by Chloe Neill
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DEAR JOHN
We made it out the door and down the steps, my head pounding, but the body ache nearly gone. Some nights it did pay to be a quickly healing vampire, fairy angst notwithstanding.
The bloodred sky was now dotted with angry storm clouds, and lightning stil flashed in great, glowing arcs. Not thril ed about being its target, we decided to debrief in my car.
We walked through chil air and damp grass and back to my Volvo. We moved silently, the air between us charged by what he'd done, and my mixed feelings about it. It was definitely good to be alive, but I had a bad track record with self-sacrifice. Ethan had stepped in front of a stake meant for me because he'd had feelings for me; had Jonah done the same?
I decided to focus on my dangerous actions instead of his heroic ones.
"I am so sorry," I told him when we climbed inside.
"Frank's rationing blood. But even beyond that, the hunger was overpowering. I've never felt anything that strong. " Even my First Hunger, during which I'd launched myself at Ethan, hadn't been that bad. The guard had come a lot closer to being fang-marked.
"The receiver cut back on your blood supplies? Is he trying to incite riots?"
"Or make us go crazy and attack the first supernaturals in sight. "
"Mission accomplished," Jonah said.
"If vampires have always reacted that way to fairy blood, it explains why fairies don't like us any more than humans. "
"It does," he agreed. "And it explains why they keep their distance and why we have to pay them so much to guard the House. That kind of power is dangerous. Unfortunately, it doesn't real y help us with the bigger issue. "
"Figuring out what the hel 's going on?"
"That's the one. Claudia mentioned a couple of times that she didn't think this was about the sky or water per se, but that they were symptoms of a larger problem. "
I nodded. "And I think she had something there. She accused the guards of not tel ing her about elemental magic. What if she meant it literal y?"
"What do you mean?"
"So far, we've seen water and sky affected. Water and air," I repeated, and watched understanding dawn in his expression.
"Water. Air. Earth. Fire," he said. "The four elements. "
"Exactly. We've seen two so far. If she was right about these things being symptoms - "
"Then someone is working magic with elemental effects,"
Jonah finished.
I wasn't entirely sure what that meant or who might be doing it, but my gut told me we were on the right track. And after the week we'd had, I'd take any victory I could get.
"She also blamed ancient magic," Jonah said. "Old magic. Any theories on who that might be?"
"Actual y, yeah. What do you know about Tate?"
"Seth Tate?" He shrugged. "I know it's believed he has magic - that you've felt it before - but that no one knows what magic it is. Why?"
"Because when I visited him, I had a sense of something old. A different kind of magic. Closer to what I felt from Claudia than what I've seen of vampires. "
"Okay, but this is the third time we've approached a supernatural group thinking they might have initiated the problem. We've been wrong al three times. "
"I know. Our batting average sucks. But like she said, we've been looking at the symptoms, not the cause.
Besides, we have to try something. If we can't tie this to a supernatural working magic, then what else would there be?"
"Radiation? A new kind of weapon? Global warming? Or if no sups are doing this on purpose, is it accidental magic of some kind?"
I thought about Lorelei's prediction that too many shifters in town were doing just that - accidental y throwing off the world's balance. On the other hand, she'd blamed shifters when the water had been the only problem. This time we had water and air.
"If Claudia's right," he said, "and this is about some deeper imbalance in the city, maybe the key isn't the who.
It's the what. What kind of magic would be powerful enough to screw up both water and air? Sorcerers?"
"I can vouch for Catcher and Mal ory. He's exhausted from working on this problem, and she's wrapped up in her exams. Besides, even asking them about it would make them both go bal istic. " And I did not need any more bal istic right now.
"I was actual y thinking about the only Order-sanctioned sorcerer in town. "
"You're talking about Simon?" I asked. "To tel you the truth, when I asked him about the water, he seemed to be in denial about the whole thing. A little shady, yeah, but largely in denial. This could be a cover for some kind of secret magic he's working, but I didn't have the sense of it. And if you're the only sanctioned sorcerer in town, you're already the big man on campus. Why risk that? What's the benefit?
The prize?"
"Be that as it may, we don't have much else to go on. It might pay at least to sit him down and talk to him about it.
See what information he, or the Order, can provide. "
"Good point. I'l see if Catcher can set it up. "
A bolt of lightning crashed nearby, shaking the car. We both looked out the windows and up at the sky, clouds whirling across it.
"If this is a symptom," I said, "a side effect, maybe we can find its heart?"
He looked over at me. "What do you mean?"
"The effect on the river stopped at the city limits, right?
