Mallory sat quietly at the table for a moment, massaging her temples. It seemed her patience with Berna was definitely wearing thin.
"It's a good reminder," Gabriel said.
"Of what?" she asked.
"Of what happens when you eventually leave us, and you don't make a successful go of it. She's going easy on you this time."
"This is going easy on me?"
"Have you cleaned out the grease trap yet?" Christopher asked.
"No?" Mallory said cautiously, lip curled.
Christopher huffed. "Then she's going easy on you. Aunt Berna's a hard-ass."
I looked at Gabriel. "Aunt Berna?"
He smiled, then waved a hand at the vinyl-topped table, the framed B-movie posters, and the peeling linoleum floor. "Kitten, would we have allowed Berna into this bastion of class if she wasn't family?"
"Is that a compliment or an insult?" I wondered.
"Yes," he said. "It is definitely one of those."
Christopher, Ben, and Derek excused themselves and disappeared into the kitchen, presumably for one of the drinks Mallory was going to pour. Gabriel gathered the cards and began shuffling them again. Dawn, according to the beer-advertisement clock on the wall, was inching closer, and I still didn't have any answers.
"About the House," I said.
"What about it?"
"I'm out of ideas, the lawyers aren't helping, we can't find the egg, and Claudia's inaccessible. I don't suppose you've got any information on the GP members we could use to our advantage?"
He chuckled a bit. "You mean blackmail?"
"I do."
"I'm sorry, Kitten, but I don't. I don't know much about the GP other than their reputation, and from that I don't believe I care to know more."
I put my elbows on the table and rested my head in my hands. "Gabriel, we're going to lose the House. Time is ticking down. And we've got some crazy Navarre Novitiate out there taking out vampires for no apparent reason, and I don't have a clue who it is. What am I going to do?"
"You're asking me for advice?"
I tucked the edges of my bangs behind my ears and looked up at him. "Yeah. I think I am."
"And you aren't asking Sullivan because . . . ?"
"He's mad at me."
"Ahhh," Gabriel slowly said. "That explains the funk."
I tried not to sniff at myself. "There's a funk?"
"Psychic funk. A bad vibe. You're sad."
"I am sad. And you know what would help me? Advice. Do you have any thoughts at all?"
"Well, let's think it through: Darius wants the House, or to punish the vampires, or both. In order to get it, he's convinced the fairies to forcibly remove you, what, tomorrow night?"
"Yeah."
"And he's bribing the fairies with the dragon's egg, which is some trinket they made but gave to vampires, and are now claiming again, or some shit?"
"That's the meat of it, yeah."
"And where is the dragon's egg?"
"We don't know. The GP took it, but we haven't been able to find it, and the other Houses aren't cooperating."
"Well, at the risk of being blunt, if the fairies are the only leverage the GP has over you, and the fairies want the dragon's egg, then you need to find it."
"That's easier said than done."
"Is it? You're dealing with vampires, and a theft that occurred in a pretty short amount of time. Consider this." The card deck in hand, he began flipping cards onto the table one at a time.
For all his shuffling, and although I'd seen no trickery, he flipped over the jack of spades, then the queen of spades, then the king and ace. All in a row, all somehow organized without my being the wiser, and even as I'd watched him shuffle.
"The vampires of the Greenwich Presidium, who don't impress me much, managed to steal an object from Cadogan House right under your noses. I find that suspect."
"What do you mean, you find that suspect? You don't think they stole it?"
Gabe placed the deck on the table. "I don't know if they did or not. In my opinion the GP consists of the sneakiest vampires. Sneaky because they're double-dealers, not because they're skilled operatives who could pull off a heist beneath the noses of Cadogan House, its Master, and its Sentinel."
He had a point, although it didn't give me any better idea where the egg actually was hidden.
Gabe glanced at the clock. "The sun will be rising soon. You should get home."
I nodded and rose. "Thanks for your help."
He nodded. "It all comes down to this, Kitten: Don't let your fear of the GP guide you, especially not to give them more credit than they deserve."
* * *
Only half an hour before dawn, with my failure on my mind, I returned to the House.
The sight that greeted me in the foyer was enough to make me weep again. The holiday decorations were gone; in their place were dozens and dozens of black suitcases.
Granted, dawn would be here soon enough, but had we really given up? Were we simply going to hand Cadogan House to the GP without a fight?
I walked downstairs, found the Ops Room empty. Luc and the rest were probably tucking in for the evening. Because I wasn't up for another Lacey confrontation, I skipped a visit to Ethan's office and headed directly to the apartment to await him there.
As the minutes passed, I put on pajamas, then perused the House's evacuation procedures in our online security manual. Luc had been incredibly thorough, including creating a security "textbook" broken into chapters and thousands of footnotes. There were 142 footnotes in the third chapter alone, including lessons learned ("Garden rakes are less effective against wereracoons than you'd think"), anecdotes ("I remember when 'message' meant something carried on the back of a horse"), and tricks of the trade ("Honey is a good balm for a cobra lily scratch").
Luc, who'd penned the protocols, had also written tests to check our knowledge, like the following gem:
Q: What's the most effective way to corral a raging centaur?
A: Ha! There's no such thing as centaurs, newbie. Get your ass in a chair and read your Canon.
I did not, however, pack a suitcase. I refused to do it, to give in. There were only a few objects I cared enough to take with me - my family's pearls, my hidden Cadogan medal, the baseball Ethan had once given me. But they'd stay exactly where they were, because packing them away now would be a sign of defeat. And Ethan had taught me better than that.
I brushed my hair for the second time, then organized the drawer of my nightstand - tissues, lip balm, socks for cold winter days.