Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires #1)(19)
Author: Chloe Neill

While Mallory was more than willing to dole out advice and urge me to get over "my little quibbles" about having been made a vampire, she wouldn’t discuss the trio’s bizarre conclusion that she’d brought magic to Cadogan House, that she was a witch. I knew nothing about magic beyond what I’d learned from television and in the tidbits Mallory, in her fixation with the occult, managed to slip into conversation. And it scared me that my normally chatty roommate was avoiding the discussion. So, as I pulled the car into the garage, I tried again.

"Do you want to talk about the other thing?"

"As far as I’m concerned, there is no other thing."

"Come on, Mallory. They said you have magic. Do you feel like you’re . . . different? I mean, if they’re right, you must have felt something."

She got out of the car and slammed the door shut, and I winced on the Volvo’s behalf as Mallory stormed to the sidewalk. "I don’t want to talk about it, Merit."

I closed the garage door and followed her, both of us ignoring the black-clad guards who flanked the front door. They were virtually identical to the guards who stood point at the Cadogan gate, tall and gaunt with sleek swords at their sides. Whatever Ethan’s faults, he was damn efficient.

We went into the house, which was comfortingly quiet and, present company excluded, vampire-free. Mallory faked a yawn and trudged toward the staircase. "I’m going to bed."

"Mallory."

She stopped at the bottom stair, turned, and looked at me with very little patience. "What?"

"Just – try to be careful. We don’t have to talk about it now, but if this threat thing continues, or if Ethan learns anything more about who you are . . ."

"Fine."

As she started up the stairs, desperate to comfort her as she’d done for me, I threw out, "This could be a good thing, Mallory. You could have some special powers, or something."

She stopped and glanced back, her smile sardonic. "Given how I feel right now, I can only assume that my giving you the same bullshit platitudes earlier didn’t help you, either." She walked up the stairs, and I heard the slam of her bedroom door. I went to my room and lay on my back on the double bed, staring at the rotating ceiling fan until dawn claimed me.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT . . .

ARE PROBABLY REGISTERED VOTERS

IN COOK COUNTY.

Having avoided my granddaughterly duty for two days, when I rose at sunset the next evening to an empty house, I showered, dressed in jeans and a fitted T-shirt that bore the image of a ninja (and certainly would have embarrassed Ethan), and drove to the West Side to my grandfather’s house.

Unfortunately, even fight-happy Vampire Merit feared rejection, so I’d been standing on his narrow front stoop, unable to make myself knock, when the door opened with a creak. My grandfather peered out through the aluminum screen door. "You weren’t going to come by and talk to your pop?"

Tears – of doubt, of relief, of love – immediately spilled over. I shrugged sheepishly at him.

"Ah, jeez, baby girl. Don’t start that." He pulled open the screen door, held it open with his foot, and opened his arms. I moved into them, clenched him in a fierce hug. He coughed. "Easy now. You’ve got a little more push in those muscles than the last time we did this."

I released him and wiped the tears from my face. "Sorry, Grandpa."

He cupped my face in his bear-paw hands and kissed my forehead. "No worries. Come on in." I moved into the house and heard the closing of both doors behind me.

My grandfather’s house – once my grandparents’ house – hadn’t changed in all the years I remembered it. The furniture was simple and homey, the walls adorned with family pictures of my aunts and uncles – my father’s brother and two sisters and their families. My aunts and uncles had endured their upbringing with significantly more grace than my own father, and I envied their easy relationships with their children and my grandfather. No family was perfect, I knew, but I’d take imperfection over the farce of my social-climbing parents any day.

"Have a seat, honey. You want some cookies? I’ve got Oreos."

I grinned at him and sat down on the floral sofa. "No, thanks, Grandpa. I’m fine."

He sat on an ancient recliner positioned kitty-corner to the sofa and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Your father called me when the House called him." He paused. "You were attacked? Bitten?"

I nodded.

He looked me over. "And everything’s okay now? You’re okay?"

"I guess. I mean, I feel okay. I feel the same, except for the vampire part."

He chuckled, but his expression sobered fast enough. "Do you know about the attack on Jennifer Porter? That it was similar to your attack?"

I nodded again. "Mallory and I saw the press conference on television."

"Sure, sure." My grandfather started to speak, but seemed to think better of it. He was silent for a moment, the ticking of the wall clock the only sound in the house. He finally raised concerned eyes to mine. "Your father has asked that the police not be involved in your attack. But your name was in the paper, so the city will know that you were changed. That you’re a vampire now."

"I know," I told him. "I’ve already gotten calls from reporters."

My grandfather nodded. "Of course. I would have expected that given your father’s notoriety. Frankly, Merit, I’m not going to hinder a police investigation, not for crimes of this magnitude. I can’t in good conscience do that, not when a killer is still out there. But I have enough pull to keep the nature of your transition under wraps but for a select few detectives. If we can limit access to that information, keep it on a need-to-know basis, you won’t be called out as a potential victim of this killer. We can keep the press from hounding you about it, and you can learn to live as a vampire, not just as an attack victim. Okay?"

I nodded, tears beginning to well again. Say what you wanted about my father, but I loved this man.

"Now that said, while I’m not going to parade you through a bureau office, we still need an official interview for the record." He put a gnarly hand on my knee. "So why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words?"

My grandfather, the cop.

I gave him the entire tale, from my walk across campus to my conversation with Ethan, Luc, and Malik, including their Rogue-vampire hypothesis. The general public may not know about the Rogues’ existence, but I wasn’t about to hide that fact from my grandfather. When I was done, he asked thoughtful questions – essentially walking me through the entire few days again, but this time pulling out details Ethan, Luc, and Malik hadn’t discussed, like the fact that the attacker bailed upon seeing Ethan, apparently aware of who he was and unwilling to risk a one-on-one confrontation. When we’d walked through the events twice, he sat back in his recliner and scratched what little hair remained on the perimeter of his head. For all that his mind was impeccably sharp, he looked so much the grandpa – tucked-in flannel shirt, twill trousers, comfortable thick-soled shoes, gleaming pate.