Friday Night Bites

Chapter Ten

YOU CAN TELL A LOT BY THE SIZE OF A MAN'S LIBRARY
It was astonishing.
My mouth open in shock, I walked inside and turned in a slow circle to take it all in. The library was square, rising through the second and third floors. Three high-arched windows illuminated the room. An intricate railing of crimson wrought iron bounded the upper floor, which was accessible by a spiral staircase of the same crimson metal.
Tables topped by brass lamps with green shades filled in the middle.
The walls - floor to ceiling - were lined in books. Big and small, leather-bound and paperback, all of them divided into sections - history, reference, vampire physiology, even a small group of fiction titles.
"Oh. My. God."
Ethan chuckled beside me. "And now we're even for the changing-you-without-consent issue."
I would have agreed to anything just to touch them, so I threw out an absent "Sure," walked to one of the shelves, and brushed my fingertips over the spines. The section was devoted to Western classics. Doyle was stacked between Dickens and Dumas, Carroll above and Eliot below.
I pulled a navy leather copy of Bleak House from its shelf. I opened the spine, paged past the vellum frontispiece, and checked the first rag-cut page. The print was tiny and pressed so deeply into the paper that you could feel the indentation of the letters. I whimpered happily, then closed the book again and slid it home.
"You're in thrall of the books," Ethan said, chuckling. "Had I known you'd be so easy to assuage, I'd have brought you to the library weeks ago."
I made a sound of agreement and pulled out a slim volume of Emily Dickinson's poetry.
I thumbed through the pages until I found the poem I wanted, then read aloud, "I died for beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the tomb, when one who died for truth was lain in an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? 'For beauty,' I replied. 'And I for truth - the two are one. We brethren are.' "
Gently, I closed the cover of the book and returned it home, then looked over at Ethan, who stood beside me, his expression thoughtful. "Did you die for beauty or truth?"
"I was a soldier," he said.
That surprised me, and didn't. The thought of Ethan warring - rather than politicking in a back room - surprised me. The thought of Ethan in the midst of war did not.
"Where?" I quietly asked him.
He paused in weighty silence, tension clear in the tilt of his chin, then gave me an obviously feigned light smile. "Sweden. A long time ago."
He'd been a vampire for 394 years; I did the historical math. "Thirty Years' War?"
He nodded. "Very good. I was seventeen when I fought for the first time. I made it to thirty before I was changed."
"You were changed in battle?"
Another nod, no elaboration. I took the hint. "I suppose I was changed in battle, in a manner of speaking."
Ethan pulled a book from the shelf before him and absently flipped through it. "You're referring to Celina's battle to control the Houses?"
"Such as it is." I leaned back against the bookshelves, arms crossed. "What do you think she ultimately wants, Ethan? Vampires controlling the world?"
He shook his head, shut his book and slid it back into place. "She wants whatever new world order puts her in power - whether in charge of vampires, or humans, or both." He angled his body, leaned an elbow on one of the shelves beside me, and propped his head on it, running long fingers through his hair. His other hand was canted on his hip.
He looked, suddenly, very tired.
My heart clenched sympathetically.
"And what do you want, Merit?" He'd been looking down at the ground, but suddenly raised glass-green eyes to mine. The question was startling enough; the near-glow of his eyes was brutal.
My voice was soft. "What do you mean?"
"You hadn't planned it, but you're a member of an honorable House, in a unique position, a position of some power. You're strong. You have connections. If you could be in Celina's position, would you?"
Was he testing me? I searched his eyes. Did he mean to take my measure, to see if I could withstand the hunger for power that had overtaken Celina? Or was it simpler than that?
"You're assuming she went bad," I said, "that she'd been balanced as a human but lost some manner of control since her change. I'm not sure that's right. Maybe she was always bad, Ethan. Maybe she didn't get fed up, hasn't suddenly become an advocate for unified vampires. Maybe she's different from me, or from you."
His lips parted. "Are we different, Celina and I?"
I looked down and plucked nervously at my silk skirt. "Aren't you?"
When I looked up again, his own gaze was intimate and searching, maybe as he considered the question, weighed the balance of his own long life.
"Are you wondering if I'll betray you?" I asked him.
There was yearning in his gaze, in his expression. I don't think he meant to kiss me, although the thought of it - maybe the want of it, maybe the fear of it - sped my pulse.
Sotto voce, he said, "There are things I want to tell you - about Cadogan, the House, the politics." He swallowed, as uncomfortable as I'd ever seen him. "There are things I need to tell you."
I lifted my brows, inviting him to speak.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "You're young, Merit. And I don't mean age - I was barely older than you when I was turned. You're a Novitiate vampire, and a new Novitiate at that. And yet, not even two months into your tutelage, you've seen the violence and maneuvering we're capable of."
He looked back at the books and smiled wistfully. "In that respect we aren't so very unlike humans after all."
There was silence in the cavernous room until he looked back at me again. When he did, his expression was somber. "Decisions are made..." He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts, then started again. "Decisions are made with an eye toward history, with an eye toward protecting our vampires, securing our Houses."
Ethan nodded at a wall of books across the room, a bank of yellowed volumes with red numbers on the spines.
"The complete Canon," he said, and I understood then why the Canon was delivered to Initiate vampires in Desk Reference form. There must have been fifteen or twenty volumes on each row, and there were multiple rows on multiple shelves.
"That's a lot of law," I told him, my gaze following the line of books.
"It's a lot of history," Ethan said. "Many, many centuries of it." He glanced back at me.
