“Why not just come for us?” Luc asked, glancing at Ethan. “For you? What is he waiting for?”
Ethan’s eyes darkened. “Consider the man. He’s waiting for me to beg, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do that. We must put a stop to this. We cannot allow him to hurt anyone else, to destroy the goodwill we’ve tried to build.”
“The Investiture,” I said. “Navarre’s vampires are stable, and it’s time to take care of our own. We have to draw him out.”
Ethan perked up an eyebrow.
“We have to draw him out, Sire,” I added politely. “As you think best and such.”
“Nice cover,” Luc muttered.
“Her Grateful Condescension leaves something to be desired,” Ethan said. “But she’s right. I’ll talk to Scott and Morgan. We’ll say two nights hence. I’ll also talk to Nick,” he added, eyeing Malik. “I was thinking, if we’d decided to finalize it, that I’d suggest it’s been in the works for several weeks, and we only just decided to announce it to humans.”
“That adds weight and interest,” Malik agreed with a nod.
“Location?” Luc asked.
“I’d prefer here. If there’s to be an engagement with Balthasar, I’d prefer it happen on our territory and our terms. But perhaps in a tent on the grounds, weather permitting, in order to keep him out of the House proper?”
I nodded, looked at Luc. “In the meantime, we’ll go back through Balthasar’s timeline again, back to the beginning. We didn’t know about the Circle the first time we looked. Maybe, with fresh eyes, something will pop.”
I hoped it would. Because no one else deserved the trauma he seemed hell-bent to put people through.
* * *
When Ethan and Malik had gone, Luc skimmed fingers over the controls in the tabletop, and the timeline appeared on-screen. Most of the events were now green, meaning they’d been verified. A couple were still black, meaning they needed corroborating. None were red.
“So he told the truth about his past,” I said.
Luc nodded. “The facts line up, except for the couple we haven’t yet verified.”
“Which are?”
Luc used a handheld tablet to zoom in on the chart. “Jeff’s algorithm didn’t pop any mention of Balthasar’s name in the Memento Mori ledgers, but Jeff’s not confident in the results. Thinks it could be due to the program, the inconsistency of the handwriting. The error rate’s too high. He’s going to keep looking.”
I nodded. “What else?”
He pointed to another black box. “The safe house in Switzerland. Chalet Rouge. It’s still operating, but I haven’t been able to reach anyone yet. That’s a phone tag issue.”
I considered, but shook my head. That wasn’t anything, either. “Go back to the beginning.”
“What?”
“The beginning of the timeline. Go back to the beginning.”
Luc zoomed out, resituated the timeline at the beginning. It began with Persephone’s death, Ethan’s departure, the attack on Balthasar by, as he’d put it, the “relative of some girl or other.”
I suddenly remembered the look on Balthasar’s face when he’d attacked me, the blankness when I’d mentioned her name. The utter lack of recognition.
The memory swamped me, raised a cold sweat down my back, a bubble of nausea in my throat. I closed my eyes, pursed my lips, forced myself to breathe in and out until the weight on my chest subsided.
“Sentinel?” Luc asked quietly.
I held up a hand, let my breaths come and go quietly until the panic passed. And felt dread settle low in my abdomen again, that I’d be living with terrifying and humiliating bouts of panic for the rest of my immortal life.
“Okay,” I said a moment later. “I’m okay.” I shook my head, accepted without argument the bottle of water Lindsey handed me, took a long drink.
“He didn’t know her name,” I said when I was done.
Luc looked confused. “Who?”
“Persephone. When he attacked me, I mentioned her name. Balthasar looked completely blank, like he had no idea who she was.”
Luc looked at the chart, contemplated. “He’d been tortured. Could have forgotten it.”
“Yeah, but that seems to be the only thing he doesn’t remember. He was attacked by a band of ‘some girl’s’ relatives, held by them for magical purposes for years, can tell us every place he’s been since then, but he doesn’t mention the girl’s name?” I looked at Luc. “If they show up at his house to punish him, to kill him, damn straight they’re going to mention her name, tell him they’re avenging her death, or his attack on her, or whatever. I’d sure remember it.”
“He didn’t say he didn’t know it,” Lindsey pointed out. “He just didn’t mention it. And we’re talking about Balthasar. He’s not gonna win Feminist of the Year.”
“And even if you’re right,” Luc said, “and he didn’t remember her name, why does it matter?”
Because her name mattered. To Balthasar, to Ethan, to the story. And maybe, I thought, dread beginning to rise thick in my chest, to all of us.
“A vampire comes back into Ethan’s life,” I began, “centuries after his supposed death, and tells a story about where he’d been the entire time. But he doesn’t know one of the most important parts of that story. We also find out he’s being funded by an organization that’s out to control all the vampire Houses in Chicago.”
My heart thudded, but I asked the question anyway. “What if the story he told wasn’t actually about him?” I looked at Luc, then Lindsey. “What if he isn’t the real Balthasar?”
The Ops Room went deathly silent.
I wasn’t sure which possibility was worse—that the vampire who made Ethan was psychopathic and misogynistic enough to forget the name of his most important victim, or that he was a magical imposter who’d gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to play that psychopath.
“Even if you’re right,” Luc said quietly, as if speaking the words more softly would minimize their power, “even if there’s some way he could have gotten the information, made himself look like Balthasar, there would be easier ways to get to Ethan.”
“Easier, but not with more legitimacy. Not with a tie to Ethan. Not like this. He’s got the Circle behind him, Luc. They are strong, and they are wily. They’ve already got Navarre under their thumb. What’s the best way to stake a claim on Cadogan?”