Masquerade

 

The Forces had booked the four-bedroom presidential suite at the St. Regis. Almost all the rooms in the hotel were taken over by Blue Blood families. It was a tradition, since it meant a simple ride in the elevator to the ballroom and guaranteed less crinkling of the ladies' gowns.



Charles Force fastened his remaining cuff link. He was a tall, proud man with a handsome head of silver hair. He was wearing white tie and tails, as well as white gloves. The tailcoat was beautifully cut in the traditional fashion, with a two-button closure and a velvet stripe down the side of the trousers. He stood in the living room with his hands clasped behind him, waiting for the women in his family to finish dressing.



His son, Jack, was dressed similarly, and looked dashing in his tailcoat. Jack had chosen a pointed collar that lay flat on his dress shirt rather than the traditional butterfly collar that turned up against the chin.



Jack had been quiet all day, and suddenly he swung his legs off the couch and stood up. He looked his father in the eye. "What did you say to Schuyler before she left?"



"Still concerned about the Van Alen girl?" Charles asked. "I would think that after she wrongly accused me of being Abomination, you would have lost interest in her." Jack shrugged. "I'm not concerned, father. Just curious," he said. During the ruckus that had surrounded Dylan's disappearance and Cordelia's passing, his father had taken Jack into his confidence, telling him the truth of Schuyler's ancestry. That night, Jack had also discovered the truth about his relationship with his sister. Mimi was his other half, for better or worse, his best friend and worst enemy, his twin in more ways than one.



But although Jack had reconciled himself to the truth of his family, questions remained: what was The Committee hiding? Had a Silver Blood truly returned? His father acted as if the entire situation were completely resolved, since the killings had abruptly stopped several months ago.



Charles sighed. "I simply told her that her journey to Venice would be useless. She has gotten it into her head that her grandfather is somehow going to provide the necessary answers to all of her silly questions. But he shall not. I know Lawrence very well; he will stay out of it as he always has. She has embarked on a fruitless journey."



Jack had guessed as much. He was aware of his father's dislike of Lawrence Van Alen, and his newly surfacing memories confirmed it.



"Any more questions for me?" Charles asked.



Jack looked down at his patent-leather shoes, shined especially for the occasion. He could see his brooding reflection on their shiny surface.



"No, Father." He shook his head. How could he doubt his father? Charles Force was Michael, Pure of Heart, the Regis. A vampire by choice rather than sin, and infallible.



"Good," Charles said, brushing the lint off Jack's black tailcoat and admonishing his son to stand up straight. "This is the Four Hundred Ball. Your formal presentation to our people. I'm proud of you."



"Trinity, my dear? Are you ready?" Charles called from the living room.



Jack saw his mother, Trinity Burden Force, walk out of her dressing room and smile affectionately at her husband. She was dressed in a deep-red silk charmeuse ball gown with a sweetheart neckline and a plunging back. The two of them would open the ball with their entrance. But Jack knew from his father that Trinity had not been honored in this fashion in the past. In fact, this would be only the sixteenth year that Allegra Van Alen did not take her place by her brother's side. The sixteenth year that Gabrielle would not lead the coven.



In an adjoining suite, Mimi Force was draped in a plush Turkish bathrobe, sitting on a gilt-back chair while a bevy of stylists and manicurists surrounded her, tending to every inch of her. Her hair was being brushed back into a graceful chignon, while another assistant held an industrial-strength hair dryer. Two of the most well-known makeup artists in the city were working on their final touches: one was brushing on lipstick, the other dotting her face with bronzer.



All the while, Mimi held a cell phone to her ear while she blew on her nails, painted a pearly "Socialite."



"Oh my God, it's a madhouse in here, sorry--I can't hear you that well. What time did you say you guys were getting there?



"We're at the hotel. Yeah, the penthouse. Sorry, do you mind? Excuse me, hello, you there," she said sharply to the goateed stylist with the hair dryer. "You almost singed my ear off," she said, giving him a dirty look. "Sorry, Bliss, I gotta go."



Mimi flipped her cell phone closed, and the activity around her came to a standstill.



"Are we done?" she asked.



"Look." The stylist handed her a mirror.



"Polaroids!" Mimi demanded.



One of the black-shirted assistants took a quick snap.



Mimi checked her reflection as well as the photograph. She studied herself critically, searching for any detectable flaw, no matter how minute. Her hair was brushed and styled to a burnished sheen, and framed her face like a golden crown. Her skin glowed; a dark smoky shadow brought out the green in her eyes, and her lips looked stained with freshly picked roses.



"Yes, I think that will be all," she said regally, dismissing her entourage with a wave of the hand and without a trace of gratitude. Mimi considered it a privilege for them to work on her, not the other way around.



Soon after, her maid entered the room bearing a white cardboard box the size of a small child's coffin. It had been messengered over to the hotel at the last minute, and Mimi clapped her hands when she saw it.



"It's here!" her maid said happily, having been the unlucky recipient of Mimi's tantrums at the fact that the ball was starting in a few hours and her dress had still not arrived.



"I see that. I'm not an idiot," Mimi snapped.



She ran over to the box, laid it on the bedspread, and ripped open the brown parcel paper like a whirling dervish.



