“Well, that’s good news,” Connor said.
“Yeah,” I said.
Connor looked at me. “Why do you sound suspicious? She used the code word.”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I said. “Occam’s razor, right? The simplest answer is usually the correct one. We didn’t hear any other vehicles at the gate, and Gwen found a path through the grass. So I can buy she walked out on her own. She didn’t know us and took a chance when she could. But that’s it? After everything that went down, she waits nearly a day to tell Roger, and then doesn’t explain what happened? And there’s no apology for getting us mixed up in it?”
“I’m not a cop, but I don’t think criminal informants are known for their empathy. And she’s laying low. Maybe she didn’t have time for details.”
“It’s a text message,” I pointed out. “She can send a text while hunkered down. It’s not like she has to traipse over to the telegraph office.”
“Would one traipse to a telegraph office?”
I smiled against my better judgment. “I don’t know.” I sighedand tried to shake off the suspicion. “I should be grateful—Rose is safe, so we didn’t fuck up our mission last night.”
“You didn’t fuck it up either way,” Connor said. “But her being alive also means her gangland friends didn’t get her—and they’re going to keep looking. They may have more ghosts in store.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought of that.”
He leaned over, kissed my forehead. “We’ll get you a coffee. Then we’ll go talk to vampires and dead people.”
Because—and I can’t stress that enough—those were two very different things.
***
Since I was feeling less guilty, we grabbed coffee from a Leo’s drive-through. It was my favorite coffee place, and I was well and thoroughly addicted. It had also been one of my best ideas—and greatest victories—to request an all-you-can-drink card from Leo’s as a “signing bonus” when I’d joined the Ombuds.
Cadogan House was, I guess, my ancestral home. It was a white stone mansion in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, situated near the front of a rolling lawn of manicured gardens and lush greenery, and bordered by an imposing wall and gate.
I paused as we walked through it, having been waved inside by the guards who’d known me for years. My second important gate of the week, and this time one I passed through easily.
The door was opened by a clutch of vampires on their way out. I didn’t recognize any of them.
I guessed they were Initiates. Vampires who’d become Novitiates—full members of Cadogan House—following their Commendation. It wasn’t a step I’d taken, and I had no regrets about that decision. I loved my parents but didn’t want to be beholden to a Master vampire. That wasn’t the life for me.
They smiled at us, and I heard the whispers as we walked into the House, which smelled tonight of gardenias and cinnamon.
“That’s their daughter,” they murmured. “And the prince.”
A totally innocuous comment, but one that made me wish I had a title, too. I could be Princess Elisa. Oh, yes. Just pass me a crown. I’d rock that and a scepter, too.
The house was bright and cheerful, with gorgeous art and crown molding, and enormous flowers on a pedestal table just behind the antique security desk. “They’re waiting in the Master’s office,” said the vampire at the desk, and we walked over gleaming hardwoods down the hallway to the House’s administrative offices.
Although my father had updated the furnishings—design styles apparently weren’t immortal—the office’s layout hadn’t changed over the years. There was a desk, a sitting area, a long conference table, and a long bank of windows that looked over the lawn. The storage boxes on one end were new, though. That would need some interrogating.
My parents stood together with Uncle Malik when we walked in, my dad’s hand on Uncle Malik’s shoulder as they laughed about something together. Uncle Malik wasn’t my biological uncle, but he was family in every way that mattered. He’d been my dad’s second in command before becoming a Master in his own right and starting Washington House, so he’d been in Cadogan—and a crucial part of the running of it—as I’d grown up.
My father, tall, fair-skinned, and blond, wore his typical black suit, even in his own home. His eyes were the same green as mine. My mother’s fair skin was a contrast to her long dark hair and pale blue eyes. She wore jeans and a crimson blouse with a V-neck.
“Hi,” I said, glad to see them both, but wishing it were under different circumstances. I could feel monster hovering, a bit suspicious of my mother, who I suspected knew something was different about me—even if she didn’t know what.
It didn’t help that monster was energized by the presence of her sword only a floor below us, locked in the House’s armory since it held the spirit of the Egregore, the supernatural creature thathad ravaged Chicago. The magic used to trap the Egregore had allowed me to be born and had somehow created monster.
Monster wanted that sword. Badly.
Dad kissed my forehead. “Good evening.” Then reached out to shake Connor’s hand. “Connor.”
“Mr.Sullivan. Ms.Merit,” he said.