Authors: Chloe Neill

Drink Deep (17 page)

BOOK: Drink Deep

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“We all miss him,” I assured him.

He looked at me again. “I know, Sentinel.” He turned and walked out again, and I stood in the middle of the tatami mats, closed my eyes, and let the music wash over me. So much for escaping the grief.

One workout, one hot shower, and one much-too-small drink box of Type A later, I decided ano kI d>

When I was dressed, I drove to a funky little gourmet store in a commercial district of Hyde Park and loaded up a handled, brown paper bag with treats. A nice candle. A cup with an “M” inscribed on it. Some mixed nuts and dried fruit. A bottle of water and some chocolate bars.

Granted, the chocolate itself was unnecessary; I’d left an entire kitchen drawer of chocolate goodies at her brownstone when I’d moved out. It seemed unlikely that she’d cleaned it out already. But these had bacon in them.
Bacon
, people.

All the goodies for a study break box in hand, I put my purchases on the counter.

When the cashier began to ring me up, I decided to poll the public. “So, you’re pretty close to Cadogan House. Do you get vampires in here often?”

The register beeped as he ran the chocolate bars across the scanner. “Occasionally, yeah.”

“Are they as bad as everybody says?”

“The vamps? Nah. They ain’t bad. Pretty nice. Some of the girls ain’t bad to look at, you know what I mean?” He smiled grandly.

“Thank you,” I said, handing over cash and picking up my bag. “I’ll tell the rest of my friends at Cadogan House you said that.”

I gave him a wink, and left him in the store with cheeks blushing crimson.

I made it to Mallory’s house just in time to see her tutor, Simon, walking out the front door. He moved down the sidewalk with a perky kick in his step, which matched pretty well his boy-next-door good looks. His dark blond hair was closely cropped, his eyes bright blue. He wasn’t overly tall, but he looked like the friendly, gregarious type who might have been senior class president.

“Hi,” he said, squinting a little. “Merit, right? You’re a friend of Mallory’s?”

“Yep.” I lifted up the care package. “Just bringing her a little something. Is she in the middle of a test?”

“Oh, no. Not tonight. Just studying. I came over to help her with a tricky spot.”

“I see.” Mallory had thought Simon had a weird vibe, and Catcher clearly wasn’t a fan. I didn’t get a bad sense, but it did seem odd to me that his focus was Mallory’s exams, not the water. After all, he was the Order’s official representative in Chicago.

“How is the Order feeling about the issues with the lake and the river? Did they have any thoughts?”

He blinked, like the question didn’t make sense to him. “The lake and the water? They’re fixed now, aren’t they?”

“They are, but it’s still weird, don’t you think?”

He looked nervously down at his watch. “I’m sorry to be rude, but I need to go. I’ve got an appointment. Good seeing you again.” He hustled down the sidewalk toward a German sports car parked on the street.

I watched until the car disappeared down the block, wondering at his reaction, at his lack of concern because the problem had been “fixed.” He was a
sorcerer
, and by all accounts this was a magical problem. Did he have no curiosity about why it had happened?

Maybe kze=unthe was just happy it was fixed, and was focused enough on getting Mal through testing.

Or maybe he knew exactly what was going on, and was keeping it close to his vest.

Either way, I found the reaction suspicious, so I filed it away, popped onto the porch and knocked on the door. Catcher opened it with brown slippers on his feet, glasses on his nose, and a
TV Guide
in his hand. Maybe he was taking his sudden retirement seriously.

“Big night?”

“I’ve spent the last forty-eight tripping through books trying to find an explanation for the water. I’ve searched every online forum I could think of for references to spells or creatures or prophecies that might explain what’s going on. And to show for it, I have nothing. I haven’t slept. I’ve hardly eaten. Mallory is in a tizzy, and Simon is calling my house every five goddamned minutes. I need a break or I am going to lose my shit.”

