Twice Bitten

CHAPTER TWENTY

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
I froze, then glanced back over my shoulder.
Jonah stood in a puddle of streetlight, auburn hair kind of curving softly around his face. He wore a snug, dark button-up shirt with jeans, and brown boots on his feet.
"Merit," he said.
I lifted my eyebrows. "Jonah."
"I was in the neighborhood."
"Grey House isn't far from here, right?"
"It's down Addison," he said, then bobbed his head to the left. "A little farther west. It's a converted warehouse."
"And you decided to take a walk and see what was happening at the Cadogan House bar?" Jonah looked away for a moment before meeting my gaze again. "It may not be entirely coincidental that I'm here."
I waited for elaboration. When none came, I prodded. "And exactly how noncoincidental is it?" He took a step toward me, hands in his pockets. He was close enough, and tall enough, that I had to look up to see his face.
"If you join us," he said quietly, "you'll be my partner. My asset. My companion. The one I follow into battle, the one who takes up arms to protect me. I don't take that responsibility lightly."
"Are you guarding me, or making sure I meet your standards?"
"Fair enough," he admitted. "A little of both, probably." He nodded toward an alley between the buildings, then walked toward it. I followed. The moon was high enough to light the alley, although the view was hardly worth the light: bricks, graffiti, empty wooden packing crates, and the steel skeletons of rusty fire escapes.
"You've made a name for yourself," Jonah said, turning to face me again, arms crossed over his shirt.
The angel and devil on his arms stared back at me, both with empty eyes, as if neither was pleased with the side they'd chosen. "With a profile that high, humans may get a little too curious about the newest vamp celeb. And curiosity might be the nicest of their emotions."
"I didn't ask for the press," I pointed out. "The story was a kind of favor."
"I hear you managed to hold your own at the shifter convocation." I assumed Luc had given the other Guard Captains a debriefing, so I nodded my agreement.
"And there are rumors Gabriel Keene likes you."
That one I wouldn't confirm. Reviewing the basics of our security plan at the convocation was one thing - Luc had already talked to Jonah about that. But the things I'd heard from Gabriel were among Ethan, me, and the Pack.
Besides, if I was going to sell out Ethan, I wasn't going to do it without being a full-fledged guard member. If I was going to incite his rage, I was at least going to get a membership card out of it.
"Gabriel's a friendly guy," I finally said.
"Playing it close to the chest?"
"I'm not a Red Guard."
"Yet." Jonah's tone was pretentious. I'd had plenty of pretentious today, so I half turned to leave, hitching a thumb over my shoulder.
"Unless you have something interesting to say, I'm going back to join my friends."
"You may not join," he said, surprise in his voice. "You might actually say no." I let my silence stand in for an answer.
"I'm told no one's ever said no."
I turned around again and smiled lightly. "Then maybe I'll start a new tradition of thinking for myself, instead of doing something just because everyone else has done it."
"That's obnoxious."
"I've had an obnoxious night. Look," I said, crossing my arms, "I don't mean to be rude, but it's been a long night, and a longer week. I'm not crazy about being stalked because someone I might work with in the future wanted to find out if I was as incompetent as he imagined." He didn't protest. Wasn't that flattering?
"Maybe you should look into requesting another partner," I said. "You don't know me, and I don't know you. With all due respect, I'd rather have a partner who waits to judge me until after we've had three or four conversations."
"And I'd rather have a partner who takes her job seriously." I nearly snarled at him. "Buddy, if you knew anything about me, you'd know just how seriously I take my job."
We stood silently for a minute, the unspoken question hanging in the air - was I going to be his partner?
"What are you going to do?" he finally asked.
"I don't know," I answered quietly after a moment.
I looked up at the lights of the city and thought about Ethan. I thought about what we'd done, what he'd wanted, what he could and couldn't offer me. I figured I had two options.
One, I could give Ethan the metaphorical finger and join the Red Guard. I'd be setting up a quick Cadogan House exit, either when humans decided they'd had enough of Cadogan vampires (or Celina decided it for them), or when Ethan found out and ripped the Cadogan medal from my neck. Two, I could give Jonah the metaphorical finger by telling Noah, "No, thanks." I'd be committing to Cadogan House; committing to Ethan. Wasn't that ironic?
