«Mmm. Nice. You don't use the hotel shampoo from the airport Hilton, do you? This is the good stuff,» he purred. «But is it the conditioner that makes it so soft and silky?»
«Shut up . . . just?»
«Hold on. Save your speech for the after-party. I see our guy. You ready?» Kingsley interrupted, his voice serious now, controlled.
«Like a shot.» Mimi nodded, all business as well. She saw their witness, the reason they were a few miles outside of Lincoln, Nebraska (that was it! She remembered now) in the first place. A former frat boy, probably just shy of thirty, with a baby beer gut and the beginnings of middle-age «carb face» He was the type of guy who looked like he'd played cornerback in high school, but whose pounds of muscle had turned to fat after a few years behind a desk.
«Good, because this is not going to be easy,» Kingsley warned. «Okay, the boys will bring him to that corner booth and we'll follow. Square him off and then go. No one will notice as long as we don't get up. Waitress won't even bother to come around.»
It was easier and more painless to enter the mind of another during REM sleep, but they didn't have the luxury of waiting until their suspect had drifted off to la-la land.
Instead they planned to barge into his subconscious with no warning and no consideration. Better that way: there would be no place for him to hide. No time to prepare. They wanted the unadulterated truth, and this time they were going to get it.
The Venators were truth-tellers, skilled in the ability to decipher dreams and access memories. While only a bloodletting would allow them to tell true memory from false, there were other, quicker ways to discriminate fact from fiction without having to resort to the Sacred Kiss. Mimi learned that the Committee only consented to the blood trial when a most grievous charge had been levied, as in her case. Otherwise, the practice of memory hunting, venatio, while not infallible, was acceptable for their purposes. Mimi had been given a crash course in Venator training before joining up. It helped that she had been one in previous lifetimes. Once she had relearned the basics, it was just like riding a bike, her core memories kicked in and the whole exercise became second nature.
Mimi watched as Sam and Ted Lennox, the twin brothers who rounded out their Venator team, led their witness to a dark corner booth. They had been plying him with pitcher after pitcher of beer at the bar. Mr. Glory Days probably thought he'd just made a couple of new friends. As soon as they sat down, Kingsley slipped into the opposite bench, Mimi right next to him.
«Hey, buddy, remember us?» he asked.
«Huh?» The guy was awake, but drunk and drowsy. Mimi felt a twinge of pity. He had no idea what was about to happen.
«I'm sure you remember her,» Kingsley said, guiding the witness to lock eyes with Mimi.
Mimi held Frat Boy with her shoulder, and for all anyone in the real world knew, the dude was just entranced with the pretty blonde, staring deep into her green eyes.
«Now,» Kingsley ordered.
Without a moment to spare, the four Venators stepped into the glom, taking the witness with them. It was as easy as slipping down the rabbit hole.
CHAPTER 3
Bliss
When she woke up that morning, the first thing that came to mind was that the bright white shutters looked familiar. Why did they look familiar? No. That wasn't right. That wasn't the right question to ask. She was getting ahead of herself again. It happened. But now she had to concentrate. Every day she had to ask herself three very important questions, and that wasn't one of them.
The first question she had to ask herself was, What is my name? She couldn't remember.
It was like trying to decipher a scribble on a sheet of paper. She knew what it was supposed to say, but she couldn't make out the handwriting. Like having something just out of reach, behind a closed door, and she had lost the key. Or like waking up blind. She groped wildly in the dark and tried not to panic.
«What is my name?»
Her name. She had to remember her name. Otherwise . . . otherwise . . . she didn't want to think about it.
Once upon a time there was a girl named . . . «
Once upon a time there was a girl named . . .
She had an unusual name. She knew that much. It wasn't the kind of name that you found on ceramic coffee mugs at airport gift shops or emblazoned on mini-license plate souvenirs you could hang on your bedroom door after you returned from Disneyland. Her name was pretty and unusual and had meaning. Something that meant snow or breath or joy or happiness or . . .
Bliss. Yes. That was it. Bliss Llewellyn. That was her name! She'd remembered! She hugged it to herself as tight as she could. Her name. Her self. As long as she could remember who she was, she was okay. She wouldn't go crazy. At least not today.
