Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires #3)(23)
Author: Chloe Neill

The debriefing accomplished, my grandfather headed for the bar. I shifted my gaze to Catcher. He and I had things to discuss, so before he walked away, I touched his arm. He glanced back, his eyebrows raised in question.

"How’s Mall doing?" I asked him, but my silent questions were much different: Has she said anything about me? Mentioned me? Does she miss me?

"Why don’t you call her and ask her yourself?"

I gave him a flat stare. "The phone works both ways," I pointed out. Besides, she’s the one who’d pushed me about Ethan, and who’d thrown my "Daddy issues" into my face. It might have been immature to avoid making the call, but she had as much to answer for as I did. Catcher rolled his eyes haggardly. "She misses you, okay? My life will be much, much simpler when you two make up." God bless him for being confident that would happen.

"How’s her training proceeding?" Ethan asked.

Despite Catcher’s unpleasant relationship with the Order, the governing body for sorcerers and sorceresses and Mallory’s new bosses, his face blossomed into a proud grin. "Excellent. She’s kicking ass."

"Of course she is," I said, and when my grandfather glanced back from the door of the bar, gave Catcher’s arm a little shove. "Go play with Chuck."

"Going," he said. "And remember what I said. Do the right thing, Merit. Call her, even if it’s awkward." I had no doubt it needed to be done. Unfortunately, I also had no doubt it would be awkward. I was never great on the phone, and as much as I missed my girl and didn’t want my fangs and her magic to come between us, it still wasn’t a call I was ready to make. Some days it didn’t pay to be a grown-up.

It was thirty more minutes before the extra police cruisers began to pull away from the curb, and ten more before Jeff, Catcher, and my grandfather emerged from the bar, leaving the shifters behind them.

"What’s the good word?" I asked when they approached.

My grandfather shook his head. "Gabriel doesn’t think Tony is capable of this."

"Is he being objective?" Ethan asked.

Catcher shrugged. "Hard to say, but he does know Tony better than the rest of us."

"It doesn’t read like an assassination on Gabriel," Jeff said, his delicate features pulled into serious concentration. "The shots were at the bar, not any particular shifter. The shooter could have attempted to push his way inside, used a rifle, tried a sniperlike approach." He frowned. "This reads more like a message – an attack against the Packs or the meeting, not Gabriel specifically."

"The forensics folks will process the bullets," my grandfather said. "Maybe they’ll find some trace, figure out the target and the perpetrator."

"I, for one, would feel a lot better knowing the crazy shifter shooter was off the streets," Jeff said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. But then he looked at me, a glint in his eyes. "Unless someone was willing to offer up some one-on-one protection?"

"Keep dreaming," I said, but patted his shoulder cordially.

"Come on, Casanova," Catcher said, steering him toward the car. "Let’s go use that hard drive you reformed."

"Reformatted."

"Whatever."

We made our goodbyes, and my grandfather followed Catcher and a sheepish Jeff back to the Olds and their South Side office. The remaining shifters – Gabriel, Adam, Jason, Robin, and a handful of blondish men I assumed to be more alphabetically named Keene siblings – walked outside and congregated near the door. A delivery truck pulled up to the curb, and two more men hopped out, then began lifting flats of particle board to place over the broken window. While the other brothers began to order and direct the repairmen, Gabriel, Adam, and the other Pack leaders walked over to where we stood.

"We appreciate your discretion tonight," Gabriel said.

"It is the better part of valor," I pointed out.

Ethan rolled his eyes. "Vampires no longer have the luxury of discretion, but I understand the need. Will you be able to keep the convocation under wraps after this?"

"I’m not worried about it. We’ll get in, we’ll meet, we’ll get out, and we’ll disperse back to our respective territories."

"And whose territory is Chicago?" Ethan asked, his head tilted to the side. "You said Chicago was a city of power. Whose power?"

Gabriel shook his head. "You don’t want to know the answer to that one, vampire. While we’re waiting for the conference, we’ll focus on the investigation here."

"And until then?" Ethan asked, then glanced around between the men. "Do you all have security you’re comfortable with?"

Gabriel nodded. "I’m not worried about the day-to-day; it’s the en masse meeting of Pack members that has me concerned. Are you still up for working the convocation, given the drama?" Ethan considered the idea. "What are the odds that I’m putting myself and my Sentinel right into the line of fire?"

Gabriel barked out a laugh. "Given what we’ve seen so far, I’d guess one hundred percent." He leaned in toward me. "Pack whatever steel you can find, Kitten. You’ll probably need the arsenal."

"Do you have a final location?" Ethan asked.

"Same neighborhood, but we’re finalizing the details." His voice flattened as he glanced back at what was left of the bar. He checked his watch. "It’s two thirty now. Let me clean up things here, and I’ll give you a call before dawn."

Ethan nodded, then extended a hand to Gabriel. "We’ll wait for your call, and we’ll be prepared for the worst on Friday."

Gabe barked out a laugh as they shook on it. "You are ever the vampire, Sullivan. Ever the vampire."

"What else would I be?" Ethan mused aloud.

The deal struck, we turned to get into Ethan’s car.

"By the way," Ethan said when the car’s motor was humming, "I like the jacket." The awkwardness that had seemed to exist between us earlier faded in the close confines of the car.

Maybe because he liked the jacket, maybe because I had to miss out on Berna’s cabbage rolls, he let me call Saul’s, my favorite Wicker Park pizza stop, to order up a Chicago-style to go. He pulled up to the curb, and I came out fifteen minutes later with an extra-large "Saul’s Best" – three inches of crust, cheese, meat, and sauce (in that order). Ethan, surely, would scoff at the grease, but it was perfect to satisfy a vampire’s late-night, post-drive-by hunger. Or so I figured, this being my first drive-by. When I returned to the car, Ethan was on his phone. The phone was on speaker mode, so I listened as he filled in Luc and Malik about the night’s events, the upcoming phone call with Gabe, and our new Friday night plans.