Biting Cold (27 page)

“Attic?” I wondered aloud.

“Yep,” Malik said, then hopped up the stairs.

I grabbed the railing and followed Malik into the ceiling and then the space above. This was clearly an older part of the house. The beams were still exposed, showing antique square-headed nails and insulation that looked like horsehair. Kowalcyzk would have loved to send some building code inspectors in here.

“Watch your head,” Malik said, and I followed as he half walked, hunched over a bit to accommodate the low ceiling, across the room.

The air was chilly. An open window let moonlight and a stiff fall breeze spill into the room. The breeze carried the scent of clove cigarettes.

Darius was the only man I knew who smoked cloves.

Malik stopped a few feet from the open window and motioned me toward it. At my nervous expression, he smiled, then leaned in.

“Remember who you are, and who you were appointed to be,” he whispered. “We all believe in you.”

I smiled appreciatively, then climbed out the dormer window
and outside onto the thin widow’s walk that capped the edge of the roof.

It was cold, and I zipped up my jacket as soon as I stepped outside and stuffed my hands into my pockets. I found my bit of worry wood still lodged there, and I rubbed its surface for luck. As if that would help me.

Darius leaned against the thin wrought-iron banister that outlined the widow’s walk. He wore a button-up shirt and trousers that couldn’t have been much protection against the chill, but he didn’t look cold. He looked well at home up here in the dark.

A dark cigarette between his fingers, Darius cast me a glance. “Sentinel,” he said, blowing out a stream of smoke.

“Sire.”

He looked out over the city, the moon milky beneath a haze of clouds.

“It’s quiet out here,” I said, not sure of the etiquette. Was I supposed to start talking? Or wait for him to do it?

“It is,” he said. “Although I suspect the city bustles considerably more in the daytime.”

I looked toward downtown Chicago, where skyscrapers blinked at us. Lights in condos and offices twinkled, and bright red beacons on the roofs rotated to warn passing planes. The view wasn’t unlike the postcard I’d stuck in the car for my trip to Nebraska, and I realized I hadn’t thought to check if that little bit of paper had survived the crash.

“The Loop definitely bustles,” I finally agreed. “A lot more than Hyde Park.”

“London has its quiet parts, as well.”

I nodded, and for a moment we stared out at the quiet city. But it was time to get this show on the road. I had a monster to hunt.

“You asked to see me?”

“I’d like your opinion.”

“My opinion?”

“On the state of affairs of your House, Sentinel. You’ve been here some months. You must have a sense of the House and its goings-on.”

I “sensed” a lot of things, but that didn’t mean I wanted to raise them with Darius West. “I think the House is operating as well as it can in troubled times.”

“Troubled times?”

Did he really need me to recite the list? They were the same grievances we’d been leveling against the GP for months now.

“Our existence was announced to the public without our consent. Celina made attempts on our lives. Mallory threw dark magic across the city. A supernatural mayor, or two of them, are out there somewhere. All problems that we have to solve.”

“And why you, Merit? Why must you solve them?”

I didn’t really have an answer for that, except the obvious:
If not us, then who?
The GP seemed to be stuck in a mode of refusing to make decisions. Who refused to act, even when the choices were clear and present before them? Were they afraid they’d be judged? Afraid they might be wrong? We had allies, unofficial or otherwise—a select few Houses, shifters, nymphs, a few fairies, a rebellious sorcerer or three. Together, we seemed to be the only ones willing to actually do anything.

It was easy to judge Ethan—or me, Malik, or Luc—when you could stand on the sidelines or quarterback from the couch. It was harder to be in the trenches, to do the best you could…and it hurt more when others didn’t believe you were acting for good.

Darius took a puff on the cigarette, then blew the smoke from his mouth in a slow, steady stream. “I have been alive a long time,” he said. “Not as long as Ethan, but a long time. I have seen much
in my life, but I must disagree that these times are troubled. I have seen world wars, Sentinel. I have seen vampires staked in public with no investigation, no remorse.”

I nodded. “With all due respect, that you’ve seen
more
troubled times doesn’t mean ours
aren’t
troubled. It doesn’t take a world war to make a situation precarious. Or dangerous. Before Celina outed us, I had no idea vampires existed. Nor, I would bet, did most people. Perhaps the Houses had troubles then that I’m not aware of. But if they did, they weren’t the kind of issues that face us now.”

“That’s very poetic.” He tapped the cigarette’s ashes against the wrought iron, and a thousand tiny sparks fell through the sky. “But ultimately, irrelevant.”

He took a final puff of his cigarette, then smudged the butt against the dark rock of the wall behind us and put the remainder in his pocket.

“You are young,” he said. “And I don’t doubt your intentions are noble. But those intentions are directed toward this House, its vampires, and its Master. My intentions are necessarily much larger in scale.”

“We are not trying to make your job more difficult, but we can’t just ignore these problems.”

“That, Merit, precisely
is
the problem. You take arms against the sea of troubles, to quote the bard, but you don’t end them. You make them worse.” He held up a hand before I could argue. “The evidence is incontrovertible. Things in Chicago have deteriorated over the last few months, and not just because there are enemies in your midst. Consider Grey House. They keep their heads down and they focus on survival, and we have no arguments with their Novitiates or their leadership.”

Yeah, but that was only because he didn’t know the truth. He didn’t know the captain of the Grey House guards was a member
of the Red Guard and that he was out there mixing it up with the rest of us.

Maybe that’s precisely why Jonah had joined the Red Guard—to keep his efforts hidden from the GP and out of Darius’s sight. It wasn’t a bad idea. Nevertheless, “Celina didn’t target anyone from Grey House, nor did Tate. Or McKetrick. The shifters didn’t ask Grey House to act as security for their convocation. What would you have us do? Stick our heads in the sand?”

