YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND

Mallory knew me way too well. I gave her a pitiful smile.

She stepped aside and held open the door. Walking into the foyer, I was immediately comforted by the sounds and smells of home - lemon furniture polish, cinnamon and sugar, the slightly musty smell of an older home, the low murmur of the television.

"Couch," she directed. "Sit."

I did, taking a seat on the middle cushion.

Mallory grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the side table, then sat beside me, handed them over, and pushed the hair from my face. "Tell me."

I did. I told her about the shifter bar, the pizza, the chocolate. I told her about the party, Gabriel's friendship, and the bully; about Ethan's reaction and the

"risk" he was willing to take. By the end of it, I was in her arms, crying into her shoulder. Crying like a girl whose heart had been shattered into tiny, brittle pieces, even if it had been my fault for falling in the first place.

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt," I said, mopping at my face with a tissue. "At first, I thought, oh, he's just afraid. He just can't give more because he's not capable right now." I shook my head. "It's not because he isn't capable. It's because he wants something else." That sickening feeling rolled through my stomach again, that horrible twist that only rejection could trigger. Mallory sat back on the couch, hands in her lap, and sighed, long and hard. "In this case, Merit - and I don't want to make a martyr of him, because he is far beneath our consideration at the moment - it's probably a little of both. I've seen him with you. I've seen the way he looks at you. I know I'm hard on him."

Her voice softened. "I know I was hard on you. But there's more than just desire in his eyes when he looks at you. It's not just the physical stuff. There's something else - some kind of affection, maybe.

Some kind of appreciation that's not just about hormones and pink parts. The problem is, he's a four-hundredyear-old vampire. He's not human, and he hasn't been in a long time. We don't even know if he thinks the same or wants the same things."

"Don't blame the vampire," I told her. "That doesn't get him off the hook."

"Oh, trust me," she said. "You give me ten minutes alone with Darth Sullivan, and he will feel my most excellent wrath." A tingle of magic lit the air and sent a prickle of foreboding down my spine. Powerful, was my sorceress friend.

"All I'm saying is, it sounds as if he doesn't think he has a choice. That's not an excuse, but it's an explanation."

I blew out a slow breath and knuckled tears from beneath my eyes. "It's not as if I don't know those things. I know he's not human, not really, even though he has these incredibly vulnerable moments that make my heart clench. You should have seen him when he jumped the shifter, Mallory. He went ballistic - shoved the guy against a wall."

"Just like I would have done. But with sorcerer juju instead of vampire juju." I nodded. "But you wouldn't have regretted it. He did. Gabriel understood why he'd done it - I know he did. But that wasn't good enough. I mean, it's as if I'm being punished because Ethan's black nugget of a heart actually started beating again."

"It's definitely not fair, hon. And I wish I had some magic thing to say that would fix the whole scenario, but I don't."

"It's just - I know he's not perfect. He can be cold and controlling. But I've seen that passion, the affection that he's locked away. I've seen what he's capable of. He's just - he's also, I don't know - "

"He's Ethan."

I looked over at her and sniffed.

"He's Ethan. For some bizarre reason, he seems to be your Ethan. And for better or worse, you seem to be his Merit. That irritates me on a daily basis."

"I'm so stupid."

"Not stupid. Just a little too human for your own good." I didn't mention that we'd both criticized Morgan for exactly the same thing. "Sometimes too human, sometimes not human enough. And either way, sometimes a stone-cold idiot."

"Now, that," Mallory said, "I can agree with."

"He's been in love, you know."

Mallory looked over at me. "In love? Ethan?"

I nodded and relayed the information Lindsey had once passed along. "Her name was Lacey Sheridan.

She was a guard for a couple of decades, I guess. Lindsey thinks he was in love with her, although they broke it off years ago when she started her own House."

"She's a Master?"

"One of twelve."

"Is it perfectly fitting that if you were the next Master in line, you'd be the thirteenth House?"

"Given my luck, pretty damned appropriate."

