Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires #1)(60)
Author: Chloe Neill

The main floor held the front and main parlors, Ethan’s office, the state dining room, the kitchen, a cafeteria area for informal meals, and a series of smaller offices, one of which belonged to Helen, who’d been given the unenviable duty of introducing me to the world of vampires. I made a mental note to find her and apologize.

As we took the stairs to the second floor, Luc explained the mansion had been built during Chicago’s Gilded Age by an industrialist eager to show off his newfound wealth. Unfortunately, the house had been finished for only sixteen days when he was shot to death in a flophouse in one of the city’s rougher neighborhoods, reportedly after an altercation with the boyfriend of a prostitute named Flora. The Greenwich Presidium purchased the building on Cadogan’s behalf shortly thereafter – for a very good price.

The second floor, which held the ballroom I’d visited the night before, also held the library, which we didn’t have time to see, a couple of informal dens, and half the dorm- style rooms that housed the Cadogan vamps who lived "on campus." The rooms were wood-floored and high-ceilinged, and each held a small bed, dresser, bookshelf and nightstand, and had been decorated to suit the personality of the vamps who lived there. The House’s ninety-seven live-in vamps (which included all of last night’s Novitiates, save me) were unmarried and tended to work directly in the House – as administrators, guards, House staff, or other members of Ethan’s entourage.

The third floor housed the rest of the vamps’ rooms, as well as another den. Ethan’s sizable apartments were also there, as were the suite of rooms next door that Luc referred to as the "boudoir." These were Amber’s rooms, the suite used by the reigning House Consort. We didn’t look inside the suite – the mental image of a "boudoir" was enough – but I couldn’t help but pause outside, thinking that I might have been moving into those rooms, replacing Amber, making myself, my body, available to Ethan.

I shivered and moved on.

Having walked through the corpus of the House, Luc took me back to and through the first floor. Just off the cafeteria, which was stocked with wooden tables and chairs, was a set of wide glass doors that led to an expansive patio.

"Wow," I said when we emerged into the torch-lit back yard. Before us was a formal hedged garden, with a huge brick barbecue to the right, and a kidney-shaped pool to the left. The entire area was ringed by a tall shrubbery that obscured the wrought-iron fence and the street beyond.

"Nice, huh?" Luc asked as we stood on the patio and surveyed the area.

"It’s beautiful."

Luc led the way to the parterre, the border of which was made up of vibrantly green hedge interspersed with a purple-leafed plant I couldn’t name. In the middle of the garden was a bubbling fountain. Black metal benches surrounded it.

"Formal garden," Luc said, "in the French style."

"So I see." I dipped fingers into the fountain, then flicked cool water from my fingers.

"Not a bad place to spend some off-duty time," he said, then led me through the path that split the garden into quadrants and through the other side to the pool. "We can’t sunbathe, obviously, but the pool’s nice in the heat. We’ll have parties, barbecues, that kind of thing."

A copse of trees stood at one edge of the pool, and Luc pointed through them to the path that wound around the edge of the property, illuminated by tiny inground lights.

"Running path. Gives us a chance to get in a little outdoor exercise without leaving the grounds. It’s heated from beneath, so you can even run in the winter, if that’s your gig."

"It isn’t, not in Chicago, but it’ll be nice in the summer," I said.

But it wasn’t summer yet, and the April night was still chilly, so Luc skipped the stone- by-stone tour of the grounds, and settled for a summary of the parts we hadn’t seen. That done, we headed back into the building, this time through a side door that opened into a narrow hallway on the first floor. Luc then led me back down to the Ops Room and planted me in front of a computer.

"You know the password?"

I nodded, loaded a Web browser, and found the Cadogan log-in page, then typed it in. He patted my shoulder. "Learn the protocols," he advised, then moved to his desk, and began pouring through a foot-high stack of files.

Hours passed. Although security and warfare had never been my gig, vampire security was highly contextual and thus incredibly interesting. There were links to history (Vampires were screwed over yesterday!) and politics (House X screwed us over yesterday!), philosophy (Why do you think they screwed us over yesterday?) and ethics (If we didn’t bite, would they have screwed us over yesterday?), and, of course, strategy (How did they screw us over? How can we keep them from screwing us over again or, better yet, screw them over first?).

While I didn’t know a thing about elemental strategy beyond what I’d learned in Catcher’s swordsmanship lectures, I understood history. I understood philosophy. I knew how to read a first-person account of warfare, of loss, how to glean information from it. That was, after all, how I’d researched my dissertation. So, when quitting time came, I felt pretty satisfied with my lot. Confident that I could learn enough to supplement my physical strength, to make good decisions for Cadogan House, to protect those vampires I’d sworn two oaths to serve.

Luc dismissed us, and I followed the off-duty vampires back up the stairs, then said goodbye to Lindsey, intending to meet with Ethan as he’d requested earlier. His office was open, but empty. And while I was momentarily tempted to take the chance, to scrounge through his books and papers and discover what secrets the antiques might have to offer, that would be a breach of privacy I wasn’t equipped to take on. So I paused inside the doorway, apparently just long enough to raise someone’s eyebrows.

"Excuse me."

I turned, found a brunette behind me. The vamp was dressed like a secretary in a noir- era detective serial, her body perched cattily in the doorway, one hand on the jamb.

"You’re in Ethan’s office." Her voice was haughty.

I nodded. "He asked me to stop by. Do you know where he is?"

She crossed her arms, short, black nails tapping against the trim cuffs of her shirt, and looked me over. "I’m Gabrielle. A friend of Amber’s."

Not an answer to the question I’d asked, but informative all the same. Gabrielle thought I was poaching, maybe preparing to steal the Master of the House from beneath the Consort’s nose. If she only knew.

But I had no interest in telling her, or anyone else, what he’d offered me. I hadn’t even told Lindsey. Instead, I smiled politely, played nice.

"It’s lovely to meet you, Gabrielle. Ethan asked me to meet him about some security issues. Do you know where he is?"