Drink Deep (Chicagoland Vampires 5)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE BEST PART OF WAKING UP . . . IS TYPE A IN YOUR CUP

I cal ed Keley on the way to give her an update about McKetrick and reached the House a bit too close to dawn for comfort. I ran from my car into the House, only barely realizing in my sun-fed exhaustion that the protestors had quieted, no doubt thanks to the two dozen camouflaged members of the National Guard who stood at equal points around the fence.

I immediately headed upstairs to fal into bed, but stopped at the second floor landing, and cast a glance at the third floor above me. Before my better judgment kicked in, I was drowsily climbing the stairs to the third floor, then tiptoeing down the hal way to the wing that held the consort's suite . . . and Ethan's rooms.

I stood in front the double doors to his apartment for just a moment, before pressing my palm to the door and my forehead to the cool wood.

God, I missed him. Jonah's kiss might have been glorious for that one moment of oblivion, but its wake was so much worse, miring me in thoughts of Ethan.

Without warning, the door slipped open.

I stood up again, heart pounding. I hadn't been in his rooms since the night he'd been kil ed. Some of his personal effects had been boxed up, but the rooms had otherwise been closed off. Frank had chosen other quarters and Malik and his wife had remained in their own.

I'd avoided Ethan's apartment altogether, thinking it was better to go cold turkey than become a phantom, haunting his rooms to foster the memories.

But tonight, after lightning and fairy queens and kisses and guns, I needed a different kind of oblivion.

I pushed the door open farther, and walked inside.

For a moment, I just stood in the doorway, eyes closed, drinking in the familiar scent. His sharp, clean cologne was giving way to the scents of cleaning polish and dust, but it stil lingered there, faint and fresh, like the whispers of a ghost.

I opened my eyes, closed the door behind me, and surveyed the room. It was nicely decorated, with expensive European furniture and furnishings, more like a boutique hotel than the rooms of a Master vampire.

I walked across the sitting room to the second set of double doors. These led into Ethan's bedroom. The sun now above the horizon, I walked inside and caught the lingering scent of him again. Before I could think better of it, my shoes and jacket were on the floor and I was crawling into his bed, tears spil ing from the familiar sensation of the linens and the scent of him that fil ed them.

I thought of the few times we'd made love, the tenuousness and joy of it, and the quirky, teasing smile he'd given me when he'd been pleased with something I'd done

- or something he'd done to me. His eyes were so bril iantly green, his mouth perfection, his body as finely hewn as any marble statue.

Wrapped in the scent of him, I smiled and savored the memories. There, in his bed in his darkened rooms, I fel asleep.

We were in a casino, surrounded by a cacophony of electronic chirps and flashing lights, jostled by a parade of smiling waitresses with trays of drinks in short glasses. I sat in front of a slot machine with dials tdivw f elechat spun in random increments, occasional y slowing to showcase a single image. A stake. A raindrop. A curl of fire.

Ethan stood beside me, a gold coin between his thumb and index finger. It spun slowly on its axis, the light catching each rotation like a gold-edged strobe light.

"Two sides of the coin," he said. "Heads and tails. Wrong and right. Good and evil." He lifted his gaze to me. "We al have choices, don't we?"

"Choices?"

"Between bravery or cowardice," he suggested.

"Ambition or contentment."

"I guess so."

"Which choice wil you make, Merit?"

I knew he meant something important, something heavy, but I couldn't tel what it was. "What choice do I have to make?"

With a flick of his thumb, he popped the coin into the air.

The ceiling seemed to rise as the coin flew upward, so that if gravity hadn't worked its peculiar magic, the coin might have lifted forever, never touching the ceiling. Over and over it flipped, heads and tails and heads again, catching the light with each rotation.

"Disappearing," Ethan said.

I watched the coin grow smal er in the distance, rising to infinity. "It isn't disappearing," I told him. "It's stil there. It's stil turning."

"Not the coin. Me."

The soft fear in his voice drew my eyes back to him. He was staring at his hands, now palm up in front of him.

Having thrown the coin in the air, Ethan was beginning to fade, the tips of his fingers dissolving into ash that fel onto the psychotical y patterned carpet below us.

"What's happening to you?" I couldn't do anything but stare as his fingers disappeared one mil imeter at a time.

Instead of screaming in horror or trying to stop it, I just gazed with clinical fascination, watching my lover being slowly erased into nothingness.

"I made my choice. I chose you."

Frantical y, fear rising in my gut, I shook my head. "How do I stop it?"

"I don't think you can. It's natural, isn't it? That we al devolve to ashes. To dust. And we're put away again." His attention was suddenly drawn away. He looked up and away at something across the room, his gaze widening farther.

"Ethan?"

His eyes snapped back to mine. "It's too dangerous.

Don't let them do it, Merit."

"Do what?"

"They'l take advantage. I think they're trying now." He looked down at his hands, now halfway turned to ash. "I think that's where I'm going."

"Ethan? I don't understand."

"I'm only ashes," he said. He looked at me again, and I felt my own panic final y rising at the fear - the honest-to-God fear - in his eyes.

"Ethan - "

Without warning, the disintegration accelerated, and he began to slip completely away, his last move the screaming of my name.

"Merit! "

I jolted awake in a cold sweat and a tangle of Ethan's blankets, dread sitting low in my stomach. It took a few moments to adjustentan to s to being awake again, to remember that it had been only a dream. That the horror wasn't real, but that he was stil gone.

The nightmares were coming faster now, no doubt the result of the stress I was feeling. I hadn't solved the problem yet, and there were potential y two more elemental dangers

- perhaps the biggest dangers - lurking out there. Earth and fire.

God forbid, I could figure something out before the city burned.

When my heart slowed again, I untangled myself from the blankets and walked to the bedroom window. The automatic shutters that covered it during the day had already lifted, revealing a gloriously dark sky, a couple of stars peeking through.