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apartment for a boy who does not arrive.
    Schuyler nodded. The two of them understood each other without speaking. It was the vampire way.
    “Still, he can’t be like this; we’ve got to get him help.” Schuyler moved closer to the two of them.
    “Don’t touch me,” Dylan snarled. Suddenly, he leaped to his feet and grabbed Bliss by the throat, his bony fingers pressing violently on her pale neck.
    “If you’re not going to help me, then you’re one of them,” he said menacingly, tightening his grip.
    Bliss began to cry. “Dylan…don’t.”
    Schuyler lunged toward Dylan, but Oliver restrained her. “Wait,” he said. “Wait—I can’t let you get hurt again…”
    Meanwhile, Dylan pushed Bliss further and further with his mind, his fury relentless, his power only more frightening in its recklessness. Bliss dropped to her knees. There would be no telepathic gymnastics on her part.
    Now it was Schuyler’s turn to scream. Schuyler’s turn to beg him to stop.
    Dylan took no notice of them, and stroked Bliss’s cheek with his other hand. He leaned in, his mouth on her neck. Schuyler could see his fangs appear. They were about to draw blood.
    “No…Dylan…please,” Bliss whispered. “No…”
    “Let me go.” Schuyler shook Oliver off her. Bliss watched as her friend frantically prepared an incantation that would break Dylan’s hold.
    But just before Schuyler could send the coercion, Dylan’s shoulders shook and he sank to the ground of his own volition, abruptly releasing his victim. Bliss crumpled to the floor, violet imprints from his fingers blooming on her neck.
    Dylan put his head between his knees and sobbed.
    “What the hell just happened?” he cried, and finally his was a voice Bliss recognized.
    For the first time that evening, Dylan sounded like himself.
    Eight
    “Try it,” Mimi said, holding a spoon on which a gelatinous mound quivered. “It’s delicious.”
    Her brother looked suspiciously at the appetizer. Gelée of sea urchin with foamed asparagus did not sound good. But he took a bite manfully.
    “See?” Mimi smiled.
    “Not bad.” Jack nodded. She was right as always.
    They were seated in a private banquette in a restaurant located in the gleaming Time Warner Center. A restaurant that was, for the time being, the most expensive and most celebrated restaurant in Manhattan. Getting a reservation at Per Se was akin to getting an audience with the pope. Near impossible. But that’s what Daddy’s secretaries were for.
    Mimi liked the new mall, as she called it. It was shiny and glossy and slick, just like the Force Tower. It smelled thrillingly expensive, like a new Mercedes. The building and everything in it was a paean to capitalism and money. You couldn’t spend less than five hundred dollars for a meal for two at any of its four-star restaurants. This was post-boom, seven-figure-bonus New York, the New York of financiers and ready-made billionaires, the New York of brash hedge-fund jockeys with shellacked trophy wives flaunting their liposculpted physiques and couture hair extensions.
    Jack, of course, hated it. Jack preferred a city that he had never even experienced. He waxed nostalgic about the legendary days of the Village, when anyone from Jackson Pollock to Dylan Thomas could be found wandering the cobblestoned streets. He liked grit and dirt and a Times Square that was known for its hustlers and three-card-monte dealers and underground juice bars (since strip clubs couldn’t serve alcohol). He couldn’t stomach a New York that had been taken over by the likes of Jamba Juice, Pinkberry, and Cold Stone.
    He had been prepared to despise the precious, sixteen-table restaurant in the middle of what was essentially a shopping mall. But as each course appeared—caviar and oyster sabayon, white truffles generously grated over slippery tagliatelle noodles, marrow over the richest Kobe beef—Mimi could see he was beginning to change his mind. Each dish consisted of a mere