When Bliss was growing up, her family lived in one of those mega-mansions that were ubiquitous in River Oaks, a wealthy Houston suburb. Their house was the epitome of "Texas Excess," at twenty-eight thousand square feet. Bliss used to joke that it should have its own zip code. She had never felt comfortable in it, and preferred her grandparents' rambling ranch in the wilds of West Texas instead. Despite their Yankee roots, her family was considered Lone Star aristocracy - their money made in oil, cattle, and well...mostly oil. The story the Llewellyns liked to tell was how the family patriarch had scandalized his upper-crust family by dropping out of Yale to work at an oil field. He'd quickly learned the ropes, buying up thousands of acres of oil-rich land to become the luckiest oil baron in the entire state. Was it luck or due to vampire ability, Bliss wondered now.

Forsyth was the youngest son of the youngest son. Her grandfather was a rebel who'd stayed East after boarding school, married his Andover sweetheart, a Connecticut debutante, and raised their son in her family's Fifth Avenue apartment, until bad luck on the stock market sent the family back to the Texas homestead.

Her grandfather had been one of her favorite people. He'd retained his Texan drawl even after his years in the Northeast, and he'd had an ironic, saucy sense of humor. He liked to say he didn't belong anywhere and therefore belonged everywhere. He was nostalgic about his life in New York, but he'd dug in and took over the family business when no one else wanted the ranch, preferring to move to the glass metropolises of Dallas or San Antonio instead. She wished Pap-Pap had stuck around; what was the point of being a vampire if you had to live a human-length lifetime anyway, and then had to wait to get called up again for the next cycle?

Bliss had grown up among many cousins, and until she moved to New York and turned fifteen, had always assumed there was nothing particularly special or interesting about her. Perhaps it was a willful ignorance. There had been signs, she realized later on: her older cousins hinting of "the change," furtive giggles from the already initiated, her father's rotating secretaries who, she now understood, served as his human familiars. It just recently occurred to Bliss how odd it was that no one ever spoke of her real mother.

BobiAnne was the only mother she'd ever known. Bliss had an uneasy relationship with her tacky, over-protective stepmother, who showered Bliss with affection while ignoring her own child, Bliss's half sister, Jordan. BobiAnne, with her furs and diamonds and ridiculous decorating schemes, had tried too hard to replace the mother Bliss had never known, and Bliss couldn't hate her for it. On the other hand, she couldn't love her for it either.

Forsyth had married BobiAnne while Bliss was still in the cradle, and Jordan had been born four years later. A silent and strange child, who was pudgy to Bliss's willowy form, pasty to Bliss's ivory complexion, and difficult in comparison to Bliss's easygoing temperament. Yet Bliss couldn't imagine life without her younger sister, and displayed a fierce protectiveness whenever BobiAnne would tease or insult her own progeny. For her part, Jordan adored her sister when she wasn't mocking her. It was a normal sibling relationship - full of spats and bickering, and yet bolstered by a faithful and abiding loyalty.

One always took the most important things in life for granted, Bliss thought, when a few days after the fashion show she took a taxi to the uppermost reaches of Manhattan. She directed the driver to the Columbia-Presbyterian hospital.

"Are you family?" inquired the guard at the reception desk, pushing forward a visitor sheet for her to sign.

Bliss hesitated. She touched the photograph hidden in her coat pocket for luck. It was similar to one her father kept in his wallet, a copy of which she'd found in a jewelry case and now held in her hands.

"Yes."

"Top floor. Last room at the end of the hallway."

She wished she had someone to accompany her, but she couldn't think of anyone she could ask. Schuyler would certainly demand an explanation, and Bliss would not be able to provide a reasonable one. "Um, I think you and I might be sisters?" just sounded too preposterous.

As for Dylan, Bliss had shoved all thoughts of him to the back of her mind. She knew she should check up on him, especially now that he'd stopped trying to contact her, but she was too angry and humiliated to return to that awful room at the Chelsea Hotel. The strange tics she'd observed: the guttural speech, the high laugh, the strange babble of languages only made her more fearful of him. Bliss knew it was wishful thinking, but she couldn't help hoping that maybe things would just go back to normal. She'd promised Schuyler and Oliver she would deal with it - turn him in to the Committee and the Conclave - but so far she kept finding excuses not to. Even if she'd decided not to be attracted to him anymore, she couldn't find it in her heart to rat on him either.

She had other things to worry about, even though she knew she wasn't going to find any answers at the hospital. Allegra was in a coma, after all. And it was useless to try bringing up the subject with her father.

All her life, Bliss had been told that her mother had died when she was young. That "Charlotte Potter" had been a schoolteacher her father had met during his first political campaign, when he'd run for state congressman. Now Bliss wondered if Charlotte Potter had ever existed. Certainly there were no wedding albums, no trinkets, no heirlooms to indicate any such woman had ever been married to her father. For the longest time she had assumed it was because BobiAnne did not want reminders of the former Mrs. Llewellyn.

She didn't know anything about her real mother's family, and with her acute vampire memory, could go back to the time when she'd first asked her father what her real mother's name was. She was five years old, and her father had just read her a bedtime story. "Charlotte Potter," he'd told her cheerfully. "Your mother's name was Charlotte Potter.

Bliss had been charmed. "Just like Charlotte's Web!" she'd squealed. And her last name was just like the woman who wrote all those books on her shelves, Beatrix Potter.

More and more, Bliss suspected that her father had just made it up. The other day when she'd mentioned the name to Forsyth, he had simply looked blank.

Bliss walked to the end of the hall and found the room. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.

Allegra Van Alen's room was as cold as a meat locker. The woman slumbering in the bed did not move. Bliss approached the bedside tentatively, feeling like an intruder. Allegra looked peaceful, ageless, her face unlined. She was like a princess in a glass coffin: beautiful and still.

She thought that when she finally saw Allegra she would sense something - know for sure whether she was related to her or not. But there was nothing. Bliss touched the necklace hidden underneath her shirt for comfort, then reached over to hold Allegra's hand, feeling her papery skin. She closed her eyes and tried to access her past lives, her memories, to see if she had any knowledge of Gabrielle.

In flashes she would catch a glimpse of someone who looked familiar, who might have been her, but Bliss wasn't sure. In the end, the woman in the bed was as much a stranger as the nurse in the hallway.

"Allegra?" Bliss whispered. It seemed presumptuous to call her "mother." "It's me. I'm...Bliss. I don't know if you remember me, but I think you might be my ..." Bliss suddenly stopped short. She felt a pain in her chest, as if she couldn't breathe. What was she doing here? She had to go. She had to leave immediately.

She was right; she would find no answers here. She would never know the truth. Her father would never tell her, and Allegra could not.

Bliss left, troubled and confused, still seeking answers to questions she kept in her heart.

She did not know that when she left the room, Allegra Van Alen began to scream.
 

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