House Rules (22 page)

Luc sighed. “Fine. Let him cool off, if you think that’s best. We’ll deal with the
murder and let the upstairs staff deal with the House. Upstairs staff,” he said with
a chuckle, then looked at me curiously. “Your parents have money, don’t they, Sentinel?
Did y’all have upstairs and downstairs staff growing up?”

My father owned Merit Properties, one of Chicago’s largest real estate development
companies. We had a miserable relationship, mostly because he always wished that I
was a different kind of daughter.

And also because he’d bribed Ethan to make me a vampire.

Ethan had declined, but the tactic—typical of my father’s dictatorial style—hadn’t
done our relationship any favors.

I wasn’t generally thrilled when people brought up my parents, but something happened
when Luc spoke those words. A thought flashed, and I stared at Luc for a moment.

Luc grimaced. “Oh, sorry, Sentinel. I know they aren’t an easy subject.”

I shook my head. “I’m not mad,” I said, then looked at the whiteboard. “I’m just thinking
about property.”

We’d identified the spots where Oliver and Eve were last spotted—the registration
office—and where they’d been found—the warehouse. But we hadn’t dug much deeper.

“The property where Oliver and Eve were found,” I said, circling it on the whiteboard.
“The warehouse. Jeff wasn’t able to figure out who owned it.”

“So?”

I recapped the marker and tapped it against the board. “Oliver and Eve were found
in a secret room. James, one of Noah’s friends, only suspected the room existed because
he scented the blood. But how would the killer know about the room? Maybe the killer
has some connection to the property.”

“It seems unlikely the owner would use his own property to dump a body when it could
be traced back to him.”

“True,” I said. “But the killer doesn’t have to be an investor. He could be a former
warehouse employee turned vampire.”

“Turned Navarre vampire,” Luc said.

“Even better. The list of people associated with that warehouse who are also Navarre
vamps can’t be long.”

“Okay,” Luc said. “But Jeff said the property records were a dead end.”

“He did, but the records have to exist somewhere, even if they’re somewhere Jeff can’t
get to them. On the other hand, I would bet my father can get anything he wants. I
could talk to him.”

The room went quiet for a moment as the group considered the gravity of that offer.

Lindsey grimaced. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I am absolutely certain I don’t want to do it, but I’ve got to do something. I don’t
want to just sit around wondering if we’re going to lose the House tomorrow . . .
or waiting for another murder.”

“You know, Sentinel,” Luc said, “you’ve turned out better than I thought you would.”

Proving she was my friend, Lindsey gave him a punch in the arm that had him roaring
in complaint.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PARENTAL PATRONAGE

M
y parents lived in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago known for its Frank Lloyd Wright
architecture and beautiful homes. My parents’ home wasn’t one of those, at least in
my opinion. It was a squat box of concrete slapped in the middle of prairie-style
brick and honed wood. I completely understood why the neighborhood association had
thrown a fit when my parents had shown them the plans.

Tonight, interrupting the usual peace and quiet of the neighborhood after dusk, men
in J & Sons Moving T-shirts carried pieces of my parents’ carefully curated furniture
out of the house and into a waiting truck.

“You’re moving?”

My mother’s laugh tinkled. “Of course not. Just redecorating a bit.”

Of course she was. My father had copious amounts of money, and my mother enjoyed spending
it. “After dark?”

“They were two hours late, and I told their supervisor I wasn’t releasing them until
they were done.”

And that,
I thought,
is life in the one percent
. It was also a testament to how much furniture they’d amassed in their blocky concrete
house.

“Why isn’t Pennebaker out here?” Pennebaker was my father’s skinny, fusty butler.
He was probably my least favorite person in the house, which rather said a lot.

“Actually, he’s at the opera this evening. It’s his birthday.” She glanced at me.
“I presume you did not remember him with a card?”

“I did not.”

Mom’s upturned nose told me precisely what she thought of that breach of etiquette.
She turned and walked into the house again, and I followed behind obediently.

“Why are you redecorating?”

“It’s time. It’s been fifteen years, and I wanted to breathe life into this house.”
She stopped and turned to look at me. “Did you hear that Robert is expecting again?”

Robert was my brother and the oldest of the Merit brood. “I didn’t. Congratulations
to them. When’s the baby due?”

“June. It’s very exciting. And this house isn’t exactly grandchild-friendly, is it?”
She put her hands on her hips and glanced around; she wasn’t wrong—the house wasn’t
very grandchild-friendly. It was all concrete, monochromatic, and sharply angled.
But it had been that way through the birth of my parents’ other grandchildren, and
they hadn’t turned out any worse for it.

“If you say so,” I said, not arguing the point. “Is Dad around? I need to talk to
him.”

“He is, and he’ll be glad to hear from you. We won’t be around forever, you know.
You should consider giving him a chance.”

