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  A busboy cleared their table and gave them the eye. Schuyler knew they should leave, the staff was ready to go home. But she wanted to linger with Oliver just a while longer. "How do you know all this?"

  "I did my reading. You know, the stuff Lawrence told us to look up?"

  Right. Schuyler felt guilty. She had been remiss on her vampire lessons. Lawrence had been using Oliver to keep her abreast on her studies. She should be concentrating on refining her strengths, on sharpening her skills, but instead she'd been distracted. The Perry Street apartment. . .

  "Do you think Dylan was lying to us?" she asked.

  "No, I think he thought he was telling us the truth, as much as he knew. But he's obviously been manipulated. " Oliver cracked ice cubes in his mouth. "I don't know if I believe he ever really got away from them. I think they let him go. "

  Schuyler became silent. They had let him go so that he could finish the job he'd failed at before. Dylan had attacked her - twice - before he'd suddenly disappeared. They'd chosen him because he was close to her, was one of her best friends. She couldn't deny it: someone wanted her killed. She wanted to share this realization with Oliver, but kept it to herself. He worried about her enough.

  Oliver glanced at the bill and put down his credit card. "So, how are things over at the Death Star?"

  "The same. " Schuyler smiled, although she felt sick enough to throw up. It was hard to see Oliver and not hate herself because of what she was doing to him.

  "So. . . " Oliver sighed. Schuyler knew where this was going and wished once again that she hadn't made him her familiar.

  "So?"

  The waitress returned with the credit-card slip and hinted that if they stayed any longer they'd have to leave through the back entrance.

  Oliver pocketed his card and tried to take another gulp of his already empty drink. "I was on my way to meet you at the Mercer when Bliss called. She said you were down here, on Perry Street. I thought that was kind of odd, since we'd agreed we'd meet at the Mercer, as usual, but she said she was positive you'd be there. What were you doing in that building anyway?"

  Schuyler wouldn't look him in the eye. "Modeling thing. Linda Farnsworth has a place for the models to crash there. Bliss and I go there sometimes to hang out with a couple other girls. I didn't realize the time. I'm sorry I kept you waiting. "

  "Well, um, since we didn't get to meet like we'd planned, do you want to. . . "

  It was easier to rebuff him this time, since she'd already made her decision earlier. Schuyler shook her head. "No, I've got to be back for the curfew. I'm late enough as it is, and if Charles finds out - "

  "Fuck Charles. " Oliver flicked a toothpick across the table so it landed on the floor. "I mean, God, sometimes I'm so tired of all this shit. "

  "Ollie - "

  "I just want us to be together," he said, looking at the ceiling again. "I mean, I know it's not possible. But why not? Why should we follow the old laws? Why should anyone care anyway?" he railed. "Don't you want us to be together?" he challenged, an edge to his voice.

  Schuyler was moved to take his hand in hers. "I do, Ollie, you know I do. " He was her ally, her partner-in-crime, her conscience and her comfort.

  Oliver's face transformed into a look of utmost happiness and satisfaction. He smiled at her then, and Schuyler hoped with all her heart that he would never find out the truth.

  Chapter Twelve

 

  It was late when Mimi and Jack finally wobbled out of Per Se. The bill for their meal was in the four-figure range, not that Mimi was surprised. She was so used to paying exorbitant prices for everything in her life, she sometimes complained when she discovered something was cheaper than she'd expected. "What do they think, that I'm poor?" she sniffed. "That I can't afford FIJI Water?"

  Jack chided her for her extravagance. "It's the mistake of the nouveau riche, you know, believing that having a lot of money is the same as having an infinite amount of money. "

  Mimi stared at him incredulously. "Did you just call me nouveau riche?"

