Sniffing Snow
ONE
"Hello, my little stalker," I say without turning around.
"How do you do that?" The whine in Snow's voice hits me with a big slap of cute again.
No. Not cute. Not attractive, endearing, or even mildly amusing.
Especially not that little finger trick she did.
I liked it! I thought it was clever, Five pipes up. Maybe I can—
No, Two cuts in. Don't even ask.
But she's—Five starts.
Seriously, Five, Four cuts in. Your power is embarrassing. Stay where you are.
The rest vehemently agree that Five is not to take lead. Even Seven.
I ignore the voices, wheel around, and give Snow a pointed look.
The Boston waterfront at three in the morning belongs to no one in particular, which is exactly why I'm here. With such a drizzly, miserable day turned night, no one is out on the streets. There’s no reason for me to be out here other than I want to be.
Fog sits low over the harbor, softening the distant city lights to a smear of amber and white. The water shifts and slaps against the pilings. The air is thick with brine and diesel and the cold that comes off open water even in summer.
And now her. Something warm and sweet cuts through, invading and surrounding me.
"I have seven times the senses you have." I pause. My jaw tightens against it. "Also, if you want to sneak up on people, don't wear perfume."
She frowns. "I don't wear perfume."
It's her soap, Four says, climbing closer to the surface with the focused interest of someone who has been waiting for exactly this information. Ask her what kind.
I would rather not.
Ask her.
"Four wants to know what soap you use," I say flatly, because it's easier than arguing with him in front of her.
She grins. Then she steps closer, pulls her white hair away from her neck, and tugs my face down toward her by the back of mine. My whole body locks up.
Oh, says Four.
Oh, says Three.
The rest of them have nothing coherent to offer.
"Well, hello Four." Her voice drops to a warm and conspiratorial purr. "It's called summer apple. Do you like it?"
I inhale despite every intention not to. Tart and sweet with a note underneath that I have no adequate category for. It hits the center of my chest like a key finding a lock.
I hate it.
We love it, Four corrects.
At least with my hood up, she’s not touching the bare skin of my neck. Heat spreads through me at the idea of her slipping her hand in and curling around my naked nape.
Snow tips her head up, loosening her grip but not stepping back. We are inches apart, and she is looking at me with those electric blue eyes like she already knows exactly what I'm thinking and finds it enormously satisfying.
She's not wrong.
You're going to kiss her, Four says. Not a question.
I am not going to kiss her.
One.
I'm not—
She’s so close I can see the slight catch of her breath.
My eyes drop to her mouth without my permission.
Every muscle I have pulls toward her like a hook has me on a line and is slowly reeling me in, and I am—for the first time in longer than I can remember—genuinely losing the argument with myself. Not the others. Just me.
My hands flex. I move closer.
No. The warning growl comes from Seven. I almost grunt from the impact.
His command hits hard and visceral with foreboding control, reverberating through my bones.
I take a step back.
Disappointment flickers over Snow's features before it’s replaced by her impish smile again.
"So fancy meeting you out here, fellow vigilante," she says as if nothing had been about to happen. As if I weren’t about to cross every line I held. As if I hadn't been about to kiss a human.
"What?"
"I mean, we are both out here stalking the night, saving those who need protection from the big bad HAM assholes."
I shake my head. "Not what I’m doing."
"No?" She arches a brow with that saucy little smirk, like she knows me better than I know myself.
She doesn’t.
So why do I feel she’s about to reveal an eighth part of myself?
"No," I say firmly. "Whatever you think you know about me, you don’t." Then the rest of us catch up to what she said. "Is that really what you are doing? Playing hero on purpose?"
Not that I hadn’t thought about her showing up, pretending like she’s some superhero. But our thoughts had circled around...other aspects of her.
Though I saw it for myself, I struggle to wrap my mind around the idea she is volunteering for late nights on the shady streets.
"Come on, you don’t have to pretend with me. What’s your trauma?" She folds her hands behind her back and leans in conspiratorially. "Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine."
I snort. "Not likely."
She snaps her fingers. "Aha! You do have trauma. I mean, everyone does, but you can admit it, and you know what it is. The dudes I know don’t typically have that level of self-awareness."
I narrow my eyes at her. "I’m split into seven parts, it’s not hard to figure."
Her eyes widen with wonder, like I just told her I got her a surprise birthday present.
"Holy faefucks, so you used to be whole, and now you’re split up?
I didn’t know if you’d just always been like this.
Oh, is that rude to say? I mean, you are technically a whole person now, just rearranged differently.
Might not necessarily be bad, just different—"
It’s bad. But I don’t bother clarifying that.
"I’m glad you find it so entertaining," I say with open disdain, then pivot to leave.
"Whoa, I’m sorry." Snow grabs my arm and spins me back around. And for some unfathomable reason, I let her.
"I didn’t mean to upset you," she blinks earnestly up at me. "It all sounds...complicated."
The litany of responses in my head ranges from snorts to laughs to resounding, damning silence.
"You think?" I throw the taunt but continue to stand there with her. Because she is still holding onto my arm.
Or because it’s a quiet, drizzly night and there really isn’t anywhere else to be. Or because her thumb has started to swipe back and forth on my arm, making me wish my sleeves were pushed up so I could feel her touch fully. My fingers clench inside the hoodie pocket.
My gaze drops to where she grips my arm. On the inside of her forearm, in ink that catches the streetlight with a faint pixie-dust shimmer, is a hand mirror. The glass is cracked, broken clean into separate pieces.
Seven of them.
Just like us.
