“You must not fall for the trick of the eye. You must use your internal sight to be able to see what is truly in front of you. Use the animadverto and your past memories to make a truly informed decision.”
He asked Mimi to hand out papers for that week’s reading assignment. Mimi glided around the room passing out the stapled sheets. When she got to Schuyler’s table she deliberately knocked all of Schuyler’s books to the floor.
“Oops!” she said disingenuously.
Schuyler picked up her books with a frown. She’d had enough of Mimi for all eternity. She wondered how the other vampires put up with it. If she had to spend the rest of her lives dealing with that witch, she would gladly let the Silver Bloods take her.
She was still glowering as she skimmed the reading. Then her eyes widened. At the top of the page she read: Vampire Bonds, A History.
Several members snickered out of titilation and embarrassment, and Schuyler found herself blushing. She noticed Oliver paging through the document with a thoughtful air, while Bliss was doodling in the margins.
The chief warden cleared his throat before addressing his audience again. “I wanted to talk today about vampire twins. At your age, there is a lot of interest in this topic, and I thought I would end this meeting on a more pleasant note. You are familiar with the bond. Each of us has a twinned soul that was formed in our heavenly past. Through the centuries, we spend each cycle searching for our twin so that we may be bound to one another once again in a new lifetime.”
All the color drained from Schuyler’s face as she listened to the warden’s words.
“Sometimes it is hard to recognize our twinned spirit in a different physical shell. Or, as in some lonely cases, one’s twin has not been called up for the same cycle again and again, and thus becomes lost in time. There are stories of lovers who have looked for each other in vain throughout the ages, never finding their twin.”
Right in front of her, Mimi began to massage the back of Jack’s neck.
“However, these are very rare cases. Since there are only four hundred of us, it is not too difficult to find each other. This happy reunion usually results in a short courtship and a public presentation at the Four Hundred Ball. The bond must be renewed during each cycle. Renewing the bond renews the spirit of life that flows in our veins. It is one of the ecclesiastic mysteries. But perhaps the bond is where all the legends about true love and romance in this world come from.
“The Red Bloods even have their own name for it:
‘soul mate.’ They’ve taken many of our traditions and practices for their own. Their wedding ceremony is directly derived from our vampire communion.
“Finding your vampire twin is one of the happiest and most fruitful phases of one’s cycle. I know several of you have already found yours, and I congratulate you. The bond is an integral part of our lives. It nourishes and strengthens us. We are incomplete without our twin; we are half of ourselves. Only when we find and bond with our twin spirit do we come into our full memories and into our full potential.”
Schuyler didn’t need to hear or read anything more. She looked over at Mimi and Jack. Saw how the light played off their fair, platinum hair, how beautiful and still and remote the two of them looked sitting together. Saw with new comprehension how the two of them complemented and balanced each other in every attribute: Mimi’s glibness softened by Jack’s eloquence, her aggressiveness checked by his temper. They were two halves of the same person. A matched pair. Schuyler felt instinctively that there was part of Jack that would always remain inaccessible to her; there was an otherness to him that she would never be able to reach.
She knew that it was rare for twinned spirits to be born in the same family in a cycle, but it was not unheard of, and had been less of a problem in the past, when pharaohs and emperors routinely married their sisters.
In the event that it did happen in the modern age, there was a spell that kept the Red Bloods from noticing anything strange. Mimi Force would still be Mimi Force after the bonding, except the Red Bloods would assume it was because she was Jack’s wife and not his sister. Memories were easily changeable, the truth malleable.
Schuyler saw Jack turn to Mimi with a soft look on his face. For her part, Mimi simply glowed.
All at once Schuyler felt a deep and aching sadness. It was hopeless to think she would ever have a chance of real, lasting happiness with Jack.
There has to be a way, she thought desperately. There has to be a way to break the bond and be free to love whomever you want.
There is.
She started. For a moment she had thought she’d heard Jack’s voice in her head. But she didn’t hear it again. Still, she knew it had happened. She had not imagined it. She felt lighter all of a sudden, and more optimistic.
There had to be hope for the two of them still.
TWENTY-FIVE