Biting Cold

chapter THREE

AN ORDERLY HOME

The worn wooden porch steps creaked as we took them, and the doorbell sounded with a long, old-fashioned chime.

A moment later, a woman opened the door in a pale silk robe she’d pulled tight around her chest. It looked old-fashioned, something a woman might have worn in the 1950s. Her hair was a tousled bob of brilliant red waves, and her eyes were shockingly green—emeralds against her alabaster skin. In a word, she was gorgeous.

Still muddy and bruised from the rollover, I felt mousy and awkward.

She gave me, then Ethan, an appraising look. “Can I help you?” she asked, but then filled in the blank. “You’re the vampires.”

“I’m Ethan Sullivan,” he said, “and this is Merit.”

“I’m Paige,” she said. “Please, come in.” The required invitation offered, Paige turned and padded down the hallway in bare feet, the door open behind her.

I glanced at Ethan, intent on letting him go first, but his gaze was on the woman disappearing down the hallway.

“Ethan Sullivan,” I said, jealousy fluttering in my chest.

“I’m not looking at her, Sentinel,” he admonished with a wink, “although I’m not blind.” He pointed at the hallway.

My cheeks warming, I looked back again. The walls were filled with vertical stacks of books, one beside another, packed so tightly together there was scarcely room between them. And these weren’t just discount-table paperbacks. These were the old-school, leather-bound type—the kind you might see in the house of an Order archivist…or on the basement table of a rebellious sorceress. As much as I loved books, that made me nervous to step into a space full of magical tomes.

I followed Ethan to the sitting room at the end of the hall. It was small but comfortable, with vintage fabrics and cottagey decor. A small fireplace put the smell of woodsmoke in the air, which mingled with the scents of ancient paper and fragrant tea.

Paige curled up on a couch and picked up a teacup from a small end table. “Sorry I’m a bit of a mess. She hasn’t shown up yet, and I wanted a few minutes of peace and quiet. Have a seat,” she said, pointing at a facing couch with a delicate teacup and saucer dotted with small pink flowers. “Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you,” Ethan said. We took seats on the couch, bags and swords at our feet.

“You have a lot of books,” he said.

“I’m an archivist,” she said. “It’s what I do.”

“Read?” I asked.

“Learn and catalogue,” she said. “I compile the history of what came before, and I record the history as it happens. And, frankly, I have a lot of time to read out here.”

“This isn’t quite the frontier,” Ethan said.

“For humans, no. But magically? It’s basically a vacuum. Isolated, both from magic makers and supernatural populations. That makes it a great place to house the Maleficium, when it’s our turn to keep it, but not much else.”

“Is it here?” Ethan asked.

“Safe and sound in the silo,” she said. “So, officially, welcome to the repository for the Maleficium. At least for now. When they found out Mallory escaped again, they started making arrangements for a new location.”

“Shouldn’t they have picked it up by now?” I wondered.

She smirked. “You’re assuming they’re eager to carry it around. That is not the case. Baumgartner’s having to call in substantial favors just to get potential transporters to consider it. Too much risk. When someone finally volunteers, it will be a blind drop to protect their identity. Or supposedly.” Paige narrowed her gaze at Ethan. “The Order wasn’t thrilled when it was taken from Cadogan House. We all expected it would be safe there.”

“At the risk of being insensitive to your concerns,” Ethan said, “I was dead when the book was stolen. And it was stolen by one of your own, not a vampire. Who then tried to make me into her familiar.”

She tilted her head. “You don’t much look like anyone’s familiar.”

“I’m not, so far as we can tell. Her spell was interrupted before she finished it.”

But not before the skies were roiling and Midway Plaisance was aflame, I thought.

Paige scanned him with magical interest. “She got just far enough to bring you back, but not quite far enough to make you a slathering minion. Good for you. On the other hand, that really doesn’t say much for Simon.”

“Not that I disagree with the sentiment,” I said, “but how so?”

Paige shrugged. “She tried to create a familiar, and Simon didn’t notice. That’s complicated magic. A lot of bits and pieces. Ingredients, mechanisms, props, and, in this case, the Maleficium. Before Baumgartner told me about that part of it, I was going to give Simon the benefit of the doubt about missing what she was doing, but…”

“Now not so much?” Ethan finished.