  Jack barked a laugh as they got on the elevator. "I guess so. "

  "Bastard!" Mimi pretended to be terribly offended. "Our money is so old it's drawing social security. Bankruptcy's out of the question. We're flush. "

  "I hope so. Didn't you say Lawrence reported a huge dip in earnings? And I've listened in on the latest investor appraisals. FNN is down several points. It's not good news. "

  She faked a big yawn. "Don't bore me with details. I'm not worried. "

  They walked out into the night. Across the street, horses hitched to hansom cabs awaited clueless tourists. It was cold - the last dredge of winter. Vestiges of the most recent snowstorm remained in the form of yellowy, cracked ice on top of garbage bins and the sidewalks.

  Jack raised his hand, and a sleek black Bentley as large as a hearse pulled up to the curb.

  "Home?" Mimi asked as she slid into the seat.

  Jack leaned over, his arm resting on the edge of the door. "I'll see you there in a bit. I told Bryce and Jamie I'd meet them at the club. "

  "Oh. "

  He bussed her cheek. "Don't wait up, okay?" Then he shut the door and rapped smartly on the window. "Take her home, Sully. "

  Mimi waved at him through the tinted glass, her good mood evaporating as she watched him walk across the street to catch a cab headed downtown.

  "Home, Miss Force?" Sully turned around.

  She was about to nod. She was tired. Home sounded like a good idea. Though she was a little piqued that she had to go home alone. She toyed with the idea of following him, but Jack had been so devoted of late. . . There was nothing to suspect . . . He always met Bryce Cutting and Jamie Kip at the club. . . silly boys. And besides, she'd been watching him like a hawk in the past few weeks, ever since Venice, and had felt guilty because she had found nothing. What was she so worried about anyway?

  But she had to be honest with herself. She was worried. "Not yet, Sully. Let's see where he's going. "

  The driver nodded. He'd heard this request before.

  "Make sure he doesn't see us. "

  The car trailed the cab heading south on the West Side Highway. Block 122 had closed, and the new hot club of the moment, the Dante Inn, was located farther downtown, in the West Village, in the basement of one of those new glass buildings right off the highway. Mimi remembered Jack telling her how the family had bought an apartment there, as an investment. The place was currently being rented out to some celebrity.

  The cab pulled up to the entrance, a velvet rope hooked between two fire escape railings and guarded by a tall man in a black greatcoat. The Dante Inn was a smaller venue, less flashy than Block 122, but even more exclusive. Jack got out and disappeared inside.

  Mimi leaned back happily. "Okay, let's go. " She watched as a white limousine drove up in front of them. God, people were so tacky. And Jack was calling her nouveau riche?

  She tried to see if she could recognize the rowdy people from the limo - that one had to be a famous actor, because he was wearing a trilby hat like a moron - when she saw something else: someone emerged from the shadows and slipped inside the main doors to the building. A figure in a silver raincoat, with dark hair.

  No.

  It couldn't be.

  It couldn't be Schuyler Van Alen. Could it? Of course it was.

  Mimi felt her heart clench. It was too much of coincidence. Jack was in the club that was located in the basement of the same building Schuyler had just entered.

  It couldn't be. Her mind raced; had she missed something? But he had been so indifferent, so cold to Schuyler. He couldn't still be infatuated, could he?

  He doth protest too much.

  Mimi was never a big fan of Shakespeare, not even during his lifetime, but she remembered the important lines. This was definitely the winter of her discontent.

  She knew, without having it confirmed, that no matter what kin
d of front Jack put up to the world, what kind of lies he told her, there was a secret place in his heart that she could not read or fathom. A secret place that was devoted to someone else. A secret place inhabited by Schuyler Van Alen.

  Strangely enough, Mimi did not feel betrayed, or stricken, or devastated. She merely felt a heavy sadness. She had tried so hard to help him. She had tried to keep him loyal to her.

  How could he act with no fear of reprisal? He knew the laws as well as she. He knew what was at stake. He knew what he could lose.

  Oh, Jack. Don't let me have to hurt you. Don't let us be estranged in this way. Don't make me have to hunt you down.

  Chapter Thirteen

 

  "I thought you'd forgotten. "

  Schuyler smiled as she removed her raincoat and hung it on the hook. She had just entered the apartment with her key. A key she kept on a silk ribbon around her neck. She never took it off, for fear that it would be stolen. She'd entered the building in the normal fashion. Had a polite word with the guard. Headed up in the elevator, exchanging pleasantries with the neighbors. Cooed at their baby bundled inside a fleece-lined thousand-dollar stroller. Pretended she was just like them. No more vampire tricks for one evening.

