Friday Night Bites (Chicagoland Vampires 2)

"We're rooting for the bitchy one," Lindsey explained, nibbling the crust on her pizza slice.

"I thought they were all bitchy," I noted.

After a few minutes of commercials, Malik began the process of getting off the bed.

"Is it me?" I asked lightly. "I can shower."

He chuckled as he took to his feet, the glow of the television glinting off the medal around his neck, and something else - a thin silver crucifix that dangled from a thin silver chain. So much for that myth.

"It's not you," Malik said. "I need to get back." He began to step between the vampires, who were completely unmoved by his effort not to step on them.

"Down in front!"

"Out of the way, vampire," Margot said, tossing a handful of popcorn in his direction.

"Let's move it."

He waved them off good-naturedly, then disappeared out the door.

"What did he have to get back to?" I asked Lindsey.

"Hmm?" she absently asked, gaze on the television.

"Malik. He said he had to get back. What did he have to get back to?"

"Oh," Lindsey said. "His wife. She lives here with him. They've got a suite on your floor."

I blinked. "Malik's married?" It wasn't the "Malik" part that surprised me, but the

"married" part. That a vampire was married seemed kind of odd. I mean, from what I'd seen so far, the vampire lifestyle was pretty comparable to dorm life. Living in a would-be vampire frat house didn't seem conducive to a long-term relationship.

"He's always been married," Lindsey said. "They were turned together." She glanced over at me. "You live down the hall from them. It's not real neighborly of you not to say hello."

"I'm not real neighborly," I admitted, recognizing that Malik was the only other vampire that I knew had a room on the second floor, and I'd only learned that four seconds ago.

"We need a mixer," I decided.

Lindsey huffed. "What are we, sophomores? Mixers are excuses to get drunk and make out with people you hardly know." She slowly lowered her gaze to the back of Connor's head and smiled lasciviously. "On the other hand..."

"On the other hand, you'd break Luc's heart. Maybe let's skip the mixer for now."

"You're such a mommy."

I snorted. "Can I ground you?"

"Unlikely," she said, drawing out the word. "Now shut up and watch the bitchy humans."

I stayed until the show was done, until the pizza was done, until the vampires on the floor stood and stretched and said their goodbyes. I was glad I'd made the trip, glad I'd been able to spend time in the company of a Cadogan vampire other than the House's 394-year-old Master. I'd missed out on a lot of college socializing, more focused on reading and studying than was probably healthy, always assuming there'd be time for making friends later. And then graduation arrived, and I didn't know my classmates as well as I might have. I had a chance to do that over now - to invest in the people around me instead of losing myself in the intellectual details.

I rounded a corner to head for the stairs, so lost in my thoughts that I nearly forgot that Ethan, too, was a resident of the third floor.

But there he was.

He stood in the doorway of the apartment that had once been Amber's - his former Consort and the woman who'd betrayed him for Celina. He glanced up as I neared, but two burly men carrying a sizable chest of drawers stepped between us and broke the eye contact.

"Couple more loads," one said to Ethan in a thick Chicagoland accent as they hobbled down the hallway. "Then we're done."

"Thank you," he replied, half turning to watch them struggle under the weight of the furniture.

I wondered at the arrangements. Vampires could have managed the bulk much easier than the humans, and wouldn't have required Ethan's supervision at five o'clock in the morning. Humans or not, Ethan didn't look thrilled to be supervising them, and I also wondered why he hadn't let Helen coordinate.

Maybe, I realized, he needed this. Maybe this was his catharsis, his chance to clean the room, clear the air, and prepare for a changing of the lascivious guards.

I wanted to say something, to acknowledge the pain he probably felt, but had no idea how to say it, how to form words he wouldn't find insulting. Words he'd find too emotional. Too sentimental. Too human. I caught his gaze again, grudging resignation in it, before he looked away and slipped back inside the room.

I stood there for a moment, torn between following him and trying to offer comfort, and letting it go, giving him back the same silence he'd given me, assuming the silence was what he needed. I pushed on toward the stairs, decision made, and dropped headfirst into bed just before Homer's "rosy-fingered Dawn" appeared, just as the horizon began to pinken. It was a little less rosy, I thought, when that dawn could fry you to ashes.

Chapter Seven

THE BELLE OF THE BALL

I woke suddenly, raps on the door jolting me from unconsciousness. I tried to shake off the dream I'd been having about moonlight over dark water, sat up, and rubbed my eyes.

The knock sounded again.

"Just a second." I untangled myself from the blankets I'd pulled up during the day and cast a glance at the alarm clock beside my bed. It was just after seven p.m., only an hour or so before the beginning of cocktails at the Breckenridge party. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A second to stand up, then I shuffled to the door, still, I realized, in yesterday's wrinkled shirt and suit pants.

I flipped the lock and opened it. Ethan stood in my doorway, tidy in suit pants and white button-up. His hair was pulled back, the Cadogan medal at his neck. Where I was rumpled, he was pristine, his eyes bright emerald green, alert. His expression was some cross between bemusement and disappointment, like he couldn't decide which emotion to choose.

"Long night, Sentinel?"

His voice was flat. It took me a moment to realize the conclusion he'd reached, that a rendezvous had kept me out late and prevented me from changing out of yesterday's uniform. His Sentinel, the woman he'd passed over to the Master of Navarre House to secure an alliance, was still in yesterday's clothes.

Of course, I hadn't seen Morgan in days. But Ethan didn't need to know that.

I hid my grin and answered back provocatively, "Yes. It was, actually. One eyebrow arched in disapproval, Ethan held out a black garment bag.

I reached out and took it. "What's this?"

"It's for this evening. Something a little more... apropos than your usual options."