Bliss waited for the beast to appear, but all they saw was the thick, black smoke.
When she opened her eyes, Nan was scribbling in her notebook.
"Good," Nan said. "Now, if you please, lift your hair and show me the back of your neck."
The back of my neck?
Bliss did as told. Nan nodded. "You may put your hair down."
After the Warden left, her father walked in and hugged her tight.
Whatever test it was, it looked as though she had passed. The back of her neck...
Part of the test...
She thought of how Kingsley's hair was so long, it always covered the back of his neck. A fashion statement? Or was he hiding something?
Kingsley...who carried that book around with him all the time, the materia acerbus. Kingsley, who had taught her to palaver with the beast of her nightmares.
Kingsley Martin, who was part of an old, old, Blue Blood family. One of the most powerful, and the most prestigious...
Bliss closed her eyes. She saw the beast again, the beast had spoken to her. It had said one word...
Now.
were arguing about her. Through the morphine haze, Bliss could hear her father and Charles Force arguing about her behind the closed hospital door. What had happened?
She dimly remembered the black, purplish fire that covered the entire library in a thick, impenetrable fog, and she knew something bad had happened to her. There was the gauze around her neck. Had she been bitten? By a Silver Blood? The thought made her forehead perspire. If she had been attacked by Abomination, why was she still alive?
Bliss tried to lift her hands up to her neck so she could check on the wound, but she was paralyzed. She panicked, until she realized her hands were tied down to the bedposts. Why?
The room was as lavish as a hotel suite, with the modern white plastic furniture she knew so well. She was in Dr. Pat's clinic, the Blue Blood hospital. With her extrasensitive hearing, she concentrated on what her father and Charles Force were arguing about in whispered tones in the hallway.
"She has not been corrupted, Charles--you know the signs as well as I do you've seen her neck! There wasn't enough time," her father was saying.
"I understand, Forsyth, I do, but you know how it looks. I can't get Lawrence off my back about this. She's going to have to be tested, just like everybody who was there that night."
"She's a victim! This is an outrage! I won't let you!"
"You don't have a choice," Charles said, and his tone brokered no further argument. "I know how worried you are, but as you said, she appears to be safe."
There was a long silence, and then the two men returned to Bliss's room. Bliss immediately closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.
She felt her father's hand on her forehead as he whis- pered a short prayer in a language she didn't understand. "Hey," she said, opening her eyes.
Her stepmother and Jordan walked into the room and crowded by the foot of the bed. BobiAnne was wearing another haute-hideous outfit a cashmere sweater with VERSACE emblazoned on its chest--and carried a small handkerchief, which she kept pressing to the side of each eye, although no tears were visible.
"Oh, honey, we were so worried! Thank God you're okay!"
"How are you feeling?" her father asked, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Tired," Bliss replied. "What happened?"
"There was an explosion at the Repository," Forsyth explained, "but don't worry, it was so deep underground the Red Bloods didn't even notice it on the sidewalk. They think it was just a small earthquake."
Bliss hadn't even thought to worry about humans discov- ering the Blue Bloods' most secret place.
"What happened to me?" she asked.