Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(19)
“Exactly what I had in mind, Sentinel.”
I met Ethan’s gaze in the mirror as I straightened out the ponytail. “I suspect there will be tension tonight. Seemed best to be prepared.”
“I don’t disagree,” he said. And he certainly looked his best. He wore the Cadogan uniform: a fitted black suit jacket over an immaculate white button-down, the top button open to reveal his own Cadogan medal. Fitted black suit pants, and he’d left his hair down, and it shone around his beautiful face like a gilded frame.
I sighed. “You are just too handsome.”
He arched a single eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
I turned around to face him, leaned back against the bathroom’s marble counter. “It’s part compliment, and part jealousy,” I said with a smile. “Were your sisters as beautiful as you?”
Ethan had had three sisters, Elisa, Annika, and Berit, in Sweden before he nearly died in battle and was made a vampire. His expression softened as he remembered. “They were lovely. Elisa and Annika were twins. Both blond, with blue eyes and pale skin. Rosy cheeks. Berit was shorter and more playful. They’d all been of an age to discuss weddings when I was killed. But, of course, I didn’t go back.”
Because he’d imagined himself a monster. “You miss them.”
He glanced at me. “It is a curse and blessing of immortality that you remember those who are gone even long after they are gone.”
I took his hand, squeezed it. “They would have been so happy, Ethan, to know that you’re alive. That you weren’t killed in battle and are thriving centuries later and keeping their memories alive. Leading your vampires with honor, working for peace.”
He tugged my ponytail, pulling me toward him, then pressed his lips to mine. “Thank you for that, Merit.”
“It’s the truth. They’d probably also be pleased that you’re famous and rich and have a smokin’ girlfriend.”
He snorted. “And there, you’ve taken it just one step too far. I’m hardly rich,” he added with a wink. “I’ve got some business to address tonight, supplicants who’ve been waiting, and I’d like to get you to help Paige with the translation.”
I nodded. “I’d planned that after grabbing a bite. Oh, and my grandfather sent a message—said the vampire’s DNA isn’t in the system. So he’s an unknown.”
“Then we’ll need to get to work.” He held out a hand. “Let’s get you fed and watered and into the library.”
? ? ?
Cadogan House was a lovely dame, with beautiful art, antiques, and vampires. But there was one room that outclassed them all.
The library—two stories of books, all meticulously organized and cataloged. The first floor featured dozens of shelves and tables for studying. The second was a balcony of more shelves ringed by red iron railings and accessible by an equally red spiral staircase.
One of the oak tables in the middle of the first floor had been piled with books. An Encyclopedia of Modern Alchemy, Alchemy and Hermeticism: A Primer, and Transmutations and Distillations for the Common Sorcerer were atop the stacks.
“Don’t get those out of order.”
I yanked back my hand, glanced behind me. A man on the shorter side, pale skin, dark hair, was rolling toward us a brass cart filled with a dozen more books. Also an exception to the Cadogan uniform rule, he wore jeans and a black Polo shirt with a small Cadogan seal embroidered on the chest.
“Sire,” he said. “Merit.”
“Librarian,” Ethan said. His name was Arthur, but everyone except Paige used his title. The Librarian was the master of this two-story kingdom within a kingdom and the books within it, including the Canon, the laws that governed vampires, at least for now. The AAM was still working out the legal situation.
“I found one more,” said the startlingly beautiful woman who emerged from between two rows of shelves. She was tall and slender, with pale skin, green eyes, and a wavy head of red curls. She wore jeans, leopard-print flats, and a simple white T-shirt that still managed to look elegant and refined.
This was Paige Martin, a sorcerer and former Order Archivist. We’d brought her back from Nebraska after Mallory absconded with a book of evil magic. Paige and the Librarian had hit it off immediately.
She stood beside him, a good four inches taller, and passed him the books. “Merit, Ethan. I was just about to get started.”
“Jeff sent you the pictures?” Ethan asked.
“He did,” she said, and there was no denying the excitement in her eyes. She put a hand on her chest. “I don’t want to make light of what happened to Caleb. It’s just—I’ve never actually seen alchemy in practice. It’s such a rare specialty. I’m—I guess ‘intellectually intrigued’ would be the best phrase.”
She walked around the table, picked up a large poster that had been mounted to a sheet of foam board. It was at least four feet long and covered in rows of symbols.
“I just need to grab an easel from the storage room. Jeff figured out a way to blow up the symbols so they’re clearer and easier for us to read. And he’s divided them into two sets—one for me and one for Mallory.”
“How can I help?” I asked, not entirely sure that I could.
“Alchemical equations typically have their own architecture. I’m hoping this one does, too. If that’s right, and I can break the equations into their subparts, I’m going to give you some of the subparts for translation using these.” She tapped a finger on the books.