over the city, the moon milky beneath a haze of clouds.
“It’s quiet out here,” I said, not sure of the etiquette. Was I supposed to start talking? Or wait for him to do it?
“It is,” he said. “Although I suspect the city bustles considerably more in the daytime.”
I looked toward downtown Chicago, where skyscrapers blinked at us. Lights in condos and offices twinkled, and bright red beacons on the roofs rotated to warn passing planes. The view wasn’t unlike the postcard I’d stuck in the car for my trip to Nebraska, and I realized I hadn’t thought to check if that little bit of paper had survived the crash.
“The Loop definitely bustles,” I finally agreed. “A lot more than Hyde Park.”
“London has its quiet parts, as well.”
I nodded, and for a moment we stared out at the quiet city. But it was time to get this show on the road. I had a monster to hunt.
“You asked to see me?”
“I’d like your opinion.”
“My opinion?”
“On the state of affairs of your House, Sentinel. You’ve been here some months. You must have a sense of the House and its goings-on.”
I “sensed” a lot of things, but that didn’t mean I wanted to raise them with Darius West. “I think the House is operating as well as it can in troubled times.”
“Troubled times?”
Did he really need me to recite the list? They were the same grievances we’d been leveling against the GP for months now.
“Our existence was announced to the public without our consent. Celina made attempts on our lives. Mallory threw dark magic across the city. A supernatural mayor, or two of them, are out there somewhere. All problems that we have to solve.”
“And why you, Merit? Why must you solve them?”
I didn’t really have an answer for that, except the obvious: If not us, then who? The GP seemed to be stuck in a mode of refusing to make decisions. Who refused to act, even when the choices were clear and present before them? Were they afraid they’d be judged? Afraid they might be wrong? We had allies, unofficial or otherwise—a select few Houses, shifters, nymphs, a few fairies, a rebellious sorcerer or three. Together, we seemed to be the only ones willing to actually do anything.
It was easy to judge Ethan—or me, Malik, or Luc—when you could stand on the sidelines or quarterback from the couch. It was harder to be in the trenches, to do the best you could…and it hurt more when others didn’t believe you were acting for good.
Darius took a puff on the cigarette, then blew the smoke from his mouth in a slow, steady stream. “I have been alive a long time,” he said. “Not as long as Ethan, but a long time. I have seen much in my life, but I must disagree that these times are troubled. I have seen world wars, Sentinel. I have seen vampires staked in public with no investigation, no remorse.”
I nodded. “With all due respect, that you’ve seen more troubled times doesn’t mean ours aren’t troubled. It doesn’t take a world war to make a situation precarious. Or dangerous. Before Celina outed us, I had no idea vampires existed. Nor, I would bet, did most people. Perhaps the Houses had troubles then that I’m not aware of. But if they did, they weren’t the kind of issues that face us now.”
“That’s very poetic.” He tapped the cigarette’s ashes against the wrought iron, and a thousand tiny sparks fell through the sky. “But ultimately, irrelevant.”
He took a final puff of his cigarette, then smudged the butt against the dark rock of the wall behind us and put the remainder in his pocket.
“You are young,” he said. “And I don’t doubt your intentions are noble. But those intentions are directed toward this House, its vampires, and its Master. My intentions are necessarily much larger in scale.”
“We are not trying to make your job more difficult, but we can’t just ignore these problems.”
“That, Merit, precisely is the problem. You take arms against the sea of troubles, to quote the bard, but you don’t end them. You make them worse.” He held up a hand before I could argue. “The evidence is incontrovertible. Things in Chicago have deteriorated over the last few months, and not just because there are enemies in your midst. Consider Grey House. They keep their heads down and they focus on survival, and we have no arguments with their Novitiates or their leadership.”