Chicagoland Vampires - Some Girls Bite Part 18

"Can I get something to eat?"

Had I any interest in dating the boy-had it not evaporated last night when I'd promised never to flirt with another vampire again- I'd have decided this was the lamest second date ever. "I guess."

He popped up and walked to the threshold. "Thanks." He disappeared down the hallway, but called back, "I'm a Packer fan. I was born in Madison."

He was rustling through a drawer when I reached the kitchen. "You have to admit it-Green Bay's a better team, especially this year. Chicago has problems with its O line, there's a quarterback issue, and you've got no defensive secondary."

I leaned back against the doorframe and crossed my arms. "You're going to stand in my kitchen, eating my food, going through my things, and bash my Bears? You're either brave or stupid."

Morgan pulled out a knife and cutting board, then moved to a stack of sandwich items he'd already arranged on the countertop-a loaf of nutty bread, mustard, mayo, ham, American cheese, Swiss cheese (an international cheese detente!), smoked turkey, a jar of bread and b.u.t.ter pickle slices, black olives, lettuce, and a tomato.

In other words, the contents of our refrigerator but for the sodas and blood.

Then he grabbed two cans of soda. He popped the tab on one, and offered the other to me as he sipped, one hip c.o.c.ked against the cabinets.

"Thoughtful of you to offer," I drily said, accepting the soda as I joined him at the counter. "Don't they feed you at Navarre House?"

He cut off two healthy slices of bread, then went to work on the tomato, slicing as he talked. "They throw out some gruel between the indoctrination sessions and propaganda films. Then we're off for a good marching around the grounds and the recitation of sonnets to Celina's loveliness."

I chuckled and tore off a couple of lettuce leaves, then held them up for his approval. He nodded, then began the very careful process of layering meats, cheeses, vegetables, and condiments on his Dagwood.

"They put out healthy stuff in the cafeteria-I just don't usually have a chance to make a sandwich my own way, you know?"

Having grown up with too much brie and foie gras and too few processed carbs, I knew very well. That was why I stopped him before he added the final piece of bread. I grabbed the bag of tortilla chips from the other end of the counter and handed them to him.

"Layer of chips," I solemnly explained. "Adds a good crunch."

"Genius," he said, then squished a layer of tortilla chips into his sandwich. We both looked down at it for a moment, four vertical inches of deliciousness.

"Should we take a picture?"

"It's pretty d.a.m.n impressive."

He c.o.c.ked his head at it. "I almost hate to ruin it by biting in, but I'm starving, so. . . ." Regrets spoken, he picked it up with two hands and bit in. His eyes closed as he crunched through the first bite. "That's a d.a.m.n good sandwich."

"Told you," I said, leaning against the counter and pulling the bag of chips toward me.

"Tell me about yourself," he said between bites.

The bag crinkled noisily as I reached for a chip. "What do you want to know?"

"Origins. Interests. Why the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Chicago decided to become a vampire."

I watched him for a minute, a little disappointed that he'd asked, and wondering if the fact that my parents had money was the lodestone of his interest in me. And since he'd known, I wondered if news of my changing and my family connections was circulating through the Houses. Of course, since he thought the decision was mine, he clearly didn't know everything.

"Does it matter who my father is?"

Morgan shrugged lightly. "Not to me. To some, maybe. I wonder if Ethan cares."

He had, I ruefully thought, but that was not how I answered. "He saved my life."

Morgan's gaze shot up. "How?"

I debated what to tell him, but opted for the truth. If he really knew nothing, all the better. If he knew something, maybe the boundaries of his knowledge could help signal the guilty parties. "I was attacked. Ethan saved my life."

Morgan stared at me, then wiped his mouth with a napkin he'd taken from the stainless steel holder on the counter. "You're kidding."

I shook my head. "Someone a.s.saulted me when I was walking across campus. He nearly tore out my throat. Ethan found me, and started the change."

Morgan's gaze narrowed. "How do you know Ethan didn't set it up?"

