House Rules (7 page)

“True. You can barely keep an eye on yourself.”

I rolled my eyes, but got up and walked toward the closet, which I could have counted
as another room. The floor was covered in thick carpet, and the walls were shelved
in cherrywood. Clothes were divided into sections—jackets, pants, shoes, ties, and
coats, and long, flat drawers for folded items. Ethan had graciously offered room
in each of those sections to me, although my simple wardrobe didn’t take up much space.

The middle of the closet held a storage unit that looked like an expensive piece of
European furniture, and a leather bench for changing clothes or putting on shoes.
Mirrors filled empty bays, and track lighting illuminated the whole room like a perfectly
prepped
Vogue
set.

Ethan wore a suit nearly every night, and the closet was filled with well-fitting
black jackets and pants. But even the value of the fabric and tailoring was second
to the artifact that hung in an alcove on the opposite end of the closet: In an ornate
gilded frame was a moody painting by Van Gogh. It was a landscape at dusk, a golden
field of wheat topped by a dark indigo sky, Van Gogh’s telltale swirls of clouds hovering
above it.

I leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms as I admired it. It was a simple
painting, and a small one, only a few inches across. But there was depth in the scene
that appealed to me . . . not unlike the vampire disrobing a few feet away from it.

Ethan wore only boxer briefs, his long and lean body exposed to my salacious glance.
It was easy to appreciate him in a purely aesthetic way—his body was like a perfectly
honed sculpture: curves and flat planes of muscle, golden skin that should have given
way to vampiric paleness some time ago. And on the back of one calf, a mysterious
tattoo he wouldn’t explain, even to me.

Thank God he had no idea how much control was required of me just to be near him.
Although given the knowing glance he offered when our eyes met, maybe he did.

I closed my eyes to reset the visual. As intriguing as he was, we had more pressing
issues.

“Oliver and Eve,” I said. “What do you think?”

“There are too many possibilities for us to even theorize at this point. This could
be a simple miscommunication. Or perhaps Oliver and Eve were reacting to a slight
and chose not to contact Noah and the others for a time.”

“Maybe Oliver and Eve fought with others about the fact that they decided to register.
That couldn’t have thrilled everyone.”

“And Eve’s phone in the alley?” Ethan asked.

“Maybe she threw it in anger? Like an ‘I’m furious they’re furious at me for no reason’”—I
mimicked hurling something at him—“kind of reaction.”

Ethan flipped off the closet light and walked toward me, an eyebrow arched. “I certainly
hope that’s not your best pitch. Because it was pathetic.”

I smiled at his attempt at humor, at ending our night on something other than a note
of fear and despair. The sun was rising and there was nothing we could do for Oliver
and Eve while it was up. But we could be ourselves, and for those few moments of peace
and solitude in the home we’d made together, we could find joy.

“You wouldn’t know a good pitch from a hole in the ground. And my athletic prowess
is unsurpassed,” I asserted.

Ethan stopped, that eyebrow still irritatingly cocked, and put a hand against the
doorjamb, leaning over me.

“Your athletic prowess?”

“Just so,” I said, using one of his favorite phrases. “I have all the right moves.”

With a look hot enough to melt me into a puddle of girl, he caught my hand, then whipped
my body against his.

“Okay, you have all the right moves,” I said, my lids dropping as the sun began to
rise . . . and as he moved his hands to the small of my back and pressed me tighter
into his body.

“You gave in so quickly, Sentinel,” he murmured. He maneuvered me backward toward
the bed, which left little doubt about the reason for those moves. He was a predator
in full alpha mode . . . and he was ready for action.

With his hands at my hips, his mouth found mine. His kiss was intense, nearly brutal
in its force. It was a show of arousal and an expression of something. His feelings
for me, certainly. His frustrations at the world, possibly.

The back of my legs hit the edge of the bed. Unbalanced, I tottered, but he kept me
upright. “I have the advantage.”

“I’m not fighting back.”

“In that case,” he said, slipping an arm behind my knees and tossing me onto the bed,
“there’s no reason to play coy.”

Ethan covered my body with his. My heartbeat quickened, as did the pulse of blood
through my veins. It was as if my heart knew his scent, his body, and his magic, and
anticipated his bite. As if our vampiric natures had connected on a biological level
separate from our hearts and minds, like our predatory souls had found kindred spirits.

