“You!” she spat, the minute she saw Deming enter the windowless room. “What do you want? What’s this all about? They said I had to come down to answer some questions. You’re a freaking Venator? What is this?”
“I want to talk about Victoria Taylor,” Deming replied coolly. She had ditched the fashion plate schoolgirl attire and was dressed in regulation Venator black. For the first time since arriving in New York, Deming felt like herself again. It was a relief to stop wearing the disguise. She’d spent the weekend pulling files and putting her case together. She was ready.
“What about Victoria?” Piper asked nervously.
Deming turned to the television screen on the wall, and hit play. “Have you seen this video?” she asked.
“Sure, it’s all over the Internet. Some kind of vampire movie from the Conspiracy.”
“It’s not a movie trailer. It’s real. And that’s Victoria in the video. Here’s another. Look familiar?” Deming played the video of Victoria’s burning and tried not to flinch, but it was hard to watch.
The color drained from Piper’s face, and she pressed her hands to her eyes. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Is she—oh my God—is that really . . . no . . . no. No, Victoria, no. She’s supposed to be at Le Rosey . . . what happened . . . oh my God . . .”
Deming cut her off. The girl was a good actress, she had to hand it to her, but she wasn’t buying one second of it. “The night of Jamie Kip’s party, you found out that your best friend was dating your ex-boyfriend.”
“What are you talking about?” Piper sobbed, her eyes and nose bright red. “Victoria is dead? Oh my God. What happened? Who did this to her?”
Deming felt a moment of pity, but she had seen this all before—suspects who could not admit to the horror of their crime, who honestly believed in their hearts that they had never harmed their loved ones. She continued her relentless interrogation. “Victoria came between the two of you, and you wanted to punish her. You wanted her dead, and you covered it up with a conspiracy threat to disguise the real reason. To hide your motive.”
When she had gone over Piper’s file again, Deming noticed that Piper was a junior member of the Conspiracy. As such, she had insider knowledge on the workings of the subcommittee; she knew which buttons to push and how to create the illusion of a real security breach.
“I don’t understand,” Piper whimpered. “Victoria . . . why . . . oh God, why . . . ?”
“Why is right. Why did you want her dead? Because she came between the most sacred relationship you had in the world. Because you and Bryce Cutting are bondmates.”
When it came down to it, everything always went back to the bond. Being bondless herself, Deming could never quite understand what the fuss was about. From what she could see, the bond just made everything more complicated.
This was just like the kidnapping in Shanghai, where instead of exposure, money was used as a smoke screen. The vampire who had taken Liling was convinced he was her bondmate, and wanted to hurt her for falling in love with someone else. He’d meant to take the Code into his own hands. Deming had saved the girl just in time. Good thing too, since in the end, the boy had been mistaken. There was no bond between them and there never had been.
Some vampires thought the bond was all about love stories and romance. Souls calling out to each other through the centuries. But Deming knew nothing was ever that simple. Not in the matters of the heart and the bond. Victoria Taylor wasn’t the first to suffer because of a bond, and she would not be the last.
After the shattering silence, Piper finally spoke. “Took you long enough to figure that out, huh?” she said bitterly, wiping away her tears. “That Bryce was mine. You sure didn’t care about that when you were hooking up with him at Rufus’s party.”
Deming blushed. “That isn’t important.”
“No? Well how about this, Venator? I don’t know where you got the stupid idea that Victoria ‘stole’ Bryce from me, and I killed her. You’re absolutely wrong on that count. Victoria was my friend. She was the best friend I ever had. She never came between us. Ask anyone in school. Victoria didn’t even like Bryce. She couldn’t believe he was my vampire twin. ‘Not that douche,’ were her words. Yeah, it pissed me off. But it pissed me off more that the night of Jamie’s party, Bryce wouldn’t acknowledge that we had found each other. He wanted more space, he said. He wanted more time, to be sure. I was so angry at him, and Vix was trying to calm me down, so I lashed out at her. But Vix was a real friend. In fact, no one has ever come between Bryce and me but you, you bondless freak. Get me a blood trial. Scan my freaking subconscious. I’m telling the truth.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The Second Victim
Deming was shaking when she left the interrogation room. Ted Lennox looked at her with sympathy. “It’s clear as day in the glom.”
