I reached Jonah on my way to the House—the river and lake were back to black and still sucking magic from the city like it was going out of style. Which meant not only had that problem not been solved—the entire situation was escalating. I felt a real jolt of fear. I had no idea where this was headed. When he met me at Cadogan, we joined the dozens of other vampires who stood on the lawn behind the House, staring up at the sky. And we weren’t the only ones. I hardly passed a single house between Wicker Park and Hyde Park where folks weren’t standing outside, fingers pointing upward or hands over their mouths in shock. White lightning flashed across the sky, and claps of thunder drowned out the sounds of the city. There wasn’t a thunderhead in sight, and I could all but hear Chicagoans’ silent accusations: These things didn’t happen before vampires. What they weren’t considering, of course, was that vampires and other sups had been in Chicago at least as long as humans, and this didn’t have anything to do with us.
