wearing Dolce & Gabbana and attending society dinners.
Ugh. Society dinners. Prissy people. Uncomfortable shoes. Butlers, and not even the monkey kind. But I said goodbye to my Friday nights, and I sucked it up. "Fine. I'll do it."
"I knew I could count on you. And there is an upside, you know."
I looked back at him, brows lifted in silent question.
"You get to take me with you."
I nearly growled at him, kicking myself mentally for not guessing that was coming. What better way for Ethan to ingratiate his way into Chicago's (human) social scene than to use me as his entry ticket?
"Clever," I commented, giving him a dry look.
"A boy learns a thing or two in four hundred years," he smartly said, then clapped his hands together. "Let's strategize, shall we?"
We convened in the sitting area of Ethan's office over a plate of vegetables and hummus I'd ordered from the kitchen. Ethan turned up his nose at the vegetables, but I was starving, and he found me petulant enough on a full stomach to avoid low-blood-sugar grouchiness. So I munched on celery sticks and carrots as we plotted over a map of Chicago locations believed to host raves. They included a club in Urbana, an expensive suburban home in Schaumburg, and a bar in Lincoln Park. Any spot would do for a bloodletting, apparently.
As we leaned over the spread of information, I wondered aloud, "If you had all this information about the raves, why not stop them?"
"We didn't have all the information," Luc said, flipping through some documents.
"So how do you have it now?" I asked.
The look of mild distaste that pinched Ethan's features gave away the answer. Well, that and the fact that as Luc pored through the scattered documents, he revealed a manila folder that bore a tail of red twine. I could just make out the phrase LEVEL ONE
stamped across the front. Bingo.
"You called the Ombud's office," I concluded. "They had the info on file, or they did the research. That's the stuff I brought you earlier."
Silence. Then, "We did." Ethan's answer was as clipped as his tone. Although he apparently wasn't too proud to beg for information, and despite the fact that he and Catcher were friends (of their peculiar sort), Ethan wasn't a big fan of the Ombud's office. He thought they were tied a little too closely to Mayor Tate, whose position regarding "the vampire problem" was less than clear. Tate had all but refused to talk to the House Masters even after we became public, despite the fact that the city administration had known about our existence for decades.
The Celina fiasco hadn't helped Cadogan-Ombud relations. The Greenwich Presidium didn't recognize Chicago's authority over Celina, no matter how heinous her acts. Since she was a member of the GP, the GP believed she was entitled to certain accommodations, including not serving an eternal sentence in the Cook County jail. It had taken no little diplomacy on my grandfather's part to secure the administration's support for her extradition to Europe. That meant my grandfather, who'd made his own oath to serve and protect Chicago, had been forced to release the vampire who'd tried to have his granddaughter killed. Needless to say, he felt a little conflicted. Ethan, on the other hand, was bound by his loyalties to the GP. Awkwardness, thy name is vampire.
"Whatever the source, Sentinel, we have the information now. Let's use it, shall we?"
I bit back a grin, amused that I'd reverted back to "Sentinel." I was "Merit" when Ethan needed something, "Sentinel" when he was responding to my snark. Admittedly, that was frequently.
"They're going to be suspicious that Merit wants back in," Luc pointed out. "Which means she's going to need a cover story."
"And not just a cover story," Ethan said, "but a cover story that can make it past her father."
We pondered that one silently. As head of Merit Properties, one of the city's biggest real estate management companies, my father was enough of a salesman to know when he was being conned.
"How about a little familial gloating?" Luc finally asked.
Ethan and I both looked at him. "Explain," Ethan ordered.
Luc frowned, scratched absently at his cheek, and relaxed back into the sofa. "Well, I think you laid it out earlier. She's a member of a key Chicago family, and now Sentinel of one of the oldest American Houses. So she plays the youngest daughter making her triumphant return to the society that once scorned her. You start with her father -