So it's unlikely the sky is red everywhere. And if there are boundaries, maybe there's also a center. An origin point. "
"Like a giant sucking tornado in the middle of the Loop?"
"Hopeful y not that, but that's the idea, yeah. If we can't find the people responsible for this, maybe we can find their location. We can drive through different neighborhoods to see if there's a focus, and we'l cover more territory if we split up. If we find something, we can ral y at that place?"
"That sounds like a decent plan," Jonah said, but he made no move to get out of thegetal y car. Was he waiting on me to say something about what had happened in the tower? To offer thanks . . . or maybe vitriol?
I silently swore, and reminded myself that the point was what he'd done - not why he'd done it. "And thanks, by the way, for defending me. "
"You're welcome," he said. "It's part and parcel of being someone's partner. "
"We aren't partners yet," I reminded him, thinking of the Red Guard.
"Aren't we?" He gazed back at me, and it was clear he wasn't thinking of the RG, but had something much more fundamental in mind. His eyes changed, and then his hand was behind my head and he was leaning toward me, pul ing me toward him, and before I could stop him his lips were on mine, his mouth insistent.
Jonah kissed me with the intimacy of a lover and the confidence of a chal enger to the throne, daring me to think outside the box I'd wal ed around me.
And for a moment, I let him.
It felt so good to be wanted, to be needed, to be desired by someone again. It hadn't been that long since Ethan had been gone, but Ethan and I hadn't been together long, if at al .
And the kiss was just . . . toe curling. Jonah wasn't a novice, and he used every part of his body to his advantage, his fingers at my jaw, his tongue teasing mine, his body moving closer and closer, a suggestion of things he could offer: warmth; the solace of touch; another kind of intimacy.
But a shock of guilt turned my stomach. I wasn't ready.
I pul ed back and turned away, covering my mouth with a hand. It had been only a kiss, not initiated by me, and certainly no violation of any promise I'd made. But my lips were swol en, and my skin was flushed, and there was a bal of heat in the pit of my stomach. However unexpected it may have been, and however long Ethan may have been gone, my reaction felt like a betrayal to his memory.
"You're not ready," he
quietly said.
"I'm not. I'm sorry - but I'm not. "
His next words surprised me nearly as much as the kiss had. "No, I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have pushed. It's just - I didn't expect this. I didn't expect to find a connection. "
I looked back at him again, my heart racing at the desire in his eyes and the sudden sense of panic that tightened my chest. "I am flattered, real y, but - "
He held up a hand and smiled gently. "You don't have to apologize. I took a chance, and the timing isn't right. No harm, no foul. " He cleared his throat, then nodded confidently. "Let's just forget the temporary humiliation and get back to work. "
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure," he said with a nod, and pul ed out his phone, a shiny gold wafer, to check in with Scott Grey. I did the same and sent a message to Keley, advising her that we hadn't discovered anything helpful, and that Claudia apparently hadn't even known about the sky.
Her response chil ed me: "PROTESTORS DOUBLED
B/C OF SKY. ALL VAMPS ON GUARD. EXTRA FAIRIES
AT GATE. NATIONAL GUARD CALLED. HUMANS
BELIEVE APOCALYPSE IMMINENT," was the immediate fol ow-up.
I muttered a curse.
"What?" Jonah quietly asked, but I held up a hand while I typed out a response to Keley. nseont si
"RETURN HOME?" I asked her, "OR KEEP LOOKING?"
"CRISIS BEING MANAGED," she responded. "KEEP
LOOKING. "
I could definitely keep looking. It was the "finding" that was proving difficult. The message sent, I tucked the phone away again and updated Jonah.
"Humans think the end is nigh," I told him. "The protestors at Cadogan House have doubled again. "
Alarm flashed in his eyes. "Do we need to get back?"
"Keley says she's on it and wants us to keep looking. Do you think you could have Scott make a cal , maybe send some guards over?"
He answered without hesitation, sending an immediate message on his phone.
"Done," he said after a moment, pushing the phone away again. "Scott is advised. Grey House is quiet, and he'l contact Keley and offer up some friends. "
Cadogan House didn't have any al iances with other Houses in Chicago; maybe we could make an al y of Grey House, even if the circumstances weren't ideal.
"I'l go back to the Loop. I'l search there for something that looks like a focus, and I'l stick close to the water in case there's some link we don't know about between the water and sky. Why don't you drive around this part of town? Hit the rest of the Gold Coast and Jackson Park. Cal me if you find anything. "
He nodded. "Sure," he said, then climbed out of my car and into his. I felt awkward leaving him after the kiss, but what else could I do?
There was only so much a girl could accomplish in a night.
