Dark Debt (24 page)

I nodded, looked at Luc. “In the meantime, we’ll go back through Balthasar’s timeline again, back to the beginning. We didn’t know about the Circle the first time we looked. Maybe, with fresh eyes, something will pop.”

I hoped it would.
Because no one else deserved the trauma he seemed hell-bent to put people through.

*   *   *

When Ethan and Malik had gone, Luc skimmed fingers over the controls in the tabletop, and the timeline appeared on-screen. Most of the events were now green, meaning they’d been verified. A couple were still black, meaning they needed corroborating. None were red.

“So he told the truth about
his past,” I said.

Luc nodded. “The facts line up, except for the couple we haven’t yet verified.”

“Which are?”

Luc used a handheld tablet to zoom in on the chart. “Jeff’s algorithm didn’t pop any mention of Balthasar’s name in the Memento Mori ledgers, but Jeff’s not confident in the results. Thinks it could be due to the program, the inconsistency of the handwriting. The error rate’s
too high. He’s going to keep looking.”

I nodded. “What else?”

He pointed to another black box. “The safe house in Switzerland. Chalet Rouge. It’s still operating, but I haven’t been able to reach anyone yet. That’s a phone tag issue.”

I considered, but shook my head. That wasn’t anything, either. “Go back to the beginning.”

“What?”

“The beginning of the timeline. Go back to
the beginning.”

Luc zoomed out, resituated the timeline at the beginning. It began with Persephone’s death, Ethan’s departure, the attack on Balthasar by, as he’d put it, the “relative of some girl or other.”

I suddenly remembered the look on Balthasar’s face when he’d attacked me, the blankness when I’d mentioned her name. The utter lack of recognition.

The memory swamped me, raised
a cold sweat down my back, a bubble of nausea in my throat. I closed my eyes, pursed my lips, forced myself to breathe in and out until the weight on my chest subsided.

“Sentinel?” Luc asked quietly.

I held up a hand, let my breaths come and go quietly until the panic passed. And felt dread settle low in my abdomen again, that I’d be living with terrifying and humiliating bouts of panic
for the rest of my immortal life.

“Okay,” I said a moment later. “I’m okay.” I shook my head,
accepted without argument the bottle of water Lindsey handed me, took a long drink.

“He didn’t know her name,” I said when I was done.

Luc looked confused. “Who?”

“Persephone. When he attacked me, I mentioned her name. Balthasar looked completely blank, like he had no idea who she was.”

Luc looked at the chart, contemplated. “He’d been tortured. Could have forgotten it.”

“Yeah, but that seems to be the only thing he
doesn’t
remember. He was attacked by a band of ‘some girl’s’ relatives, held by them for magical purposes for years, can tell us every place he’s been since then, but he doesn’t mention the girl’s name?” I looked at Luc. “If they show up at his house to punish
him, to kill him, damn straight they’re going to mention her name, tell him they’re avenging her death, or his attack on her, or whatever. I’d sure remember it.”

“He didn’t say he didn’t know it,” Lindsey pointed out. “He just didn’t mention it. And we’re talking about Balthasar. He’s not gonna win Feminist of the Year.”

“And even if you’re right,” Luc said, “and he didn’t remember her
name, why does it matter?”

Because her name mattered. To Balthasar, to Ethan, to the story. And maybe, I thought, dread beginning to rise thick in my chest, to all of us.

“A vampire comes back into Ethan’s life,” I began, “centuries after his supposed death, and tells a story about where he’d been the entire time. But he doesn’t know one of the most important parts of that story. We also
find out he’s being funded by an organization that’s out to control all the vampire Houses in Chicago.”

My heart thudded, but I asked the question anyway. “What if the story he told wasn’t actually about him?” I looked at Luc, then Lindsey. “What if he isn’t the real Balthasar?”

The Ops Room went deathly silent.

I wasn’t sure which possibility was worse—that the vampire who made Ethan
was psychopathic and misogynistic enough to forget the name of his most important victim, or that he was a magical imposter who’d gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to play that psychopath.

“Even if you’re right,” Luc said quietly, as if speaking the words more softly would minimize their power, “even if there’s some way he could have gotten the information, made himself look like Balthasar,
there would be easier ways to get to Ethan.”

