Chicagoland Vampires - Some Girls Bite Part 28

Two hours later, the sun just preparing to peek over the horizon, I was back home in a tank top and flannel pajama bottoms. I was on my bed, cell phone in hand, replaying the message I found when I left the gym. It was from Morgan, a voice mail he'd left while I was training.

Beep. "Hey. It's Morgan. From Navarre, in case you know a lot of us. Morgans, I mean. I'm rambling. I hope the Commendation went well. Heard you were named Sentinel. Congratulations." Then he gave me a little speech on the history of the House Sentinel, and the fact that Ethan had resurrected the position.

He talked so long the cell phone cut him off.

Then he called back.Beep. "Sorry. Got a little long-winded there. Probably not my finest moment. That was not really the suave demonstration of the mad skills I had planned." There was a pause. "I'd like to see you again." Throat clearing. "I mean, if for no other reason than to explain to you, a little more thoroughly this time, the obvious benefits of rooting for the Packers-the glory, the history-"

"The obvious humility," I muttered, listening to the message, unable to stop the grin that curled the corners of my lips.

"So, yeah. We need to talk about that. Football. 'That,' meaning football. Jesus. Just give me a call." Throat clearing. "Please."

I stared at the open sh.e.l.l of the phone for a long time, thinking about the phone call even as the sun pulled at the horizon, peeked above it. I finally clamped the phone closed, and when I curled into a ball, my head heavy on the pillow, I slept with the phone in my hand.

When the sun set and I opened my eyes again, I deposited the cell phone on the bedside table, and decided-it being both my day off and my twenty-eighth birthday-that I had time for a run. I stretched, donned workout gear, pulled up my hair, and headed downstairs.

I got in a run, a loop around Wicker Park, the commercial parts of the neighborhood buzzing with dinner seekers and folks seeking the solace of an after-work drink. The house was still quiet when I returned, so I was spared the sights and sounds of a Carmichael-Bell liaison. Thirsty enough to guzzle Buckingham Fountain, I headed for the kitchen and the refrigerator.

That was when I saw my father.

He sat at the kitchen island, dressed in his usual suit and expensive Italian loafers, gla.s.ses c.o.c.ked at his nose as he scanned the paper.

Suddenly, it didn't seem coincidental that Mallory and Catcher were nowhere to be found.

"You've been named Sentinel."

I had to force my feet to move. Aware that his eyes were on me, I walked to the refrigerator, grabbed a carton of juice, and cracked it open. I almost reached for a gla.s.s from the cupboard, thinking it would be more polite to pour a cup than chug from the carton, but opted to chug anyway. Our house, our rules.

After a long, silent drink, I walked to the opposite side of the island, put down the carton, and looked at him. "So I have."

He made a show of loudly folding the paper, then placed it on the counter. "You've got pull now."

Word, even if fundamentally incorrect, had traveled. I wondered if my father, like my grandfather, had his own secret vampire source. "Not really," I told him. "I'm just a guard."

"But for the House. Not for Sullivan."

d.a.m.n. Maybe he did have a source. He knew a lot, but the more interesting question was why he'd bothered to find out. Potential business deals? Bring out the daughter's vampire connections to impress friends and business partners?

Whatever the source or the reason, he was right about the distinction. "For the House," I confirmed, and squeezed the top of the carton closed. "But I'm a couple of weeks old, with hardly any training, and I'm probably last on Ethan's list of trusted vamps. I have no pull." I thought of the phrase Ethan had used and added, "No political capital at all."

My father, his blue eyes so like mine, gazed at me quietly before standing. "Robert will be taking over the business soon. He'll need your support, your help with the vampires. You're a Merit, and you're now a member of this Cadogan House. You have Sullivan's ear."

That was news to me.

"You've got the in. I expect you to use it." He tapped fingers against the folded paper, as if to drive home the point. "You owe it to your family."

I managed not to remind him exactly how supportive that "family" had been when I'd discovered I was a vampire. I'd been threatened with disinheritance. "I'm not sure what service you think I could provide to you or Robert," I told him, "but I'm not for rent. I'll do my job as Sentinel, my duty, because I swore an oath. I'm not happy to be a vampire. It's not the life I'd have picked.

