His voice was monotone, and just as tired.
I grabbed and paid for a bottle of water, sat down in the aluminum chair across from Morgan.
He smiled nervously, scratched a hand through his hair. He looked tired. That didn’t detract from his handsomeness—it sharpened the edges in a pretty nice way, actually.
“Thanks for coming.”
I nodded. “I’m not really sure why I’m here.”
“I guess I wanted to talk through some things.” He paused. “I think you got to know me, Mer. For a little while, anyway. Before things got complicated. Before all this—the drama, the spectacle. I’m not perfect. I’m not aiming to be. But I’d like to be better than I was.”
“I can’t give you redemption.”
“I know.”
“Celina changed everything, Morgan. Hopefully, they’ve realized by now the amenities will have to change. Belts will have to be tightened. But even beyond that, this isn’t the Chicago she ruled two years ago. She changed the landscape, with other Navarre vampires beside her.”
“I know,” he said. “I think one of the reasons they loved her is that she kept them in the dark. Everything was wonderful—even when it wasn’t—because she didn’t tell them the truth. Because she sold them a very complicated lie about who they were and what the world believed of them.
“They may not want to hear the truth,” he admitted. “And they may not let me back in because of it.” He paused, seemed to firm his determination. “If that’s what it comes to, so be it. But I can’t do this anymore. Trying to play her, to cajole people I don’t agree with. If they want someone else as Master, they should have it. I want to run the House differently. Not like Celina, not like Cadogan. Like me. Like Navarre.”
With those four words, he sounded more like the Morgan I’d known before he bore that mantle of authority. He’d still been rash even then. Jealous and a little prickly, especially about me and Ethan. But he’d also been happy. And I hadn’t seen him happy in a very long time.
“If worse comes to worst,” he said, “I’ll go my own way. Go Rogue, maybe hook up with your grandfather again.”
I blinked. “My grandfather? What do you mean?”
He grinned at me. “Didn’t you know? When he started out, I was the vampire who gave him information about the Houses.”
My eyes widened with shock . . . and appreciation. “That was you? You were reporting to the Ombudsman’s office while standing Second to Celina? Did you have a death wish?”
Morgan laughed full out, so that even the clerk, now wiping down a counter probably sticky with powdered sugar and stained with coffee, smiled a little.
“Maybe I was doomed from the beginning,” he said. “Maybe there was no way I could have held the House.”
“You hold it,” I reminded him. “And you’ve held it since she died. Cadogan and Navarre may never be best friends. But there’s got to be a middle ground between friends and enemies, or for Navarre vampires, between narcissism and self-abnegation.”
Wasn’t that, after all, precisely what Ethan had done? He’d avoided the worst of Balthasar’s selfishness, but was confident enough to make his own way in the world. To pick a route and undertake it, and damn those who disagreed. They could captain their own ships.
“I’m sure there is,” Morgan said. “The question is, will they go for it?” He took a sip of his coffee, glanced at me over the rim with amusement in his eyes. “You interested in becoming Second of a new Navarre House?”
There was literally zero chance I’d leave Cadogan House, much less for Navarre. It was an impossibility.
But still . . . there was something in his question that intrigued me.
I frowned down at the table, trying to unpack why it was interesting. Why the thought of standing Second was something I couldn’t just dismiss.
I let myself imagine what might have happened if Morgan had asked the same question when he originally got the House, before I’d been committed to Ethan.
If he’d asked, and I’d said yes, I’d be second-in-command of the oldest vampire House in the country, a House established the same year the U.S. Constitution had been ratified. (Joshua Merit could choke on that.) I could admit it—the possibility of helping lead a House was attractive.
And if we were playing out this alternative history, I’d have become a kind of enemy to Ethan just as he’d been wooing me with seductive promises (and, admittedly, the occasional backslide into haughty arrogance). I imagined furtive glances at meetings between Cadogan and Navarre staff, a stolen kiss in the Navarre garden, a brush of fingers beneath the conference table, a pilfered night in the stacks of the Cadogan library.
“You’re awfully quiet over there.”
I looked up at him, grinned. “Just thinking about history. Morgan, you need a Navarre vampire. You need one of your own, someone you respect, someone of the same blood. Someone who can challenge you when necessary, but present a united front when you face the enemy.”
“If it were that simple, I’d have done it by now.”
“You’ll find someone,” I assured him. “You’ll find someone, and they’ll help you build the House.”
Morgan nodded, took the final sip of his coffee, three-pointed the empty cup into a nearby trash can.
“Come on,” he said, standing up. “I’ll buy you a donut.”
Now, that was an offer I could accept.
* * *
I walked back into the House, only mildly embarrassed that I’d chased two donuts with a bottle of blood and seriously considered stopping by Portillo’s for a cake shake. I managed to overcome the temptation, not in part because of the memories of our Mallocake Massacre. I still bore the mental scars.
I walked into the House, found Helen straightening the foyer table in preparation for the next night’s supplicants.
She looked up, stood up. “Oh, that’s convenient.”
I closed the door, too high on sugar to be bothered with what I expected would be an insult. “Is it?”
She nodded, picked up a brown paper package, extended it. “A CPD officer left these for you.”
I took the package, felt nothing ticking, no sense of metal or weaponry. “Who?”
“It’s not my business,” she said haughtily, as if managing my incoming mail—limited though it was—was too much of a burden. “It was left with the guards. They’re hardly going to interrogate an officer.”