Maybe it means something, Three says.
It means nothing, Seven’s deep dark voice presses, pushing the thought away.
"What happened?" Snow asks softly, suddenly dropping the moment between us into a vat of intimate warmth despite the wet cold on my face. "I mean, if you are okay talking about it. Again, I’ve been told I don’t have a lot of tact, but I guess I’m someone who prefers to dance with skeletons rather than lock them away in a closet. "
That’s all I do. My existence is a series of opening and shutting doors to hide the ugliness behind them. But as soon as I lock it away, another door swings open, and out comes another part of me I can’t suppress no matter how hard I try.
Though there is one part of me that I have managed to lock up and throw away the key to.
Before I know what I’m doing, my mouth opens. "When I was a kid, I was sick and needed treatment to cure me. Instead of getting better, I...fractured into this. So what’s your trauma?" I ask, barreling on to keep her from asking what kind of sickness I had.
Her hand drops, and I take a step forward, my body wanting to close the gap. Thankfully, she’s faced the ocean and doesn’t notice. I turn to look out at it with her, but my arm is so close to her shoulder I can feel the heat of her body.
"Eh, it’s pretty cliche. I'm just some orphan girl who ran away from the foster home when I couldn’t take it anymore.
But the freedom wasn’t all I’d made it out to be.
I had to lie about my age to secure shitty waitress jobs to keep from living on the streets.
The service industry is a soul-sucking chasm that kept making me smaller and smaller until I almost…
poof," she snaps her fingers, "disappeared entirely. "
"That’s...cliche?"
Ask her what happened to her parents, Five says.
Put your arm around her and comfort her, Four urges. Though I doubt his intentions are pure.
Admittedly, some part of me does want to. I want to enfold her in my arms, press her to me and set my head atop of hers. I want to make her feel the last thing she should feel around me.
Safe.
"What happened to your parents?" I ask.
She shrugs. "They died in a house fire before I could even walk. Honestly, I don’t remember them."
Her tone is even, just stating facts. I would have pegged her to be more emotional about it. "For sharing trauma, you don’t seem that traumatized by it."
A small smile ghosts across her lips before fading. "You can’t miss what you never had."
It takes everything in me not to react. To freeze every reactive tissue in my body so it doesn’t flare or flex.
Snow couldn’t understand. She couldn’t know what she just said plunged a blade straight into my heart.
All our hearts.
Snow's words slide in layer by layer until it cuts through even the deepest, most buried heart we have. Seven’s.
He almost flinches. Almost.
I know what it’s like to miss a parent’s love.
To know what it felt like before it was severed. Taken away. It’s like having lived in the safe warmth of the sun before being dropped into a cold, dark expanse, like an ocean, or outer space.
"What is it?" she searches my eyes, somehow gleaning something is wrong. Again. Are we really that transparent?
I open my mouth, shut it. It’s the normally quiet Three who nudges the words out of me.
"I had my mother’s love. I miss my mother’s love."
We miss it, Three gently corrects, but I don’t add it out loud.
She blinks. "That sucks. I’m sorry."
I expect the usual barrage of questions. For her to try and dig her fingers into my wound to pry it open. But for whatever reason, she leaves it alone.
Which is good. Because if she had tried to dig any further, I would be out of here like a shot.
"So let me guess." Half her lips tilt in a sly slant. There is a gleam in her eye that I am beginning to recognize and deeply distrust. "You’re the one who has never done anything crazy or wild just for the hell of it."
I stop. "What? We’ve done plenty of..."
"No," she cuts me off with a poke to the chest. "You. One. I mean you. Specifically." She takes one step back, toward the end of the pier, keeping her gaze on mine. "I bet you have never once done something completely stupid just because it sounded fun."
She's not wrong, Two drolly observes, unhelpfully.
"Being stupid isn't fun," I say.
"I bet you’ve noticed the other parts of you know how to have fun. How to throw caution to the wind. Two is a pretty daring dude."
Two pretends not to care. He fails miserably, perking up at the acknowledgment.
Snow sets a hand on her hip, cocking her head to the side. "Also, how would you know being impulsive isn’t fun if you've never tried it?"
Four moves so close to the surface I can feel his grin on my own face, and I actively wrestle it back down.
"I don't need to touch a hot stove to know—"
"Sometimes getting hot is fun." She is still holding my gaze.
Still with that gleam. "I mean, you seem to not mind the heat.
Aren't you dying in this thing?" She plucks at my sleeve.
Then she tips her head, studying me. "Is this one of those things where guys wear shorts and flip-flops in a snowstorm to prove they're not cold?
Because you don't have to prove anything to me. You could take it off."
"I run cold," I lie.
"Mm." She steps in. "I still think you should give it a try. Shedding the layer, for science. Thermal regulation. Maybe the pants too."
She's flirting with you, Four says, delighted. She has been this entire time, and you've been answering her like she's asking about the weather, you idiot.
Oh.
Is she daring me to close the distance?
That must be what this is. She's baiting me. Inviting me to cross the remaining space between us and finish what almost happened earlier—
She turns and sprints full tilt off the end of the pier.
For one full second, I stand completely still, watching the place where she was.
The splash reaches me a beat later.
The Atlantic Ocean in July is sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, Six points out with an anxious strain.
Hypothermia can set in within the hour. She went in fully clothed, which means drag weight, and she is small, and she is human, and she has no magic to regulate her body temperature, and she is in the ocean—
The whole of me is moving before I've consciously made the decision.
I hit an ocean made of icy needles and the cold drives everything else out entirely.