“We’ve been keeping our ears to the ground,” Ethan continued, “to identify the organizers of the raves, their methods, the manners in which they attract humans.”
That was Malik’s job—Ethan’s secondin-command, the runnerup for the crown. After a blackmailing incident, he’d been put in charge of investigating the raves.
“And what have you found?” Tate asked.
Ethan cleared his throat. Ah, the sound of stalling.
“We’re aware of three raves in the last two months,” he said. “Three raves involving, at most, half a dozen vampires. These were small, intimate affairs. While bloodletting does occur, we have not heard of the, shall we say, frenetic violence of which Mr. Jackson speaks, nor would we condone such things. There has certainly never been an allegation that any participant was
. . . drained. And if we had heard of it, we’d have contacted the Ombudsman, or put a stop to it ourselves.”
The mayor linked his fingers together on the desktop. “Ethan, I believe that part and parcel of keeping this city safe is integrating vampires into the human population. Division will solve nothing—it will only lead to more division. On the other hand, according to Mr. Jackson, vampires are engaging in violent, largescale, and hardly consensual acts. That is unacceptable to me.”
“As it is to me and mine,” Ethan said.
“I’ve heard talk about a recall election,” Tate said. “I will not go down in flames because of supernatural hysteria. This city does not need a referendum on vampires or shape-shifters.
“But most important,” he continued, gaze burrowing into Ethan, “you do not want a bevy of aldermen showing up at your front door, demanding that you close down your House. You do not want the city council legislating you out of existence.”
I felt a burst of magic from Ethan. His angst—and anger—were rising, and I was glad Tate was human and couldn’t sense the uncomfortable prickle of it.
“And you do not want me as an enemy,” Tate concluded. “You do not want me requesting a grand jury to consider the crimes of you and yours.” He flipped through the folder on his desk, then slid out a single sheet and held it up. “You do not want me executing this warrant for your arrest on the basis that you’ve aided and abetted the murder of humans in this city.”
Ethan’s voice was diamond-cold, but the magical tingle was seismic in magnitude. “I have done no such thing.”
“Oh?” Tate placed the paper on his desk again.
“I have it on good authority that you changed a human into a vampire without her consent.” He lifted his gaze to me, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “I also have it on good authority that while you and your vampire council promised to keep Celina Desaulniers contained in Europe, she’s been in Chicago. Are those actions such a far stretch from murder?”
“Who suggested Celina was in Chicago?”
Ethan asked. The question was carefully put. We knew full well that Celina—the former head of Navarre House and my would-have-been killer—had been released by the Greenwich Presidium, the organizing body for European and North American vampires. We also knew that once the GP let her go, she’d made her way to Chicago. But we hadn’t thought she was still here. The last few months had been too drama free for that. Or so they’d seemed.
Tate arched his eyebrows. “I notice you don’t deny it. As for the information, I have my sources, just as I’m sure you do.”
“Sources or not, I don’t take kindly to blackmail.”
With shocking speed, Tate switched back from Capone to front-page orator, smiling magnanimously at us. “ ‘Blackmail’ is such a harsh word, Ethan.”
“Then what, precisely, do you want?”
“I want for you, for us, to do the right thing for the city of Chicago. I want for you and yours to have the chance to take control within your own community.” Tate linked his hands on the desk and looked us over. “I want this problem solved.
I want an end to these gatherings, these raves, and a personal guarantee that you have this problem under control. If it’s not done, the warrant for your arrest will be executed. I assume we understand each other?”
There was silence until Ethan finally bit out, “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
Like a practiced politico, Tate instantly softened his expression. “Excellent. If you have anything to report, or if you need access to any of the city’s resources, you need only contact me.”
“Of course.”
With a final nod, Tate turned back to his papers, just as Ethan might have done if I’d been called into his office for a friendly chat.
But this time, it was Ethan who’d been called out, and it was Ethan who rose and walked back to the door. I followed, ever the dutiful Sentinel.
Ethan kept the fear or concern or vitriol or whatever emotion was driving him to himself even as we reached the Mercedes.
And I meant “driving” literally. He expressed that pent-up frustration with eighty thousand dollars of German engineering and a 300-horsepower engine. He managed not to clip the gate as he pulled out of the drive, but he treated the stop signs between Creeley Creek and Lake Shore Drive like meek suggestions. Ethan floored the Mercedes, zooming in and around traffic like the silver-eyed devil was on our tail.
Problem was, we were the silver-eyed devils.
We were both immortal, and Ethan probably had a century of driving experience under his belt, but that didn’t make the turns any less harrowing. He raced through a light and onto Lake Shore Drive, turned south, and gunned it. . .
And he kept driving until the city skyline glowed behind us.
I was almost afraid to ask where he was taking us—did I really want to know where predatory vampires blew off political steam?—but he saved me the trouble when we reached Washington Park. He pulled off Lake Shore Drive, and a few squealing turns later we were coasting onto Promontory Point, a small peninsula that jutted into the lake. Ethan drove around the tower topped building and stopped the car in front of the rock ledge that separated grass from lake.
Without a word, he climbed out of the car and slammed it shut again. When he hopped the rock ledge that ringed the peninsula and disappeared from sight, I unfastened my seat belt. It was time to go to work.
The air was thick and damp, the sharp smell of ozone signaling rain. The lake looked like it was already in the middle of a squall: whitecaps rolled across the water like jagged teeth, and waves pounded the rocky shoreline.
I glanced up at the sky. The anvil-shaped marker of a gigantic thunderstorm was swelling in the southwestern sky, visible each time lightning flashed across it.
Without warning, a crack split the air.
I jumped and looked back at the building, thinking it had been struck by an early bolt of lightning. But the building was quiet and still, and when another crack shattered the silence, I realized the sound had come from a stand of trees on the other side of the building.
I walked around to investigate and found Ethan standing at the base of a pine tree like a fighter facing down a forty-foot-tall opponent.
His fists were up, his body bladed.
“Every time!” he yelled. “Every time I manage to bring things under control, we become enmeshed in bullshit again!”
And then he pivoted and thrust out—and punched the tree.
Crack.
The tree wobbled like it had been rammed by a truck, needles whoosh ing as limbs moved. The smell of pine resin—and blood—lifted in the breeze. And those weren’t the only things in the air. Magic rippled off Ethan’s body in waves, leaving its telltale tingle around us.
And that, I thought, explained why he’d driven here instead of the House. With that much anger banked, there was no way Ethan could have gone home. Cadogan’s vampires—even those who weren’t as sensitive to magic as I was—would have known something was wrong, and that certainly wasn’t going to ease the anticipatory mood. It was an obvious downside of being a Master vampire—to be all riled up with nowhere to go.
“Do you have any idea how long—how hard—I’ve worked to make this House successful? And this human—this temporary blip in the chronology of the world—threatens to take it all away.”
Ethan reared back for a second strike, but he’d already split his knuckles and the poor tree probably wasn’t faring much better. I understood the urge to rail out when you were being held accountable for another’s evils, but hurting himself wasn’t going to solve the problem. It was time to intervene.
I was standing on the lawn between the building and the lake; I figured that was a perfect place to work off a little tension. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I called out.