House Rules (25 page)

Derek grumbled something unflattering.

Gabriel gave him a quick and withering glance. “Pipe down, or I’ll challenge you again,
and we both know how that will work out.” He began flipping cards across the table,
creating a seven-card pile for each of us. “The name of the game is Nantucket.”

“What’s Nantucket?” I asked.

“It’s a way to cheat,” Derek said with a smile, sipping the glass of clear alcohol
in front of him. “Don’t let him fool you.”

“I would never cheat,” Gabe said. “I am as honorable as they come.”

“Or else a really good liar,” Ben said.

“I am not a liar,” Gabe said, presenting the rest of the deck to Christopher. He cut
it in half, put the bottom half on top, and slid it back to Gabe, who divided the
cards into three stacks in the middle of the table. After dealing out the entire deck,
he turned over the cards in the two outer stacks, revealing a spade in each.

“Spades are the cards to beat,” he said. There was nary a spade in my hand, but I
had no idea whether that was good. If spades were the cards to beat, what beat spades?

“High card, first trick,” Gabe said, placing the queen of diamonds atop one of the
spades. I wasn’t sure why, or what I should play. I picked a queen of hearts and played
it atop the remaining spade.

“Well played,” he said, and began looking through his cards, frowning in concentration.

Each time I played a card, I tried to steer the conversation toward the House. But
Gabriel wouldn’t let me get a word in—not about politics, anyway. And so it went on
for nearly an hour, at the end of which I still wasn’t sure of the rules of Nantucket.
I occasionally threw down a card I thought was appropriately strategic, while the
shifters placed cards with apparent nonchalance. They’d have been sure winners at
a poker table, assuming any casino let them play long enough to win.

Eventually, Derek threw his two remaining cards on the table. “Nantucket turtleneck,”
he said, and the other shifters threw in their cards, as well.

“Is it done?” I asked, looking at Gabriel.

But before he could answer, the door to the bar opened and Berna’s head popped in.
“Customers!” she said, pointing at Mallory with an arthritic finger. “You pour!”

Mallory sat quietly at the table for a moment, massaging her temples. It seemed her
patience with Berna was definitely wearing thin.

“It’s a good reminder,” Gabriel said.

“Of what?” she asked.

“Of what happens when you eventually leave us, and you don’t make a successful go
of it. She’s going easy on you this time.”

“This is going
easy
on me?”

“Have you cleaned out the grease trap yet?” Christopher asked.

“No?” Mallory said cautiously, lip curled.

Christopher huffed. “Then she’s going easy on you. Aunt Berna’s a hard-ass.”

I looked at Gabriel. “Aunt Berna?”

He smiled, then waved a hand at the vinyl-topped table, the framed B-movie posters,
and the peeling linoleum floor. “Kitten, would we have allowed Berna into this bastion
of class if she wasn’t family?”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I wondered.

“Yes,” he said. “It is definitely one of those.”

Christopher, Ben, and Derek excused themselves and disappeared into the kitchen, presumably
for one of the drinks Mallory was going to pour. Gabriel gathered the cards and began
shuffling them again. Dawn, according to the beer-advertisement clock on the wall,
was inching closer, and I still didn’t have any answers.

“About the House,” I said.

“What about it?”

“I’m out of ideas, the lawyers aren’t helping, we can’t find the egg, and Claudia’s
inaccessible. I don’t suppose you’ve got any information on the GP members we could
use to our advantage?”

He chuckled a bit. “You mean blackmail?”

“I do.”

“I’m sorry, Kitten, but I don’t. I don’t know much about the GP other than their reputation,
and from that I don’t believe I care to know more.”

I put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands. “Gabriel, we’re going
to lose the House. Time is ticking down. And we’ve got some crazy Navarre Novitiate
out there taking out vampires for no apparent reason, and I don’t have a clue who
it is. What am I going to do?”

“You’re asking me for advice?”

I tucked the edges of my bangs behind my ears and looked up at him. “Yeah. I think
I am.”

“And you aren’t asking Sullivan because . . . ?”

“He’s mad at me.”

“Ahhh,” Gabriel slowly said. “That explains the funk.”

