IN THE STACKS

"ate, isn't it?" I blinked away black text and looked up, found Ethan walking toward my table. My immersion solution had worked - I hadn't even heard the library door open.

"Is it?" I flipped my wrist to check the time on my watch, but before I read the dial, he announced, "It's nearly three o'clock. You look to be engrossed."

Over an hour had passed, then, since we'd gone our separate ways. I'd been sitting in the chair with my sword poised beside me, Pumas discarded beneath the table, legs crossed, for most of that time.

I scratched my temple and glanced down at the book before me. "French Revolution," I told him.

Ethan looked confused and crossed his arms over his chest. "French Revolution? To what end are you researching the French Revolution?"

"Because we, I, will better understand who she is, what she's after, if we know where she came from."

"You mean Celina."

"Come here," I told him, flipping through a book to locate the passage I'd found earlier.

When he reached the opposite side of the table, I turned the book toward him and tapped a finger against the relevant paragraph.

Frowning, he braced his hands on the table, leaned forward, and read aloud. "The Navarre family owned substantial holdings in the Burgundy region of France, including a chateaux near Auxerre. On December 31, 1785, the oldest daughter, Marie Co lette, was born." He glanced up. "That would be Celina."

I nodded. Celina Desaulniers, nee Marie Collette Navarre. Vampires changed identities with some frequency, one burden of immortality being the fact that you outlived your name, your family. That tended to make humans a little suspicious; thus, the name changes.

Of course, Ethan had been a vampire for nearly two centuries before Celina had been a twinkle in her parents' aristocratic eyes, and she was a GP member. He'd probably long since memorized her name, date of birth, and hometown. But I thought the next few sentences, hidden away in this petite biography of a long-dead vampire, might be more interesting.

"Marie," he continued, "although born in France, was smuggled to England in 1789 to avoid the harshest persecutions of the Revolution. She became fluent in English and was considered highly intelligent and a rare beauty. She was raised as a foreign-born cousin of the Grenville family, which held the Dukedom of Buckingham. It was assumed that Miss Navarre would marry George Herbert, Viscount Penbridge, but the couple was never formally betrothed. George's family later announced his engagement to Miss Anne Dupree, of London, but George disappeared hours before the marriage was to have taken place."

Ethan made a sound of interest, looked up at me. "Shall we place any bets as to the disposition of poor George?"

"Unfortunately, that's unnecessary on all accounts. And we know what happened to Celina - she was made a vampire. But what's important is what happened to Anne." I waved a hand at him. "Skip to the footnote."

He frowned, but without taking his gaze away from the book, pulled out the chair in front of him. He settled himself into it, crossing one leg over the other, then arranged the book in his right hand, his left across his lap.

"George's body was found four days later," he continued. "The next day, Anne Dupree eloped with George's cousin, Edward." Ethan closed the book, placed it on the table, and frowned at me. "I assume you've taken me on a stroll through English social history for a reason?"

"Now you're ready for the punch line," I told him, and pulled from my stack a slim, leather-bound volume, this one providing biographical information about the current members of the Greenwich Presidium. I turned to the page I'd flagged and read aloud:

"Harold Monmonth, holding the Presidium's fourth position and serving as Council Prelect, was born Edward Fitzwilliam Dupree in London, England, 1774." I lifted my gaze from the book, watched the connections form in his expression.

"So she and Edward, or Harold - what - plotted together? To have George killed?"

I closed the book, placed it on the table. "Do you remember what she said in the park, right before she attempted to fillet you? Something about humans being callous, about a human breaking her heart? Well, let me lay this out for you from a woman's perspective.

You're living in a foreign country with your English cousins because you've been smuggled out of France. You're considered a rare beauty, cousin to a duke, and at the age of nineteen, you nab the first son of a viscount. That's our George. You want him, maybe you love him. You certainly love that you've managed to entice him. But just when you think you've sealed the deal, noble George tells you that he's fallen for the daughter of a London merchant. A merchant, Ethan. Someone Celina would have considered far, far beneath her. You don't bear any particular grudge toward Anne. You may even pity her for being less than what you are." I put my elbows on the table, leaned forward. "But you don't pity George. George, who could have had you, your beauty, your prestige, by his side. He throws you away for London trash." I lowered my voice. "Celina would never let that stand. And what if, conveniently, George has an older cousin, a thirty-year-old cousin, who has an attachment to our dear Anne, who is all of sixteen? You and Edward have a conversation. Mutual goals are discussed. Plans are made, and George's body is found in a London slum."

"Plans are made," Ethan repeated, nodding, "and two members of the Presidium have a murder between them. The Presidium that released Celina, despite what she'd done in Chicago."

