Hard Bitten

OVER THE RAINBOW

Ten minutes later - and presumably an excuse to Ethan and Darius - Malik joined us in the Ops Room. We put Lindsey, who'd been outside patrolling the grounds, on speakerphone so she could listen in.

"I'm on," Lindsey said. "Get to it, Hot Shit."

She really did love me.

"So you know the basics," I told them. "We previously saw small raves - a handful of vampires, a few people, some drinking. Now we're talking full-on parties with lots of vamps, lots of humans, and lots of potential for violence.

I didn't see the kind of violence Tate talked about while we were there - but we pulled the plug as quickly as we could. We know humans are being pretty severely glamoured, maybe helped in part by a drug being passed around.

And we think the human invites are originating from the House bars."

The room went silent, everyone exchanging looks of concern.

"Your evidence?" Malik asked.

"The phone that got the text about last night's shindig was left at Benson's, the Grey House bar.

And another human told us she found out about the party when she met a short man and a woman named Marie outside Temple Bar."

Malik's lip curled. "Someone is using our place to hit on humans."

"That appears to be the case."

There was only one word for the look in his eyes - determination. "And what's your plan?"

"Well, in a perfect world, the plan would be not pissing off the GP. But as we know, this is clearly not a perfect world."

There were general grumbles of agreement around the room.

"Darius wants us safe and sound inside Cadogan House - where, for now, he can keep an eye on us - not stirring up trouble outside the House. But there's already trouble brewing out there, and if we don't get a handle on it, things are going to go south very quickly. We can't just sit here and watch the city fall around us.

"I know I'm young," I continued, "but I also have an obligation to do the things I think are necessary to protect the House. Even if Darius doesn't approve . . . and even if Ethan doesn't know about them."

I let that implication sink in for a minute, and then dropped my voice. "I've given him a general heads-up, but I'm not giving him details, and he's not going. The less he knows - "

"The less Darius can use him as a scapegoat," Malik said.

I nodded in agreement. "Precisely. The short of it is, he gave me a thumbs-up to make the best decision I could, and I want to give you all the same courtesy. The GP is putting enough pressure on the House without me adding to it. If you want to know what I'm doing, I'll tell you. If not" - I held up my hands - "no worries. You can deny you knew anything was going on, and hopefully that will shield you from Darius if worse comes to worst."

My piece said, I glanced around the room again.

Luc kicked a booted foot onto the tabletop.

"Are you seriously asking us if we're not going to take your side against the GP? Seriously, Sentinel? I thought I taught you better than that.

We are a team - and you're a member of it."

"And you're getting better at the speechifying," Lindsey said. "I think Sullivan's going to your head. Oh, and I'm totally in."

Juliet and Kelley smiled at each other, then at me.

"We're obviously in, too," Kelley said.

"We've known Ethan a lot longer than we've known Darius. He may not be perfect, but he's concerned about the House, not just the politics."

"Agreed," Juliet said.

We all looked at Malik, the only one I wasn't quite sure of. It was not that I doubted his allegiances, but he was quiet enough that I wasn't entirely sure where I stood with him.

"Your heart is in the right place," he said.

"That's all I need to know."

I smiled at him, then nodded at the group.

"Okay, then. Here's the plan."

Fast-forward forty-five minutes to a gaggle of vampires emerging from a cab into the dark, muggy street in front of Temple Bar, not far from Wrigley Field. Me, Lindsey, and Christine  - Christine Dupree, before she lost her name to join the House, another vamp from my Novitiate class - dressed to the nines in chic shades of black, gray, and red and makeupped within an inch of our immortal lives.

We probably looked like the new cast of Charlie's Angels. I was the spunky brunette, Lindsey was the sassy blonde, and Christine  - formerly a brunette - was now rocking a sleek bob of russet hair.

Christine wasn't a guard, and she and I weren't exactly close friends. Since we were bringing her into something that could get her in trouble - and demanded her loyalty - Luc gave her a lecture on duty. We didn't give her all the details about the raves; she only knew that we were looking into bad acts at Temple Bar. She seemed eager to help, which was good enough for me.

As for the bar itself, I'd decided on a new plan - playing the bait.

The Cadogan vamps knew me as Sentinel and Lindsey as guard. But they also knew that Christine was the daughter of Dash Dupree, a notorious Chicago lawyer, and that I was the daughter of Joshua Merit, Mr. Chicago Real Estate Bigwig.

I'd realized at the Streeterville party that I could fake party girl pretty well, so I was going to try it again. And with creds like mine and Christine's, no one was going to question two socialites mixing it up at Temple Bar, asking questions about new kinds of excitement.

There was a line outside the door. Although humans hadn't been allowed in the House, Tate hadn't extended the ban to the bars. Colin and Sean had gotten creative, installing neon signs above the door to help visitors keep track.