I tried not to sniff at myself. “There’s a funk?”

“Psychic funk. A bad vibe. You’re sad.”

“I am sad. And you know what would help me? Advice. Do you have any thoughts at all?”

“Well, let’s think it through: Darius wants the House, or to punish the vampires,
or both. In order to get it, he’s convinced the fairies to forcibly remove you, what,
tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s bribing the fairies with the dragon’s egg, which is some trinket they made
but gave to vampires, and are now claiming again, or some shit?”

“That’s the meat of it, yeah.”

“And where is the dragon’s egg?”

“We don’t know. The GP took it, but we haven’t been able to find it, and the other
Houses aren’t cooperating.”

“Well, at the risk of being blunt, if the fairies are the only leverage the GP has
over you, and the fairies want the dragon’s egg, then you need to find it.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Is it? You’re dealing with vampires, and a theft that occurred in a pretty short
amount of time. Consider this.” The card deck in hand, he began flipping cards onto
the table one at a time.

For all his shuffling, and although I’d seen no trickery, he flipped over the jack
of spades, then the queen of spades, then the king and ace. All in a row, all somehow
organized without my being the wiser, and even as I’d watched him shuffle.

“The vampires of the Greenwich Presidium, who don’t impress me much, managed to steal
an object from Cadogan House right under your noses. I find that suspect.”

“What do you mean, you find that suspect? You don’t think they stole it?”

Gabe placed the deck on the table. “I don’t know if they did or not. In my opinion
the GP consists of the sneakiest vampires. Sneaky because they’re double-dealers,
not because they’re skilled operatives who could pull off a heist beneath the noses
of Cadogan House, its Master, and its Sentinel.”

He had a point, although it didn’t give me any better idea where the egg actually
was hidden.

Gabe glanced at the clock. “The sun will be rising soon. You should get home.”

I nodded and rose. “Thanks for your help.”

He nodded. “It all comes down to this, Kitten: Don’t let your fear of the GP guide
you, especially not to give them more credit than they deserve.”

* * *

Only half an hour before dawn, with my failure on my mind, I returned to the House.

The sight that greeted me in the foyer was enough to make me weep again. The holiday
decorations were gone; in their place were dozens and dozens of black suitcases.

Granted, dawn would be here soon enough, but had we really given up? Were we simply
going to hand Cadogan House to the GP without a fight?

I walked downstairs, found the Ops Room empty. Luc and the rest were probably tucking
in for the evening. Because I wasn’t up for another Lacey confrontation, I skipped
a visit to Ethan’s office and headed directly to the apartment to await him there.

As the minutes passed, I put on pajamas, then perused the House’s evacuation procedures
in our online security manual. Luc had been incredibly thorough, including creating
a security “textbook” broken into chapters and thousands of footnotes. There were
142 footnotes in the third chapter alone, including lessons learned (“Garden rakes
are less effective against wereracoons than you’d think”), anecdotes (“I remember
when ‘message’ meant something carried on the back of a horse”), and tricks of the
trade (“Honey is a good balm for a cobra lily scratch”).

Luc, who’d penned the protocols, had also written tests to check our knowledge, like
the following gem:

Q: What’s the most effective way to corral a raging centaur?

A: Ha! There’s no such thing as centaurs, newbie. Get your ass in a chair and read
your Canon.

I did not, however, pack a suitcase. I refused to do it, to give in. There were only
a few objects I cared enough to take with me—my family’s pearls, my hidden Cadogan
medal, the baseball Ethan had once given me. But they’d stay exactly where they were,
because packing them away now would be a sign of defeat. And Ethan had taught me better
than that.

I brushed my hair for the second time, then organized the drawer of my nightstand—tissues,
lip balm, socks for cold winter days.

Just minutes until dawn, and he was still gone.

Surely he’d come back before the sun rose. Where else would he sleep?

I curled into his winged chair in the sitting room, listening to the clock tick away
the seconds of his absence. The shutters over the windows descended, and the sun began
to rise. My eyelids grew heavier, but still the door stayed closed.

The apartments creaked—the sounds of the ancient House settling and adjusting as the
wind fought it outside.

