Chloe Neill - Blood Games

I braced myself for fish stuffed with more fish, or a mousse of meat. But the meal that stared back from gleaming white plates was perfectly normal. Bacon cheeseburgers with hand-cut fries and tumblers of chocolate milk shakes.

He smiled at me. “I decided for our award dinner we might have a meal that suited us both.”

“I’ve never loved you more.”

“Are you talking to me, Margot, or the burgers?”

“Yes,” I said, and pulled up a chair as she flipped out the sides of the cart to make a round table.

When she crouched to stow the plate covers on the cart’s bottom shelf, she looked back at me, mouth and eyes wide. She mouthed, “Hubba-hubba,” and gave me a very bawdy wink before disappearing out the door again.

“Never let it be said I’m not willing to sacrifice for my Sentinel.”

“Nobody doubted it,” I said, and ate a fry to prove just that.

I had to give him props. The dinner was absolutely delicious. Margot had even thought to bring dessert—chocolate cheesecake neatly sliced on two small plates, accompanied by a drizzle of raspberry sauce and a fresh sprig of mint.

“I believe there’s something you’ll need, Sentinel.”

Ethan slid from his chair, dropped to one knee on the carpet.

My mind had to race to keep up, but my heart pounded madly.

Ethan looked up at me, grinned. “That thing, of course, is this.” He held up a small dessert fork. “You dropped your fork, Sentinel.”

My blood pounded in my ears. I stood up, swatted his arms with slaps. “You are a jerk.”

He roared with laughter. “Ah, Sentinel. The look on your face.” He doubled over with laughter. “Such terror.”

I kept swatting. “At the thought of marrying you, you pretentious ass.”

He roared again, then picked me up and carried me to the bed. “My pretentions are well earned, Sentinel.”

“You have got to stop doing that.”

“I can’t. It’s hilarious.”

Only a man would think fake proposals were so funny. “It’s nothing near hilarious. It’s several thousand light-years from hilarious.”

He dropped me onto the duvet, covered his body with mine, nipped at my lip, then trailed kisses to his favorite spot on my neck. “Let’s see, my Sentinel, just how hilarious I can be.”

I’d been right.

There was nothing hilarious about it.

Someone screamed shrilly in my ear, over and over and over again.

“Phone,” Ethan murmured, elbowing me. “Your phone.”

I snapped awake, sat up, reached out for the phone that threatened to vibrate its way across the nightstand. My grandfather’s name flashed on the screen, which made my heart jump uncomfortably.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry for the rude awakening,” he said.

“It’s okay. I’m awake. Is everything all right?”

“With us, yes. With Mitzy Burrows, no. We’ve found her body.”

“Damn it,” I muttered, then apologized for cursing, which would have earned me a stern look. “Where?”

“The south garden at the Art Institute.” That was downtown, in the middle of Chicago’s business sector and the area known as the Loop.

“All right. I’ll meet you there. Forty minutes or so, depending on traffic.”

“We’ll see you,” my grandfather said, and the line went dead.

“Could I have one night without calamity?” I asked, putting the phone back on the nightstand and pulling a pillow over my face.

The bed shifted, and Ethan lifted the pillow away. “Not for a Sentinel sworn to uphold justice.”

“I don’t think I swore to that. Although I did swear to protect the House against all creatures living or dead. What’s up with that?”

Ethan rose, pushed his hair back. “Ghosts, poltergeists, your greater and lesser banshees.”

“Those things don’t exist.”

His look was flat. “You know better, Sentinel. Another tarot death?”

“Mitzy Burrows.”

Ethan grimaced. “Wasn’t she your prime suspect?”

“She was. And if the killer’s still using the tarot, she’d be the Four of Wands or Four of Cups. She’s at the Art Institute—with my grandfather.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I glanced up at him. “Don’t you want to stay here, wait to hear about the vote?”

He stretched his arms over his head, bent slightly at the waist as if loosening up for another run. “The message will come to me. If it’s bad news, I’d just as soon hear about it outside the House. I need to go. I need a distraction, and I haven’t been much help in this investigation so far.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’m driving.”

Ethan drove.

Apparently, a man who’d been through two nights of rigorous psychological and physical testing deserved a night behind the wheel of his Ferrari.

I could hardly argue with that, mostly because it would have made me look bad. So I sucked it up.

Ethan gave Luc our itinerary, and I sent Jonah a message advising him of the murder, promising to stay in touch. He wished Ethan luck and asked me to give him an update if the GP got in touch. I guessed that request was equally motivated by personal curiosity, House curiosity, and RG curiosity. If Ethan won, there seemed little doubt the RG would have more questions, especially about my loyalty.

The Art Institute of Chicago took up a prime spot on Michigan Avenue. We parked a few blocks away, then locked the car and set out for the park on foot.

The building was one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the classical architecture marked by columns and two giant stone lions that guarded the door. When I was younger, I’d stare at the lions, totally transfixed, wishing they’d come to life like twin Aslans.

I’d also spent plenty of time inside the building, staring at paintings and sculpture, obsessing over the museum’s collection of miniature rooms, and imagining myself a tiny denizen.

None of the tales I’d spun featured vampires, sparkling or otherwise. But there might have been pirates.

We walked past the lions, heads nobly pointed toward the sky. Ethan reached up and rubbed a hand along one’s leg, as if for good luck—or to ward off bad juju.

The sculpture garden was on the north side of the building, and half the park was boxed by lumber and clear plastic. That something had happened was obvious. Cops were parked on the street, their lights flashing. My grandfather stood on the sidewalk with Catcher, who nodded as we approached.

“Construction?” I wondered, gesturing toward what looked like temporary cover.

“Closed for a couple of weeks while they replace the concrete. They don’t want people initialing it in the meantime.” He gestured with his cane to a make-do door in the construction wrapping, and we walked inside.

Once again, temporary lights had been set up inside the barrier. The light bouncing off the plastic gave the garden an ethereal glow.

Cops and forensic folks were sprinkled around the park, looking for evidence, measuring, taking photographs. Detective Jacobs, looking drawn, and Detective Stowe talked to a construction worker who held his hard hat with white-knuckled fingers. His face looked equally bloodless. Perhaps he’d discovered the body.

We followed my grandfather to the park’s water feature, a long rectangular pool of water topped by a circular fountain. An enormous pedestal emerged from it, topped by five bronze figures. The lowest figure reached out, her eyes closed, toward the body that lay at her feet.

That body wasn’t sculpture, but very human.

Mitzy Burrows was propped beside the fountain, legs curled beneath her, one arm in her lap, the hand holding a golden cup marked by a blue cross. She wore a white dress; her feet were bare but, like the rest of her body, swollen with decay.