Tonight, the HUMANS and CADOGAN lights were lit, which meant vamps from Navarre or Grey were out of luck.

The human part was fine by me, as it would help us accomplish part one of my Temple Bar Infiltration Plan, or T-BIP. Unfortunately, the ban on Grey and Navarre vamps wasn't going to help. I'd hoped I could use the night to get info from the other Houses about the raves and drugs.

Oh, well. Jonah could get me into Grey House.

As for Navarre, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

Christine, Lindsey, and I sauntered in like we owned the place, then stood in the front of the bar for a moment . . . to see and be seen.

I took a moment to appreciate the locale.

Temple Bar was practically a shrine to the Cubs, my favorite sports team. The walls were lined with uniforms and pennants, and Cubs memorabilia covered every free spot in the bar.

The bar was run by two redheaded vampires, also brothers, Sean and Colin. They kept all things Irish and Cubbie alive and well in Wrigleyville.

"First stop in T-BIP," I told my accomplices, "identifying humans who might have gotten an invite to a once or future rave so we can identify the host."

"Or hostess," Lindsey added. "Let's not forget the Celina possibility."

"Can we please stop calling it T-BIP?"

Christine put in. "I get that you enjoy acronyms, but that sounds ridiculous."

"Unfortch," Lindsey said, "I have to agree.

Unless the acronym is a helluva lot more rugged.

Like 'DANGER' or 'KILLFACE' or 'STUN GUN' or something."

I slid her a questioning glance. "And what, exactly, would 'DANGER' stand for?"

"Um." She looked up at the ceiling while she made up an answer. "'Dedicated, angsty Novitiate girls examining risk'? Or maybe, 'drugs are never good entertainment, right?'"

"Lame," I muttered.

"Aw, sadface. I came up with that totally off the cuff. No props for off the cuff?"

"Ladies," Christine said, holding up a hand.

"Let's act our ages and stay on target."

Lindsey and I exchanged a guilty glance. I'm honest enough to admit that sarcasm and silliness were my preferred methods of dealing with stress. But I had a lot of it, and it wasn't like I could just break out a Mallocake mid-katanafight.

Coolly, Christine surveyed the crowd like a lion eyeing a herd of water buffalo - dedicated to finding the weakest link. We figured any humans at a vamp bar were more likely to remember a socialite turned vampire and trust her with their vamp-party information.

"There," she finally said, pointing with a carefully manicured finger to a couple of human guys in fraternity shirts who, by the look of the empty pitcher on their table, had already done some imbibing.

"I start there," she said, then sauntered across the room toward her unsuspecting victims. The guys' heads lifted as she neared them, their eyes going a little glazy, although I wasn't sure if that was because the two of them had finished a pitcher or because she was throwing out some serious glamour.

"Strong Psych?" I asked Lindsey. That was the measure for a vamp with a lot of glamouring capability.

"Nope," Lindsey said. "Those dopey expressions are one hundred percent about her lovely lady lumps."

If so, those lumps were proven winners; one of the boys hopped up and offered Christine a chair.

She took it, demurely crossing one leg over another, then leaning forward to chat with the boys. If they had any pertinent information, I had no doubt she'd ferret it out.

"She is surprisingly good at this," I said, glancing over at Lindsey. "Is Luc interviewing her for a job?"

"I'm not sure she works," Lindsey said. "She's more the trust fund type - which comes in very handy in situations like this. On the other hand, no complaining if we start having dinner in the Dash Dupree Memorial Cafeteria a decade from now."

I chuckled, then looked over at the bar. "Since her work is under way, let's get moving on ours."

"Humans - check," Lindsey agreed, moving her finger in the shape of a check mark. "Now, shall we hit up the bartender?"

I winked at her and moved toward the bar.

"Just try and keep up, okay?"

Lindsey snorted. "Honey, you may have the steak, but I got the sizzle."

Only Colin, who was a little older and taller than Sean, was working the bar tonight.

"If he's solo, it might not be a good time to tear him away," Lindsey said as she followed me over.

I took her point, but countered with my own.

"We're nocturnal, and he probably works the bar until sunup. I'm not sure there would be a good time to tear him away, and we need to find out what's going on."

We bypassed the two-deep crowd of humans and vamps in front of the bar and went directly to the end of it. I waited until Colin moved toward us, wiping his hands on a towel stuck into his belt, before I popped the question.

"Can we talk in private for a few minutes?"

With a dubious expression, Colin turned to grab two beers out of a small refrigerator, then put them on the bar and grabbed the cash a vamp had dropped there. "Busy tonight. Can it wait?"

"Um, hello?" Lindsey asked, moving beside me and propping an elbow on the bar. "I'm here. I can watch the bar."

Colin frowned at her. "Are you up for it?"