Paige shrugged. “A little spell, a minor charm, a sorceress only has to say a few words. Those bits of magic are more akin to sleight of hand than true enchantments. They’re all but illusions, and they don’t take long—or much—to manage. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Simon had missed those. But making a familiar? That’s the real deal. Complicated, picky, and heavy-duty. There would have been signs, not just in her workspace, but on her.”

“Working black magic chaps her hands,” I said.

“Signs,” Paige said with a nod. “And Simon’s less of a sorcerer for failing to notice them…and failing to stop her.”

“And Catcher?” Ethan wondered.

Paige’s expression shuttered. “He’s not a member of the Order, so it’s not my place to discuss him.”

She deferred, but the narrowing of her gaze and acerbic breeze of magic said plenty enough: It had been an all-around bad week for Chicago sorcerers. It made me feel better that vampires weren’t, for once, the ones causing the problems.

Paige looked at me. “I understand you were friends with Mallory. Has she made any contact with you?”

She said we “were” friends, like Mallory and I had gotten a divorce and gone our separate ways. That thought didn’t exactly sit well.

I shook my head. “No contact. Last time I saw her, she was being taken away by the Order.”

“And now she wants another shot at the Maleficium,” Ethan said. “She failed to achieve her goal, and she wants to try again.”

“She was trying to put dark and light magic back together,” I explained. “Good and evil. Her magic makes her uncomfortable—physically ill—and she thinks releasing the evil in the Maleficium will make her feel better. From what I understand, the familiar spell was her means to that end. She thought by working dark magic, she’d tilt the balance of good and evil in the world, and that imbalance would force the evil out of the Maleficium.”

Paige winced. “That’s an ungainly method. It might have gotten the job done, had she been able to finish the spell, but it’s not exactly elegant. A spell that awkward is the mark of a young sorceress. Inexperienced,” she added. “Do we know if she took books or supplies or anything before she left?”

Ethan shook his head. “We don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like she stopped for anything. She just left.”

“Maybe she had a backup plan ready,” Paige suggested, “or she’s confident enough that she thinks she can come up with one on the fly.”

“So where is she now, do you think?” Ethan asked Paige.

“Nearby and planning, I imagine,” Paige said. “If she’s still using the same method, she’s debating which spell to use and trying to figure out a way to break in here, best me, and be off with the Maleficium.”

“You’re very nonchalant about the fact that a sorceress is planning to come to break in, best you, and be off with the Maleficium,” Ethan said.

Paige sipped her tea for a moment, as if carefully choosing her words. “I know you’re friends of hers, and that she’s a big magical deal in Chicago…”

“I assume there’s a ‘but’ on its way?” Ethan asked.

“But,” Paige said, “while Mallory definitely has some mojo, she’s really just small change.”

“She tried to destroy Chicago,” Ethan said, a curious tilt to his head.

“By using the ashes of a powerful Master vampire. That’s not exactly like she’d willed the destruction herself, is it?” Paige shrugged. “I’m sure the light show was big, but that’s precisely why you want a familiar who has a lot of power—so that you can use their power to beef up yours.

“Look,” Paige said. “I’m not trying to be rude, and I’m not trying to make light of the chaos Chicago was facing. But I’m a magical realist, and I don’t play favorites. Controlling the universe isn’t about pretty lights and colors and irritating humans. It’s about controlling the universe. And if we’re going by the book, what she did barely ranks at all.”

“Any thoughts about what spell she might attempt this time?” Ethan asked.

Paige shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve never actually read the Maleficium. Not for lack of curiosity on my part, but it’s part of the oath I have to take to serve here. No peeking equals no temptation.”

“A sound policy,” Ethan flatly said. “Pity no one advised Mallory.”

“Could she try another familiar spell?” Paige asked.

Ethan shook his head. “That seems unlikely. The only other vampire ashes in Chicago were Celina’s. Suffice it to say they are no longer in Chicago.”

Paige nodded. “She could always go the familiar route with something—or someone—else. Beyond that, there are millions of spells in the world, all of them somewhere on the scale between good and evil. She could pick any number of spells on the evil end of that spectrum.”

“Speaking of evil,” Ethan said, “Mallory isn’t the only one who’s after the Maleficium.”

Ethan filled Paige in on our pit stop with Tate and his own goal of unleashing evil. By the time he was done, Paige had abandoned her teacup and was leaning back on the couch, arms crossed, gaze glued to Ethan.

