Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

Luc was waiting in the basement when we walked into the House again. We were actually running pretty high, so the dour expression on his face wiped the smiles off ours.

“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked, and Luc slid his gaze to me.

“We found him.”

Ethan looked puzzled, but I knew exactly who he’d meant. “The Rogue?”

Luc nodded, handed me a sheet of paper. Pale skin. Short brown hair. Brown eyes. No beard when this was taken. McDONALD HOUSE was printed across the top of the page. LOGAN HILL was printed across the bottom.

“Logan Hill,” I said. “He was in McDonald House.” McDonald was based in Boston, and one of the oldest Houses in the U.S. Second only to Navarre, if I remembered correctly. It looked like the database search had been successful after all.

Luc nodded. “Matched the eyes. I don’t know if he goes by that name now. Almost certainly not. But once upon a time, he did.”

“Why’d he leave McDonald?” Ethan asked.

“Insubordination. I talked to Will.” That would be Will McDonald, Master of the eponymous House. “He said Hill wasn’t a team player. Lots of skill, but lots of ego that ultimately didn’t work well in the House system.”

“Caleb Franklin and his killer,” I said. “Both supernatural misfits, and both fell in with Adrien Reed. It’s like he’s a magnet for sociopaths.”

“Yeah,” Luc said. “We just need to find his sorcerer. I know this isn’t much, but I wanted you to know that he has an identity now. A name. A file with NAVR, which we will be updating.”

I gave the picture one last look and handed it back to Luc. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He nodded, and Ethan put an arm around me.

“It seems like all this is going to come to a head pretty soon,” Luc said. “We may not find him by then—this Logan. But sooner or later, we’ll find him.”

I doubted we’d have to wait that long. He’d probably find us first. But for now, we had bigger concerns.

“Put him on the back burner,” I said. “We have bigger news.”

“Oh?” Luc glanced between us.

o;We can do it in five,” Gabriel said, and waited until she’d left before opening the box.

Gabriel pulled out a single folded piece of paper. Without a word, but with an eyebrow arched, he opened it . . . then handed it to me.

On the piece of torn paper, hastily scribbled, was a list of alchemical symbols.

“Damn,” I whispered, staring at the slanted writing when he offered it to me. “It’s a cipher.”

“You’re sure?” Ethan’s voice, for the first time in days, held a note of hope.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” I held it out so they could both see it, pointed to the first column of scribbles. “These are the icons—the hieroglyphs that are specific to the sorcerer—and what they mean.”

Which meant Caleb Franklin had either found the list or translated the hieroglyphs and put them in a safe-deposit box Gabriel could access.

“Why a safe-deposit box?” Ethan asked. “Why not just tell you what was going on?”

“He tried,” Gabriel said, his words heavy with guilt.

We both looked at him.

“He called me the night before he was killed. I didn’t call him back. Meant to, but got occupied with other things.” He paused, shook his head. “No, that’s not honest. I put it off, because I thought he’d offer more excuses and justifications, and I didn’t want to hear them. But that’s not what he was offering. He learned what Reed was going to do, or some of it, and he wanted to stop it. And they killed him for it.”

“He probably tried to intervene at Wrigleyville,” Ethan said. “Prevent them from finishing the alchemy.”

Gabriel nodded. “And instead they finished him.”