Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(32)

As the women lowered the donor to the ottoman, the butler appeared at our side. “If you’d come with me?”

Ethan kept his eyes on the ottoman. “And why would I want to do that?”

“Because Cyrius wishes to have a word with you.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, playing at a man unaccustomed to being beckoned, which wasn’t much of a stretch. But I caught the tightening of his jaw.

“I’m trying to relax, and I don’t know who Cyrius is. If he wants to speak with me, he can do so here.”

Trouble?

Cyrius runs La Douleur, Ethan said. I’ve not met him, but I know his name.

Another vampire entered the room—an enormous woman with freckles, brown hair, and silvered eyes that were focused on us. A katana in a lacquered black sheath was belted at her waist, and she probably had five inches and eighty pounds on me.

Good, I thought, as I met her threatening gaze. That might make us even.

Steady, now, Sentinel.

I won’t move unless I have to, I assured him. But I hoped that I’d have to. Even vampires bored of posturing.

“Now,” the butler insisted, all pretense of politeness—and the British accent—gone. “Or we do this here.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “This was once an establishment of some gentility.” But he put aside his drink, rose, held up a hand for me.

I nodded, rose obediently, and followed Ethan and the butler to the door where the vampire waited. When I looked back, the vampires had descended on the man on the ottoman, and the scent of blood rose in the air.

The man in the fedora was gone.

? ? ?

We were marched into the hallway again, then through the open door at the far end into an enormous concrete room, probably a dock for the store that had once filled the slip. A rolling overhead door was open, letting in an astringent, chemical breeze.

There was a desk in the middle of the space piled with papers, and white cardboard file boxes lined the walls, some bursting with paper.

“Excuse the mess.” A man emerged from columns of boxes. A human of medium height, with pale skin, a round belly that hung over camouflage pants, and a gleaming head bounded by a perfect semicircle of dark hair. “We moved recently. Still organizing our inventory and whatnot.”

Ethan and I didn’t respond, but we watched him walk to the desk, pull out an army green chair, and take a seat. It creaked with his formidable weight.

He linked his hands on the table, looked up at us. His eyes were gray, and they narrowed as they took us in.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said. “You’re Ethan and, whatsit, Merit? From Cadogan House? Glamour don’t work on me,” he explained, “which makes me perfect for this job.”

So our cover was blown, and thank God for it. Playing meek was absolutely exhausting.

Ethan let the glamour slowly dissolve and flutter away. I rolled my shoulders with relief. The magic might not have had mass, but it still weighed heavily on my psyche.

I felt the vampire move closer, and I slipped a hand to my katana. The feel of the corded handle beneath my fingers was comforting.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he said, gesturing to the vampire behind us. “She’s very good with that steel.”

There were many ways to bluff. You could preen and exaggerate your strengths, or you could let others believe you were less than you were. I opted for the latter, and managed to stir up a worried glance as I looked at the vampire over my shoulder.

She unsheathed her katana and smiled at me, lifting her chin defiantly. The steel of her sword was smeared and cloudy. She hadn’t cleaned it recently. Catcher, who’d given me the sword I carried, would have my ass in a sling for that.

I swallowed heavily, playing up my fear, then looked back at the man again. He looked very pleased.

“I’m afraid you have us at a disadvantage,” Ethan said, understanding exactly the game to be played. “I take it you’re Cyrius?”

“Cyrius Lore. I manage this club.”

“For who?”

“For whoever the f*ck I want. It’s no business of yours. The fact is, you came into my club with an old password. I don’t like interlopers in my club.”

“Surprising, since you’ll allow virtually anything else.”

Ethan’s words were slow and dangerous, but Cyrius snorted. “You think I’m intimidated by you because you’re head of some vamp house? No. I manage a club; you manage a club. That makes us equals, far as I’m concerned.”

“I don’t allow my vampires to harm innocents in my ‘club.’”

Cyrius held up his hands defensively. “What happens among consenting adults is their business, not mine. I don’t police what happens here.”

I didn’t buy that everyone here was consenting, or that Cyrius didn’t know exactly what went on in his club.

But that was irrelevant, because he’d just shown us the only bit of business that mattered. On the inside of his right forearm was a forest green tattoo—an ouroboros, an old and circular symbol made up of a snake eating its tail.

It was the symbol of the Circle . . . and therefore of Adrien Reed.

Son of a bitch. Cyrius’s ink, I said to Ethan, and watched his gaze slip discreetly from Cyrius’s face to the symbol on his arm.

Cyrius Lore managed La Douleur, and the Circle managed Cyrius Lore. If we were right about the alchemical symbols, this was part of the sorcerer’s territory. We had a link between Adrian Reed and the sorcerer, the alchemy. Reed’s sorcerer and the alchemy sorcerer weren’t two different people. They were one and the same, part of his criminal organization. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.