LOVE BITES

That declaration got as warm a reception as you might have imagined. Ethan turned away and immediately flipped open his cell phone, unwilling to engage in a discussion about the possibility that our current havoc was being wreaked by one of his own bodyguards.

One of my colleagues.

Ethan called the House, updating Malik and Luc about the threat but offering no information about my group of suspects. As if nothing was amiss, the guards were put into full investigation mode, their assignment to identify any and all information regarding the purported threat against Jamie.

I was also in full investigation mode, and I'll admit that my suspect list was pretty short.

A woman had made the call to the Breckenridge house... and I'd seen Kelley arriving at Cadogan after spending the day somewhere else. Had she been the Cadogan vampire with a chip on her shoulder? The link to Celina?

Eager to solve the mystery, I borrowed the house phone and put in a call to the Ombud's office, updating my grandfather on the evening's revelations. I also talked to the man with the skills I needed.

"Jeff, I have a problem."

"I'm glad you've finally realized I'm your answer, Merit."

Okay, so the mood wasn't exactly light, but I couldn't help but smile at the comeback.

"Someone's using e-mail to make threats on behalf of Cadogan House," I told him, flipping open my cell and pulling up my e-mail client. Ever efficient, Nick had already forwarded the e-mail message.

If it was us, we'd get a good solid aspen stake. But aspen's too good for you.

Maybe quartering. The guts and appendages removed while you're still conscious so that you can feel the pain. Understand what it's like. Drowning? Hanging? A slow death at the tip of a sword, a slice from stem to stern, so that blood and gore and meat are all that's left of you?

By the way, the youngest one gets it first.

I shivered as I read it, but appreciated that the author of this threat, unlike the last one I'd seen, hadn't tried to rhyme. I also wondered if Kelley was capable of that kind of violence. That kind of anger. Those questions unanswered, I asked Jeff for his e-mail address and sent the message on.

"Phew," he said after a moment, apparently having reviewed it. "That's a doozy."

It was a doozy. It was, however, notably empty of details about why, exactly, Jamie had been chosen. That he was a Breckenridge seemed to be the only knock against him.

"It is a doozy," I told him. "And we need to figure out who it came from. Can you work some of your mojo?"

"Easy breezy," Jeff absently said, the sound of furiously clicking keys in the background.

"He's disguised the IP address - rudimentary stuff, but I'll have to do some backtracking. The e-mail addy is pretty generic, but being a representative of our fine city, I might be able to make a call."

"Call away," I told him, "but there's one small catch. I need the details on this as soon as you can get them." I checked the time on my cell - it was nearly midnight. "How's your schedule looking for the next few hours?"

"Flexible," he said. "Assuming the price is right."

I rolled my eyes. "Name your price."

Silence.

"Jeff?"

"Could I - can I get back to you on that? I'm kind of at a loss, and I want to make sure I take complete advantage of this situation. I mean, unless you're willing to give me two or three - "

"Jeff," I said, interrupting what was destined to become a very lascivious list. "Why don't you just give me a call when you've got something?"

"I'm your man. I mean, not literally or whatever, I know you and Morgan have kind of a thing going - although you're not officially together-together, right?"

"Jeff."

"Yo?"

"Get to work."

With our contacts on the trail of information that might mollify the Brecks, Ethan and I slipped out of my father's office and headed back through the crowd to the front door.

The house was packed, and it took us a few minutes of squeezing through bodies and handshaking to make it to the other side. I think I managed a polite smile in the direction of the people I passed, but my mind was completely focused on a particular Breckenridge.

I didn't understand how he could think I was capable of the accusations he'd leveled against us. How could a childhood romance, a decades-long friendship, turn into something so ugly?

I nibbled the edge of my lip as we traversed the crowd, recalling scenes from my childhood. Nick had been my first kiss. We'd been in his father's library, me a girl of eight or nine, wearing a sleeveless party dress with an itchy crinoline petticoat. Nick had called me a "dumb girl" and kissed me because I'd dared him to, a quick peck on the lips that seemed to disgust him as much as it delighted me, albeit not as much as the fact that I'd beaten him at whatever game we'd been playing. As soon as he'd kissed me, he was off again, running out of his father's office and down the hallway. "Boys have cooties!" I'd yelled, Mary Janes clomping as I ran after him.

"Are you all right?"

I blinked and looked up. We'd reached the other end of the room. Ethan had stopped and was gazing at me curiously.

"Just thinking," I said. "I'm still in shock about Nick, about his father. About their attitude.

We were friends. Good friends, Ethan, for a long time. I don't understand how it came to this. There was a time when Nick would have asked me, not accused me."

"The gift of immortality," Ethan dryly said, then glanced back at Chicago's rich and famous, who sipped champagne while the city buzzed around them. "Infinite opportunities for betrayal."

