House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,57

with things you don’t understand.” Her voice was suddenly fierce, suddenly ferocious, and I stared back at her. I knew she had feelings for Ethan, but even if she was jealous, this seemed like a lot of emotion to be mere jealousy.

“I understand everything, and very well, thank you. He took a stake for me. I mourned for him.”

She barked out a laugh. “Ha! You mourned for him? You, who’d known him for a matter of months before he died? You think you have any idea what grief is like?” She pointed at me. “You failed to protect him. You were his Sentinel, and you failed, and he died. It’s only by a freak magical accident that he’s alive again, no thanks to you.”

“Is that what you think happened? You think I was standing around, shooting the shit with the mayor, and I let Ethan get staked?”

“You were there,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

God, she sounded just like Seth Tate, blaming me for what had gone on in that room, even though I’d been an innocent bystander.

Was this grief? The pent-up emotions she’d had to face when Ethan had died? Anger that he hadn’t come crawling to her when he’d been resurrected? Whatever the cause, it was deeply felt, and strong enough to drive her to spy on me.

“He took a stake for me,” I said. “Celina threw a stake at me, and he stepped in front of it. He saved me from that. How dare you minimize what he did.”

She pointed at me, her eyes hot with anger. “You are a damned liar.”

“I am not a liar.”

She must have caught the truth in my face, because her expression fell, and for a moment she looked like a sad human being, a girl who’d been dumped. She looked vulnerable and a little pathetic, and my heart ached for her. Not a lot, but still.

She’d had feelings for Ethan, and had assumed facts about their relationship and what she meant to him—and more important, what I meant to him. And if I was right, I’d proven her seriously wrong. Lacey didn’t seem like the type who liked being wrong.

She sniffed delicately, and then, like she’d flipped a switch—and as if she hadn’t lost her composure in front of me—she was back to cool, calm, and collected again.

Well, I could play calm and collected, too. If she really thought she had something, she’d take it to Ethan right now, the GP be damned. But she didn’t know what she’d seen, not exactly. She knew only that I’d met Jonah in a parking lot. She didn’t know that I’d met him because of the RG and because I’d just been initiated as a member.

“You’ll tell him,” she said.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“You’ll tell him, or I will.” She took a step closer. “How dare you preach to me about the sacrifices he’s willing to make for you when you won’t give him the truth.”

Unfortunately, she had a point there, one that made my stomach curl.

“Tell him,” she reiterated, her lips curving into a slow and eerie smile. “Tell him, or give me the satisfaction of proving what I’ve known all along. Just how common you really, truly are,” she whispered, her words falling like poison. “You have twenty-four hours.”

And then she turned and walked away, her heels clicking as she strode down the sidewalk again and toward the House.

I stood there, my stomach in knots, trying to think what to do.

Regardless, I was pretty sure I was screwed.

* * *

Heart thudding, I walked back into the House, cold sweat blooming on my skin. The House was aflutter, and so was I. I needed time to compose myself, so I ran up the stairs to my second-floor room, the one I wasn’t sharing with Ethan, unlocked the door, and locked myself in again.

I ripped off my jacket, dumped it on the floor, and headed for the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face until my bangs dripped with it, hands gripping the edges of the sink.

Lacey knew.

Maybe not everything, but enough, and there was no way she wasn’t going to use this against me. She loved Ethan, hated me, and thought I wasn’t good enough for him. (Despite, ironically, my graduate degrees, fighting skills, rich parents, and obviously rich sense of humor.)

I looked at myself in the mirror, bangs wet and matted, skin paler than usual, House medal absent. We were all remaking ourselves, from members of an international vampire collective to