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He looked into her eyes. “I know the Committee’s just a cover. That there are people in this world who don’t die, who keep coming back every hundred years.”
“You’re insane. I have no idea what you are talking about.” My God, had they been this sloppy? How was it that he knew their secrets? Talk about a security breach. Paul was neither a Conduit nor a familiar. How did he know?
Paul cleared his throat and looked out the window, and answered as if he had heard her question. “I’ve been a student at Duchesne for a couple of years now. I’ve seen things. I’ve heard things. Guys like Bryce Cutting are pretty careless. I know most of the kids at school are blind, but I’m not. I know what you are. And it’s okay.”
Deming shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said evenly. “What I do want to talk about is why Victoria Taylor was in your car just now.”
“It’s a stalemate then,” Paul said amiably. “You want me to tell you the truth, but then you won’t give me the courtesy of doing the same.”
Suddenly, Deming remembered the words from the video. Vampires are real. Open your eyes. They are all around us. Do not believe the lies they tell.
Then Paul’s words: People who don’t know I exist. It’s demeaning. She had dismissed his attitude as the usual resentment against the popular crowd, but it was more than that. He had a key to the school, and Victoria had been hidden in the attic. Then with a start she realized two things had been bothering since she’d learned of Stuart Rhodes’s kidnapping. One, that at Rufus’s party, Stuart had been standing next to Paul Rayburn. They were friends. Two, that it was a tasting party. The only humans invited were familiars and those who were about to become familiars. And yet Paul Rayburn had left the party unchosen. No bite marks. That
was not supposed to happen. Committee rules forbade such a thing. Paul had seen too much—he should have been marked.
Deming had another epiphany. Jamie Kip’s party was closed as well—only vampires and Conduits, familiars or about-to-be-familiars. Evan Howe had entered the party an ordinary boy and had left as Victoria Taylor’s familiar. Deming would bet that Paul Rayburn had been at Jamie Kip’s party—who knows how many parties—and had left unchanged. Unclaimed. Here was a human who did not feel any loyalty to the vampires, and yet was privy to their secrets.
Then she saw it as she looked into his bright blue eyes—the memory that had eluded her so far. The night of Jamie’s party, Victoria was arguing with Piper, and had stormed off. She had made it as far as the hallway, when Paul had come out of the shadows and placed a black bag over her head and dragged her back inside. He had waited until the changing of the Wardens at dawn to slip away with his hostage. That way no one had seen them. No records. No eyewitnesses.
Deming felt a sense of horror at her discovery. Paul meant something to her. When she’d bumped into him that morning she knew it was more than just bloodlust. She’d felt something for him she hadn’t before, in centuries of being alive. Attraction. Affection. Respect. Admiration. Love? Maybe. It could have been. But now they would never know.
“Why, Paul?” Deming asked.
He smiled. “I’d suspected there was something going on for a long time, but I wanted to know for sure. Especially when my pal Stuart was tapped to be part of this ‘Committee’ and I wasn’t. It didn’t make sense that he would get in and I wouldn’t. So one afternoon I hid in the library during one of their meetings and I saw and heard everything. I confronted Stuart—told him I knew, that I shot some video too, and I was going to put it up on the Internet, show everyone the truth.
“The whole world should know what you guys are. You run the place and no one even knows. It’s not fair. You’re not gods.”
“No, we aren’t,” Deming agreed softly, thinking of that ancient battle in Heaven. “We aren’t gods.” They had certainly learned that the hard way.
“Why are you looking at me that way? You think I did something wrong? No way. It was all Victoria’s idea to play hostage. Do you even think a human could overcome a vampire? Be serious. Anyway, I told Stuart what I was going to do, and he told her. She came to me and asked me not to post the video yet. She had something better in mind. She said that she and Stuart were in love, and they wanted to leave the Coven because they weren’t allowed to be together.
“They were ‘bonded’ to other people. But if these other people found out, Stuart and Victoria would burn. They were scared of the—what do you guys call her—the Regent? They talked about Jack Force—about how what was planned for him would happen to them if anyone found out. So Victoria came up with this hostage thing. She said if we could make it seem like they’d died, no one would ever come looking for them. She said she knew how to fool even the Venators.
“She gave me detailed instructions. She was really concerned about timing. She said they were being watched all the time.”
Deming nodded. How would Paul have known about the Wardens otherwise? She hadn’t paid much attention to his affectus before, when he’d told her that fanciful tale about Victoria and Piper, but she was paying attention now. Everything she was reading indicated that he was telling the truth.
“I know you don’t have any reason to believe me. I heard about you. Stuart told me. His dad is on the Conclave. You’re some kind of super-vampire sleuth or something.”
“What else did Stuart tell you?”
“That Victoria’s waiting for him. See, she’s been in the city the entire time. They’re leaving for the European Coven. By tomorrow everyone would believe Stuart was dead, and they were free to go.”
So if everything he was telling her was true, and his affectus seemed to prove it, plus the fact that Victoria, a vampire, could never have been subdued by a human against her will, then it was all a prank—a silly prank made by vampires who were in love with the wrong people and wanted to leave the Coven, and a human boy who wanted in on a big secret. Maybe the biggest secret of all.
“Listen, I know what you’re thinking: you want to wipe my memory or something, right? Stuart and Victoria wanted to as well, but I managed to talk them out of it. Please don’t.”
Deming fiddled with the chopsticks in her hair. “No, a memory wipe won’t take care of it. You know too much. If I did it, you could have . . . brain damage.”
Paul glanced at the locked car door. “Then you’re going to do the other thing. But maybe there’s another way. I don’t want that. Maybe I can be one of those human . . . what do you call it . . . Conduits or something.”
“Conduits are born, not made. It’s not an open position. The Coven would never allow it. I’m sorry. There’s only one way.” She knew what she had to do. Something that should have been done by someone a long time ago. Maybe that’s why she had been so attracted to him, because she knew in the end, she would have to do this.
“Don’t,” Paul said, holding her hand. “Don’t make me lesser than you. Treat me as an equal, as you have been. I’m just human, but it’s our blood that keeps you alive. Without us, you are nothing.”
He put a soft hand to her cheek. “Meet me on my own terms. Share yourself with me as a person. I know about the Sacred Kiss. I know what it does. What it will do to me.”
His affectus pulsated with the blue of the open sea and of the endless sky. Blue was the color of truth. He loved her. That was why she’d felt her stomach churn when she’d seen Victoria Taylor in his car. She had trusted him and he had lied to her. But he had only lied to protect his friends. He was so heartbreakingly lovely, she could weep. Deming touched his neck and whispered, “I love you too.”
