CHAPTER 5

Mimi

Stepping into someone's subconscious is like discovering a new planet. Everyone's internal world is different and unique. Some are cluttered, stuffed with dark and kinky secrets pushed to the edge of their minds, like racy underwear and handcuffs shoved in the back of a closet. Some are as pristine and clear as a spring meadow: all hopping bunnies and falling snowflakes. Those are rare. This guy's psyche looked pretty standard, and Mimi chose a neutral environment in which to interrogate him, his childhood home. A suburban kitchen: white tiles, Formica table, clean, orderly, ordinary.

Kingsley pulled up a stool across from Frat Boy. "Why did you lie to us?" he asked. In the glom the Venator looked fiercely handsome. The glom did that to vampires: made them look even more beautiful than they already were.

"What are you talking about?" the guy asked, a confused look on his face. 'show him."

Mimi found the memory and played it on the television set on the kitchen counter.

"You remember this night?" Kingsley asked as they observed Frat Boy step out onto a hotel balcony and watch a tall man carrying a child-size bundle out of the resort gates. "You remember this man?"

Jordan Llewellyn had been missing for over a year. The eleven-year-old girl had been kidnapped from her hotel room at the same time the Conclave was being slaughtered at a party by Silver Bloods.

The Venators had scanned the mind-memories of everyone at the hotel who was there the night the little girl had disappeared, every guest, every staff member, from security guards to the chambermaids, with no luck. The Llewellyns had been too traumatized to be of much help. Which was understandable, but still useless. No one knew anything, no one remembered anything. Except for the guy sitting in front of them now.

"You told us you saw something. That you saw this man when you stepped outside for a cigarette that night," Kingsley said. 'this man does not exist. You lied to us."

"But I don't smoke," Frat Boy protested. "I don't remember this at all. What is this? Who are you?" In the bar, Mimi could see that he was starting to stir. They didn't have much time.

"Why did you lie to us? Answer the question?" Kingsley barked. For months they had tracked down every man who had stayed in the hotel who fit the description Frat Boy had given them. They had chased down marketing executives, businessmen on holiday, tourists and locals. But nothing of significance had turned up. After the better part of a year, they began to wonder if they were chasing a ghost, a phantom, a mirage. The whole team was frustrated and on edge. Just yesterday the Conclave had ordered them to give up the mission and return to New York. Jordan was gone, case closed. But Kingsley decided they needed to pay their witness another visit.

"Let me rephrase this: who told you to lie to us?" Kingsley asked.

"Nobody... I don't know what you want me to say... I don't remember that night. I don't even remember you guys. Who are you? What are you doing in my mom's kitchen?"

"Why were you in Rio?" Ted Lennox asked mildly, playing good cop.

"A buddy of mine was getting married...." he slurred. "We were there for the bachelor party."

"You went all the way to Rio for a bachelor party? You?" Mimi scoffed, peering through to the real world, looking down at his prone form sprawled on the table. The guy looked like the farthest he ever traveled was the corner 7-Eleven.

"Hey, I lived in New York not too long ago. I was a banker. We always went away whenever anyone got married. Thailand. Vegas. Punta Cana. But then I lost my job and had to move back in with my parents. Don't be a hater now."

"Laid off "? Sam Lennox asked.

"No... just... I don't remember things that well anymore. I took a leave of absence and haven't gone back. Something wrong up here," he said, knocking on the side of his skull with a worried look on his face.

Come to think of it, something about the witness did seem odd. Mimi remembered Frat Boy differently. The guy they had questioned a year ago had been much more articulate and alert, much cockier. She had found it strange that they had tracked him down in the boondocks. She had assumed anyone who stayed at such a fancy hotel also came from a fancy place.

"He's not lying," Sam said. "Look at his prefrontal cortex. It's clear."

"He doesn't remember that night," Ted agreed.

"Bring it up again," Kingsley said. 'this doesn't make sense."

Mimi pulled up the memory for a second time. The four of them watched it intently. It was the same: the tall man, the bundle, the cigarette. But Sam was right, his prefrontal cortex showed the guy wasn't lying when he said he didn't remember it.