I nodded back. "Why bother enthralling Presidium members with your glamour, or relying on your charms, as you put it, when you've got that kind of shared history?

When you share a mutual belief in the disposability of humans?"

Ethan then looked down at the table, seemed to consider what he'd heard. A sigh, then he raised his gaze to mine again. "We could never prove this."

"I know. And I think this information shouldn't leave the House, not until we're more certain of who our friends are. But if we're trying to predict what she might do, where she might go, who her friends are, this is the best way to start. Well," I added, "this is the best way for me to start." I gazed across the table of books, open notebooks, uncapped pens - a treasure trove of information, waiting to be connected. "I know how to search an archive, Ethan. That's one skill I have no doubts about."

"It's unfortunate that your best source loathes you."

That made me smile. "Can you imagine the look on Celina's face if I called and asked her to sit down with me? Told her I wanted to interview her?"

He smirked. "She might appreciate the press." He glanced down at his watch. "And speaking of the press, the Masters should be here with the results of their inquiries within the hour."

It wasn't the best thing I'd heard all day, that I'd have to face down Morgan again, but I understood that it was necessary.

"I'd hoped to keep this contained, but we've clearly reached the point where the other Masters need to be brought on board." He cleared his throat, shuffled uncomfortably in his chair, then lifted ice green eyes to mine. "I won't ask what happened at your parents house with Morgan, but I need you there. Your position aside, you were a witness to the meeting with the Breckenridges, to their accusations."

I nodded. I understood the need. And I gave him points for diplomatically mentioning it.

"I know."

He nodded, then picked up the small book of history again, began flipping through the pages. I guessed he planned to wait in the library until they arrived. I adjusted in my seat, a little uncomfortable at the company, but once he was settled in, and when I was reasonably confident that he intended to read quietly, I turned back to my notes.

Minutes passed, peacefully. Ethan read or strategized or planned or whatever he did on his side of the table, occasionally tapping at a BlackBerry he'd pulled from his pocket, while I continued thumbing through the history books before me, searching for additional information about Celina.

I was beginning a chapter on the Napoleonic Wars when I felt Ethan's gaze. I kept my eyes downcast for a minute, then two, before I gave in and lifted my eyes. His expression was blank.

"What?"

"You're a scholar."

I turned back to my book. "We've talked about this before. A few nights ago, if you'll recall."

"We've talked about your social discomfort, your love of books. Not the fact that you've spent more time with a book in your hand than you have with your Housemates."

Cadogan House was apparently full of spies. Someone was reporting our activities to whoever had threatened Jamie, and someone had apparently been reporting my activities to Ethan.

I shrugged self-consciously. "I enjoy research. And given the ignorance that you've repeatedly pointed out, I need it."

"I don't want to see you hide yourself away in this room."

"I do my job."

Ethan returned his gaze to his book. "I know."

The room was quiet again until he shuffled in his chair, the wood squeaking as he adjusted. "These chairs aren't at all comfortable."

"I didn't come down here for comfort." I looked up, gave him a predatory grin. "You're free to work in your office."

I didn't have that luxury. Yet.

"Yes, we're all agog at your studiousness."

I rolled my eyes, pricked by the accumulation of subtle insults. "I get that you have no confidence in my work ethic, Ethan, but if you're going to think up insults, could you do it somewhere else?"

His voice was flat, calm. "I have no doubts about your work ethic, Sentinel."

I pushed back my chair, then walked around the table to the pile of books at one end. I shuffled through the stack until I found the text I needed. "Could have fooled me," I muttered, flipping through to the index and tracing the alphabetical entries with a fingertip.

"I don't," he said lightly. "But you're so - what did you tell me once?" He glanced up, looked absently at the ceiling. "Ah, that I was easy to prick? Well, Sentinel, you and I have that in common."

I arched a brow. "So in the middle of a crisis, because you're angry at Celina and the Breckenridges, you've come down here to get a rise out of me? That's mature."

"You've missed my point completely."

"I didn't realize you had one," I muttered.

"I find it unfortunate," Ethan said, "that this is what your life would have been."

We avoided, usually, the issue of my dissertation. Of my looming doctorate. Of the fact that he'd had me pulled from the University of Chicago after he made me a vampire. It helped me, and therefore him vicariously, not to dwell on it. But for him to insult it, to insult what I'd done, managed a new level of pretension.

I looked up at him, palms flat on the table. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you'd have finished your dissertation, secured a professorship at some East Coast liberal arts college, and then what? You'd buy yourself a cottage and update that box on wheels you call a car, and you'd spend most of your time in your tiny office nitpicking antiquated literary conceits."

