The Van Alen Legacy

No weapons! No deaths!

As much as it pained her, she kept her blade sheathed. Two burly gangsters tried to bum-rush her, but she ducked from their assault, sending them crashing against the rickety tables. Another drew his gun, but before he could shoot, Mimi had kicked it away with her heel. Cake. She could tell even the Lennox brothers were enjoying themselves as they knocked heads and vanquished their attackers. Watching dreams and validating memories didn’t compare to a good old-fashioned fistfight.

One of the thugs picked up a chair leg and pointed it straight at Kingsley’s chest, but Mimi slashed it into pieces before it could meet its target.

“Thanks,” Kingsley said. “Didn’t know you cared so much.” He grinned as he made quick work of a boy holding an Uzi.

Mimi laughed. She’d hardly broken a sweat, although she was breathing heavily. As Kingsley ordered, their combatants would live to see another day. She stepped over the heap of bodies, Ted helping her over to join them by the bar.

The bartender came out from underneath a table, bowing in gratitude. “What can I get you?”

“What’s the specialty of this place?” Kingsley asked.

“Ah!” The bartender shot them a toothless grin. “Get the Leblon,” he told the barback, whose cut had stopped bleeding. The boy disappeared into the back closet and came out bearing a bottle of cacha?a: sugarcane rum. The bartender poured it into four shot glasses.

“Breakfast.” Kingsley nodded and picked up his glass.

“Saude,” Mimi said, downing her drink in one go. To your health.

“We’re looking for this girl. Have you seen her?” Kingsley asked, showing their new friends Jordan’s photograph. “Tell us,” he said, using a small compulsion.

The boy shook his head, while the bartender looked at the picture for a long time. Then he too shook his head slowly. “I have never seen her in my life. But this is not a place where people bring children.”

Mimi and Kingsley exchanged glances, and the twins’ shoulders slumped slightly. They left the bar after finishing the bottle. It was midday. The sun was high and the weather was at a broil. A few curious onlookers had crowded around the bar entrance, drawn by the fight, but they kept a fair distance from the foursome. The stares were respectful. No one had ever lived to defeat the Silver Command.

“For you,” an elderly lady said, handing Mimi a water bottle. “Obrigado.” The woman crossed herself, and Mimi understood it as a gesture of gratitude for bringing a small measure of justice to a lawless place.

“Thank you,” Mimi said, accepting the water with a nod. Once again she was struck by how helpless she felt.

These people’s problems are not your own, she told herself. You cannot help them.

She felt very far away from the sheltered, exclusive world of the Upper East Side as she stood on a dusty sidewalk in the slums, her muscles still tense from the encounter. This was why she had signed up for the mission, to shake up her life a little bit—to see a side of the world that wasn’t available from the backseat of a limousine. She might be a spoiled princess in this incarnation, but she was a warrior by nature. Azrael needed this.

But it was frustrating. They’d set out a year ago to find the Watchers and still had nothing to show for their efforts, save for a letter that didn’t tell them anything.

“Maybe the Watcher doesn’t want to be found,” Mimi said, taking a chug of water and passing it to Kingsley. “Ever think of that?”

“It’s possible,” he said after taking a gulp and throwing the bottle to one of the Lennoxes. “But unlikely. She knows how valuable her wisdom is to our community. She knew they would send me to find her. Believe me, she wants to be found.”

“Let me see the note again,” Mimi said. Kingsley handed her the piece of paper. She reread the note. As she held up the paper, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before. Something that had been hidden in the dawn, when it had been too dark to see clearly.

“Look,” she said to Kingsley, holding the note up so it was facing the direct rays of the sun.

Sunlight shone brightly through the paper, revealing something that had formerly been invisible, like a watermark. Phoebus ostend praeeo, indeed. The sun shall show the way.

In the middle of the page was a map.





TWENTY-ONE

Schuyler