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His answer was nearly immediate: COLOR ME RELIEVED—ABOUT YOU, NOT VIC. WHEN AND WHERE?
I gave him the instructions, tucked the phone away again. At least he wasn’t pushing me away.
Since I had a job to do as vampire courier, I walked downstairs to the basement. The Ops Room hummed busily as it often did. Vampires sat at the computers along the wall. Lindsey was gone, probably outside on patrol around the grounds. Luc was at the computer station, eating popcorn from a giant blue Garrett’s canister. If I’d had any appetite, I’d have snagged some of it.
“Merit,” Luc said, sitting up when I walked in. “What the hell are you doing up?”
“There’s been another murder,” I said, and gave them the information my grandfather had offered me.
Luc’s brows lifted. “And you’re going now? In your condition?”
“I’m fine. And murder waits for no man. Or vampire. Catcher and Jeff are occupied, and the body apparently was marked, so my grandfather needs a consult.”
“And everyone’s eager to close Brett Jacobs’s case and let his family mourn him.”
I nodded. “Precisely. Jonah’s going to meet me, primarily because Ethan has a very large stick up his ass.”
Luc looked amused. “Oh? Not happy you took a bullet?”
I debated how much I could tell him, decided I couldn’t divulge the blackmail, not that I knew much to divulge. But if Ethan knew the driver’s identity—or at least who sent him—Luc had to know that. “He has suspicions about who sent the driver. But he won’t tell me who it is. He doesn’t think they’re a threat to the House.”
That was true enough, but Luc saw through it, knew that wasn’t all of it.
“And what aren’t you telling me?”
I shook my head. “He asked me for space. I think, being an adult, I’m supposed to give that to him. And you can’t ask him about it directly. He’ll deny it, deflect it. This goes back a long way for him, and he thinks he wants to handle it on his own.”
There was a glimmer in Luc’s eyes. “And you disagree?”
“He has the rest of us for a reason. Do what you can—but do it carefully.” I rose. “I’m going to give the obelisk to my grandfather, or track down Catcher afterward.”
Luc nodded and rose, and I followed him down the hallway to the vault built into the wall. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket, plugged the square key into the vault’s door, and it flipped open.
The obelisk lay on its side, looking admittedly pitiful in the plastic bag on its bed of margarita salt. Luc pulled out the bag with two fingers, handed it over.
“I don’t think the magic can get on you,” I assured him with a smile, tucking it under my arm like a football. “It’s not a virus.”
“No sense in taking a chance with our health, Sentinel.” He closed the door again, looked at me. “Check in with us tonight, will you?”
I gave him the stink eye. “Are you asking as my boss, or because Ethan told you to keep an eye on me?”
He snorted. “I’m not going to tell you every conversation I have with your Master and mine. House business is House business.”
“And I thought we had a solid, trusting relationship.”
“Guilt doesn’t work on me, Sentinel!” he called out as I walked toward the basement door. “At least not as much as physical threats from a certain Master vampire.”
Every man had a price.
* * *
The best way to take a drive that led only to murder and loss? A sleek silver roadster purchased from a pack of shape-shifters and outfitted with a state-of-the-art engine.
I nestled the obelisk in the passenger seat behind my katana, strapped in, and turned over the engine, goose bumps lifting on my arms at the smooth and rhythmic purr of her engine.
I pulled out of the garage and into a clear spring night. The sky overhead was dark, but there was too much light in the city to see more than a few stars in the dark blanket of sky.
Because Chicago curved around the edge of Lake Michigan, there were dozens of beaches in the city. Montrose was on the north side of the city in Lakeview.
I pulled into the small parking lot across the street from the beach, but it was clear that something had happened. Police cruisers were parked along the side of the street, their lights flashing.
Jonah walked toward me, his car parked a few slots away.
“Good evening,” he said, looking dapper in jeans, a button-up, and a brown sport coat. “You all right? How’s your head?”
“Concussed, but I’ll manage.”
“I’m glad you’re conscious again.”
“I’m glad to be conscious again.” We walked to the edge of the lot, waited for traffic to clear before jogging across the street to the sidewalk that led toward the beach. My pulse pounded in my head with the effort, and I hoped I could make it through the rest of the night without a fight or a 5K.
“Did you get enough of the rescue story from Ethan?”
Jonah nodded. “He gave me the basic rundown. Nice job.”
“We couldn’t have done it without Matthew’s information. Still, not entirely a success. Cabot House lost a man.”
“So I heard. Scott sent his condolences to the House.”
“Yeah, Ethan, too.”
“Did Darius mention the challenge?”
“He did not. We got him back to the House just before dawn, and he left with Lakshmi just after sunset. Have you heard anything?”
“Only her outrage that someone dared attack Darius.”
Speaking of Lakshmi, she’d known Ethan for a long time and, considering her position, probably knew some of his history. Could Lakshmi be the “she” attempting to blackmail Ethan?
As we walked down the sidewalk toward the southeast end of the beach, I rejected that idea. She’d wanted me to encourage Ethan to challenge Darius. Why bother doing that, only to then threaten Ethan not to run? And more, she was on the GP. If she’d wanted to reject Ethan’s challenge, she could have done it directly.
The beach curved north, the southernmost chunk of it reserved as a sanctuary for birds, sand giving way to scrubby grass.
That was where they’d gathered—a gaggle of reporters barely contained by police tape, trying to snap photographs of the latest victim. They saw us approaching, began shouting out questions.
“Have vampires murdered someone else?”
“Why are you here, Merit? Did you know the victim?”
