Biting Cold (19 page)

I wished myself good luck and opened the door.

Ethan was behind his desk. The room vibrated with furious energy.

“Will they actually kick us out?” I asked, earning me a flash of green eyes.

“You spied on us?”

“I strategically gathered evidence.”

“They’ve effectively done so,” Ethan said. “We’ve been impeached. Now we see if they can make it stick.” He rose from his desk, then walked across the room to the bar tucked into the built-in bookshelf. He opened a cabinet, pulled out a bottle, and twisted off the top, then poured two fingers into a short glass.

He took a sip, then glanced back at me. “Beverage?”

I walked toward the bar. “What are you drinking?”

“Forty-year-old Scotch.”

I whistled. That couldn’t have been cheap, and it probably didn’t bode well for the House that he’d cracked it.

Ethan didn’t show fear often. That he was worried now about what the GP might do made my stomach flutter with nerves. He was supposed to be the House’s rock; the rock wasn’t supposed to be nervous.

“No, thanks,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the cabinets. “What now?”

“Contingency planning,” he said darkly. “We have some backup plans in place, and if the House isn’t long for GP membership, they’ll need executing soon. Malik and I are going to finalize them.”

“The GP hasn’t done us any favors lately. Is it such a bad thing if we’re gone?”

He didn’t answer, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

I guessed it was worse than I’d thought. “Tell me.”

He took another sip. “The GP’s general philosophy is that if we are not aligned with them, we are against them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. There are Rogue vampires in
Chicago. I haven’t heard Noah mention any kind of GP harassment.”

Noah Beck was the unofficial leader of Chicago’s un-Housed vampires; he was also a member of the Red Guard, like me and Jonah.

“For now, it’s only a cold war,” he said. “The GP believes Rogue vampires will sabotage the Houses; the Rogues believe the Houses exist solely to perpetuate the more fascist tendencies of the GP. The current peace isn’t the usual state of affairs.”

“So the GP might actually attack us?”

“Should circumstances call for it, yes. Both the GP and the Houses within it.”

“Even Sheridan House? You made Lacey Sheridan a Master. She’s from Cadogan House, and her alliance insignia is hanging over our front door.” Also, Lacey Sheridan had a crush—or more—on Ethan, which made it unlikely she’d take up arms against him.

Glass in hand, Ethan walked to one of the club chairs in the seating area and leaned against it. “Haven’t you ever wondered why we bear other Houses’ alliance insignia if we’re all members of the GP? It’s a promise not to take up arms in the event worse comes to worst—or the GP orders them to act.”

“Good grief,” I said, moving to the chair beside him. No wonder Jonah had joined the RG.

Ethan finished his glass. “Vampires existed long before the GP was formed, and they will exist long after it’s gone. We can survive. We just might need to remind our Housed brothers and sisters of that.”

And some would take more convincing than others. “Morgan will be a terror.”

“Quite possibly. Scott Grey, less so.”

And Scott’s crew, including the RG member masquerading as a
guard captain, even less than that. But that wasn’t information Ethan needed right now.

“Maybe we should beat the GP at its own game,” I suggested.

“How do we do that?”

“We could jump ship.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “The vampires of Cadogan House do not ‘jump ship.’ ”

“Not even if they get dumped?”

“Not even if,” he said. “What’s the phrase? You should dance with the one who brought you?”

“Not if you found out the one who brought you made out after third period with the head of the chess club, who was totally not as cute as you.” I felt my cheeks warm. “But that’s a personal issue we don’t need to discuss here. The thing is, we can do better. If they don’t want us, we find someone who does.”

He chuckled a little, and I felt the wall of tense magic in the room crumble a bit.

“He said he wants to interview you. Do you think he can be convinced to back off?”

“I don’t know. Darius would prefer an official House policy of ‘shut the fuck up,’ which we aren’t particularly skilled at. I hardly think he’d waste time on interviews if they weren’t for a purpose, but I can’t imagine him standing down a decision of the
shofet
.”

“Are you going to tell the House?”

“I doubt it. I’m not sure there’s any point in raising a flag until the decision is firm and final.”

Until then, we’d all have to wait and see what happened, which wasn’t a comfortable position for anyone. And speaking of which, for the sake of my own sanity, it was time to discuss the thing we were steadfastly avoiding…

“Are we okay?” I asked.

Ethan brushed a lock of hair over my shoulder. I glanced at him, but when our eyes met, he froze and looked away.

My stomach twisted. Now he wouldn’t touch me at all?

“I can’t have you. Not now.”

I could hardly form words. “What? Is this about the bruise?”

He stood up straight. “The mark I put on your body because I was upset? Yes, Sentinel, it is about that.”

“That wasn’t you,” I insisted. “It only happened because of Mallory, because she was close and upset and her emotions were affecting you.”

“And we’re back in Chicago together,” he said. “She’s close enough. What if she’s upset? What if she becomes angrier than she’s been before? What if a bruise is the least harm I could do?”

I understood his point, understood well the risk he was trying to avoid. But he’d saved my life twice. I trusted him implicitly, and not because I feared him or what he might do. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be.” Ethan walked back to the bar and put his glass on the counter, putting space—an obstacle—between us.

After a moment, he turned around, and his eyes had gone cold.

My stomach did the same.

“I’ve been thinking…”

“That’s dangerous,” I lightly said, but he didn’t laugh.

“I think we should halt our personal relationship for the time being. Until we resolve things with Mallory.”

My heart fell to my knees, and I found I couldn’t speak a single word. This couldn’t be happening. Not after all we’d been through. Not after I’d lost him and found him again.

