T-shirts, caps, and pennants for Grey and Cadogan (and for the more morbid, Navarre) were available for sale in shops around Chicago. There were House fan sites, “I ♥ Cadogan” bumper stickers, and news updates on the city’s vampires.

Still, notorious or not, I tried not to spread too many deets about the Houses around town. As Sentinel, I was part of the House’s security corps, after all. So I took a look around the gym and made sure we were alone, that prying human ears weren’t slipping a listen.

“If you’re debating how much you can say,” Mallory said, unscrewing the top of her water bottle, “I’ve sent out a magical pulse so that none of our little human friends can hear this conversation.”

“Really?” I turned my head to look at her so quickly my neck popped, the shock of pain squinting my eyes.

She snorted. “Right. Like he’d let me use M-A-G-I-C around people,” she muttered, then took a big gulp of her water.

I ignored the shot at Catcher—we’d never have a decent conversation if I took the time to react to all of them—and answered her question about the Big Move.

“I’m a little nervous. Ethan and I, you know, tend to grate on each other’s nerves.”

Mallory swallowed her water, then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Oh, whatever. You two are BFFs.”

“Just because we’ve managed to play Master and Sentinel for two weeks without tearing each other’s throat out doesn’t mean we’re BFFs.”

As a matter of fact, I’d had minimum contact with Cadogan’s Master—and the vampire who made me—during those last two weeks, by design. I kept my head down and my fangs to the grindstone as I watched and learned how things worked in the House. The truth was, I’d had trouble with Ethan at first—I’d been made a vampire without my consent, my human life taken away because Celina planned on me being her second victim. Her minions weren’t successful in killing me, but Ethan had been successful at changing me—in order to save my life.