I leaned up into the kiss, taking full advantage of the things he offered—things that
I’d missed and only truly come to appreciate while he’d been gone, taken by a stake
through the heart.

Dawn drew closer, bringing with it the hazy exhaustion that struck all vampires. We
fought back sleep with the press of skin and the rhythm of our bodies, and as the
sun breached the horizon with a crown of orange and gold, we pushed each other under,
and slept together until the sun fell again.

CHAPTER FOUR

VISITING HOURS

I
woke in Ethan’s arms, my consciousness triggered by the
whirring
retraction of the automatic shutters that covered his windows.

“Good evening,” he said, pressing a kiss to my bare shoulder.

I humphed and pressed my face back into the pillows. The room was chilly, and I was
entangled with a handsome and powerful man. I really had no incentive to get out of
bed . . . except for my solemn duty to the House and my friendship with Noah. Vampires
were missing, and I had work to do. First item on the list? Calling Catcher for an
update.

Begrudgingly, I sat up and pulled my hair out of my face, twisting it loosely behind
my head. It wouldn’t stay there for long, but at least I could make it out of bed
without blinding myself in the nest of it.

Ethan sat up beside me, his back against the headboard as he scanned his phone for
news and updates.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“The fairies have confirmed Catcher retrieved the packages we left with them. And
more updates from the transition team,” he said. “I’ve invited them to the House,
you know. I thought it would be advantageous to have them here in person. And, frankly,
they provide a bit of insulation against any shenanigans Darius attempts to pull.”

I nodded. “The dailies said people would be visiting, but there weren’t many details
yet. I don’t think the travel arrangements had been finalized.” “Dailies” were the
reports of House happenings Luc prepared for the Cadogan guards. Vampiric travel arrangements
were often complicated by our sunlight restrictions.

“Who got the official transition team invites?” I asked.

“Paige, who has maneuvered her way into the librarian’s heart.”

“As I predicted.” Cadogan House had a gorgeous library and a knowledgeable, if crabby,
librarian. Paige was a redheaded sorceress who’d gotten mixed up in Mallory’s midwestern
rampage, and she’d spent time at Cadogan House after Dominic Tate torched her house
to punish her. She’d recently found a place of her own—a third-floor walkup also in
Hyde Park—but she’d remained a frequent visitor to the House . . . and the librarian.
Both lovers of books and knowledge, they’d made a quick love connection.

“Mm-hmm,” Ethan noncommittally mumbled. “They’re perusing the library for precedents
regarding the Decertification.”

“Precedents?” I wondered.

“It might not surprise you to learn the members of the GP are sticklers for rules.”
His voice was dry as toast; the fact was completely unsurprising.

“And there are lots of rules,” he said. “The Decertification of Houses doesn’t happen
often—only twice since the GP was formally established. The problem is, when the GP
disbands a House, it doesn’t usually wave a polite good-bye and go on about its business.
So they’re checking the other Decerts to determine if the GP pulled any shenanigans
they might try to repeat here. Our financial adviser’s also on the team, and a security
auditor, Michael Donovan. We’ve asked him to provide an unbiased perspective on our
security protocols. Luc and I have been communicating with him for the last couple
of weeks, but it seemed appropriate to bring him in for the final battle, as it were.”

Luc hadn’t mentioned Michael Donovan to me, which made me wonder whether he was irritated
that Ethan had hired an auditor to look over his shoulder. But Ethan was the boss.
Unofficially, anyway. “Sounds like a good plan.”

But Ethan went suddenly—and unusually—quiet.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“Lacey will be one of the visitors.”

Lacey Sheridan was the Master of San Diego’s Sheridan House. She was tall and blond,
with enviably long legs and a history with Ethan. She’d visited once since I’d been
a member of the House, and she made it quite clear to me then that she wanted to rekindle
their relationship. Ethan might have moved on, much to her chagrin, but she wasn’t
ready to give up on him.

Part of that bond, undoubtedly, had been formed when Ethan made Lacey a vampire and
helped train her to lead her own House. She was the only one of Ethan’s vampiric “children”
to have her own House. With only twelve Houses in the United States, that made her
a very valuable ally.

On the other hand, he also knew that Lacey had been a thorn in our side before, which
made me wonder about his real motivations. How was she so vital?

“She and Darius have a unique friendship,” Ethan said, as if guessing my concern.