She rose off the couch, then walked toward the hallway. "Come on, genius. Let's get you something to eat."

I wrapped my hands around my stomach, which was just beginning to stop swimming. "I'm not hungry." She glanced back and offered a flat stare.

"Well, not that hungry," I said, but followed her to the kitchen anyway. I had missed dessert, after all.

"Dear Lord," I said, stepping into the kitchen. What had once been a tiny cottage kitchen had become a - well, I wasn't sure what to call it. The potions classroom from Hogwarts, maybe?

I walked to the kitchen island and trailed my fingers over stacks of books, a deck of tarot cards, boxes of salt, glass jars of feathers, grapevines, corked bottles of oils, matches, and dried rose petals.

I plucked a card from the tarot deck - the ace of swords. Fitting, I thought, placing the card gingerly atop the rest of the deck. "What is all this stuff?"

"Homework," she grumbled.

"Oh, my God, it is Hogwarts."

She gave me a snarky look and began to clear off an area on the island. "I'm playing catch-up with little witches who've been doing this stuff for years."

I pulled out a stool and sat down. "I thought you were training alone?"

"I am. But I'm not the first student my teacher's had. Before he was sent to the Siberia of sorcery - "

"Schaumburg?"

"Schaumburg," she confirmed. "Before that, he taught lots and lots of kids. Kids who were much younger than me when they got their magic. Turns out, hitting my magical stride at twenty-seven puts me pretty far behind the rest of the pack."

"But I bet you make up for it with sass and charm." She narrowed her gaze. "I make up for it with being twice as powerful as anyone else."

"For serial?"

"Completely for serial."

I surveyed the spread on the table. "So why the homework? I distinctly remember a lecture by Catcher about how you guys don't have to use spells or potions or whatever" - I dropped my voice an octave and bobbed my shoulders in what I'm sure was an Oscar-worthy impression of Catcher Bell - "but could funnel the power directly through your bodies."

"Was that supposed to be Catcher?"

"Kinda. Yeah."

"Huh. Sounded more like John Goodman."

"I'm not an actress. I just play one on TV. Get to the point."

"This will shock you," Mallory said, pulling out a stool beside mine and plopping down, "but it turns out Catcher's a little pretentious about the magic thing." I snorted. "I feel bad you're only just figuring that out."

"As if there's a way to miss it. Consider anything that comes out of his mouth about magic - except for the major Keys; he's got those right - to be a matter of opinion. He thinks the only legit way to do magic is to will things to happen. That's not true," she said, shoulders slumped as she surveyed the piles of materials.

"Sorcerers are like craftsmen of magic."

"Craftsmen how?"

"Well, the four Keys are a little like painting. You've got folks who paint with oils, with acrylics, with watercolors. In the end, you still get art. You just used different tools to get there. You can use any of the four Keys to make magic." She held up a cork-stoppered glass jar of white powder to the light and spun it around like a connoisseur might twirl a glass of wine before taking a sip. Its pearlescent sparkle made it seem extraordinarily white; densely white.

"Ground unicorn horn?" I wondered.

"Glitter from that craft store on Division."

"Close enough," I said. I fingered the Cadogan medal at my neck, working up the nerve to get out the thing we hadn't talked about yet - the speech I hadn't yet made. "I've missed you." She swallowed, but didn't look at me. "I've missed you, too."

"I wasn't there for you. Not like you were for me." Mallory blew out a slow breath. "No, Merit, you weren't. But I was unfair about the Morgan thing. I didn't mean to push you; I just didn't want you to get hurt. And that thing I said - "

"About my daddy issues?" That one still stung.

"Completely uncalled for. I am so sorry."

I nodded, but the silence returned again, as if we hadn't quite worked through the wall of awkwardness between us.

"Turns out, I was completely right about the Ethan thing." I rolled my eyes. "And so humble about it, too. Fine - yes, you were right. He was - is - dangerous, and I fell right into his trap."

