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."
She felt a mixture of awe and sadness as she followed the hushed crowd through the gleaming marble halls. Awe at the beauty of the place, which had been built by the same architect who had designed the Palace of Versailles, and displayed the same gilded moldings and baroque flourishes, and sadness because the building reminded her of Cordelia. She could sure use some of her grandmother's brusque tenacity right then. Cordelia Van Alen wouldn't think twice about crashing a party to get what she wanted, whereas Schuyler had too many doubts.
The party that evening was called A Thousand and One Nights, in homage to the extravagant Oriental Ball thrown at the residence in 1969. Like that party, tonight's would feature dancing slave girls, half-naked torchbearers, zither players, and Hindu musicians. Of course, there would also be a few modern additions: the entire cast from a Bollywood musical would perform at midnight, and instead of having papier-mache elephants at the entrance, a pair of real Indian elephants had been borrowed from a traveling Thai circus. The pachyderms would be carrying riders under golden canopies.
The newspapers had already nicknamed it The Last Party. The party to end all parties. The party that would mark the end of an era. The last night that the fabled building would house royalty.
Because the H'tel Lambert had been sold. Tomorrow it would no longer be home to the surviving family of Louis- Philippe, the last king of France. Tomorrow the property would belong to a foreign conglomerate. Tomorrow the chateau would fall into the hands of developers who were rich enough to have met its steep asking price. Tomorrow it would be divided up, or renovated, or made into a museum, or whatever the conglomerate had planned for it.
But tonight it was the scene of one last grand Bal des Vampires: Parisian Blue Blood society gathering together one final time in a celebration worthy of Scheherazade.
"Cordelia told me Balzac made a pass at her once, during a ball here. She was a deb then, in an earlier cycle, before she became my grandmother," she told Oliver as they made their way down into the vast basement kitchens, where modern stainless-steel appliances were installed next to medieval hearths.
"She said he was pretty drunk. Can you imagine?"
"One of France's leading lights hitting on an eighteen-year-old girl?" He smirked, pushing open a swinging door. "Totally."
The party was in two hours, and they found the cooks angrily yelling at each other, the whole kitchen in a flurry of hurried preparation. Steam was billowing from giant industrial- size vats, and the place smelled of sizzling butter, smoky and delicious.
"What are you doing here?" the head chef demanded when the wait staff arrived. "Allez, allez, upstairs with you?"
The chef had a brief argument with the staff director, but in the end they agreed that the servers could help the grounds crew, and Schuyler and Oliver were separated.
Schuyler was sent outside, where she found the elephant trainers explaining to the actor and actress playing the King and Queen of Siam how to manage the beasts. Looking to be useful, she set about lighting candles, smoothing down tablecloths, and arranging the floral centerpieces just so. All around her, the courtyard was a cacophony of noise, with performers and acrobats jumping off the roofs, musicians tuning up, and dancing slave girls giggling at the half-naked male models. Finally all the candles were lit. The tables were set. Every thing was ready. One thing was for sure. This was going to be some party.
She found Oliver polishing glassware at his station.
"Remember, meet me at the bottom of the staircase after your first round," Oliver whispered, trying not to attract too much attention from the other servers. "I'll look out for you." They had been ordered by their superiors to turn off their cell phones, not that it mattered since neither of them was able to get a signal. No cell phone towers were allowed on the exclusive part of the island.
Schuyler nodded. They had their assignments: she would be part of the team responsible for welcoming guests with trays of champagne the minute they alighted from the boats. Oliver would be upstairs, working the back bar.
"And, Sky? It'll be all right. She'll have to see you." He smiled. "I'll make sure of it." His bravado endeared him to her even more. Dear, sweet, kind Oliver, who had left everything he loved in New York to save and protect her. She knew he was just as afraid as she was, but he wasn't going to show it.
Tonight's plan was a long shot at best. She didn't even know if the Countess of Paris, the evening's hostess and the soon-to-be-former owner of the H'tel Lambert, would remember her. Much less offer them the refuge they so desperately sought. But she had to ask, for her sake and for Oliver's. And if she ever wanted vengeance on the demon who had killed her grandfather, she had to try.
The European Conclave was her last and only hope.