But it's mine now, and I'll honor that. I'm not going to jeopardize my future, my position"-or my Master and his House-"by taking on whatever little project you've got in mind."

My father huffed. "You think Ethan would hesitate to use you if the opportunity arose?"

I wasn't sure what I thought about that, but Ethan was off-limits as a paternal conversation topic. So I stared down Joshua Merit, gave him back the same blue-eyed glare he leveled at me. "Was that all you needed?"

"You're a Merit."

But no longer just a Merit, I thought, which pushed a little grin onto my face. I repeated, my tone flat, "Was that all you needed?"

A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he backed down. Without another word to his younger daughter, birthday wishes or otherwise, he turned on his heel and walked out.

When the front door closed, I kept my place. I stood for a minute in the empty kitchen, hands clenching the edge of the island, filled with the urge to run after my father, demand that he see me for who I was, love me for who I was.

I swallowed down tears, dropped my hands away.

And as the bloodl.u.s.t rose again, whether fueled by anger or grief, I went back to the refrigerator, found a bag of O positive, cradled it in my arms, and sank to the floor.

There was no intoxication this time. There was satiation, a sense of deep, earthy satisfaction, and the oblivion that accompanied the detachment I had to adopt in order to take human blood into my body. But there was no drunkenness, no stumbling. It was as if my body had accepted the thing my mind was only just becoming accustomed to-the thing that I'd admitted to my father, to Ethan, to myself.

I was a Cadogan vampire.

No-I was a vampire. Regardless of House, of position, and despite the fact that I didn't rave through graveyards at night, I didn't fly (or, at least, I a.s.sumed I didn't fly-I hadn't fully tested that, I guess), and I didn't cower at the sight of the crucifix pendant that hung on the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. Despite the fact that I ate garlic, that I still had a reflection, and that I could stumble groggily through the day, even if I wasn't at my best.

So I wasn't the vampire Hollywood had imagined. I was different enough. Stronger. Faster. More nimble. A sunlight allergy. The ability to heal. A taste for hemoglobin. I'd acquired a handful of new friends, a new job, a boss I studiously avoided, and a paler cast to my skin. I could handle a sword, knew a smattering of martial arts, had nearly been murdered and had discovered an entirely new side to the Windy City. I could sense magic, could feel the power that flowed through the metro, a metaphysical companion to the Chicago River. I could hear Ethan's voice in my head, had seen a bad boy sorcerer shoot magic in my direction, and had lost my best friend and roommate (and room) to that same bad boy sorcerer.

For all those changes, all that upheaval, what else was there, but to do? To act? To be Cadogan Sentinel, to take up arms and bear them for the House I'd been charged with protecting.

I pushed up off the floor, tossed the empty plastic bag in the trash, wiped at my mouth with the back of a hand, and gazed out the kitchen window and into the dark night.

Today was my twenty-eighth birthday.

I didn't look a day over twenty-seven.

Intent on making the most of the rest of my night off, I'd showered, changed, and was in my bedroom-door shut, sitting cross- legged in jeans on the comforter, a copy of Algernon Swinburne's Tristam of Lyonesse open before me. It was outside the context of my dissertation, Swinburne's version of Tristan and Isolde having been penned in 1852, but the despite the tragic end, the story always drew me back. I'd read and reread the prelude, Swinburne's ode to history's soul-crossed lovers, his ode to love itself: . . . And always through new act and pa.s.sion new s.h.i.+nes the divine same body and beauty through, The body spiritual of fire and light That is to worldly noon as noon to night; Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man And spirit within the flesh whence breath began; Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime; Love, that is blood within the veins of time; Fire. Light. Blood. The veins of time. Those words had never meant as much to me as they did now. Context definitely mattered.

I was staring at the text, contemplating the metaphor, when a knock sounded at my bedroom door. It opened, and Lindsey peeked inside.

