Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [29]
“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