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Oliver's head flopped down. He was already asleep. Schuyler gently laid him on her bed, where he would have to rest for the next several hours, and covered him with her blanket.
What have I done? she wondered, even as she felt her vision clear and her senses heighten. Would they be able to keep this a secret from The Committee? What if Oliver were banished because they found out a Conduit had become a human familiar? She remembered Cordelia telling her that Allegra had married Schuyler's father, her human familiar, against the Code of the Vampires. Her mother had exchanged one bond for another.
And what about Jack?
When Oliver woke, Schuyler was sitting at her desk, watching him.
"Well," he said, scratching his neck where the bite marks were still raw, "I guess that's what you call friends with benefits."
They both cracked up.
Schuyler threw a pillow at him. She walked Oliver to the door and thanked him again. He kissed her on the lips as he left. A quick kiss, but still, a kiss on the lips.
She closed the door behind him, her heart anxious and troubled.
This was a mistake.
;
Lawrence was poring over archives from the Repository, and noticed that one clipping had been completely burned except for the date on the top. November 23, 1872. He was still puzzling over it when Schuyler returned from school. She told her grandfather about Jack Force being able to read her mind that afternoon.
"I thought I was safe from telepathy, and yet he was still able to read my thoughts. Why?" she asked.
"Abbadon has always been one of our most gifted seers," Lawrence said. "It will take more than a simple occludo exercise to close one's mind from him. But it sometimes happens that those who are drawn to each other can share a kinship of some kind."
"Drawn to each other?" Schuyler asked.
"You must have noticed he is drawn to you," Lawrence said.
Schuyler blushed. She had hoped but she had never thought of it as a reality. And yet, even with his bond with Mimi, he had sought her friendship and hinted that maybe he would be interested in something more....He had kissed her once, so long ago. And the boy behind the mask...Could it have been him?
"But he is bonded," Schuyler said. "It cannot be." "No. Not among our kind. Abbadon has always been this way. You were not the first to tempt his fidelity," Lawrence said. "But it will pass. Thank goodness you are not drawn to him. Otherwise it will spell disaster for both of you."
She looked down at the carpet, wondering if her grand- father was testing her, or if he merely assumed that Schuyler would choose the right path simply because she was his granddaughter.
"Yes," she said. "Thank God for that."
She felt a sudden light-headedness, and her vision became pixilated and blurry; her knees buckled, but before she could collapse, Lawrence leaped to his feet and steadied her. "You have not done as you were told," he said grimly. "You have not taken a human familiar. You are weakening."
She shook her head.
"This is not a trivial matter, Schuyler. If you do not take a familiar, there is a very real danger you will succumb to a coma like your mother."
"But I..."
Lawrence cut her off with a curt directive. "You must hunt, then--use the seduction. The call. That is the only way now."
The Caerimonia Osculor was a ritual between vampire and human that was usually a development within an existing relationship. That was why human familiars were traditionally lovers and friends of Blue Bloods. But the Code also allowed for the use of the powers of Seduction if the vampire was desperate. The vampire would use The Call to draw the human to him, hypnotizing the human and drawing its blood.
"I have taught you the words from the sacred language that would induce it," Lawrence said. "I will be going to the club tonight. When I return, I will trust that you have performed what is necessary."
Her grandfather departed soon after that, leaving Schuyler upstairs in her room. I don't want to, she thought stubbornly. I don't want to do it with a stranger. I don't want to do it with someone I don't know. I'm not desperate! Or am I?
Then, almost as if drawn by the call, someone knocked on Schuyler's bedroom door.
"What is it, Hattie?" Schuyler asked.
The door opened. "It's not Hattie, it's me," Oliver said, slouching in the doorway.