"Honey, I spent a decade of my rather glorious life pouring shots in the East Village. These people will be both drunk and entertained by the time you get back, or I'm not one of the top ten hotties of Cadogan House. Seriously," she added with a glance at me. "There's a list, and we're both on it."

"Nice," I said. Not bad for a former library-bound grad student.

From hottie to barmaid, Lindsey didn't waste any time sidling behind the bar and slapping a white towel over her shoulder.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she announced, "who needs a drink?"

When the crowd let out an appreciative hoot, Colin put his hand at my back and steered me toward the other end of the bar. "Let's go to the office. It's a little quieter back there."

I followed as he made a loop through the bar.

He worked the room like a seasoned politician: checking on drinks, kissing pretty girls on the cheek, recommending pizza toppings at the joint next door, and inquiring after the parents of apparently human friends. I didn't know Colin much at all, but he was clearly well liked, as much a fixture of the bar as the Cubs gear and vampires.

When we made it across the room, we stopped in the photograph-covered back hallway - and past a picture of Ethan and Lacey Sheridan, his former flame - and into a small room at the end.

Colin pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door. The office was small - barely large enough to hold a metal desk and beat-up file cabinet. Every free surface was covered in papers - magazines, notes, checks, tax returns, pages from yellow legal pads, folded newspapers, sports programs, invoices, take-out menus.

The walls were also covered, although the content was much less kid-friendly. Posters and calendars featuring pinups from the last seventy years were plastered like wallpaper across the room, busty blondes and brunettes in tiny shorts and three-inch heels smiling down at us coquettishly. It looked like the office you might find in a service station or quick-lube shop. Not exactly the kind of place that made it comfortable to be a woman, but then again, I wasn't the target audience.

"Nice digs," I politely said.

"We like it," he said. "Get the door, would you?"

I closed it, which lowered the volume just enough to allow us to talk instead of screaming.

Colin slid around the desk and pulled open the top drawer of the file cabinet. He slipped a small metal flask out of the drawer, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip.

"Booze?" I wondered aloud.

"Type O. My own special concoction." He offered it to me, but I shook him off. I needed a clear head, and I wasn't confident Colin's "special concoction" was going to keep me in a business-minded place.

"No, thank you."

The flask still in one hand, he pulled out an ancient desk chair, the back cushion covered by more duct tape than fabric, and took a seat.

"Now, Ms. Sentinel, what can I do for you?"

"Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary around here lately?"

He made a sarcastic sound. "Once upon a time, this was a bar for vampires. For the fanged and their kith and kin. Since we came out of the closet, I've been serving humans who think male vamps are brooding, romantic heroes and female vamps have a secret weight-loss formula. I'm also occasionally serving humans who think vamps are trash and the harbingers of the apocalypse. So out of the ordinary? Yes, Sentinel. I'd say so."

By the end of the rant, his words had sped up, and the faster he talked, the more pronounced his accent became. I'd never been to Ireland, but I could hear green hills in his voice.

He also had a point, but I was looking for something a little more specific, so I got to mine.

"We think vamps are using the bar to find humans for a new kind of rave. Anything like that ring a bell?"

He took a sip from his flask. "Like I said, plenty of humans want to spend time with vampires. I'm not sure I'd recognize the difference between a vamp hitting on a human and a vamp inviting a human to attend a drinking party of some type."

"Fair enough." I gnawed my lip for a moment, disappointed he hadn't given me any breakthrough information. "Okay, how about drugs? Something called V? It might be used to make humans susceptible to glamour."

His brows lifted with interest. "You don't say. Are we so unskilled at glamour these days that we have to resort to pharmaceuticals to do the job?"

"We're not sure yet about how it works - just that it's been found at a party."

He shrugged one shoulder. "This is a bar; drugs are par for the course. I haven't heard about any new drugs being passed around, but that doesn't mean it's not happening."

Strike three for the Sentinel, but I tried again.

"What about familiar characters? Anyone hanging around the bar a lot more than usual?

Anyone out of place, or anyone who pops up over and over?"

Colin leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, the flask nestled beneath his arms like a doll. "I don't want to rain on your parade, and I appreciate everything you do for the House as Sentinel. But to be frank, I spend my time trying to ensure the vampires and humans in this bar are well tended and entertained and have an opportunity to burn off a little of the steam that builds up through the workweek. But if you're asking me if I've seen anything suggesting Temple Bar is the new HQ for some kind of rave movement? Then no, I have not."

Deflated, I sighed. I'd figured the guy who spent most of his time at the bar was going to have the best insight into what Sarah had thought was going on at Temple Bar. But he had a point; he might have had the access, but he also had plenty else to do.

I nodded. "Thanks for the honesty. Get in touch if you think of anything?"

He offered a wink. "Rest assured, Sentinel."

With no more information in hand, I excused Colin and headed back into the bar.

And that was when I got surprise number two.