I’d given him plenty of chances, although they were generally before he’d tried to
bribe Ethan. But that was neither here nor there.

“I just need to talk to him,” I said, willing to commit to nothing else.

We walked down the concrete-walled hallway and to my father’s office. My mother’s
redesign had already found its way there.

The house had been a strict and sterile bastion of modernism; it had become the centerfold
in an Italian design magazine. Pale carpet covered the concrete floor, and the office
was lit by a chandelier of colored glass. Modern art canvases covered the walls. They
were probably pieces my father had owned before my mother took charge of the room,
but they looked completely different in this brighter, cheerier office.

My father, on the other hand, seemed unusually out of place.

Even at the late hour, he wore a black suit. He stood in the middle of the room, back
bent over the undoubtedly expensive and custom putter in his hands. A few yards away,
a crystal tumbler lay on the floor, poised to receive the ball.

He reviewed the lie and then, with a smooth motion, swung his outstretched arms in
a perfect arc, sending the ball along the carpet to the hole at the end of his imaginary
green. With a clink of glass, he sank the put.

It wasn’t until he’d bent over to pick the ball up and cupped it in his hand that
he finally looked up at me.

“Look who’s here, Joshua.” My mother squeezed my shoulders, then plucked an errant
coffee cup from my father’s desk and headed back for the door. “I’ll just let you
two talk.”

“Merit,” my father said.

“Dad.”

He slipped the ball into his pocket. “What can I do for you?”

I was pleasantly surprised. He usually started off conversations with me with accusations
or insults.

“I need a favor, actually.”

“Oh?” He placed his putter into a tall ceramic vase that stood in a corner of the
room.

“There’s a warehouse in Little Italy. I’m wondering if you can tell me anything about
it.”

His toys put away, my father sat down behind a giant desk that looked like it had
been made of recycled bits of discarded wood.

“Why do you want to know?”

Cards on the table
, I thought. “The owner or someone involved in the property might have something to
do with the murder of vampires.”

“And you can’t find this information online?”

I shook my head. “Nothing at all.”

He regarded me skeptically. “I consider the assessor a friend, but I don’t especially
wish to burn that bridge completely by using the information she gives me to accuse
someone of murder.”

I pushed harder. “The clerk doesn’t need to know what we’re using the information
for.”

“We,” he said. “You and Ethan?”

I nodded. My father and I hadn’t discussed Ethan—or anything else—since Ethan had
come back.

“He’s alive and well, I understand.”

“He is.”

“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.” He seemed honestly relieved. Since he’d put in
motion the animosity between Ethan and Celina that had led to Ethan’s death, he’d
probably felt responsible for it, at least in some deep place in his heart.

It wasn’t that I thought my father uncaring; he definitely cared, but he was so utterly
absorbed in his own needs that he manipulated people like chess pieces to get what
he wanted . . . even if he believed he was doing it for the good of others.

He looked up at me. “You and I haven’t talked. About what happened, I mean.”

“We’ve talked enough.” My stomach clenched nervously, as it often did when my father
suggested we should “talk” about things. Such conversations rarely ended happily for
me.

“Have we talked enough for you to get some of the facts? Possibly. But the entire
truth? Possibly not.” He glanced at the array of photographs on his desk, and picked
up a small silver frame. I knew what picture he held in his hand: a photograph of
the child who would have been my older sister, the first Caroline Evelyn Merit.

“She was only four years old, Merit. It was a miracle your mother and brother walked
away from the wreck, but that miracle wasn’t large enough to save her.”

His voice was wistful. “She was such a bright child. So happy. So full of life. And
when she died, I think a bit of us did, too.”

I sympathized. I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a child, to bear witness
to her passing, especially at such a young age.

But Robert and Charlotte had also lived through it, and they’d needed my parents,
too.

“You were born, and we were so happy. We tried to give you the life we couldn’t give
her.”

My father had an indefatigable belief that he could control and shape the world around
him. He had grown up, he believed, without enough, because my grandfather brought
home only a cop’s salary. Solution? Create one of the largest businesses in Chicago.

I was the solution to Caroline’s death. I was to be her replacement, down to the name,
which is why even today I went by Merit instead of Caroline. But that burden was unfair,
and it was much too heavy for a child.

“I can’t replace her. I never could. And you decided to make me immortal . . . but
you didn’t ask me what I wanted.”

He put the picture back on the desk and looked up at me, and his gaze was chillier
now. “You are stubborn, just like your grandfather.”

I didn’t challenge that, as I didn’t consider it an insult.

My father adjusted the items on his desk so they lined up just so. “I may be able
obtain the information you’re asking for,” he said.

Relief flooded me. “Thank you,” I solemnly said, hoping that he understood I meant
it. I grabbed a pen and notepad from his desk and wrote down the warehouse’s address,
then put both back on his desk.

