by Chloe Neill
“If Cyrius was telling the truth, and Reed really does have a big plan, I can’t imagine bigger than trying to get Chicago. I just don’t know how he thinks he could do it.”
“Alchemically,” Lindsey said, and we all looked at her, the room silent but for the humming of equipment. “I mean, it’s out there for a reason, right? And Reed’s connected to it.”
Luc frowned, leaned back in this chair, and crossed his hands behind his head. “How could a few square feet of symbols help him win Chicago?”
When none of us had an answer, Luc looked at us. “Seriously? Nothing?”
“Not until we know more about the equation,” I said. “And I don’t suppose Paige has had a brainstorm in the last few hours?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” He glanced at his watch. “I know it’s getting late, but can you go up and give her a hand? I think Lindsey’s right. That’s where we have to focus.”
“Sure,” I said, rising.
The Ops Room door opened, and we all looked back. I’d half expected Ethan to walk in. But instead it was Kelley, with an armful of paper bags from SuperDawg.
“Hey, Mer.” She looked at me cautiously, turning slightly so her body was an obstacle between me and the bags. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“I’m not going to grab those right out of your hands,” I promised, although she looked dubious about the promise.
“I’m not sure I believe you.” And to prove it, she walked around the table, put the bags down on the other side. The other guards hopped up, began distributing the grub until the only thing left was a single, floppy fry abandoned in the bottom of a greasy bag.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
I popped the fry and enjoyed the hell out of it.
• • •
I didn’t need dogs or fries. Not really. I was a vampire. And after a night of fighting Leona, Warrior Princess, and Ethan, Master of Vampires, I needed blood.
I went to the cafeteria at the back of the House, passing Ethan’s closed office door along the way.
Dawn wasn’t far off, and the cafeteria was dark but for the glow of a glass-doored refrigerator that held Blood4You products. The enterprising company had been expanding its menu lately, offering more types of flavored and carbonated blood. From the variety in the case, it looked like I’d missed a few recent announcements. “Taco Fiesta,” “Cajun Heat,” and “Farmer’s Market” were now on the shelves.
“Oh, hey, Mer.”
I glanced back, found Margot in the doorway. She was beautiful and curvy, with a gleaming bowl of dark hair and bangs that fell to a perfect point in the middle of her forehead. She wore a black dress over black leggings and sandals, a white Cadogan House apron over the dress. She cradled half a dozen bottles of blood against her chest.
“You look like you’re in deep thought,” she said, walking toward me. “Keep that door open, will you?”
“Sure.” I held the door, took an armful of the bottles so she’d have a free hand to load Cajun Heat and Beach Bum.
“These flavors are crazy,” she said, “but the House seems to be enjoying them.” When that was done, she wiped her hands on her apron and glanced at me. “You all right? You look a little peaked.”
“Long night,” I said, and took a bottle of Classic from the fridge.
“Anything I want to know about? Or more drama that would give me the heebie-jeebies?”
“Heebie-jeebies,” I said. Margot reached in, grabbed a bottle of Beach Bum for herself.
“Mind if I join you? I taught a merengue class tonight, and I am beat.”
“Please do. Although I may not be very good company.”
She grinned. “As long as you aren’t going to spatter me with steaming egg whites, you’re good. I could use some peace and quiet.”
We took a seat at the nearest table, drank our blood contemplatively. The effect was nearly instantaneous, as if I’d been drinking pure energy.
“The House seems nervous,” she said after a few minutes, picking at the label on her bottle.
I nodded. “Reed puts everyone on edge.”
“Asshole,” she said, and took another drink. “There’s always one, ruining it for everyone. Ego validation, projection, whatever. I was a therapist in a past life,” she explained with a downcast smile. “Realized offering therapy just made me need more of it, and needed my own outlet.”
“Cooking?”
Margot smiled. “And baking, especially. Instincts are helpful, but it’s really all about chemistry. Precision. It’s hard to half-ass. You have to pay attention. Concentrate. It tends to”—she paused, seeming to grasp for the right words—“blank out the rest of the mind. The worries. The anxiety. Those thoughts that roll around, over and over.” She glanced at me. “Probably not unlike fighting and training.”
“They can definitely have a focusing quality,” I agreed. “You have to watch your opponent, dodge the move he’s making, try to figure out what he’ll do next. It’s very engaging that way. And the consequences for not focusing, for not paying attention, are pretty severe.”
I’d learned that lesson early on. Catcher had been the first person to train me, and he’d used flaming fireballs to keep me on my toes. I’d managed to avoid getting hit straight-on, but I’d been nicked by plenty of errant sparks. Lesson learned.
She smiled. “I don’t know how you do it. Just”—she waved a hand—“get out there and fight.” She leaned forward over the hands she’d linked on the table. “Don’t you get scared? I just can’t imagine the stuff you and Ethan and the rest of the guards have to face all the time.”
“We’re trained not to run,” I said. “So when you feel that flight-or-fight instinct kicking in, you stay and you fight. And it’s definitely easier now than it was in the beginning. More confidence, I guess. The more battles you fight, the easier it is to fight the next one. Like baking, you can develop the instincts for it.”
