HAPTER 41

Mimi

Two weeks after the White Vote was called, Mimi found a note in her Conclave e-mail asking her to visit Forsyth at the Repository in the Force Tower that afternoon. Her last class was a free period, so she finished early and took a cab.

She had to be at the Repository anyway. The other evening she had been looking for her favorite fountain pen and thought to rummage around Charles's study. She remembered she had left it there the last time she had needed a quiet space to do her homework. Her father's office was as tidy as always, with nothing on his desk but a Tiffany clock and a desk calendar. Mimi had checked drawers and cabinets, but did not find her treasured Montblanc.

She had sat in his leather swivel desk chair and spun, looking around the room. A few unmarked cassettes shoved toward the back of a shelf caught her eye. She stood up and examined them. What was Charles doing with such old audio equipment?

They were marked RH: Audio: Ven. Rep. Repository of History Audio Archives. Venator Reports. Usually tapes from the Repository came with written transcripts, but Mimi couldn't find any. She turned the tape over to see which Venator had filed them. MARTIN. These were Kingsley's reports, from his assignment two years ago. The one that had sent him to Duchesne.

What were they doing in Charles's office? They belonged in the Repository. And if Mimi wanted to listen to them, she would have to borrow an old tape recorder from the archives. She knew the Conduits were uploading everything onto digital files now, but they had obviously missed these. She had put the tapes in her pocket and taken one final look around the room. Where was Charles anyway? What had happened to him? Jack was convinced he wasn't dead. If Michael's spirit was gone from Earth, they would know for certain, he had argued.

At last night's meeting, the Conclave had voted to send Venators after the missing former Regis, and a team was being assembled. She knew her brother was disappointed not to have been picked for the assignment. But Forsyth had been adamant: they needed the twins here, he said. They couldn't leave the Coven so unprotected.

As she walked into the Force Tower that afternoon, she wondered what the senator wanted to talk to her about. Forsyth had never sought out her company before, and they had not spoken about her objection to his crowning.

"You wanted to see me?" Mimi asked, walking into the light-filled corner office after Forsyth's secretary announced her arrival. She noticed that he had set up shop in the same office Lawrence had chosen when he was Regis. Talk about overconfidence. Charles had used the one in the old building under Block 122.

"Madeleine. Thanks for stopping by," Forsyth said. "Doris, hold my calls, will you dear?"

His secretary closed the door, and Mimi took a seat across from the expansive walnut desk. She noticed that even though Forsyth had taken over Lawrence's office, he still kept the former Regis's photos of Schuyler on his desk. Mimi wished she had dressed up more; she had come straight from gym, and hadn't bothered to change out of her ratty Duchesne Athletics T-shirt and red running shorts. She put her bags on the floor and waited for him to speak.

"I just wanted to commend you on your work with the Venators. You did a fine job in Rio." He beamed.

Mimi scoffed. "Yeah. Right. We didn't find her."

"Only a matter of time, my dear. Kingsley will find her. I have no doubt. He's quite... resourceful," Forsyth said, with a hint of annoyance Mimi could not help but notice.

"All right. Well, thanks. I did want to go on another mission, but the Conclave says I have to finish Duchesne first. The school isn't going to hold my place for that long."

"Alas, that is true. It is unfair, is it not, that we have to go through the rigmarole of a human childhood and adolescence. But it is in the Code," Forsyth said, getting up to fix himself a drink from the bar cart. He picked up a carafe and poured a shot of whiskey into a glass.

"Want one?"

"No thanks." Mimi shook her head. "Um, is that all? May I be excused now?"

"Oh, I am carrying on as usual. Bliss likes to tease me about being a big blowhard." Forsyth smiled, taking a sip and walking around his desk so he could lean on the edge of it and look down at Mimi.

