

"I told you, Schuyler, you're not the only one who knows the secrets of the H'tel Lambert."

CHAPTER 16

Bliss

The good thing about fashion people is that they were usually oblivious to other people's reactions. So Henri never noticed Bliss's agitation as he chatted about the latest gossip back in New York. Most of the news was so gloomy: what magazines had folded, what designers were out of business.

"It's awful right now, just awful." Henri shook his head. "But you know, life goes on... and our motto is Never surrender. There's still work out there," he said with a well-meaning glance. "I mean, I know it's a lot to ask of you, and I completely understand if you're not ready... "? He peered at her over his glasses.

It was only then that Bliss realized with a start that Henri was talking about her going back to work.

Sensing her hesitation, which he took as a sign of surrender, Henri went straight into business mode, setting down his glass and picking up his BlackBerry. "It's nothing too difficult, just something easy to get back in the swing of things. You know Muffie Astor Carter's yearly fashion show for charity? She hosts it on their estate out on the East End?"

Bliss did. Her stepmother used to complain that Muffie never gave her a front row seat even though Bobi Anne always ordered a trunkload of clothes at the show.

"You'd be perfect for it. Can I tell her you'll do it?" Henri wheedled.

"I don't know..." Modeling. How precious it seemed now, how trivial. How much fun it would be to go back to that old life? go-sees, fittings, gossiping with the hairstylists and having designers fawn over you, getting your makeup done, going to parties, did this mean that life was still open to her? She had completely given up thinking about it. Had totally assumed that that life was over, given what had happened. But what had the Visitor said? No one must suspect. After all, it had been a year. No one would fault her for going back to work, would they?

And wasn't the best way to deal with grief and loss to find something to distract you? And what could be more distracting than a big, silly, frivolous fashion show? As Henri had said, look at those people who had lost a lot of other people's money and caused the crash, weren't they all going about their lives as if nothing had happened? Hosting charity benefits and shopping at Herm's while the victims of their financial recklessness cried into their crystal wineglasses?

She remembered a young widow, a teacher from Duchesne, who had gone back to teaching after her husband passed away suddenly. Going back to work, going back to her old life... it suddenly seemed... not impossible.

Get rid of him, the Visitor had ordered. Well, giving Henri what he wanted was the surest way to secure his exit. As soon as her agent was assured he had his old client back, he was certain to announce he had pressing concerns elsewhere. Asking about her welfare was probably just a pretense to see if he could book her for the show.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a long exhale.

"Okay?" Henri raised an eyebrow.

"Okay." Bliss smiled.

After saying good-bye to her old taskmaster, Bliss sat alone on the couch for a moment. At some point during Henri's visit she had sensed a change in herself. The Visitor was gone. The backseat was empty, as far as she could tell. Perhaps she had passed the test. In any event, like Elvis, he had left the building. But he had left the door open. He had unwittingly given her back the key to her own body. Or had forgotten to take it back.

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.