“Oh,” I said, fingers pressing the spot on my dress that lay just above the blade. “Well. Thank you.”
He nodded crisply, then adjusted his tie, all verve and smooth confidence. “A bit of advice?”
I blew out a breath and smoothed my skirt. “What?”
“Remember who, and what, you are.”
That made me chuckle. He really had no idea the gauntlet he was about to walk.
“What?” he asked, sliding me a sideways glance.
“Fangs or not, we’re still outsiders.” I bobbed my head toward the ballroom doors. “They’re sharks, waiting to circle. It’s like
Gossip Girl
in there. That I come from money, and that we’re vampires, doesn’t guarantee us entrée.”
But as if on cue, two tuxedoed doormen pushed open the doors for us. Literally, they gave us access. Symbolically, they gave us access. But the judging hadn’t yet begun.
I took a breath and adopted my best grin of Merit-worthy entitlement, then glanced up at my companion.
He of the golden hair and green eyes surveyed the glittering party before us. “Then, Merit, Sentinel of my House, let’s show them who we are.”
His hand at my back, a frisson of heat slipping down my spine, we stepped inside.
* * *
The ballroom was awash in the light of crystal chandeliers. Beneath them in the glow stood all the people I remembered. The society matrons. The two-doctor families. The bitter wives. The charming, cheating husbands. The children who were fawned over solely because they’d been spawned by the wealthy.
Technically, I suppose that last group included me.
We found a spot on the edge of the room and made camp. That’s where I began Ethan’s education. I pointed out some of Chicago’s old-money families—the O’Briens, the Porters, and the Johnsons, who’d made their money in commodities trading, pianos and beef, respectively. The room was also sprinkled with new money—celebs, music magnates who made their home in the Windy City, Board of Trade members, and sports team presidents.
Some guests Ethan knew, some he asked questions about—their connections, their neighborhoods, the manner in which they’d made their fortunes. For the families he knew, I asked about their take on the supernatural: Did they have ties to our communities? Sons and daughters in the Houses? He was, unsurprisingly, well-informed, given his penchant for connections and strategies. Really, the entire conversation could have walked itself out of a Jane Austen novel, both of us rating and evaluating the matriarchs and patriarchs of Chicago’s social elite.
Noticeably absent from the party was the remainder of the Breckenridge clan—Nicholas and his brothers and Michael Breckenridge, Sr., who was known in friendly circles as Papa Breck. I’m not saying I was thrilled at the idea of jumping into another Nick encounter, but if I wanted to learn more about this Nick/Jamie business, I would at least need to be in the same room with him again. The no-show thing was going to put the kibosh on my investigation.
I also saw neither hide nor hair of my father. Not that I looked too hard.
I did see a cluster of people my age, a knot of twentysomethings
in cocktail dresses and sharp suits, a couple of the guys with scarves draped around their collars. These, I supposed, were the people I would have been friends with had I chosen my siblings’ paths.
“What do you think I’d have been like?” I asked him.
Ethan plucked two delicate flutes of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and handed one to me. “At what?”
I sipped the champagne, which was cold and crisp and tasted like apples, then gestured to the crowd around us. “At this. If I’d skipped school in New York or Stanford, stayed in Illinois, met a boy, joined the auxiliary with my mother.”
“You wouldn’t be a Cadogan vampire,” he said darkly.
“And you’d be missing out on my sparkling personality.” I made eye contact with another tuxedoed waiter, this one bearing food, and beckoned him closer with a crooked finger. I knew from the handful of galas I’d peeked into as a kid that the fare at charity events tended a little toward the weird side—foams of this and canapés of that. But what they lacked in homespun comfort they more than made up for in quantity.
The waiter reached us, watery blue eyes in the midst of a bored expression, and extended his tray and a handful of “B”- engraved cocktail napkins.
I reviewed the arrangement of hors d’oeuvres, which rested artistically on a bed of rock salt. One involved tiny pale cubes of something soaking in an endive cup. Another formed a cone of various pink layers. But for the endive, I had no clue what they were.
I looked up at the waiter, brows raised, seeking help.
