The Van Alen Legacy

He led her out to the middle of the dance floor located in the grand ballroom just off the courtyard. The room was festooned with floating Chinese lanterns, delicate orbs of light that looked incongruous against the French classical architecture. There were only a few people dancing, and Schuyler worried they would look conspicuous as the youngest people on the dance floor by several decades.

But she had always loved this song, which wasn’t so much a love song as the opposite of one. “I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.” And she loved that Oliver wanted to dance. He held out his arms and she stepped into them, resting her head on his shoulder as he circled her waist. She wished dancing was all they had to do. It was so nice just to live in the moment, to enjoy holding him so closely, to pretend for a little while that they were merely two young people in love and nothing else.

Oliver led her smoothly through every dance, a product of mandatory ballroom lessons from his etiquette-obsessed mother. Schuyler felt as graceful as a ballerina in his confident direction. “I never knew you could dance,” she teased.

“You never asked,” he said, twirling her around so that her silk pants floated prettily around her ankles.

They danced through two more songs, a catchy polonaise and a popular rap song—the music a schizophrenic mix of high and low, Mozart to M.I.A., Bach to Beyoncé. Schuyler found she was actually enjoying herself. Then the music stopped abruptly, and they turned to see what had caused the sudden silence.

“The Countess of Paris, Isabelle of Orleans,” the orchestra conductor announced, as an imposing woman, very beautiful for her age, with coal black hair and a regal bearing entered the room. She was dressed as the Queen of Sheba, in a headdress made of gold and blue lapis. Her right hand held an immense gold chain, and standing at the end of it was a black panther wearing a diamond collar.

Schuyler held her breath. So that was the countess. The prospect of asking that woman for shelter suddenly seemed more daunting than ever. She had expected the countess to be plump and elderly, frumpy even—a little old lady in a pastel suit with a bunch of corgis. But this woman was sophisticated and chic; she came across as remote and distant as a deity. Why would she care what happened to Schuyler?

Still, maybe the countess only looked imperious and inaccessible. After all, this party could not have been easy for her. Schuyler wondered if the countess was sad to have lost her home. The H?tel Lambert had been in her family for generations upon generations. Schuyler knew the recent global financial crisis had humbled even the grandest houses and the richest families. The Hazard-Perrys had invested well: Oliver told her they had gotten out of the market years before it crashed. But all over the Upper East Side, Schuyler heard, jewelry was being auctioned, art appraised, portfolios liquidated. It was the same in Europe. None of the other Blue Blood families could even afford to buy the Lambert. It had to go to a corporation, and it did.

The countess waved to her guests as the ballroom exploded in applause, Schuyler and Oliver clapping as heartily as the rest. Then Isabelle took her exit, the music started up again, and the tension in the room abated. A collective exhale.

“So what did the baron say?” Schuyler asked, as Oliver twirled her away from the center of the room.

The Baron de Coubertin was in the countess’s employ and served his lady as human Conduit, as Oliver was to Schuyler. Anderson had told them a meeting with the countess could only be facilitated by the baron. He was the key to an appeal. Without his permission, they would never be able to even get within a hairsbreadth of the countess. The plan was for Oliver to introduce himself the minute the baron arrived at the party, waylaying him as he stepped off the boat.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Oliver said, looking apprehensive. “Don’t look up. He’s coming our way.”





ELEVEN

Mimi


The four Venators made very little sound as they landed on the roof of the building. Their footsteps could be mistaken for the rustle of bird’s wings, or a few pebbles dislodged from the hillside. It was their fourth night in Rio, and they were in the favela de Rocinha, systematically going through the population, block by block, street by street, dilapidated shack by dilapidated shack. They were looking for anything—a scrap of memory, a word, an image—that could maybe shed some light on what had happened to Jordan and where she might be.

Mimi knew the drill so well she could do it in her sleep. Or actually, their sleep. Look at these Red Bloods, so cozy and secure in their slumber, she thought. They had no idea that vampires tiptoed through their dreams.