Page 138 of Tracking Snow

Three nights without her and I walked into a bar that made my skin crawl just to stand in a room she was in.

She opens her sleepless city to me at four in the morning and asks only that whoever shows up, shows up as himself.

Mother has one name for all seven of me, and it’s as if I’m a thing instead of a person. Snow knows all seven.

There is a word for what she is to us, and it arrives whether I permit it or not.

We love her, Six says. The most pragmatic of us can’t even deny this.

All seven of us love her, Five urges.

Loved her, Six corrects sadly, to past tense.

Four is gone but, Five pushes on, it doesn’t change that we all loved her in different ways that add up to one whole man's worth of loving her, and it is the only time in a long time we have ever added up to anything whole.

My eyes burn. A sound builds behind my teeth and I hold it there.

We can't let a girl we met a couple of months ago ruin our chance at being the son Mother deserves, Seven says, needing this more than any of us. He and I were always the ones who needed Mother’s love, who were trying to get back to who we were. He even more so than me.

We can't let her ruin our chance of being fixed.

Even as he says it, I feel the conflict in him, just as strongly as I feel his resolve.

Three, Five, and Six emanate waves of disagreement, but even they aren't immune from feasting on the attention Mother has given us after feeling starved for so long.

So we say the only thing we can.

"Yes, Mother."

Chapter 43

Poison Apple Gets Lit

SNOW

"Ididn’t know." I shake my head as tears angrily sting the backs of my eyes and blur my vision. I slam the rest of my drink back before my feelings can spill over.

Normally, Poison Apple is a place of life and excitement. Tonight, it’s devoid of either. Geanie, Rap, and I sit on the tufted conversation couches, tired, defeated, and grayed from the stress of not knowing what to do.

Once I got some of my strength back after the partial sedative hit, I managed to get Brexley up to his apartment, where it’s safe for him to recover. Then, I stumbled the last few steps to his couch and passed out. When I woke up a full fifteen hours later, he was gone, and the sun was already setting again, though I hadn’t seen it rise.

The three of us each hold a glass of Jolly Roger rum in our hands. A rare, top-shelf spirit Rap gets from the notorious pirate Captain James T Hook, whom she plays cards with when he’s not sailing with his wife.

"For the best of times, for the worst of times," Rap says as she pours each of us a glass.

When I showed up on Rap’s doorstep in last night’s clothes with news about The Seven and how Red had been taken, she pulled me into a hug so tight I couldn’t breathe. I clung to her for a long time, and she didn’t break the hug until I did first.

And that’s when she received the notice.

A temporary closure order signed by Judge Trainor, citing public safety concerns, repeated nuisance complaints, and reports of unlawful magical activity.

Rap read it twice. And then she had several long strings with very colorful curses to say about it.

"I can’t believe he took out Brexley," Geanie says, eyes glassy and red as he runs a hand through his blond hair.

Geanie is in normal clothes for once. Instead of his blue suit with the tails and top hat, the man is wearing a T-shirt. Two kittens play with a ball of yarn on the front of his pink top.

Rap shakes her head. "I can’t find him. Them. Whatever. My sources can’t track down The Seven. It’s like he’s a ghost."