Hard Bitten (25 page)

I brushed my hair until it shone and added my Cadogan medal and Mary Jane shoes. I’d been so busy with vampire drama that I’d forgotten about Mallory’s sorcery drama, so before I went downstairs I flipped open my phone. I found a message from my father, probably another entreaty to allow him to help Cadogan House.

Joshua Merit was nothing if not persistent.

I sent Mallory a message checking in, and got back a quick response: “BETTER TONIGHT.

PRACTICUM ON HEALING MAGIC. FUN!”

I wasn’t sure if her “Fun!” was sarcastic, but

“healing magic” sounded a lot better than dark magic.

My phone buzzed again just as I was shutting my door. This time, it was a text from Lindsey, and not a promising one.

“WE NEED TO TALK,” she’d texted.

I hated hearing that. My fingers were fast on the keys. “HOUSE TRAUMA?”

“BOY TRAUMA,” she replied, and my shoulders unknotted a bit. “DRAMA OF MY

OWN MAKING.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how she’d managed to have boy trauma or drama. She’d been with me last night, and it wasn’t yet an hour after sunset. I couldn’t resist asking.

“HOW COULD YOU HAVE BOY DRAMA

THIS EARLY IN THE EVENING?”

“JUST FIND ME LATER,” she responded.

“THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS.”

Wasn’t that always true?

A potentially distressing conversation with Lindsey on my agenda for later, I made my way downstairs to Ethan’s office. I found him alone, the door open, adjusting the knickknacks he’d salvaged from the battle on his new bookshelves.

“A little interior decorating to start the night?”

“Trying to make my office feel like my office again.”

“Procrastination can be very satisfying.”

He laughed ruefully. “As you pointed out, it may be a very human emotion, but there’s undoubtedly something satisfying about pretending the world is fine and your problems will keep until you’re ready to deal with them.”

“It’s a lovely coping mechanism,” I agreed.

“I’m glad you’ve made it to our side. Where’s Darius tonight?”

“Scott won the lottery this evening; Darius is at Grey House.” He turned and glanced at me.

“Tell me you learned something last night. Tell me this mess will have some good end.”

“How much should I tell you? I mean, I don’t want to put you into an awkward position with Darius.”

Ethan made a sarcastic sound. “You clearly haven’t seen last night’s local news.”

I hadn’t, and by the tone of his voice, I probably wouldn’t want to. “That bad?”

“It’s so bad, Darius hasn’t called me yet.”

I grimaced. The only thing worse than being yelled at by a boss was having screwed up so royally, he’d moved right into silent treatment.

I decided not to sugarcoat it. There were details I didn’t need to give—information about the vamps who’d actually bought and used the drugs, for one—but I wasn’t going to give him a false sense of the problem.

“It all comes down to V,” I began. “It’s a drug for vampires, not humans. It’s somehow making them more aggressive. The House bars, at least for Grey and Cadogan, have been used as distribution points. I’m not sure about Navarre.”

I gave him a moment to process that information; by the look of him, he needed it. He put an elbow on the shelf, then rubbed his temples with a hand.

“I have put up with a lot in this House,” he said. “Unfortunately, vampires aren’t any more immune to stupidity than humans.” He dropped his hand and looked away, the corners of his eyes wrinkled with disappointment. “I would have hoped that they respected the House—and me—more than this.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan.”

He shook his head, and shook it off. “Tell me about the bar.”

“Colin hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. I asked Jeff to pull the security footage so we can figure out how it’s getting in. It’s definitely getting in, although I had everyone hand over their stash so they couldn’t bring it back into the House.”

“And so it wouldn’t be found on them if the cops patted them down.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “But my grandfather had already found it in the bar, so he’d already put two and two together. I gave him the rest of the drugs, and that’s when they brought in Detective Jacobs.”

“Your theory?”

“Still working it out. In terms of the overall picture, we’ve now had two instances of extra-violent vamps and drugs in the same place at the same time. As for the why of it . . .” I shrugged.

“Who’s pushing the drugs? Someone who wants us in trouble? Someone who wants vamps bringing down the Houses on their own?

Someone who wants to take us down one pill at a time?”