“I know.” She collapsed on the nearest chair. She’d seen it too, more clearly than they, who’d needed to be in the twilight world to see Piper’s affectus.
She had been so sure—Victoria going after Bryce explained everything—nothing was more anathema in the Blue Blood community than someone who came between the bond. Nothing. Just look at the Force twins.
When she’d asked him about Piper, Bryce Cutting had looked guilty and felt guilty and was guilty because he knew he was cheating on his bondmate. Bringing up Piper’s name while he was hooking up with Deming had spooked him. Bryce had reacted to Piper’s name, sure, but not for the reason Deming had believed.
Deming had been so certain of her talent for reading the affectus, she had immediately jumped to the conclusion that Piper was the murderer, that the threat of losing the bond had driven her to hatch an elaborate plot that entailed the murder of her best friend. She couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried.
Sam Lennox popped out of the glom and gripped her shoulder. “Sorry. It was a good guess, though.”
A good guess but not good enough. Not the truth. She was back to the beginning. Back where she had started. In the dark. Nowhere. The Lennox brothers were being kind, but their disappointment said it all.
“By the way, as soon as you can, the Regent wants to see you in her office,” Sam said quietly.
When she arrived at headquarters, Deming was ushered into a small waiting room. She was made to wait for a few hours, with nothing but the drone of FNN on the television screen and old magazines to keep her company. Finally Mimi’s secretary arrived. “She’s ready for you now, dear,” Doris said.
Deming entered the office and took a seat across from the massive desk. The Regent was certainly in a foul mood. The Venator thought she had never seen a person with a blacker affectus, and steeled herself for a tongue-lashing.
But after a heavy silence, Mimi only sighed. “You’re very lucky. Piper’s so traumatized from learning about Victoria’s death that the Crandalls have decided not to file a complaint.”
“I assume complete responsibility. If you’d like me to resign . . .” Deming said, looking squarely at her superior with her head held high. What happened that morning was a blow to her ego, but she had no time for self-pity. She felt a huge amount of shame, and promised herself she would make it up to Piper by bringing Victoria’s real murderer to justice.
“No. I don’t accept. We need you more than ever. While you were breaking down your suspect, this arrived in my in-box.” Mimi flipped her screen around so Deming could watch. This time, the video was much shorter. It was just a freeze frame of a bound and shackled vampire. But the message was the same. On the eve of the crescent moon, watch the vampire burn.
“Who is it?” Deming asked, stoic in the face of this new disaster.
“Stuart Rhodes. Duchesne senior. He’s been missing since Rufus King’s party in Connecticut. Saturday night. You were there, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” Deming reviewed her memories from that evening, but she had been so busy with Bryce she hadn’t paid attention to anyone else, hadn’t noticed anything odd. Stuart Rhodes. Who was Stuart
Rhodes? He wasn’t part of the in-crowd. But it had been a tasting party, which meant every Blue Blood at Duchesne was usually invited. Deming had a vague memory of a small, quiet boy standing to the side, watching everyone from behind glass-bottom lenses.
“Anyway, it’s the same thing. Just like Victoria’s video,” Mimi said.
“Is there any link between Victoria Taylor and Stuart Rhodes?”
“As far I know, none. Stuart is not . . . Well, let’s just say he had his own friends,” Mimi said delicately.
“You think this is random, then?”
The Regent shrugged. “Isn’t that for you to find out? Anyway, just like before, his location has been masked. We can’t find him in the glom.”
“This thing’s on the Internet?” she asked, motioning to the screen.
Mimi nodded. “Yes, but the Conspiracy’s working to add the Suck movie tagline on it. That should be up within an hour.”
