Friday Night Bites (Chicagoland Vampires 2)

"Someone's using e-mail to make threats on behalf of Cadogan House," I told him, flipping open my cell and pulling up my e-mail client. Ever efficient, Nick had already forwarded the e-mail message.

If it was us, we'd get a good solid aspen stake. But aspen's too good for you.

Maybe quartering. The guts and appendages removed while you're still conscious so that you can feel the pain. Understand what it's like. Drowning? Hanging? A slow death at the tip of a sword, a slice from stem to stern, so that blood and gore and meat are all that's left of you?

By the way, the youngest one gets it first.

I shivered as I read it, but appreciated that the author of this threat, unlike the last one I'd seen, hadn't tried to rhyme. I also wondered if Kelley was capable of that kind of violence. That kind of anger. Those questions unanswered, I asked Jeff for his e-mail address and sent the message on.

"Phew," he said after a moment, apparently having reviewed it. "That's a doozy."

It was a doozy. It was, however, notably empty of details about why, exactly, Jamie had been chosen. That he was a Breckenridge seemed to be the only knock against him.

"It is a doozy," I told him. "And we need to figure out who it came from. Can you work some of your mojo?"

"Easy breezy," Jeff absently said, the sound of furiously clicking keys in the background.

"He's disguised the IP address - rudimentary stuff, but I'll have to do some backtracking. The e-mail addy is pretty generic, but being a representative of our fine city, I might be able to make a call."

"Call away," I told him, "but there's one small catch. I need the details on this as soon as you can get them." I checked the time on my cell - it was nearly midnight. "How's your schedule looking for the next few hours?"

"Flexible," he said. "Assuming the price is right."

I rolled my eyes. "Name your price."

Silence.

"Jeff?"

"Could I - can I get back to you on that? I'm kind of at a loss, and I want to make sure I take complete advantage of this situation. I mean, unless you're willing to give me two or three - "

"Jeff," I said, interrupting what was destined to become a very lascivious list. "Why don't you just give me a call when you've got something?"

"I'm your man. I mean, not literally or whatever, I know you and Morgan have kind of a thing going - although you're not officially together-together, right?"

"Jeff."

"Yo?"

"Get to work."

With our contacts on the trail of information that might mollify the Brecks, Ethan and I slipped out of my father's office and headed back through the crowd to the front door.

The house was packed, and it took us a few minutes of squeezing through bodies and handshaking to make it to the other side. I think I managed a polite smile in the direction of the people I passed, but my mind was completely focused on a particular Breckenridge.

I didn't understand how he could think I was capable of the accusations he'd leveled against us. How could a childhood romance, a decades-long friendship, turn into something so ugly?

I nibbled the edge of my lip as we traversed the crowd, recalling scenes from my childhood. Nick had been my first kiss. We'd been in his father's library, me a girl of eight or nine, wearing a sleeveless party dress with an itchy crinoline petticoat. Nick had called me a "dumb girl" and kissed me because I'd dared him to, a quick peck on the lips that seemed to disgust him as much as it delighted me, albeit not as much as the fact that I'd beaten him at whatever game we'd been playing. As soon as he'd kissed me, he was off again, running out of his father's office and down the hallway. "Boys have cooties!" I'd yelled, Mary Janes clomping as I ran after him.

"Are you all right?"

I blinked and looked up. We'd reached the other end of the room. Ethan had stopped and was gazing at me curiously.

"Just thinking," I said. "I'm still in shock about Nick, about his father. About their attitude.

We were friends. Good friends, Ethan, for a long time. I don't understand how it came to this. There was a time when Nick would have asked me, not accused me."

"The gift of immortality," Ethan dryly said, then glanced back at Chicago's rich and famous, who sipped champagne while the city buzzed around them. "Infinite opportunities for betrayal."

There were a bevy of his own stories behind that little aphorism, I guessed, but I couldn't see past my own.

Ethan shook his head as if to clear it, then put a hand at my back. "Let's go home," he said. I nodded, not even up to an argument that Cadogan wasn't "home."

We'd just moved into the foyer when Ethan stopped, his hand falling away. I glanced up.

Morgan stood just inside the door, arms crossed over worn jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. A single brown curl draped rakishly across his forehead, and his blue eyes - accusing blue eyes - stared back at me.

I exhaled a curse, realizing what Morgan had seen. Me in a ball gown, Ethan in a tux, his hand at my back. The two of us together, in my parents' house, after I couldn't be bothered to return Morgan's phone calls. This was definitely not good.

"I believe someone has crashed your party, Sentinel," Ethan whispered.

I ignored him, and I'd just taken a step toward Morgan when I felt like I was falling through a tunnel. I had to touch Ethan's arm just to keep myself upright.

It was the telepathic connection Morgan and I had formed when he'd challenged Ethan at Cadogan House. The link was supposed to work only between vampire and Master, which might have been why the link with Morgan had such a strong effect. And why it seemed so wrong.

I'm sure you have an explanation, he silently said.

I wet my lips, uncurled my fingers from Ethan's arm, and forced my spine straight. "I'll meet you outside," I told Ethan. Without waiting for a response, I walked toward Morgan, forcing myself to keep my eyes on his.

"We need to talk," Morgan said aloud when I reached him, his gaze lifting to the man behind me, at least until that man slipped silently beside us and out the door.

"Come with me," I said, my voice flat.

We followed a concrete hallway to the back of the house, the walls still imprinted with the grain of their wooden forms. I picked a random door - a breach in the concrete - and opened it. Moonlight streamed through a small square window in the facing wall, providing a single beam of light in the otherwise pitch-black space. I stood quietly for a second, then two, and let my predatory eyes adjust to the darkness.

Morgan stepped into the room behind me.