12. Pretty Sure My Crush Isn’t Homeless
Pretty Sure My Crush Isn’t Homeless
SNOW
Six is gone in the morning. I fell asleep on his chest, which frankly is a crazy miracle.
We’d made out for at least an hour, but he always kept that soft, relaxed mode. Despite my wanting to push the envelope and dry hump him into oblivion, I stopped myself.
As I cram a piece of buttered toast in my mouth, maybe he’s doing the same. I wish I knew where The Seven lived, where he was, what he was doing all day long. As I watch an episode of Hex Island with Ariel, I picture him watching it too.
As I apply mascara before my shirt, my mind drifts to The Seven. Does he have a nine to five, or is he just a homeless recluse I’ve fallen head over heels for?
Whoa, girl, chill. No one is falling over anything.
Still, his hygiene suggests he’s got plenty of access to clean water, and it’s not like he’s starving and hitting me up for survival-dependent calories. Which equals him having a home, which equals a job to pay for that home.
I am incredibly proud of myself for doing the math on that.
Again, I should be a life coach to teach people my ways...
It’s a packed and popping Friday at Poison Apple.
Normally, I feed off the energy, but I keep getting distracted.
By a pair of different colored eyes. By being kissed by two very different men who also happen to be the same man.
I consider which personality will be the easiest to squeeze for all the super personal information.
"Snow!" a familiar voice cries out.
My head snaps up, a smile forming before I realize it. I lean across the bar to give a half-hug to Carolee. Our regular is slaying in her outfit tonight.
Dark wrap dress, heels, nails done in something deep and glossy, auburn hair down around her shoulders.
The locket she wears sits at the hollow of her throat, the way it always does, every single night, no exceptions.
Greenish-blue eyes already scan the bar like she's clocking the hotties in the room, of which, by her expression, there are more than a few.
"How have you been?" I ask, already grabbing the gin to make her favorite, an Enchanted Nightshade.
Blackberry puree goes into the shaker first, dark and glossy enough to look like it belongs in a spell jar. Lime next, then agave, then enough gin to make a bad decision feel good.
"Oh, you know me. Every spare minute I’m not working at the hospital, I’m over at Chapter Three accruing books for my hoard."
I shake it over ice until the tin frosts beneath my fingers, strain it into a chilled glass, and slap a sage leaf between my palms before dropping it on top. The whole thing smells like tart berries, green magic, and poor impulse control. A Lost Girl’s specialty.
She’s not kidding. I’ve caught her more than once over at Chapter Three in her scrubs, knees nearly buckling from the insanely large stack she was trying to carry around.
I’ve even heard Isabelle tell her she can leave the stack on the front desk while she shopped, but Carolee explained she has a budgetary rule that she can only keep what she can carry.
And damn, can she carry a lot.
"I’m still obsessed with Jessie," Carolee gushes, "Isabelle’s new hire? She always knows exactly what book I need. I swear she’s magic."
Great. Yet another person with a magic, or near-magic power, who isn’t me. I swallow the unexpected bitter jealousy that floods my mouth.
If I had powers, I bet The Seven would view me more like an equal. He’d probably want to spend more time with me...
Ugh, this is why they say boys make you crazy.
Even as Carolee tells me about her latest sexy read, my attention is pulled to a hooded figure who makes her way across the crowded dance floor toward Rap.
Rap’s face tightens with concern as she spots the approaching figure.
But then, Rap usually looks pretty stern. Except around the new guy.
I shoot a glance at Ryder, who is standing at the perimeter of the dance floor, arms folded, eyes sharp on the crowd, looking out for trouble.
Anticipation and suspicion swirl in my gut.
The hooded woman reaches Rap and leans in close to say something. Rap's head snaps toward the front doors right before they bang open.
Carolee's words drift off, turning to see the newcomers.
Five of them, shoulder to shoulder, matching white jackets bright as hell under the door lights.
Holy butterfly balls. HAMs. In here.
They harass people in alleys. They tag warehouses and corner kids at bus stops at two in the morning. They have never once stormed through the front doors of the busiest bar in Boston on a Friday night like they bought the building.
The five Humans Against Magic members march in like they're walking into church. Matching white jackets and judgmental expressions.
