Hard Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires 4)

"Off-duty Cadogan Sentinel at your service. Come on in."

She hit the bed. I shut the door behind her.

One of our earliest dates as new friends had been a night in her room with pizza and reality television. It wasn't exactly cerebral, but it gave us a chance to be silly for a little while, to be concerned with which celebutante was dating which rock star or who was winning this week's crazy challenge . . . instead of worrying about which groups of people were trying to kill us. The latter was exhausting after a while.

I flipped on my tiny television (my Sentinel stipend at work) and changed the channel to tonight's reality opera, which involved male contestants solving puzzles so they could escape from an island of ex-girlfriends.

It was high-quality stuff. Classy stuff.

I joined Linds on the bed and pulled a pillow behind my head.

"How was the meeting with Tate?" she asked.

"Drama, drama, drama. Luc will fill you in.

Suffice it to say, Ethan could be in Cook County lockup next week."

"Sullivan may have a heart of coal, but I bet he looks really good in orange. And stripes.

Rawr," she said, curling her fingers like a cat.

Lindsey was even less convinced that Ethan had had a legitimate post-breakup change of heart. But that didn't make him any less pretty.

"I'm sure he'll appreciate your compliments when he's climbing into that jumpsuit," I said.

"Although Luc might get jealous."

As a guard, Luc was Lindsey's boss. He was tall and touslehaired, his dark blond locks sun streaked from years, I imagined, as a bootswearing cowboy on some high-plains ranch where cattle and horses outnumbered humans and vampires. Luc kept the boots after becoming a vampire, and he'd developed a monumental crush on Lindsey. Long story short, nothing had come of it until the attack on the House. Then they started spending more time together.

I didn't think it was uberserious - more like a movie night here, a snack at sunset there. But it did seem like he'd finally managed to push through the emotional barriers she'd erected to keep him at a distance. I completely approved of that development. Luc had pined pretty hard; it was about time he tasted victory.

"Luc can take care of himself," Lindsey said, her voice dry.

"He'd enjoy it more if you were doing the caring."

Lindsey held up a hand. "Enough boy talk. If you keep harping about Luc, I'm going to hit you with a Sullivan one-two combination, in which case I'll be quizzing you about his hot bod and emotional iciness for the rest of the evening."

"Spoilsport." I pouted, but let it go. I knew she wasn't completely convinced about Luc, even if she was spending more time with him, and I didn't want to push her too far too fast. And to be fair, just because I thought they'd be good together didn't mean she was obligated to date him. It was her life, and I could respect that.

So I let it go and settled into a comfy position beside her, and then let my mind drift on the waves of prerecorded, trashy television. As relaxation went, it didn't exactly rank up there with a hotrock massage and mud bath, but a vampire took what a vampire could get.

Chapter Five

DOWN BY THE RIVER

When I awoke again, I dressed in my personal uniform - jeans and a tank top over high-heeled boots, my Cadogan medal, my sword, and my beeper - and headed out.

I stopped at the House gate, intending to get a sense of the gauntlet I'd have to walk to get to my car. One of the two fairies at the gate guessed my game.

"They are quiet tonight," he said. "Ethan planned ahead."

I glanced over at him. "He planned ahead?"

The fairy pointed down the street. I peeked outside the gate, smiling when I realized Ethan's strategy. A food truck hawking Italian beefs was parked at the corner, a dozen protesters standing beside it, sandwiches in hand, their signs propped against the side of the truck.

Ethan must have made a phone call.

"Hot beef in the name of peace," I murmured, then hustled across the street to my ride, a boxy orange Volvo. The car was old and had seen better days, but it got me where I needed to go.

Tonight, I needed to go south.

You'd think a name as fancy as "Ombudsman" (which really meant "liaison") would have gotten my grandfather a nice office in some fancy city building in the Loop.

But Chuck Merit, cop turned supernatural administrator, was a man of the people, supernatural or otherwise. So instead of a swank office with a river view, he had a squat brick building on the South Side in a neighborhood where the lawns were surrounded by chain-link fences.

Normally, the street was quiet. But tonight, cars spilled across the office's yard and down the street a couple of blocks. I'd seen my grandfather surrounded by cars before - at his house in the midst of a water-nymph catfight. Those vehicles had been roadsters with recognizable vanity plates; these were beat-up, harddriven vehicles with rusty bumpers and paint splatter.

I parked and made my way across the yard.

The door was unlocked, unusual for the office, and music - Johnny Cash's rumbling voice - echoed throughout.

The building's decor was all 1970s, but the problems were modern and paranormally driven.

So, I assumed, were the boxy men and women who mingled in the hallways, plastic cups of orange drink in hand. They turned and stared at me as I wove through them, their smallish eyes watching as I walked down the hallway. Their features were similar, like they might have been cousins related by common grandparents. All had slightly porcine faces, upturned noses, and apple cheeks.

On my way back to the office Catcher shared with Jeff Christopher - an adorable shifter with mad tech skills and a former crush on me - I passed a large table of fruit: spears of pineapple and red-orange papaya in a watermelon bowl; blood orange slices dotted with pomegranate seeds; and a pineapple shell full of blueberries and grapes. Snacks for the office guests, I assumed.

"Merit!" Jeff's head popped out from a doorway, and he beckoned me inside. I squeezed through a few more men and women and into the office. Catcher was nowhere in sight.

"We saw you on the security monitor," Jeff said, moving to the chair behind his bank of computer monitors. His brown hair was getting longer, and nearly reached his shoulders now. It was straight and parted down the middle, and currently tucked behind his ears. Jeff had paired a button-up shirt, as he always did, with khakis, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, presumably to give him room to maneuver over his monstrous keyboard. Jeff was tall and lanky, but what he lacked in mass he more than made up for in fighting skills. He was a shifter, and a force to be reckoned with.