“Good, that takes care of exposure.”
“But it doesn’t help us find our victim,” Mimi pointed out. “You heard the video, and this time we only have three days until the next crescent moon. I’ve managed to keep the Conclave unaware of this new hostage for now. I can’t take the wards down again; not that it helped us any last time. So start doing what I brought you here to do. You’d better come up with something, Chen! Find me my killer! Find Stuart! Or I swear to God when the Coven dies, I’ll take you down with me.” The Regent did not need the help of the glom to look like a wrathful Angel of Death just then.
But Deming remained unperturbed in her seat. “Understood.”
“You seem awfully confident,” Mimi huffed. “What are you planning?”
“What I should’ve done the minute I arrived in New York. A DeathWalk.”
THIRTY-SIX
Background Checks
The next morning the Lennox brothers listened intently as Deming outlined what they would need to help her prepare for the mission. After yesterday’s humiliation she had believed she would never be able to work in New York again, that her fellow Venators would demand she be taken off the case and shipped back directly to China. Instead the brothers were being extraordinarily understanding. It happened all the time, they assured her. Venator work was not infallible. They made mistakes. What was important was that they kept trying.
The plan was for the three of them to enter the glom together, with Sam keeping an eye out for danger and staying at the top level, while Ted would follow her as far as he could into the spirit trail, stopping just below the subconscious layer. Once Deming flatlined she would be able to go underneath the masking spell, locate Stuart, and pull his body out of the real world and into the glom, where the boys would be waiting to help, and then the four of them would jump out together.
“Still sounds risky,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Once you’re in the protoconscious, you’re on your own, and you might not be able to get back into your body in time.”
“Yes, technically I’ll be dead for five minutes and my heart will stop beating. But five minutes out here is like five hours in the glom. I’ll have plenty of time.”
“It’s your call.”
Deming nodded. “We’ll do it tomorrow night. I need a day to get ready.”
To prepare for a DeathWalk she had to familiarize herself with every aspect of her victims’ current and past incarnations. Given the immortal history of the Blue Bloods, one could never predict what one might find in a DeathWalk, and it was best to be prepared. She had a hunch Stuart Rhodes was not a random victim even though he had no apparent link to Victoria Taylor. From her innumerable cycles as a Truth Seeker, Deming knew that things were rarely as they seemed, and while it might appear on the surface that Victoria Taylor and Stuart Rhodes had no connection to each other, the reality was usually a lot more complicated.
Stuart Rhodes’s cycle mother was out of the county, and Deming left a message with her assistant to call her back as soon as Mrs. Rhodes was able. In the meantime, Victoria Taylor’s cycle mother agreed to meet Deming for a cup of coffee that afternoon. Even if there was nothing more she could do for Victoria, Deming thought maybe the cycle parents would know something that might help her current case, to see if there was any connection between the two victims.
She met Gertrude Taylor at the MOMA café that afternoon. Gertrude was one of the museum’s premier trustees, a hard-working Committee member. The Taylors had been told of Victoria’s demise but had been denied the ability to grieve, as the Regent had insisted on keeping everything classified until the case was solved. According to the Venator reports, the Taylors were hands-off parents who barely knew their daughter, so Deming did not know what to expect.
“How lovely to meet you.” Gertrude smiled and took a seat at the bustling café.
“Thanks for meeting me, Mrs. Taylor.”
“Oh, it’s Gertrude, and I know you’re not a student at Duchesne, really. You’re the Venator they brought in to find out who did this to Victoria, yes?”
“I aim to.” Deming nodded.
“Good.” Gertrude stirred her green tea. Up close, Deming could see the deep lines around her eyes. While the woman gave every outward indication of serenity and contentment, her face bore a shadow of sorrows that no amount of plastic surgery or vampire genes could mask. The reports were wrong. This woman was clearly suffering. “Victoria was our first. We’ve never been asked to carry a spirit before. Our names came up in the House of Records and we were thrilled. Victoria was the most sweet-tempered child. She always had so many friends. I can’t imagine how anyone would want to harm her, especially someone who knew her.”