She opened her mouth to speak, then snapped it shut again. She shook her head, as if unable to decide whether to voice the words in her head. When she did decide, the words flew out in a rush. "Okay, I'm so sorry, but I have to ask. How was it? I mean, seriously. Grade-A asshole or not, the man is gorgeous."

A corner of my mouth quirked up into a smile. "It was almost worth the emotional trauma."

"How almost?"

"Multiple times almost."

"Huh," she said. "That both figures - as pretty as he is - and irritates. You kinda hope a guy who pulls a stunt like he did this evening is seriously lacking in the nookie skills department. And your performance?"

"Mallory."

She made the sign of a cross over her chest. "I have a point, I swear." I rolled my eyes, but grinned a little. "I was impressive."

"So impressive that the next time he sees you in that leather, he's going to rue walking out?" I grinned at her. "Now I recall why I best-friended you."

"You have a faulty memory. I best-friended you."

We looked at each other for a minute, schoolgirl-silly grins on our faces.

We were back.

A few minutes and the replay of a few Sex and the City-worthy details later, Mallory was off her stool and headed for the fridge.

"I have cold pizza if you want some," she said, "but I'll warn you, it's a little . . . different." I picked up a foot-long black feather and twirled it in my hand. "How different?"

"Catcher Bell different." She opened the fridge, pulled out a wide, flat pizza box, and shut the door again with a bump. I leaned up and used both hands to push containers out of the way, leaving a bare spot big enough for the pizza box. This one was from another Wicker Park joint, the kind that made artisanal pizza with goat cheese and organic herbs. It wasn't my favorite, but it definitely had its place in my repertoire. Hand-pulled crust, homemade sauce, coins of fresh mozzarella.

"How different could it be?" I asked.

And then she placed the box on the island and flipped it open.

I stared at it, tilted my head at it, trying to figure out what, exactly, he'd done to pizza. "Is that celery?

And carrots?"

"And mashed potatoes."

It was like being dumped all over again, but this time by something I never imagined would hurt me. I looked up at Mallory, despair in my eyes, then pointed down at the pizza again. "Is that a pea? On pizza?"

"It's some kind of shepherd's pie thing. His mom was experimenting one day and made it, and it's the only good thing from his childhood or something, and he paid the restaurant a buttload of cash to make it."

My shoulders slumped, and my voice went petulant. "But . . . it's pizza."

"If it makes you feel better, they protested pretty well," Mallory said. "They tried to sell us a cream cheese and double bacon - "

"The official pizza of the Merit/Carmichael ticket," I put in.

"But Catcher can beg as well as the rest of them." Mall smiled knowingly. "Not that I know anything about that."

I groaned, but grinned. If Mallory was back to discussing doin' it with Catcher, our friendship was on the mend. Still - not anything I needed to know about.

"That's disgusting. He was my trainer."

"So was Ethan," she pointed out. "And look how well that turned out. At least you've notched your bedpost with a Master vampire and you can finally move on." She got very still, then glanced at me.

"You are moving on, right?"

Something in my stomach flipped over and clenched. It took a minute before I could answer. "Yeah. I told him it was his one chance. That if he left, the risk was on him." I shrugged. "He opted for the risk."

"His loss, Mer. His loss."

"Easy to say that, but I'd feel better if he slipped into a profound depression or something."

"I bet he's doing that right now. Probably flogging himself as we speak."

"There's no need to be dramatic. Just like there's no need to waste this - let's not call it pizza - carrot concoction."

And so I let her ply me with leftover shepherd's pie pizza. And when I'd finished, because she'd offered the thing she hadn't previously been willing to give me - understanding about Ethan - I gave her the thing I hadn't previously been willing to give her - time.

"Can I tell you about the magic now?" she'd sheepishly asked.

"Let her rip, tater chip," I told her, and gave her my full attention.

She sat cross-legged on her kitchen stool, hands in the air as she prepared to tell me the things I hadn't made time to hear before. She started with the basics.

"Okay," she began, "so you know about the four major Keys." I nodded. "The divisions of magic. Weapons. Beings. Power. Texts." Catcher had taught me that lesson.

