Hard Bitten (10 page)

She glanced up when I came in, and I noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“Hi,” she said, relief in her face.

I slid into the booth. “You look tired.” No need to equivocate when your BFF was in pain, I figured.

“I am tired.” She closed the laptop and slid it out of the way, then linked her hands on the table. “Practicum isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

I crossed my legs on the bench. “Hard work?”

“Physically and emotionally exhausting.” She frowned over at the pile of books. “This is like sorcery boot camp—learning stuff I should have studied ten years ago, cramming all that into a fewmonth period.”

“Is it useful stuff?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve gone over it with my tutor so much it’s kind of second nature now.”

Before I had time to blink, the plastic salt and pepper shakers were sliding across the table in front of me.

I glanced up and found Mallory completely still, her expression bland. I’d seen Mallory move things before—furniture, the last time—but I hadn’t seen her so lackadaisical about it.

“That’s . . . impressive.”

She shrugged, but there was something dark in her eyes. “I can do it almost without thinking about it.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

That was when the tears began to well. She looked up and away, as if the gesture alone would keep the tears from falling. But they slipped down her cheeks anyway. And when she brushed away the tears, I realized her fingers were red and raw.

“Talk to me,” I told her, then glanced around.

Our corner of the restaurant was empty; the only waitress in sight sat at a table on the other side of the room, rolling silverware into paper napkins.

“It’s practically just me and you in here.”

That unleashed a new flood of tears. My heart clenched at the thought that she’d done or seen things in the last couple of weeks that had brought her to tears—and that I probably couldn’t have stopped it.

I got up and moved to her side of the table, waiting until she slid down before I took a seat beside her.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I couldn’t help it; I smiled. If there was ever a problem I could understand as a newbie vampire, that was it. I bumped my forehead against her shoulder.

“Keep going.”

The floodgates opened. “I was this girl, right?

Doing my thing. Having blue hair, working my ad-exec mojo. And then you’re a vampire, and Ethan Sullivan is touching my hair and telling me I have magic. And then there’s Catcher and I’m a witch and I’m learning Keys and how to throw flaming balls of crap at targets so I’m ready when the vampire shit inevitably hits the fan.”

She sucked in air, then started again. “I was supposed to be a partner at thirty, Merit. Have a condo on the lake. Have a Birkin bag and generally be satisfied with my very fancy lot.

And now I’m doing”—she looked around

—“magic. And not just magic.”

Another tear slid down her cheek.

“What do you mean, not just magic?”

Her voice dropped an octave. “You know about the four Keys, right?”

“Sure. Power, beings, weapons, text.”

“Right. Those are the four major divisions of magic. Well, turns out it’s not that simple—those aren’t the only major divisions.”

I frowned at her. “So what are the others?”

She leaned in toward me. “They’re black magic, Merit. The bad stuff. There’s an entire system of dark magic that overlays the four good Keys.” She grabbed a napkin and uncapped a pen. “You’ve seen Catcher’s tattoo, right?”

I nodded. It was across his abdomen, a circle divided into quadrants.

She sketched out the image I’d seen, then pointed at the four pielike segments. “So each quadrant is a Key, right? A division of magic.”

She pulled another napkin from the holder and unfolded it, then drew another divided circle.

When she was done, she placed the second napkin on top of the first one.

“It’s the same four divisions—but all black magic.”

This time, my voice was softer. “Give me something to go on, here. What kind of black magic are we talking? Elphaba, Wicked Witch of the West–type stuff or Slytherin-type stuff?”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

“You can tell me anything.”

She looked over at me, frustration clear in her face. “Not
won’t
tell you,
can’t
tell you. There’s Order juju at work. I know things, but I can’t get them out. I can summon up the phrases in my head, but can’t actually give voice to the words.”

I did not like the sound of that—the fact that the already-secretive Order was using magic to keep Mallory from talking about the things that worried her. Dark things.

Regrettable things?

“Is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head, eyes on her hands on the table.

“Is that why your hands are so chapped?”

