She flinched as her stepmother put a hand on her brow. "She's warm," she told her husband. Then she lifted Bliss's shirt and examined her chest. "But I think she's okay."
Forsyth nodded, kneeling to rip Bliss's sheets into strips so that he could tie the comforter holding Jordan closed.
Thinking the pain had come from the emerald stone, Bliss looked down at her chest. It felt as if the stone had burned itself on her skin, branding her. But when she touched it, it was as cool as ever. Her skin underneath was smooth and unharmed. Then she understood. The emerald had saved her from whatever weapon had just tried to pierce her heart.
"She's fine," BobiAnne announced after checking Bliss's pupils and pulse. "Good girl. You gave us quite a scare," she said, tapping her pockets for her Marlboro Lights.
BobiAnne lit a cigarette and sucked on it deeply until it formed a long column of ash. Bliss noticed that her stepmother's face was perfectly made up for a party, and both her parents were dressed in formal dinner clothes.
"What's going on? Why did Jordan attack me?" Bliss asked, finally finding her voice and turning to face her father.
It took a few minutes for him to answer. Forsyth Llwellyn's reputation in the Senate was as of a moderate facilitator, someone who was willing to negotiate with the other side, to bring consensus to warring parties. His smooth Texan charm came in handy during partisan battles in the legislature.
Bliss could see he was turning this charm on her now. "Sweetie, you have to realize that Jordan is different from us," Forsyth said, securing the bundle that held his younger daughter. "She's not one of us."
"One of us? What do you mean?"
"You'll understand in time," he assured her.
"We were forced to take her. We had no choice!" BobiAnne burst out, a bitterness creeping into her voice. "Cordelia Van Alen made us. That meddlesome old witch."
"Jordan is not of this family," Bliss's father added.
"What are you talking about?" she cried. It was getting to be too much. All these secrets and lies, she was sick of it. She was sick of being kept in the dark about everything. "I know all about Allegra!" she declared suddenly, with a look of defiance.
BobiAnne gave her husband a look that said, "I told you so."
"Know what about Allegra?" Forsyth inquired, a look of innocence on his face.
"I found this …" Bliss reached into her pocket and showed them the photograph with the inscription, which she kept close by at all times. "You lied to me. You told me my mother's name was Charlotte Potter. But there never was a Charlotte Potter, was there?"
Forsyth hesitated. "No—but it's not what you think."
"Then tell me."
"It's complicated," he sighed. His eyes wandered over to the panoramic view of the beach, not wanting to meet her gaze. "One day when you're ready, I will tell you. But not yet."
It was maddening. Her father was doing it again: sidestepping her questions, stonewalling her. Shielding her from the truth.
"What about Jordan?" she asked.
"Don't worry. She won't hurt you again," Forsyth said soothingly. "We're going to send her someplace safe."
"You're sending her to Transitions?"
"Something like that," her father said.
"But why?"
"Bliss, honey, she'll be better off," BobiAnne said.
"But …" Bliss was completely confused. Her parents were talking about Jordan as if she were a dog being sent off to the country. They talked about her like she didn't matter.
But Bliss had to admit to herself that the strange family dynamics weren't entirely new. She thought about how BobiAnne never spoke lovingly of Jordan, had always made it clear that she preferred Bliss, who wasn't even her real child. How her father had always kept an arm's-length distance from his odd younger daughter.
When Bliss was younger she'd relished her parents' indifference to her younger sister. Now she realized it was pathological.
Her parents hated Jordan.
They always had.
"That was the hotel," Oliver explained, returning to the table. "Someone's checked out, and a room's opened up. They asked me if I wanted to take it. So you've got a room," he told Schuyler, his face neutral.
"Thanks," she said, trying to make her voice sound as normal as possible, even if there was a hole where her heart should be. But she forced all thoughts of Jack out of her head; later…she would mourn later.
"So why is the Conclave here, Lawrence?" Oliver asked. "Is it because of Leviathan?"
"The Conclave is here?" Lawrence asked sharply.
"Oh! I forgot to mention it—yeah. They're here. All of them," Schuyler said. "I think they arrived last night."
Lawrence mulled over this latest piece of information while draining his drink. As if she had vampire ability of her own, the waitress reappeared with another cocktail at his elbow. "More virgin coladas?" she asked, motioning to the half-empty glasses filled with melting yellow goo.
"Make mine a whiskey," Oliver coughed.
"Make that two," Schuyler quickly added, thinking she would risk her grandfather's censure later. "Who's Leviathan?" she asked, turning to Oliver. Around them the bar was starting to fill up with sunburned tourists coming in for happy hour, and a samba band began to play a rousing set.
"If you'd done your reading, Granddaughter, you would know the answer to that question," Lawrence replied.
"Leviathan's a demon." Oliver explained.
"One of the mightiest Silver Bloods of all time," Lawrence said. "The brother of the Dark Prince himself. His second-in-command."
Schuyler shuddered. "But what's he got to do with anything?" She wished the music weren't so loud. The bright, happy sound was in stark contrast to the dark subject of their conversation.
"Corcovado is Leviathan's prison," Lawrence replied. "It is the only place on earth that could hold him. He was too strong to be slain, and was too rooted in the earth to be sent back to hell. When he was captured he was imprisoned in rock underneath the Statue of the Redeemer. Your own mother took him down."
So that's what Lawrence was keeping from her the night he left. Protecting her from the truth and not telling her everything about Corcovado. Leviathan. That visceral hatred she'd felt the day of the fashion show. If she'd paid more attention to her books she could have figured it out sooner. But she'd been too distracted…
"Yes. That was him that evening of the earthquake," Lawrence confirmed. "He is the reason Corcovado is guarded by the Venator elite. We have always kept a strong presence here."
"Now I get it," Schuyler said. "Why you came down here, I mean."
Lawrence nodded. "When Kingsley first brought news of the strange disappearances in Rio, I was a bit unnerved. After the earthquake, I realized I would have to take matters into my own hands and make certain Corcovado remained fortified. I vowed I would not leave the city until I was sure that the threat—if there was one—was completely disarmed.
"Then a few weeks ago, the Venators confirmed that Yana, the young vampire who'd been missing, had simply run off for a beach vacation with her boyfriend, just as her mother had thought. Meanwhile Kingsley's team brought in Alfonso Almeida, the missing patriarch of the South American clan, after an extensive search in the Andes. Aside from frostbite and an inability to read a map, he was fine.
"So as I told you in my messages, everything was secure. There was no breaking."
"Leviathan?" Oliver asked.
"Trapped for eternity as far as I could see," Lawrence said dismissively.
"But the sending…the earthquake," Schuyler argued, trying to talk over the deafening sound of the crowd and the relentless samba drums.
"Mere symptoms in his struggle to break free of his chains. Nothing Leviathan has tried before. But it is of no use. Corcovado will hold forever." He rapped the table with his glass, as if to stress his point.