Wild Things (Chicagoland Vampires #9)(68)
Author: Chloe Neill

“And why is it here?” he asked me.

“Merit wants to find him,” Mallory said. “Although we hadn’t gotten to the why of it.”

“He’s our best bet to learn about Regan—to figure out what she is and what to do with her. And I was also hoping he might be able to talk some sense into Mayor Kowalcyzk.”

“You think he’ll play along?” Catcher asked.

I shrugged. “He was contrite when he left. Wanted to redeem himself. I’m hoping he still does and that he’ll consider this a favor to the city of Chicago. And me.”

“Do you really think he’d be able to change her mind?” Catcher asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But Ethan’s not exactly accessible. And even if we wanted to owe my father, I don’t think Kowalcyzk would roll over for a bribe. Not when she thinks she’s making political hay. I can’t fight him out, or the city will destroy us. As long as she calls him an enemy of the state, the evidence is irrelevant. And God knows she isn’t going to listen to me. I was hoping she’d listen to Tate.”

Catcher looked back at the medal, blinked. “It’s not a horrible idea.”

For the first time, I felt a sliver of hope. “I can take ‘not horrible.’ But not if it will hurt either one of you or endanger Mal’s recovery. He’s alive.” I looked at her. “I won’t trade his life for yours. If you can’t safely do this, then you don’t do it. The risk isn’t worth it.”

She looked at me for a long time, then Catcher.

“Your call,” he said. “These decisions have to be yours.”

She nodded, then put her hands flat on the table on either side of the medal and looked down, her eyes scanning back and forth as if she was reading a magical text. And maybe she was.

“Both of them are in there. A bit of Seth, a bit of Dominic.” She looked at me. “He sees you as his, in a way.”

I started. “He—what?”

She looked up. “Seth, not Dominic. He’s been part of your life for a very long time, and that’s meaningful to him.”

“Like, romantically?”

“No, Mary Sue. Not romantically. You’re just . . . there. Like an achievement, maybe because he was searching for something. Fame. Power. Popularity. In reality, of course, he probably wanted to rid himself of the parasitic demon that he didn’t know was attached to his soul. But, you know, details.”

“You got all that from my medal?”

She gestured offhandedly toward it. “It’s a piece of jewelry, not a memoir. But I can get a little. The issue will be the mechanism. We’ll have to link the medal to a map if we want to get anywhere with this.”

She spun on the stool and looked at Catcher, arms crossed. “What do you think? Compass in water? Map on a dart board? Google Maps?”

Catcher’s eyes shined. “Damn, I love it when you talk shop.”

“Especially when destroying the world isn’t the side dish,” Mallory murmured.

“That helps,” Catcher admitted.

They decided on their tools, and Catcher cleaned off the table while Mallory prepared the magic and the spell.

It was both more and less complex than I’d imagined it would be.

Less, because it involved such mundane materials. A map of the U.S. torn from a road atlas, the front cover of which bore a smiling insurance agent with perfectly coiffed brown hair. A large glass baking dish of water, which held a sliver of cork, the House medal stuck to the top with a thin sewing needle. The map was submerged in the water, the make-do magical compass bobbing above it.

Humble materials, but the magic was profound.

When her station was prepared, Mallory stretched and shook out her wrists and arms, rolled her shoulders like a swimmer preparing for a sprint. She was surprisingly calm, her movements reverential. Instead of making her anxious or manic, the preparations seemed to soothe her. Her hands, once chapped from the aftereffects of black magic, looked healthy again, although they were still marked by faint, crisscrossing lines from the damage she’d already done.

She looked up at me, smiled. “It’s different now. I mean, not the magic per se. But the preparations. They remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing, force me to calm myself, to approach it logically.”

I smiled a little. “Kind of like doing dishes?”

She chuckled. “Exactly like doing dishes. The North American Central Pack isn’t perfect, any more than the Keenes are perfect. But they know magic. A healthy kind of magic. A useful kind of magic. I couldn’t have gotten better without him. Not really.”

“This will be kind of like dousing,” Mallory said. “Water witching. Except we aren’t looking for water. We’re looking through it.”

She pulled her legs up, sitting cross-legged on a stool too small for it, which made her look a little like she was floating like a meditating yogi. She put her hands flat on the table and looked down at the water and the cork that bobbed inside it.

“And away we go,” she quietly said.

The buildup was so slow, so smooth, that I didn’t realize she’d begun spooling magic until the other objects on the table began to vibrate. The room had warmed, just a bit, not uncomfortably, but like I’d just moved a little closer to a roaring fire on a chilly day. I didn’t know I’d be able to tell the difference, but this was obviously good magic. There was no uncomfortable edge, no angry itch. It was calmer. Smoother, rippling the air in smooth waves that rolled across us instead of crashing into us like Mallory’s magic had once done.

By the expression on Catcher’s face, he was feeling it, too. He generally had three moods—bleak, pissed, and sardonic. (He might have been three of Snow White’s rejected dwarves.) But here, in this rehabbed basement with his rehabbed girlfriend, he actually looked . . . content. Proud and thoughtful, a little bit smitten, and generally satisfied with his lot.

Good for him. And her. They could use a little smitten and content.

Mallory drew the magic to a crescendo and pointed her index finger at my House medal. A blue spark sizzled from her finger to the cork. The medal heated, the edges glowing orange at first, then heating to white-hot, the metal warm enough to boil the water around it. The cork shivered and began to spin, whirling like a top in the middle of the water, then zigging across the surface like a bug, back and forth as it tried to find its target.

“Go on,” Mallory whispered encouragingly. As if in answer, like a child itching to please its mother, it dove and disappeared.