by Chloe Neill
“Biddable?” Every syllable of the word left a bad taste.
At least he looked marginally apologetic. “It will be expected,” he said, “and we’ll attract less unwanted attention that way.”
“Why can’t you play biddable?”
His smile was pure Sullivan. “Because I’m the Master.”
I supposed I had that coming. “So, to review, you want me to play submissive Marilyn Monroe?”
Ethan paused. “That’s a loaded question with several appropriate answers.”
“Let’s focus on the one pertinent to this job.”
“You know what I’m asking, and why I’m asking it. And I’d like your word on it, Merit.”
I knew why he asked for my promise—not because he doubted me, but because he trusted me. Because he knew if someone threatened him, I’d step in.
“You know what you’re asking me to do,” I said.
“I do. And that’s why I’m asking you, instead of ordering you.”
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. I batted my eyelashes, tried to Gratefully Condescend, as archaic vampire Canon required of Novitiates. “All right,” I said. “Anything else, my lord and Master?”
“Yes. Try not to use that tone.”
I couldn’t make any promises about that one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EASY LOVER
There was no bouncer, no line of supernaturals behind a velvet rope. There was only a door, solid and metal.
We walked toward it, Ethan’s magic shifting around us as we moved. I was only a secondary recipient of his glamour—he wasn’t trying to make me do anything—but I could still feel the breadth of its undulating power. A powerful vampire was Ethan Sullivan.
He rapped on the door with the heel of his hand, two hard strikes. Five seconds passed, and a small panel slid open with the grating sound of metal on metal.
A man’s face appeared—pale skin, large eyes, and a flattened nose with a mole at one corner. If he was supernatural, I couldn’t tell. At least, not through the door. Other than Ethan’s, I couldn’t feel any magic at all, and I’d have expected plenty to have seeped from a building full of aroused supernaturals. Maybe the building had been warded.
The man looked at Ethan, then me. “What?”
“Sésame, ouvre-toi,” Ethan said in melodious French.
I bit back a smile. The password was literally “open sesame,” albeit in French. Supernaturals loved a bad joke.
The doorman’s caterpillar-thick unibrow dipped low between his eyes. He bared large teeth. “That’s an old password.”
His tone threatened a violent response, and I had to stop myself from touching my sword. But I’d given Ethan my word, and I kept my composure.
Ethan managed a tone of mild boredom. “It’s an old password because I’m an old client. I’m not going to explain myself to you. Get approval if you must, but open the door or I’ll do it myself.”
The bouncer stared at us for another ten seconds before slamming the grate closed again.
An old client? I repeated. Add that to the list of things we’ll discuss later.
I have nothing to hide, Ethan said.
Why did hearing that make me think exactly the opposite?
It took a full minute before the door was wrenched open. We joined the bouncer in a box of a room barely large enough to fit the three of us.
The bouncer slammed the front door shut, which made the urge to grab my katana even stronger. No time for that now. We were in, and we were committed.
When the exterior door locked, the door on the opposite side of the room opened with a click, revealing a long hallway with oak floors, pale yellow walls, and a dozen more doors. Each door was wooden and unremarkable and looked exactly the same.
And we’ve officially gone through the looking glass, I said silently.
You might reserve that judgment, until we’re actually in there, Ethan suggested.
Right on cue, a door on the right side of the hallway opened, and magic flowed out like water. More evidence, I thought, that the building had been warded, and that a sorcerer was at work in the neighborhood.
A vampire stepped into the hallway. Tall, thin, with remarkably pale skin. He wore an old-fashioned tux, spats, and white kid gloves fastened with pearl buttons.
“This way, sir,” the vampire said in a crisp English accent, bowing slightly as he stepped back from the door and motioned us inside.
And away we go, Sentinel.
We walked inside.
When I thought “supernatural bordello,” I imagined hunky elfish guys in tight leather pants with white hair and pointed ears, vampy women with corsets and long nails, their eyes silvered with lust and emotion. I always imagined anything with vampires would be heavy on Goth, lace, and candles, but it never was. I’d been in all three of the city’s Houses—Cadogan, Navarre, and Grey—and I didn’t think I’d seen anything mildly gothic in any of them.
There also wasn’t anything gothic in here.
The large room, lit by wavering hurricane lamps, had wooden floors that were covered with expensive rugs and groupings of large leather furniture outlined with brass tacks. There were two walls of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked with leather and gilt volumes. The room smelled of leather and fragrant smoke.
It took me a moment to realize what I was supposed to be seeing—an English gentlemen’s club, or La Douleur’s version of it.
There were, at my guess, a dozen supernaturals, mostly men. I looked for familiar faces first—Reed or his cronies, supernaturals I knew, the bearded vampire who’d killed Caleb Franklin. No one looked familiar. But they did look as old-fashioned as their surroundings. They’d adopted the dress, Victorian suits or dresses with pinched waists and high necks. They generally sat in couples or groups, chatting, kissing, or sharing blood.
We followed the would-be butler, who escorted us to a high-backed settee and gestured to it. “Please.”