But it was hard. It was so, so hard because now there was the Visitor to consider. The Visitor who was in her, who was her, for all intents and purposes. The Visitor who answered to her name. She called him the Visitor because it made it easier for her to believe that her situation would be temporary. What did visitors do, after all? They left.
Bliss wondered, were you still you if someone else made the decisions? Spoke in your voice? Walked with your legs? Used your hands to bring death to the person you loved the most?
She shuddered. A sudden unbidden memory came to her. A black-haired boy lying limp in her arms. Who was that? The answer was somewhere, but she would have to dig for it. The image faded. Hopefully she would remember later. Right now she had to move on to the second question. Where am I?
The shutters. The shutters were a clue. It was enough that she was able to see something. It happened so rarely now. Most of the time she woke up in darkness. She concentrated on the shutters. They were wooden and painted white. Charming in a way, something that recalled a farmhouse or an English cottage, except they were too bright, too shiny and perfect. More like Martha Stewart's idea of an English cottage than a real one. Ah. No wonder they looked familiar.
Bliss knew where she was now. If she could still smile, she would have. The Hamptons. She was in her Hamptons house. They were in Cotswold. Bobi Anne had named the house. Bobi Anne? Bliss saw an image of a tall, lanky woman wearing too much makeup and gargantuan jewelry. She could even smell her stepmother's noxious perfume. Everything was coming back now, and coming back fast.
One summer during a dinner party at a famous designer's house, Bobi Anne had learned that all the great houses in the area had names. Owners dubbed their homes «Mandalay? or «Oak Valley? according to how pretentious they were. Bliss had suggested they name theirs Dune House for the large sand dune at the beachfront edge of the property. But Bobi Anne had other ideas. «Cotswold.» The woman had never even been to England.
Okay. Bliss was relieved. She'd figured out where she was, but it didn't make sense.
What was she doing in the Hamptons?
She was a stranger in her own life, a tourist in her own body. If someone had asked her what it was like, Bliss would have explained it this way: it's like you're driving a car, but you're sitting in the backseat. The car is driving itself, and you're not in control. But it's your car, at least you think it is. It used to be yours, anyway.
Or like being in a movie. The movie is your life, but you don't star in it anymore. Someone else is kissing the handsome lead and making the dramatic monologues. You're just watching. Bliss was an observer of her own life. She was not Bliss anymore, but simply the memory of the Bliss that had been.
Sometimes she wasn't even sure that she had ever really existed.
CHAPTER 4
Schuyler
The bus pulled to a stop up past the gates, and the group silently filed out. Schuyler noticed that even the most jaded of her coworkers, a rather haughty collection of moonlighting actors and actresses along with a smug culinary student or two, were looking around in amazement. The building and its immaculate grounds were as opulent and intimidating as the Louvre, except someone still lived here. It was a home, not a national monument. The H'tel Lambert had been closed to the public for much of its history. Only a vaunted few had been welcomed inside its massive doors. The rest of the world could leaf through pictures of it in books. Or enter as catering staff .
As they walked past the burbling fountains, Oliver nudged her. «All right?» he asked in French. One more reason to be thankful for the Duchesne School. Years of mandatory foreign language requirements meant they had been able to pass for two restaurant workers from Marseille at the job interview, although their textbook accents were in danger of giving them away at any time.
«You look worried. What's wrong?»
«Nothing. I was just thinking about the investigation again,, Schuyler said as they made their way toward the service entrance located at the back of the house. She remembered that terrible day at the Repository, when she'd been accused so unjustly. «How could they have believed that of me?»
«Don't waste any more time on it. It's not going to change anything,» Oliver said firmly. «What happened on Corcovado was terrible, and it wasn't your fault.»
Schuyler nodded, blinking back the tears that came whenever she thought of that day. Oliver was right as always. She was wasting energy wishing for another outcome. What was past was past. They had to focus on the present.
«Isn't this place beautiful?» she said. Then, whispering so no one would hear, «Cordelia brought me here a couple of times, when she came for meetings with Prince Henri. We stayed in the guest apartments in the east wing. Remind me to show you the Hercules galleries and the Polish library. They have Chopin's piano.»