Dark Debt

by Chloe Neill

She flicked a hand toward the box. “And there you go. Eat your regulatory sandwich and be happy about it. I threw in two chocolate chip cookies.”

  That was something anyway.

  * * *

  I was hungry/hangry enough that I didn’t think company was a good idea. It also wasn’t often I found myself with a few moments to sit quietly, so I sat in the dark cafeteria for a few quiet minutes, eating my take-out dinner with bottles of blood and water I’d grabbed from the cooler.

  One wall of the cafeteria was composed of windows that looked out over the Cadogan grounds. The landscape lights were on, highlighting a group of trees just beginning to bud, tulips just beginning to blossom. I could see the yard’s French fountain from there and, if I was quiet enough, could hear the gurgling water. While I ate, I kept my gaze on the sculpted yard, my mind on trickling water, on gently blowing limbs, on the fresh possibilities that spring would bring to Chicago.

  By the time I’d finished my meal, my mind was quiet again, and my sense of perspective was restored. I cleaned up, walked toward the bright hallway, and prepared to enter chaos again.

  * * *

  The Ops Room was buzzing with activity and alert magic, as per usual. Temps sat at the computer stations and Luc sat at his desk, pulling a handful of popcorn from the tin as he stared at his laptop and tapped one key at a time with an index finger. Kelley and Juliet were at the conference table, working busily on laptops and tablets. Lindsey was gone, probably patrolling the grounds.

  He glanced up when I walked in. “Ah, the prodigal Sentinel returns. Ethan upstairs?”

  “Meeting with supplicants. They’d been waiting for him.”

  Luc nodded. “We hooked two up with your grandfather yesterday. Intersup conflict stuff that’s out of our jurisdiction.” He fixed his gaze on my cheek. “It looks like you had a very interesting evening. Internet confirms that.”

  I stopped. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Kelley,” he prompted with a grin, and Kelley, mouth pursed into a smile, filled the wall screen with videos of me chasing down our suspect.

  “Son of a bitch,” I murmured, although I did look pretty kick-ass running down the street in leathers, ponytail streaming behind me. My “Serious Vampire Warrior” face was fairly convincing.

  On the other hand, “Did any of the assholes who had time to take these videos consider stopping the guy who’d just assaulted a vampire?”

  “Evidently not,” Luc said. “But they had ample time to contact the news channels and sell the footage.”

  I walked over and grabbed a handful of Luc’s popcorn, leaning a hip on the edge of his desk while I munched. “Any word from the Ombuddies?”

  “Yes. Jeff was able to run a photo search. On-screen,” Luc ordered in his best Picard, pointing a finger at Kelley.

  It wasn’t an especially good Picard, so I gave Kelley a sympathetic look. “Has he been like this all night?”

  “Unfortunately,” she said, eyes on her tablet. “‘Make it so’ has made several appearances.”

  “Make it so!” Luc said again with verve and a very bad British accent. No matter how dire the world outside, we could count on Luc for a bit of levity.

  The image popped up on-screen, a mug shot of the redhead, although his hair was shorter in the image and one eye bore an impressive shiner.

  “Looks like an upstanding citizen. Who is he?”

  “Name’s Jude Maguire. Got a helluva sheet. B and E, assault, larceny. Mostly relatively petty stuff, but plenty of it. You stabbed a felon.”

  “What about his connection to the Circle?”

  “The CPD’s actually aware of it,” Luc said. He grabbed another handful of popcorn, rose, and walked to stand by me. “He’s muscle, enforcement. Not high enough to control the money. He’s done four short raps already because he won’t give up his compatriots. Won’t snitch, and won’t even take a deal. He does the time quietly, apparently earns a lot of respect because of it.”

  I nodded. “Muscle makes sense given the position he was in. It was right on the street, Luc. Dark, yeah, but there are plenty of streetlights in that part of Gold Coast, and he was right outside the House.”

  “Ballsy, which is the way you send a message to Navarre.”

  I nodded.