“And I guess the perks are pretty good. Our Master is no slouch.”
“No, he definitely is not. A pain in the ass sometimes, but definitely no slouch.” I glanced at her. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not at the moment.” She tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I think I’m nearly over my ‘I want to be alone’ phase. It’s been great, but times like this, I really wish I had the comfort.”
I nodded. “I totally get that.” My phone rang, and I checked the screen. It was a message from Luc, telling me Paige was waiting.
I rose, pushed in my chair. “I have to get back to work. I don’t suppose you’ve got any fresh coffee in the kitchen?”
She cocked her head at me. “Got some studying to do?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I actually do.” And I smiled, because research was something I could very definitely do.
• • •
Or not.
I had a master’s degree and nearly a Ph.D., since my study had been interrupted by my transition to vampire. I’d done my time in libraries and coffeehouses, with notebooks, pens, sticky notes, cups of coffee, and bottles of water.
And I felt completely stymied by alchemy.
Ethan found me in the library as sunrise neared. I sat at a table across from Paige in jeans and a long-sleeved Bears T-shirt (“Monsters of the Midway,” one of my personal favorites). There was a spread of alchemy books on the tabletop and a notebook to my right, along with a fountain pen and the travel mug I’d borrowed from Margot and had to bribe the Librarian to let me bring in.
“You’ll spill it,” he’d said, barring the door.
“I won’t spill it.”
“They always say that. And then they spill it.”
“It’s got a lid,” I insisted, holding it out to show him.
“And they spill it anyway,” he said testily. Information, the Librarian was good with. Customer rela
tions, not so much.
That had gone on for nearly ten minutes, and didn’t stop until I’d promised to lend him a book on medieval lyric poetry still in my collection. The book was out of print, and he’d been searching for a copy, hoped I might have one. I hadn’t opened it in a year, so it was an easy trade, although I did make him promise to put a “Donated by Merit” sticker in the front.
Paige and I both pulled off earphones when Ethan walked in.
He grinned. “Is this what grad school was like?”
I capped my fountain pen. “Only if you’re going to ask me to grab something to eat, get a drink, and go hear this band, but then ditch me and enjoy a pretty good time with a blonde in the corner.”
Paige snorted. She’d been energized by the work, but she’d been doing it for hours. There were blue shadows beneath her eyes, and she looked beyond vampirically pale. Not good for a sorcerer.
“That is very specific,” Ethan said, “and doesn’t really match my plan.”
“Then it’s not an exact comparison,” I said.
“How’s the work going?” Ethan asked.
We both looked at Paige.
“It’s going,” she said, gesturing to the poster and easel. “Would you like me to play Vanna White?”
“Please,” Ethan said with a smile. He perched on the corner of the desk, hands clasped in his lap, as she rose.
“Just like words, alchemical symbols can be grouped into sentences.” She pointed to the subsets of symbols, which she’d bracketed together. “I’m calling them phrases. Each phrase has between three and ten symbols, and each phrase makes up a part of the entire equation.”
“For the purpose of?”
“One, telling the user exactly what to do—like a recipe. And two, actually igniting the magic. We think that’s why it’s written in a particular place instead of a spell book.”
She pointed to three symbols. “The phrases contain the elemental building blocks of alchemy, like mercury, sulfur, and salt.” She pointed to symbols of Jupiter and Saturn. “There are symbols for the time of year, the position of earth in the cosmos. And that’s where the magic gets customized with the hieroglyphs—the sorcerer’s tiny drawings. Some, we think, are supposed to be objects. References to the things actually used to make this magic work. But most are the actions—distillation, burning, and like that.”
Ethan frowned, crossed his arms as he studied the board. “So magic will have to be made?”
“Correct,” Paige said, gaze scanning the lines of symbols. “The magic isn’t self-effectuating. The symbols are magical enough that erasing won’t stop the magic, but not magical enough to kindle on their own. Don’t think of them as paint on a canvas.” She looked back at Ethan. “Think of them more like”—she paused, considering—“carvings in the fabric of the universe. You can wipe away the ink, the color, but that doesn’t change the underlying magic that’s already been wrought just by writing them.”
Ethan frowned, considered. “What else?”
She nodded, tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear. “So, the weird thing is that the order of the symbols doesn’t really make sense. We’ll find a few symbols that do something, a phrase in the correct order, but then they go wonky again.” She pointed to one of the phrases. “This, for example, this is a nullification equation.”
“What does it nullify?” Ethan asked, head cocked.
“Whatever you want it to. It’s like a magical verb. Particularly, a verb of subtraction. But it doesn’t do anything without an object to nullify, which also has to be spelled out.”
Ethan’s gaze tracked to the next group of symbols. “The lion, the beaker, the—what is that? A waterfall? They’re the objects?”
“Theoretically, yes.” Paige pointed to the next phrase. “This is the troubling part—the time, the position. When and where the sorcerer is supposed to make all this happen. It’s gibberish, alchemically speaking and astronomically speaking. The planets don’t align that way.” She looked at me. “It’s taken us two hours to figure out we can’t translate this phrase, and there are hundreds more phrases just like it in the equation—ones that don’t make sense in context.”
