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
Margaret Atwood
Wolf Wootan
Carolyn Keene
Dani-Lyn Alexander
Suzanne Macpherson
Kathleen O’Neal
John Ballem
Robin Stevens
Kelly Cherry
Claire Fenton