House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,80

clerk’s office would have long since closed for the night.

After saying good-bye to my mother, I sat in my car for a moment outside their house, the orange clunker no doubt depressing the property values by the minute, debating my next steps. I could return to the Ops Room and its sense of hopelessness, or to Ethan’s office, which also wasn’t exactly brimming with hope at the moment.

I checked my phone and found no messages, which made my heart ache a bit. I wasn’t expecting Ethan to suddenly blow through his anger and be thrilled that I’d joined a secret society, but a note would have been nice. Not that he didn’t have other things on his mind. Like the House.

And perhaps the House was the key.

The RG was valuable. I knew it; I’d seen them in action. They’d helped me out of jams, and they’d given us a crucial bit of information about what the GP might try to do to the House, even if they hadn’t correctly guessed how far the GP would go to screw us.

If I could use my RG connections to help save the House, wouldn’t that solve all the problems? If I could help us keep the House that way, Ethan would see the RG was necessary and honorable—not a group that wanted to undermine him. If he saw that, he’d no longer think my joining was a betrayal of our relationship.

I closed my eyes and dropped my head back. Maybe, as Mallory once said, leprechauns would also poop rainbows on my pillow. We were talking about vampires here, and all of them stubborn . . . also like my grandfather.

But I had to try. I was useless to the RG, to the House, and to Ethan if I wasn’t willing to try.

I started with Jonah.

He was immediately sarcastic. “Are you calling to tell me you’ve invited Ethan to our next RG meeting?”

“You’re hilarious. Unfortunately, I have more bad news. McKetrick is alibied for the Navarre murder, so even if the biometrics weren’t working, he wasn’t there.”

“At least we can tie off that thread,” he said.

“That was our thought exactly. Any progress on getting help for Cadogan House?”

“Not yet. Our contact in the GP is skittish. And for good reason—if they find out she’s been funneling information to the RG, she’ll be the one facing down the aspen stake.”

“That’s not good enough, Jonah. This is my House on the line. Tell her . . . tell her I just want a meeting. Ask her if she’ll do that.”

“Merit, I can’t.”

But I wasn’t taking no for an answer, and I’d been reading my Canon like a good little vampire.

“You said ‘she.’ There are only two female members of the GP, Jonah. The one from Norway—Danica—and the one from the UK—Lakshmi something. That means I have a fifty-fifty shot of guessing which member is the right one.”

He muttered a curse; he hadn’t meant for me to pick up on that. “It’s not that simple.”

“She’s not helping us enough, Jonah. This is balls-to-the-wall time. Darius will either take Cadogan House away from us, or he’ll start a war between fairies and vampires because his pride was hurt. Which one of those do you prefer as a precedent? The next time Scott does something Darius doesn’t like, which way would you prefer Darius handle it? We cannot—as RG members or Rogues or whatever—let this stand. Darius cannot be allowed to break down what we’ve built just because we’re doing it without him.”

Jonah paused. “Her name is Lakshmi Rao. Let me talk to her.”

“Thank you, Jonah. I’d do the same for you, you know.”

“I know you would. And that’s what scares me.”

He hung up the phone.

I turned on the car and turned up the heat, still sitting outside my parents’ house. It probably wouldn’t be long before the neighbors were calling about the girl in the junky car “watching” the house, but I didn’t want to go back inside while I waited for a response. Maybe my father and I had had a breakthrough; maybe he was simply feeling nostalgic. Either way, I knew when to quit.

The phone rang not even a minute later.

“Hello?”

“She’s agreed to a meeting, but that’s it.”

“That’s enough. Thank you.”

“There’s a Dirigible Donuts on State and Van Buren under the El. It’s near the library.”

“I know it,” I assured him. It was near Harold Washington Library; it was also near the Dandridge Hotel, where the GP members were staying during their time in Chicago.

“Meet us