I knew Lindsey had been born in Iowa. I knew her father was a pork producer. I knew she'd lived in New York and had an allegiance toward the Yankees that I, as a loyal Cubs fan, could only assume was the result of some sort of low-grade vampire insanity.

I did not know she was bartender extraordinaire.

I found Lindsey behind the bar and a crush of vamps fourdeep, dollars in hand, shouting her name like she'd just won them a pennant.

Girl was a phenomenon. She spun a cocktail shaker horizontally in one hand and a bottle of blue alcohol in the other. The crowd let out a "Woot!" when she flipped the bottle over her shoulder and caught it again in the palm of her hand, then dumped the contents of both containers into a martini glass. The bottle and shaker hit the top of the bar, and then the glass was in her hand and headed for the vampire in front of her. She tidily plucked cash from the vamp's extended fingers and pushed it into a jar.

The crowd around her let out a round of applause; Lindsey made a little bow and then began prepping a drink for the next vamp in line.

The vamps at the bar watched her movements with shifting eyes as if they were waiting for a once-in-a-lifetime sip of rare and limited wine.

Personally, I didn't understand the appeal, but I wasn't much of a drinker.

I turned at the tap on my shoulder and found Christine at my side.

"Anything to report?"

She gestured toward the boys. "Our new favorite fraternity brothers are here at least once a week, usually on weekends. Last Friday, they were smoking in the alley when a man approached them, made some overtures about trying out a new vampire experience. As it turns out, while our fraternity brothers were brave enough to venture into a vampire bar, they weren't quite brave enough for anything more than that." She gave me a knowing smile.

"Drinking at a bar with vamps apparently gives them a taste of danger without the calories, so to speak. They didn't get a good look at the man, but - "

I held up a hand to stop her, satisfaction warming my blood. I really did enjoy the moment when the puzzle pieces began to fall into place.

"Let me guess - he was short, older, dark hair?"

Her eyes widened in surprise. "How did you know?"

"My witness was taking a breather outside when she was approached by a man with the same description."

"And he's using Temple Bar as his own personal recruiting ground?"

"That might be the case."

Rowdy applause split the air near the bar. I looked over just in time to see Lindsey finish up another drink and clap her hands together like a Vegas dealer.

"And now, for my next trick," she said, sliding me a glance, "something vampires never get to see. I will make your House social chair do my bidding!"

With the encouragement of the crowd, she beckoned me over. I rolled my eyes, but the crowd apparently appreciated the humor, so I did my part and slid behind the bar.

She immediately began bossing me around, pointing to medium-sized glasses. "Give me seven of those and line 'em up along the bar."

When I did as directed, Lindsey grabbed a clean cocktail shaker and began pouring alcohol into it. After she'd layered five or six kinds of booze, she put the bottles down again and capped the shaker.

"You know what I miss?" she asked the crowd. "Clouds. Sunshine. That weird moment when it rains but the sun's still out. Sunrises.

Sunsets - until after the fact, of course."

The crowd chuckled appreciatively.

"But you know what I miss most of all?" she continued. "Rainbows, like a handful of Skittles thrown across the sky. So for all of you lovely Cadogan vamps, here's a rainbow, one color at a time."

With a flick of her wrist, Lindsey began pouring the liquid in a cascade over the glasses.

She filled the first glass with blue and, as soon as each glass was full, switched to the next. Like magic, the alcohol she'd layered into the cocktail shaker became a rainbow across the glasses, from turquoise to a bright shade of pink. When she was finished, there were seven glasses of liquid that stood on the bar like a perfect, wet rainbow.

"And that," she said, putting the shaker back on the bar, "is how vampires make rainbows."

The bar burst into applause. I had to admit, it was a pretty sweet trick. The drinks might not taste especially good - they looked like sci-fi movie props, to be honest - but they looked phenomenal.

Lindsey glanced over at me and grinned. "Not bad for a Yankees fan, eh?"

"Not bad at all," Colin said, stepping behind the bar again. "You did us proud."

He apparently hadn't been the only one impressed. The vamps along the bar, a mix of men and women, began jostling for position to get at one of the seven drinks.

"It's just booze, ladies and gents," Colin said with a chuckle, wiping up the excess alcohol Lindsey had spilled.

"There is plenty more where that came from," she added, "and I'm sure Colin would be happy to take your money for it."

Colin chuckled, but the jostling for Lindsey's drinks hit me as odd. Essentially, they were booze poured by a member of the House whom the vamps could have seen any night of the week - and in a bar they could have visited any night of the week.

My senses on edge, I moved back to the end of the bar, and caught Lindsey's glance from the corner of my eye. She'd watched me move, and ever the savvy guard, she gave the vamps the same once-over, saw them nudging one another to get to the alcohol.

That meant we were both watching the moment a little pushing erupted into a full-blown fight.