There was no mistaking the defensiveness in his voice or the dark circles under his eyes.

I tried to lighten the mood, and pointed at the house shoes—the last things I’d have expected to see Catcher Bell wearing. “And the shoes?” I asked with a grin.

“My house, my rules. These shoes happen to be comfortable,” he said. “If you two roamed around the house naked and carrying bows and arrows before I moved in, it’s none of my business.”

The snark notwithstanding, he moved aside to let me in.

“How’s life in the post-Ombudsman era?” I asked as he closed the door behind me.

He smiled thinly. “Like I said, exhausting, but surprisingly well organized. You know that room in the back of Chuck’s house he uses for storage?”

I did. That had been my grandmother’s treasure room. She loved garage sales, and she inevitably found something she thought one of us needed. A wooden pull toy for Charlotte’s daughter, Olivia. An antique desk blotter for Robert. A book of poetry for me. She kept them in boxes or paper bags in tidy stacks and passed them out during visits like Santa Claus. When my grandmother died, my grandfather left the room and its treasure trove intact. At least, he had before . . .

“Well,” Catcher continued, “it’s been reorganized. It’s now home of the Chuck Merit School of Supernatural Diplomacy.”

“Tell me you aren’t really calling it that.”

“It’s only a temporary name,” he assured. “The point is, we’re still on the map for folks who need help.”

“And the folks who need your help probably don’t care if you’re working out of a fancy office or a back bedroom.”

“Precisely.” Catcher assumed his position on the couch—ankles crossed on the coffee table,
TV Guide
in one hand, remote in the other, his gaze on the television over the top of his glasses. A lemon-lime soda and a bowl of gummy orange slices sat on the coffee table in front of him. This was a man ready for a break, uninterrupted by trips to the kitchen for nosh.

I assumed that was my cue. “I assume Mallory’s home?”

“She’s in the basement.”

That was a surprise. It was an Amityville spider trap down there. I couldn’t imagine she’d be down there on purpose, much less studying.

“Seriously?”

“It’s chemistry night. She needed quiet and room to make messes. I wasn’t willing to give up the kitchen.”

“Basement it is,” I said, and walked to the back of the house. The door to the grungy cellar was in the kitchen, which also housed the ice-cold diet sodas Mallory usually kept on hand. I grabbed two from the fridge and opened the basement door.

The smell of vinegar that poured up the stairs made my eyes water instantly.

“Mal?” I called out. The basement stairs were dark, but some light crept around the corner from the main part of the basement. “Is everything okay down there?”

I heard the clunking of what sounded like pots and pans—and then she began to belt out the lyrics of a hip-hop song with much gusto.

I considered that the all clear and began to pick my way down the basement stairs.

I’d never been a fan of basements. Before my parents moved into their modern, concrete box of a house in Oak Park, we lived in a Gothic house in Elgin, Illinois. The house had been a century old, and looked—and felt—like the setting for a horror movie. It was beautiful but haunting. Luxurious, as was their way, but lonely.

The house had a basement in which my mother had stored the pottery kiln she’d purchased when ceramics had become her temporary obsession. She kept the kiln immaculately clean, but it was the only clean item in the basement; the rest had been dark, cold, damp, and spidery.

“Not unlike this one,” I muttered, finally reaching the concrete floor and peeking around the corner.

A single, white-hot bulb hung down into the room. There was no sign of the source of the vinegary smell, but the scent was definitely stronger down here. Mallory sat at a giant worktable made from sawhorses and sheets of plywood. Books and bowls of unidentifiable bits were stacked feet high upon it, as were a variety of potted plants. Some looked like regular houseplants; others had viciously pointy leaves with crimson-red tips or thick, luscious leaves that looked like they were full to bursting with water.

Mallory’s ice-blue hair—now showing a little blond at the roots—was pulled into a ponytail, and black headphones covered her ears. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks looked a little more gaunt than usual. The exams must have been taking their toll.

