House Rules (5 page)

“Then by all means,” I said, “let’s see what she can do.”

CHAPTER THREE

FOUNDING FATHERS

W
e drove to Little Italy, which was southwest of downtown Chicago.

In all fairness, the Bentley handled like a dream, which I suppose was the point of
spending so much money on the car. Along with impressing your friends and intimidating
your enemies.

The street Noah had identified was quiet, a weekday neighborhood of small businesses—banks,
tailors, Realtors’ offices. Most of the buildings were stand-alone and three or four
stories tall, their windows bearing signs promising future condos and apartments.

As we neared the street number Noah had given us, Ethan pulled the Bentley into a
parking slot in front of a sushi restaurant that now stood vacant. A dry cleaner was
next door, and in the next building was the insult to our existence, the vampire registration
office. Tonight was a weekend, and the building was dark. But come Monday at dusk,
a line of vampires would appear outside the door awaiting the opportunity to give
away their blessed anonymity to the bureaucracy of the city of Chicago.

Ethan and I got out of the car and strapped on our katanas. Chicago cops would probably
lose it if they realized we were carrying dozens of inches of honed and tempered steel,
but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. There was no telling what kind of drama we
might find, and I wanted to be prepared.

I jumped as a nearby car door slammed shut. Noah, who’d parked on the street a few
cars back, walked toward us.

“You all right?” Ethan asked, glancing back at me.

“Fine,” I said with a nod. “The sound startled me.”

Ethan squeezed my hand supportively. “So Oliver and Eve came here to register,” he
said, glancing around. “Why this particular center?”

“They lived not far from here,” Noah said. “So probably proximity.”

“Sentinel? Thoughts?”

“They probably wouldn’t have been alone,” I suggested. “There would have been other
vampires here, or the employees operating the registration center. Maybe they saw
something, or could tell us if Oliver and Eve actually made it through the registration
process? That might help us nail down the time line.”

“That’s something to check,” Noah agreed.

“There’s also no blood,” I said. My vampiric instincts would have been triggered if
there’d been a quantity of blood around. I hoped that meant Oliver and Eve hadn’t
succumbed to any harm.

“I’m not suggesting anything untoward has occurred,” Ethan said, “but if it did, could
they have been targeted because they were registering?”

“Maybe,” Noah said. “But registration is supposed to soothe humans. Why punish vampires
for doing what you’ve asked them to do?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t humans who did the punishing,” Ethan said. “Other Rogues might
have been less than thrilled they’d decided to register. They might have seen it as
a betrayal.”

I thought Ethan had a point, but Noah wasn’t thrilled at Ethan’s implication. His
look was arch. “You’re suggesting we’ve created our own problems?”

But Ethan wasn’t intimidated. “I’m asking. Is it possible?”

“I’d like to think not. But I don’t control them.”

So two vampires were missing, vamps we knew had visited a registration center. There
weren’t any obvious signs of violence or anything else that linked them to the site,
or that suggested where they might have gone—or been taken—afterward.

Hands on my hips, teeth worrying my bottom lip, I glanced around the neighborhood.
It was either very late or very, very early, depending on your perspective—and the
area was quiet. Across the street from the registration center was another set of
buildings: a pizzeria, closed for the night, and a boarded former apartment building
surrounded by chain-link fence. But in between them, something interesting—a tidy,
narrow, three-story condominium . . . with a suited doorman.

I glanced back at Noah. “Do you have the picture of Oliver and Eve?”

“On my phone, yeah.”

I gestured toward the doorman. “He’s on the night shift. Maybe we’ll get lucky and
he was on the night shift two nights ago, too.”

A corner of Ethan’s mouth curled. “Well done, Sentinel,” he said, then gestured across
the street. “Ladies first.”

I waited until a very odiferous garbage truck rumbled past, then jogged across the
street, Ethan and Noah behind me.

The doorman, the brass buttons of his burgundy coat gleaming, looked up nervously
as we moved toward him, his eyes widening, his heartbeat speeding. If he’d had magic,
I’d no doubt have felt the bitter pulse of his fear yards away.

As if protecting his castle from marauders, he stepped in front of the door. “Can
I help you?”