My father looked at the notepad silently for a moment, head canted as if he were debating
something. “But keep in mind, I’m nearing retirement, Merit, and your brother will
be taking over soon. I don’t plan to set him up for immediate failure by arranging
the city’s chess pieces against him. So I’d like you to do something for me, as well.”

I almost found it a relief that he’d asked. The request was a reminder—but a familiar
one—that nothing was free when it came to my father. We were back on common ground,
working in expected patterns.

“What?” I asked.

“You previously agreed to meet with Robert. I’d like you to follow through on that
promise.”

That was also a common refrain. My father believed being connected to a House would
boost Robert’s chances of making a further success of the company.

“Okay.”

My father’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s it? No argument?”

“He’s my brother,” I said simply. “And you’re right—I agreed to do it. But if this
is for political benefit, meeting with vampires won’t exactly endear him to humans.
We aren’t very popular right now.”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “But you are popular with your kind.”

“What is ‘my kind,’ exactly?”

He gestured dismissively. “Supernaturals and the like.”

I bit my tongue at the obvious stereotyping. He was, after all, doing us a favor.
“Is there a market for you among the supernatural populations?”

“I’m not certain. But as there appears to be a substantial population of supernaturals
in the city, we believe it’s worth cultivating them.”

I didn’t tell him all the vampires living in Cadogan House might be seeking new living
arrangements pretty soon. And speaking of which, I needed to get back to it.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” I said. “Please tell Robert to call me.”

I walked out of his office, and I didn’t look back to see whether he’d smiled in victory.
But I’d have put good money on it.

* * *

I considered my visit to the Merit campus a success, but it wasn’t going to be an
immediate one. Even if my father made good on his promise to check the property, it
was a long shot the information would be worth much. Plus, it was getting late, and
the clerk’s office would have long since closed for the night.

After saying good-bye to my mother, I sat in my car for a moment outside their house,
the orange clunker no doubt depressing the property values by the minute, debating
my next steps. I could return to the Ops Room and its sense of hopelessness, or to
Ethan’s office, which also wasn’t exactly brimming with hope at the moment.

I checked my phone and found no messages, which made my heart ache a bit. I wasn’t
expecting Ethan to suddenly blow through his anger and be thrilled that I’d joined
a secret society, but a note would have been nice. Not that he didn’t have other things
on his mind. Like the House.

And perhaps the House was the key.

The RG was valuable. I knew it; I’d seen them in action. They’d helped me out of jams,
and they’d given us a crucial bit of information about what the GP might try to do
to the House, even if they hadn’t correctly guessed how far the GP would go to screw
us.

If I could use my RG connections to help save the House, wouldn’t that solve all the
problems? If I could help us keep the House that way, Ethan would see the RG was necessary
and honorable—not a group that wanted to undermine him. If he saw that, he’d no longer
think my joining was a betrayal of our relationship.

I closed my eyes and dropped my head back. Maybe, as Mallory once said, leprechauns
would also poop rainbows on my pillow. We were talking about vampires here, and all
of them stubborn . . . also like my grandfather.

But I had to try. I was useless to the RG, to the House, and to Ethan if I wasn’t
willing to try.

I started with Jonah.

He was immediately sarcastic. “Are you calling to tell me you’ve invited Ethan to
our next RG meeting?”

“You’re hilarious. Unfortunately, I have more bad news. McKetrick is alibied for the
Navarre murder, so even if the biometrics weren’t working, he wasn’t there.”

“At least we can tie off that thread,” he said.

“That was our thought exactly. Any progress on getting help for Cadogan House?”

“Not yet. Our contact in the GP is skittish. And for good reason—if they find out
she’s been funneling information to the RG, she’ll be the one facing down the aspen
stake.”

“That’s not good enough, Jonah. This is my House on the line. Tell her . . . tell
her I just want a meeting. Ask her if she’ll do that.”

“Merit, I can’t.”

But I wasn’t taking no for an answer, and I’d been reading my
Canon
like a good little vampire.

“You said ‘she.’ There are only two female members of the GP, Jonah. The one from
Norway—Danica—and the one from the UK—Lakshmi something. That means I have a fifty-fifty
shot of guessing which member is the right one.”

He muttered a curse; he hadn’t meant for me to pick up on that. “It’s not that simple.”

“She’s not helping us enough, Jonah. This is balls-to-the-wall time. Darius will either
take Cadogan House away from us, or he’ll start a war between fairies and vampires
because his pride was hurt. Which one of those do you prefer as a precedent? The next
time Scott does something Darius doesn’t like, which way would you prefer Darius handle
it? We cannot—as RG members or Rogues or whatever—let this stand. Darius cannot be
allowed to break down what we’ve built just because we’re doing it without him.”

Jonah paused. “Her name is Lakshmi Rao. Let me talk to her.”