He shrugged modestly. “The world has a lot to offer. There’s a lot to explore. I like to take advantage of that.”
“So immortality’s come in handy, then?”
“You might say that.”
A waitress with long, dark hair scuffled over the restaurant’s green carpet in white sneakers. “You ready?”
Jonah glanced at me, and when I nodded, offered his order. “Pad thai with shrimp.”
“How spicy tonight?”
“Nine,” he said, then handed over his menu. Their transaction complete, she looked at me.
I assumed that nine was on a scale of one to ten. I liked spicy food, but I wasn’t about to order a nine at a restaurant I’d never vetted. God only knew how hot their nine might be.
“Same for me. How about a seven?” I requested, KI rd. God onbut the waitress looked dully at me.
“You been here before?”
I glanced between her and Jonah. “Um, no.”
Shaking her head, she plucked away my menu. “No seven. You can have two.”
With that pronouncement, she turned and disappeared through the curtain into the backroom.
“A two? I’m not sure how not to be insulted by that.”
He chuckled low in his throat. “That’s only because you haven’t had a two yet.”
I was doubtful, but didn’t have much evidence to go on. And speaking of missing evidence . . .
“All right, quid pro quo time. How do you know my grandfather? I know you were friends with Charlotte. You told me that before. Is that the connection?” Charlotte is my older sister. I also have a brother, Robert, who was following in my father’s property-grubbing footsteps.
“I did and do know Charlotte,” Jonah said. “I knew you, too.”
I was drawing a complete blank. “How did you know me?”
“I took Charlotte to prom.”
I froze in my seat. “You did what now?”
“I took Charlotte to her senior college formal.”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember. I’d been home for spring break and had been witness to Charlotte’s meltdown when she’d had a fight with her then-boyfriend and now-husband, Major Corkburger (yes, seriously). She’d gone with a guy named Joe to the formal instead.
The lightbulb lit.
“Oh, my God,” I exclaimed, pointing at him. “You were ‘Joe’! I didn’t even recognize you.”
Joe had been a very short-lived rebellious phase. I saw him only a couple of times after prom. A month later, Charlotte and Major were back together, and Joe had disappeared.
“You had a perm,” I reminded him. “And you took her to the formal in one of those hoodies made of rugs.”
“I’d just gotten here from Kansas City.” He’d said it like that explained his ensemble, like Kansas City was a foreign country with a completely different culture. “The pace was different down there, even for vampires. A little slower.”
“And Charlotte introduced you to my grandfather?”
I could see Jonah’s blush even in the dark. “Yeah. To piss off Major, I think. I was finishing up one of my degrees. This gorgeous girl approached me on campus one day and asked me out.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I was going to say no. And when we met with Noah, you had no idea who I was.”
That explained why Jonah had copped such an attitude the first night we’d met near the lake. “That’s why you were irritated with me,” I said. “Not because you thought I was like Charlotte, but because you thought I’d forgotten you.”
“You
had
forgotten me, and you aren’t as unlike Charlotte as you’d like to believe.”
I started to protest, thinking he meant to tease me about society soirees or luxury brands or winters in Palm Beach, none of which I was interested in. But instead of assuming, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and asked the question. “Why am I like Charlotte?”
He smiled. “Because you’re loyal. Because you both value your families, even if you define them differently. Her children and Major are hers. Your House is yours.”
It hadn’t always been that way, but I couldn’t disagree with him. “I see.”
A few minutes later, our waitress returned with two steaming piles of noodles.
“Nine,” she said, placing a plate in front of Jonah. “And two,” she said, dropping an identical plate in front of me.
I removed the wrapper from a pair of chopsticks and glanced up at Jonah in anticipation. “You ready?”
“Are you?” he asked with amusement.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, plucking up a tangle of noodles and bean sprouts. My first bite was huge . . . and I regretted it immediately.
“Two” was apparently a euphemism for “Flaming Inferno.” My eyes watered, the heat building from a slow burn at the back of my throat to a firestorm along the tip of my tongue. I would have sworn flames were actually shooting from my ears.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Hot
,” I got out before grabbing my glass of water and finishing half of it in a single gulp. “That’s a two?” I hoarsely asked. “That is insane.”
“And you wanted a seven,” Jonah nonchalantly said, eating his plate of noodles like it had been doused in nothing more than soy sauce.
“How can you possibly eat that?”
“I’m used to it.”
I took another bite and chewed quickly, barely enjoying the flavor, mostly trying to choke it down before the spice caught up with me.
The waitress approached again, a carafe of water in hand. She refilled Jonah’s glass, then glanced at me. “Two?”
“Still too hot,” I admitted, chugging down another half glass of water. “What’s in it? Thai peppers?”
Shrugging, the waitress refilled my glass again. “Cook grows them in her yard. Very hot.”
“Very, very hot,” I agreed. “Do people actually order the ten?”
“Longtime customers,” she said. “Or on dare.”
With that pronouncement, she toddled away with her now-empty carafe.
I looked at Jonah with spice-spawned tears in my eyes. “Thank you for not daring me to eat the ten.”
“It wouldn’t have been right,” Jonah said, shoveling noodles into his mouth. A thin line of sweat appeared on his forehead, and he’d begun to sniff.
“I thought the heat didn’t get to you?” I asked with a self-satisfied smile.
He wiped at his brow with the back of a hand, then grinned up at me. “I didn’t say it wasn’t hot. I just said I was used to it. Immortality’s hardly worth the trouble if there’s no challenge.”
