Blood Games (Chicagoland Vampires 10)

The other was the Master himself, who stood on the other side of the room, one hand on his hip, perusing a stack of papers as he removed his cuff links and placed them on a bureau.

I watched him, looking for a hint of worry or deceit, for the truth of what he’d seen on that small piece of paper.

Perhaps sensing my gaze, he looked up at me. “Sentinel?”

I had no idea what to say, but we’d been through many trials together, and this wasn’t the time to bury fear.

“The paper you found—it wasn’t a flyer for a restaurant.”

Ethan didn’t answer. He finished with his cuff links, began unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the flat, muscled plane of his abdomen.

“What would you like me to say?”

“Obviously, I’d like you to tell me the truth. What was in the note? Was it a message from the driver? Another threat?”

He watched me, his eyes colder than I’d seen them in a very long time. “Don’t you trust me, Sentinel?”

I felt like we were having two different conversations. “I want to know if someone is out there gunning for you.”

“It’s something I need to handle.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It’s the answer I’m prepared to give right now.” His features had tightened into Master vampire haughtiness, which drove me crazy. He looked at me, green eyes alight. “Do you think I’m not capable of handling my own problems? I managed to run this House before you were named Sentinel, and I can run it now.”

He wasn’t angry at me. But in true Sullivan style, he was pushing my buttons because he was angry at something else, and I was here.

That only irritated me more. I was here because I cared about him. Because I worried for him. My own anger rose swiftly.

“I don’t doubt it, or that you’ll push me away because you’re angry or afraid. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how you and I work, and it’s not how the House works.”

His expression went stony. “That’s how this will work.”

I took a step forward. “Ethan, you’re in danger. And if it’s a threat, I need to know about it. This isn’t something you pretend not to see.”

“No, it’s something I see very clearly, and something I’ll handle on my own.”

He turned, walked into the closet, where I heard the shuffling of fabric.

My eyelids felt suddenly heavier, both because of the rising of the sun and because this conversation was exhausting.

I walked to the closet, ignoring Ethan, kicked off my boots and pulled off my jacket. I left the rest of my clothes in a pile on the floor, pulled on a tank and shorts, and headed back to the bed. Ethan walked in and sat on the edge, wearing his Cadogan medal and emerald silk pajama bottoms, phone in his hand.

I stood there for a moment, waited until he put the phone down and looked up at me again.

“Come here, Sentinel,” he drowsily said, and I stepped between his thighs, threaded my fingers into his golden hair. Ethan wrapped his arms around me, rested his head against my chest.

“Be still,” he said. “For tonight, let’s both be still.”

The automatic shades closed over the windows with a mechanical buzz. I fell into bed beside Ethan, and he turned off the lamp, leaving us in darkness.

Chapter Five

BED-AND-BREAKFAST

I woke alone, Ethan’s side of the bed already cool.

That wasn’t necessarily a problem. Although vampires theoretically woke when the sun set, in reality there was some variation. Ethan always woke earlier than me, so it wasn’t unusual for him to begin work before I’d been dragged back into consciousness.

Still. I felt like there was something between us, and I didn’t look forward to dragging it out of him.

Maybe, like Ethan, I could avoid it for just a little while.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, typed out a message for Jonah: AWAKE. YOU READY TO INVESTIGATE?

While I waited for an answer, I scanned the dailies, the schedule, alerts, and other info Luc provided to guards every evening. “Fret over GP” wasn’t listed, but I’d put good money on the possibility it would fit into the schedule somehow.

My phone beeped when Jonah responded. I HAVE SOURCE IN MIND, BUT PARKING’S IFFY. PICK YOU UP IN AN HOUR?

DONE, I told him, and climbed off the bed to get dressed.

Since I’d be out and investigating, I skipped the Cadogan black suit for jeans, a long, dark tank, and my leather jacket against the spring chill. When my hair was brushed and gleaming, my medal was in place, and my katana was in hand, I headed downstairs to the House’s first floor.

I paused at the first-floor landing, eyes closed and a hand on the banister, reveling in the scent of freshly cooked bacon. The back of the House’s first floor was filled by a school-style cafeteria that served more shade-grown, free-range, organic nonsense than a processed-food lover like me usually preferred to eat. Thankfully, though, Margot rarely skipped the bacon. If that’s because we were friends, it was fine by me.

My stomach growled with hunger, undiminished by the small thread of worry woven in my thoughts. There’d been at least one threat against Ethan, and I suspected the note was a second. But he wouldn’t give me the details, and I wasn’t confident he’d tell anyone else.

Well, screw that. He had to either tell me or tell Luc. I could live with either. The latter would sting, but I could live with it.

What kind of threat couldn’t he tell me about? If it was about me, he’d have locked me away in the apartments; there’d be no avoiding it. If it was against the House, he’d have told me and Luc, probably in a meeting.

Perhaps, I thought, as I walked to his office, the issue wasn’t the nature of the threat, but its source. Someone he didn’t want me to know about? A former enemy? I didn’t doubt that Ethan had them, but the only ones I was aware of were deceased, or he’d already challenged them. Celina Desaulniers, the former Master of Navarre House, was dead by my hand. He’d outright challenged Darius. The vampire who made him, whom I knew only as Balthasar, had been a monster, but he was dead.

I peeked in the open doorway, found the office empty. Since my stomach growled insistently, I walked to the cafeteria at the end of the hallway. It was arranged in college fashion—a buffet line of food on one side, wooden chairs and tables on the other. The back wall was glass, picture windows that looked out on the Cadogan grounds. The world outside was dark, but landscape lights and torches lit the spring grounds like a fancy resort.