Page 84 of Tracking Snow

I can only imagine Lilah and Wrecking Ball nodding gravely, as if I were the antichrist itself.

I can’t help but roll my eyes.

"Traitor to her own," someone else shouts.

"Official word from up the chain is," Lilah continues, "steer clear of her. She's human, she's not the mission." A pause. "Unofficially? Her little magic friends figured out this city's done with them and cleared out. Maybe somebody suggests she go the same way. Out of town, one way or the other. And if we can’t convince her..." The implication is clear.

A chill rolls up and down my spine like fingers on a piano. Not an easy thing to overhear, the idea of forty people agreeing that I should end up in a ditch.

And under the cold flooding my body, my brain snags on the thing it came for.

Her little magic friends cleared out.

Cleared out?

The HAMs think the mages and fae have been leaving of their own free will?

I mean granted, Boston has been super hostile lately, but do these assholes really think everyone is just picking up and walking out without saying a word or taking their belongings?

Goldie's husband walks into Poison Apple six times a night, searching. Missing posters have been going up all over the light posts and fences.

Whatever is happening to the magic-kind of this city, the people in that basement either genuinely don't know, or the truth is being kept above their pay grade, and I don't know which one scares me more.

I'm so deep in my thoughts I almost miss Four getting up to leave.

He's up on one knee. The air over his shoulders bends the brick behind it.

"Four."

"They are going to try to hurt you." His whisper is scorched at the edges. "I need to take care of this."

"Four." I get in front of him, both palms flat on his chest, a stove through a shirt. "You go through that door and my friends stay gone. And I will spend the rest of my life as the girl whose boyfriend firebombed a church."

"Boyfriend?" he says, cocking his head. Before the self-consciousness can get to me, his lips quirk up in a goofy kind of smile.

My heart flutters like a bird.

I hadn’t meant to say that, but it's basically true. We spend almost all our free time together, the sex is mind-blowing, and there’s no one else I could possibly want after knowing him. And based on the fact he murdered someone for me, for fae’s sake, I think he’s kind of invested too.

Then Four’s expression flattens as if becoming even more resolved. "Go home, I’ll meet you at your apartment." He kisses me on the forehead, giving my arms a squeeze.

While my heart melts a little, I know I can’t let him do the very stupid, murderous thing he’s about to do.

So I throw my arms around him and kiss him.

Chapter 26

This is a Piece of String

SNOW

His mouth is still on mine when I drive him up the last rungs of the fire escape.

Four curses into the kiss, one hand catching the ladder, the other clamping hard around my waist.

Good.

I need both hands busy.