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He’d said so many incorrect things, so many absolutely wrong things, that Ethan looked momentarily dumbstruck. “Get off my lawn,” he said through bared teeth.
“We got constitutional rights.”
Ethan took a step forward. He was a good five inches taller than the man, with all the muscle and power of vampirism.
“I doubt you understand what that phrase actually means, given the context you’ve used it in. But if you want to protest, do it across the street. Better yet, instead of sitting here, chatting with your friends and complaining, go do something about it. Go to the Ombudsman’s office and volunteer. Go to a charitable organization and donate your time.” He spread his gaze over all of them, covering them in furious disapproval. “But don’t you dare think that sitting here and advocating my wife’s murder is something I will allow. You have two minutes until I take things into my own hands. I suggest you use it wisely.”
He stared at them, this ancient raider, and waited for them to flinch.
And of course, they did. It didn’t take bravery to advocate that someone else throw their family to the wolf.
The man with the ball cap muttered insults, but he picked up his chair. The rest of them looked at least a little chagrined, and three climbed into waiting cars, deciding either the weather or the vampires weren’t worth the trouble.
“They’ll come back,” my grandfather said, when the last one had decamped to the strip of grass across the street.
“They will,” Ethan acknowledged. “But perhaps a few of them will think before they demand our blood in exchange.”
He looked back at me, his gaze locked to mine for a very long time. You promised me eternity, Sentinel, he said. I intend to collect.
• • •
Because the snow and ice would make getting downtown more difficult than usual, our two hours was something more like seventy minutes. And then it was time to head downtown again and talk to the mayor about Sorcha’s threat.
“Are you nervous?” Mallory asked as we walked through the foyer to the front door and the SUV that waited outside. Catcher would drive us to the mayor’s office. Everyone in the House would stay here, gates shut, with the House on high alert. My grandfather would drive separately, meet us there. In the meantime, Jeff would work with Luc to apprise the other Houses, our supernatural allies, about the situation.
“Nothing to be nervous about,” I said. That was mostly a lie, because I didn’t trust human politicians—with the possible exception of Seth Tate. But she looked nervous. That wasn’t a common emotion for Mallory, but this particular debacle mixed powerful sorcery, old magic, and extortion, and she hadn’t gotten much sleep. I could be strong for her. “This is just a strategy session.”
“A strategy session,” Mallory said, dipping her chin inside her thick scarf. “Right. Just going to talk a few things over with the mayor.”
“That’s precisely what we’re going to do,” Ethan said, putting a supportive hand on her shoulder and giving me a look behind her back, a nod that said we were in this together.
Good. Because that knot of worry was back. I didn’t like being worried. I’d come far enough as a vampire and Sentinel that I preferred a good old-fashioned fight to magic wrangling.
A few hardy and wrong-minded souls still sat on the strip of snow across the street, clearly convinced of their rightness, the rationality of Sorcha’s two-for-three-million calculation. Would it be the same, I wondered, if she’d asked for one of their wives or husbands or children? I seriously doubted it.
Once we were in the SUV, the going was slow, and Catcher took his time driving through the alternating mix of crusty slush and snow-covered ice. Beyond Hyde Park, the world was mostly quiet. The El wasn’t running; icicles hung from the elevated platforms, as sharp as sharks’ teeth. Few vehicles braved the roads, and then only snowplows, Guard vehicles, and cars headed out of Chicago, hoping to get clear before things got worse.
There were no people downtown. Those who were still in the city had stayed indoors, because of either the chill in the air or the fear that hung with it.
We parked in front of the building and headed inside.
The mayor asked that we meet her not in her office, but on the roof of City Hall. We went through security, then were escorted up an elevator and into a long hallway.
Lane stood at the end, gaze on a phone, fingers skimming and sliding along the screen. He looked up, nodded. “She’s waiting for you,” he said, then opened a heavy door beside him, sending a gust of cold air down the hallway.
We stepped outside and onto the building’s roof—and into a frozen world. The city spread out around us, most of it gleaming with the ice and snow that Sorcha had managed to dump in less than twenty-four hours. The cold had a boundary; we’d seen it on the map last night. But the parts of the world that remained green weren’t visible from up here.
To the northeast, clouds still swirled over the Towerline building. They didn’t look any bigger or fiercer than they had the night before, but until we figured out exactly what Sorcha was doing, I wasn’t sure that mattered much. How much colder could Chicago get?
Apparently, very cold. The wind on the roof was a thousand ice picks, harsh enough to make breathing feel like fire. Snow was bundled over what looked like planter boxes, with rows between for walking.
The mayor, bundled in a long, baffled down coat, was crouching near one of the piles of snow, sweeping the crust of it back from the plants beneath. Three guards in black suits stood around her, each of them gazing in a different direction, as if waiting for a threat to descend from the air. We walked toward her.
“There was a garden here last week,” she said without glancing up at us, rising and wiping the snow from her gloved hands. “Tomatoes, corn, beans. They were thriving in the heat, the rain we’ve gotten.” She looked around. “Part of the effort to ‘green’ the city and cut our heating and cooling costs. And it was working, until now.”
I didn’t know much about gardening, but I doubted much would survive the snow and the cold.
The mayor crossed her arms, tucked in her hands. “I’ve lived in this city for fifty-three years. And I’d never have imagined seeing something like this. Or not in August, anyway.” She sighed heavily, her breath crystallizing instantly in the frosty air.
