Friday Night Bites (19 page)

Halfway to the door, he stopped. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Because of your willingness to go home, and although we seem to have additional questions regarding Nicholas’ involvement, we’ve made some inroads, and we know more now than we did before.” He cleared his throat. “You did good today.”

I grinned at him. “You like me. You really, really like me!”

“Don’t overplay your hand, Sentinel.”

I pulled open the basement door and waved him ahead with a hand. “Age before beauty.”

Ethan hmphed, but I caught a glimpse of a smile. “Funny.”

When I turned to walk to the Ops Room, figuring I should do
my duty, check in, and let Luc know that I’d managed to keep Ethan alive during our jaunt off campus, Ethan stopped me with an arm.

“Where are you going?”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m not up for an after party if that’s what you’re offering.” At his flat stare, I explained. “I need to check my folder in the Ops Room.”

He dropped my arm, then slipped his hands into his pockets. “You aren’t excused yet,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

Frowning, I turned and walked to the closed Ops Room doors. I had no idea what he was up to, and that wasn’t the kind of mystery I enjoyed.

When I opened the door and slipped inside, I was greeted by catcalls that would have made a construction worker proud.

Juliet swiveled around in her chair to get a look, then winked at me. “Looking good, Sentinel.”

“She’s right,” Lindsey said from her own station. “You clean up surprisingly well.”

I rolled my eyes, but pinched the hem of my skirt and did a little curtsy, then plucked my folder from its hanger on the wall. There was a single piece of paper inside, a printout of a memo that Peter had e-mailed to Luc. The memo contained the names of the paparazzi who’d been assigned to cover Cadogan House, and the papers, Web sites, and magazines they pimped for.

I lifted my gaze, found Peter looking at me curiously. “That was quick work,” I said, waving the paper at him.

“You’d be amazed what fangs will get you,” he said. He gave me a blank look, then turned back to his computer, fingers flying across the keyboard.

He was a strange one.

“I assume your Liege and mine made it through the evening?” Luc asked.

“Healthy and hale,” said a voice behind me. I glanced back. Ethan stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

“Shall we?” he asked.

I silently cursed the question, knowing exactly what the rest of the guards were going to think about it. Namely, they would imagine much more lascivious things on his agenda. His attraction to me notwithstanding, I knew better. I was a tool in Ethan’s vampire toolbox, a pass card to be pulled out when he needed access.

“Sure,” I said, after giving Lindsey a warning look. Her lips were pinched together, as if she was only just managing not to snark.

I slipped my folder back into its slot and, memo in hand, followed Ethan into the hallway, then up to the first floor. He took the hallway to the main staircase, then made the corner and took the stairs to the second floor. He paused in front of the doors that I knew led to the library, but hadn’t yet had time to explore.

I stepped beside him. He slid me a glance. “You’ve not been inside?”

I shook my head.

He seemed gratified by my answer, an oddly satisfied smile on his face, and gripped the door handles with both hands. He twisted, pushed, and opened the doors. “Sentinel, your library.”

It was astonishing.

My mouth open in shock, I walked inside and turned in a slow circle to take it all in. The library was square, rising through the second and third floors. Three high-arched windows illuminated the room. An intricate railing of crimson wrought iron bounded the upper floor, which was accessible by a spiral staircase of the same crimson metal. Tables topped by brass lamps with green shades filled in the middle.

The walls—floor to ceiling—were lined in books. Big and small, leather-bound and paperback, all of them divided into sections—history, reference, vampire physiology, even a small group of fiction titles.

“Oh. My. God.”

Ethan chuckled beside me. “And
now
we’re even for the changing-you-without-consent issue.”

I would have agreed to anything just to touch them, so I threw out an absent “Sure,” walked to one of the shelves, and brushed my fingertips over the spines. The section was devoted
to Western classics. Doyle was stacked between Dickens and Dumas, Carroll above and Eliot below.

I pulled a navy leather copy of
Bleak House
from its shelf. I opened the spine, paged past the vellum frontispiece, and checked the first rag-cut page. The print was tiny and pressed so deeply into the paper that you could feel the indentation of the letters. I whimpered happily, then closed the book again and slid it home.