An uncomfortable twitch arced through my stomach. I didn't know that, not for sure. I was relying on instinct and Ethan's explanation, his professions of innocence. I still wondered why he'd happened to be in that spot in the middle of the night, and his answer-something about luck-hadn't been satisfying. I didn't think he'd purposefully hurt me, not physically anyway.

Emotionally, though, was a different matter, and all the more reason for me to steer clear of him. He was my boss, and I'd acquiesce as far as necessary to get my job done, whatever that might be. But he was off-limits for anything else, his (conflicted) interest beside the point.

"Merit?"

I blinked back to my kitchen, to Morgan staring at me across the countertop. "Sorry," I said. "Just thinking. I know he didn't set it up. He saved my life." I crossed my fingers under the table, hoped that it was true.

Morgan frowned. "Huh. They found that Cadogan medal at the scene of Jennifer Porter's death."

"Anyone with access to the House could have planted it there-even a Rogue trying to make the House system look bad."

He nodded. "That's a theory. Actually, it's what Celina thinks."

"She doesn't think Ethan did it? Or someone from Cadogan?"

Morgan watched me for a careful moment, then shrugged and finished the final bites of his sandwich. "It would be more accurate to say that we fear people's responses to Cadogan, not the vamps themselves. Peace is fragile."

So I'd heard, but somehow the sentiment didn't ring as true coming from Morgan as it did from Ethan.

"What did you do-before?" he asked.

Having finished the first soda, I moved back to the refrigerator and grabbed another one, popped open the top, and returned to our spot at the counter. "I was a graduate student. English lit."

"Here in Chicago?"

I nodded. "University of Chicago."

"So you wanted to, what, teach?"

"At the college level, yeah. I wanted to be a professor. Romantic medieval literature was my specialty. The Arthurian sagas, Tristan and Isolde, that kind of thing."

"Tristan and Isolde. That's interesting."

I dug into the chip bag for a single whole chip, found one, and crunched into it. "Is it? What did you do before?"

"My dad owned Red, or at least the bar it was before I rehabbed it. He died a few years before I switched, and I took it over."

"Why did you decide to become a vampire?"

Morgan frowned, rubbed the back of his neck. "I had a girlfriend. She was sick, and she was approached by someone in Navarre.

We made some overtures to Carlos-he was Celina's Second at the time-and they approved our becoming Initiates. She was bright, strong, would have made a great vampire."

He paused and stared blankly at the counter, and the volume of his voice dropped. "The night came for the change. They changed me, but she couldn't go through with it. She died about a year later."

"I'm sorry."

"She said she didn't want to live forever. I was young and stupid, felt immortal anyway-who doesn't at that age? I was with her when she died. She wasn't afraid."

We sat quietly for a few minutes, as I let him work through that memory.

"Anyway, that's my story."

"How long ago was that?"

"Nineteen seventy-two."

"So that would make you . . ."

He half chuckled, and I was glad to see a little more color in his face. "An age that will make you uncomfortable."

I leaned against the counter, crossed my arms, and gave him a good looking over. "You look about, what, twenty-eight? That would mean you were born around nineteen forty-four."

"I'm seventy-two," he offered, saving me the subtraction. "Not so old that it seems unreal enough to discount, and just old enough to think of me as . . . old."

"You don't look seventy-two. You certainly don't act seventy-two. Not that there's anything wrong with that," I belatedly added, a finger in the air to emphasize the point.

Morgan laughed. "Thanks, Mer. I don't feel a day over seventy-one."

"A spritely seventy-one."

"A spritely seventy-one," he agreed. "There's actually some pretty serious debate out there on the impact of looking young on how we act, on the age we pretend to be."

I smiled dubiously. "Vampire philosophers?"

He smiled back. "Immortality does pose its own set of quandaries."

Immortality was a quandary I hadn't fully considered yet, and I wondered what the rest of the vamps were thinking about. "Like?"

Morgan reached out and grabbed the bag of chips, our arms just brus.h.i.+ng as he pulled it away. I ignored the little shock that spilt down my arm, reminding myself that I'd sworn off boys with unusually large canines.

