HAPTER 49

Mimi

Outside the window the sun was rising over the Hudson. Mimi shrugged on a robe, swinging her legs off the bed so she could take a better look. Or so she just told him. She felt... confused. And she didn't like it. She patted the pockets of the robe for her cigarettes, then remembered she had quit smoking. Somehow chewing gum wasn't the same. She would have to console herself with a tapping of her fingers on the glass. Outside, the sky was a brilliant red and orange, the purple darkness and the yellow of the smog mixing with the horizon. But Mimi was bored with a picture of a pretty sunrise, or even sunsets, for that matter: she found them clich��d, hokey, predictable. Anyone could like a sunset. And she wasn't anyone; she was Mimi Force.

"Come back here."

Half invitation, half command.

She turned. Kingsley Martin was lying on the bed, his arms crossed behind his head. Arrogant bastard. Rio had been a mistake. The torrent of emotions after coming so close to the Watcher, only to have her slip away... the two of them had met up later that night at their hotel. Well. What's done was done. She couldn't change that.

She had been far from home and feeling low. But she had no excuse for the last twenty-four hours. Okay, so after Kingsley had told her his whole sad, terrible story, and shared the burden of his secret, they had closed down the bar downstairs, and then everything had felt inevitable after that. Hooking up once was a mistake. Twice? Twice was a pattern. The Mandarin Oriental was one of Mimi's favorite places to stay, and the one in New York was especially lovely. If only she could convince herself she was here to enjoy the view.

"Well? I'm waiting," his silky voice announced.

"You think you can order me around?" she said, throwing her hair over her shoulders: a practiced move that she made appear unrehearsed. She knew he found the sight of her hair swinging over her back enticing. "I know I can."

She moved closer. "Who do you think you are, anyway?"

Kingsley only yawned. He tugged at the edge of her robe, pulling it halfway off her shoulders, before she stopped him. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I'm getting bonded in two weeks, that's what's wrong," she snapped, belting her robe tightly around her waist. She had asked him that night in Rio if this had happened between them before. And she had asked him again last night. If they had ever been together... if... if... if... Of course Kingsley refused to answer. He had been maddening. Do your exercises, he had said. Do your regressions. He had teased and mocked her and refused to answer her question.

If it had happened before, I could forgive myself, she thought. Maybe this is my one weakness. Maybe he is my weakness.

"Can I ask you something?" Mimi asked, watching as Kingsley got dressed and walked over to the little dining table. Kingsley had ordered a breakfast suited for a king. Not just the usual plate of eggs and bacon. There was also a seafood platter on ice, a full tin of caviar, toast points, chives, sour cream, and chopped onions. A golden bottle of Cristal was sweating in a wine bucket.

"Anything," he said, scooping up caviar with his fingers and licking them. He filled a plate with food, then popped open the champagne bottle and poured two glasses. He handed her one with a smile.

"I'm serious... I don't want you to get offended."

"Me?" he said, balancing his breakfast on his lap as he took a seat on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table.

"What do... what do Silver Bloods live on?" she asked. "I mean, other than caffeine and sugar and prawns the size of your fist," Mimi said, watching him eat. "I mean, do you still perform the Caerimonia? On humans, I mean?"

Kingsley shook his head. He looked mournful as he dipped his shrimp into the cocktail sauce. "No." He took a bite. "No, my dear, that is not an option any longer for those of us who have drunk from the undying blood. I'm afraid to the Croatan the only blood that matters is the blood that runs through your veins."

Mimi crossed her legs as she sat on the bed opposite him. She arched her neck.

'So, do you ever feel tempted?"

"All the time." He smiled lazily.

"so what do you do?"

What is there to do? I can't. I've pledged to honor the Code. I live in restraint. I can still eat food... and sometimes some of it even tastes good." He shrugged and wiped his fingers on the edge of his shirt. She wanted to tell him not to do that, but didn't want to sound like his mother. "You mean you can't taste any of that stuff "?

"I try."

"But all those doughnuts..." she said, suddenly feeling sorry for him. He was immortal in the truest sense of the word. He didn't need anything to survive. What a lonely and strange way to live.

"Yeah, I know." He laughed, but his eyes looked sad. "I eat a lot because I can taste only a fraction of what is in front of me. I have a bottomless appetite that can never be filled." He winked. "And that's why the Silver Bloods are cursed."

"You make light of serious matters, you said that to me once," she chastised.

