“Talking about. Talking about in well-reasoned and measured tones.”
This time, he rolled his eyes.
“Look,” I continued. “The last time we worked on the raves, you made me focus on the media risk. Tonight, we’ve proven that worrying someone might find out about the problem doesn’t actually solve the problem. We need to get in front of the issue. We need to close them down.”
“You want to tell vampires they can no longer engage in human blood orgies?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to use those words, exactly. And I did plan to take my sword.”
He smiled a little. “You are quite a thing to behold when you’ve got steel in your hands.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I touched a hand to my stomach. “And now that we’re looking on the bright side, let’s find some grub. I am starving.”
“Are you ever not starving?”
“Har-har.” I nudged his arm. “Come on. Let’s get an Italian beef.”
He glanced over at me. “I assume that has some meaning important within Chicago culinary circles?”
I just stood there, both saddened that he hadn’t experienced the joy of a good Italian beef sandwich—and irritated that he’d lived in Chicago for so long and had so completely sequestered himself from the stuff that made it Chicago.
“As important as red hots and deep dish. Let’s go, Liege. It’s your turn to get schooled.”
He growled, but relented.
We drove to University Village, parked along the street, and took our places in line with the third-shifters on lunch breaks and the UIC students needing late-night snacks. Eventually we placed our orders and moved to a counter, where I taught Ethan to stand the way God intended Chicagoans to stand—feet apart, elbows on the table, sandwiches in hand.
Ethan hadn’t spoken since his own eight-inch Italian beef sandwich had been delivered, still dripping from its dip in gravy. When his first bite left a trail of juice on the floor in front of his feet—and not on his expensive Italian shoes—he smiled grandly at me.
“Well done, Sentinel.”
I nodded through my bite of bread, beef, and peppers, happy that Ethan was in a better mood.
Say what you might about my obsession with all things meat and carbohydrate, but never underestimate the ability of a stack of thin-sliced beef on a bun to make a man happy—vampire or human.
And speaking of happiness, I wondered what else Ethan had been missing out on. “Have you ever been to a Cubs game?”
Ethan dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin, and I got a glimpse of his knuckles—already healed from the blows. “No, I have not. As you know, I’m not much of a baseball fan.”
He wasn’t much of a fan, but he’d still tracked down a signed Cubs baseball to replace one I’d lost. That was the kind of move that threw me off balance, but I managed to keep things lighthearted.
“Just stake me now,” I said. “Seriously —you’ve been in Chicago how long and you’ve never been to Wrigley? That’s a shame. You need to get out there. I mean, for a night game, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
A couple of large men with mustaches and Bears T-shirts moved toward the high bar where we stood, sandwiches in hand. They took a spot beside Ethan, spread their feet, unwrapped their own Italian beefs, and dug in.
It wasn’t until bite number two that they glanced over and noticed two vampires were standing beside them.
The one closest to Ethan ran a napkin across his dripping mustache, his gaze shifting from me to Ethan. “You two look familiar. I know you?”
Since my photo had been smeared across the front page of the paper a couple of months ago, and Ethan had made the local news more than once since the attack on Cadogan, we probably did look familiar.
“I’m a vampire from Cadogan House,” Ethan said.
Our area of the restaurant, not full but still dotted with late-night munchers, went silent.
This time, the man looked suspiciously at the sandwich. “You like that?”
“It’s great,” Ethan said, then gestured toward me. “This is Merit. She’s from Chicago. She decided I had to try one.”
The man and his companion leaned forward to look at me. “That so?”
“It is.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You had deep dish yet? Or a red hot?”
My heart warmed. We might have been vampires, but at least these guys recognized that we were first and foremost Chicagoans. We knew Wrigley Field and Navy Pier, Daley and rush hour traffic, Soldier Field in December and Oak Street Beach in July. We knew freak snowstorms and freakier heat waves.
But most of all, we knew food: taquerias, red hots, deep dish, great beer. We baked it, fried it, sautéed it, and grilled it, and in our quest to enjoy the sunshine and warmth while we could, we shared that food together.
“Both,” I said. “I got him pizza from Saul’s.”
The man’s bushy eyebrows popped up. “You know about Saul’s?”
I smiled slyly. “Cream cheese and double bacon.”
“Oooh,” the man said, grinning ear to ear. He dropped his napkin and threw his hands into the air. “Cream cheese and double bacon. Our fanged friend here knows about Saul’s Best!” He raised his giant paper cup of soda in a toast. “To you, my friend. Good eats and whatnot.”
“And to you,” Ethan said, raising his sandwich and taking a bite.
Hot beef in the name of peace. I liked it.
“I’m surprised you told him we were vampires,” I told Ethan on the way back to the car. “That you admitted to it, I mean, given what we saw earlier tonight.”
“Sometimes the only way to counter prejudice is to remind them how similar we are. To challenge their perceptions of what it means to be vampire . . . or human. Besides, he wouldn’t have asked who we were if he hadn’t at least suspected, and lying probably would have irritated him further.”
“Quite possibly.”
He smiled magnanimously. “Besides, you clearly wooed them with your cream cheese and double-bacon talk.”
“Who wouldn’t be wooed by cream cheese and double-bacon talk? I mean, other than vegetarians, I guess. But as we have thoroughly established, vegetarianism is not my gig.”
Ethan opened my car door. “No, Sentinel, it is not.”
I’d climbed inside and he did the same, but he didn’t start the car right away.