He had that look on his face, and she knew what it meant. He walked out, set a cup of tea next to her, and sat on one of the plastic chairs.

“Sky, we need to talk.”

“I know what you’re going to say, Ollie, but the answer is no.” She took a sip of the tea. Amazing that even with everything that had happened, Oliver had still managed to buy a tin. He really was a good Conduit.

“Sky, you’re not being reasonable.”

“I’m not? They’re going to put us in jail, or whatever they do to people like us.” Schuyler shrugged. She knew the punishment for evading Conclave justice: a thousand years of Expulsion. Your spirit locked up in a box. But what if she wasn’t immortal? What would they do to her then? And what would happen to Oliver?

“You heard what Jack said. The Conclave has bigger problems than the two of us right now. Besides, maybe this time they’ll believe you. The fire at the H’tel Lambert was all over the papers, and the European Conclave is up in arms’they have witnesses who saw Leviathan! They can’t deny it anymore.”

“Even if they believe me now, they won’t let our actions go unpunished. You know that better than I do,” Schuyler pointed out.

“True, but that was when Charles Force was Regis. No one is leading the Conclave right now. They’re frightened and disorganized. I think it would be safe to go home.”

“Frightened people make the worst judgments,” Schuyler argued. “ I don’t trust an organization that would make policy out of fear. And how about you? You’re a traitor too, you know. What about your parents? They’ll go after them.”

So far Oliver’s family had been left alone, aside from their every move being tracked by the Venators: phones bugged, accounts analyzed. Oliver’s parents told him on one of their rare satellite phone calls that they couldn’t go to Dean & Deluca without feeling they were being watched.

Oliver took a gulp from his big Foster’s can. “I think we can buy them.”

Schuyler stacked her empty cup into her empty bowl. “Excuse me?”

“Pay them off. The Conclave needs money. They’re pretty much broke. My parents have a ton. I can buy my way out of it, I know I can.”

Why was she arguing? Oliver was telling her what she wanted to hear, that they could go home, and yet it frightened her.

“I don’t want to go.”

“You’re lying. You want to go home. I know it. And we are. End of discussion,” Oliver said.

“I’m booking us on the next flight back. I won’t hear anything else.”

Oliver didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening. She fell asleep with a crick in her neck from the tension. Why was she being so stubborn, she wondered as she drifted off to sleep. Oliver only wanted the best for her.

Why are you being so stubborn?

Schuyler opened her eyes.

She was in New York, in her bedroom. The faded Broadway Playbill covers that lined the walls were yellow and curling at the edges.

Her mother was sitting on her bed.

This was a dream. But not the usual one. A dream about her mother. She didn’t think about her much anymore. She hadn’t even had time to say good-bye when they had left New York last year.

It was the first time she’d seen her mother since Allegra had appeared on Corcovado holding a sword.

Allegra looked at Schuyler sternly.

“He is right, you know. The Conduits always are. You cannot live this way. The transformation will kill you without the proper guidance and care. You cannot risk your life like this.”

“But I can’t go home,” Schuyler said. “As much as I want to, I can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“I can’t!” Schuyler rubbed her eyes.

“I know you are afraid of what will happen when you return. But you must face your fear, Schuyler. If you and Abbadon are meant to be, then there is nothing that any-one, not him, not even you, can do to stop it.”

Her mother was right. She didn’t want to go home because then Jack would be so, so, so very close. Jack, who was still free . . . Jack, who had kissed her so passionately . . . who could still be hers. . . . But if she kept away, then she wouldn’t be tempted to see him and betray Oliver.

“You cannot be with someone just because you don’t want to hurt him. You have your own happiness to think about,” Allegra said.

“But even if we’re together, it will only kill Jack,” Schuyler said. “It’s against the Code. And he’ll diminish . . .”

“If he will take the risk to be with you, who are you to tell him what to do with his life? Look at me. Look at how much I risked to be with your father.”

“My father is dead. And you’re in a coma. I practically grew up an orphan,” Schuyler said, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She had never known her father, he had died before she was born. As for Allegra? well, there wasn’t much of a relationship anyone could have with a living corpse, now was there. ‘tell me, Mother, was it worth it? Was your “great” love for my father worth what has happened to your family?”

She couldn’t keep herself from saying such hurtful things. But everything spilled out after years of living alone.

She loved her mother, she did. But she didn’t want an angel who only appeared once in a lifetime to give her some enchanted sword. Schuyler wanted a real parent: one who was there for her when she cried, who encouraged and prodded and annoyed her, a little bit, only because they cared so much. She wanted someone ordinary. Like Oliver’s mom. She had no idea how Mrs. H-P knew where they would be, but every few months a package would arrive at their hotel, and inside would be chocolates and new socks and things they didn’t even know they needed, like flashlights and batteries.

Allegra sighed. “I understand your disappointment in me. I hope that one day you will understand and forgive. There are consequences to every action. It is true, I have deep, deep regrets sometimes. But without your father I would never have had you. I was only with you for such a brief moment of time, but I treasured every moment, with you and your father. I would do it all over again if I had to. So yes. It was worth it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Schuyler said. “No one in their right mind would choose your life.”

“Be that as it may, come home, daughter. I am waiting for you. Come home.”

 CHAPTER 38

Mimi

When Mimi opened her eyes, the auction room had slipped away and she was in the sanctuary, a small room with four walls made of stained glass. Of course, in the glom, it had never been destroyed.

She stood in a circle with the five other members; Forsyth, the seventh, stood in the middle. They were dressed in long black hooded robes. Like a bunch of grim reapers, Mimi thought. So much of the Blue Blood ways had seeped into popular culture, but twisted and stripped of their gravity.

“Welcome, everyone,” Forsyth Llewellyn said, looking very puffed up and self-satisfied. Perfectly natural, Mimi thought, as he was assuming the highest office in the land, as head of a secret government the Red Bloods didn’t even know existed. His work as a senator was completely perfunctory. Mimi heard he had done only superficial work toward helping to resolve the financial crisis that held the country in its grip. Mimi had not been a full-serving member of the Conclave when Lawrence had been elected, but she had a vague idea of the proceedings.

Seymour Corrigan called the roll and started the ceremony. “Since the early days of this world, our Regis holds the soul of the Coven in his heart. But before he is chosen, he must be blessed by the Seven, and so we have gathered here today for the benediction.”

It was a ceremony that went back to ancient Egypt. Except this time there would be no false beard of goat’s hair, no magic scepter, no symbolic leather whip, no crown of ostrich feathers. But the fundamentals were the same.

Warden Corrigan began the tabulation, calling out to the great houses by their names from the Sacred Language.