I stayed upright until sleep threatened to knock me to the floor, then clumsily shuffled
to the bed and climbed beneath the covers. The sheets were crisp and chilly, and I
curled into myself to preserve warmth, an island of heat in the tundra of pressed
cotton that our bed had become.

It was to be a war of attrition, of cold sheets . . . and I was losing.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CARD TRICKS

I
woke up alone, the bed cold beside me.

I sat up, my mind whirling with possibilities—namely that he’d decided to let Lacey
console him. But before I’d even put my feet over the edge of the bed, the door opened.
Ethan walked in. He was in shirtsleeves, his jacket in his hand.

I said a prayer of thanks that he was okay, that the apparent vampire assassin hadn’t
snuck into Cadogan House and taken him out. But then the anger started to build again.

“Late night?” I asked, as calmly as possible.

“Continued strategy session,” he said. “We nudged dawn, and I fell asleep on the couch
in my office.”

“And Lacey?”

“She was there,” he simply said. He walked to the bed and laid his jacket across it,
then took off his cuff links and watch.

“All this because you’re angry at me?”

He didn’t look back at me. “We were working, Merit.”

“Until dawn? Without enough time to return to your bed? To me?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to admit that you’re angry at me. That you want her to want you, and that
you’re giving her license because you’re angry with me.”

“You’re just jealous.” His tone was dismissive, as if I’d come to him with a childish
complaint.

“Of course I’m jealous. You two were cut from the same cloth. And I think, in your
heart of hearts, she’s the type of woman you imagined you’d end up with.”

“As opposed to the stubborn brunette I actually ended up with?”

“
Yes
,” I pointedly agreed, then bucked up my courage. “Are you spending time with her
to punish me about the RG?”

“I don’t have time to play games.”

“You’re avoiding me.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’re angry.”

The dam burst. He glared at me. “Of course I’m angry, Merit. I am goddamn pissed off
that you undertook a dangerous course without talking to me about it, and that you’ve
been working with him all along without telling me about it.”

He moved a step closer. “If I were to tell you Lacey and I weren’t just working together
because of our similar outlooks, our similar training, but because we shared a bond
that you couldn’t touch, how would you feel?”

He was right; I’d feel miserable. The hypothetical alone made me sick to my stomach.
On the other hand . . .

“I don’t spend time with Jonah to hurt you.”

“If that’s what you think I’m doing, then you must have forgotten the challenges facing
the House right now.”

The words notwithstanding, he wouldn’t look at me when he answered. Yes, I’d hurt
him, and there was little doubt his mind was on other things. But he knew damn well
what he was doing and how it was affecting me. He was lashing out, even if he didn’t
want to admit it. Even if he wanted to imagine himself above such human concerns.

He put an elbow on the chest of drawers, then rested his forehead in his hand. “This
won’t help us. Fighting each other.”

He was right. We were at a stalemate, and we would be until one of us stepped back,
until one of us was satisfied about the fidelity of the other.

So he changed the subject. “The transition team is meeting in half an hour to consider
our response. We have, we believe, some thoughts about the contract and the necessity
of making the payment to the GP considering their bad behavior. We’ve called the bank,
as well. But if we don’t come up with a solution respecting the House proper, we’ll
have to give in.”

“They mean to break us,” I said, tears blossoming at the thought of leaving the House.

“They anticipate we’ll bend.”

But we wouldn’t. We couldn’t. The colonies didn’t bend to the British, and I didn’t
imagine that we would, either.

“Your murder investigation?” he asked.

“We’re no closer to finding out than we were yesterday. I have nothing, Ethan. Nothing
at all.”

And we’re so far apart
, I silently thought.
So far apart it’s killing me. God, I need you. I need help. I need someone to steer
me in the right direction. I need an answer.

But I’d already asked him for more than he was able to give. He offered up a good-bye,
then headed downstairs for another meeting with his team.

Which I was apparently no longer a part of.

* * *

I showered and donned leathers in case the transition was messier than we’d expected,
and made the usual beauty arrangements—bangs brushed, hair ponytailed, lips glossed.