"Friends! Neighbors! Bostonians!" The one at the front with a yellow mullet shouts with his arms spread wide, boots loud on the floor just as the music stutters and dies. "Look around you. Look at what this city lets fester."
The dance floor pulls back from him in a slow ring. A girl near the stage grabs her friend's hand. Two guys by the tree pick up their drinks and edge toward the wall.
"This city was built by human hands." The pseudo-preacher keeps walking, flanked by his little entourage.
Two big ones, a wiry one with a neck tattoo, and a guy in the back with a jaw like a mailbox.
"Human sweat. Human blood. And now look.
Magic in our schools. Magic in our hospitals.
Magic pouring drinks." He swings around and points straight at me. "Infecting you, and this city."
I lift the shaker in my hand and give it a little jingle. "Want one? It's two-for-one appletinis till midnight."
No one laughs. The preacher's smile stretches thin and his eyes go small and hard.
"Snow," Ariel murmurs behind me. She’s warning me to keep a low profile.
Pretty sure that’s not an option anymore.
The mullet-preacher turns from me and scans the room as his buddies fan out. His finger starts picking out targets. A horned guy near the stage. A woman whose skin gives off a faint silver glow under the lights. A table of pixies who have gone completely still over their nachos.
"Sin," he announces, finger moving from one to the next.
"Corruption. Infestation. And every human in this room drinking next to it, paying for it, smiling at it.
" The finger lands on Rap. "And her. A human woman.
Harboring them. Profiting off them. Selling out her own species one cocktail at a time. "
He stops in front of Rap, who has planted herself firmly in her spot, eyeing him with extreme dislike.
"You have ten seconds to turn around and leave," she says calmly.
"You should be ashamed."
"I'm wildly ashamed. Eight seconds."
"Boston belongs to humans." He's louder now, playing to the room, the cords in his neck standing up. "And humans are taking it back. Starting with collaborators like you."
"Five seconds."
He grabs her arm.
I'm already vaulting over the bar, but Ryder gets there first.
He’d slowly but surely migrated toward them since mullet-man got within six feet of Rap.
With lightning speed, Ryder peels the man’s hand off Rap’s arm and holds his other wrist toward his elbow, bending him over a cocktail table with his cheek pressed into an abandoned coaster and his arm pinned behind his back.
"Whoa," I breathe, impressed.
"You don’t ever touch her," Ryder says, the words quiet but deadly dangerous.
"Get off me. Get OFF me, you—"
Ryder adjusts his grip and the preacher's sentence dissolves into a high, breathy sound.
"Where do you want him?" Ryder asks Rap.
Rap's mouth opens. Closes. Her eyes travel from the preacher's squashed face to Ryder's hands, then up to Ryder's face, and her cheeks flush the exact same shade they did at the interview.
"Out back," she manages with a twitch at the corner of her lips. "Dumpster's full, but he'll fit."
That's when the other four decide to join in.
The two big ones charge the bar. Neck Tattoo goes for the hooded woman beside Rap, and Mailbox Jaw peels off toward the stage end of the bar.
Where Carolee is sitting.
I throw myself at the nearest big one, pulling a dagger from the thin thigh holster under my skirt. I slash his jacket open shoulder to hip on the way past. He twists after me with a roar. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Neck Tattoo grabbing a fistful of hood.
The hood comes off, and the cloak comes with it.
Pale pink skin, pointed ears, and a dark braid whips out into the open. A blood elf. The elf moves through Neck Tattoo's grip like water, dropping her weight under his arm, hooking two fingers around his wrist as she redirects two hundred pounds of charging idiot face-first into a barstool.
Faefucks. I have never seen anybody fight like that. Every motion exact, nothing extra, like she's performed each move ten thousand times in the dark.
She plucks a coaster off the bar and flicks it. It catches Neck Tattoo in the chest as he gets up, and he sits back down, hard, blinking like somebody unplugged him and plugged him back in.
My big guy swings at my head. I drop my weight under his arm, hook two fingers around his wrist and use his momentum against him to send him face-first into the bar rail.
The blood elf catches my move, brows lifting, recognizing my copycat version of her move.
I grin at her.