  "Have you been waiting long?" she asked.

  "I just got here. "

  He was standing against a column, his arms crossed in front of him. He was still wearing the same white shirt from that morning, a little crumpled at the end of the day, and he had loosened his tie, letting it fall to the side. But he was still golden and gorgeous. His sea green eyes danced with amusement and desire. Jack Force. The boy she had been waiting to see all evening. The boy she had been waiting for all her life.

  She wanted to run to him - to skip, giggling into his arms - but she savored the way he was looking at her. She could drown in the intensity of his gaze. And she had learned a little about seduction in the last few weeks they had been together.

  Had learned that it was sweeter when she made him wait.

  So she took her time, removed her shoes, brushed her bare feet on the carpet, and let him watch her.

  Outside of this place, they could be nothing to each other. He would not even allow himself to look at her. He could not afford it. So she wanted him to enjoy himself, to look at her as much as he liked.

  "Get over here," he growled.

  And then, at last, she ran - leaped into his arms, and together they crashed against the wall in a tight embrace. He lifted her with graceful ease, covering her body with kisses.

  She tightened her legs around his torso and bent over, brushing his cheek with the tendrils of her hair.

  Jack.

  She felt liquid in his arms. Pressed against him, his heart beating wildly in time with hers. When they kissed, she closed her eyes and saw a million colors bursting in the air, glorious and alive. He smelled earthy and lush, warm and brutish. It had been a surprise: she'd assumed he would smell like ice - like nothing - and she liked that he smelled coarse and real. He was not a dream.

  She knew that what they were doing was wrong. Lawrence had warned her that vampire bonds should not be broken. Jack was sworn to another. She had promised herself to stop, but she had also promised Jack she would always be there for him. They were so happy together. They belonged to each other. Yet they never spoke about the past or the future. Only this existed, this little bubble they'd made, this little secret. And who knew how long they had?

  When she was in his arms, she felt sorry for Mimi.

  It had started right after she'd settled into that palace of gilt and marble the Forces called home. The place was part fortress and part Versailles. There were rooms and anterooms filled with magnificent antiques polished and theatrically lit on display. Oceans of expensive fabric swathed the windows, and a silent crew of servants moved around the house, dusting, cleaning, offering its occupants tea or coffee on silver service trays.

  She had sat on the princess bed in her designated room, kicking at the battered trunk that was the only remnant of home she'd allowed herself to bring. Lawrence had promised that he would get her out somehow, that she would return to her rightful home soon. He knew Charles would not allow him to have contact with her, so they had agreed they would use Oliver as a (she smiled a little) conduit between them.

  Lawrence had driven her to the Forces' town house himself. Had helped carry her bags to the front door, where a gloved butler took over. Too soon, her grandfather had left, and Schuyler was alone again.

  Charles had given her a quick tour of the house: the sparkling Olympic-size pool in the basement, tennis courts on the roof, the gym, the sauna, the Picasso room (so called because it contained one of the two mural-size black-and-white studies of the masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). He'd told her to make herself comfortable, to avail herself of everything in the kitchen. Then he'd laid down his rules. Schuyler had been too angry and annoyed to do more than dumbly nod at everything.

  So she'd decided to kick her trunk. Stupid trunk. Stupid trunk with the broken lock. Stupid ugly trunk that was one of the few things she'd kept that her mother had owned. It was an old Louis Vuitton traveling valise, the kind that, when stood upright and opened, revealed a mini wardrobe. She kicked it again.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and then the door was pushed open.

  "Do you think you could. . . um. . . keep it down a bit? I'm trying to read," Jack said, looking bemused.

  "Oh! Sorry. " She stopped kicking the trunk. She'd wondered when she'd see her cousins. The complicated ties of vampire families still eluded her, but she knew that she and Jack weren't technically blood-related, even though Charles was her uncle. Someday she'd have to ask Lawrence how it all shook down. "What are you reading?"

