The Van Alen Legacy

“I’m okay.” Bliss nodded. She sat down on the steps across from the ruin and took a deep breath. “I’m okay.” The girl gave her another curious look, but left her alone.

Bliss was still rooted to the same spot four hours later, when the lights started to blink and an announcement came over the speakers. “The Metropolitan Museum is closing in thirty minutes. Please make your way to the exit.” This announcement was repeated every few minutes in many different languages.

Bliss didn’t move from her seat. Everyone else in the room—art students, a handful of tourists, a docent-led group—dutifully walked toward the exit. What am I doing? Bliss wondered. I should go home.

But the minutes passed and the overhead lights continued to blink in warning, and when Bliss heard the footsteps of the museum guard, she hid in the temple’s crevice and made herself invisible to human sight. After what seemed like an incredibly long time, the lights finally went out, it was completely silent, and a ghostly moonlight streamed into the museum.

She was alone.

She walked right up to the temple, touching the rough stone, putting her fingers in the grooves of the etched hieroglyphics. Dylan had kissed her right here, for the first time.

She missed him so much.

I miss you too.

What was that?

She looked around the empty room. The light made weird crazy shadows on everything, reminding her of how she used to fear the willow tree outside her bedroom when she was a kid.

She walked up to the fountain on the perimeter of the room and threw a quarter into the water, watching it fall. For a moment she had thought she’d heard his voice—but now she was really going crazy, wasn’t she?

You’re not crazy.

She was annoyed, agitated. Whoever was talking to her had to stop it. “Is anyone there? Hello?” Her voice echoed throughout the still chamber.

All that answered was an echo of her question:

HelloHelloHello . . .

But if the voice wasn’t out there . . . then maybe . . . maybe . . . it was coming from somewhere . . . inside. . . . But that wasn’t the Visitor’s voice, she was sure of it. She closed her eyes. What was the harm? It wasn’t as if stranger things hadn’t already happened. She looked inward. There was a void where the Visitor usually was, an emptiness. The Visitor was definitely still away.

But for the first time she sensed another presence, and another and another—so very many others—hundreds of others. . . . Oh god, what was it that the Silver Bloods did? They took the blood—the undying consciousness—so that their victims lived on inside their captors. Many souls trapped in one body. Abomination.

There were hundreds of souls just below her consciousness—just like her, they had been trapped in the backseat (maybe even the trunk?). It was like looking down into one of those mass graves . . . but instead of corpses, they were all still alive. . . .

She wanted to scream. . . . This was so much worse than having the Visitor. This was . . . She almost lost it, but then . . . that voice again. . . .

Low, husky, and raspy, as if it had smoked too many cigarettes and had spent too many nights shouting in a packed downtown bar. It was the voice of a boy who had seen it all and had lived to tell a funny tale about it—deep and rough but with a sweet edge that went straight to your heart.

Could it be?

How could it?

“Dylan?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

There was silence.

Then, out of the darkness, she saw him materialize in front of her—saw his shape, saw his face—his beautiful sad eyes, his crooked grin, his dark disheveled hair. He stepped out of the void and into the light.

“I don’t have much time,” Dylan said. “That Visitor of yours is coming back soon.”





TWENTY-NINE

Mimi


Mimi felt someone come up behind her, but when she turned around, it was not the handsome Venator she saw, but a wraith. A blackened, burned figure. A walking corpse with sockets for eyes and a slash for a mouth, and a bandaged torso. Burned, disfigured, but somehow stomach-churningly . . . alive.

“You . . .” The wraith pointed a bony finger at Mimi, and spoke in a whistling, raspy whisper reminiscent of rustling dead leaves. “You dare . . .”

That voice. Even in its present, eerie iteration, Mimi recognized that voice. It had once made speeches in front of podiums, had once welcomed elite groups of guests to a particularly spectacular Park Avenue co-op.

“Warden Cutler?” Mimi whispered. “But I . . . I killed you.” It sounded absurd even as she said it. But she had cut Nan Cutler in two, had left her to burn in the black fire in the Almeida villa. How could the warden have survived? It was ridiculous. And it was equally absurd of Mimi to parry or banter with a walking and talking death wraith.