I walked downstairs, a couple hundred suitcases for the ninety-ish vampires who lived
in Cadogan House still staring back at me like a reminder of my failure:
If you’d found a way out of this, convinced Lakshmi to help, we wouldn’t have to leave.

I glanced into Ethan’s office, saw that it was full of vampires. Ethan, Malik, Lacey,
the librarian, Michael Donovan, but empty of mementos. Despite the crisis—or because
of it—someone had packed away Ethan’s knickknacks: trophies, photographs, physical
reminders of his time in the House.

That was utterly depressing.

I’d be in and among vampires for the rest of the night, most likely. But for now,
I wanted a moment with the House, with my home, to say good-bye, so I bypassed the
office and headed through the hallway to the back door, and then outside.

The cold was jarring, but refreshing, as if the cold had cleansing power of its own.
I walked down the path to the garden in which Ethan and I had shared moments, and
where the fountain had finally been turned off for the winter.

I glanced back, the House glowing gold in the darkness of Hyde Park, three stories
of stone and blood and memories.

A GP issue we hadn’t been able to fix.

Four murders we hadn’t been able to solve.

A relationship I’d broken.

What if I’d been wrong? What if joining the RG had been a violation of my obligations
to the House and his trust in me? What if I’d managed to take everything that was
good in my life—my place in the House, my vampire family, and Ethan—and tossed it
in the trash on a whim? Out of some misguided belief that joining the RG had been
the right thing to do? What if I’d played my hand incorrectly, made the wrong decision,
and because of that I’d lost everything?

Why was everything so complicated? The politics. My friendships. My family.

My love.

But as good as a pity party sounded, this wasn’t the time for regrets. It was the
time to savor memories I’d soon be giving away. I took a seat on a nearby bench and
recalled the things I wanted to remember about Cadogan House. Dinner with Mallory
and Catcher in Ethan’s office. The first time I’d walked into the library. The night
I’d been Commended into the House, when Ethan had named me Sentinel.

The flap of wings overhead drew my attention upward. A dark bird—a crow or a raven,
maybe—flew across the lawn and over the fence again. Wouldn’t that be nice? To be
able to disappear from our drama and bad decisions so easily?

I dropped my gaze to the garden around me. It was winter, so most of the beds were
brown and bare of flowers. Someone, probably Helen, had installed a gazing globe on
the other side of the bench. It was a perfect sphere of blue glass. Surrounded by
inground lights, its convex surface warped the image of the garden.

I scooted across the bench and stared into it, wishing for enlightenment and wisdom.
My face was warped in the glass, my nose hawkish, my cheeks pink. It was a different
perspective on who I was . . . and what I’d become. A soldier, perhaps, if not always
a successful one.

I stood up and straightened my jacket. If I was going to be a soldier, and if we were
all going down with this particular ship, I’d much rather do it with the rest of my
team in the House in which I’d built so many memories, rather than here, in the dark
and cold, alone.

* * *

My phone signaled a new message just as I walked back into the House.

It was from Jonah.
MESSAGE FROM LAKSHMI
, it said.

My heart began to pound.
AND
? I asked him.

SHE SAYS, “MERIT OWES ME A BOON.”

I stopped still, staring at that message. I’d offered her a favor last night in exchange
for the location of the egg. She thought I owed her a boon . . . because she’d already
told me the location?

SHE ISN’T RESPONDING TO MESSAGES
, Jonah added, which I presumed meant we’d gotten out of her what we were going to
get.

My hands began to shake with adrenaline. I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out distractions,
and tried to remember what she’d said about the egg, about where it had been hidden.
It was hidden in a high place? A place of high esteem?

“No, a place of high
regard
,” I whispered, opening my eyes again.

But where could that possibly be? A “place of high regard” could be virtually anywhere,
if she had literally meant “high.” Chicago wasn’t without its tall buildings, after
all. Could the GP have gotten it to the Willis Tower? Or the Hancock building?

What had Gabriel said? That I should be careful not to give them too much credit for
a heist.

The GP had clearly accomplished a heist—the egg was no longer in its case. I’d seen
that for myself. But what if, like Gabriel’s skillful card dealing, the theft was
somehow an illusion?

