HAPTER 19

Bliss

Muffie Astor Carter (real name Muriel) was a Blue Blood in every sense of the word. She was educated at Miss Porter's and Vassar, and had worked in the publicity department of Harry Winston before marrying Dr. Sheldon Carter, who had found fame as the plastic surgeon to the Park Avenue set. Their bonding was one of the more controversial ones in recent memory, as it had taken each quite a few attempts to find the other. He was her second husband and she his third wife.

She was also one of New York's most popular socialites. Jealous rivals sniped that the public just took a liking to her name. It was so outrageously preppie it sounded like a joke. But it was not; it was the real thing, like Muffie herself, who embodied a horsey, Bedford, WASP authenticity in an age of brash nouveau-riche hordes adding "von? or 'de? to their names and who didn't know a Verdura from a Van Cleef.

Every year Muffie opened up her sprawling Hamptons estate, "Ocean's End", for a fashion show to benefit the New York Blood Bank. It was the highlight of the August social calendar. Located at the end of Gin Lane, the property sprawled over six acres and included a manor house with a separate and equally lavish guesthouse, a twelve-car garage, and staff quarters.

The sweeping grounds featured two pools (saline and freshwater), tennis courts, a lily pond, and professionally maintained gardens. The Bermuda grass was cut by hand, with scissors, every other day, to keep it at just the right length.

Balthazar shook Bliss's hand with a limp handshake and passed her on to Muffie with a wan smile.

"I'm so glad to see you looking so well, my dear," Muffie said, giving Bliss the most insubstantial of embraces. Muffie had a broad, recessed forehead with nary a wrinkle (her plastic-surgeon husband's most effective advertising) and the perfect blond coif pervasive on the Upper East Side. She was the epitome of the breed: tanned, slender, graceful, and appropriate. She was everything Bobi Anne had wanted to be but could never match.

"Thank you," Bliss said, trying not to feel too awkward. "It's good to be here."

"You'll find the rest of the models in the back. I think we're running late as usual," Muffie said cheerfully.

Bliss walked toward the backstage area of the tent, swiping a canape from a tray and a glass of champagne from one of the buffet tables. Henri was right: this was an easy gig. It wasn't a real fashion show, merely a presentation to wealthy clients in the name of charity. Whereas a real fashion show was a chaotic commotion of energy and anxiety, attended by hundreds of editors, retailers, celebrities, and covered by hundreds of media outlets around the world, the Balthazar Verdugo show on Muffie Carter's estate was more like a glorified trunk show, with models. It was so odd to be back in the real world, to be walking on damp grass (sinking in her heels, really), munching on appetizers, and looking out at the Carters' amazing ocean view, an unbroken line of blue stretching over the horizon, and to find out that in some parts of the world, even their world, the world of the Committee and the Coven, there were some who remained indifferent and downright disinterested in what had happened in Rio.

Muffie and the other women on the Committee whom Bliss bumped into at the party did not bring up Bobi Anne's death or the massacre of the Conclave. Bliss understood that they simply went on about their lives: planning parties, hosting benefits, doing the rounds of couture shows, horse shows, and charity causes, which filled their days. They did not seem too worried or distressed. Cordelia Van Alen had been right: they were in the deepest denial. They didn't want to accept the return of the Silver Bloods. They didn't want to accept the reality of what the Silver Bloods had done and were planning to do. They were satisfied with their lives and they didn't want anything to change.

It had been so long since any of them had been warriors, soldiers, arm-in-arm and side-by-side in battle against the Dark Prince and his legions. It was hard to imagine this group of underfed overly Botoxed socialites and their slacker children as hardened warriors in a war for heaven and earth. It was as Cordelia had said to Schuyler: the vampires were getting lazy and indulgent, more and more like humans every day, and less inclined to fulfill their heavenly destiny.

It dawned on Bliss that this was what had set Cordelia and Lawrence apart, they cared. They had kept their vigilance against the forces of hell and had sounded an alarm. An alarm that no one was too keen on hearing. The Van Alens were the exception to the norm. It only made sense that Schuyler would be just like them. Her friend had never felt comfortable in the world of the leisured rich, even though she had been born into it. But Schuyler wasn't the only one. Even Mimi and Jack Force were different. They had not forgotten their gloried past. Just one look at the way Mimi flaunted her extraordinary vampire abilities was enough to convince anyone that there was more to that skinny bitch than just the capacity to shop.

But these people, this self-satisfied group of elites who had barely even blinked at the news of the massacre, these people called themselves vampires?

"Exactly. Just like the members of the Conclave, they will be easy enough to overcome when the time comes."

Bliss shivered. She had gotten used to being alone, and had forgotten that the Visitor could pop in at any time.

CHAPTER 20

Mimi

El Sol de Ajuste was located in Cidada de Deus, The City of God, the notorious slums in the western part of the city that had inspired a major Hollywood movie and a subsequent television show, City of Men. Of course, the real city was nothing like the cleaned-up Hollywood version, which was the equivalent of a 'slum tour' arranged by hotel concierges: showcasing fashionable grittiness. The reality of poverty was much harsher and much uglier, the towering mountains of trash, the stench of sewer and garbage, the bare-bottomed children languishing on the streets, smoking cigarettes; the way no one batted the flies away, they were way past caring about something so simple as flies.

The bar was nothing more than a tin shack, a lean-to with a roof and a wooden counter pocked with holes. When Mimi and the boys arrived, a group of rowdy toughs were harassing the barback, the boy who cleaned the counters and sopped up the spilled beer with ragged towels. Mimi recognized the fierce-looking tattoos branded on the gang members' cheeks: they were members of Commando Prata, Silver Command, a notorious street gang, and responsible for most of the criminal activity in this part of the ghetto. This was going to be interesting.

