Biting Bad_ A Chicagoland Vampires Novel(28)

“Is the city heading toward something?” I wondered aloud.

He stilled. “You feel it, too?”

His response shocked and scared me. He was supposed to say my question was silly. Overreactive, even. That he didn’t dismiss the feeling only validated it, and I found I didn’t want my paranoia to be validated.

“It feels like things are building to a head,” he said. “The pressure rising. I don’t know when the inevitable explosion will occur, and I’m not sure who will be involved, but there seems little doubt the violence will continue to rise. We have asked humans to put up with much. Celina. Tate. Mallory. And they’ve demonstrated they will not go gently into that good night forever.”

“They certainly weren’t going gently in Wicker Park last night.”

“No,” he agreed. “And perhaps we are being overly pessimistic. Perhaps Wicker Park was an isolated incident. Perhaps the tide has not turned completely, and will not turn at all. But if it does . . .”

He didn’t finish the thought, which didn’t need finishing at any rate. Humans had a long and bloodied history of destroying perceived enemies, even if the perception was only that.

“I hate to bring up another unpleasant subject,” he said, “but there’s an administrative matter we should attend to.”

“Administrative?”

Ethan reached out and pulled a cream linen envelope from his nightstand. “I didn’t want to mention this last night, given what you’d been through.” He handed the envelope to me. “Open it.”

Curious, but also nervous—he was building this up quite a bit—I slid a finger beneath the envelope’s flap and pulled out a card in the same thick, cream-colored stock.

It was an invitation to dinner at my parents’ house.

For both of us.

I made a low whistle. My family and I weren’t close, owing largely to the tense relationship between my father and me. He was controlling and manipulative; I was the rebel daughter he hadn’t quite wanted. He was also the reason, at least indirectly, that I’d been made a vampire, and without my consent.

On the other hand, I’d promised my father that I’d visit my older brother, Robert, and it would be nice to see my sister, Charlotte, and her brood again.

Still. Dinner at my parents’ house? With Ethan? That would mean a lot of Merit eyes on our relationship.

Ethan, who’d been silent while I mulled over the invite, tapped it with a finger. “What do you think?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” I glanced over at him. “Dinner at my parents’ would be two hours of pure and unmitigated discomfort.”

“Because you and your father have a history?”

“And because they’ll probably spend the evening dissecting our relationship.”

“I believe that only makes them human, darling.”

“And it would be formal,” I added, pointing for emphasis. “With fancy food and cocktail attire. We’d have to use salad forks.”

“Instead of eating a sandwich out of a napkin, you mean?”

I elbowed him but smiled. I hadn’t exactly adopted my family’s formalisms. I appreciated the advantages I’d had growing up as a Merit in Chicago, but unlike Charlotte and Robert, I’d found the lifestyle—and the strictures of wealth—completely stifling. Pumas and jeans and Chicago red hots were much more my style than Emily Post manners and crystal goblets.

“I’m unfussy,” I said.

“I know. And I appreciate that about you. But try as you might, you cannot choose your family or give them back. I think we should do it.”

“I don’t know.”

“You could wear a cocktail dress.”

“You’re not selling this very well.”

“I could remove the cocktail dress afterward as a reward for good behavior.”

I paused. “You’re getting warmer.”

“I’ll throw in a sneak peak at the new House pendants.”

I sat up. “They’re done?”

“They are. And they’re quite lovely.”

Now that was an interesting offer. When we left the GP, we’d turned in our House medals, the gold pendants that provided our House position and number. They were the equivalent of vampiric dog tags, and I felt naked without one. (Granted, I had an inadvertent backup copy in the bottom of a drawer, but since I couldn’t let anyone else know it existed, much less wear it, it didn’t really count.)

Ethan had promised us a replacement, something to mark our House membership, even if we were no longer members of the GP. He and Malik, his second in command, had been researching and pricing options, but they hadn’t yet announced their decision. And he was offering to let me be the first to see? Granted, I’d get to see the pendants eventually, but as he well knew, I was not a patient person.