Masquerade

If she had kissed Oliver, did that mean they were more than friends now? Would they have to start dating? Was she even attracted to him? She looked at his chestnut hair flopping over his eyes, and thought of how, in Venice, she had wanted nothing more than to taste his blood. Did that equal attraction? And who knew how he felt about her?

Schuyler placed the perfectly molded candy squares on the table, and caught the eye of another boy across the room.

Jack Force. Her stomach immediately tied up in knots.

Suddenly Schuyler knew she was just kidding herself. She might toy with the idea of liking Kingsley or Oliver. But really she knew she nursed a not-so-secret hope about the identity of the boy she had kissed: she wished for one name and one name only.

Jack.





TWENTYTHREE


When Schuyler arrived home from school, Lawrence still had not returned. She asked Julius to bring her grandfather’s luggage up to Cordelia’s room. It looked forlorn and lonesome in the entryway. Hattie had prepared supper, and Schuyler took a tray up to her room, eating her meat loaf and mashed potatoes in front of her computer. Cordelia would never have allowed such a thing. Her grandmother had been vigilant that Schuyler eat dinner properly at the table every night. But then, Cordelia wasn’t around to enforce her rules anymore. Schuyler fed Beauty scraps from her plate as she checked her e-mail and made a halfhearted attempt to finish her homework. Afterward, she brought her tray down to the kitchen and helped Hattie load the dishwasher. It was after nine o’clock. Her grandfather had been gone for more than twelve hours already. How long could the meeting have lasted?

Finally, at a little past midnight, Lawrence’s key turned in the lock. He looked exhausted. The lines on his face were haggard. Schuyler thought he looked as if he had aged several decades.

“What happened?” she asked, alarmed at his condition. She flew up from the window seat where she had been dozing. The living room, removed of its heavy drapes and covers, was a surprisingly comfortable place. Hattie had lit a fire in the hearth, and Schuyler couldn’t get enough of the river view.

Lawrence set his crushed fedora on the rack and sank into one of the antique couches across from the fire. Dust flew as he shifted in his seat. “I do think Cordelia could have put some money into keeping this place a little cleaner,” he grumbled. “I left her with quite a nest egg.”

Cordelia had always given Schuyler the impression that they had run out of money, and what little they had went to financing the bare necessities: Duchesne tuition, food, shelter, the skeletal staff. Anything aside from that—new clothes, money for movies or restaurants—was grudgingly parceled out dollar by dollar.

“Grandmother always said we were broke,” Schuyler said.

“In contrast to how we lived once, surely. But we Van Alens are far from bankrupt. I checked the accounts today.

Cordelia invested wisely. The interest has been collecting interest. We should be able to bring this house back to where it should be.”

“You went to the bank?” Schuyler asked, a little startled.

“I had to run a number of errands, yes. It’s been a long time since I was in the city. Marvelous how the world has changed. One forgets that in Venice. Ran into several friends. Cushing Carondolet insisted I dine with him at the old club. I’m sorry, I would have come back earlier, but I had to find out what Charles has been up to in my absence.”

“But what happened with The Committee?”

Lawrence took a cigar out of his pocket and carefully lit it. “Oh, at the hearing?”

“Yes,” Schuyler said impatiently, mystified by Lawrence’s casual attitude.

“Well, they brought me into the Repository,” Lawrence said. “I had to speak in front of the Conclave—the coven’s highest leadership. Wardens, Elders. Enmortals like me.” Enmortals were vampires who kept the same physical shell over the centuries, who had been given permission to be exempt from the cycle of sleeping and waking, otherwise known as reincarnation.

“Never seen such a sorry bunch,” Lawrence said, pursing his lips in distaste. “Forsyth Llewellyn is a senator—did you know that? Back in Plymouth he was just Michael’s lackey. It’s a disgrace. And completely against the Code. It wasn’t always so, you know. We have ruled before. But after the disaster in Rome, we agreed that taking positions of power in the human sphere was forever out of the question.”

Schuyler nodded. Cordelia had told her as much.

“And they’ve kicked out the Carondolets from the Conclave, Cushing told me all about it. Because he had proposed a Candidus Suffragium.”

“What is that?”

“The White Vote. For the leadership of the coven,” Lawrence said, kicking off his banker’s cap-toes and waving his stockinged feet in front of the fire.

“But I thought Michael—Charles—was Regis. Forever.”

“Not quite,” Lawrence said, flicking his ashes into an ashtray he had removed from his jacket pocket.

“No?”

“No. The coven is not a democracy. But it is not a monarchy either. We had agreed that leadership can be questioned if the coven feels the Regis has not led us properly. So the White Vote is called.”

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