Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

what?”
    “Come back to this. Face up to what I did. I can take responsibility for it. I’m not stupid; I know it was my fault. But I’m . . . mortified, I guess. The shifters—I see how they look at me. There’s disgust in their eyes, Merit. Catcher is so angry, so humiliated, and I know the Order’s going to punish me. And I deserve the worst they can come up with.”
    She burst into long, sobbing tears, but I wasn’t ready to go to her. I wasn’t ready to comfort her—not when she’d hurt so many. Not while they were still grieving, while they still needed comforting.
    “How do I go back into the world knowing what I’ve done?” She looked up at me, her eyes red and swollen, her face wet. “I hurt people, and you guys are in trouble. And Catcher . . . I don’t know if I’ll ever get him back.”
    “Did he say that?”
    “He said he needed time.” She covered her mouth with a hand but only barely managed to stifle her sobs.
    “Then suck it up and give him time. God knows, he’s earned it. We all have.”
    “I’m going to lose him. Oh, God, Merit, I’m going to lose him.”
    “Maybe you will,” I agreed. “You betrayed his trust. You chose dark magic over your friends, your city, your boyfriend. I’m sure he isn’t taking that well. I’m not taking it well.”
    “So much for sugarcoating it.”
    “I’m not here to sugarcoat it. There’s no happy ending here, Mallory. No pot of gold. This isn’t a TV show you can just turn off and the world goes back to normal. People were hurt. And since Tate’s still out there, there’s probably more pain on the way.”
    “I can’t face that.”
    “Yes, you can. And you will.”
    She looked up at me.
    “We all have days when we feel small. Really small. Completely inadequate, but saddled with all this responsibility. I have to keep my House safe, my city from destroying it. I have to do right by Ethan and the rest of my vampires. I have to fight battles against people who shouldn’t be my enemies—especially when there are already plenty of enemies to go around. There are days when I would love to pull the cover over my head and say to hell with it.
    “But I don’t do that. And most people don’t do that. Most people get up and do their jobs and work their asses off for no reward at all—but just so they can get up the next day and do the whole thing over again. The world isn’t perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules are too tough and they shouldn’t apply to you, and you can ignore them and make things harder for everybody else. Sometimes life is about being sad and doing things anyway. Sometimes it’s about being hurt and doing things anyway. The point isn’t perfection. The point is doing it anyway.”
    Mallory nodded a little.
    “You make a go of it,” I said. “The hard way—one day at a time, and with patience. And you’ll hope he has patience for you, as well.”
    She nodded again. The fire gone from both of us, we sat there for a little while—fifteen minutes, maybe—until there was a knock at the door.
    We looked up. A shifter I didn’t know pointed at Mallory. “You’re needed downstairs,” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer, just disappeared again. I guessed he wasn’t expecting disobedience.
    She stood up. “I should go.”
    I nodded. “I should get back to the House. Good luck.”
    She tucked her hands into her pockets, hiding the physical evidence of her crimes. “Thanks. I guess I’ll see you around.”
    I nodded and watched her walk downstairs to get to work. I hoped this time around something better would come of it.

C HAPTER T EN

    JUSTICE LEAGUE
    I drove back to Cadogan House and parked three blocks up the street. The road was packed with cars. A nearby home was well lit, with shadowed figures moving animatedly behind sheer window shades. Must have been a party. Vampires in their midst or not, life continued as usual for most folks.
    I climbed out of the car and nodded at the two black-clad guards, both mercenary fairies the House paid to keep watch at the gate. Other than their queen, the rest of the fairies were tall, with narrow faces and similar features, long, dark, straight hair, and black uniforms. Most guards were men, although a female guard had watched the post on occasion.
    My relationship with the fairies had been tense since my last encounter with Claudia, but