"Oh, dear lord. How could we have missed this? Look at this. Force! Lennox! Look?" Kingsley said, magnifying the edge of the picture.

Then she saw what Kingsley saw: a slight tear on the border of the guy's memory. It was like a seam that had been repaired. It was so fine, and so well done, you would never even notice it. Whoever had done this was good. You needed to be majorly advanced in the glom to pull this off . A false memory expertly weaved into a real one. Enough to have fooled a team of Venators for the better part of a year. Imprinting false memories on Red Bloods was very dangerous. It could mess people up: turn them into raving lunatics, unable to distinguish fact from fiction. Or turn a big city banker into a slacker who lived with his parents.

"Let him go." Kingsley said wearily.

Mimi nodded. She released her hold on his mind, and the four of them stepped back into the real world. Their witness was slumped over the table, snoring.

This was no suspect. This was a victim.

CHAPTER 6

Bliss

Every day since that morning on the mountaintop in the middle of Corcovado, the hunchbacked mountain, Bliss had to ask herself three important questions.

Who am I? Where am I? What happened to me?

She'd started the practice one day not too long ago when she'd woken up to find she couldn't remember why she was so sad. Then the next day, she couldn't remember whether or not she was an only child. But what really scared her was the day she'd looked in the mirror and thought she saw a stranger. She had no clue who the girl with the red hair was. And that's when she got the idea to ask herself the three questions every morning.

If she didn't take the time to remember who she had been, then the Visitor would take over completely. And the real Bliss Llewellyn, the girl who had once failed her driving test in an old 1950s Cadillac convertible, would be no longer. Not even this half-faded memory of her that lingered in a small corner of her brain.

So. They were in the Hamptons. It was morning. She was getting up for breakfast; her servant was calling for her. No; not her servant?her father. 'servant? was the Visitor's word for Forsyth, not hers. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes she would find she could hear the Visitor so clearly. But then a door would slam, and she would be on the other side, in the dark again. The Visitor had access to her past, to her entire life, but she had no entree to his. His conversations with Forsyth were behind a closed door, his thoughts hidden in shadow.

A part of her was relieved that the Visitor did not talk to her anymore. She dimly remembered that there had been little conversations between them once, but those had ceased. Now there was just silence. She understood it was because he didn't need to communicate with her any longer to assume control. He used to take over during her blackouts, but now he did not need them to do what he pleased. He was in the driver's seat. Still, she wasn't exactly abandoned on the side of the road, either. She had answered the first question successfully, hadn't she?

She was Bliss Llewellyn. The daughter of Senator Forsyth Llewellyn and stepdaughter of the late Bobi Anne Shepherd. She had grown up in Houston until her family moved to Manhattan soon after her fifteenth birthday. She was a student at the Duchesne School on E. 96th Street, and her favorite hobbies were, in no particular order: cheerleading, shopping, and modeling. Oh my god, I'm a bimbo, Bliss thought. There had to be more to her than that.

Start again. Okay. Her name was Bliss Llewellyn, and she'd grown up in a big, grand house in Houston's River Oaks neighborhood, but her favorite part of Texas was her Pop-Pop's ranch, where she would ride horses over lush prairies blanketed with wildflowers. Her favorite subject in school was Art Humanities, and one day she had hoped to own her own art gallery or, barring that, become a curator at the Met.

She was Bliss Llewellyn, and right now she was in the Hamptons. An upscale beach community two hours away from Manhattan (depending on traffic) where people from the city went to "get away from it all" only to find themselves smack-dab in the middle of everything. August in the Hamptons was as frantic as September in New York. Back when she was still just Bliss and not a vessel for evil (or V.F.E., as she had come to think of her situation when she wanted to laugh instead of cry), her stepmother had dragged them out here because it was 'the thing to do." Bobi Anne had been big on 'the thing to do" and had compiled a huge list of dos and don'ts ¨C you'd think she had been a magazine editor in a former life. The sad thing about Bobi Anne was that she always tried so hard to be fashionable and always ended up the complete and total opposite.