After leaving the Dior showroom, Mimi had complained to her mother about the lack of proper ball gowns, and Trinity had secured her an appointment at the Balenciaga atelier to meet with the head designer himself.



Over the course of the five-hour meeting, Mimi had rejected and dismissed countless designs, causing the designer to rip up more than several dozen sketches.



"What is it you're looking for?" he had asked, com- pletely exasperated. "You're pickier than a bride."



Mimi inhaled sharply. "Exactly." She closed her eyes and saw herself and Jack together--during their first bonding. The dress she'd worn then was simple, white, merely a sheet, like a toga, and they had walked barefoot down the streets of Venice together, hand in hand, for the ceremony.



"White, the dress has to be white," she murmured. "White like snow. Transparent like tears."



Now, there it was, nestled in deepest tissues. The dress of her dreams.



It was made of the thinnest white silk satin, and when she picked it up, it felt like a whisper between her fingers, it was so fragile. Just as she had ordered, it was severe in its simplicity. It looked like nothing on the hanger--like a plain white piece of cloth. It was corded with a heavy silver chain at the hips, and had a sexy, unexpected keyhole cut out at the hip bone--the one concession to modern fashion she had allowed.



Mimi shrugged off her bathrobe, tossing it to the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, completely nude as her maid held the dress aloft. Mimi stepped into it, feeling the light, gossamer fabric fluttering about her like mist, settling against her slim form.



"Go," she said curtly to her maid. The frightened servant almost tripped on the bathrobe in her haste to leave.



She tied the cord around her waist and assessed the tanned skin that peeked through the cutout. When she stood in front of the light, her form would be shown in complete blackened silhouette; every curve of her body, every line from neck to breast, from waist to hips to her endless legs, she would be at once covered and yet exposed, clothed and unclothed, garbed and yet nude.



No underwear necessary.



It was spectacular.



"Wow."



She smiled. That didn't take long.



She turned around to face her brother.



Jack was standing in the doorway to her room, leaning a hand on the doorknob. Charles had sent him to collect his sister. His fine, platinum hair was brushed back from his forehead, and there was a tender look on his face.



You look...He sent.



I know....



They had gone back to their old habits of talking without speaking Jack letting his sister into his every thought, his every memory.



His eyes glazed over. She could see what he saw through his eyes, and she knew he was remembering that first night as well. She could see the cloudless Venetian sky, their footsteps light and quick over the bridge. She could see herself through his eyes, an eternity younger--how young they had been then at the dawn of the world, before the wars, before the dark.



How did you find...is it the same one?



No, sadly that dress is gone to the Tiber river....Silk does not keep a thousand years, my darling. This is a new one, for a new bonding.



"But not yet," Jack blurted. Their shared vision disappeared, and Mimi was annoyed to find herself wrenched out of a very pleasant memory.



"No, not yet," Mimi allowed. They would not be bonded officially until their twenty-first birthday. According to vampire law, the bond--the holy matrimony between vampires was an immortal vow, but the ceremony could not be performed until they were of age. The two of them were obligated to renew their bond in every cycle, although this was the first time that they had been born as twins to the same family, confusing matters due to pesky human laws. But no matter. They were vampire twins, which had a different meaning among their kind. It meant their souls had twinned in heaven, where they had pledged their love.



The bond could not be performed until they had both come into their full memories and mastered their powers. Vampire twins sometimes spent cycles looking for each other, and bonded couples had to be old enough to be able to rec- ognize the latest reincarnation of their spouse in a new phys- ical shell.



She knew that in the entire history of the vampires, there was only one couple that had forsaken their bond. Gabrielle as Allegra Van Alen had forsaken Michael, Charles Van Alen Force, in this cycle. She had married--married--in a church, a holy sanctuary, had said the words, had pledged her troth to a human! To her human familiar! And look what happened...Gabrielle trapped in a coma forever, caught between life and non-death. Condemned to eternal silence. "But why wait?" Mimi asked. "I've known who you were ever since I could see. And you know who I am now."



Mimi was referring to the night in her father's study when Jack's memories had finally rushed back, allowing him to finally see what was right in front of him all along. They were two who were one. She was his. For eternity.



"I love you, you know," Mimi said. "You make me crazy, but God help me, Jack, I do."



Jack bent his head so that his nose was buried in Mimi's hair. It smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine, and he inhaled deeply.



"I love you too," he replied.



"My God." Trinity said, with a sharp intake of breath.



Mimi and Jack slowly parted from their embrace and looked to see their mother standing at the open doorway.



"Mimi, you are only sixteen. And that is certainly not a dress for a sixteen-year-old," Trinity accused, her voice shaking.



"Should I remind you I am centuries older than you, `Mother'?" Mimi sniffed. She was coming of age now, the memories flooding back, and Mimi did not want to have to play at being Red Bloods anymore, with typical nuclear family dynamics.



"Charles," Trinity said. "Control your children."



"Mimi, you look beautiful," Charles said, kissing his daughter on the forehead. "Let's go."



Trinity scowled.



"Come, darling, it is time to dance," Charles said soothingly, taking his wife's hand and leading her out of the room.



"Shall we?" Jack asked, holding out his hand.



"We shall." Mimi smiled.



And together the Force twins walked out, arm in arm, to the party of the year.