She nodded. “I’m tired, Merit. I’m training, and I’m learning what I can, but this—I don’t know—it uses you differently.” She clenched her hands into fists and then released them again.

“It’s a whole different kind of exhausting. Not just body. Not just mind. Soul, too, kind of.” Her eyebrows knotted with worry.

“Have you talked to Catcher about any of this?”

She shook her head. “He’s not in the Order. I can’t tell him anything I can’t tell you.”

I suddenly had an understanding of why Catcher wasn’t such a big fan of the Order—and why it mattered whether he was still a member or not.

“How can I help?”

She swallowed. “Could we just sit here for a little while?” She sighed haggardly. “I’m just tired. And I have exams coming up, and there’s so much prep to do—so many expectations on me right now. I just don’t want to go home. Not back to my life. I just want to sit in this crappy corporate restaurant for another couple of hours.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “As long as you want.”

We sat in the booth for an hour, barely talking, Mallory sipping orange juice from her cup and staring out the window at the rare car that passed the restaurant.

When her tumbler was empty, I bumped her shoulder again. “He loves you, you know. Even if it feels like something you can’t take to him, you can. I mean, I get that you can’t give him the details, but you can tell him this is worrying you.”

“You know that for sure?”

I caught the tiny thread of hope in her voice and tugged. “I know that for sure. It’s Catcher, Mallory. Crazy stubborn? Sure. Gruff?

Absolutely. But also totally in love with you.”

She sniffed. “Keep going.”

“Remember what you told me about Ethan?

That I deserved someone who wanted me from the beginning? Well, Catcher Bell is your somebody. He would snap anyone who came at you in half, and that’s been obvious since the second he met you. There’s not a doubt in my mind that he’s all in, and there’s nothing you can’t tell him. Well,” I added with a smile,

“unless you become a vamp. That would probably be a deal breaker.”

Mal made a half laugh, half cry and wiped her face again.

“I assume you’re not making secret plans to become a vampire?”

“Not right at this moment.”

“Good. I think one vamp in the family is plenty enough.”

“Concur on that one. It’s just . . .” She paused, then started again. “There are very few decisions in my life that I regret. Not grabbing that vintage Chanel we saw at that consignment store on Division. Not watching
Buffy
until the third season. Minor stuff, but you know what I mean.”

She shook her head. “But this. Being ID’d as a sorcerer, agreeing to go along with this stuff, taking part in things—I don’t know. Maybe I should have just ignored the whole thing. Kept on with the ad gig and ignored the vampires and the sorcery and Ethan touching my hair. I mean, who does that? Who touches someone’s hair and pronounces they have magic?”

“Darth Sullivan.”

“Darth goddamned Sullivan.” She chuckled a little, then put her head on my shoulder. “Did you ever wish you could just walk away? Rewind your life back to the day before you became supernaturally inclined and catch an Amtrak out of town?”

I smiled a little, thinking of what Ethan had said. “The thought has occurred to me.”

“All right,” she said, putting her palms flat on the table and blowing out a breath. “It’s time for a pep talk. Ready, set,
go
.”

That was my cue to call adult swim at the pity pool and kick her out—and then offer up a little motivational magic of my own.

“Mallory Carmichael, you’re a sorceress. You may not like it, but it’s a fact. You have a gift, and you are not going to sit around a Goodwin’s drinking fifty-nine-cent coffee because you’ve got concerns about your assignments. You’re a sorceress—but you’re not a robot. If you have concerns about your job, talk to someone about it. If you think something you’re doing flunks the smell test, then stop doing it. Break the chain of command if that’s what it takes. You have a conscience, and you know how to use it.”

We sat quietly there for a moment, until her decisive nod.

“That’s what I needed.”

“That’s why you love me.”

“Well, that and we wear the same shoe size.”

She swiveled in her seat and pulled up a knee.

Her foot, now propped on the seat, was snug inside a pair of lime green, limited-edition Pumas

. . . one of the pair I’d left at Mal’s house when I’d moved into Cadogan.

“Are those—”

“What they are is
so
comfy.”

“Mallory Delancey Carmichael.”