“What about an earlier cycle? Was there anything in her past that might indicate . . . a grudge? A weakness? Anything?”
“I don’t recall.”
Deming took out her notepad. “When was her last incarnation? Did she tell you?”
“Let me see. I think when the Transformation began and Victoria started having the blood memories, she said she believed she was last in cycle in Florence, around the fifteenth century or so—she remembered being in Michelangelo’s studio. The House of Records would have her file, I should think. Sometimes the blood memory isn’t so reliable at her age.”
“Thanks very much, you’ve been really helpful.”
“No, thank you. The Conclave has kept us in the dark about all this, but we’re very glad to hear they’ve put someone of your caliber in charge.” Gertrude Taylor rose from the table and shook Deming’s hand, her eyes bright with tears. For a moment she did not look like an intimidating society matron or a fallen angel, merely a mother mourning her daughter.
* * *
A few hours later, Stuart Rhodes’s mother finally returned Deming’s call. The Rhodeses were anthropologists, and currently in Egypt for a dig. From reading Stuart’s file, Deming observed that he had practically raised himself. Once the Transformation set in, he was barely supervised.
Amelia Rhodes did not seem particularly distraught over her son’s disappearance. “Sounds as if it’s just some kind of prank, doesn’t it?” she asked over the roar of helicopters. “I spoke to Stuart just a few days ago. He was going to some party and was pretty excited about it. He doesn’t get invited out much, you know.”
“I’m afraid it’s not a prank, ma’am. The Regent has given me permission to inform you that what has happened to Stuart happened to another student at Duchesne, another vampire in our community.” Deming filled her in on the gory details. “Stuart is in grave danger.”
“Well, what do you want us to do? We didn’t ask for this.”
“You didn’t petition the House of Records for a cycle birthing?” Deming asked.
“A long time ago. In my past life I thought I should try to experience being a mother. By the time they got around to my number, I was bored of the idea.”
“If there’s anything you can tell us about him, it would be helpful in saving his life. Do you remember if he was beginning to have any indication of his past i
ncarnations? Of when he was in cycle last?”
“He did mention it, but I can’t remember. Somewhere in Europe, maybe? I’m sorry. You will find him, won’t you? Before they burn him like they did this poor girl? I have become quite fond of the boy. With our work, his father and I don’t get to see him that often, but we do miss him.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The House of Records
That night Deming studied her case files again, paying close attention to the notes on the obscure message the Venators had found in the original video. She had dismissed it as a mere distraction at first but now she took a second look. The head of the Repository believed they had cracked the code and that the three images—Lucifer’s sigil, the sheep, which stood for humanity, and the symbol for union—indicated that the Morningstar was in league with Red Bloods. If so, it meant that whoever had made the video and had taken the hostages was part of this movement. A human in service to Croatan? It was simply unheard of, which was why she had ignored it as a diversion. To think that it might be real unsettled the usually stoic Venator.
Before sunrise, she crept into Duchesne to pick up her lucky jade turtle from her locker—it was a silly superstition but she didn’t want to do a DeathWalk without it. Her twin had bought them the tiny figurines in a Hong Kong market, and Deming had made it a habit to bring the little guy wherever she went. She wanted to slip in and out without anyone noticing or asking any questions. With the early hour, the school was empty save for the janitors, so she was surprised to bump into Paul Rayburn walking out of the third-floor library with a cart of books. The junior lockers were located right across from the library doors.
“Paul, hey,” she said.
“Oh hey,” he said, his affectus turning the usual shade of orange in her presence.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m a library aide. Part of the work study program,” Paul said, jangling keys. “I try to get my work done before school. It’s better than staying late.” He looked sleepy and tired, and Deming was moved by how much effort being a student at Duchesne must have cost him. It couldn’t be easy to be poor around such wealth.