I gave him a look.
“Well, I try,” he amended. “And is that to be your official Dry Wife Expression? I’d like to go ahead and commit it to memory.”
“You’re hilarious, husband.”
“And you’re beautiful, wife. Headstrong or otherwise.”
A compliment either way.
CHAPTER TEN
WE’LL ALWAYS (NOT) HAVE PARIS
I woke to the smells of chocolate and sugar, but kept my eyes closed, basking in the fantasy that Chicago’s problems had resolved themselves and we’d been whisked away to Paris while we slept. I’d open tall, iron windows to a balcony, a wonderful breeze, and a view of the Eiffel Tower.
“Bonjour, mon amour,” I said.
“You’re still in Chicago,” Ethan reminded me. “And the mayor wants to see us.”
Of course she did. I pulled a pillow over my face. “I can’t hear you. The sun’s still up.”
“The sun has set. And the mayor has beckoned. And I have breakfast.”
I tossed away the pillow, sat up.
Ethan sat beside me on the edge of the bed, naked but for a pair of silk pajama bottoms. The breakfast tray sat on the bedside table with the promised cup of dark, steaming chocolate, and two perfect-looking croissants beside a bowl of perky raspberries.
“Two delicious choices,” I said, leaning up to kiss him. “Good evening, husband.”
He smiled wickedly, kissed me back. “Good evening, wife.”
I plucked up a croissant, tore off the pointy end. “Did the mayor really summon us?”
“She did, as well as your grandfather. We’re all to be at her office as soon as possible.”
The croissant was good, but the thought of dealing with drama again made my mouth dry. Launching myself into a fight? Not altogether unenjoyable. Dealing with a mayor who tended to believe the worst of us? Not as much fun.
“We should have invited her to the wedding,” I said, crossing my legs and picking off another bite.
Ethan chuckled. “We did. Didn’t you see her?”
“No.” I grinned at him. “I only have eyes for you.”
“Mmm-hmm. And carbs.”
“Is she planning to blame us for what happened last night? I don’t see how she could. We kept the situation from getting worse.” I pointed to the Tribune folded beside the food, which featured a shot of Ethan and me in torn wedding clothes, hands linked and staring at the desolation. VAMPIRES STOP RAGING HUMANS was the headline. It was, by far, one of the better headlines we’d seen. Maybe the city was finally beginning to see us as soldiers, rather than perpetrators.
Ethan’s gaze slid across the room, to the stained and torn heap of white silk and lace on the floor. “Until we take that to Helen.”
“She’s probably seen the Tribune,” I said. “I suspect she already knows.”
“And will undoubtedly be stewing about it until we return to the House.” Ethan stood up, the bottom half of his outrageous body framed perfectly by draped silk. “Eat your breakfast and get dressed, and let’s get this over with.”
I’d do both. But since it was still technically my honeymoon, I put an arm around his waist, tugged him back to the bed.
The mayor and the croissant could wait a little while longer.
• • •
We dressed and traveled through the lobby of our beautiful hotel, stopping when it seemed everyone else was pressed against the lobby windows or walking around outside.
Something had happened. Something that had drawn the attention of the humans and, from the jittering energy in the room, had made them very skittish.
Take care, Ethan silently said, and we walked through them, whispers in our wake. We stepped outside . . . and into a thick swirl of white snow.
The flakes were enormous, the snowfall heavy enough that I couldn’t see the buildings across the street. They muffled the sound of traffic, of pedestrians, of the typical buzz of the city.
“It’s seventy degrees outside,” Ethan said. “This isn’t possible.”
I’d paired a thin, three-quarter-sleeved black shirt with jeans and boots and was actually a little warm. This probably wasn’t the first time it had snowed in Illinois in August. And while we could see only a sliver of sky between tall skyscrapers, what we could see was dark and clear. Which meant the snow wasn’t falling from clouds, but from nothing. It was spawning out of literal thin air somewhere above us.
“Magic,” Ethan quietly said. “Gabriel said there was something in the air. I thought he meant last night.”
“Yeah. I did, too.”
Magic buzzed around us, but without the chemical smell that had marked the hallucinations. This was magic, but different magic. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than the other option.
Our meeting with the mayor was about to get a little more intense.
My phone began to ring, and I pulled it out, checked the screen as Ethan did the same. There were alerts from Jeff and the House about the weather—and the wards that were screaming across the city.
Sorcha’s wards had been breached, which meant this was Sorcha’s magic—and she’d somehow managed to control the weather.
That was Official Big Bad territory.
“Let’s get moving,” Ethan grimly said, and we headed to City Hall.
• • •
The Loop’s sidewalks were busy with people who’d come out to wonder at the weather, catch snowflakes on their tongues, or take videos to share for the shock and awe of it.
City Hall looked like a lot of government buildings in the US—square, with granite, symmetrical rectangular windows, and lots of ribbed columns. The doors were edged in brass that gleamed like gold, and the lobby was marble, with towering vaulted ceilings and elevators covered by more lustrous brass.