“Noah,” I said, extending my hand until he placed his phone in my palm. I checked
the screen, saw the gentle smiling faces of two blond vampires—one male, one female.

I held it toward the doorman. “Our friends have disappeared, and we’re trying to find
them. We think they might have been across the street two nights ago. Do they look
familiar to you?”

Without bothering to check the screen, the doorman crossed his arms over his barrel
chest and narrowed his gaze at me.

“Not even a little peek?”

He blinked slowly.

“Perhaps this will jog your memory,” Ethan said, extending a folded twenty-dollar
bill between his fingers.

The doorman took it and slipped it into his coat pocket, then crossed his arms again.
I guess Jackson wasn’t his favorite president.

“How about President Grant?” Ethan asked, offering a fifty in the same way.

The doorman cast a suspicious gaze at it. “I prefer Benjamin Franklin’s commonsense
advice and down-home humor. But President Grant has his finer qualities.” He took
the bill and tucked it into his pocket. “What can I do for you this evening?”

I bit back a smile. “These two,” I reminded him, wiggling the phone. “Have you seen
them?”

This time his gaze slid to the screen. “I saw them,” he said with a nod. “They went
to the registration office.”

“How do you remember them?” I wondered.

“They took photographs of themselves in line, like they were heading into a concert
instead of registering with the city.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that seemed
unusual to me.”

It seemed unusual to me, too, but I didn’t have a strong enough sense of Oliver and
Eve to know whether it was unusual for them.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

He shrugged and looked straight ahead again.

“Really,” I flatly said.

He cast me a sideways glance. “Inflation, don’t you know.”

Irritation building, I put a hand on my sword and stepped forward.

Sentinel
, Ethan silently cautioned, but it was time to walk the walk.

“This sword isn’t for show,” I said. “It’s honed steel, and it’s very sharp, and I’m
very good at using it.”

“She is,” Noah and Ethan simultaneously agreed.

“We aren’t asking you for much—only information, for which we have handsomely paid.”
I tapped the top of the sword’s pommel. “I can’t imagine your residents would be thrilled
to learn that you irritated people carrying weapons instead of simply telling them
what they wanted to know and allowing them to be on their way.”

He scowled.

“Commonsense advice,” I reminded him with a saccharine smile.

The doorman scowled again, his upper lip curled, but relented. “They went in, came
out again.”

“And got in their cars and drove away?” I wondered.

“Actually, no,” he said. He pointed across the street. “Car pulled up in the alley.”

The dry cleaner sat on one side of the registration office, the alley on the other.

“A car?” Noah asked. “What kind of car?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t see it. Just the headlights—they were shining out of the alley.
The vampires walked over there like they were checking it out, maybe talking to the
driver. Then headlights dim like the car’s backing out of the alley.”

“Did you see them leave again?” I asked.

The doorman shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Maybe they were meeting up with friends?
This is America. I don’t keep track.” Thinking he’d been insulted, he turned his gaze
blankly back to the street again. We’d lost his interest.

“Thanks,” I told the doorman. “We appreciate it.”

He didn’t look much impressed by the thanks, but he nodded anyway. “You’re blocking
the door.”

Ethan touched my arm. “Let’s check out the alley,” he said, and with the doorman scowling
at our backs, we crossed the street once again.

* * *

I tried to imagine I was a cop—walking a beat like my grandfather had—except with
added vampire sensibilities.

I walked to the edge of the alley, then closed my eyes and breathed in the night air,
let the sounds around me unfurl. Unknown droplets fell ahead of us in the alley, which
smelled of dampness and garbage, rusty metal and dirt. Luckily I got no obvious sense
of violence—no scents of blood or gunpowder.

When I was sure the coast was clear, I stepped into the darkness. It wasn’t the first
alley I’d seen; in Chicago, they mostly looked the same: puddles of dirty water on
the ground, brick walls, a Dumpster, and an emergency exit or two.

I looked for any clue that would have explained why Oliver and Eve walked into this
alley.

After a moment of scanning the ground, a glint caught my eye, and I crouched down.
There were chunks of glass on the ground. Not shards, but square pieces. It was safety
glass, the kind used in car windows.

