“She’s there,” he said, rubbing his temples. “There’s a dull buzzing. But I’ve pushed it back into the corner of my brain dedicated to football and video games.”
“In other words, rarely used.”
“Just so.”
“Is it wrong of me to say this could have been avoided if only the Order had paid better attention to Mallory?”
“Not wrong at all,” he murmured. “Unfortunate that it’s come to this, but not wrong. They have failed all of us, and Mallory, in a multitude of ways. And they appear to be offering no assistance in cleaning up the mess they so tidily made.”
We were quiet for a moment, watching each other. Ethan seemed to be at peace, but it seemed likely his mind was roiling with possibilities, probabilities, strategies, outcomes. I just wasn’t sure how many of those involved me.
I decided to save myself the rejection, even if it was only temporary. “Well, I should get back to my room. Dawn will be here soon.”
“I want to pretend all is well in the world,” he said. “I want to pretend our House will be safe tomorrow and secure in the bosom of the GP. But that’s not the world around us.”
I think he meant it as an apology, but I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted sleep and a warm body to curl against, and I wasn’t going to get it.
“The world is what it is,” I said. “We can only battle it back.”
As dawn approached, I slipped back into my room and my own bed, the sheets cool and undisturbed. I tried to quiet my mind, and I tried not to worry about what tomorrow might bring, or the fact that the Tates were still out there, undoubtedly planning their next attack. The sun was rising, and there was nothing I could do about it now.
I hoped Chicago wasn’t Carthage. I hoped we could all find some peace. I hoped the sunrise wouldn’t bring more problems than it solved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EVERY TIME A BELL RINGS…
I jolted awake nine hours later, still alone in my chilly bedroom. My phone was ringing, so I grabbed it from the nightstand and checked the screen. It was Jeff.
“Hey,” I said, checking the time. It was barely after sunset; Jeff must have been aching to call me.
“We have news,” Jeff said, “and it’s not looking good.”
Not exactly the way I wanted to start the night, but then not terribly surprising, either. “What’s happened?”
“Not what has happened, but what might happen. Turns out, the crime scene folks found something at the scene of Paulie’s murder. They thought it was just a random bit of paper at the scene but, when they checked the blood patterns, discovered it was put there after Paulie’s throat was cut.”
I sat up and pulled my hair from my face. “What was it?”
“A newspaper article. Remember I told you about those four cops who got busted for beating up those vamps?”
“The ones you told us about in Nebraska? Yeah. Why?”
“The evidence at the crime scene? It was an article about them.”
“Why would Tate be interested in something like that?”
“The article was about the cops being released. I guess they had to do some processing, or waiting for the bail money to go through, I don’t know. Their release is scheduled for tonight—there’s a big to-do at a CPD lockup on the South Side. Plenty of people are pissed about it.”
That made more sense than I’d wanted it to. “Crap,” I muttered.
“What?”
“As it turns out, we’re hypothesizing Tate’s an old-school messenger—an avenging angel with a revenge problem whose halo fell off many, many centuries ago.”
“A fallen angel?”
“That’s the one. And if he thinks the cops didn’t get the justice they deserved, he might be hoping to wield his sword against them.”
“Tate the supernatural avenger,” Jeff muttered. “In what universe does that make sense?”
“This one, unfortunately,” I said. “First things first. Can you make contact with the cops or their attorneys? Let them know he’s a threat?”
“Already tried that route. Chuck called one of the attorneys—apparently he’d had some relationship with him when he was on the force—and tried to get him to cancel the conference.”
Chuck was my grandfather. “The attorney didn’t buy it?”
“He did not. He said his client was a cop and he could take care of himself, especially against, and I’m quoting here, a ‘desk-riding politician.’ He said he wouldn’t cancel the press conference because the city of Chicago needed to know how poorly his client had