“And this Tate is what kind of creature, exactly?”

“We were hoping you might know,” I said.

Frowning, she rose from the couch, moved to the hallway of books, and began to scan the spines. “Unfortunately, there are lots of options, and we don’t have enough information to do a fair diagnosis. Demigod? Djinn? Fairy?” She pulled out one book, flipped through it, then slid it back onto its shelf. “Maybe an incubus?”

“I don’t know about the others,” I said, “but he’s not a fairy.”

“We work with them,” Ethan explained, as mercenary fairies guarded the gates of Cadogan House. But that’s not what I’d meant.

“I’ve also met Claudia, the queen.”

Paige’s eyes widened. “You met the queen of the fairies?”

I nodded, thinking of the tall, curvaceous, strawberry blond woman. “During Ethan’s unfortunate demise. We were looking for the cause of the sky turning red. They’re known as the sky masters, so we paid them a visit. They gave us a little information, I nearly bit one of them, and yadda yadda yadda, we learned they had nothing to do with the color change.”

“You can’t yadda yadda yadda nearly biting a fairy,” Paige said.

“You can if the fairy queen baits you into it by shedding fairy blood. Tip for the future: Fairy blood is rather alluring for vampires.”

“Noted,” Paige said, selecting another book and bringing it back to the couch.

“While we’re on the subject of Tate,” I said, “I think…something about him has changed recently.”

“How do you mean?” Paige asked.

“He’s not the man he used to be. For years he was campaigning for antipoverty measures and pushing his ‘Tate for a New Chicago’ agenda, and all of a sudden he’s flipping drugs to vampires?” I shook my head. “That seems odd.”

“He’s an actor,” Ethan pointed out. “And a magical one. The entirety of it was an act.”

“For ten years?”

“Ten years could barely be a drop of time for him, for all we know. And he did destroy my car, you’ll recall. I’m not exactly feeling friendly toward Seth Tate right now.”

“I know. And I’m not, either. If it wasn’t for him, you and Celina…”

Tightness clutched at my chest at the memory of that look in Ethan’s eyes—just as the stake hit him, and just before he disappeared. “Anyway, I’m not suddenly a Tate fan. I just think there was a transition.”

Silence, until Paige slapped the book closed and placed it on the floor again. “Enough with the doom and gloom. The sun’s nearly up, and I know you need to avoid that. How about I show you to your rooms, and tomorrow night we can take a look at the silo?”

“Is it a good idea for all of us to sleep?” I wondered. Tate and Mallory didn’t seem like the types to hunt for the Maleficium in broad daylight, but who knew?

“I’ll set the house alarms,” she said. “They’ll alert us if there’s magic in the vicinity. Well, they’re supposed to.” She cast a wary glance at the front door. “Maybe I’ll just turn on the regular alarm, too.”

“I don’t suppose you have any blood?” Ethan asked. “Our stock was in the car, and it didn’t survive the trip.”

My appetite suddenly perked up.

Paige nodded. “I thought you might need it, especially if things got complicated with Mallory. I’ll grab some.”

We picked up our bags and swords, then waited for Paige to emerge from the kitchen with a tray of old-fashioned glass tumblers. “This way,” she said.

We followed her to the staircase, then to the second floor and a long, straight hallway of rooms.

“The farm’s original owners had six children,” Paige explained. “The master bedroom is downstairs, and there are six bedrooms up here. You can take your pick.” She cast an appraising glance at Ethan. “Unless you’re single and interested in sharing the bedroom downstairs?”

“As thoughtful as that offer is,” Ethan said, “I must decline. Merit would undoubtedly take another of my lives.”

“Disappointing,” Paige said. “I’ve always wondered about vampires. And the biting.”

“Every word is true,” Ethan cannily said.

Pity I couldn’t talk to him silently right now. I might have a few words about his flirting with Paige Martin. Instead, I settled for an arch look that had him grinning back at me. Both the look and his grin made me feel better.

Paige gave us the tray and said her good nights, then disappeared down the stairs, leaving me and Ethan alone again.

