Midnight Marked: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (22 page)

“I don’t know him,” Noah said. “I heard the rumors a Rogue had been involved with Celina’s murders, but never any specific leads. When Celina was arrested, the story went quiet.”

“You’re the head of Chicago’s Rogue vampires. Wouldn’t you be in the best position to know him?”

“I’m a spokesman, if that. Vampires go Rogue because they don’t want to be Housed. And for many, it means they don’t want to be tracked. Is it possible I’d know him? Yes. But I don’t.”

Jonah handed the photograph back to me. “I don’t know him, either.”

“He’s working for Reed,” I said, and gave them the details about Reed, the alchemy, and his plan.

I let my gaze slip to the other vampires in the room, who still watched me with some suspicion. But there was, at least, more curiosity now than there’d been when I opened the door.

“Have you seen anything like that? The alchemy? Magical symbols in a room, on a wall?”

No one spoke, raised, a hand, indicated they had any idea what I was talking about.

“Reed is well connected—politically, economically, supernaturally. And whatever he’s cooking up—whatever this alchemy is for—is going to be big. Dangerously big. We could use your help.”

“You want
our
help?” A female vamp I didn’t know stepped into the doorway from which Noah had entered, crossed her arms. She was tall and thin, with straight, dark hair, tan skin, and wide brown eyes. “That’s rich. You won’t do our work, but you’ll ask us for a favor?”

It didn’t bother me that they thought ill of me, as it didn’t come as a surprise. It didn’t even bother me when she walked toward us, stood protectively by Jonah. But it did bother me that she—and the rest of them—had so entirely missed the point.

“I do your work,” I said, and it only just occurred to me that that was what had bothered me about the RG all along. “
Cadogan House
does your work. We watch out for the vampires in this city, deal with the nasties that keep cropping up, and handle the human fallout. You don’t.”

“We’re a secret organization,” Noah said.

“Of which we’re all well aware,” I said. “But you aren’t even requesting private access to Cadogan House to attend meetings. You aren’t offering to contribute anonymously. You aren’t offering to contribute at all. Instead you’re stuck on this idea that I’m the enemy. Why would you think you have anything to worry about?”

“Morgan and Celina,” Horace and his girlfriend said simultaneously.

“You know what she’s done with the Circle,” he said.

“Celina’s debts to Reed have nothing to do with Morgan; he was innocent.” Or close enough for my purposes, anyway. “She was indebted to the Circle for millions. Had been for years. Morgan didn’t even know about it until it was too late. But I’ll bet you knew something, and yet you did nothing about it.”

The woman had the grace to look a little chagrined. “That’s more complicated than it sounds.”

“Oh, I’m aware of how complicated it is,” I said, anger starting to build, “because Cadogan House ended up in the middle of it. Cadogan House
always
ends up in the middle of it, and even when we’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

I took an aggressive step forward, could feel them growing restless. “By contrast,
nothing
is exactly what you do. You want to fix the bad guys? Fine. But you should also be willing to help the good guys. Which we are.”

“So you say.” Horace’s expression wasn’t friendly.

“Damn right I say. And I’d be happy to go a round with anyone who says different.” I looked at Noah, decided that if he was putting me on the spot, I could put him on the spot, too. “Why did you invite me to join the Red Guard if you didn’t trust me?”

“He was dead when we invited you,” Noah said.

Silence fell over the room like a curse. Noah’s voice was flat. I didn’t think he’d meant to be cruel, even if the statement was crude. But more important, it was wrong.

“No,” I said. “He was
alive
when you invited me. I said yes when he was gone, because I couldn’t possibly have betrayed his confidence then. There was no risk to me that way. He wasn’t dead the first time I came to the lighthouse, or any of the other times since then that Cadogan House has stepped up.”

I put my hands on my hips. I hadn’t meant to come here and begin a tirade, but I found I couldn’t stop. I was too frustrated by inaction, by apathy, by their treating every issue as someone else’s problem.

