"I thought you'd forgotten."
Schuyler smiled as she removed her raincoat and hung it on the hook. She had just entered the apartment with her key. A key she kept on a silk ribbon around her neck. She never took it off, for fear that it would be stolen. She'd entered the building in the normal fashion. Had a polite word with the guard. Headed up in the elevator, exchanging pleasantries with the neighbors. Cooed at their baby bundled inside a fleece-lined thousand-dollar stroller. Pretended she was just like them. No more vampire tricks for one evening.
"Have you been waiting long?" she asked.
"I just got here."
He was standing against a column, his arms crossed in front of him. He was still wearing the same white shirt from that morning, a little crumpled at the end of the day, and he had loosened his tie, letting it fall to the side. But he was still golden and gorgeous. His sea green eyes danced with amusement and desire. Jack Force. The boy she had been waiting to see all evening. The boy she had been waiting for all her life.
She wanted to run to him - to skip, giggling into his arms - but she savored the way he was looking at her. She could drown in the intensity of his gaze. And she had learned a little about seduction in the last few weeks they had been together.
Had learned that it was sweeter when she made him wait.
So she took her time, removed her shoes, brushed her bare feet on the carpet, and let him watch her.
Outside of this place, they could be nothing to each other. He would not even allow himself to look at her. He could not afford it. So she wanted him to enjoy himself, to look at her as much as he liked.
"Get over here," he growled.
And then, at last, she ran - leaped into his arms, and together they crashed against the wall in a tight embrace. He lifted her with graceful ease, covering her body with kisses.
She tightened her legs around his torso and bent over, brushing his cheek with the tendrils of her hair.
Jack.
She felt liquid in his arms. Pressed against him, his heart beating wildly in time with hers. When they kissed, she closed her eyes and saw a million colors bursting in the air, glorious and alive. He smelled earthy and lush, warm and brutish. It had been a surprise: she'd assumed he would smell like ice - like nothing - and she liked that he smelled coarse and real. He was not a dream.
She knew that what they were doing was wrong. Lawrence had warned her that vampire bonds should not be broken. Jack was sworn to another. She had promised herself to stop, but she had also promised Jack she would always be there for him. They were so happy together. They belonged to each other. Yet they never spoke about the past or the future. Only this existed, this little bubble they'd made, this little secret. And who knew how long they had?
When she was in his arms, she felt sorry for Mimi.
It had started right after she'd settled into that palace of gilt and marble the Forces called home. The place was part fortress and part Versailles. There were rooms and anterooms filled with magnificent antiques polished and theatrically lit on display. Oceans of expensive fabric swathed the windows, and a silent crew of servants moved around the house, dusting, cleaning, offering its occupants tea or coffee on silver service trays.
She had sat on the princess bed in her designated room, kicking at the battered trunk that was the only remnant of home she'd allowed herself to bring. Lawrence had promised that he would get her out somehow, that she would return to her rightful home soon. He knew Charles would not allow him to have contact with her, so they had agreed they would use Oliver as a (she smiled a little) conduit between them.
Lawrence had driven her to the Forces' town house himself. Had helped carry her bags to the front door, where a gloved butler took over. Too soon, her grandfather had left, and Schuyler was alone again.
Charles had given her a quick tour of the house: the sparkling Olympic-size pool in the basement, tennis courts on the roof, the gym, the sauna, the Picasso room (so called because it contained one of the two mural-size black-and-white studies of the masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). He'd told her to make herself comfortable, to avail herself of everything in the kitchen. Then he'd laid down his rules. Schuyler had been too angry and annoyed to do more than dumbly nod at everything.
So she'd decided to kick her trunk. Stupid trunk. Stupid trunk with the broken lock. Stupid ugly trunk that was one of the few things she'd kept that her mother had owned. It was an old Louis Vuitton traveling valise, the kind that, when stood upright and opened, revealed a mini wardrobe. She kicked it again.
There was a soft knock on the door, and then the door was pushed open.
"Do you think you could...um...keep it down a bit? I'm trying to read," Jack said, looking bemused.
"Oh! Sorry." She stopped kicking the trunk. She'd wondered when she'd see her cousins. The complicated ties of vampire families still eluded her, but she knew that she and Jack weren't technically blood-related, even though Charles was her uncle. Someday she'd have to ask Lawrence how it all shook down. "What are you reading?"
"Camus," he said, holding up a copy of The Stranger. "Have you read it?"
"No, but I like The Cure song. You know, the one that's based on that book?"
He shook his head. "Nope."
"I think it's on Three Imaginary Boys. Their first album. Robert Smith, he's a big reader too. Probably an existentialist like you," she teased.
Jack leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, regarding her thoughtfully. "You hate it here, don't you?"
"Does it show that much?" Schuyler asked, pulling the long sleeves of her sweater over her hands.
He chuckled. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry."
He put the book down on a vanity table. "It's not so bad."
"Really? What's good about it?"
"Well, for one, I'm here," he said, coming over to sit next to her on the bed. He picked up a tennis ball that had rolled out of her trunk. She'd brought it to practice her vampire lessons. Lawrence wanted her to concentrate on the ability to move objects in the air, something she had yet to master. Jack threw it in the air, catching it deftly. Then he put it down. "Unless, you know, you want me to go."
He was sitting so close to her. She remembered how she'd run to him the first night she was attacked, how passionate he'd been about discovering the truth about Croatan, and then how deeply he'd disappointed her when he'd brushed her aside. And then she remembered something else. Something she couldn't stop thinking about ever since she'd drawn Mimi's blood and absorbed her memories.
"You were the one - that night of the masquerade ball - it was you who..." Schuyler whispered, and in answer to her question, he kissed her. The kiss was the third one they'd exchanged (she kept count), and as he breathed into her and cupped her face in his broad hands, everything in her life up until then seemed secondary and ordinary.
There was nothing to live for but this pure, heavenly sensation. The first time they'd kissed, she had glimpsed Jack's memories of a girl who looked like her but was not her. The second time, she'd had no idea he was the one behind the mask, but this time it was just the two of them. Jack wasn't kissing someone he thought he'd known before, and Schuyler wasn't kissing someone she didn't know. They were simply kissing each other.
"Jaaaack! Jaaaaack!"
"Mimi," Jack said. He disappeared so fast out of the room it was as if he had turned invisible.
When Mimi poked her head into Schuyler's room, she was sitting by herself kicking the trunk again. "Oh. You. Have you seen Jack?"
Schuyler shook her head.
"By the way, don't get too comfortable around here. I have no idea why Father wants a little creep like you around, but here's some advice: keep out of my way."
Later that night, Schuyler had received two different welcome presents: someone had short-sheeted her bed, and there was a book slipped under her door. A copy of The Plague by Albert Camus. Inside the book was an envelope, and inside the envelope, there was a key.
From then on, Jack never acknowledged her presence at the house or at school. But he had more than made up for it later.
"Where'd you get this?" Jack asked, tracing a cut on her forehead with a light finger. They were lying on the thick shag carpet, gazing at the remnants of the fire.
"Oh. It's nothing. Banged my head," Schuyler said. She didn't want to tell him about Dylan just yet. "Were you followed?"
"Yes. But I made sure she left before I got here," he said. His voice was sleepy, and she nestled in the crook of his arm. The streetlights were the only light in the room, but she could see him clearly in the dark. His perfect profile, as if sculpted in marble, glowed like a candle. "You?"
"No."
In reality she had not checked. She had been too busy talking Oliver into leaving. Too busy and too excited. Because she had known, hadn't she? She had known Jack would be there, waiting for her, as she had waited for him earlier.
But yes, next time she would be more careful. They would both have to be.