Catcher and my grandfather stood in the lobby, just past the security area, waiting for us. My grandfather had exchanged his usual brown sport coat for a dark suit that was a little baggy in the arms, the trousers a smidge too long. I found both of those things almost stupidly endearing. Catcher wore jeans and a black T-shirt without a smart-ass comment, which was practically business wear as far as he was concerned.
“Good evening,” Ethan said.
My grandfather nodded, his expression somber.
“She’s in the city?” Ethan asked.
“There’s been no report of her yet,” Catcher said.
“If she isn’t here yet,” my grandfather said, “she’ll be here soon.” He glanced back at the snow falling outside. “She’ll want to see this.”
“What’s the protocol now that the wards have been triggered?” Ethan asked.
“Baumgartner will send a patrol to each sector,” Catcher said. Baumgartner was the leader of the Order, the sorcerers’ union. “They’ll determine where the breaches occurred, which will hopefully help us locate her and figure out what kind of magic she’s using.”
“It’s about damn time.”
Everyone just looked at me.
“Sorcha,” I explained. “She’s too egotistical to walk away, to be cool about what she would have seen as a humiliating defeat. That’s not how she operates. This was inevitable. At least now we won’t have to wonder when it’s going to happen.”
I looked around at all of them, saw the flash of acknowledgment in their eyes. Even if we hadn’t talked about it, we’d felt the same. We’d believed she’d come back. And now she had.
“There’s no chemical smell,” I said.
Catcher nodded. “I noticed that. We haven’t tied the voice or the chemical smell to any known magic. But the absence suggests this is something different.”
“A different magic, or a different sorcerer?” Ethan asked.
“Either,” Catcher said. “Or both.”
“How are the humans?” Ethan asked.
r /> “All are stable except the woman with the knife,” Catcher said. “Her name is Rosemary Parsons. She’s in critical condition, but they’re hopeful.”
“She’s sedated?” Ethan asked.
“She is,” my grandfather said. “And still at the hospital. Everyone else is at the factory.”
The supernatural prison, he meant. “Why?” I asked.
“Quarantine,” Ethan said, and my grandfather nodded.
“We don’t know why this is happening, or if it’s actually transmittable. So we have to take precautions. The CDC’s Chicago field office is doing some testing, just in case. But they don’t think this is a biological contagion, either.”
“We need to talk to them,” Ethan said. “Get more information about the delusions they’re experiencing.”
My grandfather nodded. “Winston Stiles is awake and communicating. He’d like to see you, to apologize.”
“Maybe he can give us some damned idea of what’s happening here,” Ethan said.
“It can’t hurt,” I agreed.
“And tonight’s meeting?” Ethan asked, gesturing to the elevator.
“We’ll report,” my grandfather said, “and offer ideas for resolving this thorny little problem.”
“And do you have an idea?” Ethan asked.
“No,” my grandfather said. “Here’s hoping the elevator ride is productive.”
• • •
If City Hall was built to inspire, the mayor’s office was built for business. It was a big open room of golden wood floors and paneling, curtains covering the windows. Mayor Kowalcyzk had settled her dark, curved desk beneath an enormous aerial photograph of Chicago, in case anyone forgot the realm over which she ruled.
The mayor sat behind her desk, her brown hair carefully coiffed and sprayed, makeup still polished, even though she’d probably already been on the job for twelve hours. She wore a power suit in deep crimson, hands crossed in her lap as she watched video on the flat-screen on the opposite wall, which showed footage of the fight, the image shuddering left and right as the camera was jostled.
A man I assumed was her aide—in his forties with a paunchy build and receding hairline—stood behind her against the wall, one arm crossed over his chest, the other holding a small tablet.
When an anchor appeared on-screen again, the mayor pressed a button on a flat remote and glanced at us, fingers now interlaced in her folded hands. She looked at each of us in turn, then settled her gaze on my grandfather. “Mr. Merit.”
“Madam Mayor.”
“You know my chief of staff, Lane Conrad.”
They exchanged nods.
“It’s snowing outside for no apparent reason and from no apparent band of moisture,” the mayor said. “That is disturbing. And that video, of course, is disturbing in its own right.”
He nodded. “Agreed on both counts, Your Honor.”
“And their cause?”
“Both phenomena are under investigation. That said, we’ve just been informed the wards have been tripped.”
Both the mayor and her aide went very still.
“She is back in my city?” the mayor asked, forcing the pronoun through a tight jaw.
Good, I thought. At least that anger was directed appropriately. That might make dealing with the problem a little bit easier.
“Not that we’re aware of, but that’s within the CPD’s jurisdiction. The wards were tripped when the snow began to fall.”
“So she created the snowfall?”
“That’s the logical conclusion. The timing suggests either she created it or she caused it to happen by some other magical manipulation. We’ll begin investigating that as soon as we leave here.”
“And the delusions?” the aide asked, without looking up from his tablet. “Early reports say they’re magical, too.”
My grandfather kept his gaze on the mayor. “We don’t have any definitive evidence one way or the other. But there are indicia of magic.”
“Which are what?” the mayor asked.