  “CPD checked his usual haunts, but there’s no sign of him. He’d been living with a girlfriend, hard-bitten woman according to Catcher, but she says she hasn’t seen him in a couple of weeks.”

  “Bolted,” Kelley said, and Luc nodded.

  “Hiding out with the rest of the crew somewhere, but the CPD doesn’t know where that spot is. Jeff’s trolling the Net for any clues, information. The Circle hasn’t contacted Navarre yet, but I can’t imagine that’s not coming soon based on what we’ve seen so far.”

  “How’s the evac going?”

  “Slow and steady. Grey’s gotten surprisingly good at handling the logistics. Upside of someone firebombing your House, I guess. Last count, twenty-three percent of the House was out. They’re pretty well spread out—the safe houses within city limits can’t hold them all—but they’ll have better security, at least.”

  “The Circle hasn’t interrupted?”

  “Not so far. Doesn’t mean they won’t, but they also probably didn’t expect a response this quick or head-on. I don’t give Morgan credit very often, but he’s been overseeing the evac himself, making sure the vampires get out, and get out safely.”

  “It isn’t over,” I said. “Even if the Circle doesn’t hit the vampires, or the safe houses now, they’ll wait. They have no incentive to just let it go.”

  “Agreed,” Luc said. “And we don’t want to draw this out. The vampires will talk, and the safe houses won’t be secure forever. We’ve got a limited amount of time while the Circle’s playing catch-up to get ahead of them. When Morgan gets here, I expect we’ll try to get him to ping the Circle. Get a demand, negotiate, something.”

  I nodded.

  “And then there’s Balthasar.”

  The mere sound of his name curdled my stomach, and the chocolate chip cookies currently residing there. “Has he shown up again?”

  Luc shook his head. “No. Juliet’s arranged for one of the human guards to call the real-estate office during business hours tomorrow. Like the Circle, he’s spiraling around us, getting closer with each turn. He seems to enjoy the gamesmanship.”

  “That matches my experience.”

  Luc turned to me. “Anything in that experience you think would help us find him? You’ve had the most intimate discussion with him so far. And I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

  I shrugged awkwardly at the concern, nodded. “I’m not sure what I can tell you. When I ‘woke up,’ or whatever, we were in an old-fashioned room. No electricity, roughly built. Eighteenth century, maybe nineteenth.” I closed my eyes and thought of the surroundings, the objects in the room. “Four-poster bed. Window. Candle. Small desk. There was an open notebook on it. Another small table.”

  “What kind of notebook? Any writing?”

  I opened my eyes, gauged the size with my hands. “Maybe eight inches by fourteen? It looked old. The paper was yellow. There was handwriting in it, but the ink was faded.”

  Luc nodded. “Do some research on the room as you remember it. Maybe he picked that room for a reason, those objects. Maybe that notebook means something, and maybe we can use it to find him.”

  “Sure. I talked to Ethan about an idea to draw him out,” I said, and told Luc about the possible Investiture ceremony.

  “As ideas go, I don’t hate it. Our people, our location, our terms. But there’s no guarantee he’d show up.”

  I nodded. “We’d have to get someone friendly in the media—Nick, maybe—to do a story, build it up into something Balthasar and his ego won’t want to miss. That’s the core of him, Luc—his ego. Everything
he does is to satisfy it.”

  “A narcissist and a psychopath.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Lindsey walked in, threw her leather jacket on the back of a chair. “The paparazzi can bite me, one at a time. You’re on, babe,” she said to Kelley, who grabbed an earpiece and headed for the door for her own round on patrol.

  Luc’s eyes lit at the sight of his significant other. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “All news is bad news,” she said. “Balthasar this, Navarre House that.”

  “Are you irritated they’re being nosy,” Luc asked with a grin, “or just irritated they aren’t asking about you?”

  Lindsey had once been featured as a vampire cover girl on a weekly gossip magazine, and she’d enjoyed the attention. “I don’t have to respond to that. But possibly both.” She looked at me, irritation morphing to concern. “You’re all right?”

