Part 27 (2/2)

”It's unfortunate that your best source loathes you.”

That made me smile. ”Can you imagine the look on Celina's face if I called and asked her to sit down with me? Told her I wanted to interview her?”

He smirked. ”She might appreciate the press.” He glanced down at his watch. ”And speaking of the press, the Masters should be here with the results of their inquiries within the hour.”

It wasn't the best thing I'd heard all day, that I'd have to face down Morgan again, but I understood that it was necessary.

”I'd hoped to keep this contained, but we've clearly reached the point where the other Masters need to be brought on board.” He cleared his throat, shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, then lifted ice green eyes to mine. ”I won't ask what happened at your parents' house with Morgan, but I need you there. Your position aside, you were a witness to the meeting with the Breckenridges, to their accusations.”

I nodded. I understood the need. And I gave him points for diplomatically mentioning it. ”I know.”He nodded, then picked up the small book of history again, began flipping through the pages. I guessed he planned to wait in the library until they arrived. I adjusted in my seat, a little uncomfortable at the company, but once he was settled in, and when I was reasonably confident that he intended to read quietly, I turned back to my notes.

Minutes pa.s.sed, peacefully. Ethan read or strategized or planned or whatever he did on his side of the table, occasionally tapping at a BlackBerry he'd pulled from his pocket, while I continued thumbing through the history books before me, searching for additional information about Celina.

I was beginning a chapter on the Napoleonic Wars when I felt Ethan's gaze. I kept my eyes downcast for a minute, then two, before I gave in and lifted my eyes. His expression was blank.

”What?”

”You're a scholar.”

I turned back to my book. ”We've talked about this before. A few nights ago, if you'll recall.”

”We've talked about your social discomfort, your love of books. Not the fact that you've spent more time with a book in your hand than you have with your Housemates.”

Cadogan House was apparently full of spies. Someone was reporting our activities to whoever had threatened Jamie, and someone had apparently been reporting my activities to Ethan.

I shrugged self-consciously. ”I enjoy research. And given the ignorance that you've repeatedly pointed out, I need it.”

”I don't want to see you hide yourself away in this room.”

”I do my job.”

Ethan returned his gaze to his book. ”I know.”

The room was quiet again until he shuffled in his chair, the wood squeaking as he adjusted. ”These chairs aren't at all comfortable.”

”I didn't come down here for comfort.” I looked up, gave him a predatory grin. ”You're free to work in your office.”

I didn't have that luxury.Yet .

”Yes, we're all agog at your studiousness.”

I rolled my eyes, p.r.i.c.ked by the acc.u.mulation of subtle insults. ”I get that you have no confidence in my work ethic, Ethan, but if you're going to think up insults, could you do it somewhere else?”

His voice was flat, calm. ”I have no doubts about your work ethic, Sentinel.”

I pushed back my chair, then walked around the table to the pile of books at one end. I shuffled through the stack until I found the text I needed. ”Could have fooled me,” I muttered, flipping through to the index and tracing the alphabetical entries with a fingertip.

”I don't,” he said lightly. ”But you're so-what did you tell me once?” He glanced up, looked absently at the ceiling. ”Ah, that I was easy to p.r.i.c.k? Well, Sentinel, you and I have that in common.”

I arched a brow. ”So in the middle of a crisis, because you're angry at Celina and the Breckenridges, you've come down here to get a rise out of me? That's mature.”

”You've missed my point completely.”

”I didn't realize you had one,” I muttered.

”I find it unfortunate,” Ethan said, ”that this is what your life would have been.”

We avoided, usually, the issue of my dissertation. Of my looming doctorate. Of the fact that he'd had me pulled from the University of Chicago after he made me a vampire. It helped me, and therefore him vicariously, not to dwell on it. But for him to insult it, to insult what I'd done, managed a new level of pretension.

I looked up at him, palms flat on the table. ”What is that supposed to mean?”

”It means you'd have finished your dissertation, secured a professors.h.i.+p at some East Coast liberal arts college, and then what? You'd buy yourself a cottage and update that box on wheels you call a car, and you'd spend most of your time in your tiny office nitpicking antiquated literary conceits.”

I stood straight, crossed my arms over my chest, and had to take a moment in order to keep from snapping back at him. And I only did that because he was my boss.

Still, my tone was frosty. ”Nitpicking antiquated literary conceits?”His arched brows challenged me to respond.

”Ethan, it would have been a quiet life, I know that. But it would have been fulfilling.” I looked down at my katana. ”Maybe a little less adventurous, but fulfilling.”

”Alittle less?”

His voice was so sarcastic it was nearly flabbergasting. I took it to be vampire arrogance that he couldn't believe the ordinary lives of human beings were in any way rewarding.

”Exciting things can happen in archives.”

”Such as?”

Think, Merit, think. ”I could unravel a literary mystery. Find a missing ma.n.u.script. Or, the archive could be haunted,” I suggested, trying to think of something a little more in his area of expertise.

”That's quite a list, Sentinel.”

”We can't all be soldiers turned Master vampires, Ethan.” And thank G.o.d for that. One of him was plenty enough.

Ethan sat forward, linked his fingers on the table, and gazed at me. ”My point, Sentinel, is this: Compared to this world, your new life, your human life would have been cloistered. It would have been a small life.”

”It would have been a life of my choosing.” Hoping to end that particular line of conversation, I closed the book I'd pretended to stare at. I picked it up, along with a couple of its companions, and walked them back to their shelves.

”It would have been a waste of you.”

Thankfully, I was facing the bookshelf when he offered that little nugget, as I don't think he'd have appreciated the eye roll or mimicry. ”You can stop plying me with compliments,” I told him. ”I've already gotten you in to see my father and the mayor.”

”If you believe that sums up our interactions over the last week, you've missed the point.”

When I heard the slide of his chair, I paused, hand on the spine of a book about French drinking customs. I pushed the book back in line with its comrades and said lightly, ”And you've insulted me again, which means we're back on track.”

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