Dark Debt

  The foyers were empty when I walked through, the House’s vampires tucked in and prepared for daylight. Probably a good thing, since I was hot, sweaty, and still panting.

  The stairs, however, did not feel so good. My body felt leaden, and I nearly sighed with relief when I finally reached the third-floor landing.

  The apartments were empty, so I ditched sweaty clothes and headed directly for the shower, washing off the sweat, the fear, the anxiety.

  I emerged wrapped in a towel, a second wrapped turban-style around my wet hair, and found Ethan standing in front of a small table, flipping a stack of what looked like mail. “The House is locked down.”

  I nodded, gestured. “Is that mail? Do vampires get mail?”

  He looked back at me, grinned. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t get mail.”

  “You aren’t Master of the House.”

  I padded toward him, glanced at the envelopes he’d already discarded. Credit card applications, catalogues, charity updates, bills.

  “Would you like a Cadogan House platinum card?”

  “Can I have one?”

  “No. You have a full library, all the clothes you could ever need, provided you don’t destroy them, and a cafeteria at your disposal. For what purpose, precisely, would you need a platinum card?”

  I dodged the question. “Spoilsport,” I said, but spied the magazine peeking from the bottom of the stack. Its glossy cover featured three men and women in sharp suits, arms crossed in businesslike efficiency. TONIGHT’S HOUSE was written in a tidy font across the top of it.

  “My God,” I said, picking it up and holding it against my toweled chest. “Is this a magazine for Masters?”

  “It’s for House staff,” Ethan said with a chuckle, unfolding a letter. “Why?”

  Why? Because it featured headlines such as “The Best Bang for your Blood Buck,” “Weeding Out Problematic Initiates,” and “Décor 101: Sprucing Up Your House.”

  “I’m going to need to flip through this for both edutainment and infotational purposes.”

  “He who reads Today’s House also pays today’s House’s bills.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  “I already did,” he said, refolding the letter and putting it back in the pile. “I called Nicole.”

  It took me a moment to adjust to the segue; he’d clearly been eager to get that off his chest. “And how is her royal highness?”

  “Acting very royal, which doesn’t really do credit to her democratic leanings.”

  I put the magazine back on the pile. “Did she know about Balthasar?”

  “He visited Atlanta,” Ethan said. “I don’t have the sense he was there very long, but long enough at least to meet her, to reconnect, to convince her of his identity.”

  “When?”

  Ethan’s eyes fairly glowed at the question. “You don’t miss the details, Sentinel. Two months ago. Before the Testing. Before she came to Chicago.”

  “And she never mentioned it. You think they’re working together on something? That that’s why he’s here?”

  He put his hands on his hips, frowned. “Our conversation was brief, but I didn’t have that sense. She sounded, I suppose, starstruck. In my experience, Balthasar enjoys more of a challenge than that.”

  “So the next few weeks should be really quiet around here.”

  Ethan chuckled, kissed my forehead. “As before, after. Let’s worry about that tomorrow, Sentinel, and get this night behind us.”

  I had no objection to that.

  * * *

  I pulled on pajamas, dried my hair, and brushed my fangs like a good little vampire. I checked my phone, found Jonah had left a voice mail I didn’t especially want to listen to.

  And being a good little vampire, I sat down on the bed, lifted the phone to my ear.

  “Merit,” the message said, “it’s Jonah. We need to talk. You can’t just ignore me. We’re partners. Call me, and we’ll talk about the monitoring. I’m sorry if you took it personally, but it’s not personal. It isn’t. It’s just caution. We all want to believe the best in those who lead us. But every empire has fallen, Merit. Every empire will fall.”

  The message cut off.

  I liked Jonah. Respected him, and what he stood for. He was my partner, after all. A partner I’d agreed to serve with, and a man who’d helped me and the House countless times.

  Frankly, I didn’t disagree that every empire would fall eventually. Hadn’t we just seen that happen to the GP? And I could admit my sensitivity to Balthasar’s glamour was concerning. Hell, it concerned me. But I’d adjusted. Jonah’s insistence that I’d be blind to what might happen, that I’d miss the signs of Ethan’s becoming utterly dictatorial—or that I’d purposely ignore them—that I’d let all vampires suffer because I loved a man, was just wrong. And coming from someone I thought I’d known, and certainly had respected, it hurt. A lot.

  I tossed the phone onto the nightstand, but it spilled over the end and landed on the floor at Ethan’s feet.

  He’d emerged from the bathroom in dark boxer briefs that hugged his thighs. He picked up the phone, placed it on the nightstand. “Everything all right?”

  “Just an irritating message.”

  “From Jonah?”

  I looked up at him suspiciously.

  “I saw your phone when he called you. And when you didn’t answer.” He cocked his head. “You aren’t speaking to him?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Would you like to tell me why?”

  I fluffed my pillows with cathartic thumps. “Nope.”

  This time, his brow lifted. “Is this something I should also be irritated about?”

  I caught the thread of possessiveness in his voice, almost wished it was that simple. I didn’t think Jonah was interested in me anymore, but even if he had been, handling that would have been comparatively easy.

