Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires #3)(43)
Author: Chloe Neill

We were back.

A few minutes and the replay of a few Sex and the City-worthy details later, Mallory was off her stool and headed for the fridge.

"I have cold pizza if you want some," she said, "but I’ll warn you, it’s a little . . . different." I picked up a foot-long black feather and twirled it in my hand. "How different?"

"Catcher Bell different." She opened the fridge, pulled out a wide, flat pizza box, and shut the door again with a bump. I leaned up and used both hands to push containers out of the way, leaving a bare spot big enough for the pizza box. This one was from another Wicker Park joint, the kind that made artisanal pizza with goat cheese and organic herbs. It wasn’t my favorite, but it definitely had its place in my repertoire. Hand-pulled crust, homemade sauce, coins of fresh mozzarella.

"How different could it be?" I asked.

And then she placed the box on the island and flipped it open.

I stared at it, tilted my head at it, trying to figure out what, exactly, he’d done to pizza. "Is that celery?

And carrots?"

"And mashed potatoes."

It was like being dumped all over again, but this time by something I never imagined would hurt me. I looked up at Mallory, despair in my eyes, then pointed down at the pizza again. "Is that a pea? On pizza?"

"It’s some kind of shepherd’s pie thing. His mom was experimenting one day and made it, and it’s the only good thing from his childhood or something, and he paid the restaurant a buttload of cash to make it."

My shoulders slumped, and my voice went petulant. "But . . . it’s pizza."

"If it makes you feel better, they protested pretty well," Mallory said. "They tried to sell us a cream cheese and double bacon – "

"The official pizza of the Merit/Carmichael ticket," I put in.

"But Catcher can beg as well as the rest of them." Mall smiled knowingly. "Not that I know anything about that."

I groaned, but grinned. If Mallory was back to discussing doin’ it with Catcher, our friendship was on the mend. Still – not anything I needed to know about.

"That’s disgusting. He was my trainer."

"So was Ethan," she pointed out. "And look how well that turned out. At least you’ve notched your bedpost with a Master vampire and you can finally move on." She got very still, then glanced at me.

"You are moving on, right?"

Something in my stomach flipped over and clenched. It took a minute before I could answer. "Yeah. I told him it was his one chance. That if he left, the risk was on him." I shrugged. "He opted for the risk."

"His loss, Mer. His loss."

"Easy to say that, but I’d feel better if he slipped into a profound depression or something."

"I bet he’s doing that right now. Probably flogging himself as we speak."

"There’s no need to be dramatic. Just like there’s no need to waste this – let’s not call it pizza – carrot concoction."

And so I let her ply me with leftover shepherd’s pie pizza. And when I’d finished, because she’d offered the thing she hadn’t previously been willing to give me – understanding about Ethan – I gave her the thing I hadn’t previously been willing to give her – time.

"Can I tell you about the magic now?" she’d sheepishly asked.

"Let her rip, tater chip," I told her, and gave her my full attention.

She sat cross-legged on her kitchen stool, hands in the air as she prepared to tell me the things I hadn’t made time to hear before. She started with the basics.

"Okay," she began, "so you know about the four major Keys." I nodded. "The divisions of magic. Weapons. Beings. Power. Texts." Catcher had taught me that lesson.

"Right. Well, as I was saying before, those are like your paints – your tools for making things happen." I frowned, put an elbow on the island, and put my chin in my hand. "And what kind of things can you make happen, exactly?"

"The whole range," she said, "from Merlin to Marie Laveau. And you use one or more of the Keys to do it. Power – that’s the First Key. It’s the elemental force, the pure expression of will."

"The only legit way to perform magic in Catcher’s eyes." Mallory nodded. "And the irony is, he’s a master of the Second Key."

"Weapons," I offered, and she nodded again.

"Right. But lots of things can be weapons." She spread her arms over her piles of materials. "All this stuff – potions, runes, fetishes. And not the sex kind," she added, as if anticipating that I’d make a snarky comment. Fair enough, ’cause I would have.

"None of it is inherently magical, but when you put them together in the right combinations, you create a catalyst for a magical reaction."

I frowned. "What about my sword?"

"Remember when Catcher pricked your palm? Tempered the blade with blood?" I nodded. He’d done that in my grandfather’s backyard on the evening of my twenty-eighth birthday. I’d had the ability to sense steel from that night on.

"Yep," I said, rubbing my palm sympathetically.

"Your blade had potential. When you tempered the blade, you brought forth that potential, making it real. Now, the last two major Keys are obvious. Beings

– creatures that are inherently magical. Sorcerers can do it. Vampires kind of ‘shed’ it. Shifters are all over it. And texts – books, spells, written names. Words that operate like the blood you shed on your blade."

"Catalysts for magic?"

"Exactly. That’s why spells and incantations work. The words together, in the right order, with the right power behind them."

"So you’ve learned all this stuff," I said, sitting up again. "Can you actually use it?"

"Eh, maybe." She uncrossed her legs and turned back to the island, looked over the spread of stuff, then plucked a thin glass canister of what looked like birch bark from the array. "Can you grab something for me? There’s a little black notebook on the coffee table in the living room. It has gold writing on the spine."

"Are you going to work some magical mojo?"

"If you get off your butt before I turn you into a toad, yes." I hopped off my stool. "If you turn me into a toad, you’d have already worked your mojo."

"You’re too smart for your own good," she called out, but I was already heading down the hallway. The house looked pretty much the same as it had the last time I’d visited a couple of weeks ago, although there was more evidence of a boy in residence – random receipts here and there; a pair of beat-up running shoes; a copy of Men’s Health on the dining room table; a stack of audio equipment in one corner.