Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods 7)

“Where to?” Oliver asked.

“Can’t say.” He took a drink of orange juice and grimaced, inspecting the glass. “I think this is off. But it could just be that I can’t taste it. Oh well, thought I’d try.” He picked up a doughnut and began to chew with a moody look on his face.

“Don’t change the subject. Why can’t you tell us where you’re going?” Schuyler demanded.

“Better if you don’t know. Safer,” he mumbled.

Schuyler exchanged a worried glance with Oliver. “Kingsley, stop playing MI6. Let us help. This isn’t a game.”

“No!” he yelled, then looked abashed. “Sorry—but I have to do this alone. I’m not sure it’s even something. It could be nothing, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up.…I don’t have much to go on,” he murmured, fingering something under the table. It looked like a postcard.

“It’s about Mimi, isn’t it? She’s alive, then? What about Jack…? Kingsley!” Schuyler said, getting up from her seat. “Come back!”

But the Venator had left the room in a flash, and there was nothing left on his plate but a half-eaten doughnut.

“Let him go. He’ll come back,” Oliver said, spreading butter on his toast. He regarded his breakfast skeptically. “Wonder why it’s called a toad in the hole. Are the eggs the toad? Or the sausages?”

Schuyler turned to him. “What if he’s working for the Silver Bloods?”

“He’s not, Sky. I know he’s not. I trust him. Do you?”

“I guess I do. I just wish he would tell us what’s going on.” She did trust Kingsley—Oliver was right. He was no longer the slippery Venator who had danced with her at the after-party at the Four Hundred Ball and whispered in her ear. Back then, she’d even wondered if he had been the one who’d kissed her at the dance. It was Kingsley who had called forth the Silver Blood that had attacked the Repository, but he explained that he’d done it on the orders of the Regis—it was Charles Force who had commanded him to do it, to test the strength of the Gates of Hell. As a loyal Venator, Kingsley could only obey. She couldn’t hold that against him. The gates were supposed to hold, but instead they had proved as permeable as a membrane, and the demon had been allowed to escape from the underworld. Only then did Charles finally accept that the Silver Bloods had returned.

“Kingsley does what he wants, but there’s no changing him,” Oliver said. “Let him go—he’ll work it out.”

“Do you think he’s gone to see Mimi?” she asked. And if Mimi was alive, what did that mean for Jack? Did it mean then, that—? She felt her heart clench at the thought—but it was too painful and too terrible, so she forcefully pushed it down. Jack—to even think of him brought such a sudden sharp feeling of pain that it made it hard to breathe. She saw his face for a moment—the sheen of his blond hair, his green eyes framed by golden lashes—how peaceful he looked when he was asleep. Would they ever be together again? Or was their last good-bye forever?

“Mimi? I don’t know…but—” Before Oliver could finish his sentence, the phone rang.

The butler appeared. “A Margaret St. James for Miss Van Alen.”

“Margaret? Oh, Tilly. Okay.” Schuyler took the call.

Afterward, she went back to the dining room, where Oliver was tucking into a second plate of eggs and toast.

“What did she want? Another fashion

show?”

“You wish. No—she said she remembered something that might be useful. There’s one more person from the old triumvirate who’s still in London. She rang him, and he says he’ll meet with us. He knows what happened in Rome, might be able to help us unlock the gate.”

“Huh.”

“And we thought she was just an airhead who designed clothes,” Schuyler said with a wink.

FOURTEEN

Mimi

he tour guide was speaking in hushed tones to a small gathering of tourists, her quiet words punctuated by the snaps and flashes of eager photographers. One man was filming with his handheld video camera, walking in circles around the apse. Behind him, a young couple clearly on their honeymoon posed against the wrought-iron fence, the groom holding his phone at arms’ length to take the shot.

Mimi kept her distance from the group. The guide didn’t seem to mind that she’d lingered near the entrance, unlike the usual tourist herders, who were strict about keeping everyone together.

She’d arrived in Midlothian earlier that week and had visited the Rosslyn Chapel every day, under a different guise each time, lest the nuns who guarded the place recognize her. So far, she had found nothing, and while she was glad of that, there had been no sign of Kingsley either. Perhaps he had not understood the message. If so, then she was a bit disappointed in him. She wondered how long she could pretend to be “looking” for the grail, and she knew she would not be allowed to return to the underworld empty-handed unless she had a reasonable explanation.

Inside the chapel, every available surface was elaborately decorated in twisted stone carvings. One section depicted the underworld and its inhabitants—an upside-down hanging devil, the mythic “green man” marching a row of skeletons into Hell. The sculptures wound their way around columns and along the arches, across the ceiling and on the floor. There was a term for this, she knew: horror vacui—the fear of empty spaces. Every inch of the place was bursting with decoration, as if the chapel’s creators had feared blank walls like a literal plague.

What a mess, Mimi sniffed.