Drink Deep (16 page)

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Authors: Chloe Neill

BOOK: Drink Deep
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To what?
As I drove in the dark, the song rose to a crescendo, and I concluded that was the crucial question. What would I be without Ethan?
Who
would I be without Ethan?
It was probably time to find out.
 
The Midway linked Washington Park to the west and Jackson Park to the east. It was bounded by art, including the Masaryk memorial, a statue of a mounted soldier, on the east end. The horse and soldier sat atop a rectangular plinth above a set of raised concrete steps. Jonah stood in front of the plinth, arms crossed, looking up at it.
“You rang?” I asked him, hopping up the steps.
He turned around. “Do you ever wonder if we’ll get to the point where we’re considered part of Chicago?” He gestured toward the statue. “I mean, enough that they’d consider memorializing one of us? That they’d actually be proud of what we’ve done?”
I sat do c="3 whawn on one of the steps, and he moved over and sat beside me.
“This city has been through a lot of phases since Celina’s press conference,” I said. “Denial. Hatred. Celebrity.”
“And now back to hatred?”
I made a sound of agreement. “Something pretty profound would have to change before they’d consider us equal to humans. And speaking of equality,” I said, and filled him in on the mayor’s visit.
His eyes went wide. “The Ombud’s office—they can’t close it. The city needs it. The sups need it. They trust your grandfather. They think he gives them a voice. Without him, people only know about troublemakers, about Celina and Adam Keene.”
“I agree, but don’t fret. When I left, they were already brainstorming a plan to help out. They’ll do what they have to do; taxpayers just won’t be paying for it.”
We sat quietly for a moment, the cool air raising goose bumps along my arms.
“I’m guessing you think something else is going on with the water,” he said. “Something beyond the siren?”
“I do. It’s too convenient otherwise. I was there with her, Jonah. And she wasn’t working any magic.”
“So we should keep looking.”
“Quietly,” I said. “Let my grandfather do the heavy lifting, as he put it. There’s just too much pressure on me to be more active. Frank’s not thrilled I’m standing Sentinel. It wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to push me out of the position.”
“He doesn’t have the power to do that.”
I gave him a dry look. “There may not be a rule in the
Canon
that says he can, but who’s going to stop him? He’s got the House over a barrel, and if it came down to me and the House, Malik has to pick the House. How could he not pick the House?”
My stomach sank at the thought—and not just from the possibility I’d no longer be Sentinel, but because I’d chided Ethan about having to choose between me and the House. I’d suggested it was wrong of him to even consider picking the House over me. Maybe I hadn’t given him enough credit—not because I would have agreed with the decision, but because the decision had been harder than I’d thought.
“Where are you right now?”
I looked over at Jonah. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
I looked away again, and he must have understood the embarrassment in my expression.
“Ah,” he said.
“Ah,” I repeated with a nod.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.”
Whatever he was going to say, it took a few seconds for him to work up to it. “I know we didn’t exactly hit it off in the beginning, mostly because of my admittedly preconceived notions about who you were.”
“And because I’d forgotten you’d masqueraded as a human to date my twenty-two-year-old sister.”
“Also that,” he quickly agreed. “But that doesn’t change the obvious.”
“Which is?”
“Which is, you’re rather intriguing, Merit, Sentinel of Cadogan House.”
“Thanks,” I said, but couldn’t manage to make eye contact.
Jonah put a finger beneath my chin, turning my head so I had to face him. The touch of his finger sent a warming
zing
of power straight down my spine.
“What the hell was that?”
Surprise in his eyes, he pulled back his fingers and stared down at them before lifting his gaze to mine. “Complementary magic,” he whispered. “I’ve heard it was possible, but I’ve never actually seen it. Vamps aren’t magical per se, you know. We feel it. We sense it. We know it’s around us. We disrupt the balance of it when we’re upset.”
That wasn’t exactly how I’d learned it. “I thought we leaked magic when we were upset?”
Jonah shook his head. “The magic doesn’t come
from
us. It flows
around
us. Strong emotions—fear, anger, lust—change the way we interact with it, sending ripples through it. We aren’t making the magic or leaking it. We’re altering the currents.”
“I see,” I said.
“But this,” he began, picking up my hand and tracing a finger across my palm—and sending frissons of magic down my body. “This is unexpected. The theory is that some vampires affect magic in complementary ways—as if on the same frequency. It looks like we might have some of that.”
Magical novelty or not, this sounded like a complication I didn’t need. And yet, every movement of his fingers sent shivers down my spine and shut off the part of my brain that should have been thinking better.
“All right,” he suddenly said, jumping up from his seat. “Let’s get back to work.”
The abrupt change in conversation surprised me again.
He must have caught the shock in my face, as he smiled. “This city is bigger than a magical novelty. Bigger than three Houses or two vampires or a pain in the ass council. I’m not going to sweat the small stuff.”
Relief at his casual tone coursed through me. “I’m now ‘small stuff’?”
He grinned. “And you’ve got yourself a nickname. I’m thinking ‘Shorty.’ ”
“I’m five eight without heels.”
“It’s not a description. It’s a nickname. Get used to it, Shorty.”
We stood there for a moment, waiting for the tension to evaporate. When it did, we smiled at each other. “Don’t call me Shorty,” I told him.
“Okay, Shorty.”
“Seriously. That’s very immature.”
“Whatever you say, Shorty. Let’s call it a night.”
“Fine by me.”
I’d worry about the humiliation in the morning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
 
