“Thank you.”
Deming settled into her desk and began to page through the cycle birth records for Victoria Taylor and Stuart Rhodes. Looking into an immortal’s past cycles was verboten in the Coven. The Code of the Vampires decreed that each vampire come into the knowledge of past lifetimes on their own, through the Blood Manifest—not through looking up files and records in a library. Lawrence Van Alen had been instrumental in preaching that identities came from within—that even if you had lived an immortal life, recorded diligently by scribes since the dawn of time, it was still your duty to discover your destiny on your own rather than have your past handed to you on typewritten sheets.
STUART RHODES
Birth Name: Hollis Stuart Cobden Rhodes
Known Past Lives: Piero d’Argento (Florence)
VICTORIA TAYLOR
Birth Name: Victoria Alexandra Forbes Taylor
Known Past Lives: Stefana Granacci (Florence)
That was interesting. Both Victoria Taylor and Stuart Rhodes were last in cycle in the same place and during the same time period. So even if they did not know each other in the present, there was a distinct possibility they had known each other in the past. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
In any event, once she was in the glom she would find Stuart, apprehend his abductors, and she would finally have her answers.
Deming left the Repository, her head bowed low. The Lennox boys were meeting her back at Venator headquarters in an hour, and she would have a little time to get herself ready before they arrived. She went through a checklist in her head; she would have to remember to wear something warm. The last time she had woken up from the procedure, she had been shaking with cold.
She would call her twin. She wanted to hear Dehua’s voice, and not just in the glom. Just another superstition, like the green turtle she held in her hand. Other than that, there was nothing else; she was ready to walk into the valley of the shadow.
As she waited for the light to change, she recognized a car parked across the street. It was the same one that had taken her home Saturday evening. Paul was at the wheel. She was about to wave to him when she saw he wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him.
There was something familiar about the girl getting out of the car.
Then Deming realized.
She was Victoria Taylor.
THIRTYEIGHT
Confessions
For a moment Deming was too stunned to move, but recovered quickly so that in a flash she was not only in Paul’s car, she had a hand on the wheel. “Pull over,” she demanded.
Paul jumped. He looked terrified to see her appear out of nowhere. “How did you—?” he asked, barely missing hitting a speeding taxicab. Deming turned the wheel toward the curb, and the car came to a crashing stop.
“That girl you were with. Who was she?” Deming did not have time for any more lies and nonsense. She wanted to get to the bottom of this. Now. She’d had a choice between following the girl and confronting Paul, and she chose to hear the truth from him.
“What girl?”
“The girl who got out of your car back there. Victoria Taylor.” It was Victoria, she was sure. Deming had studied her photograph numerous times and had memorized the girl’s face. She would know Victoria anywhere.
Paul scoffed. “Victoria? Isn’t she in like, Switzerland or something?”
“You’re lying. You’ve been lying since the beginning,” she said softly. She didn’t need to interrogate him to know. “That whole thing with Piper and Bryce and Victoria was a huge lie.”
Paul slumped against the wheel. “Okay, fine, I lied about that. But if you want me to tell the truth, you’ll have to do the same.”
Deming raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”
“I know what you are. You don’t have to keep your secret from me. I know you’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
He looked into her eyes. “I know the Committee’s just a cover. That there are people in this world who don’t die, who keep coming back every hundred years.”
“You’re insane. I have no idea what you are talking about.” My God, had they been this sloppy? How was it that he knew their secrets? Talk about a security breach. Paul was neither a Conduit nor a familiar. How did he know?
Paul cleared his throat and looked out the window, and answered as if he had heard her question. “I’ve been a student at Duchesne for a couple of years now. I’ve seen things. I’ve heard things. Guys like Bryce Cutting are pretty careless. I know most of the kids at school are blind, but I’m not. I know what you are. And it’s okay.”
Deming shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said evenly. “What I do want to talk about is why Victoria Taylor was in your car just now.”