I stood straight, crossed my arms over my chest, and had to take a moment in order to keep from snapping back at him. And I only did that because he was my boss.

Still, my tone was frosty. "Nitpicking antiquated literary conceits?"

His arched brows challenged me to respond.

"Ethan, it would have been a quiet life, I know that. But it would have been fulfilling." I looked down at my katana. "Maybe a little less adventurous, but fulfilling."

"A little less?"

His voice was so sarcastic it was nearly flabbergasting. I took it to be vampire arrogance that he couldn't believe the ordinary lives of human beings were in any way rewarding.

"Exciting things can happen in archives."

"Such as?"

Think, Merit, think. "I could unravel a literary mystery. Find a missing manuscript. Or, the archive could be haunted," I suggested, trying to think of something a little more in his area of expertise.

"That's quite a list, Sentinel."

"We can't all be soldiers turned Master vampires, Ethan." And thank God for that. One of him was plenty enough.

Ethan sat forward, linked his fingers on the table, and gazed at me. "My point, Sentinel, is this: Compared to this world, your new life, your human life would have been cloistered. It would have been a small life."

"It would have been a life of my choosing." Hoping to end that particular line of conversation, I closed the book I'd pretended to stare at. I picked it up, along with a couple of its companions, and walked them back to their shelves.

"It would have been a waste of you."

Thankfully, I was facing the bookshelf when he offered that little nugget, as I don't think he'd have appreciated the eye roll or mimicry. "You can stop plying me with compliments," I told him. "I've already gotten you in to see my father and the mayor."

"If you believe that sums up our interactions over the last week, you've missed the point."

When I heard the slide of his chair, I paused, hand on the spine of a book about French drinking customs. I pushed the book back in line with its comrades and said lightly, "And you've insulted me again, which means we're back on track."

I gathered up the next book in my stack, my eyes scanning the Dewey Decimal numbers on the shelves to locate its home.

In other words, I was trying very, very hard not to think about the sound of footsteps behind me, or the fact that they were moving closer.

Interesting that I hadn't yet moved out of his path.

"My point, Sentinel, is that you are more than a woman who hides in a library."

"Hmm," I nonchalantly said, sliding the final book into its home. I knew what was coming. I could hear it in his voice - the low, thick hum of it. I didn't know why he was trying, given his apparently conflicted feelings about me, but this was the prelude to seduction.

Footsteps, and then he was next to me, his body behind mine, his lips at the spot of skin just below my ear. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my neck. The smell of him - clean, soapy, almost discomfortingly familiar. As much as the want of it disturbed me, I wanted to sink back against him, let him envelop me.

Part of that, I knew, was vampire genetics, the fact that he'd changed me, some kind of evolutionary connection between Master and vampire.

But part of it was much, much simpler.

"Merit."

Part of it was boy and girl.

I shook my head. "No, thank you."

"Don't deny it. I want this. You want this."

He said the words, but the cant of them was wrong. Irritated. Not words of desire, but an accusation. As if we'd fought the attraction and hadn't been strong enough to resist it, and we were worse off for it.

But if Ethan fought it, he didn't resist. He leaned in, a hand at my waist, his body behind mine, and grazed his teeth along the sensitive skin of my neck. The breath shuddered out of me, my eyes rolling back, the vampire inside me thrilled by the innate dominance of the act. I tried to fight my way to the surface of the rising lust, and made the mistake of turning around, facing him. I'd been intent on giving him what-for, on sending him away, but he took full advantage of my shift in position.

Ethan pressed closer, one hand on each side of me, fingers gripping the shelves, framing my body with his, and stared down at me, eyes as green as cut emeralds. He raised a hand to my face, stroked my lip with his thumb. His eyes became quicksilver, a sure sign of his hunger. Of his arousal.

"Ethan," I said, a hesitation, but he shook his head, gaze dropping to my lips, then drifting shut. He leaned closer, his lips just touching mine. Teasing, hinting, but not quite kissing. My lids fell, and his hands were at my cheeks, fingers at my jaw, his breath staccato and rushed as his lips traced a trail, pressed kisses, against my closed eyes, my cheeks, everywhere but my lips.

"You are so much more than that."

It was the words that did me in, that sealed my fate. My core went liquid, body humming, limbs languid as he worked to arouse me, to incite me.

I opened my eyes and looked up at him as he pulled back, his eyes wide and intense and insanely green. He was so beautiful, his eyes on me, the desire clear, golden hair around his face, ridiculous cheekbones, mouth that would tempt a saint.

"Merit," he roughly said, then leaned his forehead against mine, asking for my consent, my permission.

I wasn't a saint.

My eyes wide, decision made and the repercussions be damned, I nodded.