Noise leaked from Lindsey’s room on the third floor, a cacophony of voices and television sounds. I knocked, and at Lindsey’s invitation (“Get your ass in here, Sentinel”), pulled it open.
The tiny room, already crowded with furniture and Lindsey’s expressive decor, was stuffed with vampires. I counted six, including Lindsey and Malik, who were reclining on her bed. Kelley and newbie vampire (and Lindsey’s current paramour) Connor sat on the floor beside two vampires I didn’t know. All six of them faced a small round television that sat atop Lindsey’s bookshelf. On TV, thin people with strong accents berated the fashion choices of a large, flustered woman who wore a dress of eye-bruising colors but who was giving back as good as she was getting.
“Door,” Kelley said without looking at me. I obeyed and closed it.
“Cop a squat, Sentinel,” Lindsey directed, patting the bed beside her and shuffling farther from Malik, giving me room to sit between them. I stepped carefully among vampires and over a half-eaten box of pizza that made my stomach grumble in a way blood didn’t, and climbed onto the bed. I had to go in headfirst, then carefully turn around, apologizing to Malik and Linds for kicks and pokes along the way. I heard grunts and moans, but assumed they were related to the show, which seemed to be heading for some kind of bitchfest climax.
“This is Margot and Katherine,” Lindsey said, pointing at the unfamiliar vampires on the floor in turn. Margot, a strikingly gorgeous brunette with an angular crop of dark hair and bangs that curved into a point between amber-colored eyes, turned and offered a finger wave. Katherine, her light brown hair piled into a high knot, turned back and smiled.
“Merit,” I said, waving back.
“They know who you are, hot shit. And you obviously know
Connor and Kelley,” Lindsey added when I’d settled myself, a pillow between my back and the wall, legs crossed at the ankles, tiny, glowing reality television show half a dozen feet away.
Connor glanced back and grinned. “Thank God you’re here. I was the youngest person in the room by at least fifty years.”
“Hate to break it to you, Sweet Tits,” Lindsey said, “but you aren’t a person anymore.” She called for a piece of pizza, and the box was passed up. Eyes on the television, she grabbed a slice, then handed over the box. I settled it on my lap and tucked into a piece, pausing only long enough to make sure it was covered in meat. Bingo. While it was barely warm, and consisted of an offensive New York hybrid crust that could have used two more inches of dough and sauce and cheese, it was better than a kick in the face.
Malik leaned toward me. “You heard she’s been released?”
In the two months that I’d been a Cadogan vampire, this was the first solo conversation I’d had with Malik. And while we were on the subject, it was also the first time I’d seen him in jeans and a polo shirt.
I swallowed a mouthful of Canadian bacon, cheese, and crust. “Yes,” I whispered back. “Ethan told me yesterday.”
He nodded, his expression inscrutable, then turned back to the television.
As first conversations went, it wasn’t much. But I took it for concern, and decided I was satisfied with it.
A commercial came on and the room erupted in sound, Margot, Lindsey, Connor, Katherine, and Kelley rehashing what they’d seen, who was “winning,” and who’d cry first when the results came in. I wasn’t entirely sure what the contest was, much less the prize, but since vampires apparently delighted in human drama, I settled in and tried to catch up.
“We’re rooting for the bitchy one,” Lindsey explained, nibbling the crust on her pizza slice.
“I thought they were all bitchy,” I noted.
After a few minutes of commercials, Malik began the process of getting off the bed.
“Is it me?” I asked lightly. “I can shower.”
He chuckled as he took to his feet, the glow of the television glinting off the medal around his neck, and something else—a thin silver crucifix that dangled from a thin silver chain. So much for that myth.
“It’s not you,” Malik said. “I need to get back.” He began to step between the vampires, who were completely unmoved by his effort not to step on them.
“Down in front!”
“Out of the way, vampire,” Margot said, tossing a handful of popcorn in his direction. “Let’s move it.”
He waved them off good-naturedly, then disappeared out the door.
“What did he have to get back to?” I asked Lindsey.
“Hmm?” she absently asked, gaze on the television.
“Malik. He said he had to get back. What did he have to get back to?”
“Oh,” Lindsey said. “His wife. She lives here with him. They’ve got a suite on your floor.”