“That doesn’t sound like Celina,” he pointed out.

“Not unless she’s decided all vamps have to suffer for her crimes,” I agreed. “Morgan didn’t think that was likely, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Until you have more evidence, I’m not conceding that point. What about McKetrick?

He’s focused on forcing us out of Chicago.

Perhaps he’s pushing V to rile up vampires and pressure Tate into deporting us?”

“McKetrick was outside the bar last night,” I said. “I saw him, then pointed him out to Catcher. He was going to tail McKetrick and get what info he could.” I made a mental note to follow up with him later. “That said, McKetrick may hate us, but making vamps extra-aggressive risks a lot of collateral damage. I don’t see it being part of his master plan.”

“Whoever is behind it, we need to find them and stop the distribution before things get any worse.”

“Coincidence—those are the first two things on my to-do list.”

“I have item three for you. Dinner at Grey House this evening with Darius and the Masters.

Darius also invited Gabriel and Tonya. One o’clock. We’ll leave from here. And it’s formal, of course.”

Since Darius seemed like a rules stickler, the formal bit didn’t surprise me. But I was curious about his invitation to Gabriel and Tonya, Gabriel’s wife. Vampires and shifters had a historically nasty relationship—a lot of distrust and angst by vampires, a lot of eye rolling and denial by shifters.

“Why invite Gabriel and Tonya?” I asked.

“If I was being generous, I’d say Darius was interested in improving inter-sup relations. But he’s more likely attempting to micromanage our relationship with the Packs. It would be bad for the Chicago Houses to completely alienate the Packs. But in Darius’s mind, it would be altogether worse to become too cozy with them.

There’ve never been official allegiances with a Pack before. If we pulled it off, it would indicate a definite shift in power in our direction.”

At his mention of the potential Pack allegiance, I looked away. Ethan’s fear that our relationship—or our future breakup—would endanger our burgeoning friendship with the North American Central was the reason he’d given for the breakup he now regretted.

“Come on,” Ethan suddenly said, walking toward the door.

I glanced up again, moved from my reverie.

“Where are we going?”

“Ops Room. I was supposed to have you downstairs fifteen minutes ago.”

I followed him obediently to the basement stairs and toward the Ops Room. The door was open; Luc, Juliet, Kelley, Malik, and Lindsey were already assembled around the conference table. Luc, in a faded denim shirt and jeans, was an interesting contrast to the rest of the guards, who were all dressed in black.

Ethan closed the door. I took an empty seat at the table, and he took the chair beside me.

I glanced between Luc and Lindsey, who sat on opposite ends of the table, trying to read the tea leaves regarding her message earlier. But she wore her usual expression of mildly amused boredom; Luc was scanning the paper on the Ops Room table, a steaming mug in his hand. If they were at odds, I couldn’t tell, and there wasn’t any obviously negative magic in the air.

“Finally, they join us,” Luc said, sipping his drink. Normally, that kind of comment would have been a tease coming from him. This time, it sounded like a rebuke, and Luc didn’t normally err toward grouchiness. Maybe he and Lindsey
had
gotten into something.

“We were on our best behavior,” Ethan advised him. “Merit was filling me in on last night’s investigation.”

“Do tell,” Luc said.

“Long story short, it’s the V that’s been causing the violence.”

Luc frowned, sat up, and put his mug on the tabletop, hands wrapped around it like it was providing necessary warmth. I’d been cold as a newbie vampire, and it had taken some time to ward off that chill. But it was August and probably ninety degrees outside. I didn’t understand people who drank coffee in the heat of summer.

“Why would some lowlife sell drugs to vamps and get them together for parties? What’s he trying to accomplish?”

“Merit thinks McKetrick might be involved,”

Ethan said, “that maybe it’s a ploy to get vamps out of the city.”

I put up a hand. “That was actually Ethan’s idea,” I said, giving credit where credit was due .

. . or distributing the blame accordingly.

Luc tilted his head back and forth while he considered it. “Whoever came up with it, it’s not a bad idea, although manufacturing the drug, distributing it, organizing the parties, and everything else in the chain means a lot of work just to get rid of a population. There are easier ways.”

