“Nice flowers,” she said as she reached me on the sidewalk. “A gift from the new Master of Navarre?”
“Apparently so,” I said, turning to follow her into the House.
Those few words were all I got, as she immediately pulled out her own cell phone and slid open the keyboard, keys clicking as she walked. Kelley wasn’t much for chatting.
“Good day?” I asked her, as we took the stairs to the basement.
She paused as we reached the landing between the floors and tilted her head thoughtfully, inky dark hair falling over her shoulder as she moved. “You’d be amazed,” she said throatily, then continued her trot to the basement.
I stood on the stairs for a moment, watching her descend, curiosity killing my cat, then made myself get to work. Even though it was only just past dawn, the Ops Room was already abuzz with activity. Lindsey and Juliet were already at their respective stations, Juliet perusing the Web, probably doing research. Lindsey was on environs duty, staring intently at a bank of closed-circuit monitors while speaking quietly but steadily into the earpiece-and-microphone duo that curled around her ear.
I put the flowers on the conference table, then went to the hanging wall of folders that held instructions, announcements, dossiers, and anything else Luc felt we needed to know. Inside was a single sheet of daffodil-colored paper. It bore two simple, ominous sentences: “Celina Desaulniers released. Expect Chicago infiltration.”
I glanced at the rest of the folders; each held the same yellow sheet. Ethan must have spread the news. The word was out, and so was the warning. Celina was probably on her way . . . if she wasn’t here already.
With that motivation in mind, I decided it was time to do my Sentinel duty. I started with my homework, handing the Breck invitation to Luc. “For Ethan,” I told him. “Friday night with the Breckenridges.”
He peeked inside the envelope, then nodded. “Fast work, Sentinel.”
“I’m a goddess among vampires, Boss.” That bit done, I grabbed a slim earpiece-and-microphone set from a rack, slipped it over my ponytail, and walked to Lindsey’s monitor.
“Hot shit on duty,” Lindsey said, and my earpiece crackled to life.
“Sentinel,” acknowledged a gravelly voice from the earpiece. That gravelly voice belonged to one of the RDI fairies at the Cadogan gate. They kept watch on the grounds while we slept (or not, in Kelley’s case) and stood point at the gate twenty-four/seven. The earpieces kept us all in contact in the event of a supernatural catastrophe. As I’d once told Mallory, you never knew when giant winged nasties were going to swoop down from the sky and snatch up a vampire.
Did I have a great job, or what?
Sucking in a breath, I adjusted my earpiece, tweaked Lindsey’s blond ponytail, and headed for the door. “I’m on my way up,” I said into the tiny jaw mic. “Be there in two.”
“Pack your lipstick,” Luc threw out.
Like Lindsey, Juliet, and Kelley, I looked back at him. “Lipstick?”
“Paparazzi,” he said. “RDI herded them together, but they’re standing at the corner.” He half smiled. “And they’ve got cameras.”
Kelley glanced back from her computer monitor. “I saw them on the way in. Maybe a dozen.” She turned back to her computer. “All eager for images of Chicago’s new favorites,” she grumbled.
I stood in the doorway for a minute, hoping for a little more direction from Luc—what the hell was I supposed to do with paparazzi?—but got nothing until he shooed me toward the door.
“You’ve read your talking points, I hope,” he said. “Go forth and . . . Sentinelize.” It wasn’t until I was out of the room and on my way toward the stairs, when I heard words yelled behind me. “And no ass pictures, Sentinel!”
That, I could do.
Although the House had been all but empty a few minutes ago, the first floor was now sprinkled with vampires in Cadogan black, some with gadgets in their hands, all looking busy and supernaturally attractive, preparing for evenings among the humans or, like me, evenings in service to the House and its Master.
Some looked up as I passed, their expressions ranging from curiosity to outright disdain. I hadn’t made the best impression on my fellow Novitiates, having challenged Ethan only a few days after my change. The near havoc I wreaked at their Commendation ceremony, in which I’d accidentally ignored Ethan’s orders, didn’t help. Ethan made me Sentinel at Commendation, giving me the historic duty of defending Cadogan House. But Lindsey was right—the position set me apart from the other vampires. My fellow guards had been supportive, but I knew the rest of the House still wondered—Was she loyal? Was she strong? Was she sleeping with Ethan?
(I know. That last one was disturbing to me, too. Seriously.)