I wasn't really feeling either option. Both felt like ploys in a supernatural game, and I wasn't sure I was holding the right pieces. I certainly wasn't crazy about picking one or the other based on which vampire I wanted to piss off more, especially given what was at stake - my life, my friends, the shape of my immortality.
"I'll call Noah when I've made a decision," I finally told him, then turned and headed back toward the bar. For obvious reasons, I kept the conversation with Jonah to myself. I faked a smile back at Temple Bar, then faked a yawn so that I could extricate myself from the crowd and head back to the House.
Lindsey decided to stay, so I took a cab home, ready to spend the little rest of my evening in the thrall of the books. Say what you had to about Ethan, but the boy filled a library very, very well.
Okay - arguably, that wasn't the only thing he filled out well, but let's stay on track.
The library was a two-story space that occupied a chunk of the second floor toward the front of the House. The room itself was two stories tall and ringed by a balcony full of books, the balcony ringed by a red wrought-iron railing. A spiral staircase in the same iron led up to it. Three giant windows filled the room with light, and tidy rows of library tables filled the middle.
Long story slightly shorter, it was lush - a booklover's dream.
When I reached the second floor, I slipped inside the library's double doors, then glanced around, hands on my hips. I didn't have a research assignment per se, but I also didn't think I had the knowledge I needed to live and work hand in hand with shifters.
Historical animosity or not, there had to be material on shifters in here. Unfortunately, as big and well organized as the library was, it was still old-school about one thing: it had a card catalog - and not just any card catalog, but three massive oak cabinets with slender drawers, each containing thousands of alphabetized cards.
I went to the S row, pulled out the appropriate drawer, then set it onto a slide-out shelf. There were lots of entries for books on shifters, from the Encyclopaedia Tractus - the "preeminent guide to shifter territories across the world" - to A Life in Fur: One Man's Journey. I scribbled down the call numbers of a handful of nonfiction titles (minus the biographies and memoirs), then slid the drawer back into place. I bumped a hip against the slide-out shelf to fit it back into its slot, then scanned the slips of paper I'd collected to figure out what parts of the library the books might be in . . . and ran face-first into a brown-haired twentysomething who scowled up at me with obvious irritation.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean - "
"Surely you didn't think you were the only Novitiate who used this room. Surely you didn't think the books just organized themselves?"
I blinked at the man - shortish, cute, bedeviled expression - who'd just cut me off midapology.
"I - um - no? Of course not?" Stuttering or not, I was actually being honest. The first time I'd seen the library, I'd assumed it had to have a librarian to keep things organized. I'd thought it weird, actually, that I hadn't seen him or her before. I guessed this was him.
The librarian seemed to relax a little at the answer, then ran a hand through his hair, which made it stand up on end. He wore jeans and a black polo shirt -
another vampire apparently exempt from Cadogan's all-black dress code.
"Of course not," he repeated. "That would be incredibly naive." He motioned at the books behind him.
"There are tens of thousands of titles in this library, you know, not to mention that we're an official Canon depository." He lifted his eyebrows, as if waiting for my response - my awed response.
"Yeah," I said, "that's - wow. Tens of thousands of titles? And an official Canon depository? Also very wow."
He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression all skepticism. "Are you just saying that or are you really impressed?"
I scrunched up my face. "How would you like me to answer that?" One corner of his mouth quirked up. "Cute and you don't kiss ass. I can appreciate that. You're the new Sentinel? The researcher."
"Former researcher," I said, holding out a hand. "And you are?"
"The librarian," he said, apparently not interested in offering a name. He also didn't take my hand.
Instead, he waggled his fingers and bobbed his head at the papers in my hand. "Gimme your notes and we'll find what you need."
I did as I was told, then followed as he turned and headed toward the social sciences section. Funny, I thought, that most libraries probably stocked books about shape-shifters and were-creatures in the myths and fantasy section. But here, in the confines of this vampire-owned library, they were real. That meant the books were more akin to anthropology (or maybe zoology?) than mythology.