“When the GP came knocking at our door, when the cops came knocking at our door, when Adrien Reed came knocking at our door, you weren’t there. So don’t give me bullshit about how you’re on the side of vampires against the oppressors. You pick and choose your battles. And you know what? I think you’ve decided Ethan and I are one of those battles because you think that battle’s actually winnable. I think you know the Red Guard is useless, that if you demonstrate you can control me, control Cadogan House, you can show you have balls. But that’s bullshit. The only thing you get out of it is pissing off the people who have worked themselves to death—literally—to clean up the messes you’ve been ignoring.”

“Looks like Sullivan’s creating his own mess,” the tall woman said. “He’s making a spectacle of himself with Reed.”

“Going to the Garden wasn’t the best idea,” I agreed. “Reed threatened me, wanted to get a reaction out of Ethan, and he did. Ethan knows it was a mistake, but the arrest was a complete sham. They’d spent maybe ten minutes talking. It was a show of power by Reed, because that’s the kind of guy he is. That’s why we need to be united. That’s why it’s crucial.” And it was a damn pity I couldn’t say that to Ethan and Gabriel right then. But one step at a time.

The woman opened her mouth to speak again, but I held up a hand. “No. I’m not done. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of conversations about me, and this is my chance to speak my piece. Here’s the question you have to ask yourselves: Are you going to keep wasting your time on me, on Ethan, when there are enemies out there with plans to bring the city to its knees? Instead of joining us, instead of helping fight, are you going to keep debating whether I’m the enemy? Here’s a tip: I’m not.”

“Big words,” someone muttered.

“Damn right they are,” I said. “And not easy ones. You’ve seen what Cadogan has gone through. I’m not saying it will be easy. But that’s not why the RG was founded, was it? To do what’s easiest?”

I didn’t wait for a response, but walked to the door, glanced back. I centered my gaze on Jonah, let it linger there. His eyes, crystalline blue, showed absolutely nothing.

“When you’re ready to get to work,” I said to him, “you know where to find me.”

And I walked out.

•   •   •

I stared out the windows of the taxi that sped toward Hyde Park. The driver kept checking his rearview mirror, and he’d made it plain he was in a hurry to get me the hell out of his car.

“I could drop you off at the university,” he said for the third time.

“You’ll drop me off at the House, or I’ll call the city and tell them you refused a fare to a vampire.”

I didn’t think that was illegal; civil rights for vampires hadn’t exactly caught on. But he blanched, and kept driving.

Sometimes you took the victory where you could find it.

•   •   •

I slammed into the House in the mood for a fight, was momentarily disappointed Ethan and I had made up. A good, screaming yell-fest would have worked out some of my anger. The next best thing, I decided, would be a good bout of exercise. I could go for a run or get in a little time of my own in the training room, maybe practicing the ballet Berna had mentioned.

But Mallory intercepted me in the hallway. She wore cropped jeans rolled up above her ankles, sneakers, and over a fitted shirt, a stained canvas tunic that looked like something kindergarteners wore to protect their clothes while finger-painting. Her hair was parted to the side, the wider part braided in front, the braid tucked behind her ear. “First of all, Catcher told me about the Rogue, which completely sucks. But it looks like you kicked his ass.”

“Not enough to bring him down permanently.”

“One step at a time,” she said. “Second, I have something to show you. Ethan said you were on your way back to the House.” She gestured for me to follow her. “You need to come outside.”

“Mallory, I don’t have time for—”

“Come outside,” she said again. “Ethan, Malik, and Paige are already out there, and it’s work-related, I promise. I’ve got a little something in the crucible.”

That wasn’t an offer I thought I should refuse.

•   •   •

They’d set up in the House’s fancy barbecue, an enormous brick structure that was as much outdoor kitchen as grill. I recognized Mallory’s crucible, the slightly pitted and char-marked surface. It had survived the trip back to Wicker Park. I wondered if Margot’s snacks had fared as well.

Paige stood in front of the brick counter, looking at a book open beside the crucible, a basket on the brick patio at her feet.

Ethan and Malik stood a few yards away, presumably out of the danger zone. Both had their arms crossed as they watched the proceedings warily.

“What’s going on, exactly?” I asked as I joined them, and Mallory joined Paige in front of the barbecue.

“We’ve picked out a testable portion of the alchemy,” Paige said, putting drops of clear liquid in the crucible with a dropper.

“And why are you testing it here?”

