Page 17 of Tracking Snow

Super speed. Pfft. My power is way better than his. Though before Snow came poking along, I would never have dared to brag about having a power.

I want to meet her, Five says, putting in a bid which he rarely does.

We’ve told him countless times why it’s not a good idea for him to take lead. Not with his power. It leaves behind too much evidence.

No, One snaps, saving me the trouble. Absolutely not.

It’s like the HAM guy said. It’s unnatural, wrong. And we don’t have just one power. We have seven aberrations.

You will stay away from her. All of us will. She’s a problem, One lectures with his usual boring command.

"So I guess that means you don’t approve of what we did," I say, shaking my hands in the sink, knowing they’re as clean as I can get them right now.

The bone white sink is splattered with red. I look up in the mirror, this time at the figure in the background.

The HAM guy who was definitely going to come back around and hurt Snow later is lying dead on his living room floor.

Following him home had been easy. Phasing through his front door, even easier. What came after that was…considerably less elegant than I would like to admit.

He had more fight in him than I expected, and this was the first time I’d gotten my hands this dirty.

After drying my hands on his hand towel, I gingerly poke at the fast-forming bruise under my eye.

One never would have let that happen. One would have been a ghost and a killing blow in the same breath, clean as a surgical cut, no evidence, no three-inch gash across the forearm I'm only now noticing.

One would never have needed seven attempts with a kitchen knife before finding the right angle either.

I look at the body with mild affront. He was probably thirty pounds heavier than me, but it shouldn't have been that much of a production.

One remains tersely silent.

Because I’m right. Had he been lead, he would have hunted this guy down too and finished what Snow should have.

Because the idea of him hunting her later...doesn’t sit right.

I grab a roll of bandaging from inside the medicine cabinet and wrap my bleeding forearm.

Besides, the human had seen us too many times.

Two nights, same streets, same face. Men like that don't let things go. They come back with an axe to grind, sometimes literally.

After Snow, he would have come for us. It’s just simpler this way.

The plant mage kid saw us too, Six points out. And those other two from the first night are still breathing.

I scrub harder at my knuckles.

"Those are different circumstances entirely."

How? Six asks, with genuine curiosity rather than accusation, which is somehow worse.

I pump out more soap.

They just are.

I turn and step over the body, a kitchen knife sticking straight up from his jugular, messy cuts all along his torso before I landed the killing blow.

I head to his surprisingly clean bedroom. Shucking off my shoes, I slide into the bed and hug a pillow to my body...like it’s her.