Images from Bliss's last real summer in the Hamptons began to flood her brain. She was an athletic girl, and had spent the three months horseback riding, sailing, playing tennis, learning to surf. She had broken her right wrist again that year. The first three times had been because of sports, skiing, sailing, and tennis. This time she'd fractured it for a stupid Hamptons-style reason. She'd tripped on her new Louboutin platforms and landed on her wrist.

Now that she had answered the first and second questions in detail, she had no choice but to move on to the third. And it was always the third question that was the most difficult to answer.

What happened to me?

Bad things. Terrible things. Bliss felt herself grow cold. It was funny how she could still feel things, how the ghost-memory of being alive and fully aware through each of her senses lingered. She could feel her phantom limbs, and when she slept, she dreamed she was still living an ordinary life: eating chocolates, walking the dog, listening to the sound of the rain as it drummed on the roof, feeling the softness of a cotton pillowcase against her cheek.

But she couldn't dwell on that. Right now there were things she did not want to remember, but she had to force herself to try.

She remembered their apartment in the city, how the white-gloved doormen called her "Miss" and always made sure her packages were sent up quickly. She remembered making friends at school: Mimi Force, who had taken her under her wing and had laughed at her white leather handbag. Mimi was patronizing and intimidating at the same time. But she'd had other friends, hadn't she? Yes, of course she had. There was Schuyler Van Alen, who had become her best friend, a sweet girl who had no idea how strong she was, or how beautiful, and Oliver Hazard-Perry, the human boy with the wry sense of humor and the impeccable wardrobe.

She remembered a night at a club, shared cigarettes in an alley, and a boy. She had met a boy. The black-haired boy, lying limp in her arms. Dylan Ward. She felt numb. Dylan was dead. She remembered everything now. What had happened in Rio. Everything. The killing. Lawrence. Running down the hill, away from Sky and Oliver because she did not want them to see her face, to see her for who she really was.

Silver Blood spawn.

With Forsyth, she had returned to New York for Bobi Anne's funeral. A memorial, really, because like the other dearly departed members of the Conclave, there was nothing to bury. There was nothing left of Bobi Anne, not even a singed lock of her highlighted hair. A giant blown-up glamour shot on an easel took the place of a coffin at the front of the altar. The photograph showed her stepmother at her finest moment, when she had been profiled in a society magazine.

The funeral had been packed. The entire Blue Blood community had come out for it, to show support for those who had stood against the Silver Bloods. Mimi had been there with her twin brother, Jack. They had offered her words of solace and comfort.

If they only knew.

At the funeral Bliss was still aware enough of what was around her. She had heard Forsyth tell her (but not her; he was talking to the Visitor even then, she understood now) not to worry. Jordan was no longer a problem. Worry about what? What problem? Oh. Right. She'd almost forgotten. Her little sister. Jordan had known that Bliss carried the Visitor inside her. Jordan had tried to kill her.

The exercise was over. She knew who she was, where she was, and what had happened to her. She was Bliss Llewellyn, she was in the Hamptons, and she was carrying the soul of Lucifer inside her body.

That was her story.

The next day she would have to remember it all over again.

THE INVESTIGATION

Lawrence's killer. Her grandfather's killer. Okay, so the Inquisitor didn't come out and say it, no, nothing so coarse as that. But he'd hinted enough. Cast enough doubt on her story that he might as well have branded the word across her forehead.

She hadn't seen it coming. She was still in shock from losing Lawrence so violently, forget about having to defend herself to the Committee afterward. She had told them what happened as well as she could, never even considering the possibility that they might not believe her.

"Miss Van Alen, allow me to walk you through your testimony. According to your recollection of the events at Corcovado, a boy had been transformed into the image of Lucifer himself. Your grandfather ordered you to kill him, but you missed. Lawrence then struck the fatal blow, mistakenly killing an innocent and unlocking Leviathan's prison, setting the demon free. The demon then murdered him. Is this all correct so far?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

The Inquisitor consulted his notes for a moment. Schuyler had met him once before, when her grandfather had hosted a few members of the Conclave at the house. His name was Josiah Archibald, and he had retired from the Conclave years ago. His granddaughters were her classmates at Duchesne. But if he felt at all sympathetic to her plight, he masked it well. "He was right in front of you, was he not? The boy?" the Inquisitor asked, looking up.