"Voc? deve tr's pesos?" the barback insisted. You owe me three pesos. "Caralho! Vai-te foder?" The fat one laughed and cursed at the boy, pushing him against the wall.

The elderly proprietor stood behind the table, looking frightened and annoyed to find his employee being harassed, as well as finding his small establishment suddenly crawling with strange, black-clad foreigners.

"Can I help you?" he huffed in Portuguese, keeping an eye on the kid. "You! Leave him alone?" he cried as one of the gangsters tripped the boy, sending him falling facedown on the floor.

In answer, the fat bully gave the cowering boy a sharp kick in the head. There was a sickening crunch of a steel-toe boot against bone, and in a quick movement, one of the gang had a knife to the bartender's throat. "You got something to say to us, old man?"

"Put down the blade," Kingsley ordered in a quiet voice.

"Piss off," the leader said. He was a skinny kid with a pockmarked face sitting in the back. He held up his automatic weapon as casually as a soda can. The local drug lords acted as an unofficial police presence in the shantytowns, playing judge and executioner at their whim. But the only law they upheld was their own.

"Happy to, as soon as you let these good people go," Kingsley said smoothly. There were twenty gang members and only four Venators, hardly a fair fight for the sorry group of Red Bloods. If the vampires wanted to, they could destroy everyone in the room without warning. Mimi could see it already: a pile of corpses on the floor.

She felt her blood rise to the challenge, but it was a superficial rise, the kind of shallow excitement one felt upon watching a boxing match when you already knew the outcome. These thugs thought they were so tough, but they were nothing: fleas on the backs of buffalo, hyenas before lions. Mimi wished for better sport, a bigger challenge.

The street gangs were not afraid of the foreigners, however, and were faster than the Venators gave them credit for. Before Kingsley could turn around he was cut with a blade, a tear on his sleeve revealing an ugly wound.

That was enough. Mimi spun around, kicking two of them to the ground and forcing another to his knees. She was about to draw Eversor Lumen, Light-Destroyer, when she heard Kingsley's voice in her head. "No weapons! No deaths!"

As much as it pained her, she kept her blade sheathed. Two burly gangsters tried to bum-rush her, but she ducked from their assault, sending them crashing against the rickety tables. Another drew his gun, but before he could shoot, Mimi had kicked it away with her heel. Cake. She could tell even the Lennox brothers were enjoying themselves as they knocked heads and vanquished their attackers. Watching dreams and validating memories didn't compare to a good old-fashioned fistfight. One of the thugs picked up a chair leg and pointed it straight at Kingsley's chest, but Mimi slashed it into pieces before it could meet its target.

"Thanks," Kingsley said. "Didn't know you cared so much." He grinned as he made quick work of a boy holding an Uzi.

Mimi laughed. She'd hardly broken a sweat, although she was breathing heavily. As Kingsley ordered, their combatants would live to see another day. She stepped over the heap of bodies, Ted helping her over to join them by the bar.

The bartender came out from underneath a table, bowing in gratitude. "What can I get you?"

"What's the specialty of this place?" Kingsley asked.

"Ah?" The bartender shot them a toothless grin. "Get the Leblon," he told the barback, whose cut had stopped bleeding. The boy disappeared into the back closet and came out bearing a bottle of cachana: sugarcane rum. The bartender poured it into four shot glasses.

"Breakfast." Kingsley nodded and picked up his glass.

"Saude," Mimi said, downing her drink in one go. To your health. "We're looking for this girl. Have you seen her?" Kingsley asked, showing their new friends Jordan's photograph. "tell us," he said, using a small compulsion.

The boy shook his head, while the bartender looked at the picture for a long time. Then he too shook his head slowly. "I have never seen her in my life. But this is not a place where people bring children." Mimi and Kingsley exchanged glances, and the twins? shoulders slumped slightly. They left the bar after finishing the bottle. It was midday. The sun was high and the weather was at a broil. A few curious onlookers had crowded around the bar entrance, drawn by the fight, but they kept a fair distance from the foursome. The stares were respectful. No one had ever lived to defeat the Silver Command.

"For you," an elderly lady said, handing Mimi a water bottle. "Obrigado."

The woman crossed herself, and Mimi understood it as a gesture of gratitude for bringing a small measure of justice to a lawless place.

"Thank you," Mimi said, accepting the water with a nod. Once again she was struck by how helpless she felt.

These people's problems are not your own, she told herself. You cannot help them.

She felt very far away from the sheltered, exclusive world of the Upper East Side as she stood on a dusty sidewalk in the slums, her muscles still tense from the encounter. This was why she had signed up for the mission, to shake up her life a little bit, to see a side of the world that wasn't available from the backseat of a limousine. She might be a spoiled princess in this incarnation, but she was a warrior by nature. Azrael needed this.

But it was frustrating. They'd set out a year ago to find the Watcher and still had nothing to show for their efforts, save for a letter that didn't tell them anything.

"Maybe the Watcher doesn't want to be found," Mimi said, taking a chug of water and passing it to Kingsley. "Ever think of that?"

"It's possible," he said after taking a gulp and throwing the bottle to one of the Lennoxes. "But unlikely. She knows how valuable her wisdom is to our community. She knew they would send me to find her. Believe me, she wants to be found."

"Let me see the note again," Mimi said. Kingsley handed her the piece of paper. She reread the note. As she held up the paper, she noticed something she hadn't seen before. Something that had been hidden in the dawn, when it had been too dark to see clearly.

"Look," she said to Kingsley, holding the note up so it was facing the direct rays of the sun.

Sunlight shone brightly through the paper, revealing something that had formerly been invisible, like a watermark. Phoebus ostend praeeo, indeed. The sun shall show the way.

In the middle of the page was a map.