"No one's been here in ages, ever since they stopped doing the Viennese Opera Balls properly," Jack explained. He dusted off an ancient-looking Sony cassette recorder.
"Listen to this," he said, putting a tape inside. "I think you might like it." He pressed PLAY.
There was a scratchy hissing sound. Then a husky, low voice—unmistakably female, but sounding ravaged by years of smoking—began to speak.
"It was also my violent heart that broke …"
Schuyler recognized the lines. "Is it her?" she asked rapturously. "It is her, isn't it?"
Jack nodded. It was. "I found the tape at this old bookshop the other day. They had poets reading their work."
He had remembered. It was Anne Sexton. Reading from Love Poems. Her favorite poet reading from her favorite poem, "The Break." It was the saddest of the lot, angry and bitter and beautiful and enraged. Schuyler was drawn to grief—like Schiele's paintings, Sexton's poetry was brutal, honest in its agony. Love Poems had been written during an affair the poet had—an illicit, secret affair not unlike their own. She knelt and huddled close to the little stereo, and Jack folded her in his arms. She didn't think she could love him more than she did right then.
Maybe there was part of him that she would never understand, but at this moment the two of them understood each other perfectly.
When the tape ended, they were silent, enjoying the warmth of each other's bodies.
"So…" Schuyler felt hesitant and lifted up on one elbow to speak to him. She feared that talking about the reality of their situation would break the magic of the evening. And yet she wanted to know. The bonding was full speed ahead. "The other day at The Committee meeting you said that there was a way to break the bond."
"I believe so."
"What are you going to do?"
In answer, Jack pulled Schuyler down so that they were lying together again. "Schuyler, look at me," he said. "No, really look at me."
She did.
"I have lived a very long time. When the transformation happens…when you begin to become aware of your memories…it is an overwhelming process. It's almost like you have to relive every single mistake," he said softly.
"I don't want to make the same mistakes I've made before. I want to be free. I want to be with you. We will be together. I believe I will have less to live for, if I am not with you."
Schuyler shook her head vigorously. "But I can't let you do that. I can't let you take the risk. I love you too much."
"Then you would rather see me bonded to a woman I do not love?"
"No," she whispered. "Never."
Jack held her then and kissed her. "There is a way. Trust me."
Schuyler kissed him back, and every moment was sweeter than the last. She trusted him completely. Whatever it was he was going to do to break the bond, they would be together. Always.
Dylan's doctor was a bear of a man, with a full bushy beard and a tilted lumbering gait. Dress him in a red suit and send him down the chimney, Bliss thought, not quite trusting to put her faith in the awkward human, even though he was a very prominent hematologist and came from an old Red Blood family of trusted Conduits.
"My secretary tells me you are friends of Dylan Ward. I know you've been trying to get in touch with me. I apologize for the delay in responding. It's been a very busy week. Someone snuck a familiar into one of the dorms, and it was almost a bloodbath." He winced. "But not to worry, everything's under control for now." The doctor smiled.
"Right." Bliss nodded and took a seat across from his desk. "We're his friends. Thank you for seeing us."
"I'm not a friend. I'm here to find out what's going on with him for the Conclave," Mimi snapped. "I'm a Warden."
He raised his eyebrow. "You look young for your age."
Mimi smirked. "When you think about it, we all do."
"I mean, for someone in your position," he said nervously, coughing and shuffling papers on his desk.
"Get to the point, doctor. I didn't come here to debate the policies of the Conclave. What's going on with that basket case?"
Dr. Andrews opened the file in front of him and grimaced. "Dylan appears to be suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. We've enrolled him in several regression therapies to help recover his memories. But so far he hasn't made any real connection to anything. He remembers neither what happened to him a hundred years ago nor what happened to him a month ago."
It was just as Bliss feared. Dylan was like an unmoored boat, anchored to nothing and no one. "So he'll just have amnesia like that…forever?"
"Hard to say," the doctor said hesitantly. "We don't like to foster false hopes."
"But why," Bliss said, feeling extremely agitated, "why did it happen?"
"The mind does that sometimes; it blanks out everything in order to function. To blunt the force of a recent trauma."
"He's been through a lot," Bliss whispered.
"Silver Blood attack and all." Mimi nodded.
The doctor consulted his chart again. "That's the interesting thing. Like I told Senator Llewellyn, as far as we can determine, there are no signs of Silver Blood corruption in his blood. He has been attacked, yes, and badly tortured, but we are skeptical that he has actually performed the Caerimonia on a fellow vampire. He hasn't completed the process. Or let me make it clear: he hasn't even begun it."
Bliss started. "But…"
"That's ridiculous," Mimi said flatly. "We all know Dylan killed Aggie. She was fully drained. And he was the only suspect. He even confessed to Bliss."
"He did," Bliss agreed.
Dr. Andrews shook his head. "Perhaps he'd been deluded, or manipulated into thinking he was one of them. Our findings are quite conclusive."
"Forsyth knew this? That Dylan was innocent?" Mimi asked sharply.
The doctor nodded. "I called him as soon as the tests came in."
Mimi laughed a sharp, sarcastic laugh. "If Dylan's not a Silver Blood and he didn't take Aggie, that means he probably wasn't lying when he told me he doesn't know where the jeans she'd borrowed from me are."
"What are you talking about?" Bliss asked, her mind awhirl.
"Never mind." Mimi shrugged. She stood up, and Bliss followed her lead. "Thanks very much for meeting us, doctor. You've been a great help."
Bliss couldn't concentrate. Her fingers shook as she buttoned her coat. She bumped her knee into the table and almost tripped.
Dylan was innocent.
He was not a Silver Blood nor about to become one.
He was a victim.
For months, everyone in the community had believed in Dylan's guilt in the murder of Aggie Carondolet. That he had dispatched the other victims, attacked Schuyler, and mortally wounded Cordelia. He'd told Bliss himself that he'd done those things. And she'd believed him.
But what if he'd just been covering up for someone else? What if he'd just been made to think he had been infected?
And if it hadn't been Dylan who'd done all these things, then who had?
It was evening when Schuyler left the apartment on Perry Street. Her face was still flushed from Jack's kisses, her cheeks and lips a rosy deep red. Like everything in New York, Schuyler was blooming. A kiss for a kiss for a kiss, she thought, still hazy from their night in Vienna. They had just returned and repaired to the hideaway to shower and change.
Jack had left first—slipping out the side door—and she had waited the requisite half hour before attempting an exit herself.
She was smiling softly to herself, trying to calm her wild hair in a sudden wind, when she saw someone she did not expect to see.
He was standing across the street, staring at her with a look of shock and dismay. One look in Oliver's eyes and she knew he knew. But how? How could he have known? They'd been so careful to keep their love a secret.