“Magic has a unique kind of energy,” my grandfather explained. “A buzz that’s detectable by other supernaturals, and occasionally carries a particular scent. The vampire that attacked Merit at Cadogan House had that scent. And so did these humans.”
The aide lowered his tablet. “The humans had magic?”
“Not precisely. More that it seemed they’d been touched by it.”
“By Sorcha?”
“We don’t have any evidence of that at this time, Your Honor. The wards weren’t tripped until the snowfall.”
“You said a delusional vampire attacked Merit?” the mayor asked. “When was this, and why wasn’t it reported to me?”
“The vampire, by all appearances, was emotionally unstable,” my grandfather said. “He attacked Merit night before last. We had no reason at that time to believe the attack was anything more than the action of a sick man.”
She gestured toward the window. “And now the snow. How are they connected?”
“We have no reason to believe they’re related at this time.”
“They’re both magic,” Lane said, crossing his arms over his tablet and exuding haughty skepticism.
“We aren’t saying they won’t ultimately prove to be related,” my grandfather said. “Just that we haven’t found the common thread yet. The humans’ identities were only released to us an hour ago, so we haven’t been able to research or interview them completely.” He gave Lane a none-too-friendly glance.
“Your office opens at dusk,” Lane said, with superior tone.
“Yours doesn’t,” my grandfather said.
“Gentlemen.” The mayor’s tone was crisp, her gaze narrowed at my grandfather. “If this is a supernatural activity, it remains under your jurisdiction. Lane, you will provide Mr. Merit with information as it is gathered.”
Lane looked prepared to mutter behind her back, but tapped something on his tablet.
“Thank you, Madam Mayor.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Mr. Merit. That means this remains your problem. Determine the cause and correct it. And if it is that woman . . .” She paused, clearly working to control her anger. “We will deal with her as is appropriate for a traitor, a murderer, a sociopath.” Her gaze lifted again. “Is that understood?”
My grandfather nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The media,” the aide prompted, gaze on his tablet, and the mayor nodded.
“Reporters will, of course, be contacting all of you for comment. For the time being, please direct those inquiries to our public relations staff. We may want you to speak to the public later. But I would prefer for these matters to be investigated and addressed before that becomes necessary. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly, ma’am.”
“Then you’re dismissed,” she said. “Keep us apprised and keep the city safe.”
Easier said than done.
• • •
It was still snowing when we stepped into the street again. The temperature had dropped a little since we’d been inside, but that was probably due to the cooling night, not any magic by Sorcha—or anyone else. Still not cold enough for the snow to stick, although the sidewalk and streets gleamed with water.
My grandfather held out a hand, watched dime-sized flakes float into his palm, melt. “There are things I wouldn’t have thought I’d see in this or any other lifetime. Magical snow is definitely one of them.”
“That went better than I’d have thought,” Ethan said. “Much less blame assigning than I thought she’d do.”
“She’s learning,” my grandfather said. “And I’ll give her credit for that. But it’s hard to say how long it will last.”
“As long as the city stays mostly safe,” Catcher said, pulling out his phone. “If it gets worse, she’ll look for someone to
blame.”
“The aide’s willing to hang us now for not having all the answers,” Ethan said.
“Lane is an impatient man,” my grandfather agreed. “But if our office is to be seriously considered the arbiter of magical issues, it’s fair for us to demand we resolve it. That’s chain of authority.”
“It’s politics,” Catcher muttered.
“That, too.” My grandfather glanced around, settling his gaze on a line of brightly colored food trucks lined up in the Daley Center Plaza across the street: Spotted Dogs, which served gourmet hot dogs, Pizzataco, which served a pizza-taco hybrid, and Coriander Creamery, which served supposedly “gourmet” ice cream that mostly involved chopped herbs and flowers that didn’t have any business in hot fudge sundaes or sugar cones. In my humble opinion.
“Is anyone hungry?” he asked.
“I’ve heard the hot dog truck is pretty good,” Catcher said.
“I’m starving,” I said, to absolutely no one’s surprise. “But I don’t have any cash.” I rarely carried anything other than my ID and transit card. I glanced at Ethan. “At the risk of sounding anachronistically wifely, can you pay?”
“I can spare some money for you,” Ethan said. “Probably. How hungry are you, exactly?”
“You’re hilarious,” I said, but held his hand as we dashed between cars to the other side of the street.
We all opted for the hot dog truck, joining the line of people who hadn’t been fazed by the weather. But that didn’t stop them from speculating about it.
“It’s the vampires,” said the man in front of us, his voice thick with Chicago. He talked with his companion, who wore a Blackhawks jersey that matched his own.
“They work black magic in that House of theirs. Drove past it once, saw lights blazing in the middle of the night. I know what they were doing.”
Probably taxes or something equally dull, Ethan silently said. But who are we to argue?
Ethan was becoming increasingly frustrated with willing human prejudices.
“No,” said the woman in front of him, turning around to join the conversation. “It’s the witches. This is witch magic, and I’d put good money on it.” She glanced at his jersey, nodded. “Go, Hawks.”