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
 
I
dreamed in darkness. I stood atop Chicago’s John Hancock
Center, the wind swirling around me. A yellow moon hung low in the sky, huge as it balanced just above the horizon, as if too heavy to make its way higher.
Ethan stoo fous as d beside me in his black Armani, his golden hair tied at the nape of his neck, his green eyes glowing. “Look,” he said. “It’s disappearing.”
I followed the line of his outstretched hand and looked into the sky. The moon was higher now—small and white in the midsky—and a fingernail crescent of it had turned dark.
“A lunar eclipse,” I said, watching the earth’s shadow crawl across the face of the moon. “What does it mean?”
“Darkness,” Ethan said. “Chaos. Destruction.” He looked back at me and squeezed my hand until it ached. “The world is changing. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I’m still . . . stretched thin. You have to find the cause.”
I blew him off, offering him a smile. “It’s nothing. Just an eclipse. They happen all the time.” But when I looked again, the moon was no longer disappearing behind a round disk of shadow. The circle had morphed, the edges blurring into shapes that more closely resembled tentacles than the smooth curve of the earth. They undulated across the moon like a ravenous monster intent on devouring it.
My chest clenched with panic, and I squeezed Ethan’s hand as tightly as he’d squeezed mine. “Is this the end of the world?” I asked him, unable to look away from the dancing shadows.
That he didn’t answer didn’t comfort me at all.
Together, fingers tangled, we watched the moon disappear behind the monster’s shadow. And as it happened, a cold wind began to blow, the temperature dropping precipitously.
“You have to stop this,” he said into the silence.
“I don’t know how.”
“Then you must find someone who does.”
I looked over at him, there beside me, hair whipping in the wind. And as the wind rose, each gust stronger than the last, I watched him disappear behind the monster’s shadow, until there was nothing left of him.
Until I stood alone in the chilling wind beneath an empty sky.
There was no sound except the howling of the wind in my ears, and his screaming of my name.
“
Merit!
”
My eyes flashed open. I was still in bed, warm beneath the blankets in my chilly room.
I pulled a pillow over my face and screamed into it, frustration pulling my nerves so taut I felt ready to snap. These dreams were killing me.
I’d always been a fan of ripping off the bandage—dealing with the pain all at once rather than suffering death by a thousand stings. These dreams were torture by a thousand memories: Seeing his green eyes, his face, all the while knowing the Ethan in my dreams was a weak facsimile of the man I’d known.
Maybe I needed more sleep. More vegetables. More exercise. Maybe I needed more Mallory and less vampire, more Wicker Park and less Hyde Park.
Whatever the reason, I needed a change. I threw off the blankets and hopped out of bed, then pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and yoga pants. My hair went up, and I headed downstairs for a workout session as long and brutal as I could make it. For a workout, I hoped, that would push the grief right out of me.
 
Vampires had a long history of martial arts work in a style that mixed swordcraft, defensive postures, and offensive attacks. We practiced those efforts in th keffistoe House’s sparring room, a giant space in the basement that was prepped for combat. The walls were lined with wooden paneling and antique weapons, and tatami mats were spread across the floor.
I kicked off the flip-flops I’d donned for the trip downstairs and stepped onto the mat. The room was big and silent, and it felt strange to stand in the middle of it alone. I’d lost a workout partner in Ethan, and I hadn’t trained with Catcher since Ethan had taken over the job earlier in the year. I worked out with the House guards on occasion, but we were so short-staffed opportunities for long workouts and training sessions didn’t arise very often.
Silence, I quickly decided, wasn’t going to work tonight. There was a sound system in one corner of the room, and I flipped through the channels until I found an angry alternative song (courtesy of Rage Against the Machine) and turned up the volume. And then I returned to the middle of the mat, shook out my shoulders, closed my eyes, and got to work.
Katas were the building blocks of our martial arts work, short combinations of punches, strikes, kicks, and the like. Put them together, and you had a pretty fierce-looking demonstration of our skills. With the music pounding behind me, I used strikes, spins, and flips to push out the grief.
Workouts were tricky. Some days it was easier than others. Some days you felt light as air; some days you felt heavy as lead. Tonight was somewhere in between. It felt good to move, but I could feel the gnawing thirst itching beneath my skin.
I pushed through it. An out-of-shape Sentinel wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Given the trouble I often managed to get into, I needed to make sure my muscles were honed and my skills were fine-tuned.
After twenty minutes or so, the door opened, and Luc stepped inside. I pushed sweaty bangs from my face.
“I heard the music down the hall,” he said. “Getting in some exercise?”
When I nodded, Luc walked to the edge of the mat and looked down at the tatami. “There are nights when he seems more absent than others.”
The grief in his voice brought immediate tears to my eyes. I looked away to keep them from falling, but didn’t disagree with the heart-clenching sentiment.
“There are nights when the world is completely askew because he’s gone,” I agreed.
Luc crossed his arms over his chest and glanced around the room at the objects displayed on the walls. He nodded toward a shield that bore images of acorns.
“That was Ethan’s when he was in Sweden.”
More than four hundred years ago, Ethan had been a Swedish soldier, changed into a vampire during a vicious battle.
“Family crest?”
Luc nodded. “I believe so. He’d been a helluva soldier, at least until the reaper got him. Two lives instead of nine, I suppose.” He laughed mirthlessly, then looked down at the floor, as if ashamed he’d made a joke. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

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