I wasn’t positive, but I had a sinking suspicion he wasn’t talking about the food. I took another bite, and focused on the burning sting.
“Tell me about Ethan.”
Startled, I looked over at Jonah. “Excuse me?”
Nonchalantly, he shrugged and swallowed another knot of noodles. “You told me you weren’t together K’dth="1e. That may be true, but I don’t get the sense it’s the entire story.”
I watched him for a moment, smiling as he chewed, as I decided what to tell him. My time with Ethan had been tempestuous. More stops than starts, and those stops had been traumatic. Ethan was gone before the relationship had had a chance to blossom, but that didn’t make the grief any easier to bear—or explain.
“We had moments together,” I said. “We weren’t quite a couple—although I think we might have been if he hadn’t . . .” I couldn’t make myself finish the sentence.
“If Celina hadn’t done what she’d done,” Jonah finished kindly.
I nodded.
“He meant a lot to you.”
I nodded again. “He did.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
He let the subject drop, but I still had the sense he was asking something more. And his subtlety didn’t make the rest of our dinner any less awkward. I kept the conversation moving (and light) until we paid and headed back to our cars. That’s when he got to the heart of it.
“You had feelings for Ethan,” he said. “You were close and that affected your perception of the Red Guard. But you know now the GP isn’t always on the side of the good and the just. Grey House knows who’s in the wrong about Celina, and about Ethan’s death. The GP should have supported what you were doing in Chicago, and instead of offering help when V surfaced, they ignored it and blamed you for the aftermath. The RG’s argument isn’t with the Houses; it’s with the GP.”
“I swore an oath.”
“Working with us to ensure the GP doesn’t tear your House apart supports that oath.”
I considered the argument in silence. He had a point; the GP was no friend to Cadogan House. On the other hand, wasn’t joining the Red Guard still a slap in Malik’s face? An agreement to work behind his back even if supposedly for the “greater good.”
“Why?” I wondered.
He frowned. “What do you mean, why?”
“Why do you want me to join the RG? What’s the benefit? We already know the GP is self-centered and more focused on perception than real work. They leave the hard stuff to us and still blame us after the fact, so what’s the point? Membership doesn’t change anything, except risking that we’ll be nailed to the wall if they find out.”
“We?”
I looked back at him, and wasn’t thrilled by the self-satisfied grin that was overtaking his expression.
“You said ‘we,’ ” he pointed out.
“It was a turn of phrase. You know what I meant.” I tried to keep my tone nonchalant, but he had a point. Jonah and I were working together—had been working together—to keep the Houses safe. Was I already implicitly a member?
“No, Merit, I don’t know that,” he countered. “I know you just confessed you already consider yourself to be doing the work of the RG.” He stepped in front of me and looked down. “You want to know why you should join? Because for the first time in your life, you’d have a partner. You’d have someone on your side, at your beck and call, ready to serve and assist you in whatever the assignment might be.”
He was wrong about that. W Kaboal work. Then Ethan was alive, I’d had a partner.
“I’m already working with you,” I pointed out.
“You have me because you don’t have a better option. If Ethan was still here, or if there was an extra guard in your House, you’d go that route.”
I couldn’t disagree with him there.
“But here’s the real kicker,” he said. “For the first time in your life, you’d be offered the choice. You were dragged unconscious into Cadogan House. You were appointed Sentinel with no say in the matter.”
He tipped his head down, his lips nearly brushing my ear. The move was intimate, but it didn’t feel sexual. Jonah wasn’t attempting to break through my defenses—he was demonstrating how close we’d already become. “You’d be making the
choice
to serve.”
He was right. I hadn’t had the choice then, but he was giving me the choice now. I could admit it was a powerful argument.
He apparently knew that, too, because without another word, he stood straight again and walked away.
“That’s it?”
He glanced back. “That’s it. This call, Merit, is all yours.”
As he got into his car and drove away, I blew out a breath. To RG or not to RG, that was the question.
Since the lake was still dark and unmoving, I wasn’t excited about the report I’d have to give Kelley back at the House. But at least we had a plan, and if anyone in Chicago could corral a helicopter, my grandfather could.
When I pulled up to the House, the protestors were louder and larger in number, their signs promising even more hellfire and damnation than usual. “Apocalypse” and “Armageddon” were sprinkled among the hand-painted posters, just as we’d feared. And to be frank, I couldn’t completely blame them. Even I wasn’t sure why the lake had turned black and started leeching magic, so I guess the end of the world was on the list of possibilities. It was at the bottom of the list, but it was still on the list.
The protestors weren’t the only ones out in force. We’d been the subject of picture- (and money-) hungry paparazzi for a while now; a corps of photographers was usually camped out on a corner near the House. Tonight, though, news trucks lined the street, reporters waiting to see vampire shenanigans. Anything that went wrong in this city and was remotely paranormal in nature led them straight to our door. It was an argument for outing the rest of Chicago’s sups, if only to take some of the heat off us.
The reporters, familiar with me through the Ponytailed Avenger story and my patrols of the Cadogan grounds, called me to a stop.
I didn’t want to support their efforts at sensational journalism, but I figured their theories would only get worse if I ignored them. So I walked over to a knot of reporters and offered a muted acknowledgment.
“Tough night out there, isn’t it?”
Some chuckled; others began shouting out questions.
“Did vampires poison the lake?”