Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires 11)

I got to mine first, saw Luc’s number, switched it to speaker. “Merit.”

Luc’s nose loomed on the screen. “Sorry to interrupt date night.”

I grimaced at the image. “Step back from the camera. We don’t need to see your sinuses.”

“Sorry,” he said, leaning back so his nose moved back into proper perspective, right in the middle of his very charming face, which was surrounded by tousled blond-brown curls. “You’re alone?”

“We’re with Catcher and Mallory,” I said, then glanced around to ensure that no curious humans were eavesdropping. “We can talk. What’s going on?”

“Media vans at the House. Four of them. Mess of reporters, all gathered at the gate, ready and waiting.” Luc’s pause, matched with his drawn expression, made me nervous. “They’re asking questions about Balthasar.”

opened his mouth, closed it again. “Likely not.”

“And there you go.”

“A vampire cannot survive on Italian hot beefs and Mallocakes alone.”

“Speak for yourself, fancy pants.”

“I’m not fancy,” Ethan said imperiously. “I’m particular. Which is actually a compliment to you.”

“He did pick you after four hundred years of wild-oat sowing,” Catcher said, earning an elbow from Mallory. He grunted, but he was smiling when he lay back on the blanket, hands crossed behind his head.

“You make it sound like Ethan picked her up at a farmers’ market,” Mallory complained.

“That would require Merit to eat vegetables,” Ethan said, grinning at me. “Could you differentiate between a rutabaga and rhubarb?”

“Yes, but only because my grandmother made the best strawberry-rhubarb pie I’ve ever tasted.”

“I don’t think that counts.”

“Oh, it counts,” I said with a nod. “That pie was sublime. I’ve got solid culinary chops.”

“My culinarily chopped vampire missed a spot of powdered sugar,” Ethan said, leaning forward, swiping his thumb across my lips just slowly enough to heat my blood.

“Get a room,” Catcher groused. He was grouchy but loyal, and had followed Mallory through her stint as a Maleficent wannabe and on to the other side. He was also unfailingly dedicated to my much-beloved grandfather, which gave him points in my book.

But I still gave him the much-deserved stink eye. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen you naked? You and Mallory considered the entire house your personal love shack.” Mallory and I had been roommates once upon a time, before Catcher had moved into the town house we’d shared, and I’d moved into Cadogan House to escape the nudity.

“Your”—I waved my hand at his body—“rod and tackle touched pretty much everything in the place.”

“My body is a wonderland” was his only response.

“Be that as it may,” Ethan said, “Merit is not your Alice. I’ll thank you to keep your rod and tackle away from her.”

“Nowhere near my agenda,” Catcher assured him.

Ethan’s phone beeped, and he pulled it out quickly, checked the screen.

“Just a media inquiry,” he said, tucking it away again.

Every phone call put us on high alert, because a ghost—or someone pretending to be one—had staked a claim on our lives. That ghost was Balthasar, the vampire who, on a battlefield nearly four hundred years ago, had made Ethan immortal and nearly turned him into a monster in his own image. Ethan had escaped his maker, made a new life for himself, and believed Balthasar had died shortly after he had escaped. Ethan hadn’t yet told me the details, but he hadn’t indicated any doubts about Balthasar’s death.

And yet, three weeks ago, a note had been left in our top-floor apartments in Cadogan House. A note purporting to be from Balthasar, who was alive and excited to see Ethan again.

A note . . . and then nothing.

He’d made no contact since then, and we’d found no evidence he was alive, much less in Chicago and waiting for an opportunity to wreak havoc, to wage war, to exert control over Ethan once again.