Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires 11)

“Focus,” I said. Since Jonah kept his gaze on me as he approached, I kept my gaze on him.

“Hello,” he said, eyes dipping to take in the gown, the lace, the skin. “You look nice.”

“Thanks. So do you.”

I felt the burst of Ethan’s magic across the tent. Party guests noticed, too, and began whispering, just as if we’d actually broken up. The ruse had played pretty well.

“If you touch her,” said a familiar voice in my earpiece, “you’ll lose something more precious than a finger.”

“Take a breath, Sullivan,” Jonah intoned, his gaze on me. He slid his hands into his pockets, and I braced myself for the worst, for him to ask me to return the saints’ medal he’d given me to mark my RG membership.

But his tone was utterly bland. “Any sign of Balthasar yet?”

I surmised he was still angry, whether at me, the RG, or the circumstances.

Since I was utterly in the right, I kept my tone flat and businesslike. “Not yet. But we believe he’s a vampire by the name of Julien Burrows who once knew Balthasar. Like Balthasar, he was imprisoned by the Memento Mori, but he escaped and disappeared.”

“That’s new.”

“Hot off the presses,” I said. “Jeff found the link a little while ago.”

“The Masters are here,” Ethan said through the earpiece. “Let’s begin the ceremony and see if that draws him out.”

*   *   *

They gathered on a dais at the end of the tent—three Master vampires in tuxedoes, all of them handsome beyond any human measure or level of appropriateness.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ethan said, “thank you for joining us here tonight. We come to begin a new tradition, to celebrate the Investiture of the Chicago Masters into the American Assembly of Masters.”

“Hear, hear!” shouted voices across the crowd of vampires, who filtered into the tent to hear the ceremony. None of them were Balthasar.

“Just as our American forefathers did nearly three hundred years ago, we have relieved ourselves of interests that didn’t align with our own, men and women who sought to keep their power intact at all costs and to the detriment of the American Houses. Tonight, we celebrate the beginning of a new era.” Ethan raised his glass of champagne. “To Cadogan, to Grey, to Navarre!”

“To Cadogan, to Grey, to Navarre!” they repeated, and clapped wildly for their Masters while I scanned the crowd for danger.

“Anything, Sentinel?” asked Luc through the earpiece.

“Nothing at all,” I responded, covering the answer with my champagne glass. “Maybe the ceremony’s too ceremonial. Maybe he’s biding his time.” But for what?

Ethan handed the microphone to Scott. “We have vowed,” Scott said, “to protect the vampires of our Houses, to support their happiness, their freedom. We reiterate those vows here, and now, and pledge that our membership in the Assembly is intended solely to foster those goals. We pledge to reject any action, any resolution, that would harm our vampires. We pledge to keep our vampires’ interests at the forefront of our minds in all decisions.”

Scott passed the microphone to Morgan. “We take these vows here, before you whom we serve, before the Novitiates we have made, before our colleagues and friends”—he looked at Scott and Ethan—“before the other Masters with whom we share this city, because if we cannot hold the city safe, we have failed not just our vampires but each other.”

Morgan and Ethan shared a long and intense look before Morgan turned to the crowd once again. “We make these vows to you, our Novitiates, tonight. May our Houses eternally prosper, may we eternally serve, and may our vampires enjoy eternally good health.”

“Hear, hear,” Ethan said, and the vampires burst into applause again.

And still there was no sign of Balthasar.

*   *   *

Another hour passed, and I was getting more nervous. Mallory, Catcher, Jonah, and I noshed on puffs of this and slivers of that, and scanned the crowd surreptitiously for some sign of him. But he wasn’t there. And maybe he wouldn’t be.

I sighed. “Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe this was too obvious, too much a trap.” Maybe, I feared, I’d gotten it wrong from the beginning, and this wasn’t the way to do it. Maybe we’d have to call him out.

“Some ops require patience,” Catcher said, and I looked at him.

“You’ve been talking to my grandfather, haven’t you?”