House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,102

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“I’m here,” said Delia, stepping into the room with the vampire who’d fetched her. Delia was tall, with dark skin and straight dark hair that reached her shoulders. She wore pale blue scrubs and flip-flops.

“I was about to hop into the shower. What happened?”

“She was attacked outside the House,” Ethan said. “Her throat was cut.”

I moved out of the way so she could get closer to the sofa. “Someone applied pressure,” she said. “Good.”

Carefully, she peeked beneath the scarf I’d put on the wound. She grimaced a bit. “It’s a very clean cut—sharp weapon. Those often don’t heal as well as more jagged cuts. It’s deep enough that it will take a bit yet to stitch together, but if I can get some blood into her, we can keep her stable until she heals completely.” She glanced back and found Helen in a corner of the room. “Can you get me the House emergency medical kit, some water, clean towels, and a knife? I want to get her cleaned up so it heals well. Less risk of a scar that way.”

Helen nodded and disappeared.

“A knife?” Ethan asked.

“We’ll need a blood donor,” Delia said. “Not everyone prefers to break skin with teeth.”

“She came to me,” Malik said. “When she was injured, she came to me. I’ll give her blood. And I don’t need the knife.”

Without waiting for approval, Malik bit into his own wrist, and the smell of sweet and powerful blood and magic filled the air. I closed my eyes, enjoying the scent before Delia cleared her throat and gestured toward us.

“This isn’t exactly a sterile environment, and you’re not making it any cleaner. Disperse, please. I’ll keep you updated.”

Her authoritative tone didn’t leave any room for argument, so we climbed to our feet and walked into the hallway just as Malik placed his open wrist to Margot’s lips.

“A knife wound at the neck,” Luc said. “Similar MO, if we assume he ran out of time.”

“We so assume,” Ethan said. “Check the security video. I want to know exactly what happened out there. We work from the presumption this was another act of violence by our killer. And until he’s caught, no one leaves this House. Not without the express permission of a senior staff member. I don’t care if they’re going to work, to dinner, to the bar, or to do a good deed.”

Luc grimaced. “Liege—” he began, but Ethan stopped him.

“No excuses. I don’t want to hear how it can’t happen. I want to hear how it will happen. Figure out a way. Make it clear to them that they don’t have a choice. That asshole has targeted my vampire, which means he’s under my authority now.”

“On it,” Luc said, trotting toward the basement stairs.

Ethan looked at me, helplessness in his eyes. He didn’t have to speak for me to know what he was feeling: fear that he’d somehow allowed Margot to be hurt.

“What could we have done differently?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But we’ll find out.”

The front door opened and shut behind us, and we glanced around.

My father stood in the foyer in a crisp tuxedo, a large set of rolled papers in his hands. The security guards had let him through the gate, probably given our family ties. I sincerely hoped he had evidence in hands.

“Merit, Ethan,” my father said.

“Joshua,” Ethan said. “What brings you by?”

“Meredith and I are on our way home. We were downtown, and we picked these up while we were there.”

“It’s nice to see you,” Ethan said, “but if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to this.”

Ethan disappeared. Given the drama in the front parlor, I opted to guide my father toward the front door. “Why don’t we just chat outside?”

Brows knitted, my father glanced back as we stepped outside. “Is everything all right?”

“Unfortunately not. One of our vampires was attacked. We think the murderer might have done it. What have you got there?”

My father unfurled the roll, revealing several large sheets of white paper. There was a building plan, several contract documents, and a map of land plots, dozens of square and rectangular puzzle pieces fitted together to form some part of Cook County.

My first thought was that he’d discovered something about the property in Little Italy, but I didn’t recognize anything on the map. The boundaries were strangely drawn, and there were no buildings to be seen.

“What am I looking at?”

He tapped a spot on the map. “That is the address you asked about. These parcels are