“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
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
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,
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
“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-