“Romantic?” I wondered.

“No. More an affinity. A kinship. They are two of a kind.”

Darius was fastidious and proper, and the Cadogan vampires called Lacey the Ice Queen.
She was as carefully styled and modulated as Ethan—without the endearing personality.
A friendship between her and Darius actually made a warped kind of sense.

“Darius is a member of the old guard,” he said. “We challenge the authority of the
GP and, by virtue, his authority. By becoming Rogues, we become that which they despise:
outcasts and traitors. I’m hoping that Lacey’s presence—an ally of his own, in a sense—will
mitigate his more dictatorial sensibilities.”

Ethan ran his hands through his hair, then crossed them behind his head and leaned
back against the headboard again. He looked concerned, and was obviously unaware of
how the move tightened the muscles in his torso and made him look even more like a
distracted cologne model from a
GQ
spread.

I couldn’t fault his logic. It was entirely reasonable that he’d ask Lacey to visit.
I wasn’t crazy about the idea—mostly because I wasn’t crazy about her—but I was also
a grown-up.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked at me with suspicion in his eyes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I repeated with a smile. “I appreciate your honesty. I don’t trust her any
farther than I can throw her, but I’ll deal.”

“Why don’t you trust her?” I saw the pain in his eyes; he was afraid I thought he’d
be unfaithful. But it wasn’t him I worried about.

“She’s still in love with you.”

“She is not in love with me,” he countered, but there was a hint of pink in his cheeks.

“I assure you she is, and she’s all but willing to take me out to get to you.”

He looked mildly amused . . . and flattered in an ego-driven, masculine kind of way.
“And you know this because?”

“She stares at you, she hangs on every word . . . and she told me.”

He looked surprised. “She told you?”

“She told me.” Maybe not in so many words, but she’d gotten the point across.

“Merit, Lacey has lived in Sheridan House for years. She is the only Master in a city
with hundreds of vampires, and—I say this without personal interest—she’s a perfectly
attractive woman. I assure you—if she wanted a suitor, she could find one.”

Not when she’s holding out for you
, I silently thought, but kept that to myself. If he was truly that naive about her
feelings, I figured that benefited me. It would be harder for her to woo him away
if he had no romantic thoughts of her.

“Okay, then.”

Ethan looked at me. He watched me, really checking my mood and whether that “okay”
meant okay in the male sense (“okay”) or the female sense (“possibly okay; it depends
on what you say next”).

“You mean that,” he said.

“I do. I trust you. I’m not entirely sure I trust her, but I trust you.” I put my
hand on his. “And more important, I know you’re worried about the House—and about
Darius and the GP. Do what you need to do. I’ll live.”

Without warning, he pounced, wrapping my body in his, his warmth penetrating through
to my core. As a vampire, I was often cold; Ethan Sullivan was by far the best blanket
a girl could ask for.

“What time do they arrive?” I murmured.

“Hours yet.” He nipped at my neck and pulled me closer, a suggestion of exactly how
we might spend those hours.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards for me tonight. “You’ve got work to do, and
I need to get moving. We’ve got missing vampires and an Ombudsman who’s probably already
left half a dozen messages on my phone.”

“That should fill out your schedule for the night,” he said.

Still beneath him, I stretched out and snagged my cell phone from my nightstand. No
calls or messages, which was unusual, but we were only a few minutes past dusk. Perhaps
Catcher hadn’t seen the point in sending a message I wouldn’t have been able to read
for hours anyway. “Barring a zombie attack, yes.”

“More likely a human attack than a zombie attack,” Ethan said.

“Potato,
potato
. Either way, the attacks would be mindless, and they’d be out for blood. Hey,” I
said, poking his chest. “What do zombies chant at a riot?”

“Grrarphsnarg?”
he asked, in a surprisingly well-done bit of mindless zombie imitating.

“No, but that was really good. Disconcertingly good.”

“I was deceased for a time.”

“True. But anyway, the rioters get all riled up, and they chant: ‘What do we want?
Brains! When do we want them? Brains!’” I fell into a wave of appropriately boisterous
laughter; Ethan seemed less impressed.

“I truly hope the stipend we pay you doesn’t get spent on the development of jokes
like that.”

“It gets spent on smoked meats to supplement this House’s paltry smoked-meats selection.”

