I immediately headed upstairs to fall into bed, but stopped at the second floor landing, and cast a glance at the third floor above me. Before my better judgment kicked in, I was drowsily climbing the stairs to the third floor, then tiptoeing down the hallway to the wing that held the consort’s suite . . . and Ethan’s rooms.
I stood in front the double doors to his apartment for just a moment, before pressing my palm to the door and my forehead to the cool wood.
God, I missed him. Jonah’s kiss might have been glorious for that one moment of oblivion, but its wake was so much worse, miring me in thoughts of Ethan.
Without warning, the door slipped open.
I stood up again, heart pounding. I hadn’t been in his rooms since the night he’d been killed. Some of his personal effects had been boxed up, but the rooms had otherwise been closed off. Frank had chosen other quarters and Malik and his wife had remained in their own. I’d avoided Ethan’s apartment altogether, thinking it was better to go cold turkey than become a phantom, haunting his rooms to foster the memories.
But tonight, after lightning and fairy queens and kisses and guns, I needed a different kind of oblivion.
I pushed the door open farther, and walked inside.
For a moment, I just stood in the doorway, eyes closed, drinking in the familiar scent. His sharp, clean cologne was giving way to the scents of cleaning polish and dust, but it still lingered there, faint and fresh, like the whispers of a ghost.
I opened my eyes, closed the door behind me, and surveyed the room. It was nicely decorated, with expensive European furniture and furnishings, more like a boutique hotel than the rooms of a Master vampire.
I walked across the sitting room to the second set of double doors. These led into Ethan’s bedroom. The sun now above the horizon, I walked inside and caught the lingering scent of him again. Before I could think better of it, my shoes and jacket were on the floor and I was crawling into his bed, tears spilling from the familiar sensation of the linens and the scent of him that filled them.
I thought of the few times we’d made love, the tenuousness and joy of it, and the quirky, teasing smile he’d given me when he’d been pleased with something I’d done—or something he’d done to me. His eyes were so brilliantly green, his mouth perfection, his body as finely hewn as any marble statue.
Wrapped in the scent of him, I smiled and savored the memories. There, in his bed in his darkened rooms, I fell asleep.
We were in a casino, surrounded by a cacophony of electronic chirps and flashing lights, jostled by a parade of smiling waitresses with trays of drinks in short glasses. I sat in front of a slot machine with dials tdivw f elechat spun in random increments, occasionally slowing to showcase a single image. A stake. A raindrop. A curl of fire.
Ethan stood beside me, a gold coin between his thumb and index finger. It spun slowly on its axis, the light catching each rotation like a gold-edged strobe light.
“Two sides of the coin,” he said. “Heads and tails. Wrong and right. Good and evil.” He lifted his gaze to me. “We all have choices, don’t we?”
“Choices?”
“Between bravery or cowardice,” he suggested. “Ambition or contentment.”
“I guess so.”
“Which choice will you make, Merit?”
I knew he meant something important, something heavy, but I couldn’t tell what it was. “What choice do I have to make?”
With a flick of his thumb, he popped the coin into the air. The ceiling seemed to rise as the coin flew upward, so that if gravity hadn’t worked its peculiar magic, the coin might have lifted forever, never touching the ceiling. Over and over it flipped, heads and tails and heads again, catching the light with each rotation.
“Disappearing,” Ethan said.
I watched the coin grow smaller in the distance, rising to infinity. “It isn’t disappearing,” I told him. “It’s still there. It’s still turning.”
“Not the coin. Me.”
The soft fear in his voice drew my eyes back to him. He was staring at his hands, now palm up in front of him. Having thrown the coin in the air, Ethan was beginning to fade, the tips of his fingers dissolving into ash that fell onto the psychotically patterned carpet below us.
“What’s happening to you?” I couldn’t do anything but stare as his fingers disappeared one millimeter at a time. Instead of screaming in horror or trying to stop it, I just gazed with clinical fascination, watching my lover being slowly erased into nothingness.
“I made my choice. I chose you.”
Frantically, fear rising in my gut, I shook my head. “How do I stop it?”
“I don’t think you can. It’s natural, isn’t it? That we all devolve to ashes. To dust. And we’re put away again.” His attention was suddenly drawn away. He looked up and away at something across the room, his gaze widening farther.
“Ethan?”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “It’s too dangerous. Don’t let them do it, Merit.”
“Do what?”
“They’ll take advantage. I think they’re trying now.” He looked down at his hands, now halfway turned to ash. “I think that’s where I’m going.”
“Ethan? I don’t understand.”
“I’m only ashes,” he said. He looked at me again, and I felt my own panic finally rising at the fear—the honest-to-God fear—in his eyes.
“Ethan—”
Without warning, the disintegration accelerated, and he began to slip completely away, his last move the screaming of my name.
“
Merit!
”
I jolted awake in a cold sweat and a tangle of Ethan’s blankets, dread sitting low in my stomach. It took a few moments to adjustent only ash to being awake again, to remember that it had been only a dream. That the horror wasn’t real, but that he was still gone.
The nightmares were coming faster now, no doubt the result of the stress I was feeling. I hadn’t solved the problem yet, and there were potentially two more elemental dangers—perhaps the biggest dangers—lurking out there. Earth and fire.
God forbid, I could figure something out before the city burned.
When my heart slowed again, I untangled myself from the blankets and walked to the bedroom window. The automatic shutters that covered it during the day had already lifted, revealing a gloriously dark sky, a couple of stars peeking through.