There were a bevy of his own stories behind that little aphorism, I guessed, but I couldn't see past my own.

Ethan shook his head as if to clear it, then put a hand at my back. "Let's go home," he said. I nodded, not even up to an argument that Cadogan wasn't "home."

We'd just moved into the foyer when Ethan stopped, his hand falling away. I glanced up.

Morgan stood just inside the door, arms crossed over worn jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. A single brown curl draped rakishly across his forehead, and his blue eyes - accusing blue eyes - stared back at me.

I exhaled a curse, realizing what Morgan had seen. Me in a ball gown, Ethan in a tux, his hand at my back. The two of us together, in my parents' house, after I couldn't be bothered to return Morgan's phone calls. This was definitely not good.

"I believe someone has crashed your party, Sentinel," Ethan whispered.

I ignored him, and I'd just taken a step toward Morgan when I felt like I was falling through a tunnel. I had to touch Ethan's arm just to keep myself upright.

It was the telepathic connection Morgan and I had formed when he'd challenged Ethan at Cadogan House. The link was supposed to work only between vampire and Master, which might have been why the link with Morgan had such a strong effect. And why it seemed so wrong.

I'm sure you have an explanation, he silently said.

I wet my lips, uncurled my fingers from Ethan's arm, and forced my spine straight. "I'll meet you outside," I told Ethan. Without waiting for a response, I walked toward Morgan, forcing myself to keep my eyes on his.

"We need to talk," Morgan said aloud when I reached him, his gaze lifting to the man behind me, at least until that man slipped silently beside us and out the door.

"Come with me," I said, my voice flat.

We followed a concrete hallway to the back of the house, the walls still imprinted with the grain of their wooden forms. I picked a random door - a breach in the concrete - and opened it. Moonlight streamed through a small square window in the facing wall, providing a single beam of light in the otherwise pitch-black space. I stood quietly for a second, then two, and let my predatory eyes adjust to the darkness.

Morgan stepped into the room behind me.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

There was a moment of silence before he met my gaze, one eyebrow raised in accusation. "Someone suggested I might see something interesting in Oak Park tonight, so here I am. You're busy working, I assume."

"I am working," I replied, my tone all business. "Who told you we'd be here?"

Morgan ignored the question. Instead he arched his eyebrows, and with a look that would have melted a lesser woman, raked his gaze across my body. Had waves of angry magic not radiated from him as he did it, I'd have called the move an invitation.

But this was different. A verdict, I think, of my guilt.

He crossed arms over his chest. "Is that what he's dressing you in these days while you're... working?"

He made it sound like I was less a Sentinel than a call girl.

My voice was tight, words clipped, when I finally spoke. "I thought you knew me well enough to know that I wouldn't be here, in my father's house, if there weren't a phenomenally good reason for it."

Morgan gave a strangled, mirthless half laugh. "I imagine I can guess what the phenomenally good reason is. Or maybe I should say, who the reason is."

" CadoganHouse is the reason. I'm here because I'm working. I can't explain why, but suffice it to say that if you knew, you'd be sufficiently concerned and more supportive than you're being now."

"Right, Merit. You blow me off, avoid me, and then turn it around, blame me for being suspicious, for wanting some answers. You haven't returned my phone calls and yet" - he crossed his hands behind his head - "you're the victim here. You should take Mallory's place at McGettrick, great as that spin is." He nodded his head, then looked down at me. "Yeah, I think that would really work out well for you."

"I'm sorry I didn't call you. Things have been a little crazy."

"Oh, have they?" He released his hands, walked toward me. He reached out a finger and traced his fingertip across the top edge of my bodice. "I notice you aren't wearing your sword, Sentinel." His voice was soft. Lush.

I wasn't buying it. "I'm armed, Morgan."

" Mmm-hmm." He lifted his eyes from my chest and met my gaze. I could see the hurt in his face, but that hurt was tempered by anger. Predatory anger. I'd seen him in the same mode before, when he'd challenged Ethan at Cadogan House, wrongly believing that Ethan had threatened Celina. That Ethan had made a move after his own Master.

Apparently this was a theme for Morgan - the anger of a man who believed another vamp was sniffing around his girl.

"If you have something to say," I told him, "maybe you should just put it out there."

He stared at me for a long, long time, neither of us moving, but when he spoke, the words were softer, sadder, than I'd expected. "Are you fucking him?"

A kiss in Mallory's hallway or not, we were hardly dating, Morgan and me. He had no right to this kind of jealousy, and certainly no basis for it. I was just about reaching the limit of my tolerance for ignorant men today. My anger rose, peppering my arms with goose bumps. I let it flow around me, working to keep the emotions off my face, the silver out of my eyes, the vampire asleep.

"You," I began, my voice low and on the edge of fury, "are being incredibly presumptuous. Ethan and I are not together, and you and I don't exactly have a commitment. You have no right to accuse me of being unfaithful, much less any basis."

