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"It's end of shift. The girls are waiting upstairs with a pizza.
Are you hungry? You look like you could use a bite."
When didn't I look like that? In al seriousness, I wasn't sure I was ready to talk to Ethan, and I certainly wasn't up for another argument tonight. Not with sorcerers and cops and falen angels on my mind. On the other hand, Lindsey and I had a pretty good history of late-night pizza-and-movie relaxation.
"Yeah," I said. "That sounds good."
"Okay," she said, slipping her arm through mine. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm not," I said. "But I wil be."
A crowd was already gathered in her smal room. Margot was there, along with a few male vampires I vaguely recognized but hadn't realy spoken to. Notwithstanding the fact that we were vampires, the air smeled of cheese, tomato sauce, and lots of garlic. Three of my favorite food groups, baked into one deep-dish pizza amalgamation so thick and saucy you had to eat it with a spoon.
I was greeted by cheers (always better than jeers) and tiptoed my way across vampires toward an empty spot on the floor.
"We were just deciding what to watch," Margot said as she served up a slice of deep dish onto a paper plate and handed it over. "As social chair, I think you should get to pick which one."
Ethan had named me House social chair as a half joke and half punishment. He thought I needed to become better acquainted with my felow vampires. It was undoubtedly a good cal, although I hadn't done much at al in the position. I'd thought about hosting a mixer for Navarre, Grey, and Cadogan vampires, but magical drama always seemed to get in the way.
"What are our options?" I asked.
Lindsey flipped through some movies. "Animated with a good moral. Three ladies being saucy about their jobs and boys. And, my personal favorite, poor kid proves she's the best dancer at Dance-Off High and wins the lead role in a Broadway musical."
She slid me a glance. "The guys won't appreciate this, but there is singing. Much singing, and you can make the lyrics scrol across the bottom of the screen."
She knew me as wel as anyone. I loved to dance, and in high school I'd had plenty of ambition - but sadly, no talent - to become a musical theater songstress. Thank God I'd had good grades to fal back on.
"I can't possibly say no to sing-along lyrics," I said, diving into the pizza. It was ridiculously good.
I caught a pretty bad habit in graduate school of obsessing about my work to the point of ignoring anything and everything else. I rarely visited friends. I rarely did anything that wasn't related to getting the job done. I became a hermit, not because I didn't like people, but because I wasn't very good at balancing work and play. "Al work" was a lot easier to manage.
Times like this made me remember that I could do both. I could be busy, productive even, while having a social life. While interacting with people. While being out in the world instead of sequestering myself away from it. Times like this I felt like a normal person, not just a solver of problems for a House of vampires.
Friendship, I thought, quickly downing my wedge of pizza, wasn't a burden. It was a gift. It alowed us to remember what al the fighting was about in the first place. Why we struggled to protect the House - and what we were protecting.
So I sat back with Lindsey and the others, and I sang horribly to lyrics that were wincingly bad, and I remembered why we went to al the trouble of fighting in the first place.
When the movie was over, I helped the crew clean up and was happy to take the last piece of pizza for myself back to my room.
But when I made a move to leave, Lindsey stopped me.
"Oh, no," she said. "We have words for you." She looked around the room. "Al boys out of the room, please."
There were only a couple of male vampires left, but they shuffled out after whistles and catcals about what they joked was going to take place with me, Margot, and Lindsey after they left.
Lindsey closed the door behind them, then looked back at me.
"Spil."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, but Margot and Lindsey exchanged a glance that said they knew better.
"You and Ethan should be doing the nasty with aplomb and frequency," Lindsey said. "And instead, you're barely talking to each other and you're having me and Luc relay messages between you. If the sexual tension in this House gets any thicker, we'l have to paddle through it. What the hel is going on?"
I closed my eyes. Part of that was completely humiliating, and I realy didn't want to get into the rest of it.
On the other hand, I needed help. And unlike a certain pretentious Master vampire, I knew when to ask for it.
I sat down on the floor again. "He's driving me crazy."
Lindsey and Margot joined me. "What happened?"
"It started in Nebraska. We realized he and Malory have some kind of connection because of the spel she tried to work.
He's not her familiar or anything, but if she gets emotionaly freaked-out, he does, too."
"That's scary," Margot said.
"It is," I agreed. "But he can control it - he controled it in Nebraska. Anyway, during one of these spels he grabbed my arm, and now he's convinced he's going to hurt me if we keep seeing each other while Malory's in his head. So we're 'halting' our relationship." Yes, I used air quotes.
Lindsey gave me a flat stare. "He's an idiot."
"Oh, I know."
"After al the shit you two have been through - al those months of fighting and driving the rest of us crazy - this is the thing he gets freaked-out about? Because he grabbed your arm?"
"That's it."
Lindsey fel back onto the carpet with much drama. "I knew he was stubborn, but this truly takes the cake." She leaned up on her elbows. "He knows you're immortal, right? And that you've broken ribs before? And been shot?"
"He might know those things," Margot said, "but consider it from his perspective - the man is Master of this House, or was anyway. His life is about control and order and combating chaos.
And now he's got someone else shacking up in his head who can affect his behavior - and cause him to hurt one of his vampires?
That's not a comfortable place for him."
"I get that," I said. "But that's exactly my point - Ethan didn't suddenly turn into a jerk. He has a sorceress living in his head, creating his moods, and causing his emotions to go magicaly wonky. I'm not one to excuse people for their bad behavior, but in this case, it really isn't his fault . And, more important, it's me. He knows I can take care of myself. And instead of letting me help him, we have, as you put it, the giant wal of tension that is driving me crazy."
