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Silence, then, "There's a vampire. Housed, but his colleagues don't know he works for me. He avoids the office unless absolutely necessary. They do the groundwork," my grandfather continued, "so all I have to do is step in and play good guy." I doubted he was as uninvolved as all that, but - especially in contrast with my father - the humility was refreshing. "You won't believe this," he said on a gravelly chuckle, "but I'm not as spry as I used to be."
"No!" I exclaimed, feigning shock, and he laughed in response. "I can't believe you've been keeping this from us. I can't believe you've been playing with magic for four years and didn't tell me. Me! The girl who wrote about King Arthur for a living."
He patted my hand. "It wasn't you that I was trying to keep the information from."
I nodded in understanding. My father's discovery of my grandfather's secret would have led to one of two results: arranging to have my grandfather fired, or trying to manipulate my grandfather to get closer to the Mayor. Ever scheming was my father.
"Still," I said, watching through the window as the city passed by, "you could've told me."
"If it makes you feel any better, I'm now your Ombudsman. And I'm taking you to our secret headquarters."
I looked over at him, watched him try unsuccessfully to hide a smile. "Secret, huh?"
He nodded, very officially.
"Well, then," I said. "That makes all the difference."
The office of the Ombudsman was a low, unassuming brick building that stood at the end of a quiet block in a middle-class neighborhood on the city's South Side. The houses were modest but well tended, the yards surrounded with chain link fence. My grandfather parked the Olds along the curb, and I followed him up a narrow sidewalk. He tapped buttons on an alarm keypad on the wall next to the door, then unlocked the front door with a key. The interior of the building was equally unassuming, and looked like it hadn't gotten a style upgrade since the late 1960s. There was a lot of orange. A lot of orange.
"They work late," I noted, the interior well lit, even given the hours.
"Creatures of the night serving creatures of the night."
"You should put that on your business cards," I suggested.
We walked past a reception area and down a central hallway, then into a room on the right. The room housed four metal desks that were placed at intervals, two back-to-back set out from each facing wall. The front and back walls were covered by rows of gunmetal gray filing cabinets. Posters lined the white walls, most of gorgeous, scantily clad women with flowing hair. The prints looked like they were part of a series: Each featured a different woman wearing a tiny scrap of strategically placed fabric, but the "dresses" were cut in different colors, as were the pennants they held in their hands. One woman was blond, her dress blue, and she held a pennant that read "Goose Island." A second had long, raven-dark hair and was dressed in red. Her pennant read "North Branch." These, I surmised, were some of the Chicago River nymphs.
"Jeff. Catcher."
At my grandfather's voice, the men who sat at two of the desks looked up from their work. Jeff looked every bit the twenty-one-year-old computer prodigy. He was fresh- faced and cute, a tall, lanky guy with a mop of floppy brown hair. He wore trousers and a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the top, the sleeves rolled halfway up his lean arms, long fingers poised over an expansive set of keyboards.
Catcher had a solidly ex-military look about him - a muscular body beneath a snug olive T-shirt that read "Public Enemy Number One" and jeans. His head was shaved, his eyes pale green, his lips full and sensuous. Had it not been for the annoyed look on his face, I'd have said he was incredibly sexy. As it was, he just looked disgruntled. Wide berth, indeed.
Jeff grinned happily at my grandfather. "Hey, Chuck. Who's this?"
My grandfather put a hand at my back and led me farther into the room. "This is my granddaughter, Merit."
Jeff's blue eyes twinkled. "Merit Merit?"
"Just Merit," I said, and stuck out a hand. "It's nice to meet you, Jeff."
Rather than reaching out to take my outstretched hand, he stared at it, then looked up at me. "You want to shake? With me?"
Confused, I glanced back at my grandfather, but before he could answer, Catcher, his gaze on a thick ancient-looking book in front of him, offered, "It's because you're a vamp. Vamps and shifters aren't exactly friendly."
That was news to me. But then, up until twenty minutes ago, so were the existence of shifters and the rest of Chicago's supernatural citizens. "Why not?"
Catcher used two fingers to turn a thick yellowed page. "Aren't you the one who's supposed to know that?"
"I've been a vamp for three days. I'm not really up on the political nuances. I haven't even had blood yet."
Jeff's eyes widened. "You haven't had blood yet? Aren't you supposed to have some kind of crazy thirst after rising? Shouldn't you be, you know, seeking out willing victims for your wicked bloodlust?" His gaze made a quick detour to the stretch of T-shirt across my chest; then he grinned up at me through a lock of brown hair. "I'm O neg and completely healthy, if that matters."
I tried not to grin, but his enthusiasm over my notably un-buxom chest was endearing. "It doesn't, but thanks for the offer. I'll keep you in mind when the wicked bloodlust hits." I looked around for a chair, found an avocado green monstrosity behind one of the two empty metal desks, and sank into it. "Tell me more about this vamp-shifter animosity."
Jeff shrugged negligently and went back to tinkering with a vaguely octopus-shaped stuffed animal on his desk. A buzz sounded, and my grandfather pulled a cell phone from a hip holster, took a look at the caller ID screen, then glanced up at me. "I need to take this. Catcher and Jeff will get you started." He looked at Catcher. "She's trustworthy, and she's mine. She can know everything that's not marked Level One."
At my smile and nod, he turned and disappeared through the door.
I had no idea what Level One was, but I was pretty sure that was the stuff I'd really want to know. Or it was the stuff that would scare the crap out of me, so it was probably better not to press the point today.
"Now you can get the real scoop," Jeff said with a grin.
Catcher snorted and closed his book, then slid back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. "You met any vamps yet? Beyond Sullivan, I mean?"
I stared at him. "How did you - "