I blinked. “Malik’s
married
?” It wasn’t the “Malik” part that surprised me, but the “married” part. That a vampire was married seemed kind of odd. I mean, from what I’d seen so far, the vampire lifestyle was pretty comparable to dorm life. Living in a would-be vampire frat house didn’t seem conducive to a long-term relationship.
“He’s always been married,” Lindsey said. “They were turned together.” She glanced over at me. “You live down the hall from them. It’s not real neighborly of you not to say hello.”
“I’m not real neighborly,” I admitted, recognizing that Malik was the only other vampire that I knew had a room on the second
floor, and I’d only learned that four seconds ago. “We need a mixer,” I decided.
Lindsey huffed. “What are we, sophomores? Mixers are excuses to get drunk and make out with people you hardly know.” She slowly lowered her gaze to the back of Connor’s head and smiled lasciviously. “On the other hand . . .”
“On the other hand, you’d break Luc’s heart. Maybe let’s skip the mixer for now.”
“You’re such a mommy.”
I snorted. “Can I ground you?”
“Unlikely,”
she said, drawing out the word. “Now shut up and watch the bitchy humans.”
I stayed until the show was done, until the pizza was done, until the vampires on the floor stood and stretched and said their goodbyes. I was glad I’d made the trip, glad I’d been able to spend time in the company of a Cadogan vampire other than the House’s 394-year-old Master. I’d missed out on a lot of college socializing, more focused on reading and studying than was probably healthy, always assuming there’d be time for making friends later. And then graduation arrived, and I didn’t know my classmates as well as I might have. I had a chance to do that over now—to invest in the people around me instead of losing myself in the intellectual details.
I rounded a corner to head for the stairs, so lost in my thoughts that I nearly forgot that Ethan, too, was a resident of the third floor.
But there he was.
He stood in the doorway of the apartment that had once been Amber’s—his former Consort and the woman who’d betrayed him for Celina. He glanced up as I neared, but two burly men carrying a sizable chest of drawers stepped between us and broke the eye contact.
“Couple more loads,” one said to Ethan in a thick Chicagoland accent as they hobbled down the hallway. “Then we’re done.”
“Thank you,” he replied, half turning to watch them struggle under the weight of the furniture.
I wondered at the arrangements. Vampires could have managed the bulk much easier than the humans, and wouldn’t have required Ethan’s supervision at five o’clock in the morning. Humans or not, Ethan didn’t look thrilled to be supervising them, and I also wondered why he hadn’t let Helen coordinate.
Maybe, I realized, he needed this. Maybe this was his catharsis, his chance to clean the room, clear the air, and prepare for a changing of the lascivious guards.
I wanted to say something, to acknowledge the pain he probably felt, but had no idea how to say it, how to form words he wouldn’t find insulting. Words he’d find too emotional. Too sentimental. Too human. I caught his gaze again, grudging resignation in it, before he looked away and slipped back inside the room.
I stood there for a moment, torn between following him and trying to offer comfort, and letting it go, giving him back the same silence he’d given me, assuming the silence was what he needed. I pushed on toward the stairs, decision made, and dropped headfirst into bed just before Homer’s “rosy-fingered Dawn” appeared, just as the horizon began to pinken. It was a little less rosy, I thought, when that dawn could fry you to ashes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE BELLE OF THE BALL
I woke suddenly, raps on the door jolting me from unconsciousness. I tried to shake off the dream I’d been having about moonlight over dark water, sat up, and rubbed my eyes.
The knock sounded again.
“Just a second.” I untangled myself from the blankets I’d pulled up during the day and cast a glance at the alarm clock beside my bed. It was just after seven p.m., only an hour or so before the beginning of cocktails at the Breckenridge party. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A second to stand up, then I shuffled to the door, still, I realized, in yesterday’s wrinkled shirt and suit pants.
I flipped the lock and opened it. Ethan stood in my doorway, tidy in suit pants and white button-up. His hair was pulled back, the Cadogan medal at his neck. Where I was rumpled, he was pristine, his eyes bright emerald green, alert. His expression was some cross between bemusement and disappointment, like he couldn’t decide which emotion to choose.
“Long night, Sentinel?”
