House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,66

boyfriend, even while my House was on the brink of destruction.

Ethan was already up, so the bedroom was utterly quiet. Indulgently, I pulled the sheet over my head and let myself pretend the world outside was empty and blackmail-free.

I didn’t want to tell him. I wasn’t supposed to tell him. After all, what was the first rule of the RG? Don’t talk about the RG.

The entire point of the organization was to monitor the behavior of Masters and the GP so they couldn’t act dictatorially and hurt vampires along the way. It was hard to do that when they’d identified you as a spy. How could I give up the Red Guard to a Master’s scrutiny? How could I punish Jonah for my lack of discretion and Lacey’s obsession with Ethan? If I confessed where I’d been, wouldn’t I be negating the GP’s careful effort to be anonymous, their decades of work, and all the members who’d given their twenty years of service?

Wouldn’t I be betraying Jonah?

But I also couldn’t let Lacey be the one to spill to Ethan what she’d seen. He wasn’t supposed to know at all, but he certainly shouldn’t find out from her. Especially not when she’d use it as an excuse to drive a wedge between us.

Maybe I’d wanted too much, hoped for too much—that I could be an RG member and have a relationship with a Master vampire, of all people. Maybe this would be the end of us: our friendship, our camaraderie, our relationship.

That conversation was going to suck. I knew he’d be angry and feel betrayed, just like Lacey had said. In true Sentinel form, I analyzed the risk, walking through every possible result of my confession:

1. Ethan, drunk on love, would tell me he was proud I’d agreed to serve vampires by joining the RG.

2. Ethan would dump me in a special ceremony in front of Cadogan House.

3. Ethan would kick me out of the House in a special ceremony in front of Cadogan House. Commemorative T-shirts would be prepared bearing the words I SURVIVED MERIT’S EXCOMMUNICATION.

4. Ethan would do both two and three, then kill Jonah.

5. Ethan would turn inward, then let loose a silent but deadly rage that would destroy Cadoga n House and most of Hyde Park. Mayor Kowalcyzk would blame it on our genetics; Catcher would blame it on love.

The scenarios were the least comforting, because one way or the other, Ethan was going to find out, and Jonah was going to be exposed.

I had an unwinnable choice, which was hardly a choice at all.

I hated regret, and that was what I was feeling right now. Not so much regret that I’d said yes to Jonah, but that I hadn’t been more careful the night before and that I’d baited Lacey enough to prick her into blackmailing me.

Unfortunately, sitting around and whining about it wasn’t going to change anything. A killer was still roaming the city and my House was facing a ticking time bomb. Oliver, Eve, and Cadogan needed someone to fight for them, so I flipped off the sheet and climbed out of bed. The night would bring what the night would bring. Better to face it like a soldier—head-on, and without fear—than cower beneath a sheet.

I checked my phone and found a message from Jonah: CHECKING WITH RG CONTACT ABOUT CADOGAN; WILL ADVISE.

I wasn’t sure how plugged in his contacts were. But he’d clearly been right about the contract clause. Maybe he could offer help. It would be an absolute godsend.

Since Ethan and the others were downstairs handling the House, I took a long, hot shower, trying to think through the murders I still hadn’t managed to solve. We knew Oliver and Eve had been killed after visiting the registration office. Their bodies had been placed in a warehouse in Little Italy, and there were slivers of aspen near the body, possibly from a weapon created by McKetrick.

We also knew a black SUV was involved in their deaths and our House drive-by, and that McKetrick had used black SUVs in the past to terrorize us.

Of course, this was Chicago, and black SUVs were a dime a dozen. And McKetrick denied any knowledge of the murders, and particularly the idea that someone had used his weapon. Frankly, if he was so certain he had scads of political power, why lie? Why not admit to me what he’d done, and trust that no one would believe if I pointed to him as the culprit?

I wasn’t ready to give up on McKetrick as