To have rejected me so handily, you seem oddly curious now.
I cringed, and opted for acquiescence. Now was not the time to fight. I was coming by to talk to you, as you asked. I knocked. I didn't mean to intrude.
The room quieted, and Amber suddenly cried out, made a pouty moue of disappointment, maybe that he'd stopped thrusting.
Downstairs. An obvious order. When he said it, when that single word echoed through my head, I'd swear I heard it again, that tiny twinge of disappointment.
And suddenly I wanted to fix that. I wanted to heal that disappointment, to ease it. To comfort. That thought was as dangerous as any other I'd had, so I pushed away from the wall and crept back through the room. As I neared the door to the hallway, the rhythmic creak of the bed began again. I left Ethan's apartments and closed the door behind me.
I was in the foyer when he arrived. I'd taken a seat next to the fireplace - a larger version of the one in his apartments - and curled up with the copy of the Canon I'd stowed in my messenger bag. I flipped absently through its pages, working to wipe the images of him, the sound of him, from my mind.
At least, that was what I was trying to do.
He was back in black, skipping the suit coat for trousers and a white button-up, the top button undone to reveal the Cadogan medal around his neck. The front of his hair was pulled back in a tight band, the rest just hitting the top of his shoulders.
I dropped my gaze back to my book.
"Found something . . . productive to do?" His tone was unmistakably haughty.
"As you might have noticed," I said lightly, turning a page in the Canon despite the fact that I hadn't read the one before it, "my plans to talk to the boss didn't quite pan out."
I forced myself to look up at him, to offer him a smile, to play off what could easily become a profoundly embarrassing moment. Ethan didn't return the smile, but he seemed to incrementally relax. Maybe he'd expected a spectacle, a jealous rant. And maybe that wasn't so far-fetched as I might want to admit.
Beneath hooded lashes, he offered, "I believe I'm sated for the day, if you'd care to chat now."
I nodded.
"Good. Shall we discuss this upstairs?"
My head snapped up.
He smiled tightly. "A joke, Merit. I do have a sense of humor." But it hadn't sounded like a joke, still didn't sound like he was kidding.
Ethan offered his office, so I unfolded my legs and stood. We made it as far as the stairs, but stopped short when Catcher and Mallory walked through the front door. He held paper bags and what looked like a newspaper under one arm; she held a foam tray of paper cups.
I sniffed the air. Food. Meat, if my vampire instincts were correct.
"If you think that's true," Catcher was telling her, "then I've been giving you more credit than you deserve."
"Magic or no magic, you're a dillhole."
The handful of Cadogan vamps in the foyer, to a one, stopped to stare at the blue- haired woman who was swearing in their House. Catcher put his free hand at the small of her back.
"She's adjusting to her magic, folks. Just ignore her."
They chuckled and returned to their business, which I assumed was looking posh and very, very busy.
Catcher and Mallory walked toward us. "Vamps," he said in greeting.
I checked my watch, noted it was nearly four in the morning, and wondered why Mallory wasn't tucked into bed, presumably with her escort. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm taking a couple weeks off work. McGettrick owes me fourteen weeks of accumulated vacation. I figured I was due."
I looked at Catcher. "And you. Don't you have work to do?"
He gave me a sardonic glance and pushed the bags of food against my chest. "I am working," he said, then looked at Ethan. "I brought food. Let's chat."
Ethan looked dubiously at the paper bags. "Food?"
"Hot dogs." When Ethan didn't respond, Catcher cupped his hands together. "Frankfurters. Sausages. Meat tube, surrounded by a baked mass of carbohydrates. Stop me if this sounds familiar, Sullivan. You live in Chicago for Christ's sake."
"I'm familiar," Ethan said drily. "My office."
The bags were filled with Chicagoland's finest - foil-wrapped hot dogs in poppy seed buns, coated in relish and onions and hot peppers. I took a seat on the leather couch and bit in, closing my eyes in rapture. "If you weren't taken, I'd date you myself."
Mallory chuckled. "Which one of us were you talking to, hon?"
"I think she meant the dog," Catcher said, munching on a curly fry. "It's amazing she's as small as she is when she eats like that."
"Sick, isn't it? It's her metabolism. It has to be. She eats like a horse, and she never exercises. Well, she never used to exercise, but that was before she became Ninja Jane."
"You two are dating?" Across the room, where Ethan was pulling a plate from his bar cabinet, he froze and stared back at us, his face a little paler than usual.
I grinned down at my frank. "Don't choke on it, Sullivan. She's dating Catcher, not you."
"Yes, well . . . congratulations." He joined us on the couch, deposited a hot dog on a dinner plate of fine platinum-banded china. Frowning, he began sawing at it with a knife and fork, then carefully ate a chunk.
"Sullivan, just pick it up."
He glanced at me, spearing a chunk of hot dog with his fork. "My way is more genteel."
I took another gigantic bite, and told him between chews, "Your way is more tight ass."
"Your respect for me, Sentinel, is astounding."
I grinned at him. "I'd respect you more if you took a bite of that dog."
"You don't respect me any."
Not entirely true, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of a correction. "Like I said, I'd respect you more. More than none."
I smiled and turned back to Mallory and Catcher, who, heads cocked, stared at both of us. "What?"
"Nothing," they simultaneously said.
Ethan finally acquiesced, picking up the dog and taking a bite, managing not to spill condiments on his fancy pants. He chewed contemplatively, then took another bite, then another.
"Better?"
He grunted, which I took as a sound of hedonistic fulfillment.
Without raising his gaze from the dog in his hands, Ethan asked, "I assume you have some reason for showing up on my doorstep two hours before dawn?"
Catcher dusted crumbs from his hands, picked up the newspaper he'd laid beside him, and unfolded it. The headline of the Sun-Times read: Second Girl Dead; Vamp Killer?