"Right. Well, as I was saying before, those are like your paints - your tools for making things happen." I frowned, put an elbow on the island, and put my chin in my hand. "And what kind of things can you make happen, exactly?"

"The whole range," she said, "from Merlin to Marie Laveau. And you use one or more of the Keys to do it. Power - that's the First Key. It's the elemental force, the pure expression of will."

"The only legit way to perform magic in Catcher's eyes." Mallory nodded. "And the irony is, he's a master of the Second Key."

"Weapons," I offered, and she nodded again.

"Right. But lots of things can be weapons." She spread her arms over her piles of materials. "All this stuff - potions, runes, fetishes. And not the sex kind," she added, as if anticipating that I'd make a snarky comment. Fair enough, 'cause I would have.

"None of it is inherently magical, but when you put them together in the right combinations, you create a catalyst for a magical reaction."

I frowned. "What about my sword?"

"Remember when Catcher pricked your palm? Tempered the blade with blood?" I nodded. He'd done that in my grandfather's backyard on the evening of my twenty-eighth birthday. I'd had the ability to sense steel from that night on.

"Yep," I said, rubbing my palm sympathetically.

"Your blade had potential. When you tempered the blade, you brought forth that potential, making it real. Now, the last two major Keys are obvious. Beings

- creatures that are inherently magical. Sorcerers can do it. Vampires kind of 'shed' it. Shifters are all over it. And texts - books, spells, written names. Words that operate like the blood you shed on your blade."

"Catalysts for magic?"

"Exactly. That's why spells and incantations work. The words together, in the right order, with the right power behind them."

"So you've learned all this stuff," I said, sitting up again. "Can you actually use it?"

"Eh, maybe." She uncrossed her legs and turned back to the island, looked over the spread of stuff, then plucked a thin glass canister of what looked like birch bark from the array. "Can you grab something for me? There's a little black notebook on the coffee table in the living room. It has gold writing on the spine."

"Are you going to work some magical mojo?"

"If you get off your butt before I turn you into a toad, yes." I hopped off my stool. "If you turn me into a toad, you'd have already worked your mojo."

"You're too smart for your own good," she called out, but I was already heading down the hallway. The house looked pretty much the same as it had the last time I'd visited a couple of weeks ago, although there was more evidence of a boy in residence - random receipts here and there; a pair of beat-up running shoes; a copy of Men's Health on the dining room table; a stack of audio equipment in one corner.

So as I trolled back into the living room, I was prepared to see guy stuff. Balled-up sweat socks, maybe, or a half-empty can of Pabst or a bottle of 312, or whatever Catcher drank.

I wasn't prepared for an empty room . . . that had been filled with furniture only a little while ago.

"Holy shit," I swore, hands on my hips as I surveyed the room. "Mal," I called out. "Come here! I think you were robbed!"

But how could they have moved out an entire roomful of furniture and knickknacks - and without our knowing it?

"Look up!"

"Seriously - come here! I'm not kidding!"

"Merit!" she yelled back. "Just flippin' look up."

I did.

My mouth dropped.

"Holy shit."

The room had gone completely Poltergeist. All of the furniture - from couch to end table to entertainment console and television - was on the ceiling. Everything was in its place, but everything was upside down. It was like standing beneath the looking glass - a mirror image of what had been here before. It was also as if gravity took a vacation. I saw the tiny black book Mallory wanted, but it was stuck to the top (bottom?) of the coffee table that was now perched a few feet above my head.

"I guess I could jump for it," I murmured with a small smile, then instinctively glanced back toward the door. She stood in the doorway, arms over her chest, one ankle crossed over the other, a supremely smug smile on her face.

"You know, you look just like Catcher when you stand like that." Mallory, this girl who'd mooted gravity, stuck out her tongue at me.

"I guess you learned a few things."

She shrugged, then pushed off the door.

"How did you do it?" I asked, walking around, head tipped up as I moved across the room, to survey what she'd done.

