The Van Alen Legacy

She removed a tiny cosmetic bag from the same backpack and began to apply some makeup. She dropped her powdered compact to the floor, and only then realized her hands were shaking again.

She wasn’t ready for this. Whenever she contemplated what she was about to do, what she was about to ask, she couldn’t breathe. What if the countess turned her away? She couldn’t run forever, could she?

If the countess refused them an audience, they had nowhere else to go.

More than anything, Schuyler wanted to go home. She wanted to be in the same place her grandparents had lived. Back in her small bedroom with the peeling paint and the clanging heater. She had already missed an entire year of school. In a month, Duchesne would be back in session. She wanted to go back to that life, even though she knew it was lost to her. Even if the European Conclave gave her shelter, it did not mean she would be able to return to New York.

Outside the band was playing “Thriller,” Michael Jackson to a bhangra beat, cymbals crashing. She bundled her waiter’s uniform into the bag and stuffed it in a trash can, then left the powder room, slipping past the velvet rope.

“Champagne?” a server offered. Thankfully, the waitress didn’t recognize Schuyler as a fellow serf on the bus.

“No, thank you,” Schuyler demurred.

She walked to bottom of the staircase, elaborately costumed as an Indian princess. She held her head high even as her throat constricted with fear. She was ready for whatever the night would bring, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long.





EIGHT

Mimi


The Silver Bloods are much more clever than we give them credit for,” Kingsley said, when they arrived at yet another airport. They had left the U.S. the night before. Now they were back where it had all started, before that wild-goose chase had sent them halfway around the world. Back in Rio.

“You think?” Mimi replied, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “You should know. You are one.” She put on her oversize sunglasses and rescued her battered Valextra roller from the luggage carousel. She was irritated that Kingsley made them fly economy everywhere. She was used to having her bags wrapped and secured in plastic whenever she traveled internationally. Her poor little valise was not surviving the rough treatment from the baggage handlers. She spotted yet another muddy footprint on its smooth leather surface.

“It’s not funny,” Kingsley said as he took her bag and tossed it into the baggage cart, almost as if he were dunking a basketball and not lifting a seventy-pound weight. (Mimi never traveled light. A girl needed choices.)

“I’m not laughing,” Mimi snapped. “I just don’t know how we could’ve missed it the first time.”

“Just because we’re Venators doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes. And it’s one thing to be incompetent, but it’s another thing to be deceived. We weren’t looking for it, that’s why we missed it.” They walked out of the terminal and into the mild, tropical afternoon. Thank goodness for the upside-down weather here. Mimi had braced herself for blistering heat, and discovering it was winter in South America was a pleasant surprise.

The Lennox boys had hailed their own cab to the hotel, which meant she and Kingsley were stuck with each other again. The two brothers had been under Kingsley’s command for centuries, but kept to themselves. They preferred their own company and often only spoke when they were spoken to, in monosyllabic grunts. She and Kingsley had had no choice but to talk to each other or die of boredom.

Kingsley whistled for a cab, and they piled in the back and drove slowly into town. The city looked the same, as gorgeous and exotic as ever, but somehow seeing the Redeemer statue above Corcovado mountain did not give Mimi the same thrill it once had. She didn’t know what to think—she sure knew what the Conclave thought—even Kingsley had wanted to go after Leviathan as soon as he’d read the report, but he had been sent on this little adventure instead. Forsyth Llewellyn had pressed upon the surviving Elders to make finding the Watcher a top priority. Mimi wasn’t wholly convinced, as the senator was, that the Silver Blood traitors had been fully unmasked by the Almeida fire—sure Nan Cutler, their leader, had perished—but there had to be others among the Coven. Warden Cutler had to have had help. But that wasn’t really Mimi’s problem right now.