"You're familiar with the origin of the House system, of the Clearings?"
I was. The Desk Reference, while apparently not offering the play-by-play that the complete collection provided, outlined the basic history of the House system, from its origins in Germany to the development of the French tribunal that, for the first time, collectively governed the vampires of Western Europe, at least until the Presidium moved the convocation to England after the Napoleonic Wars. Both acts were attributable to the panic caused by the Clearings.
"Then you understand," he continued at my nod, "the importance of protecting vampires.
Of building alliances."
I did understand, of course, having been handed to Morgan to secure a potential Navarre alliance. "The Breckenridges," I said. "I'd have considered them allies. I'd never have imagined that he'd talk to me that way. Not Nick. He called me a vampire - but it wasn't just a word, Ethan. It was a swear. A curse." I paused, lifted my gaze to Ethan.
"He said he'd come after me."
"You know that you're protected?" he quietly asked, sincerely asked. "Being a Cadogan vampire. Living under my roof."
I appreciated the concern, but it wasn't that I feared Nick. It was that I regretted losing him to ignorance. To hatred. "The problem is," I said, "not only are they not allies - they're enemies."
Ethan's brow furrowed, that tiny line back between his eyebrows. And in his eyes - I don't know what it was, other than the heavy weight of something I was confident I'd prefer not knowing. I wasn't sure where his speech had been going, maybe just an acknowledgment of vampire history, but it felt like he wasn't sharing everything he might have. Something waited on the cusp.
Whatever it was, he shook it off, blanked his expression, and assumed the tone of Master vampire.
"I brought you here - the information is at your disposal. We know you're powerful.
Support that power with knowledge. It wouldn't do for you to remain ignorant."
I squeezed my eyes shut at the strike. When I opened them again, he was headed for the door, his exit marked by the receding sound of his footsteps on the marble floor. The door opened and closed again, and then the room was quiet and still, a treasure box closed off to the greater world.
As I turned back to the books and scanned the shelves, I realized his pattern. Whenever he began to see me as something more than a liability or a weapon, whenever we spoke to each other without the barrier of rank and history between us, he backed away, more often than not insulting me to force the distance. I knew at least some of the reasons he backed away - including his general sense of my inferiority - and suspected others - the difference in our rank.
But there was something else there, something I couldn't identify. The fear in his eyes revealed it - he was afraid of something. Maybe something he wanted to tell me. Maybe something he didn't want to tell me.
I shook my head to clear the thought, then checked my watch. It was two hours until dawn, the bulk of my evening having been taken up by Ethan, Nick, and my father, so I took the opportunity to give the library the perusal of a former researcher.
The books were organized into fiction and nonfiction sections just like a traditional library, every section organized, every shelf impeccably clean. There must have been thousands of volumes in the room, and there was no way a collection that large could be maintained without a librarian. I looked around, but saw no sign of a circulation desk or administrator. I wonder who'd been lucky enough to get that assignment. And more importantly, I wondered why I hadn't been the obvious nominee. Books or a sword for an English lit student? Seemed like an easy call.
I searched the shelves for something readable and decided on a book of urban fantasy from the popular fiction shelf. I left the library after a geekily wistful goodbye, promising the stacks that I'd return when I had more time, then headed downstairs and toward the back of the House. I followed the long central hallway to the cafeteria area, where a handful of vampires munched on predawn snacks, their gazes lifting as I walked to the back door. I slipped outside to the brick patio that spanned the end of the House, then followed a path to the small formal garden. In the middle of the garden was a fountain illuminated by a dozen in-ground lights, and the light was just strong enough to read by.
I picked a bench, curled my legs into the seat, and opened the book.
Time passed, the grounds quiet and empty around me. Since the night was waning, I dog-eared and closed the book and uncrossed my legs. As I stood, I glanced up at the back of the House. A figure stood at a window on the third floor, hands in pockets, facing the garden.
It was a window in Amber's former room, the Consort suite beside Ethan's, the rooms he'd cleaned out. She was gone, and so was the furniture; I couldn't imagine that anyone but him would be in the room, much less staring into the garden.
I stood there for a moment, book in my arms, watching his meditation. I wondered what he thought about. Did he mourn for her? Was he angry? Was he embarrassed that he hadn't predicted her betrayal? Or was he ruminating on the things that had happened tonight, worrying about Nicholas, Celina, and whatever war she might be leading us into?
The horizon began to purple. Since I had no urge to be caught in the sun, reduced to ashes because I'd been curled up with a paperback in the garden - or spying on my Master - I returned to the House, occasionally glancing up at the window, but he never changed position.
Peter Gabriel came to mind, his lyric about working just to survive. Ethan did that. Day in and day out, he kept watch over more than three hundred Cadogan vampires. We were a kind of kingdom, and he was the lord of the manor, the figurative and literal Master of the House. Our survival was a responsibility that fell upon his shoulders, and had since Peter Cadogan's death.
It was, I realized, a responsibility I trusted him with. Ethan's biggest fault, at least so far as I was aware, was his inability to separate that responsibility from everything else in this life.
Everyone else in his life.
And so, on a night in late May, I found myself standing on the lawn of a Hyde Park mansion of vampires, staring up at the stone-framed visage of a boy in Armani, an enemy who'd become an ally. Ironic, I thought, that I'd given up one ally today, but gained another.
Ethan ran a hand through his hair.
"What are you thinking about?" I whispered up, knowing he couldn't hear me.
Where was a boom box when you needed one?