"First Key," she said. "Power. There are energies in the universe that act on all of us. I moved the energies, spun the currents a little, and the universe shifted itself." Well, I guess Ethan had been partly right. "So it's like the Force?"

"That's not a bad analogy, actually."

My best friend could cause the universe to shift. So much for my being a badass. "That is just . . .

splendiferous."

She chuckled, but then screwed up her face. "The problem is, I'm not very good at getting it back down again."

"So what are you going to do? Leave it for Catcher?"

"Dear God, no. He's already fixed it three times this week. I'll just give it the old college try." She cleared her throat and lifted her arms, then glanced back at me. "You may want to get out of the way. It can get a little messy."

I took the warning to heart, then hightailed it to the threshold between the living room and the dining room, where I turned back around to watch. Mallory closed her eyes, and her hair lifted as if she'd put a hand on a Tesla coil. I felt my own ponytail lift as energy swirled through the air, as strong as the currents and eddies in a river.

"It's just a matter," Mallory said, "of shifting the currents." I looked up. The furniture began to vibrate, then bobble on its feet, the vibration of all those marching bits of furniture sending down a light shower of plaster.

"This is the hard part," she said.

"You can do it."

Like a marching band at halftime, the pieces began to march in little lines around the ceiling. I watched in awe as the love seat followed the couch, which followed a side table around in a circle and then, after a little bob, onto the sidewall. Gravity had no more effect there than it had on the ceiling, and the furniture began to move, Fantasia-like, down the walls and toward the baseboards.

"Tricky, tricky," she said as the furniture stepped down onto the floor again.

I glanced back at Mallory. Her outstretched arms, shaking with the effort, shone with sweat. I'd seen her like this before, one of the first times I'd seen her work her magic. We'd been at a rave sight at the time, and she'd offered up a prophecy. But it had taken a lot out of her, and she'd slept in the car on the way home.

This looked a lot like that - with much heavier consequences.

"Mal? Do you need some help?"

"I'll get it," she bit out, and the furniture continued its dance, the floor now vibrating beneath us as it marched back into place.

"Uh-oh," she said.

"Uh-oh?" I repeated, then took a step backward. "I don't like the sound of 'uh-oh.' "

"I think I'm kicking up dust."

I managed to mutter a curse before she sneezed and the rest of the stuff on the ceiling crashed to the ground. Luckily, the electronics had already made their way down. But the rest of the stuff that I could see, after I'd waved a hand at the dust she'd kicked up, was in a shambles.

"Mal?"

"I'm okay," she said, then appeared through the fog of plaster and dust that had accumulated over the twenty years her aunt had lived in the brownstone. She stood by me and turned around, and we surveyed the damage. There was a snowfall of knickknacks on the ground - kittens and porcelain roses and other items purchased by Mal's aunt on one of her television shopping network sprees. The sofa had successfully finished the journey right-side-up, but the love seat stood precariously on its side. The bookcase was facedown, but the books were stacked in tidy piles beside it.

"Hey, the books look nice."

"Watch it, smartass."

I bit back a snicker that threatened to bubble up, and I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing.

"I'm still learning," she said.

"Even vampires need practice," I supportively added.

"No shit, since Celina batted you around like you were Tom to her Jerry." I slid her a sideways - and none too friendly - glance.

"What?" she asked with a shrug. "So Celina likes to play with her food."

"At least Celina didn't destroy Cadogan House in the process."

"Oh, yeah? Check this." She stomped - literally, stomped - back to the kitchen, moved around the island, and pulled open the long drawer that held my chocolate stash.

She reached in and, her eyes still on me, moved a hand through my treasure trove until she pulled out a long paper-wrapped bar of gourmet dark chocolate. Grinning evilly at her bounty, she held it before her with both hands, then ripped a corner off the packaging.

"That's one of my favorites," I warned her.

"Oh, is it?" she asked, then used her teeth to snap off a giant corner of the bar.

"Mallory! That's just hateful."

