The Van Alen Legacy by Melissa de La Cruz Page A

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. Memories were tricky things, Mimi thought as she entered the twilight world of the

glom. They weren’t stable.
    They changed with perception

over time. She saw how they shifted, understood how the passage of time affected them. A

hardworking striver might recall his childhood as one filled with misery and hardship, marred by

the catcalls and name-calling of playground bullies, but later have a much more forgiving

understanding of past injustices.
    The handmade clothes he had

been forced to wear became a testament to his mother’s love, each patch and stitch a sign of her

diligence instead of a brand of poverty. He would remember Father staying up late to help with

the homework, the old man’s patience and dedication, instead of the sharpness of his temper when

he returned home, late, from the factory.
    It went the other way as well.

Mimi had scanned thousands of memories of spurned women whose handsome lovers turned ugly and

rude, Roman noses perhaps too pointed, eyes growing small and mean, while the ordinary looking

boys who had become their husbands grew in attractiveness as the years passed, so that when asked

if it was love at first sight, the women cheerfully answered yes.
    Memories were moving pictures

in which meaning was constantly in flux. They were stories people told themselves. Using the

glom, the netherworld of memory and shadow, a space the vampires could access at will in order to

read and control minds, was like stepping into a darkroom, into a lab where photographers

developed their prints, submerging them in shallow pans of chemicals, drying them on nylon

racks.
    Mimi remembered the darkroom

at Duchesne, how she used to hide there with her familiars. Spinning through the revolving door,

leaving the Technicolor world of school behind to enter a small, cramped space that was so dark

she’d wonder for a second if she had gone blind. But vampires could see in the dark, of

course.
    Did they even have darkrooms

anymore, other than in movies where they had to track down the serial killer? Mimi