  "Camus," he said, holding up a copy of The Stranger. "Have you read it?"

  "No, but I like The Cure song. You know, the one that's based on that book?"

  He shook his head. "Nope. "

  "I think it's on Three Imaginary Boys. Their first album. Robert Smith, he's a big reader too. Probably an existentialist like you," she teased.

  Jack leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, regarding her thoughtfully. "You hate it here, don't you?"

  "Does it show that much?" Schuyler asked, pulling the long sleeves of her sweater over her hands.

  He chuckled. "I'm sorry. "

  "You're sorry. "

  He put the book down on a vanity table. "It's not so bad. "

  "Really? What's good about it?"

  "Well, for one, I'm here," he said, coming over to sit next to her on the bed. He picked up a tennis ball that had rolled out of her trunk. She'd brought it to practice her vampire lessons. Lawrence wanted her to concentrate on the ability to move objects in the air, something she had yet to master. Jack threw it in the air, catching it deftly. Then he put it down. "Unless, you know, you want me to go. "

  He was sitting so close to her. She remembered how she'd run to him the first night she was attacked, how passionate he'd been about discovering the truth about Croatan, and then how deeply he'd disappointed her when he'd brushed her aside. And then she remembered something else. Something she couldn't stop thinking about ever since she'd drawn Mimi's blood and absorbed her memories.

  "You were the one - that night of the masquerade ball - it was you who. . . " Schuyler whispered, and in answer to her question, he kissed her. The kiss was the third one they'd exchanged (she kept count), and as he breathed into her and cupped her face in his broad hands, everything in her life up until then seemed secondary and ordinary.

  There was nothing to live for but this pure, heavenly sensation. The first time they'd kissed, she had glimpsed Jack's memories of a girl who looked like her but was not her. The second time, she'd had no idea he was the one behind the mask, but this time it was just the two of them. Jack wasn't kissing someone he thought he'd known before, and Schuyler wasn't kissing someone she didn't kno
w. They were simply kissing each other.

  "Jaaaack! Jaaaaack!"

  "Mimi," Jack said. He disappeared so fast out of the room it was as if he had turned invisible.

  When Mimi poked her head into Schuyler's room, she was sitting by herself kicking the trunk again. "Oh. You. Have you seen Jack?"

  Schuyler shook her head.

  "By the way, don't get too comfortable around here. I have no idea why Father wants a little creep like you around, but here's some advice: keep out of my way. "

  Later that night, Schuyler had received two different welcome presents: someone had short-sheeted her bed, and there was a book slipped under her door. A copy of The Plague by Albert Camus. Inside the book was an envelope, and inside the envelope, there was a key.

  From then on, Jack never acknowledged her presence at the house or at school. But he had more than made up for it later.

  "Where'd you get this?" Jack asked, tracing a cut on her forehead with a light finger. They were lying on the thick shag carpet, gazing at the remnants of the fire.

  "Oh. It's nothing. Banged my head," Schuyler said. She didn't want to tell him about Dylan just yet. "Were you followed?"

  "Yes. But I made sure she left before I got here," he said. His voice was sleepy, and she nestled in the crook of his arm. The streetlights were the only light in the room, but she could see him clearly in the dark. His perfect profile, as if sculpted in marble, glowed like a candle. "You?"

  "No. "

  In reality she had not checked. She had been too busy talking Oliver into leaving. Too busy and too excited. Because she had known, hadn't she? She had known Jack would be there, waiting for her, as she had waited for him earlier.

  But yes, next time she would be more careful. They would both have to be.

 

 

  Chapter Fourteen

 

  Bliss arrived late to the Lexington Armory. The Rolf Morgan show was scheduled to start at nine in the evening, and she was supposed to be there by six for hair and makeup, but it was already half past eight. She hoped the designer wouldn't kill her, although he'd probably already written her off, and she'd arrive to find some other model wearing the black-lace corset dress she was supposed to wear that evening.