Chapter 10
How Big Does He Get?
AURORA
The next two weeks are a blur. A messy, chaotic, blur of a learning curve.
Most of my time is spent working and learning at Poison Apple, but there are just as many nights in, sprawled on Ariel and Snow’s couch watchingHex Island.Thereality show disaster features a bunch of level two mages crammed into a beachside mansion for a million-dollar prize.
The catch? Every time they use their powers, they lose money. Which of course they do. Constantly. Because they’re horny narcissists who can’t stop flexing their magic to seduce each other. It’s like watching magical Darwinism, and I’m beyond addicted.
Snow and Ariel cheer me on at work, insisting I’ll get better behind the bar, but there are no empty platitudes. They’re honest. Brutally so. Snow once called me a “hot mess with excellent tits and a tragic pour.”
She’s not wrong.
Despite Rap’s hard exterior, she never comes down on me for my mistakes. She’s sharp and direct with her feedback, but nevercruel. And she always steps in to pick up the slack when I’ve created a disaster.
When I get caught in a spiral trying to apologize for it, she tells me not to bother. It’s a waste of time. She says to just keep going and I’ll get it.
Rap makes it so simple. No emotional recrimination required.
I don’t love failing, or mixing up disgusting drinks, or dropping bottles that explode on impact, or getting so overstimulated by lights and music and people yelling drink orders that words stop making sense. And the girls notice.
They see it on my face before I fully break, and they send me to the back to take a breath in the breakroom with bubblegum-pink lockers and a vending machine that always eats your coins.
I’m not used to this kind of care.
I’ve never had real girlfriends before.
They continue to tease me about Talon, about how he looks at me like he’s two seconds from eating me alive (like one of those lobster rolls he’s now obsessed with) or committing murder in my honor.
If they only knew...
I still keep the truth buried. What Talon really is to me. Who I was at home. I don’t want to scare them. But also, it’s not me anymore. That version of Aurora stayed behind in the Realm of Roses.
Here, I’m one of the Lost Girls. One of the reasons people show up to Poison Apple. The new addition. A little mystery with her own drink special and piercings. The pedestal I’m on isn’t about decorum or being a marble statue. I work the crowd, and we feed each other with energy and excitement.
With Ariel and Snow, I’m just…a girl. Their girl.
Snow often rests her head on my shoulder because she rarely sleeps but is always tired. Ariel lets me help her push or maneuver her chair on the rare occasion she needs the help.
We gossip. We paint our nails. We argue aboutHex Islandlike it’s life or death.
It’s messy, and sweet, and stupid, and everything I’ve always wanted. They’re the kind of moments I’ve spent my whole life aching for, and now that I have them, I’m scared of how much they matter.
“So are Talon’s abs just painted over cobblestones he glued to his stomach?” Snow asks while unwrapping anotherMagic Morselsnack pack. She pops the tiny chocolate cake into her mouth whole.
It’s three AM and we are hunkered down in Snow and Ariel’s apartment, decompressing from the wild frenetic night of work. Talon opts to decompress alone. Either he’s gone to stretch his wings around the city, or he’s just avoiding conversation. Likely both.
Snow and Ariel's apartment smells like toasted sugar and incense, with old wood floors that creak if you shift too hard. One lamp’s missing its shade, and the TV’s propped up on an uneven stack of books and board games. Snow is poised on the half-broken reading chair across from me.
Despite the decent money we make, a lot of that goes to clothes, tattoos, and well...rent. Downtown Boston ain’t cheap, as Snow puts it.
“I mean, if his skin burns, why doesn’t he wear a shirt?” Ariel chimes in, snapping a picture of Snow. Snow kindly obliges by opening her mouth so she can get a picture of the half-masticated sweet stuck to her teeth and tongue.
Half-grossed out, half-amused, I pick up one of the Magic Morsel boxes with the picture of the kindly grandma on the box. I’ve never seen Grandma’s House products back in the Realmof Roses, but here her lifestyle brand is everywhere. The couch pillows are hers. The curtains. The throw blanket tangled around Snow’s legs. But the Magic Morsels are definitely the bestsellers.
Because they can give non-magical beings a buzz of power that’s light and fizzy, like soda in your stomach. You get maybe five to fifteen minutes of magic, depending on the flavor.