“What did you find?” Ethan asked, stepping behind me.

“There’s glass here. Could be from the vehicle the doorman sort of saw.”

“Very long odds of that,” Ethan remarked. “If the glass was broken, surely the vampires
out front would have heard it and investigated.”

“Probably,” I agreed, standing up again and dusting my hands on my pants.

The shrill ringing of a cell phone filled the alley. Instinctively I checked my phone,
but it was dark and silent.

“Is that yours?” Ethan asked, and I shook my head and scanned the alley, realizing
the sound was coming from a few feet away, near a red metal Dumpster.

I walked closer, the sound growing louder, and kicked aside a few windblown bits of
trash. A vibrantly pink phone lay on the concrete, flashing as someone tried to reach
the phone’s owner.

No—not just someone. The screen flashed with a phone number and name; the caller was
Rose, Noah’s Rogue friend. I had a sinking suspicion I knew whose phone this was,
and my stomach flipped uncomfortably.

“Noah,” I called out, and felt him move behind me, his nervous energy tickling the
air.

“That’s Eve’s phone,” he solemnly pronounced. “I’d know it anywhere. It’s old and
does pretty much nothing but take calls, but she refuses to upgrade. Rose is probably
trying to reach her—to check on her again. She’s worried. She keeps calling. I’ve
told her to stop, but . . .”

I understood that fear, and sympathized. But I didn’t think finding Eve’s phone in
an alley signaled very good news.

“Perhaps Eve just dropped it here?” Ethan wondered. “Oliver did call Rose earlier.
There’s a chance this is all a misunderstanding.”

Ethan’s tone was optimistic, probably intended to keep Noah calm. And he was right:
We really had no idea how or why the phone had ended up here, although it did confirm
that Eve had been in the alley. But it also made her and Oliver’s disappearances look
less and less like they might be voluntary.

“It seems unlikely she’d have just left it,” Noah said. He rubbed a hand over his
face, seeming suddenly exhausted.

The ringing stopped, leaving the alley silent . . . and a little grim.

“Do you have a handkerchief?” Ethan asked. “We’ll want to get it to the Ombud’s office—they
have connections—but we don’t want to disturb any evidence.”

He was right. There could be fingerprints or biological material on the phone, evidence
that could help us figure out exactly what had gone on.

“Bandanna,” Noah said, pulling one printed in pixilated camouflage from his pocket
and handing it over.

Gingerly I picked up the phone with the cloth. While I was gathering evidence, I walked
back to the pile of glass and snagged a square. I folded the packet carefully, then
looked at Noah.

“I’ll give this to Jeff Christopher, and we’ll have him check Eve’s call log. Maybe
there’s a clue about where she might be.”

Jeff was one of my grandfather’s pseudo-employees, an adorable and quirky computer
genius. He was also a shape-shifter and member of the North American Central Pack.
Along with Catcher, a rogue sorcerer, my grandfather’s admin, Marjorie, and a “secret”
Housed vamp I hadn’t heard about in a while, they kept an eye on supernatural comings
and goings and helped us manage whatever crises popped up. Since their office had
been closed by the mayor, they’d all been working together at my grandfather’s house.

A black cat hopped down from the neighboring yard’s retaining wall, gazed at us warily,
and trotted to the Dumpster, presumably to look for a snack. Oblivious to the danger,
birds began to chirp nearby, a cheery song that announced the impending break of morning.

I glanced up at the sky. The eastern horizon was just beginning to pale. Sunrise was
on its way, which meant we were running out of time. Vampires and sunlight didn’t
mix, not without fatal consequences.

Ethan checked his watch. “We’ve not quite an hour before dawn. We should get back
to the House.”

“The world continues to turn,” Noah said.

“So it does,” Ethan agreed. “And hopefully for Oliver and Eve, as well.” We walked
back toward the alley entrance, the birds singing behind us.

“We’ll find them,” Ethan said.

Noah nodded, but didn’t seem convinced. “I hope so. They’re good kids.”

“We don’t doubt it,” Ethan said. They shook hands, and Noah walked back to his car.
We followed and climbed silently into the Bentley.