Мелисса де ла Круз: Masquerade

In answer, Bliss pushed away her tray and made a face. She shoved all thoughts of Dylan out of her mind.

"What's all this about an after-party everyone's been harassing me about? No one believes me when I tell them I have no idea what's going on. You and Jack are throwing some kind of bash after the ball?”

Mimi looked around to make sure no one could overhear, and only when she was certain they were beyond earshot did she speak. "Yeah, I was going to tell you about it today.”

She filled Bliss in on the details. She had secured the perfect spot—an abandoned synagogue downtown. There was nothing Mimi enjoyed more than advocating a night of debauchery in a once-sacred space. The Angel Orensanz Center was a neo-Gothic building in the middle of the Lower East Side. It had been designed as a synagogue in 1849 by a Berlin architect who modeled it after the cathedral of Cologne. Mimi wasn't the only New Yorker who liked to throw over-the-top extravaganzas in the space: the center had already played host to several fashion shows during Fashion Week, which was how she got the idea in the first place. Mimi didn't care about points for originality she only cared about being where the action was, and right now, desecrated synagogues were hot.

"The inside is a mess," Mimi said gleefully. "There are like, rotting columns and exposed beams…It's like a beautiful ruin," she whispered. "We're going to light the whole place with tea light candles no electric lights at all! And that's it, no other decor. The place has enough atmosphere. It doesn't need anything.”

Mimi ripped out a sheet of notebook paper from her binder and passed it to Bliss. "This is who I'm thinking for the party. I wrote it down during my French quiz." Mimi was enrolled in AP French, but the class was a joke. Once her vampire memories resurfaced, she had discovered she was already fluent in the language.

Bliss looked down at all the names. Froggy Kernochan. Jaime Kip. Blair McMillan. Soos Kemble. Rufus King. Booze Langdon.

"These are all Committee members. But not even all of the Committee members," Bliss noted.

"Exactly.”

"You're not inviting Lucy Forbes?" Bliss asked, aghast. Lucy Forbes was a Blue Blood senior, and Head Girl of the school.

Mimi wrinkled her nose. "Lucy Forbes is a drip. A goody-goody." Mimi had had a vendetta against the girl ever since Lucy had reported that Mimi had abused her human familiars by feeding on them without adhering to the forty-eight hour rest period mandate.

They went down the list, Bliss proposing a name and Mimi rejecting it.

"How about Stella Van Rensslaer?”

"Freshman! No frosh at this shindig.”

"But she's going to be inducted next spring. I mean, she is a Blue Blood," Bliss argued.

All the names of potential Blue Blood vampires were available to Committee members so they could watch out for their younger brethren, the way Mimi had taken Bliss under her wing earlier that year.

"Ugh. No," Mimi said.

"Carter Tuckerman?" Bliss proposed, thinking of the friendly, skinny boy who spent Committee meetings taking copious notes as secretary.

"That geek? No way.”

Bliss sighed. She hadn't seen Schuyler's name on the list either, which bothered her.

“And what about…you know…`significant others,' the familiars?" Bliss asked. Blue Bloods used the term "human familiar" to describe the reliant relationship between the mortal and immortal races. Human familiars were lovers, friends, vessels from which the vampires drew their greatest strength.

"No Red Bloods at this party. This is like the Four Hundred Ball, but even more exclusive. Vampires only.”

"People are going to be really upset about this," Bliss warned.

Mimi smiled her cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. "Exactly.”

SIX

The Venice Biennale was located in several overlapping pavilions, so that visitors wandered through a long series of darkened rooms, searching as video installations crackled to life in unexpected corners. Faces projected on vinyl balls expanded and contracted, shrieking and giggling. Flowers blossomed and withered on the screens. A rush of Tokyo traffic sped by, claustrophobic and threatening.

When Schuyler and Oliver had first arrived in Venice, Schuyler had been fired up with a wild, almost feverish, energy. She was relentless in her search, dogged and determined. But her enthusiasm had flagged when it became clear that finding her grandfather in Venice would not be as easy as she had assumed. She had come with nothing but a name—she didn't even know what he would look like. Old? Young? Her grandmother had told her Lawrence was an exile, an outcast from the Blue Blood community. What if all those years of isolation had led to madness and insanity? Or worse, what if he was no longer alive? What if he had been taken by a Silver Blood?

But now, after seeing the Professore's room, she was filled with the same fierce hope as when she had first arrived. He is here. He is alive. I can feel it.

Schuyler drifted from one room to the next, scanning the dark places for a sign, a clue that would lead her to her grandfather. She thought most of the art was intriguing, if somewhat overwrought, with just a hint of pretension. What did it mean that a woman kept watering the same plant over and over again? Did it even matter? As she looked at the video, she realized she was the same as the woman, trapped in a Sisyphean task.

Oliver had already skipped ahead several installations. He took the same amount of time to study each piece approximately ten seconds. Oliver claimed that that was all he needed to understand art. They were supposed to call each other if they found anything, although Oliver had pointed out that neither of them knew what Lawrence Van Alen actually looked like. Oliver was not as convinced as Schuyler that a visit to the Biennale would be fruitful, but he had held his tongue.

She stopped at the entrance to a room bathed in a crimson haze. A single light cut through the entire space, projecting a glowing orange equator through the expanse of red light. Schuyler walked inside and paused for a moment, admiring it.

"It's an Olaf Eliasson," a young man standing next to her explained. "It's beautiful, isn't it? You can see the influence of Flavin.”

Schuyler nodded. They had studied Dan Flavin in Art Humanities, so she was familiar with the work. "But then again, doesn't all fluorescent art come under the influence of Flavin?"

she asked saucily.

There was an awkward silence, and Schuyler started to move away, but her companion spoke again. "Tell me. Why have you come to Italy?" the handsome Italian boy asked in perfectly accented English. "You are obviously not an art tourist, one of those with the big cameras and their cultural guidebooks in tow. I would bet you have not even seen the new Matthew Barney.”

"I am looking for someone," Schuyler replied.

"At the Biennale?" he asked. "Do you know which venue?"

"There are others?" Schuyler asked.

"Of course, this is only the giardini; there is also the Arsenale and the corderie. The whole city of Venice transforms for the Biennale. You are going to have a hard time finding just one person. Almost a million people visit the Biennale-the garden itself has thirty pavilions.”

Schuyler's heart sank. She had no idea the Biennale was such a vast and confusing collection of places. She had walked along the promenade, past other buildings before entering the Italian pavilion, but she had no idea what stretched beyond. The gardens were a vast landscape filled with buildings from every era, each one built by its host country. Each building had its own style and housed its own country's art.

If what the boy was saying was true, going to the Biennale to look for the Professore was akin to searching for a needle in the middle of a haystack.