His voice was flat. It took me a moment to realize the conclusion he’d reached, that a rendezvous had kept me out late and prevented me from changing out of yesterday’s uniform. His Sentinel, the woman he’d passed over to the Master of Navarre House to secure an alliance, was still in yesterday’s clothes.
Of course, I hadn’t seen Morgan in days. But Ethan didn’t need to know that.
I hid my grin and answered back provocatively, “Yes. It was, actually. One eyebrow arched in disapproval, Ethan held out a black garment bag.
I reached out and took it. “What’s this?”
“It’s for this evening. Something a little more . . . apropos than your usual options.”
I nearly snarked back—Ethan was not keen on my jeans-and-layered-T-shirts fashion sensibilities—but decided I appreciated the gesture more than I needed the last word. Tonight I was returning to the fold. Returning to Chicago’s most elite social circle. This was my chance to don a dress and an attitude, to act like I belonged. To use my name as the entry ticket it truly was. But that name or not, that task would be a helluva lot easier in a nice dress than in anything I had in my closet at the moment.
So, “Thank you,” I said.
He looked down and flicked up the cuff at his wrist, revealing a wide, silver watch. “You’ll find shoes to match in your closet. I had Helen drop them off last night. As I’m sure you know, it’s quite a drive to Loring Park, so we need to leave directly. Be downstairs in half an hour.”
“Forty-five minutes,” I countered, and at his raised eyebrow, offered, “I’m a girl.”
His gaze went flat again. “I’m aware of that, Sentinel. Forty minutes.”
I saluted crisply after he turned and walked down the hallway,
then shut the door behind him. Curiosity getting the best of me, I went to the bed and spread the garment bag upon it, then clasped the zipper.
“Five bucks says it’s black,” I bet, and unzipped it.
I was right.
It was black taffeta, a cocktail dress with a fitted bodice and just-above-the-knees swingy skirt. The taffeta was pleated in well-constructed tucks, turning a classic little black dress into something much sassier.
Sassy or not, it was still fustier than my usual jeans and Pumas. It was the dress I’d successfully avoided wearing for ten years.
I pulled it from the bag and slipped it off the hanger, then held it up against my chest in front of the full-length mirror. I looked, at twenty-eight, almost exactly as I had at twenty-seven. But my straight hair was darker, my skin paler. Barring some ill-advised trip into the sun or a run-in with the wrong end of a katana or an aspen stake, I’d look the same as I did now—the twenty-seven years I’d owned when Ethan changed me—for the remainder of my life. For an eternity, if I managed to last that long. That, of course, would depend on how many enemies I made, and how much I was asked to sacrifice to Cadogan House.
To Ethan.
That thought in mind, I blew out a slow breath and offered a silent prayer for patience. The clock ticking, I spread the dress back on the bed and headed for the shower.
Maybe unsurprisingly, it took time for the water in the antique House to heat. I slipped into the claw-foot tub and pulled the ringed shower curtain around me, then dunked my head beneath the spray, relishing the heat. I missed daylight, being able to stand in the warmth of a spring day, my face tilted toward the sun, basking in the heat of it. I was relegated to fluorescent lights and moonglow now, but a hot shower was a surprisingly good substitute.
I stayed in the tub huddled beneath the water until the tiny bathroom was fogged with steam. Once out, I toweled off and turbaned my hair, then arranged my ensemble. The shoes Ethan had mentioned were in the closet, carefully wrapped in white tissue paper and nestled inside a glossy black box. I unwrapped them. They were evening pumps, an arrangement of spaghetti-thin straps atop three needle-sharp inches of heel.
I pulled them out by the straps and dangled them in the air, giving them a once-over as they twirled. I used to dance
en pointe
, but during my grad school days, I’d gotten used to Converse and Puma, not Louboutin and Prada. I’d do Ethan a solid and wear them, but I truly hoped I wouldn’t have to make a run for it at the Breckenridge estate.
I arranged undergarments, prepped and dried my hair, and applied makeup. Lip gloss. Mascara. Blush, since it was a special occasion. When my dark hair gleamed, I pulled it into a high ponytail, long bangs across my forehead, which I thought looked modern enough to match the kicky cocktail dress and heels.