  “No,” I said on a sigh. “He’s just being unreasonable about something RG-related.”

  Ethan didn’t answer. He just looked at me, waiting, with his face drawn into Masterly features.

  “I can’t talk about it,” I insisted. “It’s nothing dangerous to the House. Just—something between us.”

  “Ah,” he said, and walked around the bed, sat down, and turned off the light. “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  He stretched out beside me, then snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me tight against his body. “I do. You’re in the RG, and you’re dating—very seriously—a member of the AAM. It’s not unforeseeable he’d have concerns. The RG is an organization, Merit, which is built on a certain fundamental sense of fear. That those in power will erode the very rights they’ve promised to protect, and that if we are not careful and vigilant, it will happen sooner rather than later.”

  “So you’re saying he’s being reasonable?” I asked.

  “No. But I am suggesting he’s being rational. For some—and the RG is among them—vigilance isn’t paranoia; it’s inevitability. Consider this: If he was dating Lakshmi, would you have the same concerns?”

  Lakshmi was a member of the now-defunct GP, and a woman who’d had a definite romantic interest in Jonah. She’d helped during the GP’s reign, but she was undeniably manipulative.

  “I wouldn’t trust her,” I said. “But I’d trust Jonah’s judgment. I’m not getting the same trust. That’s what’s frustrating.”

  “Ah,” was all he said. “Would you like me to talk to him?”

  “No. I can fight my own battles.” And would. I just wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” he said. “In other news, it appears Mallory and Catcher are to be married.”

  “So they say.”

  “You don’t sound enthused.”

  “They sounded like th
ey were discussing getting a small business loan, not making a lifetime commitment of love and fidelity.”

  “You have doubts about their love and fidelity?”

  “Well, no, not in the abstract. I know he loves her, and vice versa. But that’s not what I heard from her tonight.” I shifted, suddenly restless, and stretched out beside him. He gave me the room but linked our fingers together.

  “I heard business. And I heard nerves. Once upon a time, she’d wanted this big wedding in New Orleans, for God’s sake, on Bourbon Street. With fire-eaters, a jazz band, a second line, the entire shebang. And, okay, we’ve grown since the last time we talked about it, so maybe her tastes have changed. But she didn’t even sound excited. That’s what bothers me, I guess. It’s her wedding. She should sound excited.”

  “You will be.”

  “When I get married, yes, I probably will be excited. I’ll let you know if anyone proposes.”

  Ethan humphed.

  I sighed, turned in to him again. “It’s been a long night. Let’s go to sleep.”

  Ethan wrapped his arms around me, and I instantly relaxed, my lids growing heavier, drifting closed.

  * * *

  I woke alone in an empty room, with wooden floors and walls of robin’s-egg blue. The bed was tall, with four posters of thick, spiraling wood that rose at least five feet into the air. The bed was down, with its juxtaposing softness and lumpiness, the sheets ivory and soft. Light from a candelabra on a small wooden desk flicked shadows across the wall.

  This isn’t my room, some part of me realized, but it was a dim and quiet voice. I sat up, touched the white shift that covered me from neck to ankles, rubbed against bare skin.

  “You’re awake.”

  The words were spoken aloud, but they also reverberated in my head just as a silent conversation with Ethan might have, and my heart began to pound in response.

  I looked up, found him standing in a corner. He wore fawn leather breeches, knee-high boots, a white linen shirt that draped open at the neck. A small book was open in one palm, one knee lifted and a booted foot flat on the wall, as if he’d been lazily reading.

  Balthasar.

  “Merit,” he said, his smile slow and seductive. “I am so glad we have this opportunity to get acquainted.”

  “Where are we?”

  Balthasar gestured at the room. “A little place I created. It allows you a sense of how Ethan and I used to live.”

  It wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been real. But the scents of beeswax and bay rum belied that belief. Mallory had warded the House. So how was he here? And how was I with him?

  Too many questions, not enough answers. But I’d seen enough of Balthasar to know that he’d take advantage of any indication of weakness, so I kept my voice smooth.

  “He told me how you used to live.”

  Balthasar moved closer. “Did he?”

  “I know that you used humans. That you used women. How you discarded them. And he told me about Persephone. How you used her. How you killed her, used her to punish Ethan.”

  His expression went momentarily blank. She’d meant so little to him that he hadn’t bothered to remember her name.

  “If Ethan was punished, it was for good reason. He was my child, after all.”

  “He hasn’t been anyone’s child in a very long time. Where is he?”

  A flash of anger. “Not here. This place is for me and you, so that we can become better acquainted. Don’t you want to become better acquainted with me, Caroline?”

  “That’s not my name,” I said as Balthasar took a step forward. I scanned the room for an exit, but there was no doorway, only the window across the room, which was covered by slatted shutters that locked in place with metal braces.

  If there wasn’t an exit, I’d have to find a weapon. I slid across the bed to the other side, hopped onto the floor, putting the bed between me and him. I walked across rough floorboards toward the desk, hoping to find a letter opener, a dagger. Or if I was really lucky, a sharpened aspen stake.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, chérie,” Balthasar said, closing the book and kicking off from the wall. He walked toward me, putting the book on a side table as he passed.