“Agreed,” Malik said. “And at the risk of jumping on one of our favorite bandwagons, the first witness saw a woman named Marie. Any votes for Celina?”

“But we haven’t heard anything about her since then,” I pointed out. “So if she is involved, she’s staying under the radar. I’m having Jeff Christopher check the bar’s security tapes, so if there’s any sign of her—or any more details about the seller—we’ll find them.”

Luc nodded, then picked up a remote that sat beside his mug. “In that case, a little more good news to brighten your evening.” He held up the remote and mashed buttons until the clip on the screen began to play.

It was a recorded news program. We caught the end of a story about international warfare before the headline switched to read, “Vamp Violence in Wrigleyville.” The female anchor

—polished in her jewel-toned suit, her stiff hair a helmet above her head—offered up the rest.

“In this morning’s top local news,” she said,

“an uptick in violence in the city is deemed the result of a drug called ‘V’ that’s circulating among the city’s vampire community.”

They cut to an image of a white V tablet in someone’s hand, and then to a shot of Temple Bar.

“One such event was last night’s disturbance at a Wrigleyville bar with ties to Cadogan House.

We were live on scene last night, and here’s what one local resident had to say.”

They cut to video of the two frat boys from Temple Bar.

“Oh, those traitorous little shits,” Lindsey muttered. “Those are the humans Christine talked to.”

“It was awful in there,” said the taller of the two boys. “All those vamps just wailing on each other. It was like they just went crazy.”

“Did you fear for your life?” asked an offscreen reporter.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “How could you not? I mean, they’re vampires. We’re just humans.”

“The atom bomb was invented by ‘just humans,’” Malik muttered. “World War II and the Spanish Inquisition were perpetrated by ‘just humans.’”

We were clearly not a receptive crowd for muckraking journalism.

“Aldermen Pat Jones and Clarence Walker issued statements this morning calling for investigation of Chicago’s vampire Houses and their role in this new drug. Mayor Tate responded to events this morning after meeting with his economic council.”

The newscast cut to a shot of Tate shaking hands with a woman in an unflattering suit.

Beside a plain-looking bureaucrat, he looked that much more like a romance-novel hero: seductive eyes, dark hair, wicked smile. You had to wonder how many votes he’d gotten because voters just wanted to be near him.

When reporters began peppering him with questions about the bar fight, he held up both hands and smiled affectionately. That smile, I thought, walked a thin line between empathy and condescension.

“I have made Chicago’s Houses well aware of their responsibilities, and I’m sure they’ll take whatever precautions are necessary to put an immediate stop to the spread of V and the violence. If they don’t, of course, steps will have to be taken. My administration is not afraid to take those steps. We’ve done a lot of work to remake this city into one that Illinois can be proud of, and we will continue to ensure that Chicago remains a place of peace and prosperity.”

The anchor popped on-screen again. “Mayor Tate’s approval rating remains consistently high even in light of the recent violence.”

With that, Luc reached up with the remote and stopped the video again.

The room went silent and heavy with concern.

I guessed I now knew why my father had called.

He was probably dying to berate me for being a vampire and sullying the family name—despite the fact that I’d had no say in becoming fanged, and I was trying my best to keep the peace in Chicago.

Unless his tone had changed about that, as well.

“Well,” Ethan finally said. “It does comfort me so to know that Mayor Tate’s approval ratings remain strong.”

“Tate must be feeding the anchors with information,” I offered. “We only barely know about the uptick in violence, and my grandfather promised to keep V out of the press.”

“So Tate’s using vamps to make political hay?” Luc offered. “I guess it’s not the first time a politician’s taken advantage of chaos, but it sure would be nice if it wasn’t at our expense.”

“And if he didn’t have an arrest warrant ready,” I agreed.

“Way to put the city first,” Lindsey said.

Luc glanced over at Ethan, concern in his expression. “Anything from Darius?”

“He’s still on radio silence.”

“It’s not going to go over well.”

“Drugs and violence in my bar? Drugs and violence covered by local paparazzi that will probably spread to national coverage, if it hasn’t already? No, I don’t imagine he will be pleased, and there’s a good chance the House will suffer for it.”

“Tell him the other part,” Kelley said.