"Thank you," Mimi said, accepting the water with a nod. Once again she was struck by how helpless she felt.
These people's problems are not your own, she told herself. You cannot help them.
She felt very far away from the sheltered, exclusive world of the Upper East Side as she stood on a dusty sidewalk in the slums, her muscles still tense from the encounter. This was why she had signed up for the mission, to shake up her life a little bit, to see a side of the world that wasn't available from the backseat of a limousine. She might be a spoiled princess in this incarnation, but she was a warrior by nature. Azrael needed this.
But it was frustrating. They'd set out a year ago to find the Watcher and still had nothing to show for their efforts, save for a letter that didn't tell them anything.
"Maybe the Watcher doesn't want to be found," Mimi said, taking a chug of water and passing it to Kingsley. "Ever think of that?"
"It's possible," he said after taking a gulp and throwing the bottle to one of the Lennoxes. "But unlikely. She knows how valuable her wisdom is to our community. She knew they would send me to find her. Believe me, she wants to be found."
"Let me see the note again," Mimi said. Kingsley handed her the piece of paper. She reread the note. As she held up the paper, she noticed something she hadn't seen before. Something that had been hidden in the dawn, when it had been too dark to see clearly.
"Look," she said to Kingsley, holding the note up so it was facing the direct rays of the sun.
Sunlight shone brightly through the paper, revealing something that had formerly been invisible, like a watermark. Phoebus ostend praeeo, indeed. The sun shall show the way.
In the middle of the page was a map.
ER 19
Bliss
Muffie Astor Carter (real name Muriel) was a Blue Blood in every sense of the word. She was educated at Miss Porter's and Vassar, and had worked in the publicity department of Harry Winston before marrying Dr. Sheldon Carter, who had found fame as the plastic surgeon to the Park Avenue set. Their bonding was one of the more controversial ones in recent memory, as it had taken each quite a few attempts to find the other. He was her second husband and she his third wife.
She was also one of New York's most popular socialites. Jealous rivals sniped that the public just took a liking to her name. It was so outrageously preppie it sounded like a joke. But it was not; it was the real thing, like Muffie herself, who embodied a horsey, Bedford, WASP authenticity in an age of brash nouveau-riche hordes adding "von? or 'de? to their names and who didn't know a Verdura from a Van Cleef.
Every year Muffie opened up her sprawling Hamptons estate, "Ocean's End", for a fashion show to benefit the New York Blood Bank. It was the highlight of the August social calendar. Located at the end of Gin Lane, the property sprawled over six acres and included a manor house with a separate and equally lavish guesthouse, a twelve-car garage, and staff quarters.
The sweeping grounds featured two pools (saline and freshwater), tennis courts, a lily pond, and professionally maintained gardens. The Bermuda grass was cut by hand, with scissors, every other day, to keep it at just the right length.
Balthazar shook Bliss's hand with a limp handshake and passed her on to Muffie with a wan smile.
"I'm so glad to see you looking so well, my dear," Muffie said, giving Bliss the most insubstantial of embraces. Muffie had a broad, recessed forehead with nary a wrinkle (her plastic-surgeon husband's most effective advertising) and the perfect blond coif pervasive on the Upper East Side. She was the epitome of the breed: tanned, slender, graceful, and appropriate. She was everything Bobi Anne had wanted to be but could never match.
"Thank you," Bliss said, trying not to feel too awkward. "It's good to be here."
"You'll find the rest of the models in the back. I think we're running late as usual," Muffie said cheerfully.
Bliss walked toward the backstage area of the tent, swiping a canape from a tray and a glass of champagne from one of the buffet tables. Henri was right: this was an easy gig. It wasn't a real fashion show, merely a presentation to wealthy clients in the name of charity. Whereas a real fashion show was a chaotic commotion of energy and anxiety, attended by hundreds of editors, retailers, celebrities, and covered by hundreds of media outlets around the world, the Balthazar Verdugo show on Muffie Carter's estate was more like a glorified trunk show, with models. It was so odd to be back in the real world, to be walking on damp grass (sinking in her heels, really), munching on appetizers, and looking out at the Carters' amazing ocean view, an unbroken line of blue stretching over the horizon, and to find out that in some parts of the world, even their world, the world of the Committee and the Coven, there were some who remained indifferent and downright disinterested in what had happened in Rio.
Muffie and the other women on the Committee whom Bliss bumped into at the party did not bring up Bobi Anne's death or the massacre of the Conclave. Bliss understood that they simply went on about their lives: planning parties, hosting benefits, doing the rounds of couture shows, horse shows, and charity causes, which filled their days. They did not seem too worried or distressed. Cordelia Van Alen had been right: they were in the deepest denial. They didn't want to accept the return of the Silver Bloods. They didn't want to accept the reality of what the Silver Bloods had done and were planning to do. They were satisfied with their lives and they didn't want anything to change.
It had been so long since any of them had been warriors, soldiers, arm-in-arm and side-by-side in battle against the Dark Prince and his legions. It was hard to imagine this group of underfed overly Botoxed socialites and their slacker children as hardened warriors in a war for heaven and earth. It was as Cordelia had said to Schuyler: the vampires were getting lazy and indulgent, more and more like humans every day, and less inclined to fulfill their heavenly destiny.
It dawned on Bliss that this was what had set Cordelia and Lawrence apart, they cared. They had kept their vigilance against the forces of hell and had sounded an alarm. An alarm that no one was too keen on hearing. The Van Alens were the exception to the norm. It only made sense that Schuyler would be just like them. Her friend had never felt comfortable in the world of the leisured rich, even though she had been born into it. But Schuyler wasn't the only one. Even Mimi and Jack Force were different. They had not forgotten their gloried past. Just one look at the way Mimi flaunted her extraordinary vampire abilities was enough to convince anyone that there was more to that skinny bitch than just the capacity to shop.
But these people, this self-satisfied group of elites who had barely even blinked at the news of the massacre, these people called themselves vampires?
"Exactly. Just like the members of the Conclave, they will be easy enough to overcome when the time comes."
Bliss shivered. She had gotten used to being alone, and had forgotten that the Visitor could pop in at any time.
CHAPTER 20
Mimi
El Sol de Ajuste was located in Cidada de Deus, The City of God, the notorious slums in the western part of the city that had inspired a major Hollywood movie and a subsequent television show, City of Men. Of course, the real city was nothing like the cleaned-up Hollywood version, which was the equivalent of a 'slum tour' arranged by hotel concierges: showcasing fashionable grittiness. The reality of poverty was much harsher and much uglier, the towering mountains of trash, the stench of sewer and garbage, the bare-bottomed children languishing on the streets, smoking cigarettes; the way no one batted the flies away, they were way past caring about something so simple as flies.