My hands are still humming with it, the shape of her pivot settling in my muscles like I've practiced it for years.
The second big one shoves through screaming patrons toward Rap, and across the room Mailbox Jaw has reached Carolee.
Ryder didn’t give Rap a chance to respond, but she doesn’t miss a beat this time. She picks up one of the chairs and smashes it on the guy’s head. He wobbles on his feet before dropping to his butt, eyes dazed.
Meanwhile, I’m already charging to help Carolee before he gets to her.
Carolee remains on her stool. One hand curled around her drink, heels hooked on the rung, watching him come like he's a mildly interesting commercial.
"Look at this one," he sneers, leaning into her space. "All dressed up to party with freaks. You their little human mascot, sweetheart?"
"Oh, honey." Carolee sets her drink down and pats the bar twice. "You picked the wrong girl to mess with."
Soft little spheres, gold and lilac and seafoam green, a dozen of them rising off her shoulders and drifting around his head, slow and gentle as soap bubbles.
His pupils swallow his eyes. His jaw goes slack, and his whole face smooths out, twenty years of mean draining off it in about two seconds.
"There we go," Carolee says, sweet as anything, the little spots of light painting her face in rotating pastels.
"Now. You're going to walk out those front doors.
You're going to sit on the curb. And you're going to think, really think, about what an asshole you are.
Every door you've kicked in. Every person you've made afraid.
You're going to sit with all of it until the cops come to throw you in jail, and then you’ll think some more. "
He turns and walks toward the doors. Steady. Obedient. A man with a to-do list.
Whoa. I had no idea Carolee had Will O’ The Wisp powers. I’d thought she’d been like me. Envy wars with pride at her ability to kick ass without having to lift a high-heeled foot.
"And tip your bartenders!" she calls after him. "Thirty percent! Forever!"
The wiry one sees his buddy march himself out and makes a run for the same exit.
One of the wisps of light detaches from Carolee's little constellation, floats lazily across the room, and bops him on the back of the neck.
He stops at the threshold, then lowers himself onto the curb outside next to his friend, hands folded in his lap like a kid in time-out.
Carolee picks her drink up again and takes a sip.
I look at her. She looks at me.
"What?" she says, then shoots me a wink. "Can I get another one of these?" She points at her now empty glass.
Ryder marches the preacher past us toward the exit, arm still held behind him, and Rap follows close with her phone out, snapping a photo of the man's face. "For the wall," she says. "We frame our banned ones."
The second big guy is on the floor by the stage with Geanie sitting on him, our emcee waving cheerfully at the crowd. "Folks, give it up for tonight's interactive entertainment!"
The crowd roars. Geanie starts the music up again, and the whole room surges like a held breath letting go, drinks lifting, the pixie table cackling, the horned guy getting his back slapped by three strangers.
I turn to the bar, and the pink-skinned elf is right there, braid across her shoulder, retrieving her cloak off the floor. Up close, her eyes are green. She scans the room, the exits, the windows, the curb outside where two grown men sit contemplating their sins.
"This is just the beginning," she says to Rap, and her voice is low and even, a report instead of a conversation. "Five men, no weapons, front door, maximum witnesses. It’s just a warning, but they’ll be back. And they won’t be as nice next time. They mean to run you out. Shut this place down."
Rap’s jaw clenches as the woman pulls the cloak over her shoulders.
The hood starts to come up, and my mouth gets there before my brain does.
"Your moves were absolute badass."
Green eyes slide to me. Down to the dagger still in my hand and up again. "You seemed to enjoy trying them on for size."
"I pick things up fast," I say with a shrug.
The elf’s chin lifts a fraction. "Is that what it is?" Her gaze volleys between Rap and me. "She cut hers off too?"
"Fireopal," Rap says the woman’s name, and it’s a warning. Rap’s lips thin until they almost disappear, giving the blood elf a quick shake of the head.
The elf shrugs and raises her hood. She moves toward the back hall with Rap, the two of them bending their heads together.
Fireopal. Even her name is badass.
The city has been tense for a while, but now it feels like the pin has been pulled from the grenade.
Suddenly, I'm extra amped to head out and patrol. And I know just the guy to help me keep things tight.