Revelations (Blue Bloods 3)

"He did," Bliss agreed.

Dr. Andrews shook his head. "Perhaps he'd been deluded, or manipulated into thinking he was one of them. Our findings are quite conclusive."

"Forsyth knew this? That Dylan was innocent?" Mimi asked sharply.

The doctor nodded. "I called him as soon as the tests came in."

Mimi laughed a sharp, sarcastic laugh. "If Dylan's not a Silver Blood and he didn't take Aggie, that means he probably wasn't lying when he told me he doesn't know where the jeans she'd borrowed from me are."

"What are you talking about?" Bliss asked, her mind awhirl.

"Never mind." Mimi shrugged. She stood up, and Bliss followed her lead. "Thanks very much for meeting us, doctor. You've been a great help."

Bliss couldn't concentrate. Her fingers shook as she buttoned her coat. She bumped her knee into the table and almost tripped.

Dylan was innocent.

He was not a Silver Blood nor about to become one.

He was a victim.

For months, everyone in the community had believed in Dylan's guilt in the murder of Aggie Carondolet. That he had dispatched the other victims, attacked Schuyler, and mortally wounded Cordelia. He'd told Bliss himself that he'd done those things. And she'd believed him.

But what if he'd just been covering up for someone else? What if he'd just been made to think he had been infected?

And if it hadn't been Dylan who'd done all these things, then who had?

It was evening when Schuyler left the apartment on Perry Street. Her face was still flushed from Jack's kisses, her cheeks and lips a rosy deep red. Like everything in New York, Schuyler was blooming. A kiss for a kiss for a kiss, she thought, still hazy from their night in Vienna. They had just returned and repaired to the hideaway to shower and change.

Jack had left first - slipping out the side door - and she had waited the requisite half hour before attempting an exit herself.

She was smiling softly to herself, trying to calm her wild hair in a sudden wind, when she saw someone she did not expect to see.

He was standing across the street, staring at her with a look of shock and dismay. One look in Oliver's eyes and she knew he knew. But how? How could he have known? They'd been so careful to keep their love a secret.

The grief etched all over in his face was too much to bear. Schuyler felt the words catch in her throat as she crossed the street to stand in front of him. "Ollie...it's not..."

Oliver shot her a look of pure hatred, turned on his heel, and began to walk, then run away.

"Oliver, please, let me explain..."

In a flash, she was standing right in front of him. He could run, but he could not outrun her. "Don't do this. Talk to me."

"There's nothing to say. I saw him leave, and then, just as she'd said, I waited a half hour, and then you left too. You were with him. You lied to me."

"I didn't - it's nothing like that - Oh God, Oliver." The sobs forming now, Schuyler felt his sadness and anger wash over her. If only he would hit her, if only he would strike her - do something other than stand there looking so devastated that she could only feel more devastated in turn.

It began to rain. Thunderclouds opened up overhead, and the first raindrops pelted, then drummed on them. They were going to get drenched.

"You have to choose," Oliver said, as the rain mixed with tears that fell from his cheeks. "I'm tired of being your best friend. I'm tired of being second best. I won't settle for that anymore. It's all or nothing, Schuyler. You have to decide. Him or me."

Her best friend and Conduit, or the boy she loved. Schuyler knew one day it would come to this. That she would have to lose one to have the other. That this game would have consequences. That she could not carry on just as she'd had - with a vampire lover and a human familiar, with none the wiser. She had lied to Oliver, lied to Jack, lied to everyone, including herself. But her lies had finally caught up with her.

"You are selfish, Schuyler. You should never have made me your familiar," Oliver said impassively. "But I let it happen because I cared about you. I was worried at what would happen to you if I didn't. But you - if you ever cared about me at all, if you were thinking about me at all, you should have had the decency to restrain yourself. You knew exactly how I felt about you, and you used me anyway."

He was right. Schuyler nodded dumbly as the rain ran in rivers over her hair and her clothes, her garments becoming a soggy mess. Oliver had always been the more sensible of the two of them. He'd had a crush on his best friend, loved her since they'd first met, carried a torch for her for years, but if she hadn't brought the Caerimonia into it, hadn't drunk his blood, hadn't imprinted herself on his soul, maybe someday he would have stopped feeling that way about her.

If she had found another familiar, if she had chosen another human boy, Oliver's crush might have faded into a soft, nonbinding affection. Oliver would be able to grow up, love a Red Blood girl, have his own family one day. But she had made him her own. She had sealed his affection with that first tantalizing bite. The Sacred Kiss had marked him as hers.