Part 26 (2/2)

I nibbled the edge of my lip as we traversed the crowd, recalling scenes from my childhood. Nick hadbeen 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 clomp ing 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 att.i.tude. 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-s.h.i.+rt. 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 a.s.sume.”

”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 hedid 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.”

”Cadogan House 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 f.u.c.king 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 b.u.mps. 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 beingincredibly 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 relations.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.s 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.

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