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"I thought I'd killed you." She sniffed, swiped absently at a tear. "Catcher had to hold me up. The vampires freaked; I think they wanted to take us out. Ethan checked your pulse, said you were alive, and he was all bloodied up. Blood everywhere. You were, too, cuts and scratches on your arms, on your cheeks. You two beat the shit out of each other.
Catcher picked you up, and someone brought Ethan a shirt, and everyone got in the car. I brought your sword." She pointed to the corner where it balanced on its pommel against the bedroom wall. It was back in the scabbard, cleaned, probably by Catcher, who'd have taken exquisite care of the blood-tempered blade.
"He carried you up here."
"Catcher?"
Mallory shook her head, then rubbed at her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, seemed to shake off the emotion.
"Ethan. He rode with us. They - the vampires, your vampires - followed him in another car."
My vampires. I'd become something else to her. A different kind of thing.
"Catcher said you needed to sleep it off, that you'd heal from it all."
I looked down at my arms, which were pale and pristine once again. I had healed, just like he'd predicted.
"So Ethan carried you up here, and Catcher took care of me, I guess, and Lindsey and Luc - we all waited downstairs." She glanced up at me. "You were unconscious the whole time?"
I looked back at her, my best friend, and I didn't tell her what I'd done.
That I'd gone through some part of the change again, and in the haze of it, the bloodlust of it, had taken blood from someone else.
His blood.
Ethan's.
And it had been like a homecoming.
I couldn't even begin to deal with that, to process it.
"I was out," I told her.
Mallory looked at me, but nodded, maybe not buying it completely, but not arguing the point. She sighed and leaned forward, enveloped me in a hug. "There's a reason they call it hopelessly romantic."
"And not rationally romantic?"
"Well-developed-thoughtly romantic."
I half chuckled and knuckled away my own tears. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Don't mock me." She squeezed, then let me go.
"You fireballed me. Knocked me out." Made me drink him, I thought, but didn't voice that aloud, being ill-equipped for the Freudian analysis that would follow the confession. "I'm entitled to mock a little."
"It's not fire. It's a way to transmit the magic. A kind of conduit." Mallory sighed and stood up. I hadn't noticed how tired she looked. Dark circles shadowed eyes already swollen from tears.
"As much as I'd like to continue this conversation, which is honestly not at all, dawn's nearly here. We both need sleep." She stood, went for the door and, hand on the doorknob, stood there for a moment. "We're going to change. This is going to change us both. There's no guarantee that we come out the end of it still liking each other."
My stomach clenched, but I nodded. "I know."
"We do the best we can."
"Yeah."
"Good night, Merit," she said, and flipped off the light, then shut the door behind her as she left.
I lay back, one hand under my head, one on my stomach, eyes on the ceiling. It hadn't been a particularly good night.
Chapter Twenty-five
THE KING AND I
The next night bloomed warm and clear. The house was quiet when I emerged downstairs, beeper and sword in hand. I nabbed a bottle of juice from Mallory's refrigerator, avoiding the last bag of blood, the drinking I'd done last night either satiating me fully or putting me off the taste completely.
Not that it had been horrible.
Because it hadn't been horrible.
And that was the thought that played over and over again in my head as I drove south again - just how unhorrible it had been.
My beeper sounded just as I pulled in front of the House. I unclipped it, found MTG @
U. NOW. BLRM scrolling on the display.
Charming. The entire House was being called to discuss my punishment, I presumed, given that the meeting was being held in the House's ballroom, rather than somewhere, I don't know, more intimate? Like Ethan's office? With only me and him in attendance?
Grumbling, I parked and closed up the car, thinking I wasn't exactly dressed for public humiliation in my leftover jeans and fitted black T-shirt. My Cadogan suit had been shredded; I wore the fanciest thing still in my closet at Mal's house. I had to pause outside the gate, not quite ready for the onslaught.
"Quite a show."
I looked up, found the RDI guards looking at me curiously. "Pardon me?"
"Last night," the one on the left offered. "You wreaked a good bit of havoc."
"Unintentionally," I dryly said, shifting my gaze back to the House. Normally I'd have been thrilled to get conversation out of the usually silent guards, but not on this topic.
"Good luck," said the one on the right.
I offered as appreciative a smile as I could muster, took a breath, and went for the door.
I could hear the sounds of the meeting as I climbed the stairs to the second-floor ballroom. The first floor had been quiet, but the echo of ambient vampire noise -
conversations, coughing, shuffling - drifted down from the ballroom.
The doors were open when I reached it, a mass of Cadogan vampires inside. There were ninety-eight who resided in the House, and I guessed at least two-thirds of the group were here. Ethan, once again in his crisp black suit, stood alone on the short riser at the front of the room. Our gazes met and he held up a hand, silencing the vampires.
Heads turned, eyes on me.
I swallowed, gripped the sword I still held in my hand, and walked inside. I couldn't bear to look at them, to see if their gazes were accusatory, insulted, fearful, so I kept my eyes on Ethan, the crowd parting around me as I walked through the room.
I didn't deny that, as Master, he needed to deal with me, to dole out punishment for what I'd done, for challenging him - for the second time - in his own House. But was the ceremony necessary? Was my humiliation in front of most of the vampires in the House necessary?
The final vampires separated, and I found consoling eyes in Lindsey, who offered a compassionate smile before turning to face Ethan. I walked to the riser, stood before him, and gazed up.
He looked back at me for a moment, expression carefully blank, before lifting his gaze to the crowd. He smiled at them, and I moved to the side so as not to block the view.
"Didn't we just do this?" he asked with a grin. The vampires laughed appreciatively. My cheeks blossomed with heat.
"I debated," he told them, "whether to offer a lengthy dissertation on why last night's events occurred. The biological and psychological precursors. The fact that Merit defended me against an attack by one of our own. And speaking of which, I regret to inform you that Peter is no longer a member of Cadogan House."