"Sometimes, a woman needs to hate," was what I thought she said over a mouthful of seventy-three percent dark chocolate that I'd been able to find only at a tiny shop near U of C. On the other hand, I'd done without for this long. . . .

"Fine," I said, crossing my arms over my chest. If we were going to fight like adolescent sisters, might as well go the distance. "Eat it. Eat the whole thing while I'm standing here."

"Maybe I - ," she broke off, raising the back of her free hand and chewing a mouthful of chocolate.

"Maybe I will," she finally got out. As if acting on a dare, she arched an eyebrow, then snapped another bite - although a tiny one - off the end.

"Don't snap my chocolate at me."

"I'll snap whatever I want at you whenever I want. It's my house."

"It's my chocolate."

"Then you probably shouldn't have left it here," said a manly voice in the doorway. We both turned to look at the door. Catcher stood in the doorway, hands on his hips. "Does either one of you want to explain what the hell happened to my house?"

"We're making up," Mallory said, still trying to masticate the mouthful of chocolate.

"By destroying the living room and going into sugar shock?" She shrugged and swallowed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." As if suddenly realizing that the gruff boy she loved had come home, she smiled. Her face lit up with it. "Hey, baby." He shook his head in amusement, then pushed off the door and went to her.

I rolled my eyes. "Can we keep it PG for the kids, please? Think of the children." Catcher stopped when he reached her and clucked her chin between his thumb and fist. "Just for that, we're going to have a steamy make-out scene."

I rolled my eyes and looked away, but not before I caught sight of him dipping his head for a kiss. I gave them a few seconds before I began clearing my throat, the universal symbol of uncomfortable friends and roommates everywhere.

"So," Catcher said, moving around me to nab the last piece of casserole-style pizza from the box when they finally unlocked lips. "How are things in Cadogan House?"

"Merit and Ethan did it."

He paused midbite, then turned to stare at me.

My cheeks flamed red.

"If you're here instead of basking in the glow, I assume he did something incredibly stupid."

"That's my boy," Mallory said, then slapped him on the butt and headed for the fridge. She opened it, grabbed two cans of diet soda, handed one to me, then popped the top on the other one.

"What an idiot," Catcher said, and put the rest of the slice back in the box. He placed his hands on his hips, his expression mystified. "You know that I've known Sullivan a long time, right?" When he looked at me, brows raised, I nodded. I didn't know how they knew each other, but I knew they went "way back," or so Catcher had said.

"This may not come as much consolation after the deed is done, so to speak, but he'll regret it, and probably sooner than later. But you got something out of it, at least." At my lifted brows, he pointed at Mallory. "You two are talking again." Mallory looked at me from across the island. "Funny, isn't it, that it took Darth Sullivan to bring us back together?"

"Well, he did have the honor of tearing us asunder in the first place." She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. "Come on over. Let's hug it out." And so we did.

When Catcher got his appetite back, he worked on the last slice while Mallory and I rummaged through my chocolate collection. As an act of good faith, I donated most of it to the Carmichael-Bell house, but that didn't stop me from stuffing chocolate bars filled with almonds and dried cherries into my pockets before I left. I also nabbed a bag of chocolate-coated pecans and sat down to catch up with Mallory's beau. He didn't yet have any additional information about the investigation of the bar shooting, but I filled him in on the basic details of the Pack meeting at the Brecks'. Eventually, I thought to check my watch.

Dawn was approaching, and I still had to meet Ethan and Luc to discuss the convocation. "I need to head back to the House."

"Maybe Ethan's come to his senses since you've been gone," Mallory said. "Maybe he's pining outside your door."

We both contemplated that for a second before snorting simultaneously.

"And leprechauns might poop rainbows on your pillow," she said.

"What do I do, Mal? Do I argue with him? Tell him he's wrong and we can work this out? Ignore him?

Scream? How am I supposed to work with him?"

"I think that's exactly his point, Mer. As for arguing, think about it this way: do you want to be with a man who has to be convinced to be with you?"

"Not when you put it like that."

She nodded, then patted my cheek. "You're ready. Go home." I knew when to take an order.