“So, you’re hanging out with Jonah again?”
“Again?” I wondered aloud, not willing to commit to an answer until I knew how much she knew.
“Hon, give me some credit. I’ve been alive a long time, and I’m one of the best guards this House has to offer.”
“It’s a small sample,” I snarked, but she poked me in the shoulder.
“Focus. I’m pretty sure he’s the reason you were glowing a little last night.”
“I wasn’ ing“I wat glowing.” Had I been glowing? And how had she known I’d seen Jonah? When had I become a topic of House conversation?
“You were glowing.” She put a hand on my arm. “And that’s okay. It’s okay for you to have a friend, or a lover . . . ?”
There was actually hope in her voice; I decided not to take that as a compliment.
“He’s a friend. A colleague. Only a colleague.”
“Does he know that?” At my raised eyebrows, she shook her head. “I mean, Merit, from what I hear the guy’s spending time with you. Call it work or whatever, but guys don’t invest time if they aren’t interested.”
“Trust me,” I said. “This is business.” Even if he was vaguely interested, Jonah was still my RG recruiter. He had an interest in keeping me safe.
“Is it going to stay that way?”
I looked away, embarrassed by the question. Ethan had been gone for only two months. I knew Lindsey wanted to see me come back to life, but the idea of dating anyone seemed rushed, disrespectful of Ethan’s memory.
“You aren’t ready to talk about it, are you?”
“What answer will you believe?”
Lindsey sighed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “You know what we need? We need to toughen you up a little. Rough up your edges. You’ll find being a heartless vamp a helluva lot easier when the shine is gone.”
“Yay,” I said without enthusiasm, twirling my fingers like a party favor. “I am really looking forward to that.”
“You should be. You’ll get a membership card and a lifetime subscription to
Heartless Vampires Monthly
.”
“Does that come with a free tote bag?”
“And a toaster.” She gestured tow
ard the back of the House. “I’m gonna get to work and take a look around the yard. Good luck tonight.”
If only it were a matter of luck.
CHAPTER THREE
DEAD IN THE WATER
S
ome aspects of this city were spectacular. A river cruise at sunset. The Field Museum on a rainy day. Wrigley Field pretty much anytime. There was even thirty-course molecular gastronomy, if you were into that (no, thanks), or red hots, if they were your bag (yes, please!).
Other parts were less fabulous. Winters in Chicago had all the charm of a late sleeper at seven a.m. Politics were a combustible mess. And then there was perhaps the greatest irony of all: Despite the public transportation, despite the traffic, despite the construction, despite the fiasco that was on-street parking, most of us had cars. Even residential parking required a permit, and don’t get me started on “dibs.”
Because parking was usually a disaster, I’d been prepared to text Jonah and advise him it would take me an hour to meet him at Navy Pier—twenty minutes to get there and forty minutes to find a parking spot and make the hike.
Fortunately, although Chicago was a busy city at pretty much any time of day, it was a little less busy in the hours vampires roamed. Business in the Loop was winding down as I searched for a parking space, so I found an on-street spot and jogged back to t Mo~he pier entrance, a hand on my sword to keep it from bouncing at my side.
I’d avoided Lake Shore Drive, thinking it would be swamped with gawkers. Consequently, I didn’t get a look at the water until I neared Navy Pier. My first look might have been delayed, but that didn’t dampen the shock. Sure, the lake at night had always been dark. Sometimes it was so dark it seemed the lakefront was the edge of the world, Chicago the final outpost before oblivion. But you might spy the break of a white wave or a glint of moonlight on the water, and you knew the sun would rise and the lake would appear again.
But this dark was something altogether different. There was no movement, no life, no reflection. There were no breaking waves, and the moon reflected off the slick, black surface like it was a lacquered void in the earth.
And it didn’t just look strange—it
felt
wrong.
Vampires weren’t magical creatures per se. We were the result of a genetic mutation that made us a little more powerful than humans, but with profound weaknesses—including aspen stakes and sunlight. But we could sense magic around us, usually a mild, peppery, caffeinated buzz in the air.
Tonight there wasn’t just an absence of magic—the lake actually felt like a magical vacuum, sucking what magic there might have been into its maw. I could feel the magic being leached past me, like a freezing winter wind wicking away moisture. The sensation was uncomfortable, an irritating breeze beneath my skin, and it was all the weirder since the air was perfectly still.
“Who could turn Lake Michigan into some kind of magic sink?” I quietly wondered.
“That would appear to be the principal question.”
I jumped at the words, then glanced behind me. Jonah wore jeans, boots and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt with MIDNIGHT HIGH SCHOOL across the front. The school was fake, a cover used by RG members to signal their membership in case things went awry.
It probably didn’t bode well that he was wearing one now.
“You can feel it, too?” I asked.
“I can now. I couldn’t at the House. I don’t like it,” he added, scanning the lake. “But let’s walk the pier. I want to get closer to the water.”
I nodded and followed him, only just realizing that throngs of people were moving toward the lake. I guess everyone wanted a glimpse. Unfortunately, lines of bundled-up Chicagoans moving en masse through the dark looked uncomfortably zombie-esque. I shivered involuntarily, and followed Jonah.
He was right about the pier. The ten-foot gate was locked. After waiting to avoid a couple of passing guards, he vaulted over the fence with minimal effort. He glanced back at me, then motioned me over with a hand.
I’d mounted a fence before, but wasn’t thrilled to try again in front of this particular audience. My nerves ramped up, I blew out a breath, backed up a few feet, and jumped. I made it a few feet up, and scrambled to reach the top. But just as I swung my legs over the side, I got caught in a tangle of fence posts and jacket pockets. Arms and legs twisted, I hit the ground butt-first, bruising both my derriere and my ego.