“And if things aren’t ever resolved with Mallory? If you can’t ever be one hundred percent sure that you’re free of her? What then?”

He looked up at me, and he didn’t answer.

Apparently, four hundred years did a lot of damage to a man’s psyche, and Ethan’s defense mechanism was to throw up barriers to every emotion he didn’t care to feel. A few months ago, I’d have walked away from this conversation, and from him. I’d have taken the emotional punch like a trouper and left the room without a parting shot. But he was facing down a demon of his own making, and I wasn’t going to help him with the illusion.

I fought back tears. “You’d just give me up?”

“This isn’t about giving you up. I can’t—I’m not in
control
of myself, Merit.”

“Then it’s about not trusting me enough to help you when you’re in a bad situation.”

“It’s about keeping you safe until this problem is resolved. I didn’t save your life so that I could tear it down again, Merit. I will not put me or you in the position of hurting you again. God willing we can find a way to separate Mallory and me before our immortality has passed us by.”

There were times I secretly enjoyed Ethan’s alpha-male posturing. But this wasn’t one of them. My anger began to rise, spurred by his irritating stubbornness and blind desire to control every situation.

“You’re resolving this problem by pushing me away. You’re a four-hundred-year-old vampire and avoidance is the best solution you’ve got?”

“Until you’re at the mercy of someone else’s thoughts and whims, I’m not looking to you for advice.”

That bullet was aimed right at me, but I kept up my guard. “Ah,” I said, nodding. “So you’re going to take shots at me until I walk away? You know, we’ve been down this road before. It ended with your apologizing.”

“This is different.”

It wasn’t. Not really. But if he believed it, what could I do? He thought he was protecting me; how was I supposed to convince him his instincts were wrong?

Tears threatening to spill over my lashes, I strode to the office door. I would not cry in front of him.

“We weren’t done here,” he called out.

I risked a glance back, and I could see the panic flaring in his eyes. Maybe the consequences of his ridiculous position were finally occurring to him. Good. Maybe he’d come to his senses. But I wasn’t going to waste time arguing with someone who needed to be convinced I was an asset.

“According to you,” I said, “we are done here.”

Rarely had slamming a door felt so good.

I
t was a good thing we weren’t telepathically connected, because he wouldn’t have enjoyed hearing my thoughts on the way back down to the Ops Room.

I decided my best option was to help the team with the investigation of Paulie Cermak’s death, but with my mind absorbed by Ethan’s stubbornness, I was pretty useless. Hoping to identify a specific motive for Paulie’s death, I’d printed off as much information on Paulie Cermak as I could find on the Web. The stack of papers sat on the table in front of me, but I hadn’t so much as glanced at them in half an hour.

All my brain cells were busy being furious at Ethan and wondering whether I could keep him from imploding our almost relationship. He was afraid he’d hurt me. It couldn’t have been easy to feel trapped in someone else’s neuroses, but that wasn’t Ethan—the man who’d taken a stake for me.

But what was I supposed to do? What was the right thing to do? Respect his wishes and keep my distance? Play the sexy minx and
use seduction to get him to change his mind? Or just ignore him until we got Mallory’s mind meld squared away?

Getting her squared away was definitely the first thing on my revised agenda.

“Merit!”

I jolted to attention and found Lindsey, who was back from guard duty and sat across from me at the conference table, staring at me with amusement.

“What?”

“Your phone is ringing.”

For the first time, I heard the phone ring from the pocket of my jacket, which I’d slung over the back of my chair. I managed to grab the phone just before it stopped ringing.

“Hello?”

“Too busy to answer the phone?”

It was Catcher. “Sorry. I didn’t hear it ring. What’s up?”

“I talked to Mallory. She used a conjuration spell.”

“Which does what?”

“It conjures. Brings something into the space that hadn’t been there before. The spell was also in the
Maleficium
, just like the familiar spell. She copied it before they took the book away so she’d remember the steps.”

“Same magical theory as last time?” I wondered. “Use a bit of dark magic to upset the line between good and dark magic, and invoke the rest of the dark magic out of the
Maleficium
.”

“That seems to be what she was trying to do. And that explains the second Tate. She conjured him into existence.”

But had she? “I don’t understand. If she was conjuring something, shouldn’t something new have popped into the room? I mean, instead of Tate splitting in two?”

“That’s possible, I guess, but it’s hard to say. Tate
touched
the
Maleficium
. That’s like being shot at point-blank range by magic. It could have affected the outcome of the spell.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the information.”

“Sure,” he said, and the line went dead.

I put the phone away, and when Luc rolled his office chair closer to the table for a report, I relayed what Catcher had said. But while I took Catcher’s point about Tate having touched the
Maleficium
, the magical math still didn’t make sense to me.

“He said conjuration is supposed to bring forth something new,” I said, my gaze shifting between Lindsey and Luc. “Not duplicate something that already existed.”

“The intricacies of conjuration aren’t my specialty,” Luc said. “There is, however, a library at your disposal. You should take full advantage.”

I nodded. “Good idea. When Paige gets back, I’ll stick her in the library and tag team with her. I’m hoping there’s a logical explanation.”

“As logical as a man asexually reproducing before your eyes.”

“Precisely.”

“And that’s enough for me,” Luc said, wheeling back to his desk.

As soon as he was gone, Lindsey leaned forward. “Where were you before the phone rang?”

My cheeks warmed. “I was just thinking.”

“You were not just thinking,” she whispered, frowning. “Do you want to talk? We can go outside.”

There wasn’t much point in trying to fool Lindsey. She was an empathic vampire and could read others’ emotions.

“Not right now. Maybe later.”