Blood Games

Mallory nodded. “Precisely. And within each one of those ways, there are sub-ways. If you’re working up a spell, you can add the ingredients in a different order, say the words differently, mix it under a full moon, what have you. Those are basically languages.”



“And you can tell what language was used?”



“To some degree, yeah. Each step leaves a kind of”—she searched for a word—“fingerprint in the magic. You work a little reverse magic, you can try to read all those fingerprints.”



“That’s really awesome. It’s like magic forensics.”



“It is magic forensics,” Mallory said. “Just don’t tell Catcher that you said so. Too ‘newfangled’ for him. Although I am super good at it.”



“You could add it to your résumé. Along with SWOB.”



“SWOB!” she playfully chanted, throwing a fist in the air.



“So what are the fingerprints here?”



“Little bit of Speilwerk—that’s magic with Pennsylvania Dutch origins. Little bit of British herbalism. But the primary language is American, including the main ingredient.” She reached out, grabbed a bowl, and held it out to me. “Smell.”



I lifted a brow, looked down into the bowl, which held a fine gray-green powder. “Will it turn me into a newt?”



“Yes,” she flatly said. “Smell it anyway.”



I leaned toward the bowl, sniffed delicately. “It smells . . . green. Pungent. Herby. What is it?”



Mallory smiled, put the bowl back on the table. “Exactly. It’s filé powder—the ground leaves of the sassafras tree. It’s primarily used in gumbo or, in certain locations in the South, in certain herbal remedies and charms. Such as this little gal here.” She picked up the obelisk, put it down again.



“What does that tell you about the person who magicked it?”



“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out. First impression? Someone who’s versed in different schools of magic, but not just academically. There’s a certain creativity here—a willingness to mix the different styles. Like jazz. This was, kind of, a magical riff.”



“Is this the work of a sorcerer?” There was concern behind the question, and from her expression, she realized it. A rogue sorcerer was bad enough; a rogue sorcerer helping unknown parties control vampires was much, much worse.



“It could be,” she said. “This improvisational magic—you have to have a certain level of experience and knowledge to do that. Otherwise every third grader with a plastic recorder would be a Coltrane. But you don’t have to be a sorcerer—the way we define it—to make magic. Spells, charms, herbalism. Those are approaches to magic that we can use, but we aren’t the only ones.”



“So we have the what, but not really the who?”



She smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. It’s possible I’ll get something else out of it, but there’s not a guidebook I can use for this. I kind of have to make it up as I go along.” She pointed at me. “Now, if you can get me something from a suspect, I could see if the magicks match.”



“You’ll be the first to know.”



“I will say this: To get involved in that kind of vampire drama—that level of vampire drama?—they’d demand a price. Money, power . . . I don’t know. But it would be steep.”



I nodded, thinking of the GP—its current members all based in Europe. They seemed the most likely to have the connections, resources, and opportunity to hijack Darius’s brain.



I realized I hadn’t yet heard from my dad about the Swiss account to which the U.S. money had been transferred, and sent him a follow-up message. I felt a little guilty asking him for help when I hadn’t seen him in weeks. On the other hand, he’d tried to bribe Ethan to make me a vampire, and he was still working off that particular debt.



“Does the Order have any contact with their European counterparts?” The Order was the American union of sorcerers.



“Once upon a time,” Mallory said, leaning forward and linking her hands on the table, “there was this little thing called the American Revolution.”



“I’m vaguely familiar.”



She stuck out her tongue. “The answer is no. They don’t communicate. Postrevolutionary bitterness.”



“One if by land, grouchy if by sea.”



“Exactly.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “We should get going. I told them we’d be there around ten.” She uncrossed her legs and hopped off the stool. I followed her upstairs to the living room, where she grabbed a jacket from the back of the love seat. “We’re leaving,” she told Catcher.



He looked up from his spot on the other couch, already tucked in with a bottle of 312 beer and a magazine. “Did you take out the trash?”



“What? Oh, sorry, can’t hear you . . .” she mumbled, grabbing her keys and purse and hustling me outside.



I guessed she wasn’t taking out the trash.



* * *



“Sounds like things are back to normal with you and Catcher,” I said as we walked down the stairs to the sidewalk.



“Things are domestic.” At my look of concern, she waved me off.



“It’s not a bad thing, just an adjustment. You’ve seen him mostly naked. He has the body of a god, Merit. Seriously—he has muscles I didn’t even know existed. Very nommable hills and valleys. And he’s going on about the trash.”



Ethan and I hadn’t really had the opportunity to argue about the trash—both because we usually had too much other drama to deal with and, frankly, because he hired staff to do that kind of thing. Helen, the House’s den mother, managed the general upkeep of the centuries-old building, so Ethan and I hadn’t once had to argue about the vacuuming or the dishes. Considering my preference for equality and his imperial nature, I bet those conversations would have been frequent and unpleasant.



Score one for Helen.



“Car’s right here,” I said, gesturing, but she waved me on and kept walking toward Division.



“It’s, like, six blocks away. We’ll chat, get a little exercise.” She hooked an arm through mine. “Now, give me all the dish at Cadogan House.”



There was, of course, a lot to tell, at least as far as my relationship was concerned. As we walked past the town houses of Wicker Park—tall, narrow, and brick, with cute stoops and tiny patches of green in front—I told her about Ethan and the mysterious woman in his past.



“So he’s got a mysterious lady in his past, and she’s making threats because she doesn’t want him to lead the GP?” She kicked a rock, sent it skipping down the sidewalk. “Were they lovers?”



Mallory wasn’t one to mince words, which was exactly why I’d told her. “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t matter to me if she was. I mean, I accept that he has a past. I wasn’t a saint before we met.”



