I couldn’t help but smile at that comment.
“Is this when we talk about taxation without representation?” asked one of the Grey House guards, a woman with cocoa skin and a gorgeous pouf of dark hair. She was tall and trim, so the jersey nearly overwhelmed her lean figure. But paired with short nails painted yellow and a bright pair of yellow Converse sneakers—both of which matched the yellow in the Grey House jersey, she pulled it off.
If it was appropriate to judge a person based on her footwear—and it obviously was—I decided I liked her immediately.
The other Grey House guards chuckled, but Scott looked less than amused by the comment. I guess it was still too soon for jokes about defecting from the GP.
“Back to the riots,” Jonah said in a serious tone, apparently taking his cue from Scott. “Two riots, two nights in a row. It’s not unreasonable to surmise they’ll hit another location tomorrow night.”
“And not necessarily a House,” Luc said. “They hit a Blood4You distributor the first time. That means they like businesses with connections to vampires, and they have enough information to ferret out places that aren’t commonly known to humans. We’ve put together a potential list of targets.”
Luc switched the image on-screen, and the bulleted list popped up. Navarre and Cadogan Houses made the list, as did Benson’s, Red, and Temple Bar, the official bars of Grey House, Navarre, and Cadogan, respectively.
The harbor lighthouse in Lake Michigan, which served as the Red Guard’s headquarters, did not make the list. Probably because Jonah and I were the only two vampires in the room who knew its purpose.
“Anybody know if Robin Pope has connections to any of those places?” Jonah asked, glancing around the room, but no one offered an answer.
Luc tapped a spot on the screen near the Houses. “If these rioters were really aiming for maximum impact, Cadogan House would be the target. It’s in a neighborhood they haven’t hit before, and we’re all here together.”
“Maximum impact and damage,” Jonah agreed. “You hit one place, and two Houses.”
“Yeah, but that assumes these guys are doing anything by the book,” Lindsey said. “They clearly aren’t. If they really wanted to hit vampires and for maximum publicity, you hit Cadogan House first. We’re more infamous.”
“Which suggests Robin Pope is on the riot steering committee. She’s picking the locations—not because they’ll make the biggest bang, but because she’s got personal vendettas.” I glanced at Luc. “You might want to poll the House, make sure she doesn’t know anyone here.”
“And we’ll keep looking into her background,” Jeff said.
“Just in case,” Ethan said, “we’ve doubled the number of guards outside. They’re humans, but they have guns. At dusk, let’s discuss how we can work together to increase our guard presence while we have the bodies to do so. Chuck, could you also apprise the CPD of the possibility the House may be a target?”
“Of course,” he said.
“I thought the CPD wasn’t exactly on our side right now?” asked one of the Grey House guards.
“They aren’t,” Grandpa confirmed. “But they are on the side of humans, and there are plenty in Hyde Park. In particular, there are wealthy humans who own sizable homes and contribute to the mayor’s election campaign. That will probably spark some considerable interest on the part of the CPD.”
“That’s a good segue,” Scott said, stepping forward again. “We’re looking for temporary housing, but that’s going to take some time. While we’re here, we’ve got a good opportunity to work together. As I see it, our agenda is to find the source of the riots and cut it off. We can look into the rioters, the employees, whatever. I’m less interested in how we get there than the fact that we get there. We’ve lost our House. That will not stand. And we will find a way—and now—to stop it.”
He looked at Ethan and nodded.
“Well put,” Ethan said. “With that, I think we’re done.”
—
While the senior staff discussed the details of our inadvertent partnership, I said good-bye to the Ombuddies.
“Thank you for coming, although I hope you didn’t come this way for such a short meeting?”
“Actually, we didn’t,” Catcher said. “As soon as I got back to the house, we discovered some ongoing hysteria on the police scanners about a chimera on Fifty-seventh Street.”
“A chimera? Like the mythical monster?”
“Exactly like that,” my grandfather said.