“Give me something to do to help,” I said when she was gone. “Riley’s my friend.”
“You can’t get involved,” my mother said. “That’s the deal.”
“I can’t just sit around while people blame him for murder. He didn’t do it.”
“There’s an agreement,” my father said. “I understand you made a promise to Maison Dumas, but we made a bigger one to the city of Chicago, to the people who live here. This time, that agreement has to win. It’s for the best, and not just because the Ombudsman’s office is trained to investigate.”
“I can handle myself.”
“We know, Elisa. But we’ve worked hard to keep Cadogan House safe, to keep the vampires protected. If we breach the deal, we lose our charter.”
That was the other penalty of the deal made with the mayor, the other promise exacted from Cadogan House. Cadogan, Grey, Navarre, and now Washington had been recognized by the city of Chicago. They were official. They were licensed. They were, basically, allowed to exist. Ironic, considering the House had been in the city longer than any of its humans had been alive.
His voice softened. “If I said I was sorry that you’re being excluded from the investigation, it would be a lie. You’re my daughter, and I want you safe and sound.”
I made a sound of frustration.
“I also wish we could do more,” my father said. “But that is the agreement we made. We will not break it. Not even for the Pack. And not even when it happened at my House.”
His tone had sharpened, and I guessed he was facing his own struggle.
“We’re doing what we can,” my mother said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “The rest is outside our control.”
“I don’t find that acceptable,” he said.
“I know.” She smiled, just a little. “Because you prefer to lead, not follow, and because you’d never take a life to prove a point, whatever point this might have been. But this battle isn’t yours. You were just unlucky enough to own the battleground.”
“I really wish you’d stop being so reasonable,” my father said after a moment.
“I’m angry, too. But anger won’t help us, and it won’t help Riley.”
My father looked at me. “You should warn the delegation to be careful until we know what’s happening here. It seems unlikely they’d be targeted, but until we know precisely why Tomas was targeted, we can’t be sure.”
“I will,” I promised. “I’m sorry this happened here. I’m sorry the House was violated, that this was brought to your door.”
He nodded, put an arm around me. “It has turned out to be a horrible evening all around. I’m sorry this is what you found when you returned home. It’s not what I wanted for you. Maybe when dusk falls again, we’ll find it a little better.”
* * *
• • •
The guests had left, and the cleanup had begun. But the lawn was still dotted with overturned furniture, empty champagne glasses, and abandoned linen napkins. The excited magic that had sparked in the air had been replaced with sadness, grief, and confusion.
Since I made it back to the hotel with less than an hour to go before sunrise, I left a message for Seri, confirming I’d give her and Marion an update at dusk.
I also got Lulu’s voice mail, so I also made a promise to her to give an update tomorrow.
Once in my room, I stripped off my clothes, left them in a pile on the floor, and fell face-first onto the bed. And then tried to figure out how to get around the deal my father had made.
I didn’t have any reason to doubt what I’d seen—Riley holding a knife over Tomas’s body—except for the ten years I’d known Riley and every instinct in my body. He wasn’t a killer. Either he’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or someone had made sure he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Ombudsman was looking for proof that he was guilty.
I was going to find proof that he was innocent.
ELEVEN
I dreamed of knives, of spinning blades that sliced tiny nicks in my skin, until every inch of my body felt like it was on fire.
I woke in a sweat, pushed my hair out of my eyes, and tried to slow my breathing.
I was also starving, so I walked to the mini fridge to check out my options. Booze, soda, fruit juice. Four bottles of Blood4You, the old-school bottled blood my parents preferred. Four bottles of Hemo, my favorite. I thought Blood4You tasted like plastic, and the flavored varieties tasted like plastic plus imitations of actual food. I preferred the unadulterated variety, probably because I’d been drinking blood since birth. My parents had scared plenty of humans by handing me bottles of pink milk during evening walks—when the humans got past wondering why a baby was out of the house at midnight.
I grabbed a bottle of Hemo, flipped the cap, and drank the entire bottle in seconds. Then I grabbed another and did the same. After three, I finally began to feel level again.
I’d gotten sleep and nourishment, so it was time to get on with my evening—and figuring out a way to help Riley. I wanted to see what the humans were saying, so I plugged my screen into the hotel’s monitor and selected the twenty-four-hour news station.
A panel of humans speculated about Riley’s motives. They stopped short of calling him a murderer, probably not because they believed him, but because they didn’t want to get sued. They called him a suspect, and I could all but hear the air quotes around the word. The photographs they’d picked just helped their narrative. They emphasized how large he was, how strong, how other. Not delicately handsome, but a hulk. A thug of a man. A man who obviously could have killed.
They didn’t know Riley and didn’t care to. That it was totally out of character for him to hurt anyone wouldn’t have made a good story. Kindness wasn’t thrilling.
But until there was evidence the Ombudsman would believe—that all of us could believe—nothing was going to change. And in the meantime, the real murderer was still out there with a motive we didn’t understand.
Before I could turn it off, the image switched to a photo of Connor and Tabby arriving at the party, then shots of couples talking—Connor and me, then me and Dane, then Seri and Dane. They were stacked above a headline that read, “Love before Violence?”
I rolled my eyes. Never mind that Connor and Tabby were the only ones actually dating, and the rest of us had just been chatting. Casual conversation at a party also apparently wasn’t thrilling enough.
Irritation layered over the impotence and frustration I already felt about not being able to help Riley.
But by the time I emerged from the shower, an idea had begun to blossom. A way that I could avoid breaching the mayor’s deal with Cadogan House so I could do some investigating, and my parents wouldn’t get tagged for it.
Yes, I was Ethan and Merit’s daughter, and I’d lived in Cadogan for most of my life. But I wasn’t officially a Cadogan vampire. I’d been born into the House, so I hadn’t been officially Commended into it—the process through which Initiate vampires became Novitiates. I was technically a Rogue, a vampire unaffiliated with any particular House.
If I wasn’t a Cadogan vampire, any deal with Cadogan House didn’t affect me.
Was it a technicality? Maybe. But Riley was worth the argument.
I got dressed, opting for jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved, flowy black top, and pulled my hair into a knot that I hoped made me look moderately professional. I had a report to give, and plenty of questions to ask.
And if my parents and the Ombudsman learned what I was doing, plenty of explaining to do.
I rose, walked to the door. It was time to do my part.
* * *
• • •
Two human guards stood outside Seri’s hotel room. They wore head-to-toe black and eyed me suspiciously as I walked closer.
“Elisa Sullivan to see Seraphine and Marion,” I said, and pulled out my identification.
They looked at it, then me, then the ID again, just as they’d been instructed to do.
Good. I liked it when people followed instructions.
“Ma’am,” one of them said, then unlocked and opened the door.
The suite was full of vampires and heavy magic. Seri saw me first, rushed over. She wore jeans and a striped top, her feet in red ballet flats and her hair in a messy knot that somehow managed to look fashionable.
As she pressed kisses to each cheek, I could feel the frizzle of her nervous magic. “You are all right, Lis?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. How are things here?”
“They are . . . concerned,” she said quietly, sliding her gaze back to Marion and the others. They sat on couches near the large windows, talking quietly as they looked over the dark city.