ballet-style flats, and a pair of black Mary Janes she'd given me - from my closet. She raised them for my approval and, at my nod, stuffed them in. Two more pairs followed before she settled on the bed next to the bag and crossed her legs, one foot swinging impatiently.
"I can't believe you're leaving me here with him. What am I going to do without you?"
I gave her a flat stare.
She rolled her eyes. "You only caught us the one time."
"I only caught you in the kitchen the one time, Mallory. I eat in there. I drink in there. I could have lived a contented, happy eternity without ever catching a glimpse of Catcher's bare ass on the kitchen floor." I faked a dramatic shiver. Faked, because the boy was gorgeous - a broad-shouldered, perfectly muscled, shaved-headed, green-eyed, tattooed, bad-boy magician who'd swept my roommate off her feet (and onto her back, as it turned out).
"Not that it isn't a fine ass," she said.
I folded a pair of pants and put them into my bag. "It's a great ass, and I'm very happy for you. I just didn't need to see it naked again. Ever. For real."
She chuckled. "For realsies, even?"
"For realsies, even." My stomach twinged with hunger. I glanced at Mallory, then lifted brows toward the glass of blood on my nightstand. She rolled her eyes, then waved her hands at it.
"Drink, drink," she said. "Pretend I'm some Buffy fan with a wicked attraction to the paranormal."
I managed to both lift the glass and give her a sardonic look. "That's exactly what you are."
"I didn't say you had to pretend very hard," she pointed out.
I smiled, then sipped from my glass of slightly microwaved blood, which I'd seasoned up with Tabasco and tomato juice. I mean, it was still blood, with the weird iron tang and plastic aftertaste, but the extras perked it up. I licked an errant drop from my upper lip, then returned the glass to the nightstand.
Empty.
I must have been hungrier than I thought. I blamed Aerobics Barbie. Regardless, in order to make sure that I had future snacks (thinking a stash of actual food would increase the odds that my fangs and Ethan's neck stayed unacquainted), I stuffed a dozen granola bars into my bag.
"And speaking of Catcher," I began, since I'd cut the edge off my hunger, "where is Mr.Romance this evening?"
"Work," she said. "Your grandfather is quite the taskmaster."
Did I mention that Catcher worked for my grandfather? During that one big week when all the supernatural drama went down, I also discovered that my grandfather, Chuck Merit, the man who'd practically raised me, wasn't retired from his service with the Chicago Police Department as we'd been led to believe. Instead, four years ago he'd been asked to serve as an Ombudsman, a liaison, between the city administration - led by darkly handsome Mayor Seth Tate - and the city's supernatural population. Sups of every kind - vampires, sorcerers, shapeshifters, water nymphs, fairies, and demons - all depended on my grandfather for help. Well, him and his trio of assistants, including one Catcher Bell. I'd visited my grandfather's South Side office shortly after becoming a vamp; I'd met Catcher, then Mallory met Catcher, and the rest was naked history.
Mallory was quiet for a moment, and when I looked up, I caught her brushing a tear from her cheek. "You know I'll miss you, right?"
"Please. You'll miss the fact that I can afford to pay rent now. You were getting used to spending Ethan's money." The Cadogan stipend was one of the upshots of having been made a vampire.
"The blood money, such as it was, was a perk. It was nice not to be the only one slaving away for the man." Given her glassy office overlooking Michigan Avenue, she was exaggerating by a large degree. While I'd been in grad school reading medieval texts, Mallory had been working as an ad executive. We'd only recently discovered that her job had been her first success as an adolescent sorceress: She'd actually willed herself into it, which wasn't the salve to her ego that a hire based on her creativity and skills might have been. She was taking a break from the job now, using up weeks of saved vacation time to figure out how she was going to deal with her newfound magic.
I added some journals and pens to the duffel. "Think about it this way - no more bags of blood in the