Once I was on my way to the Loop, I turned the heat to maximum. Even though I'd felt a little claustrophobic in the tower, there was something weirdly soothing about cranking the heat on a cold night. There had been cold nights during grad school - nights when Mal ory had been late at work or on a date with some law firm or financial services cutie - when I'd taken a study break by climbing into my car and driving across the city. I knew which roads had less traffic and relatively few lights, and I'd use the drive to zone out, to forget myself, to forget everything except the road in front of me.
Occasional y, I'd bring along an audiobook, the twelfth or thirteenth instal ment in some long-running mystery or action series I couldn't seem to stop buying, even as the books became formulaic copies of the ones that came before. I'd crank up the sound just as I had the heat, and I'd drive across Chicago - sometimes into Indiana, sometimes into Wisconsin, sometimes into the Il inois countryside - to have a little time away.
This, of course, wasn't one of those times. I didn't have time for a joyride, and the trip wasn't relaxing. The city was stil fil ed with groups of people huddled on sidewalks or porches, staring tentatively up at the sky, taking pictures with cel phones and cameras.
There was no way "Crisis in Chicago!" wasn't the lead story on every news station in the country, especial y if the National Guard was involved. They'd al be looking for some reason for the sky and water, and I had absolutely nothing to offer them. I wish I had the answers they were looking for.
I crossed the river, the gleaming, inky black slice of it, and drove back into the Loop. The buildings were tighter here, but the sky seemed as red as it had at Potter Park, the tered lightning strikes just as frequent. No more, no less.
"Damn," I quietly muttered. It was probably one of the few times anyone other than a meteorologist or storm chaser had rued the absence of a giant sucking tornado, as Jonah had put it, in a populated area. But it would have given me an answer. And those were few and far between these days.
Instead . . . there were questions. Questions about me.
Questions about sorcerers. Questions about the House and its staff. Questions about the city and whether they trusted us to live our own lives without our constant reassurances that we meant them no harm.
After what I'd seen tonight - a fairy queen wil ingly scarring those who worked for her because they hadn't brought issues to her attention fast enough - maybe they were right. Maybe we shouldn't be trusted.
God, I was beginning to depress myself.
Without any better option, I pul ed over into a parking space and turned off the car. The city was relatively quiet, but the night stil carried a quiet buzz. There was an energy in Chicago. Even if we weren't the city that didn't sleep, we certainly were the city that never rested.
Thinking a katana was a little too lightning rod for my taste, I unbuckled the sword and left it in the car. Humans were already afraid of us; there was no point in riling them up when we had other problems to address.
I was a block from State Street, so I walked over to it, sticking close to the edge of the buildings while looking for anything that might be amiss. The streets were relatively empty except for bar-hoppers and folks scanning the sky for meteors or aliens or some other explanation for its color.
I fol owed State to the river, noting the strange tingle of its increasingly powerful magical vacuum, and walked across the bridge, stopping in the middle to take a look. The river stretched out in front and behind me - a frozen, black artery through downtown. The sky was uniformly red above, heavy clouds also tinted red by . . . whatever. The side effect of some curse, some ancient charm, some bitter hex?
Unfortunately, I had no clue. If there was a focus, I hadn't found it. Nothing seemed any different out here. There were no sorcerers casting spel s upon the sky. No fire-breathing dragons. Tate, as far as I was aware, hadn't escaped into the Loop to transfix us al with his strange magic.
While none of those developments would have been exactly welcome, at least they would have been developments. Hints of answers.
I walked back toward my car, pausing at a bus stop and sitting down on the empty bench. The city was undergoing natural disasters with no obvious cause, and apparently these were only the symptoms of some larger issue. How was I supposed to figure this out? Vampires could sense magic, but only if it was real y close by. This was way beyond my expertise. I needed a diviner - the witches who walked around with forked branches and searched out hidden springs - except I needed one for magic.
I sat up straight and pul ed out my phone. And since he was the closest thing to a water witch I had, I dialed up Catcher.
"You're stil alive. "
"Last time I checked. And here's a fact to add to your database - fairy blood turns vampires batshit crazy. "
I heard the creak of his chair as he sat up. "You shed fairy blood?"
"Actual y, no. Claudia, the Cldth="1emqueen, got irritated with her guards. They hadn't fil ed her in on the sky yet. "
He made a low whistle. "Since the sky is s
til red, I assume the fairies weren't the problem. "
"They were not. That's three strikes. The water sups didn't mess with the water; the sky sups didn't mess with the sky. Claudia thinks we're seeing the effects of a larger magical problem with elemental magic as the visible symptoms. "
I heard his sigh through the phone. "Elemental magic," he said. "I should have put two and two together. I should have thought about that. "
My heart raced - were we getting somewhere? Did he have an answer? "Does that mean something to you?"