“You’re in thrall of the books,” Ethan said, chuckling. “Had I known you’d be so easy to assuage, I’d have brought you to the library weeks ago.”

I made a sound of agreement and pulled out a slim volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. I thumbed through the pages until I found the poem I wanted, then read aloud, “I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb, when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? ‘For beauty,’ I replied. ‘And I for truth—the two are one. We brethren are.’ ”

Gently, I closed the cover of the book and returned it home, then looked over at Ethan, who stood beside me, his expression thoughtful. “Did you die for beauty or truth?”

“I was a soldier,” he said.

That surprised me, and didn’t. The thought of Ethan warring—rather than politicking in a back room—surprised me. The thought of Ethan in the midst of war did not.

“Where?” I quietly asked him.

He paused in weighty silence, tension clear in the tilt of his chin, then gave me an obviously feigned light smile. “Sweden. A long time ago.”

He’d been a vampire for 394 years; I did the historical math. “Thirty Years’ War?”

He nodded. “Very good. I was seventeen when I fought for the first time. I made it to thirty before I was changed.”

“You were changed in battle?”

Another nod, no elaboration. I took the hint. “I suppose I was changed in battle, in a manner of speaking.”

Ethan pulled a book from the shelf before him and absently flipped through it. “You’re referring to Celina’s battle to control the Houses?”

“Such as it is.” I leaned back against the bookshelves, arms crossed. “What do you think she ultimately wants, Ethan? Vampires controlling the world?”

He shook his head, shut his book and slid it back into place. “She wants whatever new world order puts her in power—whether in charge of vampires, or humans, or both.” He angled his body, leaned an elbow on one of the shelves beside me, and propped his head on it, running long fingers through his hair. His other hand was canted on his hip. He looked, suddenly, very tired.

My heart clenched sympathetically.

“And what do you want, Merit?” He’d been looking down at the ground, but suddenly raised glass-green eyes to mine. The question was startling enough; the near-glow of his eyes was brutal.

My voice was soft. “What do you mean?”

“You hadn’t planned it, but you’re a member of an honorable House, in a unique position, a position of some power. You’re strong. You have connections. If you could be in Celina’s position, would you?”

Was he testing me? I searched his eyes. Did he mean to take my measure, to see if I could withstand the hunger for power that had overtaken Celina? Or was it simpler than that?

“You’re assuming she went bad,” I said, “that she’d been balanced as a human but lost some manner of control since her change. I’m not sure that’s right. Maybe she was always bad, Ethan. Maybe she didn’t get fed up, hasn’t suddenly become an
advocate for unified vampires. Maybe she’s different from me, or from you.”

His lips parted. “Are we different, Celina and I?”

I looked down and plucked nervously at my silk skirt. “Aren’t you?”

When I looked up again, his own gaze was intimate and searching, maybe as he considered the question, weighed the balance of his own long life.

“Are you wondering if I’ll betray you?” I asked him.

There was yearning in his gaze, in his expression. I don’t think he meant to kiss me, although the thought of it—maybe the want of it, maybe the fear of it—sped my pulse.

Sotto voce
, he said, “There are things I want to tell you—about Cadogan, the House, the politics.” He swallowed, as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen him. “There are things I need to tell you.”

I lifted my brows, inviting him to speak.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You’re young, Merit. And I don’t mean age—I was barely older than you when I was turned. You’re a Novitiate vampire, and a new Novitiate at that. And yet, not even two months into your tutelage, you’ve seen the violence and maneuvering we’re capable of.”

He looked back at the books and smiled wistfully. “In that respect we aren’t so very unlike humans after all.”

There was silence in the cavernous room until he looked back at me again. When he did, his expression was somber. “Decisions are made . . .” He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts, then started again. “Decisions are made with an eye toward history, with an eye toward protecting our vampires, securing our Houses.”

Ethan nodded at a wall of books across the room, a bank of yellowed volumes with red numbers on the spines.

