Never Talk Smack About a Man’s Mama
Never Talk Smack About a Man’s Mama
TWO
"That was not a low profile," I yell at Snow as we run. "You promised we’d keep a low profile."
"Well, he was being a bigoted asshole," she yells back. The clatter and heavy footsteps behind us prove they don’t plan to give up.
The Dry Dock had gone quiet the second she shoved through the door of the dive bar. A room full of men in matching white HAM jackets turned to find their turf invaded and every part of One wanted to streak out of there like lightning.
But Snow forged ahead, planted both hands on the sticky bar and said, "I’m looking for my friend, Goldie. A gorgeous voluptuous blonde who wears a lot of pink with tattoos, makes a mean appletini, and has a smile that feels like sunshine itself."
She distinctly avoided the part where Goldie was a siren. Which would be the main reason HAM would target her, but no use informing them if they didn’t know.
The tall, hefty bartender clenched his fists so tight I hear the snapping of bones. "Filthy magic freaks aren’t welcome here."
"The bitch is human," a voice came from the corner. He’s an even bigger guy in the corner, nursing a beer. I recognized him from the first night Snow and I met. He glared at her but kept to his seat.
The bartender cast a suspicious eye on Snow but leaned in and laid a hand on hers. "Then you can stay, honey, and we can get you on the right path." To his credit, it sounded kind, like he was saving her from my kind of filth.
Snow simply looked down at where he was touching her.
All Seven us knew something very bad was about to happen.
"He’s mistaken," she said, looking up at the bartender as she slipped her hand out from under his. "Because I do know magic."
She stepped right into the man’s space, reached up, pinched his nose between two knuckles, and yanked her hand away.
"Got your nose."
The room went so quiet, the only sound was the humming of the old beer cooler behind the bar.
Snow held her thumb between her fingers and wiggled it at him. "Ta-da. Magic."
I stared at her.
All of us stared at her.
It went downhill very quickly from there.
One might be super-fast, but we needed to disappear quicker than he could move, which is why I took lead, grabbed Snow, and phased out through the wall where we broke into a run.
You should have let me lead. I could have taken care of it, Four complains darkly.
Leaving a bunch of charred bodies behind would not have been a good idea in any way shape or form, Six says, beating One to the punch. And you could have accidentally hurt Snow.
Four merely grumbles in response.
"Did you have to bring the bartender’s mother into it?" I yell.
"Alright, fair point," she says, panting. "But I maintain that their jackets are ugly and his mama didn’t raise him right."
The urge to close my eyes in exasperation is strong, and suddenly I know what it’s like to be One.
Or...I guess I always know what it’s like to be One, since we are the same person, though it doesn’t feel that way. Snow has a way of bringing all of us closer together in more ways than one.
While I’d eliminated that HAM a while back, who I knew would circle back and try to hurt Snow, it had been messy. My talent had more to do with getting us out of scrapes than fighting through them. Thus, we run.
"You just can’t go around talking about people’s moms like that," I say again, needing to press the point on her.
The stamping gets louder as I realize some of the HAMs used shortcuts.
I was right when I told Snow about the danger of going in there. It’s not that the Humans Against Magic were particularly smart or dangerous on their own, but upwards of ten of them and it becomes a problem.
We definitely have a problem.
"Here, quick," Snow grabs my sleeve and drags me down an alley in a different direction. "Phase us through here," she instructs.
I do as she says. We are in a corridor of a hotel, and she rushes me through and out the front door then back onto the street.
I continue to let her pull me along as she asks me to phase once, twice, three more times.
Each time my vision blurs, never completely coming back into focus.
My boots start hitting the pavement flat, whole-footed, like they belong to somebody heavier.
Twice, I clip a shoulder on a doorframe I meant to miss.
"What’s wrong?" Snow asks from somewhere that seems far away.
"It takes a lot of energy to phase," I pant, "We’ll need to sleep soon."
"Got it," she says with a sharp nod. "I’ll take care of it."
I wish she’d say, “I’ll take care of you,” Five says a bit wistfully.
We need to stay focused, Six instructs. If we phase one more time, we might pass out.
He isn’t wrong. I’m stumbling now and probably would have collapsed if Snow hadn’t looped her arm around my waist, directing me forward.
"Just one more time." Her words are warm and soothing in my ear, and I obey without question.
She leaves me, and the wall catches me before the floor gets the chance. I stay where it puts me.
There is the snap of a light fixture, and warm light spreads from a Victorian-style lamp with a fringed shade. Its glow illuminates a black and white checkered floor, a big floral couch and live plants hanging from the ceiling. Their vines crawl everywhere, dotted with different types of blooms.
I blink several times before I discern that we are in some kind of tattoo parlor. One that might have been decorated by a grandma with a plant addiction.
"You should turn the light out," I say, my voice hoarse.
"It’s okay. The blackout shades are pulled down over the window and door. No one can see in. For safety and all that jazz…whoops, I got you."
She catches me just as I stumble and almost end up flat on my face. "Come on, big hero. Let’s have a lie down, shall we?"
Snow leads me over to the white leather chair so I can lay out. Then she uses the pedals underneath to recline me before sitting on a short rolling stool and gliding over to my side.
"You’re not going to tattoo me, are you?" I ask only half-teasing.
Snow squints at me as if seriously considering it before breaking into a smile, shaking her head.
"Nah, Tink would skin me alive if I touched her tools."
"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.
"Doesn't matter. It’s just the truth."
"It does though." She leans forward, elbows on her knees.
"Because I have spent my whole life being told I'm wrong.
That I look wrong. That I want the wrong things.
" Her voice stays flat. "But the best day of my life was when I met a bunch of badass women, who taught me I get to choose what is right for me. That I get to decide who and what I am. If I believed what people told me while I was growing up, I’d be so...
small." I see it in her eyes first, only because I'm watching closer than I'll ever admit.
The focus slips off me by a degree, maybe two.
Her pupils spread. The blue goes from live wire to standing water, and she's not in this room anymore.
"I did shrink for a while. For many years, actually.
" She rolls the chair over to a counter and runs her fingers over it.
"While I may covet other people’s magic and strive to be more than I am, I’ve come a long way to accepting a lot of my own pieces because I stopped listening to the voices that wanted to keep me small."
Another wave of exhaustion overcomes me, and I lay back on the couch. This is too much philosophy shit. This was always Six’s playing field. But I’m so exhausted I can’t even tell if he’s adding commentary or analysis.
"I’m tired," I croak.
The screech and clatter of the wheels precede the warmth radiating off her, where she stops right in front of me.
I extend an arm and she crawls onto my body, despite the couch barely being big enough for me.
Still, she fits in perfectly and I let go of thinking about what a shitbag I am and let myself fall asleep with this human curled around me.
Wondering if she would ever in a million years understand why I don’t tell her where her friends have gone.