Page 124 of Tracking Snow

The smile leaves her face piece by piece.

"This city has gone insane over this election, and our friends are..." My throat works. "I can’t lose you too."

Red blinks hard, then scrapes the limes into the garnish tray with more force than necessary. "Like I said, this place needs to stay open. Besides," Red says with a smile again, tipping her chin toward Brexley. "My werewolf husband will rip the head off anyone before they get near me."

The image of Brexley ripping off The Seven’s head hits me in full technicolor vision, so vivid it feels like it’s happening right in front of me. I have to lock my knees and grip the edge of the bar to keep steady.

Rap notices because of course she does. Her gaze cuts to me. "Snow?"

The bar noise swells around us. Ice hits metal. Someone laughs too loudly. The ticket printer spits out another order.

I haven’t told her.

I haven’t told anyone.

Not what I suspect about The Seven, because I’m not entirely sure.

Still, I can’t bring myself to say the words. I can’t force myself to tell them that the men I love might be destroying everything else that I love.

And I can’t force myself to confess that I’ve already let it slip to him that Red has powers too.

But I have to. I have to tell them now. They deserve to know.

I open my mouth.

The bar goes quiet in strange, unnatural pieces. First, the table nearest the entrance. Then the stools along the wall. Then the cluster by the tree. Conversations drop, one after another, until even the music sounds obscene. Geanie looks up from where he’s spinning the tunes but scratches it all to a halt.

Queenie Fairchild walks into Poison Apple like the whole building has been waiting to receive her.

The senatorial candidate is wrapped in a winter-white wool dress despite the blazing summer heat. Glossy blonde hair is pinned smooth, makeup soft enough to look effortless and expensive.

A single guard follows her, broad and expressionless in a dark suit. He stops a few feet behind her, one hand folded over the other in front of him.

Rap straightens beside me, one hand still wrapped around the tequila bottle, the other settling flat on the bar top.

Ryder, halfway between the booths and the bar with a tray of empties in one hand, stops moving. His eyes flick to Rap.

Red reaches for my wrist beneath the counter. Brexley starts slinking through the crowd, making his way toward his wife.

Queenie’s eyes sweep the room, pausing on the fairy tree growing through the center of the bar. Her mouth tightens a fraction.

The young woman at Queenie’s side—dressed in the same prim lines, dark hair twisted into a severe French knot, the look of an eager intern or well-trained lackey on her face—keeps her phone lifted, slowly panning across the bar, though the hate she can’t quite smother flickers in her dark eyes. On the screen, comments scroll in a fast vertical blur beside Queenie’s calm profile.

A livestream.

Of fucking course.

Queenie doesn’t need more guards. Not with everyone in the room being recorded for the good citizens of Boston to judge.

Rap steps out from behind the bar. "What a surprise," she says, voice carrying across the room. "If I’d known you were coming, I would have pulled out all my anti-magic posters and brushed up on my hate slurs."

Ryder begins to move toward her, but Rap gives an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He stops.

Brexley angles himself closer to the guard, putting himself between the behemoth in a suit and where Red and I are behind the bar.

Rap and Queenie meet in the middle of the room beneath the outstretched branches of the fairy tree.

For a second, my brain spits out the wrong picture. Queenie standing at the front of Brightpath House with her kind smile and Christmas gifts, telling a room full of unwanted kids how loved we all were.