The house’s six bedrooms were remarkably similar, and it looked like they hadn’t changed much since the 1940s. Each held a cast-iron bed, a nightstand, and a bureau. Pale floral wallpaper adorned the walls. The floors were well-worn hardwood, and the bed linens were old-fashioned chenille spreads. They looked like the types of rooms in which children would have hidden old baseball cards and Cracker Jack toys in the backs of the bureau drawers or under the mattresses.

Each room had a single window covered by a heavy velvet curtain. I guessed Paige hadn’t wanted to encourage snoopy neighbors.

“Do you have a room preference?” I asked Ethan.

“Whichever you prefer,” he said, “since I’ll be staying with you.”

There was no equivocation in his voice. No question, no request for permission. It was a statement, an announcement of something he meant to do. Something he would do.

“Of course you will,” I said. “It would be rude to muss two of her bedrooms. We might as well bunk up and save her the trouble.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “That isn’t exactly the reasoning I had in mind.”

“Oh, I know,” I said, walking back to the first bedroom. “But if I don’t keep a check on your ego, you’ll become insufferable.”

He made a sarcastic, but pleased, grunt.

Figuring it made sense to pick the easy exit, I opted for the bedroom closest to the stairs and dropped my bag on the side of the bed closest to the door. I was the Sentinel, after all, and still responsible for my Master’s safety.

Without hesitation, Ethan dropped his bag by the bed, then grabbed the glasses of blood from the tray. He handed me a glass, and we drank them dry in seconds, thirsty from hunger and our bodies’ healing the scrapes and bruises we’d gotten in the crash.

The necessities addressed, Ethan closed the bedroom door and locked it. When he turned around to face me again, his eyes had silvered—the sign of vampire arousal, emotional or otherwise.

Desire spilled into the room, rising above the scents of blood and leather and the well-oiled steel of our swords.

“We have unfinished business, you and I.”

My lips parted. “Unfinished business?” I asked, but there was no mistaking the look in his eyes—or the earnest intent.

An eyebrow popped up, challenging me to argue, but I wasn’t about to do that. He’d been gone for two months, and I figured the universe owed me one…even when his phone rang audibly from the pocket of his pants.

Ethan’s lip curled, but he managed not to look at it.

For a moment, we stood there in silence, staring at each other, desire curling between us like the forks of an invisible fire.

“It could be Catcher,” I said, not thrilled about the interruption—but equally unthrilled at the proposition that Mallory was floating around outside the farmhouse and we were ignoring the warning.

With obvious resignation, he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. “It’s Malik. I apparently missed some calls.”

I did a quick calculation. “It’s nearly sunrise here, which means it’s already dawn there. He stayed up—past sunrise—to get you the message. You should take it.”

He frowned, clearly torn by duty and desire. Since he’d normally have answered the phone immediately, I took that as a compliment.

At least I could ease the agony of the choice. “Take the call,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He pointed at me. “This isn’t over,” he said, and answered the phone. This time, he didn’t switch it over to speakerphone. As a vampire—and a predator with keen senses—it wouldn’t have been difficult for me to ferret out their conversation. But I respected his decision and didn’t pry. Besides, as soon as the call was over, he’d probably tell me everything anyway.

I grabbed pajamas and a toothbrush from my bag and disappeared into the small bathroom adjacent to the bedroom.

I probably should have checked a mirror sooner. My dark bangs were matted together, and my high ponytail barely contained a mess of tangles. Dried blood dotted a now-healed scrape above my eyebrow, and dirt still streaked my cheeks. I looked worse for wear, and certainly not like the object of anyone’s desire.

Towels and washcloths were folded on a small table on the other side of the room. I wet a cloth and scrubbed my face clean, then pulled the elastic from my hair and brushed it until it gleamed. The bathroom’s claw-foot tub had been fitted with a showerhead and wraparound curtain, and I quickly scoured away the rest of the grime from our trip into the Ditch That Ate Ethan’s Mercedes.

When I was clean and pajama clad, I walked back into the bedroom, eager for another try at the reunion we’d begun before.

But the second I stepped into the room, I knew it wasn’t meant to be. Ethan was still on the phone, and the needle sting of magic in the air foretold that Malik’s news hadn’t been good. He murmured quietly for a few more minutes, then put the phone away again.

“Give me the bad news first,” I requested.

“It seems Malik’s ‘f*ck you’ to the receiver did not go over well.”