I exited the gigantic stone-clad House through the front door, then took the sidewalk to the front gate, nodding at the two black-clad fairies who stood point. They were tall and lean, with long, straight hair pulled back tightly from their handsome, if angular, faces. Their uniforms were black shirts, cargo pants tucked neatly into black boots, and black-scabbarded swords. They had fraternally similar faces, so much so that I couldn’t tell them apart. I didn’t know if they were brothers, or twins, or even related. I didn’t even know their names, and my polling the other Cadogan guards for information hadn’t been successful. It seemed the RDI staff preferred to interact with vampires on a purely professional basis, if at all.
Lindsey had taken to calling the guards the “Twins.” I’d settled on Rob and Steve. I wasn’t entirely sure which Rob and Steve were guarding the House tonight, but they nodded back at me, and I found the act, if cold, comfortingly familiar. The little I’d learned about the supernatural in the last two months made me glad these sword-wearing warriors were on our side . . . at least as long as we paid them to be.
“Press?” I asked them. One of them looked down at me, an angular eyebrow raised from his six feet plus. Even at five foot nine, I suddenly felt very, very short.
“Corner,” he said, then turned his gaze back to the street before him. Having apparently lost his attention, I glanced down the street.
Sure enough, there they were. Given the size of the knot of them, I guessed a baker’s dozen. Since paparazzi weren’t rumored to be the most manageable of critters, the guards had done an impressive job of rounding them up. On the other hand, who wouldn’t obey more than twelve collective feet of sullen, sword-bearing sups?
I headed down the sidewalk in their direction, planning to make a survey of the perimeter before moving back in for a sweep of the grounds. I wasn’t sure I had the innate moxie to stare down a group of paparazzi, but I figured now was as good a time as any to test the confidence Ethan expected me to show Friday night. I kept my smile vaguely pleasant as I sauntered toward them, gazing at them beneath my long, straight bangs.
As I moved closer, the confidence got a little easier to fake. Although they wore the expressions of men hell-bent on getting the Next Great Shot, the smell of fear tingled the air. Maybe their proximity to the RDI guards, maybe their proximity to vampires. Ironic, wasn’t it, that they were afraid of the people (ahem) that they were obsessively trying to capture on film?
When I was younger, and still well integrated into the Merit clan, I’d been photographed with my family at charity gatherings, sporting events, the razing or raising of important Chicago buildings. But the reporters were different this time around, and so was my role. I was the main dish, not just the cute kid being dragged around Chicago by social-climbing parents. As I neared them, they began calling my name, clamoring for my attention, for the perfect head shot.
Flashbulbs popped, the afterimages blinding to my noctur nally adjusted eyes. Calling up some of my newfound fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude, I tapped the fingers of my left hand against the handle of my sword, and reveled in the way their eyes tightened at the corners.
Like prey.
I nibbled the edge of my lip provocatively.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
The questions came so fast I could hardly differentiate them. “Merit, show us the sword!”
“Merit, Merit, over here!”
“Merit, how are things in Cadogan House tonight?”
“It’s a beautiful spring night in Chicago,” I said, smiling can nily, “and we’re proud to be in the Windy City.”
They asked questions. I kept to the talking points Luc had provided us last night; thank God I’d taken the time to look them over. Not that there was much to them—mostly blurbs about our love of Chicago and our desire to assimilate, to be part of the neighborhoods around us. Fortunately, those were the subjects of their questions. At least at first.
“Were you surprised to learn that the perpetrator of the park killings was a vampire?” a voice barked out. “Were you satisfied by the extradition of Celina Desaulniers?”
My smile flattened, and my heart thudded in my chest. That sounded like the kind of question Ethan and Luc feared. The kind Jamie was supposed to ask.
“No response?” the reporter asked, stepping to the front of the pack.
This time my heart nearly stopped altogether. It was a Breckenridge, but not the one I’d have expected to see. I guess everybody, vampires and humans alike, came back to Chicago eventually. “Nicholas?”
He looked the same, but older. More grave, somehow. Caesar-cut brown hair, blue eyes. The boy was gorgeous in a stoic kind of way. That lean, stoic form was currently wrapped in jeans, Dr. Martens, and a fitted gray T-shirt. He also wore a blank expression—no indication in his eyes that he knew me or that he was willing to acknowledge our shared history.
I’d often wondered what it would be like to see Nick again, if there’d be camaraderie or something more detached. The latter, apparently, given his businesslike posture, his opening volleys.
So much for the warm reunion.