“A napoleon of prawn and prawn mousse,” he said, nodding down at the pink columns, “and tuna ceviche in endive.”
Both weird seafood combinations, I thought, but, ever brave when it came to matters of
gastronomie
, I picked up one of each.
“You and food,” Ethan muttered, with what I thought was amusement.
I bit into the endive. I was a little weirded out by the ceviche treatment, but I was accommodating a vampire-sized hunger that wasn’t nearly as picky as I was. I raised my gaze from the appetizer as I noshed, pausing midbite at the realization that the cluster of twentysomethings across the room was staring at me. They talked among themselves and, some decision apparently made, one of them began walking toward us.
I finished my bite, then scarfed the shrimp napoleon, which was good but a little exotic for my junk-food-ruined palate. “Sharks, two o’clock.”
Brows raised, Ethan cast a glance at the away team, then smiled at me, with teeth. “Humans, two o’clock,” he corrected. “Time to do a little acting, Sentinel.”
I sipped at my champagne, erasing the taste of whipped shellfish. “Is that a challenge, Sullivan?”
“If that’s what it takes, Sentinel, then yes.”
The brunette leader of the ensemble, her petite figure tucked into a sequined silver dress, approached, her entourage watching from across the room.
“Hi,” she said, politely. “You’re Merit, right?”
I nodded at her.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but we were in the same cotillion class. I’m Jennifer Mortimer.”
I picked back through my memories and tried to place her face. She looked vaguely familiar, but I’d spent most of my cotillion being humiliated by the fact that I’d been trussed up and stuffed into a billowing white gown in order to be paraded before Chicago’s wealthy like a cow on parade. I hadn’t paid much attention to the people around me.
But I faked it. “It’s nice to see you again, Jennifer.”
“Nick Breck was your escort, wasn’t he? I mean, at our cotillion?”
Well, I had paid attention to him, so I nodded, then used my
champagne glass to gesture at Ethan, whose expression had flattened at Jennifer’s announcement. I guess I hadn’t mentioned that part of our history. “Ethan Sullivan,” I offered.
“A pleasure,” Ethan said.
“Can I . . .” She half smiled, looked away uncomfortably, then twisted a ring on her right hand. “Could I . . . ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“I noticed earlier . . . with the appetizers . . .”
“We eat food,” Ethan smoothly answered. He’d realized what she’d wanted to know before I did, which was funny, because that was one of the first questions I’d asked as a new vampire.
Jennifer blushed, but nodded. “Okay, sure. It’s just, the blood thing, obviously, but we weren’t sure about the rest, and, God, was that really rude of me?” She pressed a hand to her chest, grimaced. “Am I completely gauche?”
“It’s no problem,” I said. “Better to ask a question than assume the worst.”
Her face brightened. “Okay, okay, great. Listen, one more thing.”
I’m not sure what I expected—another question, sure, but not her next move. She slipped a thin business card from her bodice, and with manicured fingers that somehow worked under the weight of a gigantic marquis-cut diamond engagement ring, handed it to me.
This time when she spoke, her voice was all smooth confidence. “I know this is a little forward, but I did want to give you my card. I think you could benefit from representation.”
“I’m sorry?” I glanced down at the card, which bore her name beneath the heading CHICAGO ARTS MANAGEMENT.
She was an
agent
.
I nearly dropped my glass.
Jennifer cast a cautious glance at Ethan, then back at me.
“You’ve got a great look, a good family, and an interesting story. We could work that.”
“I—uh—”
“I’m not sure about your experience or interests—modeling, acting, that kind of thing—but we could definitely find a niche for you.”
“She’ll call you,” Ethan said, and Jennifer, all smiles and thank-yous, walked away. “I’m not surprised by anything anymore,” he said.
“Seconded.” I flipped up the card between two fingers, showed it to him. “What the hell just happened?”
“I believe, Sentinel, that you’re being wooed.” He laughed softly, and I enjoyed the sound of that laughter a little more than I should have. “That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.”
“I’m amused that you thought it was inevitable.”
“Yes, well.” Another waiter approached, and this time Ethan picked a curl of endive from the tray. “Things have become decidedly less predictable since you came on staff. I believe I’m beginning to appreciate that.”