She spit out lyrics with nimble speed while she perused a hefty book that sat open on the tabletop before her. She was oblivious while I picked through the maze of cardboard boxes, unused furniture, and waiting bags of ice melt that covered the basement floor . . . and she jumped when I put a can of soda on the table.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt, Merit!” she exclaimed, ripping off the headphones. “What are you doing here? I nearly zapped you into next month.”

“Sorry. You were busy communing with Kanye. What’s with the smell?”

Mallory pointed to a series of homemade wooden shelves tucked into a nook across from the table. It was probably eight feet tall, and each of the shelves was lined with rows of home-canned fruits and vegetables. I could identify pickles, apples, and tomato sauce. The rest of the jars were a mystery. But the vinegar smell wasn’t—there was an empty slot on the pickle row.

“Missing a jar?”

“I blasted one of Aunt Rose’s pickle jars,” Mallory said, looking ksai of home down at her book again. She’d inherited the town house, and its contents, when her aunt died a few years ago. Since the jars had been sitting in the same spot unused, Mal apparently wasn’t a fan of her aunt’s canned goods.

“I didn’t even know this stuff was down here.”

“I didn’t bring any jars upstairs,” she flatly said. “They didn’t taste very good. They were garlic-spiced apples.”

I wrinkled my lip. “Foul.”

“Hella foul. After that, I didn’t open another jar. Until last night. And that wasn’t on purpose.”

“Funny the pickles didn’t make it smell like dill.”

“No dill,” Mallory said. “Just vinegar. I think Aunt Rose’s sense of taste was a little off. Too bad she hadn’t at least thrown some garlic into it. And it wouldn’t have even bothered you, since you aren’t that kind of vampire.”

She was right that garlic wasn’t the vamp repellent of myth; on the other hand, the thought of a basement sprayed down with garlic and vinegar didn’t exactly make me eager for a visit, either.

“That is true.” I plopped the care package onto a clean strip of table. “And speaking of snacks, this is for you.”

Without a word, she closed her book, then looked inside the bag and pulled out the bag of nuts and fruit, which she pulled open with her teeth. After pouring some into her hand—which was seriously chapped, like it had been one of the last times I’d seen her—she extended it to me, and I rooted around until I found a couple of whole cashews.

“Thanks,” I said, enjoying the satisfying snap when I broke them in half with my teeth. “How are exams?”

“Complicated. Lots of math. It’s not like the exams Catcher took,” she said, with a little feistiness. “He’s been out of the Order for years more. He’s not exactly up to speed on sorceress testing procedures.”

I guessed she and Catcher had exchanged some words about the tests. “I see,” I said neutrally.

A low cry suddenly lit through the air. I heard shuffling across the floor, and nearly jumped onto the table, imagining it was a spider the size of a football.

But a small, black cat with a pink rhinestone collar padded into view from beneath the table. It sat down on its haunches on the floor beside Mallory and looked up at me, its eyes chartreuse.

“Your familiar?” I wondered, and Mallory nodded. At Simon’s suggestion, she’d adopted a black kitten to help her perform her sorcery duties.

“That would be Wayne Newton, yes.”

“You named your familiar ‘Wayne Newton’?”

“They have the same haircut,” she dryly said. I moved my hand. Sure enough, the small cat had a bouffant of dark hair between its ears.

“Huh. It does seem a lot calmer than the last time you mentioned it,” I said. I reached down to scratch Wayne Newton between his ears. He nuzzled against my hand, but swayed a little as he did it, as if he was drunk.

I glanced back at Mallory. “What’s wrong with him?”

She glanced down, then frowned at the kitten. “Her, not him. And it’s the fermented pickle juice. I didn’t quite get there in time, and she was lapping it up.”

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“Poor kid.”

“I know. And it’s another strike against Aunt Rose. I don’t even think she liked pickles, anyway.”

BOOK: Drink Deep

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