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

chewed the edge of her lip.
    “This is so awkward,” I said.
    “It really is.” She seemed relieved to say it.
    “Like we’re strangers to each other.”
    Mallory nodded. “We are. I am a stranger to you. You didn’t know I was capable of all these things—of the things I’ve done. Horrible things. Turns out, I am.” She looked up at me. “I’m the kind of person who hurts others to get what they want. I shouldn’t be here right now, Merit. I should be in prison.”
    Her sadness was palpable, but at least she was beginning to see reality.
    “Have you talked to Gabriel?”
    “He thinks I’m redeemable.”
    That simple statement made me feel better than I had in a long, long time. Gabriel wasn’t an easy one to impress, and he had insight—magical or otherwise—into the future. If he thought Mallory was redeemable, that meant something. And it wasn’t like he was prone to overcomplimenting.
    “That’s something,” I said.
    “It’s something,” she agreed. “I’m working at the bar. This is my lunch break, I guess, although I’m not hungry much. I’m not much of anything right now. Numb, I guess. I know the things I did. They replay in my head over and over and over again. But they feel removed, like it wasn’t me. Like I’m just watching a video playback or something.”
    “Those things happened. They were real.”
    She nodded. “Gabriel says—he thinks I have a sensitivity to the imbalance the Maleficium created. He thinks that’s why I was so drawn to it.”
    I nodded. “Paige said all sorcerers felt that a little.”
    “Some more than others, I guess. And I’m not trying to make an excuse. I’m just—I’m trying to understand why—” She began sobbing again.
    I sat down on the bed beside her. Not touching—I wasn’t ready for that—but acknowledging what she was going through, and that she was finally facing her demons.
    “God, I am so sick of myself,” she said after a few minutes.
    “A lot of us are,” I said with a smirk, and she choked out a laugh and nodded.
    “I needed that,” she said, knuckling away tears. “I can’t use my magic here. He arranged it or something.”
    “I know.”
    “It will be a long time before they let me use it again. But Gabriel thinks I have talent, but I have to be trained how to use it for the right causes.”
    “Gabriel said that?” It was an unusually hands-on position for a shifter, who was usually more concerned with carousing than counseling.
    “He says there’s work I can do. Hard work, but fulfilling.”
    “Did he say what?”
    She shook her head. “I’m not sure it matters. I’m not sure I’ll ever make this up to anyone, no matter what I do.”
    She and Seth were a pair right now. Both facing guilt and the specter of never being able to atone for what they’d done, both suffering because of a book intended—ironically—to make life better for everyone.
    The moral of the story? Don’t fuck with the magical order.
    “There’s one thing you can do to help,” I said.
    She looked up at me, and I trusted her with my secret.
    “You may not have completed the familiar spell, but you and Ethan are linked together somehow.”
    Mallory blanched. “What?”
    “I think when you feel strong emotions, he does, too. You’re connected to each other because of the spell you attempted.”
    She looked horrified, which actually made me feel better. “Oh my God, Merit, I didn’t know.”
    “I didn’t want to tell you,” I confessed. “Not until I was sure you were in control of yourself.” I wasn’t entirely sure she was in control of herself now, but she was aware of her weaknesses and of what she’d done, which was more maturity than I’d seen from her in a while.
    I’d expected more tears from my confession, but she steeled her expression and looked up at me.
    “I will fix this,” she said.
    “Then do it,” I said. “Make this your first act of contrition. Give him back to me.”
    The small black alarm clock on her bedside table buzzed, and she tapped it with a hand. “I should get back to work.”
    I nodded. “What do you have to do?”
    “Dishes again. The bar serves some food, and shifters eat. A lot.”
    She’d gone from high-profile ad executive to high-powered witch . . . and now she was cleaning up for drunken shifters in the back of a run-down bar.
    “Does it bother you? That you’re doing dishes?”
    “It’s not the best job. Hot. Swampy. Kind of gross—all those little bits of wet