“I am suggesting,” he said firmly, “that there is a skill inherent in handling a crisis and not making it worse. And I am suggesting the current leaders of this House do not have that particular skill.”

I was too pissed at the insult to Ethan and Malik to respond. This man sat in a cushy chair in England and complained about what went on here, in
Chicago
, on the ground. He didn’t have to make the types of decisions we did; he didn’t have to investigate and solve the kinds of problems we did. What right did he have to complain about how we reacted?

“Compose yourself, Sentinel. I can feel your irritation from here. You need to learn to better guard your emotions. Stealth is difficult when you’re broadcasting your position.”

I didn’t respond to the constructive criticism.

“There’s no point denying relations between humans and vampires in Chicago are on a rather unfortunate course. Perhaps that course could have been avoided; perhaps not.” He looked over at me. “It is crucial that the Master of this House be capable of handling that course, whatever it may be.”

“Meaning?”

“Is Ethan Sullivan capable of leading this house?”

My heart began to pound. He wasn’t here to evaluate me. This meeting wasn’t about my role in the House, or the manner in which I’d been made a vampire.

Darius hadn’t come to Chicago to take a long, last look at Cadogan House before enforcing the
shofet
’s decision.

He’d come to Chicago to take a long, last look at Ethan.

Unfortunately, I was long ago tired of politics and strategies and games. “What are you afraid of?” I asked.

Darius looked startled. “Excuse me?”

“Are you afraid of what he’ll do if you disown the House…or if you don’t?”

He looked at me for a moment, and I felt a bolt of panic that I’d thoroughly overstepped my bounds.

But then he called my bluff. He leaned forward, his face only inches away from mine, and his voice dropped. “You tell me, Sentinel. You tell me about the man Ethan has become. He was raised from the dead by a witch who wanted to control him, to make him a thing to be used in the effectuation of her magic. That woman would destroy the world if allowed to do so. Can you tell me, with one hundred percent certainty, that Ethan bears no scars from his experience with her? That he is one hundred percent free of her influence?”

I’d never been a good liar. I’d always believed in a truth—the unassailable facts that either were or were not.

But what could I tell Darius? That Ethan and Mallory still had a connection? That she had the ability to drive him to his knees and assault him with pain?

That the Master of one of the country’s twelve Houses—the fourth-oldest House in the United States—was at a witch’s mercy?

My heart pounded in my chest, but I forced myself to meet his eyes, to fight through the fear, and to say the words that needed to be said, even if they weren’t the absolute truth.

“Ethan Sullivan is the man he always was. A better man, perhaps, because of what he’s been through.”

“A very strategic answer. I don’t approve of relations between Master and Novitiate. I didn’t approve when Lacey and Ethan were involved, and I don’t approve now. I find such relationships to be essentially incestuous. Regardless, you are his confidante. You have his ear, Merit. Steer him straight, Sentinel. Steer him straight…or his future will be considerably darker than it is tonight. I’m going to speak with the dueling Masters now. I’ll not mention we had this discussion.”

With that, he moved past me and climbed inside again.

I closed my eyes and blew out a breath, then stood there for a moment on the roof, the world dark and quiet, the breeze cold. A light rain began to fall. With my heart heavier than it had been when I’d arrived, I climbed back inside and closed the window behind me.

It was gonna be a long night.

I’d just opened my door when Margot came rushing down the hallway, a worried expression on her face. She still wore chef’s whites stained with vegetal green, and a vibrant scarf covered her hair. Whatever brought her up to the third floor, she’d left in a hurry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ethan and Malik just went in to talk to Darius, but someone is here. You need to come downstairs.”

“Who is it?”

“I’m…not entirely sure.”

Without waiting for me to agree, she turned and headed toward the stairs. I followed her, and I was just panicked enough that the trip seemed to take twice as long as usual. Wasn’t that always the way? Maybe it was anticipation that stretched out the seconds, much in the same way that a trip to some exotic destination seemed to take twice as long as the return voyage.

We took the stairs at a trot and found a protective net of vampires between the stairs and the front door. They split to make room for me, and I stepped between them, my eyes widening at the dark-haired figure at the door.

“See?” Margot whispered.

I nodded, my brain reeling as I tried to figure out what to do.

“Hello, Ballerina,” he said, and I whipped my sword from its sheath.

H
e looked tired. Tall, handsome, and exhausted. And he’d traded in the Armani suit for a long black cassock, the dresslike garment worn by priests. He was a Tate, to be sure. But I didn’t know whether he was Dominic or Seth, or what Seth was in any event, so I wasn’t going to take chances.

“Can we talk?” he asked, gaze on me.

Lindsey and Juliet stepped beside me, swords bared.

“You have three seconds to turn around and leave this House or meet the business end of my steel,” Lindsey said.

“Wait,” I said, putting out a hand, my gaze tracing the lines of guilt carved into Tate’s face. Guilt wasn’t exactly Dominic’s type of emotion.

“Identify yourself,” I said.

“I’m Seth Tate,” he said. “The former mayor. An angel, in your parlance.”

The foyer went silent.

I was stunned and confused…and then a little more stunned. If Dominic was essentially a demon, how could Seth be an angel?
They’d split apart from the same person—from Seth when he touched the
Maleficium
.

How were things getting even more confusing?

“You’re a messenger?” I asked.

He visibly relaxed, perhaps relieved that someone had figured out the truth. “Yes, Merit. A messenger. That’s why the fairies let me in.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d gotten past the fairies.

“We don’t know that,” Lindsey said. “This could be a ruse.”