Page 77 of Tracking Snow

"Tink?"

"Oh right," she extends her arms out. "Welcome to Inked by Tink. My friend Tinkerbell is the grand artist who does all my tattoos and piercings." She waggles her brows before sticking her pierced tongue out at me. Instantly, I remember the way it dragged against my hardness in Poison Apple that night we were groveling.

Or rather, Four is reminiscing. I’m still on the verge of passing out.

"The shop gets locked up tight while Tink’s abroad," Snow explains, "sailing on her older, debonair hubby’s pirate ship. We are perfectly safe here."

"Is this where you got all your tattoos?" I ask, wondering about one in particular.

"Yeah, Tink is one of the best tattoo artists in all the realms. And I got her specialty." She rolls up her sleeve to show off the broken hand mirror on her forearm. The very one I was thinking of.

I wonder if she ever noticed that it’s broken into seven pieces. Kind of like me.

I close my eyes, resting, letting her words roll over me.

"She uses the pixie dust from her fairy wings to infuse the ink for the tattoo, which gives them a little bit of power, and sometimes they have hidden meaning. For a while now, I think I’ve gotten the mirror thing figured out."

I want to hate it. That she’s marked herself with magic. That yet again she is trying to become something like me. Something beneath her. But right now, I can’t muster the energy to disapprove.

The rolling stool she sits on gently rolls back and forth. "I watched someone do a French braid once at Brightpath House, the place where I grew up. Watched them do it once, chatting the whole time, barely paying attention. Not even to me. And then I could just do it. Like I'd done it a hundred times. I can make any cocktail after I see it made once. I can do a back walkover because I watched a gymnastics class for twenty minutes through a park fence. I've never understood it. It's just a thing I can do. Like a copycat, or maybe..." I open my eyes to see her run her fingers over the tattoo, "Like a mirroring ability."

Then she makes a face, like she’s blowing off what she says. Like it’s stupid and she’s sorry she let it out of her mouth.

"So while I’m not magic, this tiny bit of ink on me is." She smiles up at me. "Between this and my Poison Apple tattoo, I can almost pretend I’m part of the cool magic club everyone else seems to be part of."

Despite being exhausted, I awkwardly push out of the chair and to my feet. "Why are you so obsessed with having magic?"

She frowns at me without getting up from the roller stool. "How can you ask me that? You are spectacular and special in so many different ways."

"Those guys at the bar were right. It’s unnatural and wrong. I’m unnatural and wrong."

"It’s how you were born. You were born with a gift. Gifts," she corrects.

I sit down on the edge of the floral couch, still a little too woozy to stand my ground. I just shake my head.

"Tell me then." She folds her hands in her lap. Waiting.

"You're perfect," I say. "Exactly how you are."

She opens her mouth, lips peeling back in a grin.

"Not a compliment," I hold up a finger, stopping her from misunderstanding. "It’s just a fact. You're human. That's what it’s supposed to be."

She wrinkles her nose in confusion. "Supposed to be, according to who?"

"Snow," I chide, needing her to be serious. "Mages and fae are just...wrong. People who say magic isn’t dangerous are in denial, or stupid."

Snow's mouth drops open with an offended squawk, but I push on.

"They...we," I correct, "are unpredictable. Out of control. Half of us don't even understand what we've got, we just have it, and we walk around in the world with it like that's everyone else's problem to navigate around." I shake my head. "Humans didn't ask for this. They didn't ask to share the world with something they can't predict, can't stop, can't even see coming. They're not wrong to want us gone. It’s too much power, distributed unevenly."

Snow goes very still.

"So yeah," I say. "You're clean. You're exactly right as a human. And you should stop spending one more second of your life wishing you were something like me."

She studies me for a long moment.

"Who told you that?" she asks.