“Because it needs testing,” Mallory said. “And we don’t want to burn down Wicker Park.”

I glanced at Ethan. “So you’re going to let her burn down Cadogan House?”

“I’m not going to burn anything down,” Mallory said, looking back with a grin. “It’s just, the houses in Wicker Park are really close together, so if anything did go wrong—
which it won’t
—it would spread quickly. Here, there’s plenty of room. Besides, I have Paige as my partner in crime.”

“I don’t have nearly as much practical experience,” she said. “More of the book stuff. So this is good practice for me.”

“I’m not sure that inspires confidence,” Ethan murmured.

“No, it does not,” Malik agreed.

“And what, exactly, will you be doing?” I asked.

“We’re increasing the resonance of rosemary,” Paige said, holding the crucible still as Mallory glopped green paste into it, stirred it with a wooden spoon.

“Elaborate, please,” Malik said.

“Alchemists were really committed to the idea that everything in its basic form was a little bit crappy,” Paige said. “But if you worked hard enough, you could raise something to its true potential.”

“Like all the work we’ve put into Merit over the last year?” Malik asked with a wink.

“Like that,” Mallory said, with an answering grin. “Pretty much anything organic—especially plants and people—have that quality. A lot of alchemy is about distilling things down to their essence—to the purity inside them. And if you can do that, if you can get, I don’t know, rosemary, down to its true, unadulterated essence, its resonance changes, and it develops these healing properties. You ingest those, and you get closer to your own real essence, spiritually and physically, to a change in your own resonance.”

“Alchemy is really weird,” I said.

“Completely bonkers,” Paige agreed.

“How does resonance—this test of it—relate to the symbols we’ve found?” Ethan asked.

“This is what we’re calling a ‘pattern test,’” Mallory said. “The actual equations are set up in phrases that, so far, don’t stand on their own. In order words, we haven’t been able to find one excerpt that we can run as an experiment. It would be like mixing one part of a recipe—let’s say baking soda and flour—and expecting to get cookies out of it. That one step is useless on its own.”

“We’re looking for confirmation we’re translating correctly,” Paige said. “Even if we can’t yet translate the entire thing, we’ll know we’ve translated correctly certain parts of it.”

Mallory nodded. “It will help me calibrate the machine. We want to find this alchemy. I need to be certain I’m looking for this alchemy. Otherwise we’re going to end up with a machine that tags, I don’t know, coffee drinkers in Chicago or something.”

“Which would be useless,” I said. “Especially in the Loop.”

“And Wicker Park!” Mallory said. “There’s a whole-bean, shade-grown, cage-free coffeehouse on every corner now.”

“I didn’t realize beans required cages,” Ethan said.

“Neither did I,” Mallory said. “Now hush and let me work.”

“I guess she’s giving you orders now,” I said to Ethan with a smile.

“I guess she is,” Ethan said as they turned to their work, putting material in the crucible, arranging components on the top of the patio.

Paige and Mallory looked happy and very compatible working together. Paige’s height and red hair matched interestingly with Mallory’s petite stature and blue locks. Mallory moved quickly, efficiently, as she prepared the work. Paige’s movements were more deliberate. For two sorcerers on the right side of the law, they hadn’t spent much time together. Maybe a friendship could blossom. If so, I’d take credit for that, too.

“How was the meeting?” Ethan asked.

In response, I growled.

“I guess that means we’ll discuss it later.”

“That would probably be best.”

“All right,” Mallory said as Paige handed her a box of matches. “Let’s do this.”

When Mallory snapped the match against the side of the box, Malik, Ethan, and I took a simultaneous step backward. As she dropped it into the crucible, Paige took a step backward, too. Mallory stayed exactly where she was, watching and waiting for something to happen.

The crucible rattled once. Then again. And then it began to vibrate as if someone had flipped a switch.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have alchemy.” Mallory put her hands on her hips, and her smile was as sly as a vampire’s. “That’s resonance.”

We clapped politely, and Malik leaned in. “Is anyone else disappointed there wasn’t a pretty blue or green explosion?”

It was as if he’d made a wish.

There was a whistle, like a teapot at the ready, and a small blue spark popped out of the crucible, burst like a tiny firework.