Dark Debt
“No,” I said on a sigh. “He’s just being unreasonable about something RG-related.”
Ethan didn’t answer. He just looked at me, waiting, with his face drawn into Masterly features.
“I can’t talk about it,” I insisted. “It’s nothing dangerous to the House. Just—something between us.”
“Ah,” he said, and walked around the bed, sat down, and turned off the light. “I see.”
“Do you?”
He stretched out beside me, then snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me tight against his body. “I do. You’re in the RG, and you’re dating—very seriously—a member of the AAM. It’s not unforeseeable he’d have concerns. The RG is an organization, Merit, which is built on a certain fundamental sense of fear. That those in power will erode the very rights they’ve promised to protect, and that if we are not careful and vigilant, it will happen sooner rather than later.”
“So you’re saying he’s being reasonable?” I asked.
“No. But I am suggesting he’s being rational. For some—and the RG is among them—vigilance isn’t paranoia; it’s inevitability. Consider this: If he was dating Lakshmi, would you have the same concerns?”
Lakshmi was a member of the now-defunct GP, and a woman who’d had a definite romantic interest in Jonah. She’d helped during the GP’s reign, but she was undeniably manipulative.
“I wouldn’t trust her,” I said. “But I’d trust Jonah’s judgment. I’m not getting the same trust. That’s what’s frustrating.”
“Ah,” was all he said. “Would you like me to talk to him?”
“No. I can fight my own battles.” And would. I just wasn’t looking forward to it.
“I’ve no doubt of it,” he said. “In other news, it appears Mallory and Catcher are to be married.”
“So they say.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“They sounded like they were discussing getting a small business loan, not making a lifetime commitment of love and fidelity.”
“You have doubts about their love and fidelity?”
“Well, no, not in the abstract. I know he loves her, and vice versa. But that’s not what I heard from her tonight.” I shifted, suddenly restless, and stretched out beside him. He gave me the room but linked our fingers together.
“I heard business. And I heard nerves. Once upon a time, she’d wanted this big wedding in New Orleans, for God’s sake, on Bourbon Street. With fire-eaters, a jazz band, a second line, the entire shebang. And, okay, we’ve grown since the last time we talked about it, so maybe her tastes have changed. But she didn’t even sound excited. That’s what bothers me, I guess. It’s her wedding. She should sound excited.”
“You will be.”
“When I get married, yes, I probably will be excited. I’ll let you know if anyone proposes.”
Ethan humphed.
I sighed, turned in to him again. “It’s been a long night. Let’s go to sleep.”
Ethan wrapped his arms around me, and I instantly relaxed, my lids growing heavier, drifting closed.
* * *
I woke alone in an empty room, with wooden floors and walls of robin’s-egg blue. The bed was tall, with four posters of thick, spiraling wood that rose at least five feet into the air. The bed was down, with its juxtaposing softness and lumpiness, the sheets ivory and soft. Light from a candelabra on a small wooden desk flicked shadows across the wall.
This isn’t my room, some part of me realized, but it was a dim and quiet voice. I sat up, touched the white shift that covered me from neck to ankles, rubbed against bare skin.
“You’re awake.”
The words were spoken aloud, but they also reverberated in my head just as a silent conversation with Ethan might have, and my heart began to pound in response.
I looked up, found him standing in a corner. He wore fawn leather breeches, knee-high boots, a white linen shirt that draped open at the neck. A small book was open in one palm, one knee lifted and a booted foot flat on the wall, as if he’d been lazily reading.
Balthasar.
“Merit,” he said, his smile slow and seductive. “I am so glad we have this opportunity to get acquainted.”
“Where are we?”
Balthasar gestured at the room. “A little place I created. It allows you a sense of how Ethan and I used to live.”
It wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been real. But the scents of beeswax and bay rum belied that belief. Mallory had warded the House. So how was he here? And how was I with him?
Too many questions, not enough answers. But I’d seen enough of Balthasar to know that he’d take advantage of any indication of weakness, so I kept my voice smooth.
“He told me how you used to live.”
Balthasar moved closer. “Did he?”
“I know that you used humans. That you used women. How you discarded them. And he told me about Persephone. How you used her. How you killed her, used her to punish Ethan.”
His expression went momentarily blank. She’d meant so little to him that he hadn’t bothered to remember her name.
“If Ethan was punished, it was for good reason. He was my child, after all.”
“He hasn’t been anyone’s child in a very long time. Where is he?”
A flash of anger. “Not here. This place is for me and you, so that we can become better acquainted. Don’t you want to become better acquainted with me, Caroline?”