Dark Debt (Chicagoland Vampires #11)(43)
Author: Chloe Neill

He hadn’t looked stable, and he certainly hadn’t appreciated my stepping between him and Ethan. But we’d had to leave, so we’d dispatched Luc to make sure he was escorted off Cadogan property.

Nicole had warned me that dissolving the GP wouldn’t solve our problems, but create new ones. Put a new and different kind of target on Ethan’s back. As much as I hated to admit it, she’d been right. But we still had to try, and that meant handling one problem at a time.

Sometimes triage wasn’t just the best you could do—it was the only thing you could do.

As if Ethan could sense my worrying, he reached out to touch me, to put his hand on my knee, and I hated that I flinched. It was instinct, a reaction to my attack, to the personal barriers that Balthasar had so obviously violated.

Ethan froze.

I’m sorry, I said silently. I just . . . I need time.

I could feel the wall rising between us. It was a wall Balthasar had prompted, and it was wholly unfair to both of us. But there it was. I needed time to regain my control, to feel that I was the one in charge of me, and not that someone else was running rampant inside my head.

He nodded sharply, seemed to battle between fury and hurt. I’ll give you time, as I always have. But he will not stand between us.

I hoped he was right.

*   *   *

Despite the drama, we found Navarre House unchanged. It was still a beautiful dame of a building with a turret on the corner, pale stone on the exterior, and a view of Lake Michigan that even my father would have admired. Perfectly manicured boxwoods in terra-cotta pots were placed at intervals in the small strip of (also perfectly manicured) grass in front of the building, while hydrangeas that hadn’t yet bloomed marked each corner of the building. Celina had undeniably good taste. But then, that was part of the problem.

“Katanas?” I asked, with a hand on the door.

Ethan looked at my scabbard, then his. “You’ve got your dagger?”

“In my boot.”

He likely compared politics to risk. “I’ve got mine as well. Let’s leave them in the car for now. Brody, stay close.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured him.

We walked up the stairs and opened the front doors, found the interior also the same, with a pale, museumlike chill. Marble floors, spare furnishings, and the occasional bench or piece of artwork arranged and lit as if part of an exhibit. I couldn’t help wondering how much the Circle had paid for Celina’s carefully curated home. And how much her vampires would have to pay for that now.

The House’s demilune reception desk, previously staffed by three brown-haired beauties, was manned tonight by three brawny men I pegged instantly as off-duty cops. They had the broad shoulders and flat eyes of men used to seeing all manner of inappropriate behavior. So Morgan had upgraded his security, but that might have been due to the last round of Navarre House dramatics: A killer had gained access to Navarre House a few months ago and killed two Navarre vampires.

The man in the middle looked up as we approached, scanned us. “Name and business?”

Ethan looked mildly irritated by the question, but answered, “Ethan Sullivan and Merit, Cadogan House. We’re joining Malik, also of Cadogan House. We’re here at the behest of Morgan Greer.”

They looked duly unimpressed by the explanation and that the Master of Cadogan House was visiting. But that was the point of having cops at the security desk. No fangirling, and no famous vampires sneaking into Navarre House without permission.

“One moment,” the middle guy said, then confabbed with his colleagues, checked clipboards, surveyed lists. After a moment, he rolled his chair back to the middle position, pulled two Navarre House lanyards and security badges from a drawer, and pushed them and a clipboard across the counter. “Sign in.”

Ethan looked up at him, opened his mouth to give what I guessed would be a dressing-down. I knew what he thought, because my thoughts were the same—that this was a power play by a Master who wanted to remind us he was in charge within his halls.

If Navarre’s situation was as bad as we suspected, that hardly seemed to matter.

“I’ll sign us in,” I said, and scribbled our names on the clipboard, plucked up the lanyards, and handed one to Ethan.

“Someone will be out in a moment,” the guard said, then picked up a handset and dialed up a number, whispered into the receiver.

By the time he put the phone down again, footsteps were clipping on marble toward us. Nadia, Navarre’s Second and Morgan’s paramour, emerged from a hallway.

She was gorgeous in an exotically European way, with generous features and golden brown hair. She wore slim-cut black pants, a flowy black top, and laser-cut high-heeled booties. And tonight she looked thinner, her cheekbones sharper, dark circles beneath her eyes, and a deep sadness still set there. Her sister, Katya, had been one of the murdered Navarre vampires. It appeared she was still in mourning.

“Nadia,” Ethan said. “It’s lovely to see you again, although I’m sorry the circumstances are what they are.”

Nadia nodded but didn’t say a word. She gestured us to follow her up the staircase that flowed to the first floor. The stairs were also marble, the handrails gleaming brass. And as beautiful as the House was, she was the only Navarre vampire we’d seen enjoying it. Maybe the others were locked in their rooms, lest the Circle should come calling.

We rounded a corner and walked down a hallway with marble floors and white walls covered in black strokes and slashes. Not graffiti, but woodcut prints blown up and reproduced on the wall. They were images of Navarre House through history, I realized, from an elaborate French chateau to the Gold Coast graystone. Had the Circle funded the artwork?

“In here,” Nadia said, pausing by an open door. Ethan nodded at her, and I followed him inside. It was a large room dominated by a glass conference table with leather and chrome chairs. There were separate seating areas on both sides of the enormous room, and a wall of mirrors along one end.

I wasn’t an expert on home décor, but living with Joshua Merit had taught me enough to know the furniture in this single room was probably worth tens of thousands of dollars.

I can no longer walk into a room in Navarre without assessing its cost, Ethan confessed.

Me, too. I suppose Morgan could always hold a tag sale if things got too bad.

Why would he sell tags?

I just shook my head.

Juliet stood in a corner near the door in full Cadogan black, a yellow katana scabbard belted at her waist. She nodded when we walked in, and Ethan did the same.