“Not hungry?” Mimi asked, sliding in next to her.
In answer, Bliss pushed away her tray and made a face. She shoved all thoughts of Dylan out of her mind.
“What’s all this about an after-party everyone’s been harassing me about? No one believes me when I tell them I have no idea what’s going on. You and Jack are throwing some kind of bash after the ball?”
Mimi looked around to make sure no one could overhear, and only when she was certain they were beyond earshot did she speak. “Yeah, I was going to tell you about it today.”
She filled Bliss in on the details. She had secured the perfect spot—an abandoned synagogue downtown. There was nothing Mimi enjoyed more than advocating a night of debauchery in a once-sacred space. The Angel Orensanz Center was a neo-Gothic building in the middle of the Lower East Side. It had been designed as a synagogue in 1849 by a Berlin architect who modeled it after the cathedral of Cologne. Mimi wasn’t the only New Yorker who liked to throw over-the-top extravaganzas in the space: the center had already played host to several fashion shows during Fashion Week, which was how she got the idea in the first place. Mimi didn’t care about points for originality, she only cared about being where the action was, and right now, desecrated synagogues were hot.
“The inside is a mess,” Mimi said gleefully. “There are like, rotting columns and exposed beams . . . It’s like a beautiful ruin,” she whispered. “We’re going to light the whole place with tea light candles—no electric lights at all! And that’s it, no other decor. The place has enough atmosphere. It doesn’t need anything.”
Mimi ripped out a sheet of notebook paper from her binder and passed it to Bliss. “This is who I’m thinking for the party. I wrote it down during my French quiz.” Mimi was enrolled in AP French, but the class was a joke. Once her vampire memories resurfaced, she had discovered she was already fluent in the language.
Bliss looked down at all the names. Froggy Kernochan. Jaime Kip. Blair McMillan. Soos Kemble. Rufus King. Booze Langdon.
“These are all Committee members. But not even all of the Committee members,” Bliss noted.
“Exactly.”
“You’re not inviting Lucy Forbes?” Bliss asked, aghast. Lucy Forbes was a Blue Blood senior, and Head Girl of the school.
Mimi wrinkled her nose. “Lucy Forbes is a drip. A goody-goody.” Mimi had had a vendetta against the girl ever since Lucy had reported that Mimi had abused her human familiars by feeding on them without adhering to the forty-eight hour rest period mandate.
They went down the list, Bliss proposing a name and Mimi rejecting it.
“How about Stella Van Rensslaer?”
“Freshman! No frosh at this shindig.”
“But she’s going to be inducted next spring. I mean, she is a Blue Blood,” Bliss argued. All the names of potential Blue Blood vampires were available to Committee members so they could watch out for their younger brethren, the way Mimi had taken Bliss under her wing earlier that year.
“Ugh. No,” Mimi said.
“Carter Tuckerman?” Bliss proposed, thinking of the friendly, skinny boy who spent Committee meetings taking copious notes as secretary.
“That geek? No way.”
Bliss sighed. She hadn’t seen Schuyler’s name on the list either, which bothered her.
“And what about . . . you know . . . ‘significant others,’ the familiars?” Bliss asked. Blue Bloods used the term “human familiar” to describe the reliant relationship between the mortal and immortal races. Human familiars were lovers, friends, vessels from which the vampires drew their greatest strength.
“No Red Bloods at this party. This is like the Four
Hundred Ball, but even more exclusive. Vampires only.” “People are going to be really upset about this,” Bliss warned. Mimi smiled her cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. “Exactly.”
SIX