Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [31]
“What’s that?”
“If it takes too long to turn the waters back, you may not be able to bring any of them back from the brink.”
Not that there was any pressure.
I spent the next few hours doing what any mature adult would do—hiding out in the library so I didn’t have to face down the receiver. It’s not just that I didn’t want to play justify-your-existence with Frank—I didn’t want to play justify-your-existence with a man charged with cataloging Ethan’s failures.
That was a threshold I didn’t want to cross—a bridge between my life with Ethan and my life without him. Not just emotionally, but because Ethan had initiated me into his House and taught me to stand Sentinel.
Frank, on the other hand, was an interloper, an interruption. When I met with him, I’d no longer be able to deny how different things in the House had become. That wasn’t an admission I was ready to make.
I also wasn’t ready to talk about the night Celina and Ethan had been killed. I didn’t think it possible that Frank, a GP representative, wouldn’t mention my role in the death of two Master vampires. I’d been waiting for the day the GP laid their deaths at my doorstep, blaming me for what had happened even though Tate had been controlling Celina, and Celina had killed Ethan. I wasn’t looking forward to debriefing him on those events.
So I was seated at a desk in a perfect hiding place, a carrel tucked back in the stacks at the end of a row—almost completely hidden from view.
I was scanning a book of Waterhouse paintings and scribbling notes about the spirits’ characteristics when I heard the efficient clip-clap of plastic-soled shoes heading in my direction.
I glanced up.
Helen, the House liaison for new vampires and a den mother for the House, came into view. She was a taskmaster, and she was dressed for the part tonight in a boxy gray suit paired with sensible heels and classic X-shaped earrings that probably cost a fortune. Since she was staring down at me, I assumed she was here on a mission.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Mr. Cabot is ready to speak with you. Please join him in the office.” She didn’t wait for a reply, but turned and walked back toward the door.
Ugh. Busted.
Helen was the type who ran only hot or cold, and offered no warning about which temperature might be in the pipes on any given day. She could fawn over a new pair of shoes one day and treat you like a stranger the next, barely acknowledging your existence. She was an odd duck, but since I didn’t usually interact with her, I didn’t worry too much about it.
Frank, on the other hand, apparently used her as an errand girl.
I dropped my forehead to the library table, gearing myself up for a meeting I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy. After a moment, I shut the book, then rose and scooted my chair beneath the table. I offered the librarian a nod as I passed him, then headed back to the stairs and Frank’s first-floor abode.
Why did I do all those things? Because sometimes, especially for vampires, drama was unavoidable. And on those days, a girl just had to suck it up.
For some reason, my favorite game as a child had been playing school. Except that I didn’t pretend to teach a class or be a student. I played class administrator. I put GREAT JOB! stickers on fake homework. I penned students’ names and attendance records in old-fashioned class roll books. I organized papers into piles, including ticket stubs and hotel letterhead from my father’s business trips.
I’m not sure why, but I loved paper and pens, markers and stamps, all manner of ephemera. As an adult, that translated into an appreciation for fancy pens and slick-papered notebooks. But as vast as my love of paper was, it was nothing compared to Frank’s.
He’d filled Ethan’s office with piles of paper. Trees would have wept from the sight. The sheer abundance made me wonder if Frank imagined the reams to be the source of some secret power—as if his ability to push paper (and stack it into tidy columns) were the keys to the Cadogan kingdom.
I was standing at the threshold,