We walked to the back-right corner of the room, the librarian's gaze on my notes as we moved. He didn't bother to read the signs on the ends of the shelves, apparently having memorized the locations of the volumes.
"Vampires are talking," he began as he turned into a narrow aisle between shelves. I followed him, books of every shape and size, new and old, paper-and leather-bound, stretching above us.
"Talking about what?"
"The convocation." He stopped in the middle of the aisle and turned to face one of the shelves, then glanced back at me. "Word is, they voted not to leave for Aurora, and then attacked you." Stories of the convocation had traveled; truth, unfortunately, hadn't. "They voted to stay and support us, not to run away," I clarified. "The attack was against one of the Pack leaders. They didn't attack me. I just helped defend."
"Still," he said, "doesn't that just show what they're like? Fickle? And meeting to discuss their future in Chicago. Who'd have thought the day would come?"
When he began to run a fingertip across the books' spines, I assumed the comment was rhetorical. But I still had a question.
"Why are they called 'Pretenders'?" I asked. I'd heard Peter Spencer use the term against shifters, as well. I knew it wasn't flattering, but I wasn't sure of its origin.
The librarian pulled a long, slim, brown leather book from the shelves, then handed it over. It was actually a portfolio that held sketches of shifters in animal form. The usual suspects were there: wolves, big cats, birds of prey. There were also a few more unusual options, including seals. Maybe that was the origin of the silkie myth.
"Shifters pose as humans," he said. "They pretend to be humans. They mingle among them, even if they aren't really humans."
I had to admit, the argument confused me. "But we aren't humans, either, right?"
"We are what we are. Predators. Humans, plus a little genetic restructuring. We don't change forms to disguise ourselves." He took a step back, then gestured at his body with his hands. "This is me. This is us," he said, frustration in his voice, then turned back to the shelves from which he started plucking volumes.
"Whenever humans have tried to take out supernaturals, the shifters have still pretended they were humans."
I managed not to argue that vampires had been hiding in plain sight for centuries, pretending to be humans in order to avoid staking. Frankly, I didn't think he'd appreciate the comparison. This was the kind of prejudice that didn't bend to logic.
"Is that what they did in the Second Clearing?" I wondered aloud as the librarian began stacking books in my arms. "Pretended to be humans and ignored that vampires were being killed?"
"I think that's enough, don't you?" he asked darkly.
I guess that explained the prejudice. I knew the wound caused by the shifters' failure to help vampires during the Second Clearing - to put themselves on the line to save vampires - was a deep one. And not just deep, but still jagged and unhealed, even more than a century later. I'd seen the animosity from the shifters'
side; they'd shown it clearly enough. Their urge to retreat sounded as if it was based on fear of what would come, so I still wasn't sure why so many shifters seemed so bitter about the past.
But even as enlightened as Ethan imagined his vampires to be, the anger, the bitterness, were just as present in our camp, as well. . . . Even in this archive of learning and knowledge, it lingered.
He finally stopped pulling books from the shelves, then glanced back at me. "That should be all you need," he said. "These will give you the basics."
I nodded, working to keep my smile neutral, then watched as he walked around me and back into the main aisle.
"I know what you think," he said when he reached it, glancing back, hands on his hips. His expression had turned stern, concern evident in the tightness around his eyes. "That I'm just ignorant, or that I'm pissed about something that happened a hundred years ago." His eyes suddenly flashed silver, and the hair at my neck stood on end as magic spread through our corner of the library, leaking as his emotions rose.
"We are immortal, Sentinel. These were not harms done to our ancestors, to our forebears. They were harms done to us. Our families. Our lovers. Our children. Ourselves." With that, he walked away.
A foot-high stack of books in my arms, I blinked after him for a moment, thinking not just about the anger in his voice, the pain over acts that had happened, but the fear, the worry that without vigilance, such things could happen again.
And I thought of the passion I'd heard in Gabriel's voice, his desire to protect his Pack members. I thought of the anger I'd once heard in Nick's voice, his desire to keep his family safe.
I matched all that disdain and contention together . . . and I still wondered who was the bigger threat.