Jonah paused. “Is this call an indication of interest in the RG?”
“Fair enough. I’ll ask some questions and get back to you if I learn anything. I assume you won’t tell anyone we’ve talked.”
“Your secret is safe with me. And thanks.”
“Don’t thank me until I dig something up. I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead, so I tucked the phone away. There were more drama and complications with each day that passed.
Rarely did a night pass without more vampire drama.
Sometimes hanging out in pajamas with a good book sounded like a phenomenal idea.
The phone rang again almost immediately after I’d hung up. I glanced at the screen; it was my father.
I briefly considered sending him directly to voice mail, but I’d been doing that a lot lately —enough that my lack of communication hit my grandfather’s radar. I didn’t want my problems on his plate, so I sucked it up, flipped open the phone, and raised it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“I’d like to speak with you,” my father said, apparently by way of greeting.
That was inevitably true. I’m sure my father had a number of topics in the queue for me. The trick was figuring out which particular topic was on his mind today.
“About?” I asked.
“Some things on the horizon. I’ve become aware of some investments in which I think Ethan might be interested.”
Ah, that explained the good humor at Creeley Creek. If there was anything that made my father happy, it was the possibility of a capital gain and a fat commission. Still, I did appreciate that he was interested in working with Ethan—instead of trying to bury us all.
“We’re in the middle of something right now.
But I’ll definitely advise Ethan of your offer.”
“He can call me in the office,” my father said.
He meant his skyscraper on Michigan Avenue across from Millennium Park. Only the best real estate for the city’s best real estate mogul.
With that bit of instruction, the line went dead.
If only we could have picked our family . . .
I pulled into the restaurant’s almost empty parking lot. The restaurant’s windows glowed, only a handful of men and women visible through the glass.
I parked the Volvo and headed inside, glancing around until I found Mallory. She sat at a table in front of a laptop computer and a foot-high stack of books, her straight, ice blue hair tucked behind her ears. She frowned at the screen, a half-full tumbler of orange juice at her side.
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.