  I nodded. “Cheek’s sore, but I’ll be fine. It’s getting better already.”

  “Good.” She patted my hand, and I didn’t flinch, which sent a fresh wave of Ethan-related guilt through me. “What’s new in here?” she asked.

  “As it turns out,” Luc said, “Balthasar this, Navarre that. Merit’s going to consider the setting of Balthasar’s attack, see if that gives us any clues. Why don’t you coordinate with Jeff, see if there’s any help you can provide about the Circle?”

  Lindsey nodded.

  “Actually,” I said, “before you get started, could I talk to you for a minute?”

  Brows lifted in curiosity, she nodded. “Sure.”

  She followed me into the hallway. I opened the training room’s door enough to see that it was empty, then pushed it open and stepped inside, beckoning for her to follow. The ceiling was high, ringed by a balcony where vampires could watch sparring matches or training sessions. On the walls hung ancient weapons of war, and on the floor was a layer of tatami mats, ready for battle or practice.

  “What’s up, chica?” Lindsey asked, making sure the door was closed behind us again.

  “It’s about Balthasar. About last night. About glamour. I’m wondering if there’s something you can teach me about fighting it off. If he does it again, I want to be ready. I don’t want . . .”

  I cut off the sentence when tears threatened and looked away, focusing on one of the ancient pikes hanging on the wall, the painted bands of color, the swag of leather strips and feathers at one end. When I thought my control was back again, I looked at Lindsey, found her expression soft and supportive.

  “I don’t want to get that close again,” I said. “If it’s happening in my head, I can stop him from coming in, right? Stop it from happening?”

  “I can try,” she said, then lowered herself to the floor and patted the mat across from her. “Tell me how it felt,” she said as I sat down cross-legged in front of her. “Physically, I mean.”

  “Well, I was asleep, and then I was awake in this room.” I gave her the same brief description I’d given Luc.

  “I don’t remember feeling any magic, not going in. I did feel magic coming out of it, like I was being pushed through a tunnel. I felt that same sensation when Balthasar glamoured me in Ethan’s office. That tripped something, triggered some vampire sensibility. We think my immunity was actually a malfunction, that glamour is now affecting me the way it’s supposed to.”

  Lindsey nodded. “Like when Celina kicked your ass and your senses fell into place.”

  It wasn’t my finest moment as a fighter, but it was an important moment for me as a vampire. “Yeah, like that. I’m becoming a vampire in bits and damned pieces. And now, either because of what happened then or what happened in his room, or both, I’m extra sensitive to it. Morgan used glamour tonight, and I nearly lost it.”

  “I would really like to have a few choice words with Balthasar.”

  “You’d have to get in line. Ethan’s first.”

  She nodded. “So, back to this particular instance, it’s not that Balthasar was literally in your head, right? And you weren’t actually in some other room. It’s more like there’s a”—she paused, clearly thinking of the right phrase—“joint psychic space. A psychic spot he’s pulled you into.”

  I nodded. “I tried to put up walls—mental blocks. They didn’t help much.”

  She nodded. “Unless you’re an amazingly strong psych—top one percent—mental blocks aren’t going to work against that kind of glamour.”

  “What if he tries to pull me into a joint psychic space again?”

  “Well, first, you remember it’s a metaphysical construct, not a real thing.”

  “But he hurt me. Slapped me and left a mark.” The reminder made my cheek sing sympathetically.

  “Psychic wounds have physical manifestations,” she said. “Just because he connects with you psychically doesn’t mean there’s no physical effect. But remember—it’s still glamour. He can’t really force you into that psychic space—not physically anyway. But he’ll try to convince you he can. That’s what glamour’s all about, after all. And second, if he gets you in there, you let it ride.”

  “I let it ride?”

  She nodded. “Have you ever ridden a bus, and there’s no seats left, so you have to try to stand up in the middle, hold on to one of those ‘oh shit’ straps?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said, just deciding to go along for the metaphorical ride.