I closed my eyes in relief. The sky was back to normal, and that probably meant the lake and river were, as well.
If Claudia and Catcher had been right—that the magic was elemental and following a kind of pattern—the reprieve would be only temporary. We’d seen air and water. Earth and fire couldn’t be far behind. But even a temporary reprieve would take some of the heat off us.
I returned to my room. With Tate on my agenda, and a message from Catcher confirming our second meeting, I showered and dressed in my leathers. I wasn’t trying to impress Tate with my business acumen tonight; this was about fixing supernatural problems. The bit of worry wood, of course, was back in my pocket.
Jonah, on the other hand, hadn’t called. That bothered me a little. I hoped he wasn’t going to avoid me because I’d rebuffed him. We were a green team, but a good one. And while I was beginning to learn that I could stand Sentinel on my own, I’d have much rather done it with a partner.
Thinking misery loved company, I dialed up Mallory. It took five rings before she answered, and even then she wasn’t thrilled about it.
“Kind of in the middle of something.”
“Then don’t answer the phone next time,” I joked, but the comment still stung.
“Sorry,” she said, and it sounded like she meant it. “I’m just—every exam gets a little worse, you know? And then I’m crazy tired, and I’m nearing the end of my rope. I just want this entire process to be over. I don’t even care if I pass. I just want it done.”
I could hear the exhaustion in her voice, and in the speed of her words. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d been downing energy drinks.
“I hear you,” I said. “I’ve got an errand to run, but would you be up for a breather afterward?”
“I start my next exam in a few minutes.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it. And to add insult to injury, Catcher’s being a gigantic pain in the ass right now. I don’t think he has any idea of the stress I’m going through.”
Her voice was testy, and I wondered if any of us knew the stress she was going through. Other than Simon, who seemed to be directing it.
And while I had her on the phone . . . “Hey, I know you’re in a hurry, but is there anything you can tell me about what’s going on in the city right now with the lake and sky? I understand it’s magic tied to the four elements—water, air, earth, and fire. Is that anything you’ve learned about?”
Her response was fast and furious. “Jesus, Merit. How many times nowmanhile have you wondered if the city’s problems come back to sorcerers? You did it with the drugs, as well.”
“I wonder about a lot of things,” I said, reminding myself of the stress she was under. “It’s my job to wonder about the possibilities, and then to figure out the truth.”
“Oh, so we’re possibilities?”
I had no idea why we were arguing. I certainly hadn’t accused her of anything. Was she lashing out at me because she’d thought the same thing, or because she was stressed?
“It’s not like I’m out there just randomly making mischief,” she said, before I could respond. “Or researching random pieces of magic. I’m taking exams, Merit.”
Since when was city trauma a random piece of magic? The comment was irritating, but I stayed calm. “I know you are. I’m not accusing you of anything. But there’s some kind of magic at work here that I don’t understand. I just thought maybe you would.”
“You know what I know about, Merit? I know about sigils and callefixes and magical algorithms and seeding auras. That’s what I know about.”
“You know what?” I told her, forcing myself to remain calm. “I’m going to let you go so you can get back to studying. Okay?”
“Maybe that’s a good idea. And maybe you should hold off on the phone calls and the accusations until my exams are done.”
The phone went dead, leaving me wild-eyed and flustered and completely at a loss for words.
Lindsey picked that moment to pop her head into my room. “Breakfast?”
I held up the phone. “Mallory just hung up on me!”
Lindsey frowned, stepped inside, and shut the door behind her. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I mean, I did ask her if she knew anything about the lake and the sky, but nothing other than that.”
Lindsey whistled. “Way to play it smooth.”
“It was a legitimate question. And she’s one of only three people in town who would know.”
“True. I really don’t have a dog in this fight. I just like not being the one getting into relationship trouble for once.”
That comment suggested it was going to be followed by details I didn’t want to hear, but it also sounded like a cry for help. “What did you do?”
She didn’t waste any time. “Long story short: relationships are hard, I don’t fight fair, and I am the messiest person he knows.”
I grimaced—and agreed with him about the first and last things. Her room was a riot of stuff, and not in a stuff-tidily-arranged-in-those-identical-wicker-baskets-people-put-on-bookshelves way. “You don’t fight fair?”
Her shoulders slumped. “I might make references to breaking up when we fight?”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. It’s just—I’ve never really done this for real, you know? Not a relationship this serious. Sometimes I just feel like there’s all this fear bottled up, and it has to go somewhere. I convince myself this isn’t going to last.”
“He loves you.”
“I know. But he might stop someday. And someday, he might be gone, and then where am I? I’m alam "3">l wrapped up in a boy, and I can’t untangle myself.”
She fell back on the bed. “I’m tired, I’m overworked, I’m being forcibly underfed, I’m stressed, and I have a boyfriend—a
boyfriend
, Merit—with his own issues, and the only thing I want to do is gorge on ice cream. And let’s face it—the only problem that’s going to solve is the ‘hey, my pants are too loose!’ problem. And that’s not a problem I have right now.”
She stood up and pooched out her belly. Her tiny it’s-really-just-skin belly.
“Really?” I asked her, my voice dry as toast.
“It’s just—I never used to be this girl. I was Lindsey, Cadogan House guard and all-around hot shit. I was on the cover of the
Chicago Voice Weekly
for Christ’s sake. I
knew
I looked good. And now I’m worrying about how my hair looks? And whether these jeans look fan-fucking-tastic.”
“They really do.”
“They should. They cost two hundred bucks.”
“For
jeans
?”