House Rules - Chloe Neill Page 0,87

across the table, creating a seven-card pile for each of us. “The name of the game is Nantucket.”

“What’s Nantucket?” I asked.

“It’s a way to cheat,” Derek said with a smile, sipping the glass of clear alcohol in front of him. “Don’t let him fool you.”

“I would never cheat,” Gabe said. “I am as honorable as they come.”

“Or else a really good liar,” Ben said.

“I am not a liar,” Gabe said, presenting the rest of the deck to Christopher. He cut it in half, put the bottom half on top, and slid it back to Gabe, who divided the cards into three stacks in the middle of the table. After dealing out the entire deck, he turned over the cards in the two outer stacks, revealing a spade in each.

“Spades are the cards to beat,” he said. There was nary a spade in my hand, but I had no idea whether that was good. If spades were the cards to beat, what beat spades?

“High card, first trick,” Gabe said, placing the queen of diamonds atop one of the spades. I wasn’t sure why, or what I should play. I picked a queen of hearts and played it atop the remaining spade.

“Well played,” he said, and began looking through his cards, frowning in concentration.

Each time I played a card, I tried to steer the conversation toward the House. But Gabriel wouldn’t let me get a word in—not about politics, anyway. And so it went on for nearly an hour, at the end of which I still wasn’t sure of the rules of Nantucket. I occasionally threw down a card I thought was appropriately strategic, while the shifters placed cards with apparent nonchalance. They’d have been sure winners at a poker table, assuming any casino let them play long enough to win.

Eventually, Derek threw his two remaining cards on the table. “Nantucket turtleneck,” he said, and the other shifters threw in their cards, as well.

“Is it done?” I asked, looking at Gabriel.

But before he could answer, the door to the bar opened and Berna’s head popped in. “Customers!” she said, pointing at Mallory with an arthritic finger. “You pour!”

Mallory sat quietly at the table for a moment, massaging her temples. It seemed her patience with Berna was definitely wearing thin.

“It’s a good reminder,” Gabriel said.

“Of what?” she asked.

“Of what happens when you eventually leave us, and you don’t make a successful go of it. She’s going easy on you this time.”

“This is going easy on me?”

“Have you cleaned out the grease trap yet?” Christopher asked.

“No?” Mallory said cautiously, lip curled.

Christopher huffed. “Then she’s going easy on you. Aunt Berna’s a hard-ass.”

I looked at Gabriel. “Aunt Berna?”

He smiled, then waved a hand at the vinyl-topped table, the framed B-movie posters, and the peeling linoleum floor. “Kitten, would we have allowed Berna into this bastion of class if she wasn’t family?”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?” I wondered.

“Yes,” he said. “It is definitely one of those.”

Christopher, Ben, and Derek excused themselves and disappeared into the kitchen, presumably for one of the drinks Mallory was going to pour. Gabriel gathered the cards and began shuffling them again. Dawn, according to the beer-advertisement clock on the wall, was inching closer, and I still didn’t have any answers.

“About the House,” I said.

“What about it?”

“I’m out of ideas, the lawyers aren’t helping, we can’t find the egg, and Claudia’s inaccessible. I don’t suppose you’ve got any information on the GP members we could use to our advantage?”

He chuckled a bit. “You mean blackmail?”

“I do.”

“I’m sorry, Kitten, but I don’t. I don’t know much about the GP other than their reputation, and from that I don’t believe I care to know more.”

I put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands. “Gabriel, we’re going to lose the House. Time is ticking down. And we’ve got some crazy Navarre Novitiate out there taking out vampires for no apparent reason, and I don’t have a clue who it is. What am I going to do?”

“You’re asking me for advice?”

I tucked the edges of my bangs behind my ears and looked up at him. “Yeah. I think I am.”

“And you aren’t asking Sullivan because . . . ?”

“He’s mad at me.”

“Ahhh,” Gabriel slowly said. “That explains the funk.”

I tried not to sniff at myself. “There’s a funk?”

“Psychic funk. A bad vibe. You’re sad.”

“I am sad. And you know what would help me? Advice. Do you have any thoughts at all?”

“Well, let’s think it through: Darius wants the House,