Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [12]
“I call ’em like I see ’em. Wanna schedule a dinner break? Maybe sushi?”
“Breaks aren’t really on my agenda right now. I have a lot to focus on. But you might think about not hogging down snack cakes right before bedtime.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Liar,” she accused, but I was saved the necessity of lying any further. My Cadogan House beeper—a guard necessity—all but buzzed off my nightstand. I leaned over and snatched it up. OPS ROOM, it read. ASAP.
Unfortunately, “ASAP” translated only one way in Cadogan House these days: “It’s time for another meeting.” Once again, with feeling: another meeting. Kelley, our newly appointed guard captain, was a fan.
“Mal,” I said, climbing off the bed, “I need to run. It’s time to play Sentinel. Good luck with your exams.”
Mallory made a huffy noise. “Luck doesn’t figure into it. But sweet dreams to you.”
I hung up the phone, not thrilled about our conversation, but well aware that I needed to pick my battles. I’d done a really crappy job of supporting Mallory when she’d discovered she was a sorceress, mostly because I’d been knee-deep in newbie vampire drama at the time. I needed to be supportive, even if it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place to be. This was not the time to lay into her about sarcasm. She’d given me slack when I’d needed it; it was time to repay the favor.
Besides—we both had other fights to wage.
Luc took his job seriously, but he also had a pretty good sense of humor. He brought a jokey camaraderie to the Ops Room, along with a taste for denim, swearing, and beef jerky. Luc was a great strategist and a big picture kind of guy. I was perfectly fine with all those qualities.
Kelley, his replacement, was smart, savvy, and skilled . . . but she was no Luc—cowboy boots or otherwise.
When she’d accepted the position, she’d chopped her silky dark hair into a short, sleek bob. Her hair became all business, and so did the Cadogan House guards. Our schedule became tighter, our meetings more formal. She scheduled daily workouts and required us to complete end-of-shift reports. Virtually everything in the Ops Room had become virtual, and the few bits of paper that remained were color-coded, tabbed, alphabetized, and collated. We had time cards and name tags, and we were required to wear the latter during our nightly patrols of the House grounds “for public relations.”
“Part of keeping a safe House,” Kelley had said, “is instilling a sense of trust in the neighborhood. If they know who we are, they’ll be less inclined to violence.”
It’s not that I didn’t agree. It’s just—name tags? Really?
But while I thought the idea was corny, I didn’t voice the objection. When Ethan had been Master, before they’d needed me back in the guard corps, I’d spent most of my time on special assignments with him. Now that he was gone, Kelley was my boss and my primary point of contact for the House.
She was my boss, so she’d get no name tag arguments from me. Besides, now was the time for solidarity, name tags or not. We’d had enough upheaval lately.
Surprisingly, the Ops Room was meeting-free when I arrived, post-shower and clothed in my Cadogan uniform—a black, slim-fit suit. Lindsey and Juliet sat at two of the room’s computer stations, while Kelley stood beside the conference table, a cell phone in hand, her eyes on the screen.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Without a word, Kelley turned her cell phone around and thrust it toward me. A picture filled the screen—or what I assumed was a picture, since the screen was pitch-black and I couldn’t actually see anything.
“I don’t get it.”
“This is Lake Michigan.”
I frowned, trying to figure out what I’d missed. Lake Michigan made up the eastern border of the city. Since we were awake only at night, the lake was always pitch-dark by the time we woke up. So I didn’t understand the concern.
“I’m sorry,” I told her apologetically, “but I still don’t get it.”
Kelley pulled back the phone, punched some buttons, and swiveled it again. This time, it displayed a photo of a drinking glass full of