House Rules (Chicagoland Vampires 7)

She moved a step closer. "Suppose you're correct. Suppose it isn't my business whom he dates. Suppose it's yours. Then maybe you should think long and hard about the kind of vampire he deserves. Are you that girl? Or does he deserve someone better? Someone loyal and true?"

"Someone blond?" I dryly asked. "Someone exactly like you, perhaps?"

My phone rang. Fearing another crisis, I whipped it from the pocket of my jacket. It was Jonah, probably calling to ensure I'd show up at the initiation. I turned off the phone and put it away again, but not before Lacey watched me with obvious curiosity.

"Are we keeping you from something?"

"I'm trying to solve a double murder," I reminded her. "Just checking in."

She smiled a little. "I have plenty of decades under my belt, Merit. Decades of having worked with him, watched him, known him. You think, what, eight months of being fanged is going to tell you what you need to know about a Master vampire? About what an immortal needs?" She arched her eyebrow in a perfect imitation of Ethan. "You're a child to him. A momentary interest."

If Lacey was working to make me even more insecure - to plant the seeds of doubt - she was doing a damned good job of it.

"Leave me alone," I said, my anger growing.

"No problem." She walked to the kitchen door. "Just remember, I don't trust you, and I'm keeping an eye out."

"What a witch," I muttered when she was gone, but I stood there in the kitchen for a moment, my hands shaking with vaulted anger. Was she right? Was I nothing more than a liability to Ethan?

No, I thought. He loved me, and he knew better than anyone what was or wasn't right for him and the House. He was a grown-up, by God. It wasn't like I'd somehow teased him into a relationship.

I snapped off the bottle cap and chugged the bottle of blood as I stood there, until the gremlin inside me quieted down again.

I presumed her plan was to make me crazy. To make me uncertain about our relationship until I drove Ethan crazy from neediness . . . or ended the relationship to "save" him.

Lacey had once called me a "common soldier," but she'd confused soldiering and martyrdom. My job was to stand strong for my House and my Master, not give myself away like a wilting violet because I was afraid I'd ruin him.

I wouldn't ruin him. Just as I'd told him before when he needed to be reminded, we were stronger together than we were apart. Two souls different from the rest who'd found solace in each other.

She couldn't take that away from us.

At least, I hoped she couldn't.

* * *

My mood soured and my nerves even more jangled, I walked downstairs to the Ops Room. Everyone but Juliet was in the room; it was her night for patrol, I guessed. Luc, now officially entrenched as Guard Captain again, sat at the head of the table, just as he usually did.

Lindsey's gaze found me when I walked into the room, and the question in her eyes was easy to read: What's Merit's emotional state now that Lacey has spent an evening in the House?

Since she was highly empathic, I didn't feel a need to inform her.

"Sentinel," Luc greeted me. "Glad to see you're here without your panties in an obvious twist."

"They're getting there," I said ominously. "Any word from the Ombud's office?"

"Not a lick. We thought we'd wait for you and give Jeff a call."

I sat down at the conference table. "Thanks. Let's do it."

Luc nodded and leaned over the table to the conference phone, where he hit the second speed-dial option.

"Who's number one?" I wondered.

"Saul's Pizza," Lindsey said. "You've ruined us for all other deep-dish."

Damn straight, I thought. Saul's was my favorite deep-dish joint in Chicago, a little hole-in-the-wall in Wicker Park, near Mallory's brownstone. I'd introduced it to the House.

"This is Jeff," Jeff answered appropriately.

I linked my fingers together as Lindsey moved the whiteboard closer. "Hey, Jeff. It's Merit in the Ops Room, on speakerphone as per usual."

"I've got an update. Which do you want first? Good news or bad news?"

"Bad news."

"The glass from the alley is a dead end. It's safety glass from the side window of a passenger vehicle. Could have been dozens of models, so it doesn't really tell us anything."

Bummer, but not entirely surprising. Lindsey erased GLASS from the whiteboard, and I suddenly felt I was playing a game show in which the prizes were disappearing with each wrong answer.

"What else did you find?" I asked.

"We checked out Oliver's and Eve's backgrounds. Nothing pops there. No arguments with neighbors, no personal feuds, no money problems. If the killer picked them for a reason, it's not obvious to us. But I'll send you the documents in case you want to review them."

Luc leaned forward. "That would be great, Jeff. Thanks. We've got a security consult in for the transition. Maybe we'll have him take a look."

"They're on their way. And now for the good news," Jeff said. "I was checking out satellite images of the registration center. Turns out there's a bank across the street. And banks have lots of security."

I crossed my fingers. "Tell me there's video, Jeff."

"There's video," he confirmed. "But not much of it. I'll send it to you."

By the time Luc had dabbled with his touch screen, it was already registering receipt of a new file. He hit the "play" button.

The video was grainy and dark, and it stuttered along more like time-lapse photography than film, but the setting was right. The shot was focused on the spot directly in front of the bank's ATM machine, but it caught the edge of the registration center across the street and the alley next to it.

"What's the timing?" Luc asked.

"This starts eight minutes before Oliver and Eve show up. Now, ignore the guy at the ATM, and watch the alley."

The guy at the ATM was broad shouldered and dark skinned, and he wore green scrubs as he cheerfully pulled cash from the ATM. He was easy on the eyes, but Jeff was right; the action was behind him.

Traffic rolled past the registration center across the street. Some of the cars pulled to the curb, where vampires spilled out to get into the line gathered outside the door.

"There they are," Luc said, pointing as Oliver and Eve hopped out of a car not far from the ATM and walked across the street, hand in hand. The car took off again.

My heart clutched. I wanted to urge them back into the car, and felt utterly powerless watching them walk into danger . . . and that much more determined to find their killer.