“The complete
Canon
,” he said, and I understood then why
the
Canon
was delivered to Initiate vampires in
Desk Reference
form. There must have been fifteen or twenty volumes on each row, and there were multiple rows on multiple shelves.

“That’s a lot of law,” I told him, my gaze following the line of books.

“It’s a lot of
history
,” Ethan said. “Many, many centuries of it.” He glanced back at me. “You’re familiar with the origin of the House system, of the Clearings?”

I was. The
Desk Reference
, while apparently not offering the play-by-play that the complete collection provided, outlined the basic history of the House system, from its origins in Germany to the development of the French tribunal that, for the first time, collectively governed the vampires of Western Europe, at least until the Presidium moved the convocation to England after the Napoleonic Wars. Both acts were attributable to the panic caused by the Clearings.

“Then you understand,” he continued at my nod, “the importance of protecting vampires. Of building alliances.”

I did understand, of course, having been handed to Morgan to secure a potential Navarre alliance. “The Breckenridges,” I said. “I’d have considered them allies. I’d never have imagined that he’d talk to me that way. Not Nick. He called me a vampire—but it wasn’t just a word, Ethan. It was a swear. A curse.” I paused, lifted my gaze to Ethan. “He said he’d come after me.”

“You know that you’re protected?” he quietly asked, sincerely asked. “Being a Cadogan vampire. Living under my roof.”

I appreciated the concern, but it wasn’t that I feared Nick. It was that I regretted losing him to ignorance. To hatred. “The problem is,” I said, “not only are they not allies—they’re enemies.”

Ethan’s brow furrowed, that tiny line back between his eyebrows. And in his eyes—I don’t know what it was, other than
the heavy weight of something I was confident I’d prefer not knowing. I wasn’t sure where his speech had been going, maybe just an acknowledgment of vampire history, but it felt like he wasn’t sharing everything he might have. Something waited on the cusp.

Whatever it was, he shook it off, blanked his expression, and assumed the tone of Master vampire.

“I brought you here—the information is at your disposal. We know you’re powerful. Support that power with knowledge. It wouldn’t do for you to remain ignorant.”

I squeezed my eyes shut at the strike. When I opened them again, he was headed for the door, his exit marked by the receding sound of his footsteps on the marble floor. The door opened and closed again, and then the room was quiet and still, a treasure box closed off to the greater world.

As I turned back to the books and scanned the shelves, I realized his pattern. Whenever he began to see me as something more than a liability or a weapon, whenever we spoke to each other without the barrier of rank and history between us, he backed away, more often than not insulting me to force the distance. I knew at least some of the reasons he backed away—including his general sense of my inferiority—and suspected others—the difference in our rank.

But there was something else there, something I couldn’t identify. The fear in his eyes revealed it—he was afraid of something. Maybe something he wanted to tell me. Maybe something he
didn’t
want to tell me.

I shook my head to clear the thought, then checked my watch. It was two hours until dawn, the bulk of my evening having been taken up by Ethan, Nick, and my father, so I took the opportunity to give the library the perusal of a former researcher.

The books were organized into fiction and nonfiction sections just like a traditional library, every section organized, every shelf
impeccably clean. There must have been thousands of volumes in the room, and there was no way a collection that large could be maintained without a librarian. I looked around, but saw no sign of a circulation desk or administrator. I wonder who’d been lucky enough to get that assignment. And more importantly, I wondered why I hadn’t been the obvious nominee. Books or a sword for an English lit student? Seemed like an easy call.

I searched the shelves for something readable and decided on a book of urban fantasy from the popular fiction shelf. I left the library after a geekily wistful goodbye, promising the stacks that I’d return when I had more time, then headed downstairs and toward the back of the House. I followed the long central hallway to the cafeteria area, where a handful of vampires munched on predawn snacks, their gazes lifting as I walked to the back door. I slipped outside to the brick patio that spanned the end of the House, then followed a path to the small formal garden. In the middle of the garden was a fountain illuminated by a dozen in-ground lights, and the light was just strong enough to read by. I picked a bench, curled my legs into the seat, and opened the book.