“I love you, but you don’t even know the half of what I’m thinking right now.” Mallory’s teeth were gritted with anger, every word bitten off like a bitter seed.
“He’s right.”
We looked back at my grandfather in the doorway. He walked in, Jeff by his side.
“How much of that did you get?” Catcher asked.
“Enough,” he said. “We’ll get the details later.” He sat down beside Mallory, clasped his hands together. “Even if you and Merit walked right up to her, offered yourselves, do you think it would make a difference? Do you think it would change anything?”
“Probably not,” Mallory admitted. “But if there’s a one percent chance she’d back down? That if we go to her, turn ourselves in, she takes her ice and her couture and walks away? Isn’t that worth taking to save the city?”
“Mallory,” Catcher said, “you know the math doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s just an example,” she said, and rubbed a hand over her face.
It might have been an example, but she had a point. I didn’t want that many people on my conscience, weighing it down.
“I need more time,” she said. “We all need more time.”
“I’m sure she realizes that,” Ethan said. “Which is why time is a luxury she isn’t giving us.” Ethan looked at my grandfather. “What’s the situation outside?”
“The city is frozen and, because of it, quiet. The governor has called in the National Guard, and they’re helping those who’ve opted to evacuate. There’ve been two more instances of humans having delusions, which sent four people to the hospital. No fatalities, thank goodness. And there are protestors on your lawn.”
“Protesting?” Ethan said, gritting out the word. “Protesting what?”
My grandfather looked at me. “They demand Merit and Mallory immediately surrender for the safety of the city.”
Protestors were nothing new. Much like the House’s fans, their numbers waxed and waned, usually depending on the weather and our news coverage. But that didn’t much matter to Ethan.
His magic flared like a burst of energy from the sun. “They would dare . . . They would dare to come near my House and advocate for the death of my wife?”
I could feel his building rage, like a storm that tinted the horizon. I touched his arm, but he just flashed those blazing eyes at me.
“No,” he said. “I will take many things from humans, Merit. But this is not one of them.” He turned on his heel and stormed down the hallway, leaving the rest of us staring.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MERE MORTALS
We followed him down the hall, reaching the foyer as he pulled open the door with enough force that it bounced against the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster.
There were vampires in the hallway, in the foyer. Vampires bundled against the chill, and their gazes slipped away as we moved past them. There was guilt in their eyes—either that Mallory and I had been the unlucky ones called out, or that they’d thought accepting Sorcha’s proposal was a good idea.
I bit my tongue, kept my eyes on Ethan. Ignoring the snow, the ice, the chill, Ethan strode down the sidewalk like a warrior heading into battle, then through the gate to the sidewalk outside.
We trailed him, stopped behind him on the sidewalk, where he stared down at the thirteen humans who’d taken up positions on the strip of snow between sidewalk and street. They were bundled up against the weather, and they’d brought camp and lawn chairs, blankets, mugs of hot chocolate.
They looked cold and a little bit pitiful, but Ethan didn’t seem to care. Defenseless or not, he gave no quarter.
His shoulders were back, his feet planted, his hands fisted at his sides. The wind blew back his hair, the lapels of his expensive jacket, so he looked like an ancient raider come to claim his prize.
“You’re here, in front of my House, drinking coffee and cocoa, and advocating murder. Can you be so casual about it? So callous?”
“They’re immortal,” said a large, pale woman in a camp chair, her gloved hands around an insulated mug. “So turn them over. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“Mallory isn’t immortal,” Ethan said. “And being immortal doesn’t mean you can’t be killed. It means you don’t age.” I could hear dimwit as the unspoken punctuation to his sentence, but he managed not to voice it. “They are vulnerable.”
“We’re more vulnerable,” said a thin, tan man a few seats over. “We’re human. Look what she’s already done to our city.”
“It’s our city, too,” Ethan said.
“It was ours first.” A large man in a ball cap, puffy Cubs jacket, and jeans pushed aside his blanket and stood up, knocking over his lawn chair in the process. “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Slowly, Ethan turned his gaze on the man. “How, exactly, is this our fault?”
“You riled her up. Pissed her off.” He looked around, nodding at the others, trying to get them to throw their hates into the ring. “This fight doesn’t have anything to do with us. It’s between you supernaturals, and you need to work it out for yourselves.”
“This fight has nothing to do with us,” Ethan gritted out, frustration obviously rising. “A madwoman wants to use magic to put the city under her control, under her power. She is a demagogue with no conscience, and through no fault of ours. But we’re the only ones who seem interested in trying to stop her.” He looked at the humans again. “If she’d asked for your wives, your husbands, your children, would you be so eager to hand them over? And yet, here you are, talking about things you don’t even try to understand.”
“You think you’re better than us,” said the man in the ball cap. “That’s the thing, right?” He gestured toward Cadogan House. “You live in some big House, wear your fancy suits. You don’t know what it’s like to be out there, working every day, and have magic throw your whole world into a spin. The world would be better off without magic in it.”
He’d said so many incorrect things, so many absolutely wrong things, that Ethan looked momentarily dumbstruck. “Get off my lawn,” he said through bared teeth.
“We got constitutional rights.”
Ethan took a step forward. He was a good five inches taller than the man, with all the muscle and power of vampirism.
“I doubt you understand what that phrase actually means, given the context you’ve used it in. But if you want to protest, do it across the street. Better yet, instead of sitting here, chatting with your friends and complaining, go do something about it. Go to the Ombudsman’s office and volunteer. Go to a charitable organization and donate your time.” He spread his gaze over all of them, covering them in furious disapproval. “But don’t you dare think that sitting here and advocating my wife’s murder is something I will allow. You have two minutes until I take things into my own hands. I suggest you use it wisely.”
He stared at them, this ancient raider, and waited for them to flinch.
And of course, they did. It didn’t take bravery to advocate that someone else throw their family to the wolf.
The man with the ball cap muttered insults, but he picked up his chair. The rest of them looked at least a little chagrined, and three climbed into waiting cars, deciding either the weather or the vampires weren’t worth the trouble.
“They’ll come back,” my grandfather said, when the last one had decamped to the strip of grass across the street.
“They will,” Ethan acknowledged. “But perhaps a few of them will think before they demand our blood in exchange.”
He looked back at me, his gaze locked to mine for a very long time. You promised me eternity, Sentinel, he said. I intend to collect.
• • •
Because the snow and ice would make getting downtown more difficult than usual, our two hours was something more like seventy minutes. And then it was time to head downtown again and talk to the mayor about Sorcha’s threat.
“Are you nervous?” Mallory asked as we walked through the foyer to the front door and the SUV that waited outside. Catcher would drive us to the mayor’s office. Everyone in the House would stay here, gates shut, with the House on high alert. My grandfather would drive separately, meet us there. In the meantime, Jeff would work with Luc to apprise the other Houses, our supernatural allies, about the situation.