The soft sound of footsteps had us all looking up. The Librarian strode toward us in a collared shirt, his wavy hair sticking up in tufts. He reached us, looked protectively at Paige, then at Ethan.
“It’s late,” he said. “Any objection if I get her out of here? She could use a break.”
Ethan checked his watch, looked surprised by the time. “Your work is very appreciated,” he said, lifting his gaze to Paige. “And I think you’ve done plenty of it for the night.”
“Good,” she said, “because I’m beat.” Right on cue, she yawned, cupping delicate fingers over her mouth. “Sorry. Long night.”
“For all of us,” Ethan said, gesturing to the door. “Get some rest. We’ll close up the library.”
There weren’t many vampires who could pull off a suspicious look at their Master, but the Librarian managed it. “But, Sire . . .”
Ethan arched an eyebrow. “I’m fairly certain we can turn off the lights and close the door. We probably won’t even allow Malik to test the sprinkler system.”
The Librarian’s expression was dour. “That’s not funny.”
Ethan just smiled. “Take a break. Have a drink. Get some rest.”
Paige pushed back her chair. “Maybe I’ll have some sort of brainstorm in a dream.” Although the sun wouldn’t affect her the way it did us, many other supernaturals slept during the day, as if they’d adapted to our schedule.
She glanced at us. “You’re heading out, too?”
Ethan smiled. “As soon as we see that you’re tucked away.”
“In that case, we’re out,” the Librarian said, and led her to the door.
“I’m surprised he doesn’t sleep on a cot in the back,” I muttered when the door closed behind them.
Ethan grinned. “He requested it when we remodeled the House and added the library. He’s very committed to his job.”
“So’s Margot, but I don’t think she sleeps in the pantry.” Not that that would be a bad way to go. “I didn’t know the library wasn’t original.”
He frowned, gesturing to the space. “There was a room, more akin to a study than an actual library. The Librarian created the initial plan, coordinated the assemblage of our collection. I don’t think he would be offended to hear me call it his life’s passion. Well, other than Paige. He is a man in love.”
I smiled. “She’s the only one who gets to call him Arthur. That’s sign enough.”
He chuckled. “In the same way that you’re the only one who gets to call me Ethan in that particular tone.”
From the gleam in his eyes, I assumed he meant a seductive tone. “I better be. I hear anyone else is taking liberties, and we need to have a serious talk.”
“You’re the only one I allow to take liberties,” he said, and the gleam in his eyes deepened.
There was something about this sexy, beautiful man in this sexy, beautiful library that made my mouth dry.
“Then I should take advantage,” I said, and walked toward him, put my hands on his thighs.
I slid my hands from his lean thighs to his lean abdomen, felt his sharp intake of breath, the clench of muscles beneath my hands. His body was warm beneath my hands, seemed to radiate heat.
I lifted my gaze to his; the green of his eyes had deepened. He watched me with intent interest, and with the arousal we’d already halted twice tonight.
“I have plans,” I said, adjusting my body against his. I tangled my hands in his hair, pulled his mouth toward mine, and sank in. At other times, there might be kisses of love, of companionship, of solidarity. This was a kiss of banked passion, of heat, of promise. Ethan’s throat grumbled possessively, predatorily, as he deepened the kiss, tilted his
body toward mine.
He pulled back, stared at me with silvered eyes languid with desire. “We should take this upstairs.”
I shook my head. “Here. Right here.” Others had had their fun tonight. I figured I was due.
Ethan opened his mouth to argue but then closed it again and slyly. “Very well, then.” He walked to the double doors, locked them with a loud metallic click that echoed across the room. When he stalked back, he picked me up, set me on the table, and stepped between my thighs. He was already rigid, already ready, and he moved a hand between our bodies to ensure that I was, too. He didn’t have to worry. I closed my eyes, arched back against passion.
Sensation pummeled me, and the first golden arc of pleasure swept over me like a firestorm, igniting every nerve in my body. “Ethan,” I cried, nails digging into his shoulders as I worked to keep my grip on him, on reality.
My head spinning, I focused on stripping him of clothing. His shirt, mine, hit the floor, were joined by pants, shoes. And then we were naked in the middle of the Cadogan library, his body lean and hard with muscle and desire. I put a hand on the flat of his abdomen, watched his defined muscles stiffen.
“You are beautiful,” I said, lifting my gaze to him. His eyes were silver now, his fangs bared, his gorgeous face framed by hair that gleamed golden in the moonlight. To an unsuspecting mortal, he’d have been terrifying. But to a vampire, to me, he was the embodiment of life and energy and strength. He was passion and desire, the hunger that would never really be sated, the eternal craving.
He put his hands on my face, stared at me for a long moment before setting his mouth over mine, kissing me deeply. This time, I moved a hand between our bodies, finding him and driving him further.
He braced a hand on the table, eased me back, and thrust into me with power that had me sucking in air. Then we moved together, illuminated by the shafts of moonlight that speared down from the room’s high windows. Heat and magic flared again, and I arched my neck to him and felt the press and pinch of his fangs all the way to my core, as if he’d reached the very well of my soul to the love that bound us together.