Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires 11)

Catcher took a step forward. “You’re going to want to watch your tone, Sullivan.”

“And you’ll want to make sure your magic functions the way it’s supposed to.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Catcher said. “You can see the ward as well as she can, and it’s not been breached. Can you not tell that she’s exhausted?”

I looked at Mallory, for the first time saw the dark shadows beneath her eyes.

“A ward for a structure this large doesn’t operate automatically,” Catcher said, quieter now. “It takes energy to maintain it.”

But Ethan couldn’t see past his fear. “If the wards are in place, how did he get to her? How the fuck did he get to her?”

“Ethan,” I said softly, “he didn’t get past the wards.”

“Maybe it was just a bad dream,” Catcher said. Now Catcher’s protectiveness was making him stupid.

“Do you honestly think I can’t tell the difference between a bad dream and someone in my mind? Someone attacking? Because I have to say, there’s a pretty big difference.”

“All right,” Mallory said, and when Catcher muttered a curse, slugged him in the arm. “I said all right! Everybody take a step back. Something awful has happened here tonight, and you know Merit wouldn’t cry wolf. If she says it happened, then it happened. So instead of griping about it, we figure out what the hell it was. All right?”

When no one answered, she poked Catcher in the arm with a finger. “All right?”

struggled to understand. “You mean to say it was a dream?”

“It wasn’t a dream.” His voice had been kind, the question well intentioned. But it hit me wrong, and my voice was shaking with defensiveness.

I shook my head, collected myself, found my voice. “It wasn’t a dream,” I said again. “It was real. I don’t know how it was real, but it was.”

He frowned. “How are you so sure?”

I lifted fingers to my cheek. I didn’t want to tell him what Balthasar had done, incite him just as I suspected Balthasar wanted me to do, but he deserved the truth. And, more important, we needed to figure out what had happened.

“He slapped me. I could see the mark in the bathroom mirror.”

That flash of cold magic again, but Ethan stayed absolutely silent, clearly holding his temper in check.

I glanced around the bedroom, at the seemingly solid walls, at the fact that I was still in a tank and pajama bottoms, not the white linen shift Balthasar had put me in. But it had felt real. Impossibly real.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter?” His tone was icy now, that fury only barely banked, his eyes like cold green glass, nearly translucent and undeniably deadly. “It doesn’t matter that he hurt you? That he assaulted you?”

“To Balthasar,” I clarified. “It doesn’t matter to Balthasar, because I don’t matter to Balthasar. He doesn’t care about me.” I looked up at him. “He’s using me to get to you. To show that he’s powerful. To prove that he can still hurt you. To prove that he could get to me just as he did Persephone. That he could ruin something else of yours, force your hand against him.”

“Hurting you doesn’t gain him anything.”

“But it does,” I said. “He doesn’t think you’ll run away this time, but that you’ll stay and fight, because you love me more than you loved Persephone. He believes he’ll win, Ethan. That he’ll kill you and stake a claim on the House. He’s decided he wants it, that he’s owed it, and he’ll take it however he can.”

There was a knock at the door. Ethan moved to answer it. Mallory rushed in, Catcher behind her, both of them in Cadogan T-shirts. She wore pajama bottoms; he wore jeans. Ethan must have called them while I was in the bathroom.

“What happened?” she asked. I could tell she debated whether to touch me, to embrace me, and held herself back.

“Balthasar attacked her. He got to her in this room, in this House, and I want to know how that happened.”

“Attacked her?” She looked me over, eyes wide with concern. “Jesus, Merit. What happened?”

“He got to her,” Ethan repeated, “while she slept in our bed.”

Mallory looked at me, then the room’s exterior wall. Her expression transmuted from horror to utter confusion. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean. There’s no breach in the ward. He couldn’t have gotten in.”