“Since I am the big shot, and you’re Sentinel, you could probably skip that training altogether.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell Luc that. He likes to play boss, and you’d break his heart.” I shrugged. “The training’s good for me, and it does give me a chance to hang out with Lindsey.”
It was much more fun to be part of the guard group, even if not quite one of them, than to stand alone as Sentinel.
“In that case, talk to him, and make it snappy. Our interlude this morning put us behind.”
That interlude had been his idea, but considering how much I’d enjoyed it, I let it go. “I can read a clock. I’ll meet you in the apartments.”
Unless I came up with a really good reason to avoid the thing altogether.
* * *
Cadogan House had four floors—three aboveground, which held offices, gathering spaces, the library, and the vampires’ individual rooms; and a basement, which held the training room, the arsenal, and the Operations Room. The latter was Luc’s personal kingdom, a high-tech room with security monitors, computers, a giant conference table, and several vampires at his disposal.
Tonight, it also held a giant tin of popcorn with the seals of the three Chicago vampire Houses stamped in gold on an azure background.
“Nice,” I said, reaching over the table and grabbing a handful. “I hope we’re getting licensing fees for this.”
“But of course,” Luc said. While the guards sat at computer stations along the edges of the room, monitoring security, doing research, Luc sat at the end of the table in jeans and cowboy boots—like Helen, an exemption from Cadogan’s black-suit policy—his ankles crossed on the table as he perused the day’s Tribune.
The headline on the front page, which faced out, was jarring: MASTER MEETS MAKER above a photograph of Ethan and Balthasar facing each other. The opportunism was clear in Balthasar’s eyes. The concern clear in Ethan’s.
“Glad to see they aren’t encouraging him.”
Luc grunted, folded the paper lengthwise, then horizontally, and set it on the table. “Reporters love a good story.” He tapped the folded paper. “That’s a damned evocative one.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Too evocative—too emotional—for my tastes. “Did every outlet pick it up?”
Luc gestured back to his desk, where a pile of folded papers had already been reviewed. “Across the world. We’re the hot new dysfunctional family.”
Lindsey rolled her office chair toward us, used red nails on the tabletop to pull herself to a stop. Her blond hair was pulled into a high bun, and she’d paired her suit with eyeglasses with trendy black frames that she didn’t actually need. But she pulled off the “saucy librarian” look.
“Babe,” she said to Luc, “you sound whiny.”
“I’m entitled to be whiny,” Luc said. “And don’t call me ‘babe’ on duty.”
Lindsey gave me a long-suffering look. “If I had a quarter, am I right?”
“Always.” I pointed toward the glasses, the hairdo. “What’s this?”
She smiled, shrugged. “Just trying something a little different. I’m going for intellectual femme fatale.”
“And you’re pulling it off,” I said. “We’ll be heading to Reed’s within the hour, so I wanted to check in. Any word about Balthasar?”
“No,” Luc said, “but the door’s good and warded. He won’t be able to get in or out.”
“How’d they link it to him?” I wondered.
“Used a piece of wood from the office bookshelves. Residual magic, apparently. You know Mallory’s into forensic magic?”
I nodded. “Yeah. How are the Novitiates taking her involvement?”
“There are grumbles, of course. Concerns about trustworthiness. But considering those are matched against concerns about Balthasar, most are chill.”
“Where’s he staying?”
“Condo on Michigan near Grant Park. We aren’t sure which unit—we didn’t follow him in past the lobby. We’re looking through real-estate records to confirm the owner, and we’ll keep eyes on him twenty-four-seven.”
“What about his backstory?”
Luc leaned forward, tapped the touch screen built into the tabletop, and an image flashed onto the large wall screen behind us—a spreadsheet marked by black and green boxes.
“That’s impressive,” I said. “What is it?”
This time, Luc tapped a button on the conference phone.
“Yo,” said a familiar voice after a moment.
Luc smiled. “Jeff, Merit likes your spreadsheet.”
Jeff Christopher was a shape-shifting white tiger in the body of a lanky computer genius and, along with Catcher, one of my grandfather’s employees.
“My spreadsheets bring all the girls to the yard. Hi, Merit.”
“Hi, Jeff.” I glanced at Luc with amusement. “You’re giving orders to the Ombuddies now?”
“Requesting their assistance in our time of great need,” Luc corrected, bringing his hands together prayerfully.
“Being bossy,” Lindsey corrected with a grin, rolling back to her computer station at Luc’s arch look.
It occurred to me that over the course of the last year, we’d become a strange and wonderful team. The Ombuddies, Cadogan House, the sorcerers, with occasional help from other supernaturals. Most of them friendly, all of them with unique strengths that contributed to a pretty weird, but wonderful, whole.
“I’m short on time tonight,” I told the team members, “so tell me about whatever this is.”
“So,” Jeff began, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice, “we’ve begun the fact-checking process. Given the importance, we decided to be systematic about it, so we created this timeline.”
“Green entries are verified,” Luc said. “Black entries need to be. Red entries, if there were any, would be falsies. No falsies yet.”
I nodded, gestured to the green entries. “What have you verified so far?”
Luc gestured to the beginning of the timeline. “We’ve started with Persephone’s death, and Balthasar’s not-quite death and capture by the Memento Mori. There was definitely cult activity in Spitalfields. In our particular case, men who wanted immortality and, ironically, didn’t care who they killed to get it.”