"As we have agreed to the convocation," Gabriel said, his gaze on his cards as he interrupted the silence, "if the decision is made to stay in Chicago, it may be time to consider allying with one of the Houses."
I felt the sharp spike of magic around the room, and not all of it shifter. When I looked over at Ethan, his eyes were wide, lips parted. There was hope in his expression.
"There's never been an alliance between Pack and House," Jason said.
"Not formally," Gabriel agreed. "But as a colleague recently pointed out, the Houses didn't have the kinds of political and economic power they do now." I stood a little straighter, realizing I'd been the colleague he was referring to.
Jason tilted his head to the side. "You're suggesting an alliance would actually benefit us, as opposed to just benefiting vamps?"
"I'm suggesting that if we stay, friends will be invaluable. I imagine the Houses would be willing to entertain that kind of notion." Gabriel glanced over at Ethan, who was trying very hard, I could tell, not to look overeager.
"No, you're suggesting we make some kind of permanent arrangement with vampires." Tony all but spit out the words, the magic around him turning peppery, vinegary, as if his fury changed its flavor.
"The world is changing," Gabriel countered. "If we don't keep up, we risk ending up like the pixies - creatures of dreams and fantasy and fairy tales. No one thought they'd come to that kind of end, did they? And in the end, running back to the forest didn't save them."
"We are not f**king pixies," Tony muttered. Apparently fed up with poker and vampire politics, he threw his cards down on the table, then stood up. I tightened my grip on my katana, but Ethan nodded me back.
"Convocation is one thing," he said, punching a finger into the tabletop for emphasis. Anger swirled in his eyes like a freshly stoked fire. "But I'm not playing nice with vampires - I won't lose family - because you feel guilty about something that happened two hundred years ago, something none of us was involved in. Fuck that."
Tony clapped his hands together and threw them up like a dealer leaving his table. Then he disappeared out the red leather door, leaving it swinging angrily behind him.
CHAPTER SIX
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY . . . FRENEMY?
Tony might have walked out, but he left a wake of thick tension behind him. We all looked at Gabriel, waiting for direction.
"Let him go," he said, then began piling up the cards that Jason and Robin pitched onto the table. "He'll calm down."
"He usually does," Jason muttered, and I assumed this wasn't the first time Tony had thrown a temper tantrum. His concerns were understandable, the risks real. But dramatics weren't exactly helping.
"I don't know," Robin said, his shaded gaze on the door, "but this feels different." The door opened again, and a man who had Gabriel's same sun-streaked hair and golden eyes looked in, one eyebrow arched in amusement. He wore a snug black T-shirt and jeans, his body long and lean.
His shoulder-length hair was a shade blonder than Gabe's, but his week's worth of facial hair was a shade darker. That difference aside, there was no mistaking the relationship. They both had deep-set eyes and brutally handsome faces, and he exuded the same aura of power and unadulterated maleness.
This was a younger Keene, I guessed.
"Commotion, bro?" he asked.
"Drama," Gabriel replied, then glanced over at us. "Ethan, Merit, this is Adam. Adam, Ethan and Merit.
Adam is the youngest of the Keene brothers."
"Youngest and by far the smoothest," Adam said, checking out Ethan and me in turn. When he got to me, I saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, the appreciation of trim leather and scabbarded steel. His gaze lifted, met mine, and I felt the same punch of power and history I'd gotten when I'd met Gabriel. But Adam's punch, maybe because he was younger, had a greener, rawer feel.
Regardless, it took me a moment to drag my gaze away from Adam Keene and those hypnotic golden eyes, and I got a look of chastisement in green ones when I finally managed it.
Well, chastisement or jealousy.
I arched an eyebrow back at Ethan, then turned to Gabriel. "Brothers?"
"I'm the oldest. Mom wanted a big family, and she thought it would be funny if we were named alphabetically. She made it all the way to baby Adam, here, before she learned better."
"Hello, baby Adam," I said.
He smiled, a deep dimple perking up at the left corner of his mouth. My stomach wobbled a little.
Oh, yeah. This one was dangerous.
"Down, boy," Gabe said. "If she's going to be taken in by a Keene, it's not going to be you." He glanced back at me and winked. If I hadn't seen him with his wife and would-be son and hadn't known he was happily married, I'd have thought he was flirting with me. As it was, I figured he was showing off for baby brother.
Without warning, Gabriel pushed back his chair and stood up, then walked to the red leather door. His expression was severe. Confused, I looked at Ethan. What's happening? I silently asked him. He looked at the door for a moment and, for the first time since I'd known him, seemed unsure of the protocol.
But when the other shifters followed Gabriel back into the bar, Ethan followed. I stepped in line behind him. We found the alphas and the baby brother at the bar's front window, their broad-shouldered backs to us, their gazes on the dark street outside. The bar was silent - the music now off - and their body language was tense, the magic in the air prickly and bated as if they were waiting for something to happen.
"Robin?" Gabriel asked, without turning to face him.
Robin shook his head. "I don't feel him. I don't feel anybody."
"I don't like this," Gabriel said. "Something's off. And it's too quiet out there."
"Sentinel," Ethan said, "do you sense anything?"
"What kind of anything?" I asked.
"The shifter who left," Gabriel said. "Do you sense him . . . waiting?" I closed my eyes, and with some trepidation dropped my guard against the sounds and smells of the world. I immersed myself in a thick, warm blanket of sensation, of latent magic, of the heat and smell of nearby bodies.
But there was nothing unusual. Nothing out of the ordinary - assuming a bar full of very intense, magically leaking shifters was in the ordinary.
"Nothing," I said, opening my eyes again. "There's nothing unusual out there." I spoke too soon. That was when I heard it - the rumble of exhaust pipes. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end, something in the air outside suddenly tripping my vampiric instincts, something that vibrated the air in a way that wasn't explained by the roar of the hog. A tang filled the air - the sharp, astringent burn of exhaust and something else . . . gunpowder?