She slid me a glance.



“I wasn’t.”



“You were a nerdy English lit student; you were as close as it gets without beatification. But keep going.”



For the sake of my emotional well-being, I ignored my urge to fight the point, got us back on track. “I can live with Ethan’s past, his ego, the fact that he’s an alpha. But he’s pushing me away about this, and I don’t understand why.”



“You really don’t see it?” she asked, spritely dodging a suspicious brown pile in the middle of the sidewalk.



“See what?”



“His problem. To not put too fine a point on it, he’s a control freak. I don’t mean that in a bad way. He works hard to protect what’s his, and now he’s trying to extend that range of protection. He’s trying to exert his sizable will on the GP, the Houses in Europe and the U.S.



“But he’s got people from his past—including this crazy woman—coming out of the woodwork. He doesn’t like to be reminded that he’s vulnerable—or that you are—and she knows exactly what buttons to push. She knows how to get to Ethan. And that scares the shit out of him. Especially now, the very time he’s trying to prove how strong and powerful and fearless he is. That’s like a Darth Sullivan tornado of horrors.”



Faux words aside, she made a lot of sense.



“Bottom line, he loves you. Powerfully. And he’s trying to build a life with you. This heifer’s getting in the way. Maybe he’s a little embarrassed he can’t control it; maybe he’s a little afraid he’ll lose you because of it.”



“He’s been pushing me away.”



“Better to push you away than have you see him as less or different than you do now. I’ve seen you look at him, Merit. He’s seen you look at him. There’s a lot of things there—love, heat, amusement. But there’s also admiration. A man like Ethan isn’t going to risk that lightly.”



I nodded, and we walked a few steps in companionable silence. I cleared my throat, told her the rest of it. “Before all this, he was hinting about a proposal.”



She stopped short, jaw dropped. “You are shitting me.”



“Not even a little.”



Mallory looked at me for a moment, and then her smile dawned bright and excited. “Darth Sullivan is going to propose.”



“Well, he was going to propose. Now who the hell knows?” I blew out a breath, rolled my shoulders in frustration. “What do I do about this, Mallory? It makes me want to scream and cry at the same time.”



“You two have always run hot,” she said. “Most people, I think they operate somewhere between four and seven.”



“Four and seven?”



“On a scale of one to ten. One being totally disinterested, ten being crazy, can’t-keep-our-hands-off-each-other love.”



“Angelina and Billy Bob.”



“Correct. You two operate in the seven to nine zone, and that’s only the stuff I’ve actually been around to see. I’d guess you two run hot the rest of the time, too.”



“He told me he just gave me the chance to blossom, to become the person I was meant to be.”



Mallory put a hand on her chest, sighed. “For all his faults, which are legion, Darth Sullivan has a way with words. I assume he also has a way with what I’m assuming is an impressive endowment. Is sex an option? I find it fixes many things that ail the alpha type.”



“That’s not really a problematic area.”



“Good. And not surprising. Vampire or not, he cleans up well.” She bobbed her head as she considered. “In that case, I say you have to mix things up. Steal the ball. Run a new play. Jump higher than everyone else. Fake out the QB.”



“You can stop with the mixed sports metaphors. I suppose I need to stage some kind of Ethan intervention.”



She nodded emphatically. “Merit, sneaking around behind Darth Sullivan’s back? I love it.”



“If he kicks me out, I can sleep under your table in the crafts room, right?”



“No,” she said, without hesitation. “But you can sleep on the floor of the Ombud’s van.”



But not with my own Ombuddy T-shirt, I glumly thought.



Chapter Fourteen



FILL IT ’TIL YOU SPILL IT



It was late, and most of the restaurants and shops on Division were locked up tight for the night. But lights shined brightly in the “all-nite” pizza joint and the bar next door, and the store that sat beside them in a small strip.



“The Magic Shoppe” was painted across the front glass in old-fashioned gold letters that looked like they’d been chiseled. Although the lights were on, the store looked empty. Mallory squinted as she peered through the glass, then tapped a fist against the door.



It took a few minutes—and another round of tapping—before a tall man, as lean as a whipcord—walked up one of the long aisles. He wore a snug plaid shirt and corduroys, and his brown hair was cut into a short Caesar. His face was long, his chin covered in a thick goatee, and there were bags under his eyes.



Late for him, I guessed.



He had a clipboard and large round key ring in hand, and he stuck the clipboard under his arm to unlock the door. He pulled it, the mechanism squealing in protest and a leather strap with a bell jangling.



“Hey, Mallory,” he said. “Long time no see. Come on in.”



“Hey, Curt. It’s been a while,” she agreed. I followed her inside. “Trying to work off my current stock. The store looks good,” she said, glancing around.



It looked much like Jonah had described it. The store was long and narrow, the floor made of scarred wooden planks, the walls lined in wooden bead board. A long wooden counter filled the left side of the room, its backer mirrored and edged in fluted wooden columns that reached from the floor to the ceiling of the wall behind it. “Smithson Pharmacy” was etched in faded gold letters across the top of the mirror, and on glass apothecary jars of mysterious substances. The right-hand side of the store was lined with shelves, and the weapons FaireMaker Nan had mentioned hung high along the back wall. Katanas, wakizashi, daggers, sais. There was an array to choose from, and at least far away, they looked like quality instruments.



The place smelled witchy—the scents of dust and paper mixed with the bright fragrance of dried plants and herbs.



“Business is good,” he agreed. “Although I’m tired tonight.”



Mallory nodded sympathetically. “We appreciate your opening up the store.”



“You said something about tarot cards?”



“Yeah. We actually think they’re being used in a crime. I wanted to show Merit your stash, maybe get your thoughts?”