Some Girls Bite (39 page)

Fine
, I told him, hoping irritation carried telepathically.
I owe you a favor
.

A favor, unspecified.

There was my mistake.

I had to give him credit—he saw his opportunity, and he took it. I omitted terms, failed to identify the thing I owed him, failed to clarify that I owed him a favor equal to the one he’d given. Vampires, I belatedly realized, negotiated via a system of verbal trades and barters and, just as to overzealous attorneys, every word mattered. These were oral contracts of a sort, backed by steel rather than law, but just as binding. And I’d just handed Morgan a blank check.

He grinned wolfishly, offered a smile so possessive it made my stomach flip, and then sank to one knee. My own eyes wide, I followed him down with my sword, kept it pointed at his heart.

You made it too easy
, he said, then announced to the room, “Merit, Sentinel of Cadogan House, I hereby claim the right of courtship. Do you accept?”

I stared down at him. I wasn’t even sure what it meant—not the details, anyway—although the gist of it was bad enough.
You
cannot
be serious,
I told him.

I was about to respond with a few choice maxims of my own, but the landscape shifted, and I was hurling down another tunnel, Ethan whispering at the end of it.

Take his hand. Accept his claim
.

My stomach dropped again, this time for an altogether different reason.
What?

I had to fight back the urge to turn on him and level my sword at the shrunken black nugget of his heart.
Tell me why. Explain to me why.
“Why you’re pimping me out,” was the unspoken end of that request.

Silence, until:
Because it’s a chance for us. For Cadogan. If Morgan courts you, he courts Cadogan by proxy. And he has made this request before representatives of Cadogan, Navarre, Grey, and the Rogues. For Navarre to court a House that drinks, to court Cadogan so openly—it’s unprecedented. This could be the gateway to an alliance between our Houses. Things are . . . unstable, Merit. If your courtship brings Navarre closer . . .

He didn’t finish the thought, the obvious implication being that I was a useful bridge between Cadogan and Navarre, a leather-clad link between the Houses. My feelings, my desires, were irrelevant.

I looked down at Morgan on his knees before me, his smile bright and hopeful even while he’d manipulated his way into a relationship, and wondered which of them was the lesser evil.

The crowd around us shuffled, getting antsy as they waited for a response. There was chatting. I heard snippets, whispered behind cupped hands:

“Do you think she’ll say yes?”

“Morgan dating someone from Cadogan—that’s huge.”

“I didn’t know they knew each other.”

And the real kicker: “I thought Ethan had a thing for her?”

My eyes still on Morgan, I squeezed the handle of my sword, sent Ethan another question:
If I accept his claim, what does that mean?

It means you accept his suit
.
You acknowledge that I am, and that you are, receptive to his courting you.

I locked my knees and forced out the question that needed asking, unpleasantly surprised that the answer mattered so much.
And are you? Receptive?

Silence.

Nothing.

Ethan didn’t answer.

I closed my eyes, realizing I’d made the lamentable, and incorrect, assumption that, at the least, we had reached an accord that would have prevented him from using me, from passing me to a rival to meet a political goal. Oh, how wrong I’d been. Wrong to discount the fact that he was first and foremost a strategist, weighing outcomes, considering options, debating the means that would best achieve his ends. Wrong to think that he’d make an exception for me.

While his end might have been laudable—protecting his House, protecting his vampires—he was willing to sacrifice me to meet those goals. I’d just been sent to the sacrificial altar, given to the man who only moments ago, and quite literally, wielded the ceremonial dagger.

I’d imagined myself safe from Ethan’s machinations because I’d thought, naively, that he cared for me, if not as a friend, then because I was a Cadogan vampire.

I squeezed back tears of frustration. Damn it, I was supposed to be one of his vampires, to protect, to shield. Not to offer up.

But there was something worse beneath that sense of House betrayal, some undefined emotion that made my stomach ache. I didn’t want to pick at it, examine it, consider why tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, why his passing me along to another vampire hurt so much.

Not because he’d given me to Morgan.

But because he hadn’t wanted to keep me to himself.

I squeezed my eyes shut, lambasted my own stupidity, wondered how in God’s name I’d managed to form an attachment to a man so obviously determined to push me away. It wasn’t about love, maybe not even about affection, but rather some bone-deep sense that our lives were bound together in some important way. That there was—and would be—something more between us than the awkwardness of unfulfilled sexual attraction.

It would be so easy, so handy, to blame it on the vampire inside, to attribute the connection to the fact that he’d made me, turned me, that I was his to command, that he was mine to serve. But this wasn’t about magic or genetics.

This was about a boy, and a girl . . .

Gently, quietly, Morgan cleared his throat.

... and the other boy still on his knees before me.

I opened my eyes, recalling that I was still standing in the middle of a room of anticipatory vampires, all waiting for me to act on Morgan’s proposal. So I pushed down the pain of the betrayal Ethan likely didn’t known he was committing, and did my job.

I lowered my sword, smiled softly at Morgan, and took his hand. I let my voice go flat—no sense in pretending I was thrilled to play political go-between—and offered, “Morgan, Second of Navarre, I accept your claim on behalf of Cadogan House, on behalf of my Master, on behalf of myself.”

The applause was hesitant at first, but soon thundered through the ballroom. Morgan rose and pressed my hand to his lips, then squeezed it. He smiled quirkily. “Is it so bad?”

I lifted my brows, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of a perky answer. “To be a pawn?”

