Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires 3)

I got an arched eyebrow when I slid in, pizza box on my lap, probably at the size of the behemoth. It steamed the knees of my suit pants, no doubt leaving a disk of grease in the process. Good thing I had a couple of backup pairs. I didn't think Ethan would approve of a grease-stained Sentinel. When his call was done, and my stomach was rumbling loud enough to fill the car with sound, we began the trek back to Hyde Park.

"It's been a long night," he said. "Assuming you're willing to set aside a piece or two of that for me, we'll camp in my rooms and wait for Gabriel to call." Since I'd been in his apartments the day before - and since I had seven or eight pounds of Saul's Best on my lap - I didn't give that invitation the kind of clearheaded thought it deserved. And it did make sense to think that we would relax over pizza in Ethan's quarters while waiting for Gabriel's follow-up call, mulling the night's events and considering strategy for the convocation and pre-meeting.

Well.

I was half right.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH

"Pit stop," Ethan said when we'd arrived back at the House and made our way to the main floor. We walked back through the hall toward the cafeteria, but stopped at a door on the right-hand wall. Ethan pushed through it, and I followed him into a gleaming stainless-steel kitchen. A handful of vampires in tidy white jackets and those ballooning chef's pants chopped and mixed at various stations.

"Now, this is the kind of kitchen a Novitiate vampire deserves," I approvingly said, taking in the sights and sounds and smells.

"Margot?" Ethan asked aloud. One of the chefs smiled back at him, said something in French, and pointed farther into the kitchen. Ethan bobbed his head at her, took the pizza box from my hand, and started down the aisle between the chefs' stations. He said hello to the men and women along the way; since I didn't know any of them, I offered polite smiles as I passed.

I also didn't know Ethan spoke French.

But I did, of course, know Margot. She sat on a stool beside a giant slab of marble, watching as a young man with dark hair rolled out dough on the floured marble.

"Watch your pressure," she said before lifting her gaze and smiling at Ethan.

"Liege," she said, hopping off her stool. "What brings you and" - she slid her gaze my way, measuring whom Ethan had brought into her lair, then offered me a sly smile - "Merit to my neck of the mansion?" Ethan placed the pizza box on a clean spot of counter. "Merit and I will be waiting on a call in my rooms. Could you arrange this and deliver it upstairs with some plates and silverware?" She arched a curious eyebrow, then lifted the pizza box, her lips twisting into a smile. "Saul's Best," she said fondly, one hand over her heart. "He got me through culinary school. And given our culinary history to date, I'm assuming, Liege, that our Sentinel had some input on this choice?"

"It's not my usual fare," he agreed.

Margot winked at me. "In that case, excellent choice, Merit." I smiled back.

Margot closed the box again, then clapped her hands together. "Well, let's get this going. Something to drink, Liege? You still haven't opened the bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild you picked up in Paris." Being a Merit, and having been raised by my father to appreciate the difference between Cabernet and Riesling, I knew she was talking about high-dollar wine

. . . and pairing it with junk food. "You want to drink a Mouton Rothschild with pizza?" Ethan looked amused. "I'm surprised at you, Sentinel. Given your diet, I'd have thought you'd appreciate the combination. And we are in Chicago, after all. What better to drink with Chicago's finest than something nice from France?"

A girl couldn't argue with logic like that.

"The Rothschild is fine," Ethan said, putting his hand at my back to turn me toward the door again.

"Merit is hungry, so all due haste would be appreciated." Since he was right, I spared him a sarcastic retort, but I couldn't stop myself from glancing back to check Margot's expression. It didn't look good: arched eyebrow, crossed arms, and much-too-curious stare.

I was so going to hear about this later.

The lights were already on in his apartments, soft music playing, and, despite the season, a golden glow emanating from the fireplace in the corner. It looked like his room had been prepared by staff members for his return. Apparently Master vampires got sunrise turndown service. I sat my scabbard carefully on a side table.

"Make yourself at home," Ethan said, "such as it is." He slipped off his jacket, flipped it around like a matador's cape, and placed it carefully on the back of a desk chair.

When he plucked his PDA off the desktop and began to thumb through it, I took the opportunity to give the room another perusal. It was, after all, a record of Ethan's four-hundred-year existence. If the stuff didn't give some clue to the puzzle that was Ethan Sullivan, I wasn't sure what would. Hands behind my back, I walked to the wall opposite the Faberge egg, where an embroidered heraldic crest was mounted in a cherrywood frame. The crest bore an oak tree with red acorns, a symbol I'd seen before.

I pointed to it, then glanced back at him. Ethan stood with one hand on the back of the chair, his BlackBerry in the other.

"This is the same crest that's on the shield in the Sparring Room?" He glanced up, nodded, and turned back to his PDA. "It's my family crest. From Sweden."

"What was your name?" I asked. Morgan had once told me that vampires switched identities every sixty or so years in order to keep from arousing too much human suspicion when they failed to age like their friends and families. "Ethan Sullivan" was his current name, but I assumed he hadn't been born to that name - not in Sweden nearly four hundred years ago.

"My family name was Andresen," he said, thumbs clicking at the keys. "I was born Jakob Andresen."

"Siblings?"

He smiled wistfully. "Three sisters - Elisa, Annika, and Berit - although I was often away from them. I was in the army - a man-at-arms before our lieutenant asked me to run an errand. When I came back, information about our opponents' positions in hand, he promoted me." Apparently done with his messages, Ethan placed the PDA on the desktop, slid his hands into his pockets, and glanced up at me. "I was an artillery captain when my time came." Ethan wasn't usually this talkative about his past, so I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him my full attention. "When you were killed?"

"When I was changed," he corrected. He gestured toward a spot at the crux of his left shoulder and neck. "An arrow at dusk. Night fell, and the vampires emerged, stripping the battlefield of blood, including my own. It was easy to come by on a battlefield, of course, not that they were particular.