“So much for falling gracefully,” Jonah snickered, offering me a hand. I growled out a few choice comments, but took his hand and let him pull me up.
I stood up and dusted off my bottom. “I can scale a fen Cn soser tce. I’ve done it before.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The audience
, I thought, but kept the thought to myself. “Nerves, I guess.”
Jonah nodded. “To truly utilize your skills, you’ll have to let go of your human preconceptions and trust your body.”
Before I could make a snappy response, Jonah grabbed my hand and pulled me around the corner of a building just before the guard walked by, his walkie-talkie buzzing with chatter about the lake.
When he’d passed, Jonah peeked around the corner. “He’s gone. Let’s go.”
We headed around the pier in the opposite direction. It was deserted, the ticket booths, restaurants, and snack vendors closed up for the night, the tour boats in dry dock for the winter. We skirted the edge of the buildings to keep a low profile and jogged the length of the pier—nearly a mile—to the end.
There was an open area at the end of the pier, so we checked for guards and then hustled past the stand of flags that dotted the concrete to the edge. I kneeled down and gazed into the water. Just as we’d seen earlier, the lake was pitch-black and absolutely still. The water looked like a black sheet of ice, perfectly frozen and flat. It carried no scent, and it was completely silent. There was no sign of life, and no sound of it, either. No crashing waves. No seagull
caws
. The lake was eerily still and eerily silent.
It was also eerily antimagical. The vacuum was stronger here, as was the sensation that magic was being pulled toward the lake.
Chicagoans had always had a love-hate relationship with the lake. We flocked to it in the summertime, and bemoaned the freezing winds that rolled off it in the winter. But humans’ reactions to this were going to be different by magnitude. Before, humans feared supernaturals because of who we were. Now, they were going to fear what we could do.
It wasn’t the first time I wished Ethan was here, if only to brainstorm with. He’d already be deep in strategy territory, figuring out how to avoid the possibility humans would blame vampires for whatever was going on.
I glanced behind me and up at Jonah. “This is going to be bad.”
“That’s my thinking. And I am at a complete loss. Four graduate degrees,” he added, with a mischievous grin, “and still at a complete loss.”
Predictably, I rolled my eyes. “Well, let’s do what we can with what we have. Maybe we can find some clue as to the origin.”
The first step in that task, I figured, was getting down there and getting a feel for the water. I glanced around and spied an access ladder that led down to lake, then searched the pier for something to prod it with. After all, there was no way I was dipping toe one into a magical black hole.
After a few seconds of fruitless searching, Jonah handed me what looked like a used-up sparkler stick.
“Tourists,” he blandly suggested when I glanced at it curiously.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But it’ll work.” I unbelted my katana and handed it to him, then climbed down the ladder. When I was close enough to the water, I dipped the sparkler into it.
The water was so opaque I’d half expected the stick to bounce off the top. Instead, it offered no resistance at all. When I lifted the sparkler from the water, there were no ripple Cerestick s—the few errant, inky drops simply dropped back into the water with no effect.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked, looking up at the pier.
“Yes, although I still have no idea what it is.” He reached out a hand. “Come on up. You’re making me nervous.”
With a nod, I sacrificed the sparkler to the lake and climbed back up again. Jonah handed back my katana and I rebelted it, and we stood there for a moment silently regarding the water.
“So, to review,” I said, “we have a lake and apparently a river that have turned black, absorb magic, and no longer obey the laws of physics. And that’s only what we can see. There could be more turmoil under the surface.”
“The questions now are ‘why’ and ‘how.’ ”
“Did you see the photo of the River nymph on the bridge? It looked like she was casting some kind of spell.”
“I did,” he said, “but this can’t be the work of nymphs. Even if they were fighting each other, they love the water. They wouldn’t do anything to destroy the lake or the river.”
“Not on purpose,” I suggested. “But as we know, there are ways for supernatural populations to be controlled.” After all, Tate had manufactured V, a drug that made vamps more aggressive and bloodthirsty than usual. He’d used it to control Celina. Maybe he hadn’t been the only one in the city with supernatural control in mind.
“That’s true,” Jonah said. “But if you wanted to control a population, why the nymphs? They manage lake and river resources. That’s not exactly big magic. And even if they were being targeted, why kill the lake? What’s the point?”
“Maybe the goal was knocking the city off-kilter,” I suggested. “Some of the city’s water comes from the lake, so maybe they wanted to futz about the water supply?”
“To dehydrate us to death?”
“Or incite riots.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“So we have two theories,” he said. “This has something to do with the nymphs, which would explain the picture, or this has something to do with the lake. Unfortunately, neither one of those theories really tells us anything.”
“Actually, it gives us at least a place to start.” I pulled out my cell phone. I’d met nymphs before, and I knew two people who had a way with them. My grandfather and Jeff Christopher, my grandfather’s employee. The boy had a touch.
Handily, Jeff answered the call. “Talk to me, Merit.”
“We’re at the lake. Have you seen it yet?”
“Yeah. We’re at DuSable Harbor. We wanted to see it for ourselves. And now that we’re here . . .” He paused. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Very much so. Any thoughts on how it happened?”
“We’ve been talking it through, but this is completely unprecedented. Even Catcher’s shocked, and Catcher’s not shocked by a lot.” I could hear the thread of concern in his voice, like a child who has, for the first time, seen his parents at a loss. I didn’t envy the feeling.