Shaking his head, he took a step forward, bent his lips to my ear. “Whatever the political ramifications, I’ve told you before—I want you.” When he pulled back, his eyes twinkled with an amusement I appreciated, but didn’t share. “Especially now that I’ve seen the wardrobe change. Kudos to your stylist. When can I see you again?”

I met his eyes, was slightly mollified to see that he was sincere, and slid a glance over my shoulder to the blond who stood behind me. Ethan met my gaze, but his thoughts were unfathomable, typically blank, a tiny crease between his eyebrows the only indication that he’d witnessed anything consequential in the last few minutes.

Without thought to the consequences, I let my eyes fill with the array of emotions he’d forced me to sort through. I let all of it show—anger, betrayal, hurt, and the one I knew I’d regret most of all, the frazzle-edged bit of attachment. And then, with Morgan waiting in front of me, I waited to see what, if anything, Ethan would give back.

For a long moment, he just stared at me, need laid bare in his expression.

But then his mouth tightened, and slowly, excruciatingly, he looked away.

I stiffened, turned around again, and offered Morgan a bright smile that I hoped didn’t look as forced as it was.

“Call me,” I dutifully said.

 

It took minutes for Ethan to calm down the crowd again. Once he had their attention, I moved back to the edge of the crowd, close enough to defend if necessary, but outside the inner circle. I’d had my fill of attention for the night.

“Now that we’ve enjoyed that . . . romantic interlude,” Ethan said with a smile, capitalizing on the lighter mood, “we should return to the matter of the girls.”

Static buzzed in my ear, and Luc’s voice echoed through the earpiece. “Thanks for the distraction, Sentinel,” he whispered. “That was damn entertaining. But everyone keep eyes and ears open—we may have defused tension, but we still have a shit storm to deal with.”

I bobbed my head in acknowledgment.

“That ‘matter’ has gotten more complicated,” Noah said, arms still folded across his chest. “Navarre House has apparently been infiltrated.”

“So it would appear,” Ethan agreed, nodding. “We are dealing with a killer, or killers, who have access to multiple Houses, perhaps a vendetta against them.”

“But they’ve also got a vendetta against the Rogues,” Noah said. “Let’s not forget that every time a House denies involvement, they implicitly accuse us.”

“Implicit or not, it’s hard to accuse a group no one knows about,” Scott grunted, joining the conversation. “The public only knows about us—that means the shit falls on us.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have stepped forward,” muttered a Rogue who stood beside Noah.

“Not my choice,” Scott pointed out.

“Nor mine,” Ethan said. “But it’s too late to do anything about that now. The only thing we can do now is cooperate. With the CPD, the administration, the investigations. Cooperation is the only thing that will insulate us from the public relations fallout, at least until the perpetrator of these crimes has been identified.”

“And our existence?” Noah quietly asked.

The room fell silent as the Masters, Ethan and Scott, likely weighed their options.

“Until we figure out who’s doing the damage,” Scott finally said, “there’s no point embroiling other vamps.” He shrugged, glanced at Ethan. “That’s my take.”

Ethan nodded. “I would agree.”

“Then we wait,” Noah pronounced, propping hands on his hips. “And if someone has information about which vampire or vampires are responsible for this cluster fuck, I suggest they come forward. We had no intention of entering the public eye, and we won’t do it now. If the Houses fall, we will not step forward. We will disperse into the human world as we have before.” He glanced between Ethan and Scott, then settled his gaze on Morgan. “Clean up your Houses,” he said.

With that pronouncement, Noah turned and began walking through the crowd, which opened to accommodate him and the Rogues who followed.

“And we’re adjourned,” Ethan muttered.

Not privy to the private meeting between Ethan, Scott, and Morgan that followed the Rogues’ departure, I went home, ignored the worried glances I received on the way in, headed straight for my bedroom, and shut the door behind me. The belted sword was placed on an armchair, and I grabbed my iPod, slipped in the ear buds, lay down on the bed, and told myself I didn’t care what had happened earlier in the evening.

I’d never been a very good liar.

 

 

 

T
he next night I woke exhausted, having spent most of the day rolling, staring, cursing, replaying the events of the night before, mentally reenacting every moment Ethan and I had shared, and wondering how, why it had been so easy for him to trade me in for his precious political capital.

While that mystery loomed, I had work to do, so I rose, showered, dressed, ate a bowl of cereal in the darkness of my kitchen, slipped on the leather jacket, and grabbed the belted sword and the box of cupcakes I hadn’t had time to deliver last night, preparing to return to Cadogan House and report for duty.

I’d just locked the front door and turned to descend the stoop steps when I saw Morgan leaning against his car, arms and ankles crossed. He was in jeans again, a black shirt tucked into jeans snugged with a heavy black belt, and the ubiquitous leather jacket.

He was grinning. “Hi.”

I stood on the stoop, blinked, then took the steps and went for the garage, hoping the obvious uninterest would send him running. Instead, he followed me, pausing at the threshold of the garage, a disarmingly cute grin on his face.

“You said I could call.”

“Call,” I repeated. “Not show up at dusk.” I pulled open the garage door, walked inside, and unlocked the car door.

“You gave me permission to court you.”

With what I thought was an impressive amount of control, I managed not to run him through with my sword, instead pulling open the driver’s side door and sliding the katana into the backseat, then laying the box of cupcakes on the front. That done, I turned back to him.

“You put me on the spot in front of fifty vampires. I couldn’t exactly say no.” He opened his mouth to respond, but I didn’t give him the chance. “Fifty vampires, Morgan. Fifty, including my Master, another Master, and the leader of the Rogue vampires.”