Mimi sank lower in her seat. Llewellyn rarely spoke of Bliss. The bemused father act didn't suit him too well: it felt bogus, like he was trying to sell her a used car, or get her to believe he cared an iota about his daughter. At least Charles and Trinity had tried to be there for Mimi and Jack during their transformation. As far as Mimi knew, Bliss's parents never bothered to explain to her what was happening.

"How is Bliss?" she asked. Mimi had bumped into her a couple of times, and Bliss had seemed friendly enough, but their conversations never seemed to go anywhere. She didn't know why that was, but something about Bliss made her feel nervous and giggly.

"She's much better." Forsyth Llewellyn nodded. "Anyway, I called you in today to discuss a rather delicate situation... and forgive me if I offend... I realize this may not be the right time for such an occasion, but I feel that after everything that's happened with the Conclave... the community needs something to lift its spirits right now, and perhaps, if I may..."

Mimi made a motion to let him continue.

"A simple favor... for the betterment of the entire community. I know you and Jack canceled your bonding because of the tragedy, but now is the time to renew morale, to show our people that we are still strong, and to see the two of you together. Our strongest, our best, will bring them hope."

A wry smile played on Mimi's lips even if her heart suddenly clenched and an image of Kingsley's smirking face came to mind.

"So what you're telling me is, the bonding's on?" she asked.

It took no effort to keep her tone light and breezy. After all, she was still the same Mimi Force whose image was plastered on a billboard across from Times Square. The Mimi Force who tortured freshmen for sport, making them fetch and grovel. (How she had missed orientation week!)

Hopefully she would still fit into her dress....

CHAPTER 42

Bliss

If Dylan wasn't going to come to her, maybe she could go to him. The Conclave urged its newest members to perform the regression therapy to access their past lives and learn from the accumulated knowledge that was available to them from the vastness of their prior experience. Bliss sat cross-legged on her princess bed. She closed her eyes and began the deep sorting through many lifetimes of memories. This was the knowing. The practice of finding out who you really were. She was in the void, in that space in between her conscious and subconscious self, who had she been before? What shape had her spirit taken in its prior histories?

She was dancing across a crowded ballroom. She was sixteen years old, and her mother had let her wear her hair up for the first time... and she was laughing because tonight she would meet the boy who would be her husband, and even before he came to stand in front of her to ask her to dance, she knew his face.

"Maggie." He smiled. Had he always kept his hair that way?

Even in the nineteenth century, Dylan, or Lord Burlington, made her heart pound.

But then, something happened at the party, the Visitor whispering lies in her ear. Telling her to kill. Maggie could hear him. Maggie did not want this, did not believe it... and before Bliss could open her eyes, she could feel the cold water surrounding her.

Maggie Stanford had drowned herself in the Hudson. Bliss saw the dark murky river, felt her lungs burst and her heart collapse.

As Bliss went backward, it was all the same. Goody Bradford had set herself on fire, pouring oil over her head, and then she had lit a match and let the flames consume her. Giulia de Medici "accidentally? walked off the balcony of the family's villa in Florence, her broken body splayed in the center of the square.

Quick as the flutter of a butterfly's wings, every image, every 'death? Bliss had ever experienced came to the forefront. But then... Maggie walked out of the funeral home. Goody Bradford survived the flames. Giulia got up from the fall.

None of them had been successful in ending their lives, or successful in exorcising the demon that possessed them. They had all tried and they had all failed.

Bliss understood.

I have to die.

Because if she died, truly died, if she found a way to never come back, then the Visitor would die as well. He would never have a chance to do what he was planning.

That was it. That was the only way. She knew it.

There was no getting out of it. There was no surviving it. She and the Visitor were locked in a fatal embrace. If she was able to kill her spirit, the undying blood in her arms, she would bring death to him as well. She would have to make this sacrifice, or else those horrible visions, that terrible future, would be unavoidable. She was a vessel for evil, and as long as she lived, so did he.

"Dylan, you knew, didn't you? You knew what I would have to do. All along," she whispered.

From the darkness, Dylan appeared at last. He looked at her mournfully. "I didn't want to tell you.