"Well, yes. We are very much alike," Kingsley said. He put down his empty plate and glass and walked over to stand in front of her. "And we have fun together, don't we?" he asked. "Admit it, this is kind of fun... isn't it?" He licked her neck, then her ear, gently kissing her back and her shoulders. She could smell the champagne on his lips.

Mimi closed her eyes. A bit of fun, that was all. It meant nothing. Not to him, not to her. Hooking up. That's all they were doing. Purely physical and purely pleasurable. There were no feelings involved, no divine connection, no heavenly conscription... This was just fun. Pure and simple.

Kingsley was still kissing her neck when she felt his fangs come out, that slight prickling, tickling her skin.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked, feeling afraid, but excited too. She had never known what it was like to be treated as a victim. As prey. He was dangerous. A reformed Silver Blood. You might as well call him a reformed Doberman.

"Shush... it won't hurt... I promise." And then he bit her neck, just a tiny bit, just so she could feel his fangs sink in and pierce the skin, and then she felt his tongue lick a drop of her blood. He licked his lips and smiled at her. "You try it."

Mimi was horrified. What had he just done? And now he wanted her to do it too? "No." But she had to admit, she was tempted. She had always wondered what it would be like.

Why the Croatan preferred it over the usual Caeremonia.

"Go on. You won't hurt me. I dare you."

Being with him made her feel alive and uninhibited. What could it hurt? Just a touch. Just a drop. Just a tease. She did not want to drink his blood, but she did, suddenly, very much want to taste it.

To play with a lit candle. To hold her finger to the flame, taking it away just before it burned. That knife edge that skirted between danger and fun. A roller coaster ride. The adrenaline rush was heady. She pushed out her fangs and buried her face into his neck.

The sun rose, filling the room with light. And Mimi Force was having the time of her life.

CHAPTER 50

Schuyler

She felt bad about leaving Bliss like that. But right then she was too wound up to even think about anything other than the fact that the person she had waited her entire life to talk to... was now awake. Alive. Allegra Van Alen was alive. She had opened her eyes a half hour ago, and she was asking for her daughter.

As she walked through the glass doors of New York Presbyterian Hospital, toward the back elevator that would take her to the permanent care unit, Schuyler wondered how many days, how many nights, how many birthdays, how many Thanksgivings and Christmases, she had spent walking down the same fluorescent-lit hallways, with the smell of antiseptic and formaldehyde, walking by the sympathetic smiles of the nurses, by the tearful groups huddled near the surgical waiting rooms, their faces drawn and anxious.

How many times?

Too many to count. Too many to mention. This was her entire childhood, right in this medical center. The housekeeper had taught her to walk, to talk, and Cordelia had been there to pay the bills. But she'd never had a mother. There had been no one to sing her songs in the bath, or to kiss her on the forehead to sleep. No one to keep secrets from, no one to fight over her wardrobe with, no one to slam doors on, there had been none of the normal rhythms of softness and disagreements, the infinite ways of mother-daughter kinship.

There was only this.

"You're here so quickly," the attending nurse said with a smile from the nurses? station. She escorted Schuyler down the hallway to the private wing, where New York's most privileged and most vegetative slumbered.

"She's been waiting for you. It's a miracle. The doctors are beside themselves." The nurse lowered her voice. "They say she might even be on television?"

Schuyler didn't know what to say. It still did not seem true. "Wait. I need... I need to get something from the caf��teria." And she ducked away from the nurse's side and ran down the entire flight of stairs to the first floor. She burst through the swinging door, surprising a few interns sneaking a coffee break on the hidden landing.

She wasn't sure if she would be able to do this. It seemed too good to be true, and she couldn't bring herself to face it. She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked inside the cafeteria.

She bought a bottled water and a pack of gum, and returned to the right floor. The kind nurse was still waiting for her.

"It's okay," she told Schuyler. "I know it's a shock. But go on. It'll be okay. She's waiting for you."

Schuyler nodded. 'thank you," she whispered.

She walked down the hallway. Everything looked exactly the same as it always did. The window looking over the George Washington Bridge. The whiteboard charts with the patients' names, medications, and attending physicians. Finally she stood in front of the right door. It was open just a crack, so that Schuyler heard it.

A voice, lilting and lovely through the doorway. Calling her name ever so softly.

A voice she had only heard in her dreams.

The voice of her mother.

Schuyler opened the door and walked inside.