Sit at my feet, Ethan said, before I could move.
He must have felt my hesitation.
It is part of the illusion, of the theme of this particular room. Remember your word.
Since I’d given it, I bit back a sneer and sank to the floor at the edge of Ethan’s chair as graciously as possible.
He stroked a hand over my head. “Very good,” he said, signaling to the room that I’d pleased him.
I’d learned to bluff a long time ago, and if ever there’d been a time to use the skill, this was it. Dutifully, I rested my cheek on his knee.
“What may I obtain for you, sir?” the butler asked.
“Cognac, for the moment. We’ll see how well my pet behaves.”
I began to make very specific plans for Ethan’s quid pro quo. If I had to sit at Ethan’s feet, he’d damn well better be prepared to sit at mine.
The butler nodded, walked to a brass cart, poured liquid from a cut-crystal decanter. He brought it back to Ethan and then began checking with the other sups.
Do you recognize anyone? Ethan asked.
I trailed my fingers up and down his leg. I don’t. I count several vampires and shifters, but no sorcerers.
Caleb Franklin’s killer?
I looked them over. None had a beard, although that could have been removed easily enough. But the killer had also been tall and well muscled, and none of the vampires here seemed to have the right proportions, Ethan excluded.
I don’t see him, I said.
Me, neither.
But there’d been other doors in the hallway. There are other rooms? Themes?
Yes. All varied in the degree of their explicitness.
Do any of them have black lace and candles?
Goth, Sentinel? Really?
Someday, I was going to wander into a lair of Underworld look-alike
s and my prejudice would be rewarded. Until then, Is there any way we can get to them? Inspect them?
Likely not without a fight.
I have no objection to a good fight. Especially since I’d come out on the losing end of my last one.
The butler carried a drink to a female vamp with pale skin and long, dark curls. She wore a scarlet bustier and a fluid skirt in a matching fabric, her lithe form draped across a chaise longue. A male vampire, naked but for his spill of long, dark hair and snug, hip-hugging leather pants, stood like a statue behind her. He stared at nothing in particular, seemingly waiting for her command.
There were bruises across his face, across his collarbone.
The butler spoke quietly to the woman, but she shook her head, waved him away.
Across the room, a slender man in a three-piece suit, a fedora pulled low over his head and a slim leather book in hand, lifted his hand to signal for service. The butler moved to him, bent slightly at the man’s words, then nodded, disappeared from the room.
Neither of them had looked at us, so it didn’t seem likely that had been a signal about us. But one could never be too careful.
Fedora, two o’clock, I told Ethan, nipping lightly at the fingers he brushed against my cheek.
I’m watching, Ethan said.
I turned my attention to the rest of the room, searching for magic, a forgotten alchemical symbol, some hint of that metallic magic. But there was nothing. Just the prickly air of excitement, of sensual anticipation. Considering the number of vampires in the room, I presumed there would be blood.
I looked up at Ethan, working my features into an expression of total adoration. If this is the appetizer, what’s the main course?
Ethan sipped at his cognac, kept a hand on my hair, stroking, his eyes on the room. The hallway door opened, and the butler escorted a young man inside. He was tall and leanly built, with dark skin and hair in short braids. He wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt, and his eyes glimmered with excitement.
I believe he would be the entrée, Ethan said.
Two female vampires with tan skin, high cheekbones, and straight hair pulled into high knots rose together from a sofa with an ornate back. They wore black silk dresses that snugged their bodies to midcalf, where the fabric pooled around their bare feet as they walked toward the young man. They were beautiful, and the man stared at them with obvious desire.
They took his hands, guided him toward a round, tufted ottoman in the middle of the room. They unfastened the buttons on his shirt, let it fall to the floor.
His neck and arms were dotted with scars, which the women caressed and flicked with eager tongues. It wasn’t hard to guess the scars’ origins; he’d given blood before, many times.
As the women lowered the donor to the ottoman, the butler appeared at our side. “If you’d come with me?”
Ethan kept his eyes on the ottoman. “And why would I want to do that?”
“Because Cyrius wishes to have a word with you.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, playing at a man unaccustomed to being beckoned, which wasn’t much of a stretch. But I caught the tightening of his jaw.
“I’m trying to relax, and I don’t know who Cyrius is. If he wants to speak with me, he can do so here.”
Trouble?
Cyrius runs La Douleur, Ethan said. I’ve not met him, but I know his name.
Another vampire entered the room—an enormous woman with freckles, brown hair, and silvered eyes that were focused on us. A katana in a lacquered black sheath was belted at her waist, and she probably had five inches and eighty pounds on me.
Good, I thought, as I met her threatening gaze. That might make us even.
Steady, now, Sentinel.
I won’t move unless I have to, I assured him. But I hoped that I’d have to. Even vampires bored of posturing.
“Now,” the butler insisted, all pretense of politeness—and the British accent—gone. “Or we do this here.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “This was once an establishment of some gentility.” But he put aside his drink, rose, held up a hand for me.
