Biting Cold (Chicagoland Vampires 6)

"I don't know," Catcher said. "I can ask Jeff."

"He's already on it, as are Seth and Paige. I'm sure someone wil come up with something."

Catcher nodded, then glanced at his watch, then up at Malory again. "I need to get back."

She nodded a couple of times. "Okay."

"I'l let you know if we find anything," he said, then walked out the door.

No hug, no kiss good-bye for Malory. No good-bye at al, realy.

I looked back at her, but she wouldn't meet my gaze. She just kept picking at that spot on the blanket.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She laughed mirthlessly. "I have flushed my entire life down the toilet. That's realy al there is to say right now." She put both hands over her face, then pressed her palms against her eyes.

I nodded, my heart aching for her, even though I could completely sympathize with Catcher.

"You and Ethan?" she asked, trying to smile a little.

Somehow, that made her seem even sadder.

"We're...working on it. Things are complicated right now."

She nodded, then chewed the edge of her lip.

"This is so awkward," I said.

"It realy is." She seemed relieved to say it.

"Like we're strangers to each other."

Malory nodded. "We are. I am a stranger to you. You didn't know I was capable of al these things - of the things I've done.

Horrible things. Turns out, I am." She looked up at me. "I'm the kind of person who hurts others to get what they want. I shouldn't be here right now, Merit. I should be in prison."

Her sadness was palpable, but at least she was beginning to see reality.

"Have you talked to Gabriel?"

"He thinks I'm redeemable."

That simple statement made me feel better than I had in a long, long time. Gabriel wasn't an easy one to impress, and he had insight - magical or otherwise - into the future. If he thought Malory was redeemable, that meant something. And it wasn't like he was prone to overcomplimenting.

"That's something," I said.

"It's something," she agreed. "I'm working at the bar. This is my lunch break, I guess, although I'm not hungry much. I'm not much of anything right now. Numb, I guess. I know the things I did. They replay in my head over and over and over again. But they feel removed, like it wasn't me. Like I'm just watching a video playback or something."

"Those things happened. They were real."

She nodded. "Gabriel says - he thinks I have a sensitivity to the imbalance the Maleficium created. He thinks that's why I was so drawn to it."

I nodded. "Paige said al sorcerers felt that a little."

"Some more than others, I guess. And I'm not trying to make an excuse. I'm just - I'm trying to understand why - " She began sobbing again.

I sat down on the bed beside her. Not touching - I wasn't ready for that - but acknowledging what she was going through, and that she was finaly facing her demons.

"God, I am so sick of myself," she said after a few minutes.

"A lot of us are," I said with a smirk, and she choked out a laugh and nodded.

"I needed that," she said, knuckling away tears. "I can't use my magic here. He arranged it or something."

"I know."

"It wil be a long time before they let me use it again. But Gabriel thinks I have talent, but I have to be trained how to use it for the right causes."

"Gabriel said that?" It was an unusualy hands-on position for a shifter, who was usualy more concerned with carousing than counseling.

"He says there's work I can do. Hard work, but fulfiling."

"Did he say what?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure it matters. I'm not sure I'l ever make this up to anyone, no matter what I do."

She and Seth were a pair right now. Both facing guilt and the specter of never being able to atone for what they'd done, both suffering because of a book intended - ironicaly - to make life better for everyone.

The moral of the story? Don't f**k with the magical order.

"There's one thing you can do to help," I said.

She looked up at me, and I trusted her with my secret.

"You may not have completed the familiar spel, but you and Ethan are linked together somehow."

Malory blanched. "What?"

"I think when you feel strong emotions, he does, too. You're connected to each other because of the spel you attempted."

She looked horrified, which actualy made me feel better. "Oh my God, Merit, I didn't know."

"I didn't want to tel you," I confessed. "Not until I was sure you were in control of yourself." I wasn't entirely sure she was in control of herself now, but she was aware of her weaknesses and of what she'd done, which was more maturity than I'd seen from her in a while.

I'd expected more tears from my confession, but she steeled her expression and looked up at me.

"I wil fix this," she said.

"Then do it," I said. "Make this your first act of contrition.

Give him back to me."

The smal black alarm clock on her bedside table buzzed, and she tapped it with a hand. "I should get back to work."

I nodded. "What do you have to do?"

"Dishes again. The bar serves some food, and shifters eat. A lot."

She'd gone from high-profile ad executive to high-powered witch...and now she was cleaning up for drunken shifters in the back of a run-down bar.

"Does it bother you? That you're doing dishes?"

"It's not the best job. Hot. Swampy. Kind of gross - al those little bits of wet bread and crust." She made a gagging sound.

"But it's something to do that's not magical. And there's a kind of security, I guess, with al of them around me. Like I can't backslide while they're watching. And that they realy believe I could do something worthwhile someday."

"How long is someday?"

She shrugged. "How long does it take to make up for what I've done?" She stood up. "I need to get downstairs."

I didn't want to go back to the House. I didn't want to face Dominic on the way or Darius or Ethan when I arrived. I got her point about security. Here, I was behind a wal of dozens of shifters and lots of firearms. It might not have been safe from Dominic, not realy, but it felt safer. It felt removed from the world, and I could use that right now.

"I could help you?"

She looked at me, tentative hope in her face, and nodded.

So I stayed with her. We walked downstairs again and I hung my leather jacket on the back of the door. She dumped food while I rinsed, and in the rising heat and steam, under the watchful eye of a very big shifter with a very large gun, we did our work in silence.