Page 66 of Tracking Snow

I know all of this. It holds up every way I look at it. Every piece of it is true.

And it doesn't change a single fucking thing about how I feel.

I want him anyway. All the logic in the world won’t stop me from tumbling down an endless rabbit hole.

I look around at my friends, laughing, safe, mine.

There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect them.

And there's nothing I can do to stop him from hurting me.

Chapter 21

Don’t Touch The Seven’s Snow

SNOW

"Snow, have you seen Goldie? She’s late," Rap says.

I glance at the clock on the wall. "Give her another ten minutes, you know she usually struts in fashionably late."

Rap shakes her head. "Ted called. He asked if she was here or with you and Ariel. She didn’t come home last night."

Cold washes through me as I shake my head.

She knocks her knuckles against the bar in familiar agitation. "Okay, well, let me know the second she shows up."

Grabbing my cellphone, I hit the button until it lights up. Sure enough, there is a text from Ted and two missed calls from him.

That’s the equivalent of a panicked frenzy from the normally stoic bear shifter. He doesn’t mess around when it comes to his wife.

I thumb a reply to Ted one-handed. She'll flash home the second anything spooks her. You know how her magic works.

That magic is the only reason I make myself keep stacking glasses instead of vaulting this bar. Goldie's power has one job. Danger touches her, and she teleports to her safest person before her heart finishes the beat. She popped into Ted's lap once over a spider dropping from a doorframe. The woman cannot be held anywhere she doesn't want to be.

If she were in trouble, she'd already be home.

The logic is airtight. I run it twice, but my stomach refuses to sign off either time.

Tonight. If she hasn't strutted through that door by close, I’ll be on the roofs, and Boston can watch me take this city apart shingle by shingle.

As much as I may want to, I can’t abandon Rap right now. Poison Apple is swarmed for a Saturday at four PM. It feels like one AM on a Friday because most people gave up pretending they were doing anything normal this weekend and came here to meet their friends. No one is pretending they can focus after what happened in Boston Common two days ago.

I dart out behind the bar in an attempt to collect some of the insane number of empty glasses accruing in every corner of the place.

Shoulders bump mine from both sides, and I have to turn sideways to wedge through the wall of bodies packed between the bar and the nearest table. Everyone I pass is talking about the same thing. Half of them out of quiet concern, while others are partying their faces off in celebration.

"I wish they had succeeded," someone says to a group of their friends next to where I’m loading up an epic amount of empties onto my tray. "We’d all be safer, better off if Fairchild was dead."

"She’s still in the hospital," someone else points out.

"Didn’t you hear? They reported that Queenie only has a broken arm and a bruised face. She’ll live."

That last bit is reported with no small amount of disgust and disappointment, which makes my stomach uneasy.

"Unlike that mage," someone else says. "I mean, did you see the way he used his power to lift her into the air before slamming her back down? In the middle of broad daylight, at a rally?" the person’s voice pitches with disbelief.

I suppress a shudder. I saw the footage as well. And while they didn’t broadcast what happened after, it was all over the internet, recorded from at least twenty different camera phones.