"So this is where the mysterious Cadogan Sentinel spends her free time?" She was in jeans and a black T-s.h.i.+rt, heavy, black leather bands at each wrist, her blond hair in a ponytail. She tucked her hands behind her back, turned around to survey the room.

"I understand it's someone's birthday."

I closed the book. "Aren't you working today?"

Lindsey shrugged. "I switched with Juliet. Girl loves her guns, sleeps with that sword. She was happy to take duty."

I nodded. In the few days that I'd known Juliet, that summed up my impression. She had the look of an innocent, but she was always ready for a fight. "What brings you by?"

"You, birthday girl. Your party awaits."

I arched a brow. "My party?"

She crooked a finger at me, walked back into the hallway. Curious, I put the book aside, unfolded my legs, turned off the bedside lamp, and followed her. She trotted back down the stairs and into the living room-and into an a.s.semblage of friends. Mallory, Catcher behind her, one hand at her waist. Jeff, quirky grin on his face and a silver-wrapped box in his hands.

Mallory stepped forward, arms outstretched. "Happy birthday, our little vampette!" I hugged her and gave Jeff a wink over her shoulder.

"We're taking you out," she said. "Well, no, actually, we're taking you in-to your grandfather's house. He's got a little something prepared."

"Okay," I said, at a loss to argue, and a little gushy-hearted that my friends had come to sweep me away to birthday festivities. It was a h.e.l.l of an improvement over the mock-paternal visit earlier in the evening.

I found shoes and we gathered up purses, turned off lights, and locked the front door under the gaze of the guards who stood outside. Mallory and Catcher bundled off to the SUV that sat at the curb, a vehicle I guessed was Lindsey's when she headed toward the driver's seat. Jeff hung back, shyly offering the silver box.

I took it, looked at it, glanced up at him. "What's this?"

He grinned. "A thank-you."

I smiled, and pulled off the silver gift wrap, then slid open the pale blue box beneath it. Inside was a tiny silver sculpture. It was human in form-a body genuflecting, arms outstretched. A little confused, I looked up at him, brows lifted.

"It's bowing to you. I may have"-he pulled at the collar of his dress s.h.i.+rt-"spread around the fact that the Sentinel of Cadogan House had a tiny crush on me."

I folded my arms and looked at him. "How tiny?"

He started for the car. I followed.

"Jeffrey. How tiny?"

He held up a hand as he walked, the fingers pinched together.

"Jeff!"

He opened the back door, but turned before he slid in, a grin lighting his eyes. "There may have been begging, and I may have turned you down because you were a little too. . . ."

I rolled my eyes, slid into the backseat beside him. "Let me guess-too clingy?"

"Something like that."

I faced forward, felt his worried gaze at my side and the sudden peppering of magic that filled the back of the car. No, not just magic-alarm. But he was a friend, so I ignored the p.r.i.c.k of vampiric interest-predatory interest-in the sweetly astringent aroma of his fear. "Fine," I said. "But I'm not giving you underwear."

I heard a chuckle from the front seat, then felt Jeff's lips on my cheek. "You seriously kick a.s.s."

Mallory flipped down her visor, met my gaze in the inset mirror, and winked at me.

There were cars all around my grandfather's house-at the curb, parked on the front lawn. All luxury roadsters-Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti, Audi-all in basic colors-red, green, blue, black, white. But it was the license plates that gave them away: NORTH 1, GOOSE, SBRNCH. All divisions of the Chicago River.

"Nymphs," I concluded, when we were out of the car and Catcher had joined me on the sidewalk. I remembered the designations from the posters in my grandfather's office.

"This wasn't scheduled," he said. "They must have needed some Ombud input. A mediation, probably." He looked over at Jeff, stuck out a pointed finger. "No touching. If they're fighting, there'll be tears enough."

Jeff raised both hands, grinned. "I don't make the ladies cry, CB."

"Don't call me that," Catcher ground out, before looking at me. "This was not part of the birthday party."

I looked at the house, brightly lit, figures moving to and fro inside, and nodded. "So I gathered. Anything I need to be aware of?"

