Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [74]
Her response chilled me: “PROTESTORS DOUBLED B/C OF SKY. ALL VAMPS ON GUARD. EXTRA FAIRIES AT GATE. NATIONAL GUARD CALLED. HUMANS BELIEVE APOCALYPSE IMMINENT,” was the immediate follow-up.
I muttered a curse.
“What?” Jonah quietly asked, but I held up a hand while I typed out a response to Kelley.
“RETURN HOME?” I asked her, “OR KEEP LOOKING?”
“CRISIS BEING MANAGED,” she responded. “KEEP LOOKING.”
I could definitely keep looking. It was the “finding” that was proving difficult. The message sent, I tucked the phone away again and updated Jonah.
“Humans think the end is nigh,” I told him. “The protestors at Cadogan House have doubled again.”
Alarm flashed in his eyes. “Do we need to get back?”
“Kelley says she’s on it and wants us to keep looking. Do you think you could have Scott make a call, maybe send some guards over?”
He answered without hesitation, sending an immediate message on his phone.
“Done,” he said after a moment, pushing the phone away again. “Scott is advised. Grey House is quiet, and he’ll contact Kelley and offer up some friends.”
Cadogan House didn’t have any alliances with other Houses in Chicago; maybe we could make an ally of Grey House, even if the circumstances weren’t ideal.
“I’ll go back to the Loop. I’ll search there for something that looks like a focus, and I’ll stick close to the water in case there’s some link we don’t know about between the water and sky. Why don’t you drive around this part of town? Hit the rest of the Gold Coast and Jackson Park. Call me if you find anything.”
He nodded. “Sure,” he said, then climbed out of my car and into his. I felt awkward leaving him after the kiss, but what else could I do?
There was only so much a girl could accomplish in a night.
Once I was on my way to the Loop, I turned the heat to maximum. Even though I’d felt a little claustrophobic in the tower, there was something weirdly soothing about cranking the heat on a cold night. There had been cold nights during grad school—nights when Mallory had been late at work or on a date with some law firm or financial services cutie—when I’d taken a study break by climbing into my car and driving across the city. I knew which roads had less traffic and relatively few lights, and I’d use the drive to zone out, to forget myself, to forget everything except the road in front of me.
Occasionally, I’d bring along an audiobook, the twelfth or thirteenth installment in some long-running mystery or action series I couldn’t seem to stop buying, even as the books became formulaic copies of the ones that came before. I’d crank up the sound just as I had the heat, and I’d drive across Chicago—sometimes into Indiana, sometimes into Wisconsin, sometimes into the Illinois countryside—to have a little time away.
This, of course, wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t have time for a joyride, and the trip wasn’t relaxing. The city was still filled with groups of people huddled on sidewalks or porches, staring tentatively up at the sky, taking pictures with cell phones and cameras.
There was no way “Crisis in Chicago!” wasn’t the lead story on every news station in the country, especially if the National Guard was involved. They’d all be looking for some reason for the sky and water, and I had absolutely nothing to offer them. I wish I had the answers they were looking for.
I crossed the river, the gleaming, inky black slice of it, and drove back into the Loop. The buildings were tighter here, but the sky seemed as red as it had at Potter Park, the lightning strikes just as frequent. No more, no less.
“Damn,” I quietly muttered. It was probably one of the few times anyone other than a meteorologist or storm chaser had rued the absence of a giant sucking tornado, as Jonah had put it, in a populated area. But it would have given me an answer. And those were few and far between these days.
Instead . . . there were questions. Questions about me. Questions about sorcerers. Questions about the House and its staff. Questions about the