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"I've survived being disliked before."

"Disliked? Are you kidding me right now?" I wanted to shake some sense into him. "She could kill you."

River didn't flinch or look away, but the dryness left his expression and his attention settled completely on me. "I am not sure she could do that easily now."

The absence of bravado frightened me more than any joke would have.

"You told me yourself there's less of you than there was Monday. Using your power is costing you more every time, and Danika isn't someone you can bluff your way past if she decides she wants a fight. You could walk into that coven with me and not be able to get either of us back out without losing yourself completely."

"I am aware."

"Then why would you come?"

River watched me for a moment before answering. "Because you're going." His tone suggested I was daft.

"That's not a reason."

"It is to me."

I looked away, suddenly far too aware of his shoulder against mine and the cold that had worked its way through my sleeve. River didn't call me out.

When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. "I know what I am right now, Hazel. I know that if Danika decides this ends in a fight, I may not be much use to you. I also know she'll probably take great pleasure in pointing that out to both of us. None of that changes the fact that I'm coming."

"You don't have to prove anything to me, River." I had to fist my hands so I wouldn't reach for him out in the open.

"I'm not."

"Then what are you doing?"

His eyes stayed on mine. "Making my own decision."

That shut me up.

"You made something very clear to me last night, Firefly. You don't get to decide what someone else is willing to risk simply because you're afraid of what it might cost them. I'm a big guy, I can make my own choices."

For half a second, the words last night sent my thoughts somewhere they had absolutely no business going while we sat on Alex Greywood's back porch. Then the rest of the sentence caught up.

I looked down at the frost creeping from beneath River's boots across a step Alex had built with his own hands.

"That's my line, you know."

"Yes," River said, his shoulder still resting against mine. "I've been paying attention."

Chapter Nineteen

I put the boot on Sunday morning.

Amber had washed it without being asked. She'd gotten my blood off the toe and whatever a demon left behind out of the seam, stuffed the ankle with newspaper so it would keep its shape, and left it beside my bedroom door where I would see it first thing. She hadn't mentioned doing any of it, which was probably why the sight of that stupid boot sitting there affected me more than it should have.

It was oxblood suede, four and a half inches of covered platform, size eight, and the only surviving half of a pair I'd loved enough to spend an obscene amount of money on. Its mate had died in a shoe store on Euclid Avenue nine days ago, along with approximately nine hundred dollars of my dignity.

I stood there in borrowed jeans with one of Stella's sneakers on the floor beside it and considered my options. The sneaker belonged to a fifteen-year-old, the laces were tied in a knot my fingers still weren't coordinated enough to undo, and wearing the two together was going to leave me walking with one hip four and a half inches higher than the other.

It was ridiculous.

I put them both on anyway.

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, my spine had lodged an official complaint and a nine-year-old eating cereal had nearly choked himself laughing. Every adult I passed on the way through the house looked down at my feet, then very deliberately back at my face. Not one of them said a word.