  “Well, to stay upright, you have to be fluid. If you lock your knees, you’ll tip right over. But if you keep your legs loose”—she hopped to her feet, waved her arms snakishly—“you’ll stay upright. You can’t just ride the bus. You have to ride the bus.”

  “Okay.”

  “Glamour’s like that. Your instinct will be to fight—to put up mental blocks. For most vampires, that won’t work. You have to keep your knees loose and ride it out.”

  “Ride it out,” I murmured, thinking suddenly of a late night last April, when I’d first met Celina. She’d tried to intimidate me, but I was still naive to her power, and I let her magic flow right around me. That had managed to piss her off, which made the effect doubly fun.

  “I’ve kind of done that before,” I said, and told her the story. “But even then, casual magic didn’t affect me this way. This is overwhelming, even the light stuff. Even the stuff not directed at me.”

  She nodded. “I think the strategy would still be the same. You’re standing on the bus, or floating through waves, or whatever analogy you prefer. But you let it ride over you, flow past you. Let the magic move in and out, across you, without actually touching you.”

  “Lot of metaphors,” I pointed out.

  She grinned, chucked me on the shoulder. “You’re the lit student.”

  “And you’re a Yankees fan and the daughter of the pork king of Dubuque.”

  “All that and a bag of chips,” she agreed, then jumped to her feet, and held out a hand to help me up, too.

  “Thanks for the help.”

  “No worries. Least I can do since you held back my hair during my last psychic barfathon.”

  “I did do that,” I agreed. “Listen,” I said, toying the zipper on my jacket absently, “while we’re here, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Is it about my sex life?”

  “I will never ask you a question about your sex life.”

  “Fair enough. Carry on.”

  “It’s about being called . . . ” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “It really sucked, Lindsey. Balthasar was in my head, and there was nothing good or comforting about it. It was manipulation, pure and simple, and in the most fundamental way.” I frowned. “I guess my question is this: If there are ways to fight it, why do any Novitiates let their Masters do it?”

  She looked saddened by the question, which made me feel like a freak for having asked.

  “Because immortality is a long time, M
erit. Humans and empires will come and go in that time. Sorcerers and shifters will come and go,” she added quietly, and I refused to think about the implications of that statement. I refused to consider the possibility my beloved humans, shifters, and sorcerers wouldn’t be around forever.

  “That’s the crappy part of our reality,” she continued. “But your connection with your Master? It’s there as long as you’re alive. A wisp of flame in the darkness. You’re never alone. Not really.” She tilted her head at me. “Didn’t you notice when Ethan was gone? I mean, in your head?”

  How could I separate that? I’d felt his loss utterly and in so many ways—emotionally, physically, psychically. Yes, I knew he wasn’t there any longer, but his sudden absence had been devastating, the mental silence only one small sliver of it.

  “I was grieving,” I said. “I don’t know that I could separate it out.”

  She nodded. “I get that. Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder why Ethan didn’t sense Balthasar out there somewhere.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said. “He’s never said that he didn’t.”

  But we still looked at each other, added that fact to the growing list of concerns about this man we’d called Balthasar, a man who was powerful enough to call our Master and invade my brain, and brave enough to glamour humans in the middle of downtown Chicago.

  We weren’t sure who he was, but the “what” was clear enough.

  He was a threat.

  Chapter Seventeen

  (MALLO)CAKE OR DEATH

  After the session, I went back to the Ops Room, searched (unsuccessfully) for anything I could find about Balthasar’s room until Luc accused me of looking tired, which I was, and sent me upstairs.

  There were two hours until dawn, and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to sitting in our apartments and obsessing about Balthasar or the Circle, or my strategic failure today. I hated screwing up. My grandfather’s and Ethan’s support notwithstanding, I still felt that that was exactly what I’d done.

  I was too tired to exercise, and didn’t look forward to my cheek aching from more running, so I’d decided to lose myself in a book that had nothing to do with vampires, mobsters, or magic. I was rounding the banister to head from first floor to third when I spied Mallory heading toward me.