Maybe it was time to take a look at exactly what had happened during the GP ceremony.

I put the phone away and ran back down to Ethan’s office, where Malik and the transition
team were settled in around Ethan’s conference table.

Ethan stood a few feet away, not yet sitting, but clearly taking in the lay of the
land—the vampires and stacks of materials at his table. Tools unable to help him solve
the problem that confronted him.

But perhaps I could help.

I walked toward him, put a hand on his arm. “I need to speak to you outside.”

He glanced back, dubious of the suggestion. “Time is a bit crucial, Merit. We have
less than an hour before they arrive.”

“I promise it will be worth your time.”

He watched me for a moment, his trust in me clearly not back to usual levels, but
nodded and followed me into the hallway.

“I think we should check the security tapes from the GP ceremony. There should be
video of the back half of the House. I’d like to see exactly what went on when the
egg was stolen.”

His expression didn’t change; I could tell he was trying not to get his hopes up.
“Why?”

I wet my lips nervously. “I’m not entirely sure yet. But I’ve spoken with the particular
source you don’t approve of, and let’s just say I think it’s worth checking out.”

He looked at me in silence for a moment. “Merit—” he began, and I knew he was going
to tell me I was wrong.

But I wasn’t wrong. I was right, and I knew it. I just wasn’t sure
how
I was right.

“I’m asking you to trust me. I know I’m not good at being a girlfriend, but I’ve tried
my best since I joined this House—without my consent, I might add—to protect it. To
keep it safe.”

“Without your consent?”

I smiled a little. “I just threw that in for tension relief. But that’s not the point.
Just give me a few minutes, Ethan. Humor me.”

Ethan tapped his fingers against his hip, undoubtedly debating the value of spending
precious minutes on an untested plan, instead of working on the plans he already had
in place.

Without a word, he started down the hallway. I followed him, hope deflating, afraid
he’d refused to believe me because he was still angry, or because the idea was really
just that bad.

But he passed his office and headed for the stairs, and then walked down to the basement.

The Ops Room was abuzz. The overhead screen showed a group of photos, pictures of
the Navarre House vampires, some of them crossed out, presumably because Luc had eliminated
them as murder suspects.

I would have been surprised that the electronics were still here and operational.
But there was an emergency plan for the Ops Room, too—an electromagnetic switch that,
when pushed, would wipe clean the electronics where they stood. Luc didn’t have to
worry about packing; nor did he have to worry about any new residents of Cadogan House
taking our sensitive information.

“Liege?” Luc asked, glancing between us when we entered. “Is everything all right?”

“We need to see video of the GP ceremony,” Ethan said. “Can you arrange that?”

“Um, sure. Do I get to know the punch line?”

“We’re curious about the egg theft.”

“I’m listening,” Luc said, tapping a tablet to pull up video from the security cameras.

The screen went dark, and then the video popped up. It was black-and-white and grainy,
but the figures posturing on the lawn were clear enough. The GP appeared in its typical
V formation.

“Goose on the lawn,” Luc said.

“Goose?” I asked.

“That V formation. I like to use derogatory terms to describe the GP whenever possible.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

“They’re all there,” Ethan said, his gaze tracking the screen as he counted the GP
members. “No one’s missing.”

“Patience,” I said, hoping that I was right and wasn’t wasting his time.

In the video, Ethan and Darius faced off, and the fairies arrived for their show of
strength.

That was when I saw it.

“There,” I said, pointing to the video. In the back corner of the “goose,” Harold
Monmonth, Celina’s GP buddy, disappeared from view.

“That little shit,” Ethan said. “Move the video forward.”

Luc fast-forwarded the video, and it skipped ahead. Four minutes later, Harold Monmonth
popped back into the V like he’d never been gone.

“Check his hands,” I said, and Luc zoomed in closer.

His hands were empty.

“Can we be sure he went into the House?” Ethan asked.

“We can,” Luc said. “Camera on the back door, too.”

Luc switched the view and rewound a bit, and sure enough, Harold walked inside . . .
and four minutes later walked back out again, empty-handed.