Мелисса де ла Круз: Masquerade

"I say shaft them at the back table with all the other fringe families!" BobiAnne Llewellyn declared with her forceful Texan bray. She made a joking slash across her neck, if only to display the thirty-carat diamond on her ring finger. BobiAnne Llewellyn was the second and much younger wife of Forsyth Llewellyn, who currently served as junior senator for New York.

Several ladies seated around Priscilla DuPont shuddered ever so slightly at the suggestion, even if they privately agreed with it. BobiAnne's crass way of putting it was distinctly not the Blue Blood way of doing things.

Mimi noticed her friend Bliss Llewellyn look up at the sound of her stepmother's grating voice. Bliss was one of The Committee's newest members, and her face had turned as red as her curls when she'd heard BobiAnne's guttural laugh boom across the room.

"Perhaps we can reach a compromise," Priscilla noted in her gracious manner. "We will explain to Sloane that they shall not sit at the head table this year, seeing as they are still in mourning and we respect their grief. We will place the Van Alen girl at their table as well. They cannot argue with that, seeing as they were great friends of Cordelia's, and, as her granddaughter, she too has suffered a loss.”

Speaking of Schuyler—where was that little wretch? Not that it was Mimi's problem, but it annoyed her that Schuyler hadn't even bothered to show up for today's Committee meeting.

She'd heard someone say that Schuyler and her human sidekick, Oliver, had gone to Venice, of all places. Venice? What the hell were they doing in Venice? Mimi wrinkled her nose. If one had to abscond to Italy, wasn't the shopping in Rome and Milan better? Venice was just wet and stinky, in Mimi's opinion. And how were they able to get permission from the school to do so?

Duschene did not look kindly upon self-scheduled school vacations even the Forces had been reprimanded when they had taken the twins out of school last February for a ski vacation.

The school had already allocated an official "ski week" in March on the calendar that all families were supposed to follow. But tell that to the Forces, who maintained that the powder on Aspen Mountain in March was deeply inferior to February's snowfall.

Mimi threw a silk rose across the table at her brother, Jack, who was involved in a lively discussion with his subcommittee over security issues, blueprints of the St. Regis ballroom spread out in front of them.

The rose fell into his lap, and he looked up, startled. Mimi grinned.

Jack colored a bit, but returned her smile with a dazzling one of his own. The sun shone through the stained-glass windows, framing his handsome face with a golden glow.

Mimi thought she would never get tired of looking at him: it was almost as gratifying as looking at her own reflection. She was glad that after the truth of Schuyler's heritage—a half blood! Practically Abomination!—had been revealed, things between the two of them had gone back to normal. What passed for normal around the Force twins, anyway.

Hey handsome, Mimi sent.

What's up? Jack replied, without speaking.

Just thinking of you.

Jack's smile deepened, and he threw the rose back at his sister so that it landed in her lap.

Mimi tucked it behind her ear and fluttered her eyelashes appreciatively.

She checked over the RSVP cards once again. Since the ball was a community affair, it would be a party dominated by the Elders and the Wardens—an older crowd. Mimi pressed her lips tightly together. Sure, it would be a fun party—the most glamorous event ever—but suddenly she had an idea.

What about an after-party?

For Blue Blood teens only? Where they could really let loose without worrying about what their parents, Wardens, and Committee leaders thought?

Something more edgy and adventurous…something only the crème de la crème could attend. A cold, glittering smile played on her lips as she imagined all her silly little peers at Duchesne begging for an invitation to the party. All in vain, Mimi thought. Because there would be no invitations. Only a text-message sent to the right people on the night of the Four Hundred Ball would reveal the location of the after-party. The Alterna-vampire Ball.

Mimi glanced over at Jack, who was holding a sheet of paper in front of his face, covering his handsome visage. And she suddenly remembered a scene from a past life of theirs: the two of them, bowing to the Court at Versailles, their faces concealed behind ornately beaded and feathered masks.

Of course!

A masquerade ball.

The after-party would require elaborate masks.

No one would be sure who was who, who had been invited and who had not—creating the most exquisite social anxiety.

She liked this idea very much. Any time she could exclude other people from having fun, Mimi was always ready.

THREE

It's not like she hasn't had this dream before. Of being cold and wet, and of not being able to breathe. All the other dreams had been like this, except this one felt real. She was freezing, shivering, and as she opened her eyes to the murky darkness, she sensed another presence in the shadow. A hand, grasping her arm, lifting her up, up, up toward the light, and breaking the surface.

Splash!

Bliss took a ragged, coughing breath, and looked around wildly. It was no dream. This was real. She was submerged in the middle of a lake.

"Hold still, you're too weak. I'll swim us to shore." The low voice in her ear was soothing and calm. She tried to turn around to look at his face, but the voice interrupted. "Don't move, don't look back, just concentrate on the shore.”

She nodded, rivulets of water dripping from her hair into her eyes. She was still coughing, and felt an enormous need to retch. Her arms and legs were weak, although there was no current. The lake was placid and still. It was hardly even a lake. When Bliss's eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw that she was in Central Park, in the middle of the man-made lake where, last summer, before she'd enrolled at Duchesne, her parents had taken her and her sister to the boathouse restaurant for dinner.

The boats were nowhere to be found this time. It was almost the end of November, and the lake was deserted. There was frost on the ground, and for the first time that evening, Bliss felt a cold seeping into her veins. She started to shake.

"It'll pass. Your blood will heat up, don't worry. Vampires don't get frostbite." That voice again.

Bliss Llewellyn was from Texas. That was the first thing Bliss said to new acquaintances.

"I'm from Texas," as if identifying her home state went a long way to explaining everything about herself: the accent, the big curly hair, the five-carat diamond rocks on each ear. It was also a way for Bliss to hold on to her beloved hometown, and a life that seemed more and more remote from her current reality as just another pretty girl in New York.

In Texas, Bliss had stood out. She was five foot ten (with the hair height, she was easily six feet tall), fierce, and fearless—the only cheerleader who could execute a tumbling leap off the top of a fifty-person pyramid and safely land feet first on the soft grass of the football field. Before she discovered she was a vampire and capable of such physical dexterity, Bliss had chalked up her coordination to luck and practice.

She had lived with her family in a sprawling, gated mansion in an exclusive Houston suburb, and had driven to school in her grandfather's vintage Cadillac convertible—the one with real buffalo horns on the hood. But her father had grown up in Manhattan, and after a fruitful run as Houston's leading politician, had abruptly uprooted the family when he ran and won—New York's empty senate seat.

Adjusting to the frenzy of the Big Apple after life in Houston was difficult for Bliss. She felt uneasy in all the glamorous nightclubs and exclusive parties Mimi Force, her self-appointed new best friend, dragged her to. Give Bliss a jug of Boone's, a few girlfriends, and a DVD of The Notebook, and she was happy. She didn't like hanging out at clubs, feeling like a wallflower while watching Mimi have all the fun.