“There’s probably a twelve-step program for meat addiction, and I imagine the program
starts by admitting you have a problem.”

“Loving smoked meats isn’t a problem. It’s a birthright. Especially for the fanged.
All right,” I said, slapping Ethan on the butt. “Off. I need to get dressed, as do
you.”

But he didn’t shift the weight of his body; instead, he cupped my face in his hand.
“Be careful out there.”

“Yes, Liege,” I dutifully said.

Ethan turned to his side, and I climbed off the bed and headed toward the shower.
But I paused in the doorway just long enough to wink. “And do try to keep your hands
to yourself.”

His smile widened. “Michael Donovan is an attractive man, Sentinel. But I’ll do my
best.”

Ethan Sullivan, registered smart-ass.

* * *

I quickly cleaned, loofa-ed, and shampooed, spending less time in Ethan’s roaring
shower than I would have liked. When I was just clean enough, I toweled through my
hair, pulled it into a high ponytail—my signature move—and brushed out my bangs.

Ethan dipped into the shower as I walked back into the bedroom to dress. My clothes
were easy to assemble—leather pants, shirt, leather jacket, and boots. An ensemble
that would protect me against the chill in the air and serve me well in a fight . . .
in case that became necessary.

I already wore the gold medal around my neck that identified my name and position
and marked me as a member of Cadogan House. I tucked a sleek dagger—a gift from Ethan
that bore a coin in the hilt similar to my House medal—into my boot, and grabbed my
scabbarded katana from the table near the door. I hadn’t pulled it last night, but
I was planning on visiting the Ombuddies tonight, including Catcher. He’d given me
the katana and trained me in how to use it, and there was no way I’d carry it near
him without ensuring it was clean.

With a
whip
of sound, I unsheathed it, the light pouring down its honed steel. It looked pristine,
but out of caution I pulled a sheet of rice paper from a drawer in the table—the sword-cleaning
drawer, as I’d named it—and wiped down the blade. Better safe than sorry, especially
when a gruff sorcerer might demand an inspection. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“You’re going to see Catcher, I presume?”

I looked up. Ethan stood in the doorway in unbuttoned slacks, scrubbing a towel through
his hair.

It was not an unpleasant sight.

“Yes,” I said, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “I’m going to call him as soon as
I grab some blood and breakfast.”

“And Jeff?”

There was a funny little twinge in Ethan’s voice. Surely not jealousy, as he’d sworn
he was so sure of our relationship that he wasn’t capable of it. Jeff did, admittedly,
have a pretty obvious crush on me. But since he was in some kind of on-again/off-again
relationship with a shifter named Fallon—the only sister of the head of the North
American Central Pack—I didn’t think Ethan had much to worry about. Even if I weren’t
in love with him, and even if I did have a thing for Jeff, I was not about to cross
a shifter, much less one in line for the Pack throne. I hoped to squeeze at least
a few years out of my immortality, thank you very much.

“Yes, and Jeff. I enjoy seeing him, and he enjoys seeing Fallon,” I reminded Ethan.

“Fair enough. Keep your wits about you, Sentinel.”

“I will. And I’ll be back in time to say hello to our guests.” I might have wanted
to refuse Lacey’s entrance into the House, but Ethan wanted her here, so I could take
one for the team.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said with a wink.

But before I could make my brilliant exit, there was a knock at the door.

“Likely Helen,” Ethan said, “with information about ceremony planning.”

He was partially right. Helen, who was basically the House’s den mother, stood in
the hallway when I opened the door, but she didn’t look pleased about it. She stepped
inside, her gaze searching for Ethan, with a cloud of floral perfume and nervous magic
about her.

Ethan stepped into the room, hair still damp, but now dressed. “What is it?” he asked,
concern in his expression. He must have picked up the same magical notes.

“They’re here. Early.”

Ethan’s expression went stone cold. “They” could only have been the GP, and their
arrival a day early couldn’t have signaled anything good.

“Sentinel,” he said, grabbing his suit coat and heading for the door.

I pushed my sword into its scabbard and tied the belt around my waist. “Right behind
you,” I said, and followed him down to the House’s first floor.

In addition to Malik and Luc, seven men and women stood in the foyer in an inverted
V, with Darius West, head of the Greenwich Presidium, directly in the middle. These
were the members of the GP, some of the most powerful vampires in the world.