Page 122 of Tracking Snow

A little boy in a cage with only a black cat in another cage nearby. A mother standing on the other side of the glass, telling him he was dirty and the pain was necessary.

No friends. No one coming for him. No one telling him the thing that happened to him was natural, and that he was lovable no matter what.

I hate the part of me that still aches for him. I hate that even now some stupid bleeding piece of me thinks maybe The Seven needed someone too. That maybe he still does.

Some energy returns to my limbs as the two animals turn their affections on me.

"I can’t let my friends down, can I?" I ask in an exhausted voice, even as their tiny kisses continue to trickle new life into my chest and limbs.

For all that I want to give up on everything, on everyone, on myself, I can’t. Rap still needs me. My friends are still out there, and I can’t stay down. I stayed down too long after Rosie died. I became so small I was barely a smudge of myself for years.

My friends wouldn’t want that.

Especially not when they need me the most.

Lucifer stops licking my cheek first. His ears swivel toward the window.

The flutterbun lifts its head.

"What?" I whisper.

Lucifer hops down from the couch, silent as spilled ink. The flutterbun flies after him, crooked but steady, landing on the sill beside his tail. Together, they slip out into the night.

The room goes quiet again.

I look down at Rosie’s pencil case, still on the ground. I lean over and pick it up, examining it though I know every line, every curve.

The unicorn is faded. The hinge is bent. The tin is scratched all to hell.

Still here.

My fingers close around it one more time before I set it carefully on the coffee table.

Then I do the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my entire life.

I get up again. Alone.

Chapter 39

A Pissing Match with the Queen

SNOW

"You shouldn’t be here, Red," I say, hugging my friend close.

She laughs into my hair and squeezes me back. "You want to tell your arms that? Careful. If you break my ribs, I can’t wash glasses, and I know that’s your least favorite duty here."

I hug her tighter anyway.

Two minutes ago, Red had ducked under the service gap behind the bar, grabbed the empty ice bucket from beside my station, and announced, "You look like hell, babe," like she still worked here and this was any other understaffed Saturday night.

It’s not any other understaffed Saturday night.

It’s Rap and me behind the bar with a crowd three deep, Ryder working the floor, dirty glasses stacked in every possible place, and a city full of magic-kind looking at Poison Apple like it is the last lit window in a very dark street.

Where Ariel’s red hair is bright copper, Red is red red. Fire-engine, stop-traffic, impossible-to-miss red. Thus, the nickname.

Her pale skin glows beneath the bar lights, and her smile is wide enough to make my chest hurt. Since she left Poison Apple to become a CPA, of all fucking things, she has been deliriously happy.