"Vamps change ident.i.ties every sixty years or so," Morgan responded, waving a chip in the air. "And yet, to stay under the radar, we've had to operate within the system. That means we fake our deaths. We have to lie to the friends and family we acc.u.mulate in each human lifetime. We forge social security numbers, drivers' licenses, pa.s.sports. Is that ethical?" He shrugged. "We justify it by saying its necessary to protect ourselves. But it's still lying."

Thinking of my own hasty exit from academia, I wondered aloud, "Where do they work? These philosophers, I mean."

"They stay pretty cloistered. Some in academia, usually with enough tenure to get bas.e.m.e.nt offices and night cla.s.ses. You ever see those guys who hang out in coffeehouses-they've got their laptops and those little black notebooks? They're always there at night, scribbling furiously?"

I grinned. "I used to be one of those guys. Well, girls, anyway."

Morgan leaned forward conspiratorially and hooded his fingers into a claw, then pawed at the air. "You never know if they're vamps on the prowl."

"Good to know," I offered with a chuckle. Morgan smiled back at me. It was a nice smile, but it broke when he pulled an empty hand from the plastic chip bag, apparently realizing we'd finished it off. I took it away, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash, a perfect arc on the shot.

"Nice," he said. "And speaking of hoops, you have something planned?"

I didn't know we'd been speaking of hoops, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. "What did you have in mind?"

He checked his watch. "It's one fifteen. SportsCenter's probably on." "It's a date," I said with a firm nod, and led him back into the living room.

He was right. It was on. Even as late as it was, I shouldn't have doubted SportsCenter was rolling tape on ESPN. Was it ever not on in the wee hours of the morning? We settled back into the living room, watched forty-five minutes of sports-related sarcasm, and debated the this year's potential NFL draft picks. When the show was over, Morgan pushed up from the couch.

"I should get going. Couple things I need to check into before dawn, and I should run by Red."

I belatedly realized that it was Sat.u.r.day night, surely a big night for the club, and that he'd opted to spend it here, eating sandwiches and watching ESPN. As he went for the door, stretching his arms above his head and revealing the curve of smooth skin at the small of his back, I found myself wis.h.i.+ng that he wasn't a vampire. We'd reached a kind of comfortable rapport, and a quiet night with ESPN and lumpy sandwiches was a nice change from political intrigue, death threats, and supernatural revelations.

"Thanks for coming by to apologize," I said, rising to walk him to the door. "It would have been nicer if you hadn't been a jacka.s.s in the first place, but a girl always appreciates a nice dose of remorse."

Morgan laughed. "Does a girl?"

I smiled back and opened the door, and we stood next to it for a minute, watching each other. Then he leaned down, one hand at my hip, and pressed his lips to mine. Morgan kissed me in slow increments, meeting my lips, then pulling back and moving in again.

It was teasing by kiss, and he was incredibly good at it. But I wasn't eager to repeat the mistake of kissing a vampire, so I pushed him back with the flat of my palm.

"Morgan."

He protested with a groan, then diverted his mouth to my neck, where he trailed a line of kisses from ear to collarbone. My eyes drifted shut, my body apparently as eager as his to push things forward.

"You're a hot single vampire," he breathily murmured. "I'm a hot single vampire. But for your unfathomable allegiance to the Bears, we should be together."

I pushed him back again, and this time he stayed upright. "I'm not up for a boyfriend right now."

Morgan's face furrowed into an exquisite frown, and he ran a hand through his hair. "Do you and Ethan have a thing?"

"Ethan? No," I replied, probably sounding a little more defensive than I should have. "G.o.d, no."

Still frowning, he nodded. "Okay."

"I don't do fang."

He pulled back, apparently shocked, and gazed at me. "You are fang."

I grinned at him. "Yeah, I get that a lot. Friends, though?" I offered a conciliatory hand.

"For now."

I rolled my eyes and pushed a hand against his chest again, pus.h.i.+ng him over the threshold. "Good night, Morgan."