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“The Ombuds are making sure they have what they need.”
He must have seen my face. “If you’re feeling guilty, don’t. Your job is to get the House back, and I’ll wager that’s not goingto be easy. I’ll talk to Roger and we’ll help with the displaced vampires however we can. We’ve got plenty of room in the House, and I’m sure Grey and Navarre will help, too.”
Those were Chicago’s other two vampire Houses.
“Thank you,” I said, and began to understand why Uncle Malik had selected him as Second. “We’ll keep you updated on this.”
“Do that,” Micah said. “And if you need some time with Babu, you know where to find us.”
***
By the time the moon had arced across the sky, I was exhausted. There were still two hours before dawn, but I felt like the sun was already on the rise.
Connor and Alexei pulled an SUV to the curb, which they’d switched out at Pack HQ so we could travel back to the town house together.
We said our goodbyes to the Ombuds, and I took one last look at the grounds. CPD uniforms had been stationed around the House, as if Sentinels to replace the one—my mother—who was currently missing.
I turned back to the SUV, where Connor held open my door. He hadn’t mentioned yet what had gone down at Pack HQ, but his face was hard and tired.
“How bad was it?” I asked quietly.
“As bad as it gets. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. We’re going to get something to eat, then we’re going to sleep. We all need our strength,” he added, anticipating my argument that we didn’t have time for anything else. “Without it, you won’t do your parents any good.”
I climbed in and he closed the door. I had no energy to argue, so I didn’t try.
We were silent as Connor drove to a silver bullet of a building that apparently housed a twenty-four-hour diner.
“Just a minute,” he said, then went inside and picked up an order that smelled, frankly, delicious. We rode to the town house in a fog of food smells.
I changed clothes and came back downstairs to find dinner on the table—assorted containers of soup. Someone had added a box of crackers, a bottle of ketchup, bottles of small-batch soda made in Chicago, and a bottle of blood for me.
Lulu was already seated, arms crossed and staring blankly across the room.
“Eat,” I said, taking a seat next to her. “It’s probably going to be a long few nights, and we might need your strength. Have you been practicing with those throwing knives Alexei gave you?”
I was trying to shift the mood from grieving to planning, hoping that giving her a goal, something to focus on, would help dilute the sadness. She picked up her spoon, at least, dabbed it into the soup.
“Some,” she said. “I’m more comfortable with guns.”
Lulu might have avoided supernatural drama, but she had no issues with weapons. Weapons were her father’s magical specialty, so she’d been taught how to use a variety of them. And there was nothing supernatural about an M1911.
I pulled the lid off my container, found chunks of beef in a thick potato- and carrot-filled stew that made my stomach rumble. I could eat, even if the act felt selfish because it wasn’t laser-focused on getting our parents back.
“Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish,” Connor said, as if he could read my mind.
When I gave him a narrow stare, he just smiled. “It was written all over your face, Lis. And it’s going to take time and energy to fix this.”
“Will we fix it?” I hadn’t meant to express that as a question. But my fears were real.
Alexei leaned over, snatched a cracker from Lulu’s plate, chomped it.
Lulu gave him her driest look. “Could you not?”
By way of response, he took her soda and nabbed a solid swig of that, too, all the while meeting her gaze. Then he put it down again, went back to his soup with a sly little smile. He was trying to make her smile, I thought, even through the pain.
“They’ll be working on getting back,” Connor said, and waited for Lulu to look at him.
“What?” she asked.