  “Then let me go.”

  His smile was slow. “You are not here because you are trapped, Merit. You are here because you want to be. Because you are intrigued by me. Because you understand le désir.”

  “I’m not intrigued by you.”

  He shook his head, smiling softly as if talking to a child. “You were so wonderfully sensitive to me yesterday. I was surprised by the depth of your . . . passion.”

  “It wasn’t passion. It was magic.”

  “Are you certain of that?” And yet the tendrils of his magic stretched across the room, reached for me.

  “I love Ethan.” I said the words with force, like they were a talisman, a charm against Balthasar’s appetite.

  “You can love more than one thing, chérie. I am sure Ethan shared his past with you, told you of the women in which we took pleasure. There was always room for more.”

  Focus, I told myself. Find a way out. There is always a way out.

  I reached the small desk, trailed my fingers across it as if I were just exploring the room. The candelabra was stuck to the surface, and the drawer pulls were decorative. The desktop held only an open notebook, slanted writing across its yellowing surface.

  “I don’t want to love more,” I said.

  “That is unfortunate, poppet. Because I am owed much by your Master.”

  I moved closer to the window, glanced at the shutters. I might be able to pry off one of the braces, but I’d need time for that. “Why would he owe you anything?”

  “Because I made him what he is.” The words were heavy, and they fell in the room like thunderclaps.

  I glanced back at Balthasar, and the silver in his eyes made my heart hammer against my ribs.

  “I made him everything.”

  I swallowed, forced my voice to steadiness. “You made him a monster. He made himself a Master.”

  Balthasar hissed, teeth gleaming and bared, glistening with hunger for whatever he thought he could get from me. He walked closer, maneuvering his body between me and the bed.

  I needed a weapon. My heart sped, and I put my back to the window, using the oversized shift to shield my hands as I tried to work one of the braces loose. To keep him occupied, I kept talking.

  Balthasar chuckled, and that was nearly as disturbing as his anger. “Are you seeking escape, Merit? For that is not to be. Our business is not done.”

  Damn it, the brace wouldn’t budge. Fear began to tighten my chest, send flutters through my stomach. I had no weapon, and no exit, and an enemy who was eager to hurt Ethan. It was a bad combination.

  “What do you want from Ethan? From us?”

  “Je veux tout. Everything I might have had. Everything that was taken from me.”

  “Ethan took nothing from you. Your captors did.”

  Balthasar moved so fast I didn’t even see it. He grabbed my arm, the mere touch enough to send desire rushing through my body like liquid fire, and began to drag me across the room.

  I pulled back, tried to free my arm, kicked at his calves, but his grip was steel-solid. “What do you want from me?”

  “Ah, chérie, let us not be coy. Not now.”

  As he pulled me toward the bed, a new kind of panic set in. Not fear for my life, but for my body, and the sanctity of it. For what he meant to do, and who he meant to hurt by it.

  “You can’t use me to get to him.”

  Balthasar’s smile was wide and feline. “We would both disagree with you.”

  “I won’t let you. I’ll leave him first.”

  Balthasar clucked his tongue. “No, that is not the truth. I have seen how you look at each other.?
??

  Magic moved in a whirlwind around him, a cyclone that transmuted body, hair, clothes. Light flashed, and when the light and magic dissipated, Ethan stood before me.

  My body bucked with shock.

  No, I told myself. No. This is not Ethan.

  But he looked so much like Ethan. Tall, rangy, his body honed and sculpted, his eyes sharply green. If they’d stood side by side, I’m not sure I could have told them apart.

  Balthasar pulled me tighter against the line of his body. Of Ethan’s body. He looked like Ethan, smelled like Ethan, and the touch of his hand carried the same strength and warmth. Thought and need warred, made enemies by love and magic.

  It’s an illusion, I reminded myself, digging my fingers into my palms until bright pain radiated, hoping the sensation would wake me up, send me home, or break whatever spell Balthasar had worked on me. So break it.

  I used mental blocks to keep my keen vampire instincts—and the sights, smells, and sounds they revealed—from overwhelming me. Maybe that’s what I need, I thought, and closed my eyes, blocking out the sight of him, then the sensation of his arms around me, then the magic that flowed around the room as easily as water.

  The pain was nearly immediate—a searing pressure that threatened to burst my head from the inside, a vise pressing against my skull. And the more I tried to fight it, the taller I tried to raise the walls against him, the worse the pain became. My hands curled into shaking and sinewy fists, my body shaking from the exertion, the inside of my skull booming like the percussion of a thousand flash grenades.

  The force in my head kept building, the blood roaring in my ears, until I was certain I’d pass out.

  And then what would he do to me? Exactly, I feared, what he wanted.

  Instantly knowing I’d rather be conscious and fighting as best I could, I gave up, let the blocks fall away . . . and as my body went limp, felt the warm rush of heat as his magic spilled over me like wine.

  Suddenly, his mouth was on mine, the taste of wine and blood on his lips, his teeth and tongue demanding.