She turned on the television and settled in to eat her lonely lunch and watch another rerun of It’s a Wonderful Life. The movie never failed to make her more depressed, since there was no happy ending for Allegra that she could see.
Oliver had invited her to spend the day with his family, but she had declined. Whatever family she had left in the world was in this lonesome hospital room. This was where she belonged.
Across town on the Upper East Side, the great houses and lavish apartments were empty of their residents. The Forces had already left on their Gulfstream IV for their annual sojourn, shipping their beachwear via FedEx to their villa in St. Barths, where they would spent the first week of the break, and sending their ski gear to their Aspen cottage for the second half of their vacation. The Llewellyns were off to Texas to visit family for Christmas and were meeting up with the Forces in Aspen for New Year’s.
Even Oliver’s family had made plans for a beach getaway to the family compound in Tortola, but he had opted to stay in the city to be close to Schuyler.
He planned to visit the Van Alen town house the day after Christmas with an abundance of presents. They always spent Boxing Day together. Oliver liked to bring over a crusty baguette, French butter—the real kind, he stressed, nothing like the bland American versions—several jars of premium Russian caviar from Petrossian, as well as a magnum of champagne from his parents’ wine cellar for their post-Christmas feast.
But on the morning of the twenty-sixth, just as Oliver had packed the picnic basket with treats and was about to leave, he received a frantic call from Hattie, the Van Alen’s maid.
“Mr. Oliver, you come, you come right now,” she begged.
Oliver immediately jumped into a cab and arrived at the brownstone, to find Hattie frantic and incoherent, wringing her hands on her apron and close to tears. She led him up the stairs to Schuyler’s room.
“Miss didn’t come down for breakfast. I thought she was just sleeping in, until Beauty ran down the stairs and practically pulled me up here. Then I saw she was just lying there, and I couldn’t wake her up. God help me, she looks so much like Miss Allegra, and I was so worried because she wouldn’t move, didn’t even look like she was breathing, so I called you, Mr. Oliver.”
Beauty, Schuyler’s bloodhound, was whimpering at the foot of her bed. The dog jumped up and licked Oliver’s hands and face when he entered the room.
“You did well, Hattie,” Oliver said, patting Beauty and then shaking Schuyler and checking for her pulse. There was none, but that didn’t mean anything. His Conduit training had told him vampires could slow their heartbeat to a barely detectable rhythm to conserve their energy. Yet Schuyler was only fifteen years old and had only begun the transformation. It was too early for her to go into preservation mode. Unless . . .
Oliver suddenly had an awful thought: what if Schuyler had been attacked by a Silver Blood? His hands shook as he dialed his aunt, Dr. Pat, the human doctor who cared for Blue Bloods. Dr. Pat discouraged Oliver from waiting for an ambulance or taking her to a proper hospital. “They won’t know what to do with her. Just get her to my office now. I’ll meet you there.”
When Oliver arrived, holding Schuyler in his arms, Dr. Pat and her team were ready. They wheeled out a hospital bed, and Oliver gently laid his friend down.
“Tell me she’ll be all right,” Oliver pleaded.
Dr. Pat checked Schuyler’s neck. There were no marks. No sign of Abomination. “She should be. It doesn’t look like she’s been attacked. She should be fine. They are immortal. But we’ll see what’s going on.”
Oliver waited in Dr. Pat’s outer room on a particularly uncomfortable plastic chair. His aunt had always been enamored of modern furniture, and the office resembled the lobby of a trendy hotel rather than a clinic: all-white plastic furniture, white flokati rugs, white space-age lamps. After a few anxiety-ridden hours, Oliver’s aunt emerged from the inner office.
Dr. Pat looked tired and beat. “Come in,” she told her nephew. “She’s awake. I gave her a transfusion. That seems to have done the trick.”
Schuyler looked even smaller and more fragile in the hospital bed. She was wearing one of those gowns that tied in the back, and her face was paler than usual. He could see her blue veins through her transparent skin.
“Well hello, Sleeping Beauty,” Oliver cracked, trying to mask his concern.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in my office, child,” Dr. Pat said solemnly. “You went into hibernation. It’s not something that usually happens until much, much later. It’s another word for prolonged sleep, something vampires do when they are weary of immortality at the close of a cycle.”
“My head feels weird. And my blood—it feels strange. Icky.”
“I had to give you a transfusion. You had very low blood cell counts. It’s going to feel strange for a little while as the new blood adjusts to the old.”
“Oh.” Schuyler shuddered.
“Oliver, can you excuse us?”