"Cheer up," Oliver Hazard-Perry said, lifting a small cup of espresso to his lips. Her beauty was made even more benevolent when she smiled, although there was little chance of that this morning. With her pale, ivory complexion, deep-set blue eyes, and mass of dark, blue-black hair, she was a stunning, impossibly lovely creature.
On any other girl, the ragged ensemble might look as though it had been thrown together by a homeless vagrant, but on Schuyler it became raiment equal to royalty, and made her delicate, heart-shaped features even more striking. Her clothes-the black turtleneck that hung past her hips, cutoff leggings, an army flak jacket, and beaten-up motorcycle boots-were thrift- store castoffs. But that was a long time ago, and the family fortune had been dwindling for many years: Schuyler was more familiar with penny-pinching than shopping sprees. Once upon a time, the Van Alen name had been synonymous with power, privilege, and patronage. She was a Blue Blood vampire, the last of the Van Alens-a formerly prominent New York family whose influence and largesse had been instrumental in the founding of modern-day Manhattan. Schuyler Van Alen rested her elbows on the rickety caf? table and put her head in her hands, so that the bottom of her chin was hidden underneath her oversize turtleneck. The waters were in low tide, the dark stain of the higher levels visible on the building facades. The gondolas were lined up on the docks, empty, their striped-shirted gondoliers leaning on their oars, waiting for customers who had not arrived. It was noon, but the sun was hidden behind clouds, and a gloomy pall had fallen over the city. Hundreds of them: fat, gray, squat, and silent, pecking at the pieces of sfogliatelle and pane uva bread crumbs that careless tourists had left behind.
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