"Yes."

"And you say you were holding your mother's sword?"

"Yes."

He snorted, looking pointedly at the assembled Elders, who then leaned forward or shuffled in their seats. The only active surviving member of the Conclave was Forsyth Llewellyn, who sat in the back, his head covered in bandages and his left eye swollen shut. The others were emeritus members like the Inquisitor. They sat clustered in a semicircle, looking like a group of shrunken elves. There were so few of them left: old Abe Tompkins had been fetched from his summer home on Block Island; Minerva Morgan, one of Cordelia's oldest friends and the former chairwoman of the New York Garden Society, sat gargoyle still in her knit boucle suit; Ambrose Barlow, who looked like he was fast asleep.

"Gabrielle's sword has been lost for many, many years," the Inquisitor said. "And you say your mother appeared to you?, poof! Out of nowhere, and handed it to you. Just like that. And then disappeared. To go back to her bed at the hospital, presumably." His voice dripped with sarcasm.

Schuyler shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It did seem fantastic and amazing, and unreal. But it had happened. Just as she had described.

"Yes... I don't know how, but yes."

The Inquisitor's tone was condescending. "Pray tell us, where is this sword now?"

"I don't know." She didn't. In the chaos afterward, the sword seemed to have disappeared along with Leviathan, and she told them so.

"What do you know about Gabrielle's sword?" the Inquisitor asked.

"Nothing. I didn't even know she owned a sword."

"It is a true sword. It holds a special kind of power. It was forged so that it always meets its target," he grumbled, as if her ignorance were a sign of guilt.

"I don't know what you're getting at."

The Inquisitor spoke very slowly and carefully. "You say you were carrying your mother's sword. A sword that has been lost for centuries and that has never failed to strike its enemies in all its history. And yet... you did. You failed. If you were indeed holding Gabrielle's sword, how could you miss?"

"Are you saying that I wanted to miss?" she asked, incredulous.

"I'm not saying that: you are."

Schuyler was shocked. What was happening? What was this? The Inquisitor turned to his audience. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Conclave, this is an interesting situation. Here are the facts of the matter. Lawrence Van Alen is dead. His granddaughter would like us to believe a rather outrageous story, that Leviathan, a demon that Lawrence himself buried in stone a millennium ago, has been released, and that that same demon killed him."

"It's true," Schuyler whispered.

"Miss Van Alen, you had never met your grandfather until a few months ago, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"You barely knew him from a stranger on the street."

"I wouldn't say that. We became very close in a short amount of time."

"Yet you harbored bitterness against him, did you not? After all, you chose to live with your mother's estranged brother rather than with Lawrence."

"I didn't choose anything! We were fighting the adoption. I did not want to live with Charles Force and his family?"

"So you say."

"Why on earth would I want to kill my grandfather?" she practically shouted. This was insane. A kangaroo court, a charade, a travesty. There was no justice to be served here.

"Perhaps you did not mean to kill him. Perhaps, as you told us earlier, it was an accident."

The Inquisitor smiled, looking like a shark. Schuyler slumped in her seat, defeated. For whatever reasons, the Inquisitor did not believe her story, and it was clear the remaining members of the Conclave would not either. The hidden Silver Blood among their ranks had been discovered, Nan Cutler had perished in the Almeida fire. The Conclave believed that, at least. They had accepted it. Forsyth Llewellyn had been the victim of Warden Cutler's betrayal and had borne witness.

But the ruling body did not want to accept the reality of Leviathan's return. It was one thing to accept the testimony of a fellow Elder, and another thing to take the word of a half-blood. They would rather believe Schuyler had deliberately killed Lawrence than that a demon stalked the earth once more.

There were no other witnesses to back her up except for Oliver, and the testimony of human Conduits was inadmissible in a Committee investigation. Humans simply didn't count, when it came down to it. So the night before the Conclave cast judgment and decided what to do with her, she and Oliver fled the country.