“Hey, Street Fest is this weekend,” she suddenly said. “Maybe we could head down and nosh some meat on a stick.”

Street Fest was Chicago’s annual end-of-summer food bash. Restaurants and caterers put up their white vinyl tents in Grant Park to hawk their wares and celebrate the end of August’s roasting heat and steamy humidity. Normally, I was a pretty big fan. Sampling Chicago’s finest grub while listening to live music wasn’t exactly a bad way to spend an evening.

On the other hand, “Are you trying to distract me with roast beast?”

She batted her eyelashes.

“Seriously, Mallory. Those shoes are limited edition. Do you remember how long I tried to find them? We staked out the Web for, like, three weeks.”

“Epistemological crisis here, Mer. Seriously.

One cannot tread lightly in cheap knockoff sneaks when one is enmeshed in a crisis.”

I sighed, knowing I’d been beaten.

As it turned out, she didn’t have two hours in her. She needed only twenty more minutes before she was ready to return to her life—to Keys and magic and Catcher. She decided to make an early night of practicum, and instead put in a call to Catcher that was sickly sweet enough that my blood sugar rose.

But however sickening, she was smiling by the end of the call, so I had to give props to Catcher.

We exchanged hugs in the parking lot, and I sent her home to Wicker Park and the waiting arms of a green-eyed sorcerer.

Whatever worked.

Ironic, I guess, that I was heading back to the House of a green-eyed vampire, although definitely not—to his chagrin—his waiting arms.

I was nearly back in that vampire’s territory when my phone rang again.

“Merit,” I answered.

“Something’s going on tonight,” Jonah said.

“A rave?”

“Might start out that way. But if these things really are as violent as you’re hearing . . .”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence, unfortunately. The implication was obvious—and bad.

“How did you find out?”

“Text message. A flashmob, just like the others.”

“And this time we got in early enough?” I wondered aloud.

“This time we got lucky and found the phone,”

Jonah said. “Someone left it at Benson’s.”

“Benson’s, as in across-the-street-from-Wrigley-Field Benson’s?”

“Yeah. That’s the Grey House bar.”

One of the many bars around the stadium that had installed bleachers on its roof, Benson’s was, in my opinion, the best spot in town to get a view of Wrigley Field without a ticket.

“Kudos on that one,” I said. “I’ve spent many a fine evening in Benson’s.”

“And so you were in the company of vampires before you were even aware of them,” he said.

“How ironic.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. He might be pretentious, but Jonah apparently had a sense of humor, as well.

“Anyway, I had the phone in my office, and we didn’t think much of it until we got the text.

Same format, same message as the others.”

“Is the phone useful? Can we trace the number or something?”

“The phone was a disposable, and it hadn’t been in use long. The outgoing calls were all to businesses that don’t keep track of customer calls. The only incoming was the text. We called that number back, and it’s already been disconnected. We haven’t been able to find any other information.”

Ah, but they didn’t have a Jeff Christopher.

“Can you give me the number? I’ve got a friend with some computer skills. Wouldn’t hurt to have him look at it.”

Jonah read me the digits; I grabbed an envelope and a pen from the glove box and wrote it down, making a mental note to send it to Jeff later.

“So where’s the rave?”

“A penthouse in Streeterville.”

Streeterville was the part of downtown Chicago that stretched from Michigan Avenue to the lake. Lots of skyscrapers, lots of money, and lots of tourists.

“I am not crazy about the idea of raving vampires in Streeterville.”

“Although that would make a good

horror-flick title. ‘Vampires in Streeterville,’ I mean.”

A second joke in a matter of minutes. “I’m glad to know you have a sense of humor.”

“I’m a vampire, not a zombie.”

“Good to know.”

“If you’re in, meet me at the water tower. Two o’clock.”

I checked the dashboard clock—it was barely past midnight, which gave me just enough time to get back to the House, change clothes, and head out again. “I’ll be there,” I assured him.

“Weapon-wise, what should I bring? Sword or hidden dagger?”

“I’m surprised at you, Sentinel. Vampires generally don’t use hidden blades.”