Wild Things (Chicagoland Vampires #9)(62)
Author: Chloe Neill

“That’s impossible,” Mallory said.

“Only in the traditional sense,” Luc said. “Maybe she’s not one of them per se. But she could be a student, a pretender—a kid with magic who wants us to believe that magic is ancient and prestigious. Hell, as little as we know, she could be Seth Tate’s kid, for Christ’s sake.”

Catcher snorted. “In this day and age, any kid of Seth Tate’s would have announced it to the world already.”

“And he’d have told us,” I said. “Maybe not pre-Maleficium, but after it, certainly. If he’d known he had a kid—or a fourth cousin—who could cause trouble for us, he’d have told us.”

Or so I hoped.

Still, I added the possibilities to the whiteboard. “We have to find her,” I said. “Or both of them—Regan and the carnival—before she targets someone else.” And we needed to do that while finding a way to get Ethan out of lockdown before Mayor Kowalcyzk decided to make an example of him.

Luc checked his watch. “We’ll need to do that,” he agreed. “But we’re nearing sunrise, so it’s not going to happen tonight. Let’s pack it in for now, touch base at sunset. Paige, let us know if the librarian finds anything else.”

“Roger that,” she said, and there was a click as she dropped from the call.

We said good-bye to the others, and they dropped off the call as well. Luc’s personal phone rang almost immediately.

“Luc,” he said, lifting it to his ear.

He nodded, listened, spoke quietly with the caller, and after a moment, hung up the phone and looked at us. “That was Will, the guard captain at Navarre. The terrorism squad is packing up at Navarre House.”

That meant Ethan was officially in interview, or in custody, depending on how the mayor’s office was spinning it.

“That’s good news,” Lindsey earnestly said, catching my gaze. “It means she’s sticking to her word. That’s exactly what we want.”

I nodded, but the clenched ball of worry in my stomach didn’t unknot much.

“Why don’t you take some personal time tomorrow at sunset?” Luc said. “You haven’t had a chance to see your grandfather yet. Take an hour—go say hello.”

It was a good idea. I hadn’t had a chance to visit the hospital since he’d been admitted. We’d gotten home too late tonight, but if I went after sunset tomorrow, I could probably catch him during visiting hours. Still, we were in the middle of an investigation.

“Is that a good idea right now? Considering?”

“You need a break,” he said. “And you need to visit your grandfather. Run the carnival bit past him. See if he has any ideas.”

I nodded.

“How about a movie tonight?” Lindsey asked. “We don’t have time for a full run before sunup, but we could fit in half a show, maybe some snacks?”

I thought about the offer. While I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of going back to the apartments alone and spending the entire evening obsessing about Ethan, I also wasn’t up for another night of entertainment. A bottle of Blood4You, roaring fire, and good book seemed like a much better option.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I’ve been surrounded by sups for a few days now. I need a little quiet time.”

Luc chuckled, fingered the new pendant around his neck. “Sentinel, you live in a literal house of vampires. You’re going to be surrounded by sups regardless.”

For better or worse.

I added what we’d discovered to the whiteboard, said my good nights, and headed upstairs to the first floor. I heard sounds coming from the front parlor and walked toward it.

A dozen Cadogan vampires stood around the television mounted above the fireplace. The TV was tuned to a news station and the coverage of Ethan’s arrival at the Daley Center.

Ethan climbed out of a town car and then walked, Andrew at his side and four officers surrounding him, into what looked like an underground entrance. Reporters who’d staked out the door yelled questions and accusations, wondering why Ethan had killed Harold Monmonth, where he’d been for the last three days, and why he’d finally come back to Chicago. He kept his eyes clear and stared straight ahead, ignoring the questions. But the line between his eyes tightened with each new volley, and it was clear he had plenty of things to say to them.

After a moment, Andrew directed him to stop and faced the camera. With his broad shoulders and intense expression, Andrew looked more like a soldier or bodyguard than a lawyer. But either way, and whatever the reason, he commanded their attention. They quieted immediately.

“Ethan Sullivan is innocent of the various accusations—political, criminal, and otherwise—that have been leveled against him. He is being targeted because he is a vampire, and the mayor’s office, respectfully, is targeting him because she’s looking for a scapegoat. The citizens of Chicago know better, and I’ll be glad when we can put this entire matter to rest.”

The tension in my chest eased just a little. Thinking I’d seen as much as I needed to, I turned to walk away, but the sudden gasps behind me had my heart pounding, and I turned back to look.

“Altercation at Daley Center,” read the screen now, and the footage showed Ethan being escorted into a small room, a table and chairs visible through the door. But there was a bright bruise blooming across his left cheekbone.

Sometime between his arrival at the building and his reaching the interview room, he’d been assaulted. Punishment, maybe, for his refusal to come in earlier, to acquiesce to Kowalcyzk’s request that he sacrifice himself for her political agenda. And if they were knocking him around before he even got into the room, what more did they have planned?

Fear bubbled and spilled over, and I strode from the room before the tears tracked down my face. I made it as far as the stairway, stopping to knuckle away the tears, hoping no one had seen my quick exit or the reason for it. The last thing they needed was to see their Sentinel bawling in fear. There was a place for tears; it wasn’t here, when the House needed its officers to be strong.

An arm wrapped around my shoulder. I looked up, surprised, into Malik’s eyes.

“Are you all right?”

He was so quiet, so reserved, I wouldn’t have expected him to offer physical solace, which made the fact that he had offered it even more meaningful. I had, over the last year, gathered up an assemblage of weird and wonderful friendships. They all had their ups and down, and some of the downs were pretty miserable. But sometimes, times like this, I could just be grateful.