“Easier, but not with more legitimacy. Not with a tie to Ethan. Not like this. He’s got the Circle behind him, Luc. They are strong, and they are wily. They’ve already got Navarre under their thumb. What’s the best way to stake a claim on Cadogan?”

“Jesus Christ,” Luc murmured, staring at the timeline.

I nodded, walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Luc asked.

“I want to talk to Ethan about Persephone, about that night.”

And if this vampire, this man who’d thrown our lives into chaos was nothing more than a very powerful grifter running a long con, he was going to answer to me.

*   *   *

My palms began to sweat on the trip upstairs to Ethan’s office. I wasn’t looking forward to making him focus on
Balthasar again, and certainly not to suggest that Ethan had been wrong from the beginning.

His office door was open a few inches. I put a hand on the
door, nearly pushed it open, until I recognized Jonah’s voice in the room.

I froze, shifted so I could see them through the crack in the door. They stood in the middle of Ethan’s office. Ethan had a glass in hand. Jonah had his hands in
his pockets, and he looked profoundly uncomfortable.

“She is sad, Jonah,” Ethan was saying. “She feels you’re underestimating her. As you are.”

My eyes widened in surprise, just as Jonah’s did.

“She told you?”

“Not the details. She didn’t have to.” Ethan turned back, looked at him. “Her relationship with me, my involvement in the AAM. Of course you’d see that as a potential asset.”
He paused. “I know you have feelings for her.”

“Had.”

“That’s debatable. If your emotions weren’t coloring your analysis of this situation, you’d see it differently. That’s what makes it disappointing.”

“And how, exactly, would I see it differently?”

“If I were you, instead of seeing her relationship with us as a liability, I’d see it as a bonus.” He put a hand on his chest. “I’d
consider the information she’ll be privy to, the access she’ll have. I’d wager her situation is unique in the United States, and I’d be grateful for that situation. I wouldn’t hold it against her. And I wouldn’t use it as an excuse to question her loyalty. And if you have any doubt that she would put power and gain above the welfare of her friends, her colleagues, her family, then she’s the one
who needs a new partner.”

“She made an oath.”

“To the RG, and to me, and to her House. And she made an
oath to you, of a kind, and you to her. She isn’t the one breaking that oath now.”

“Balthasar could—”

“Balthasar is irrelevant, as you well know. He is trouble, yes, and we are dealing with him. But he has no bearing on my rule of this House, or her.

“Look,” Ethan continued.
“Either you earnestly, and wrongly, believe that she’ll be suddenly blind to my incompetence, or my succumbing to Balthasar—or someone else in the RG believes it, and you won’t stand up for her. Neither option is particularly flattering for you.”

He finished his drink, set it aside. “You should get back to your House, keep an eye on your Master, just as you suggest Merit keep an eye on hers.
Although Balthasar has no bearing on my leadership, he’s still dangerous. Until we get him squared away, I recommend you stay close to Scott.”

Jonah nodded. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Jonah turned toward the door, and I nearly ran down the hallway to duck out of sight. But since I wasn’t a child, I cleared my throat and pushed open the door as if I’d only just come by.

“Oh, sorry,” I
said, with what I hoped was admirable acting. “I didn’t see you had anyone in here.”

Ethan looked amused. “No trouble, Sentinel. Jonah was here to discuss the Investiture and look over the grounds. He’s just heading back to Grey House.”

Jonah nodded. “You were at Torrance Island?”

“Yeah. It would have been a cool tour but for the murderous criminals.”

“I bet. I should go,” he said,
and slipped out without another word.

“Did you enjoy our conversation?”

I looked back at Ethan. “What conversation?”

He smiled. “I saw you outside, Sentinel. Although I don’t think he did.”

“Thanks for taking up for me.”

“I’d say I was taking up for your partnership. Whether I like it or not, it’s a valuable asset to the House. You two work well together and could continue
to do so if he wasn’t being so stubborn.”

“Yeah.” I walked to him, slipped my arms around him, relieved that I hadn’t questioned the gesture before doing it. “What do I do?”

“I don’t know, Merit.” Ethan paused, clearly surprised by the embrace, before wrapping his arms around me, his relief nearly palpable. “I’m afraid he’s not giving you many choices. He certainly doesn’t believe he has
many. You came up for something, and I presume it wasn’t Jonah.”