And before he asked the obvious question, I gave the obvious answer. "And, yes, I've read the Canon." The book wasn't a bad fill-in for the supernatural reference guide I'd been wis.h.i.+ng for-it had introductory sections on all the major supernatural groups, water nymphs included. They were small, slim, moody, and p.r.o.ne to tears. They were territorial and wielded considerable power over the river's flow and currents, and were rumored-and G.o.d only knew how to evaluate rumor in something like this-to be the granddaughters of the Naiads of Greek myth. The boundaries of the nymphs' respective areas were constantly waxing and waning, as the nymphs traded up and down for tiny bits of water and sh.o.r.e. And although human history books didn't mention it, there were rumors that they'd played a key role in reversing the Chicago River's flow in 1900.

"Just stay out of arm's reach," Catcher advised, and went for the door.

My grandfather's house was full of women. All of them pet.i.te and curvy, not a single one taller than five foot four. All drop-dead gorgeous. All with flowy hair, big, liquid eyes, tiny, tiny dresses. And they were screaming, screeching at one another with voices half an octave past comfortable. They were also crying, watery tears streaming down their faces.

We walked in, the five of us, and were greeted by a brief din in the silence.

"My granddaughter," my grandfather, seated in his easy chair, one elbow on the arm, hand in his chin, announced. "It's her birthday."

The nymphs blinked big eyes at me-blue and brown and translucent green-then turned back to one another, and the screaming commenced again. I caught a few snippets-something about bascule bridges and treaties and water flow. They were clearly unimpressed that I'd arrived.

My grandfather rolled his eyes in amus.e.m.e.nt. I grinned back and gave him a finger wave-and nearly lost a chunk of hair to the snap of pink-tipped fingers before Lindsey pulled me back from the fray.

I looked over at Catcher, who offered me the Look of Disappointed Sensei. "Arm's reach," he said, inclining his head toward the nymphs, who'd moved on to clawing and hair-pulling. It was a catfight of You Tube-worthy proportions. Hems were tugged, hair yanked, bare skin clawed and raked by prettily manicured nails. And through it all, screaming and tears.

"For goodness' sake," said a voice behind me, and Jeff pushed through us to the edge of warring women. "Ladies!" he said, and when they ignored him, gave a little chuckle, before yelling again, "Ladies!"

To a one, the nymphs stopped in place, even while their hands were wrapped around the necks and hair of the ones nearby. Heads swiveled slowly toward us, took in the group of us, stopped when they reached Jeff. The nymphs-all nine of them-dropped their hands, began adjusting hair and bodices, and when they were set, turned batty-eyelashed smiles at Jeff.

Mallory and I stared, openmouthed, at the skinny computer programmer who'd just wooed nine busty, l.u.s.ty water G.o.ddesses into submission.

Jeff rocked back on his heels, grinned at them. "That's better. Now what's all the fuss?" His voice was soothing, crooning, with an edge of playful that made the women visibly s.h.i.+ver.

I couldn't help but grin . . . and wonder if I hadn't been giving Jeff enough credit.

The tallest of the pet.i.te group, a blue-eyed blonde whose perfect figure was tucked into a blue c.o.c.ktail dress-and who I remembered from the posters at my grandfather's office was the Goose Island nymph-looked across the group of women, smiled tentatively at Jeff, then let loose a stream of invectives about her sisters that would have made a salty sailor blush.

"Uh, earm.u.f.fs?" Mallory whispered next to me.

"Seriously," I murmured back.

The gist of Goose Island's argument, without all the cursing, was that the (s.l.u.tty) raven-haired nymph on her left, North Branch, had slept with the (whorish) boyfriend of the platinum blond nymph on her right, West Fork. The reason for the betrayal, Goose suggested, was some sort of complicated political nudging of their respective boundaries.

Jeff clucked his tongue and regarded the North Branch brunette. "Ca.s.sie, darling, you're better than this."

Ca.s.sie shrugged sheepishly, looked at the ground.

"Melaina," he said to the West Fork blonde, "you need to leave him."

Melaina sniffled, her head bobbing as she toyed with a lock of hair. "He said I was pretty."