"It gives the magic context. It shows the pattern. "
"Is there a group, a species, a person who uses that pattern?"
"Not specifical y. But it proves that magic is involved. "
I rol ed my eyes. Hadn't we already figured magic was involved? Jonah's suggestions notwithstanding, it seemed unlikely humans had simply flipped a switch that had turned the sky red and sent lightning crashing across it.
As if irritated by the thought, a bolt of lightning suddenly struck a car three blocks down the street. Its car alarm began to chirp in warning. I huddled back into the bus stop, wishing I was already back in my car. I hated lightning.
"I don't suppose you have any better sense of what Tate might be? Claudia kept mentioning old magic, and that's the sense I get from him. "
"Old magic wouldn't surprise me," Catcher said,
"although that's not a magical classification per se. That his magic feels 'old' doesn't signal what he is or who he might be. "
Of course it didn't. That would be too easy. "Then we need to work that angle and figure it out. Can you get me in to see him again?"
Catcher whistled. "Since our office has been official y disbanded, we aren't exactly on the approved visitors list for the secret facility holding our ex-mayor. We may be able to pul some strings, but that'l take time. "
"Do what you can. I'm getting nowhere fast. " Although there was one group I could look into. "I know this question is going to hurt, but I need an answer regardless. What about the Order?" I gnawed my lip in anticipation of a snarky response. But that's not what I got back. Catcher had changed his tune.
"I've been racking my brain," he said, and I could hear that in the hoarse exhaustion in his voice. "But I can't come up with any way they're involved. I just don't know what advantage they'd see in doing this. They may be na?ve, but they aren't evil. "
"What about Simon?"
"I don't know how Simon spends his days, Merit, other than monopolizing almost al of Mal ory's time and every ounce of her mental energy. She seems to be the number one focus of his attention. Besides, he's king of the city right now. Why cause trouble?"
"I had the same thought. "
"Keep your people calm and off Simon's radar. He may seem mild-mannered, but he's stil a ful y trained member of the Order, and vampire interference wil only piss him off.
Let me look into it. "
"I'l stal ," I warned,,ed member "but Frank's antsy, and you know the kind of pressure he's putting on Malik.
Humans are freaking out, and the National Guard is on its way to Cadogan House. Whoever is involved in this, we need evidence, and we need it fast. "
"I'l handle it. Where are you anyway?"
I decided not to tel him I was hunched in a bus stop on State Street because I didn't have any better ideas. "I'm playing Sentinel," I told him. "Give me a cal as soon as you have something. "
Catcher grunted his agreement, and the phone went dead. I tucked it away again and looked out into the night.
Noise began to rol down the street as a parade of humans dressed in white clothes walked toward me. They carried white poster board signs announcing the apocalypse and recommending
Bible passages for immediate consideration. The warnings were scrawled in bloodred paint, drips marking the edges of the letters. They'd painted the signs in a hurry, frantic to make a difference before it was too late.
"Before vampires destroy the world," I quietly muttered.
The humans might be right about the end of the world; that wasn't exactly information I was privy to. But I was pretty confident they'd have more than words for me if they caught me out here alone, so I hunkered back into the corner and watched as they passed, a Greek chorus warning of the coming tragedy.
A few minutes later they disappeared from view and the street was quiet again. I stood up and stretched my legs, but just as I prepared to leave the bus stop, a streak of white lightning shot across the sky and rain began to pour down in heavy sheets.
"Of course it would rain," I muttered.
I stood in the doorway of the bus stop for another few moments, rain splashing onto my boots, waiting for a break in the downpour and wishing, once again, that Ethan had been here with me. He'd know what to do, have some plan of attack in mind.
I knew this burden was mine to bear; I just hoped I had the brawn to carry it and the brains to figure it out.
As quickly as it had begun, the rain slowed and stopped.
As I stepped onto the street, I caught scents of water and city and sulfur, but there was something else: the smel s of lemon and sugar, the same scents I'd caught around Tate.
Claudia thought the magic was old, and now the rain smel ed like Tate? That couldn't just be coincidence.
Dawn was approaching, but I knew exactly where I needed to go tomorrow night. Hopeful y my grandfather's name stil carried some cachet, and they'd be able to get me in to see Tate again.
Stil afraid of the lightning, I sprinted back to my car, my skin buzzing from the ozone in the air. I'd only managed to put the key in the lock when the barrel of a gun was pushed against my cheek.
"Helo, Merit," McKetrick said pleasantly. "Long time, no see. "