My stomach twisted again, and I pulled back. “I have a question about Balthasar, actually.”

“Ah.”

“You said you believed it was Persephone’s family who assaulted Balthasar. Held him.”

“That’s correct.”

“How do you know?”

His jaw worked for a moment, his expression still unusually cautious. “I told them.”

I blinked. “You told them?”

“What he’d done and where to find him.” One hand on his hips, he ran the other through his hair. “I couldn’t save her, couldn’t kill my maker to avenge her. But I could let them know
the truth and give them an opportunity to avenge her death, and prevent any others.”

Ethan walked a few steps away, giving himself space, looked back at me. “It is not something
I’m proud of. It was cowardly to ask a human to do work I should have done. But there had been so much death . . .” He looked away.

So Balthasar had killed Persephone, and Ethan had told her family about it. They’d hunted him down and planned to kill him, and one of them decided he’d be more useful scientifically. But still, through all that, Balthasar didn’t remember her name? Had he not
thought about the timing? About the fact that he’d been attacked just after Ethan left? Surely he could have put that together. And if he had, why hadn’t he mentioned it?

“What’s on your mind, Sentinel?”

“Puzzle pieces that don’t fit well,” I said. “He didn’t know about Persephone.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t mention her when he was here. And when he attacked me, he didn’t
recognize her name.”

“He could have forgotten, repressed it,” Ethan said, but he didn’t look convinced by that. “He called me. Knows all the history.”

“True. But his appearance, right now, was oddly coincidental. And he’s here, at least in some part, because the Circle is paying for it. Just at the moment when the Circle is making a concerted bid for control of the city’s vamps.”

“You’re suggesting he’s an imposter.” Ethan’s tone went hot. “I’d know if he wasn’t who he says he is. It wouldn’t be possible for someone to pretend that well.”

But we lived in a world of fairies, gnomes, harpies, shifters;
that’s what bothered me. Since when was anything impossible, magically or otherwise?

Before he could say anything else, my phone rang. I pulled back, found Catcher’s
number, answered it. “Merit.”

“We’ve got something new on Jude Maguire, starting with the fact that Jude Maguire isn’t his real name. Jeff did an image-surf—”

“Hey, Mer,” said Jeff’s voice in the background.

“Hey, Jeff. Image-surf?” I prompted.

“And we found a photograph, think we found Maguire’s previous identity. His name was Thomas O’Malley.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yeah,”
Catcher said. “I think it does. Judge for yourself.”

“Send it to Ethan’s mail,” I said, and walked to Ethan’s desk, sat down behind his computer.

“Oh, do help yourself,” Ethan murmured, watching.

I pulled up the program, waited for the photograph to come through, and when the alert rang, clicked it.

I nearly dropped the phone. “Crap on toast,” I said, borrowing Mallory’s curse,
and gestured Ethan to come look.

It was a photograph from a college yearbook, two guys standing side by side, an arm over each other’s shoulder, bottles of beer in their free hands. Their hair was fashionably long, just brushing their popped shirt collars. They looked casually wealthy, confident, and very content with their lot.

They, according to the caption below the photograph, were
Thomas O’Malley and Adrien Reed.

“I’m going to put you on speaker,” I said to Catcher, and put down the phone so Ethan could hear.

“They went to college together,” Catcher said. “O’Malley got popped for larceny, changed his name, if not legally. Jeff says there’s no record of it.”

“When you’re friends with Adrien Reed, who needs a judge?” Ethan muttered.

“Yeah,” Catcher agreed.
“There was barely a record of the photograph—Jeff found it buried in an online alumni forum. Wouldn’t surprise me if Reed tried to scrub the records. In order to hide the connection.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “I’m sure Reed took a lot of pictures with a lot of people.”

“This wasn’t just a throwaway,” Catcher said. “They were buddies, frat brothers. O’Malley was in Reed’s first
wedding. Pre-Sorcha. First wife’s name was Frederica. No pictures that we could find—also likely scrubbed—but there’s a line item in the society pages. Reed and Maguire are friends,” Catcher concluded. “Which makes me wonder if Reed is also part of the Circle.”

“Jesus,” Ethan said. “All the money. All the connections. Why would he risk that?”