Concerned that Cadogan House was causing problems in Chicago and beyond, the Greenwich Presidium had assigned a receiver, a piece of work named Franklin Cabot, to temporarily take over the House after Ethan’s death. He’d implemented awful rules during his blessedly brief tenure, including limits on our ability to meet together and drink blood. Not exactly popular restrictions for vampires who were basically living in a fraternity house.

When Ethan had returned, he and Malik unceremoniously kicked Cabot to the curb.

“How unwell did it go?”

“No decisions have been made yet, but Darius has called a shofet. It’s an emergency meeting where the GP discusses matters of urgency.”

Darius West was head of the Greenwich Presidium. His rank was so high that even Ethan referred to him as “sire.”

“Like a rebellious American House that doesn’t seem to respect their authority?” I asked.

“Like that,” Ethan said, but didn’t elaborate. I began to work over mental scenarios about Cadogan’s vampires being cast out into the night. Along with the more dire problems, I’d have to find an apartment. In Chicago, in winter. That would not make me happy.

“Exactly how serious is this?”

“Serious enough.” Ethan frowned and rubbed his temples.

“Are you okay?”

He smiled a little. “Just a bit of a headache. It will pass.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed, from unfulfilled desire to political and magical anticipation. The sun chose that moment to breach the horizon; I couldn’t see it through the draperies, but the sudden weight on my eyelids was telling enough.

“It seems certain things are not meant to be,” Ethan said.

I nodded, unable to do much more. Vampires slept during the day, not just because direct exposure to sunlight would kill us, but because the rising of the sun pulled us into unconsciousness. We could fight the exhaustion, but it was a hard and losing battle. We’d succumb eventually.

He seemed to understand my hesitation.

“We both have other things, other people, on our minds,” he said. “There will be plenty of time for the remainder when we have addressed this particular crisis.”

“And if we can’t?”

“We will,” he said. “Because I will goddamned see you naked under much more auspicious circumstances before the year is up.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

Ethan took his turn to freshen up, then emerged from the bathroom in pajama bottoms that didn’t leave much of his body to the imagination. His Cadogan medal hung just above the scar that puckered his chest—the mark he bore from taking Celina’s stake.

Too soon for my preference, he flipped off the light, and we climbed onto the hard, creaky mattress. Ethan wasted no time in pulling my body against his.

I relished the feeling, the glory, of having him there. Of his warmth, his scent, his energy, his everything.

“We can do nothing to stop the rising of the sun,” he said. “So let us rest, and we will fight the good fight tomorrow.” He pressed me back tighter against him, and his arm snaked around my waist.

Reflexively, I shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“It’s a habit. I used to have trouble falling asleep.”

“Before the sun?”

“Before the sun,” I agreed. “I’d be exhausted, but my mind would race with all the things I needed to do, papers I needed to grade, other nonsense. And so, I developed a little trick.”

“Shivering?”

“Imagining. I would hunker down into my blankets and close my eyes, and I would imagine it was wintertime and a storm was raging outside. Freezing temperatures. Chilling wind. Howling blizzard.”

“Not exactly a comforting scenario.”

“It wasn’t the blizzard that was comforting. It was the idea of being safe and warm inside.”

“And it worked?”

“I always fell asleep eventually.”

Ethan chuckled. “Then tell me your story, Sentinel. Lull me to sleep.”

I smiled and closed my eyes. “We’re off the coast of Alaska, on a freighter in the Bering Sea. It’s late summer, and the air is turning colder. The seas are calm, but there’s a brisk wind.”

Ethan shivered a bit and stretched against me. Closer to me.

“We’re in a stateroom. Nothing plush, but there’s a thick, soft mattress. We lie together, the wind whistling outside, the waves beneath us. We close our eyes, and as the world goes quiet, and the snow begins to fall, we fall asleep.”

“A nice story,” Ethan quietly said. “But I have a tale to weave, as well. Imagine a roaring fire in the dark depths of a Chicago winter. Imagine the warmth of the fire against your skin—”

“I’ll probably be wearing flannel pajamas,” I teased, but Ethan wasn’t fazed. He leaned in, his lips at my ear.

“You’ll be wearing nothing but your Cadogan medal and a smile, Sentinel.”

“Is that a prediction?”

“It’s a promise.”

And with the possibility of that promise foremost in my mind, I let my body rest and drifted off to sleep.