Blood Games (Chicagoland Vampires 10)

“What does that tell you about the person who magicked it?”

“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out. First impression? Someone who’s versed in different schools of magic, but not just academically. There’s a certain creativity here—a willingness to mix the different styles. Like jazz. This was, kind of, a magical riff.”

“Is this the work of a sorcerer?” There was concern behind the question, and from her expression, she realized it. A rogue sorcerer was bad enough; a rogue sorcerer helping unknown parties control vampires was much, much worse.

“It could be,” she said. “This improvisational magic—you have to have a certain level of experience and knowledge to do that. Otherwise every third grader with a plastic recorder would be a Coltrane. But you don’t have to be a sorcerer—the way we define it—to make magic. Spells, charms, herbalism. Those are approaches to magic that we can use, but we aren’t the only ones.”

“So we have the what, but not really the who?”

She smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. It’s possible I’ll get something else out of it, but there’s not a guidebook I can use for this. I kind of have to make it up as I go along.” She pointed at me. “Now, if you can get me something from a suspect, I could see if the magicks match.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“I will say this: To get involved in that kind of vampire drama—that level of vampire drama?—they’d demand a price. Money, power . . . I don’t know. But it would be steep.”

I nodded, thinking of the GP—its current members all based in Europe. They seemed the most likely to have the connections, resources, and opportunity to hijack Darius’s brain.

I realized I hadn’t yet heard from my dad about the Swiss account to which the U.S. money had been transferred, and sent him a follow-up message. I felt a little guilty asking him for help when I hadn’t seen him in weeks. On the other hand, he’d tried to bribe Ethan to make me a vampire, and he was still working off that particular debt.

“Does the Order have any contact with their European counterparts?” The Order was the American union of sorcerers.

“Once upon a time,” Mallory said, leaning forward and linking her hands on the table, “there was this little thing called the American Revolution.”

“I’m vaguely familiar.”

She stuck out her tongue. “The answer is no. They don’t communicate. Postrevolutionary bitterness.”

“One if by land, grouchy if by sea.”

“Exactly.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “We should get going. I told them we’d be there around ten.” She uncrossed her legs and hopped off the stool. I followed her upstairs to the living room, where she grabbed a jacket from the back of the love seat. “We’re leaving,” she told Catcher.

He looked up from his spot on the other couch, already tucked in with a bottle of 312 beer and a magazine. “Did you take out the trash?”

“What? Oh, sorry, can’t hear you . . .” she mumbled, grabbing her keys and purse and hustling me outside.

I guessed she wasn’t taking out the trash.

* * *

“Sounds like things are back to normal with you and Catcher,” I said as we walked down the stairs to the sidewalk.

“Things are domestic.” At my look of concern, she waved me off.

“It’s not a bad thing, just an adjustment. You’ve seen him mostly naked. He has the body of a god, Merit. Seriously—he has muscles I didn’t even know existed. Very nommable hills and valleys. And he’s going on about the trash.”

Ethan and I hadn’t really had the opportunity to argue about the trash—both because we usually had too much other drama to deal with and, frankly, because he hired staff to do that kind of thing. Helen, the House’s den mother, managed the general upkeep of the centuries-old building, so Ethan and I hadn’t once had to argue about the vacuuming or the dishes. Considering my preference for equality and his imperial nature, I bet those conversations would have been frequent and unpleasant.

Score one for Helen.

“Car’s right here,” I said, gesturing, but she waved me on and kept walking toward Division.

“It’s, like, six blocks away. We’ll chat, get a little exercise.” She hooked an arm through mine. “Now, give me all the dish at Cadogan House.”

There was, of course, a lot to tell, at least as far as my relationship was concerned. As we walked past the town houses of Wicker Park—tall, narrow, and brick, with cute stoops and tiny patches of green in front—I told her about Ethan and the mysterious woman in his past.

“So he’s got a mysterious lady in his past, and she’s making threats because she doesn’t want him to lead the GP?” She kicked a rock, sent it skipping down the sidewalk. “Were they lovers?”

Mallory wasn’t one to mince words, which was exactly why I’d told her. “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t matter to me if she was. I mean, I accept that he has a past. I wasn’t a saint before we met.”

She slid me a glance.

“I wasn’t.”

“You were a nerdy English lit student; you were as close as it gets without beatification. But keep going.”

For the sake of my emotional well-being, I ignored my urge to fight the point, got us back on track. “I can live with Ethan’s past, his ego, the fact that he’s an alpha. But he’s pushing me away about this, and I don’t understand why.”

“You really don’t see it?” she asked, spritely dodging a suspicious brown pile in the middle of the sidewalk.

“See what?”

“His problem. To not put too fine a point on it, he’s a control freak. I don’t mean that in a bad way. He works hard to protect what’s his, and now he’s trying to extend that range of protection. He’s trying to exert his sizable will on the GP, the Houses in Europe and the U.S.

“But he’s got people from his past—including this crazy woman—coming out of the woodwork. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he’s vulnerable—or that you are—and she knows exactly what buttons to push. She knows how to get to Ethan. And that scares the shit out of him. Especially now, the very time he’s trying to prove how strong and powerful and fearless he is. That’s like a Darth Sullivan tornado of horrors.”