Page 65 of Tracking Snow

He feints left.

I feint left.

"Kitchen," Cinder calls, vaulting the coffee table with the broom held like a halberd.

"Aurora, window. WINDOW."

Aurora is already shoving the sash up, pink hair flying, hot alley air pouring in to ruin our perfectly air-conditioned apartment.

Lucifer changes his mind about the kitchen and breaks for the bookshelf, the slice dragging and slapping the floor, and Cinder cuts him off with the broom flat against the boards. He hisses. She hisses back. Two years apart, and she's still all in on the bit.

I herd him along the wall toward the open window with my open arms. He tries the gap under the entertainment center, and the slice catches the frame, forcing him to a dead stop. That half-second is all I need. Cinder reads it and tosses me the broom. I catch it, plant a foot, and sweep the whole greasy package, cat and crust together, up onto the sill.

Lucifer lands on the ledge. He looks back at the four of us, at the caved-in cake, at Goldie clutching a single rescued daisy. He lifts his tail, flashes us his puckered little asshole, and drops off the fire escape with the entire slice still clamped in his jaws.

We’re left panting, everything a mess.

"I'm adopting an attack dog," I announce loudly and angrily.

Twenty minutes of cleaning and we’re somewhat resettled, though it’s hard to calm my murderous streak that demands demon cat blood.

The new episode of Hex Island coming on is a beach challenge, and the camera holds a long shot of open ocean, waves rolling silver all the way out to nothing. Ariel goes quiet. Her thumb circles the rim of her glass, around and around, and her eyes have gone somewhere past the screen, past the apartment, past Boston.

"Ariel?" Goldie asks. "You good, babe?"

"Mm." She comes back with a smile, sitting perfectly in place. "Just thinking they're wasting the beach. If I had a beach like that, I'd never leave it."

I rub her legs again.

The room moves on. I watch her one second longer than everyone else. Then I let it go, because that's the deal we have. Don’t talk about the past.

We all freeze at the sound of breaking glass and yelling from outside the window until Ariel is forced to hit pause. We wait to hear more, but whatever happened is over.

Aurora says to no one in particular, "Is it me, or is this city getting worse?"

"It's worse," Goldie says quietly.

"Midnight watches Boston, you know," Cinder says. "The vampires think the human cities are going to boil over, and they're deciding whether to care. I keep telling them it's my city. They keep telling me cities change owners."

A silence sits heavy in the room. Because with Queenie Fairchild’s election coming up in a little over a month, it’s only going to get worse. Anti-magic sentiments will likely go through the roof if she wins, which is bad news for Poison Apple, and especially my friends.

The finale of the premiere block ends in an elimination. Cinder pumps her fist when the guy she hates gets axed, while Goldie throws popcorn at the screen and demands a recount. Aurora laughs so hard, she slides off the armchair. Goldie makes us pose for a photo, repositioning all of us twice to get just the right angle.

I look around the room, and the old ache rises. Rosie would have loved this show. She'd have loved these women. I have no photographs of her or of my parents, just the shape of the place inside me where they should have been, a space I've carried so long it has its own gravity.

This loud, ridiculous family that found me is everything to me. Safe. Solid. These women would never hurt me.

And still my mind drifts to him. To The Seven.

He's nothing like this. There is no safety with him. He's dangerous and unpredictable and more complicated than anyone I've ever known. I never know which one I'm going to get, or what he wants, or whether the next thing out of his mouth is going to pull me in or push me off a ledge.

I hate that being with him feels so right, I can't deny it. I've tried. Fae lords, I've tried to hold the line these last couple of weeks and cling to my self-respect. But my hold has slipped, and instead I'm reaching for him again.

I already know how this is going to end. I'm going to forgive him. I'm going to let him back in and hand him every soft part of me and give him the power to hurt me all over again, worse than the last time.

Because a man who hates himself like that—men who hate themselves like that—don’t have enough love left over to give anyone.

Whatever love is in him gets spent on contempt before it ever reaches the surface. There can never be enough left by the time it gets to me.