She remembered a night at a club, shared cigarettes in an alley, and a boy. She had met a boy. The black-haired boy, lying limp in her arms. Dylan Ward. She felt numb. Dylan was dead. She remembered everything now. What had happened in Rio. Everything. The killing. Lawrence. Running down the hill, away from Sky and Oliver because she did not want them to see her face, to see her for who she really was.

Silver Blood spawn.

With Forsyth, she had returned to New York for Bobi Anne’s funeral. A memorial, really, because like the other dearly departed members of the Conclave, there was nothing to bury. There was nothing left of Bobi Anne, not even a singed lock of her highlighted hair. A giant blown-up glamour shot on an easel took the place of a coffin at the front of the altar. The photograph showed her stepmother at her finest moment, when she had been profiled in a society magazine.

The funeral had been packed. The entire Blue Blood community had come out for it, to show support for those who had stood against the Silver Bloods. Mimi had been there with her twin brother, Jack. They had offered her words of solace and comfort.

If they only knew.

At the funeral Bliss was still aware enough of what was around her. She had heard Forsyth tell her (but not her; he was talking to the Visitor even then, she understood now) not to worry. Jordan was no longer a problem. Worry about what? What problem? Oh. Right. She’d almost forgotten. Her little sister. Jordan had known that Bliss carried the Visitor inside her. Jordan had tried to kill her.

The exercise was over. She knew who she was, where she was, and what had happened to her. She was Bliss Llewellyn, she was in the Hamptons, and she was carrying the soul of Lucifer inside her body.

That was her story.

The next day she would have to remember it all over again.

 THE INVESTIGATION

Lawrence’s killer. Her grandfather’s killer. Okay, so the Inquisitor didn’t come out and say it, no, nothing so coarse as that. But he’d hinted enough. Cast enough doubt on her story that he might as well have branded the word across her forehead.

She hadn’t seen it coming. She was still in shock from losing Lawrence so violently, forget about having to defend herself to the Committee afterward. She had told them what happened as well as she could, never even considering the possibility that they might not believe her.

“Miss Van Alen, allow me to walk you through your testimony. According to your recollection of the events at Corcovado, a boy had been transformed into the image of Lucifer himself. Your grandfather ordered you to kill him, but you missed. Lawrence then struck the fatal blow, mistakenly killing an innocent and unlocking Leviathan’s prison, setting the demon free. The demon then murdered him. Is this all correct so far?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

The Inquisitor consulted his notes for a moment. Schuyler had met him once before, when her grandfather had hosted a few members of the Conclave at the house. His name was Josiah Archibald, and he had retired from the Conclave years ago. His granddaughters were her classmates at Duchesne. But if he felt at all sympathetic to her plight, he masked it well. “He was right in front of you, was he not? The boy?” the Inquisitor asked, looking up.

“Yes.”

“And you say you were holding your mother’s sword?”

“Yes.”

He snorted, looking pointedly at the assembled Elders, who then leaned forward or shuffled in their seats. The only active surviving member of the Conclave was Forsyth Llewellyn, who sat in the back, his head covered in bandages and his left eye swollen shut. The others were emeritus members like the Inquisitor. They sat clustered in a semicircle, looking like a group of shrunken elves. There were so few of them left: old Abe Tompkins had been fetched from his summer home on Block Island; Minerva Morgan, one of Cordelia’s oldest friends and the former chairwoman of the New York Garden Society, sat gargoyle still in her knit boucle suit; Ambrose Barlow, who looked like he was fast asleep.

“Gabrielle’s sword has been lost for many, many years,” the Inquisitor said. “And you say your mother appeared to you?, poof! Out of nowhere, and handed it to you. Just like that. And then disappeared. To go back to her bed at the hospital, presumably.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

Schuyler shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It did seem fantastic and amazing, and unreal. But it had happened. Just as she had described.

“Yes . . . I don’t know how, but yes.”

The Inquisitor’s tone was condescending. “Pray tell us, where is this sword now?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t. In the chaos afterward, the sword seemed to have disappeared along with Leviathan, and she told them so.

“What do you know about Gabrielle’s sword?” the Inquisitor asked.

“Nothing. I didn’t even know she owned a sword.”

“It is a true sword. It holds a special kind of power. It was forged so that it always meets its target,” he grumbled, as if her ignorance were a sign of guilt.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

The Inquisitor spoke very slowly and carefully. “You say you were carrying your mother’s sword. A sword that has been lost for centuries and that has never failed to strike its enemies in all its history. And yet . . . you did. You failed. If you were indeed holding Gabrielle’s sword, how could you miss?”

“Are you saying that I wanted to miss?” she asked, incredulous.

“I’m not saying that: you are.”

Schuyler was shocked. What was happening? What was this? The Inquisitor turned to his audience. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Conclave, this is an interesting situation. Here are the facts of the matter. Lawrence Van Alen is dead. His granddaughter would like us to believe a rather outrageous story, that Leviathan, a demon that Lawrence himself buried in stone a millennium ago, has been released, and that that same demon killed him.”

“It’s true,” Schuyler whispered.

“Miss Van Alen, you had never met your grandfather until a few months ago, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You barely knew him from a stranger on the street.”

“I wouldn’t say that. We became very close in a short amount of time.”

“Yet you harbored bitterness against him, did you not? After all, you chose to live with your mother’s estranged brother rather than with Lawrence.”

“I didn’t choose anything! We were fighting the adoption. I did not want to live with Charles Force and his family?”

“So you say.”

“Why on earth would I want to kill my grandfather?” she practically shouted. This was insane. A kangaroo court, a charade, a travesty. There was no justice to be served here.

“Perhaps you did not mean to kill him. Perhaps, as you told us earlier, it was an accident.”

The Inquisitor smiled, looking like a shark. Schuyler slumped in her seat, defeated. For whatever reasons, the Inquisitor did not believe her story, and it was clear the remaining members of the Conclave would not either. The hidden Silver Blood among their ranks had been discovered, Nan Cutler had perished in the Almeida fire. The Conclave believed that, at least. They had accepted it. Forsyth Llewellyn had been the victim of Warden Cutler’s betrayal and had borne witness.

But the ruling body did not want to accept the reality of Leviathan’s return. It was one thing to accept the testimony of a fellow Elder, and another thing to take the word of a half-blood. They would rather believe Schuyler had deliberately killed Lawrence than that a demon stalked the earth once more.

There were no other witnesses to back her up except for Oliver, and the testimony of human Conduits was inadmissible in a Committee investigation. Humans simply didn’t count, when it came down to it. So the night before the Conclave cast judgment and decided what to do with her, she and Oliver fled the country.