“You appreciate having a chance to bolster your social connections.”
“That helps,” he admitted, biting into his endive. He chewed, then, his face contorted in displeasure, sipped his champagne. Glad I wasn’t the only one.
Without warning, my main social connection suddenly appeared at my side and touched my elbow.
“We’ll use Michael’s office,” my father said by way of greeting, then walked away, apparently confident that we’d follow. Ethan and I exchanged a glance, then did.
My father strutted through the halls of the Breck estate as if he’d traveled them a million times before, as if he were
strolling through his own Oak Park mansion and not someone else’s.
Papa Breck’s office was located in a back corner of the first floor. It was full of furniture, books, globes, and framed maps, the detritus of wealth collected by the Breck family. It smelled comfortingly familiar, of cigars and ancient paper and cologne. It was Papa Breck’s respite from the world, a secret sanctuary that Nicholas and I had only occasionally dared to violate. We’d spent a handful of rainy days in the office, hiding amidst the antiquities, pretending to be castaways on a nineteenth-century ship of the line, sprinting down the hall when we heard his father approaching.
The door closed behind us. I blinked my way out of the memory.
My father turned to us, hands in his pockets. He bobbed his head at me, then looked at Ethan. “Mr. Sullivan.”
“Call me Ethan, please, Mr. Merit,” Ethan said. They shook, the guy who made me, and the vampire who made me something else. That seemed fundamentally wrong.
Or maybe discomfortingly right.
“I read about your acquisition of the Indemnity National Building,” Ethan said. “Congratulations. That’s quite an achievement.”
My father offered a manly head bob of acknowledgment, then slid a glance my way. “You’ve gained a Merit property of your own.”
I nearly stepped forward to wipe that smug smile off my father’s face, at least until I remembered my pretty party dress.
“Yes, well,” Ethan said, a hint of dryness in his voice. “Vampirism does have its benefits.”
My father made a sound of agreement, then looked at me over the top of his glasses. “Your mother informs me that you want to, to use your words, rebuild some relationships. Meet the right people.” He used the same tone he’d adopted when, as a
child, I’d finally made my way to his office to apologize for some presumed transgression.
“I’ve reconsidered your request to assist Robert.”
He seemed to freeze for a moment, as if utterly shocked by the offer. Given our interaction the last time he’d asked me—I’d all but thrown him out of Mallory’s house—maybe he was.
“What, exactly, did you have in mind in that regard?” he finally asked.
Let the acting begin, I thought, and prepared to lay out the script that Ethan and I had prepared—details that might be useful as Robert attempted to build connections among the city’s supernatural population. A few words about that population (which was, but for the vampires, unknown to the populace), House finances, and our connections to the city administration—leaving out, of course, the fact that my grandfather was playing Ombud to the city. It would be enough, or so Ethan hoped, to make my father believe we were offering bites of a much larger apple.
But before I could speak, Ethan handed over the entire Red Delicious.
“Celina has been released by the Presidium.”
I turned my head to stare at him. That was so
not
the plan.
I didn’t think I could activate the mental connection between us—the telepathic link he’d initiated when I’d been Commended into the House—but the sarcasm was boiling me from the inside, so I had to try.
That’s your “tidbit”??
If he heard me, he ignored it.
And Ethan’s gift was only the first surprise.
“When?” my father asked, his tone as bland as if we’d been discussing the weather. Apparently, the loosing of a would-be serial killer—a woman who’d arranged to have his daughter killed—wasn’t any more interesting than the day’s high temperature.
“Within the week,” Ethan answered.
My father made a motion with his hand, and Ethan followed him to a group of chairs, where they sat down. I followed, but stayed standing behind Ethan.
“Why was she released?” my father asked.
Ethan covered the ground we’d already discussed. But unlike the surprise I’d shown, my father reacted with nods and sounds of understanding. There was a familiarity with sups and the workings of the Houses and the GP that surprised me. It wasn’t so much that he had the information that was surprising—the Internet was chock-full of vamp facts. But he also seemed to understand the rules, the players, the connections.