I nodded, rose obediently, and followed Ethan and the butler to the door where the vampire waited. When I looked back, the vampires had descended on the man on the ottoman, and the scent of blood rose in the air.
The man in the fedora was gone.
• • •
We were marched into the hallway again, then through the open door at the far end into an enormous concrete room, probably a dock for the store that had once filled the slip. A rolling overhead door was open, letting in an astringent, chemical breeze.
There was a desk in the middle of the space piled with papers, and white cardboard file boxes lined the walls, some bursting with paper.
“Excuse the mess.” A man emerged from columns of boxes. A human of medium height, with pale skin, a round belly that hung over camouflage pants, and a gleaming head bounded by a perfect semicircle of dark hair. “We moved recently. Still organizing our inventory and whatnot.”
Ethan and I didn’t respond, but we watched him walk to the desk, pull out an army green chair, and take a seat. It creaked with his formidable weight.
He linked his hands on the table, looked up at us. His eyes were gray, and they narrowed as they took us in.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said. “You’re Ethan and, whatsit, Merit? From Cadogan House? Glamour don’t work on me,” he explained, “which makes me perfect for this job.”
So our cover was blown, and thank God for it. Playing meek was absolutely exhausting.
Ethan let the glamour slowly dissolve and flutter away. I rolled my shoulders with relief. The magic might not have had mass, but it still weighed heavily on my psyche.
I felt the vampire move closer, and I slipped a hand to my katana. The feel of the corded handle beneath my fingers was comforting.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he said, gesturing to the vampire behind us. “She’s very good with that steel.”
There were many ways to bluff. You could preen and exaggerate your strengths, or you could let others believe you were less than you were. I opted for the latter, and managed to stir up a worried glance as I looked at the vampire over my shoulder.
She unsheathed her katana and smiled at me, lifting her chin defiantly. The steel of her sword was smeared and cloudy. She hadn’t cleaned it recently. Catcher, who’d given me the sword I carried, would have my ass in a sling for that.
I swallowed heavily, playing up my fear, then looked back at the man again. He looked very pleased.
“I’m afraid you have us at a disadvantage,” Ethan said, understanding exactly the game to be played. “I take it you’re Cyrius?”
“Cyrius Lore. I manage this club.”
“For who?”
“For whoever the fuck I want. It’s no business of yours. The fact is, you came into my club with an old password. I don’t like interlopers in my club.”
“Surprising, since you’ll allow virtually anything else.”
Ethan’s words were slow and dangerous, but Cyrius snorted. “You think I’m intimidated by you because you’re head of some vamp house? No. I manage a club; you manage a club. That makes us equals, far as I’m concerned.”
“I don’t allow my vampires to harm innocents in my ‘club.’”
Cyrius held up his hands defensively. “What happens among consenting adults is their business, not mine. I don’t police what happens here.”
I didn’t buy that everyone here was consenting, or that Cyrius didn’t know exactly what went on in his club.
But that was irrelevant, because he’d just shown us the only bit of business that mattered. On the inside of his right forearm was a forest green tattoo—an ouroboros, an old and circular symbol made up of a snake eating its tail.
It was th
e symbol of the Circle . . . and therefore of Adrien Reed.
Son of a bitch. Cyrius’s ink, I said to Ethan, and watched his gaze slip discreetly from Cyrius’s face to the symbol on his arm.
Cyrius Lore managed La Douleur, and the Circle managed Cyrius Lore. If we were right about the alchemical symbols, this was part of the sorcerer’s territory. We had a link between Adrian Reed and the sorcerer, the alchemy. Reed’s sorcerer and the alchemy sorcerer weren’t two different people. They were one and the same, part of his criminal organization. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.
And once again, it raised questions about Caleb Franklin. Had he known about the Circle? About Reed?
Probably sensing our magic, Cyrius nodded and the vamp stepped closer, unsheathed her katana with a dull whistle of sound. I’d bet the edge was dull, too. She really needed to take better care of her blade.
She stepped forward, put the blade against my neck.
Maybe it was the place, maybe it was Reed. Maybe it was the residual effect of Ethan’s magic. Whatever the reason, my blood began to hum beneath the cold steel, aching to fight. Ethan tensed with concern, but my adrenaline was already flowing.
Focus on him, I said silently. She’s mine.
“Now,” Cyrius said. “Why don’t you tell me why the fuck you’re in my place when you weren’t invited?”
“We want information about Caleb Franklin.”
Cyrius frowned, which didn’t do his mug any favors. “The fuck is Caleb Franklin?”
“A shifter under the protection of Gabriel Keene,” Ethan said. Not entirely the truth, given the defection, but true enough for our purposes. “He’s dead.”
“I don’t know shit about him or who killed him.”
“He lived nearby,” Ethan said.
“We’re in Chicagoland. Few million people live nearby. I know nothing about him, which means you’ve wasted your time and mine.” Ugly or not, Cyrius’s face didn’t show any hint he was lying. Maybe he was just a good liar.
But the vampire was another matter. I didn’t need to see her face to know she had knowledge; the fizz of magic in the air was enough.