"Ah," he said. "I see." He looked down at me, his expression flat. "So you two aren't together. Is that why you danced with him?"

I could have confessed that it was part of a plan to build relationships, to build connections. That it had been intended to get close to a reporter who had the power to make things very, very difficult for vampires, however unlikely that story seemed now.

But Morgan had a point. I'd had a choice. I could have walked away.

I could have set boundaries with Ethan, could have reminded him that we were at the party for information, not entertainment. I could have reminded him that I'd given up time with friends to do my job, and asked for a pass on the dance.

I hadn't done any of those things.

Maybe because he was my Master. Because I was duty-bound to accept his orders.

Or maybe because in some secret way, I wanted to say yes, as much as I'd wanted to tell him no, in spite of the discomfort that I felt around him. Despite the fact that he didn't trust me as much as I deserved.

But how could I admit that to Morgan, who'd gate-crashed my parents' party in order to catch me in the act of infidelity?

I couldn't, either to me or to him.

So I did the only other thing I could think of.

I took my exit.

"I don't need this," I told Morgan, sweeping up my skirt. I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

"Great," he called after me. "Walk away. That's mature, Merit. I appreciate that."

"I'm sure you can find your way out."

"Yeah, sorry to have interrupted your party. You and your boss have a great evening, Sentinel."

He spit it out like a curse. Maybe it was, but what right did he have to criticize? Ethan was my obligation. My duty. My burden. My Liege.

I knew it was immature. I knew it was childish and wrong, but I was pissed, and I couldn't help myself. I knew it was the one thing that as a Navarre vamp Morgan couldn't do. But it was the perfect line, the perfect exit, and I couldn't resist.

I glanced back at him, silk swirling around my legs, and, single eyebrow raised, gave him the haughtiest look I could muster.

"Bite me," I said, and walked away.

Ethan was outside, waiting beside the car in the gravel drive. His face was tilted up, eyes on the full moon that cast shadows against the house. He lowered his gaze as I began to cross the gravel.

"Ready?" he asked.

I nodded and followed him to the car.

The mood during the ride back to Hyde Park was even more somber than it had been on the ride to my parents'. I stared silently out the car window, replaying events. That was three times tonight that I'd managed to alienate people. Mallory. Catcher. Morgan.

And for what? Or better yet, for whom? Was I pushing everyone else away in order to get closer to Ethan?

I glanced over at him, his gaze on the road, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel.

His hair was tucked behind his ears, brow furrowed in concentration as he drove. I'd given up my life as a human for this man; not willingly, of course, but still. Was I giving up everything else? The things I'd brought with me across the transition - my home in Wicker Park? My best friend?

I sighed and turned back toward the window. Those questions, I guessed, weren't going to be answered tonight. I was hardly two months into my life as a vampire - and I still had an eternity of Ethan to go.

When we reached the House, Ethan parked the car, and we walked up from the basement together.

"What can I do?" I asked when we reached the first floor, not that I hadn't done enough already on behalf of Cadogan and its Master.

He frowned, then shook his head. "Keep me up to date about Jeff's progress with the e-mail. The Masters are investigating on their ends; I'm going to make some calls on my own until they arrive. In the meantime - " He paused, as if he was debating my skills, then finished, "Try the library. See what you can find."

I arched my eyebrows. "The library? What am I looking for?"

"You're the researcher, Sentinel. Figure that out."

Experienced enough to know that a ball gown wasn't appropriate research attire, I returned to my room to change, trading the silk for jeans and a short-sleeved black top.

(A fusty suit wasn't, to my mind, research attire, either.) I was relieved, physically relieved, to hang the dress back in the closet, don jeans and pick up my katana. It felt right in my hand - comforting, as if I'd stepped out of a costume and back into my own skin. I stood in my room for a moment, left hand on the scabbard, right hand on the handle, just breathing.

When I was calmer and ready to face the world again, I grabbed a pen and a couple of notebooks, ready to begin my own brand of investigation.

The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with Ethan that Celina had a role in this.

We didn't have much in the way of evidence, but this was totally her style - to sow discord, put the players in motion, and let the battle proceed on its own. I wasn't sure where Kelley fit in, or if she fit in at all, and I didn't exactly have the skills of a private investigator.

But I could research, study, peruse the library for information that might give us a clue - about Celina's plans, her connections, her history. Whether it would help us in the long run remained to be seen, but it was something proactive, something I had the skills to do.

And more importantly, it was something I could sink into, something that would keep my mind off other things. Off Morgan, and what seemed the inevitable end of that relationship. Off Ethan, and the attraction that, however ill-advised, lingered between us.

Off Mallory.

I found the library quiet and empty - and this time, I double-checked - dropped my pens and notebooks on the table, and headed for the shelves.