43. Poison Apple Gets Lit
Poison Apple Gets Lit
SNOW
"Ididn’t know." I shake my head as tears angrily sting the backs of my eyes and blur my vision. I slam the rest of my drink back before my feelings can spill over.
Normally, Poison Apple is a place of life and excitement. Tonight, it’s devoid of either. Geanie, Rap, and I sit on the tufted conversation couches, tired, defeated, and grayed from the stress of not knowing what to do.
Once I got some of my strength back after the partial sedative hit, I managed to get Brexley up to his apartment, where it’s safe for him to recover.
Then, I stumbled the last few steps to his couch and passed out.
When I woke up a full fifteen hours later, he was gone, and the sun was already setting again, though I hadn’t seen it rise.
The three of us each hold a glass of Jolly Roger rum in our hands. A rare, top-shelf spirit Rap gets from the notorious pirate Captain James T Hook, whom she plays cards with when he’s not sailing with his wife.
"For the best of times, for the worst of times," Rap says as she pours each of us a glass.
When I showed up on Rap’s doorstep in last night’s clothes with news about The Seven and how Red had been taken, she pulled me into a hug so tight I couldn’t breathe. I clung to her for a long time, and she didn’t break the hug until I did first.
And that’s when she received the notice.
A temporary closure order signed by Judge Trainor, citing public safety concerns, repeated nuisance complaints, and reports of unlawful magical activity.
Rap read it twice. And then she had several long strings with very colorful curses to say about it.
"I can’t believe he took out Brexley," Geanie says, eyes glassy and red as he runs a hand through his blond hair.
Geanie is in normal clothes for once. Instead of his blue suit with the tails and top hat, the man is wearing a T-shirt. Two kittens play with a ball of yarn on the front of his pink top.
Rap shakes her head. "I can’t find him. Them. Whatever. My sources can’t track down The Seven. It’s like he’s a ghost."
A ghost couldn’t have stabbed me in the back and through the heart.
"I still don’t understand. How is he going to ‘help’ them?" Geanie asks, using air quotes around the word help.
I rake my fingernails through my hair, agitation rising like a swarm of bees in my body.
"I don’t know. I don’t know where they’ve been taking our people.
Or what is being done to them. He called it a facility.
He said they could help Red. Help all of them.
He said he wouldn’t let what happened to Carolee happen to them. "
Or Rosie. I told him how Carolee looked just like Rosie in death, and when walking my dreams, Three saw it too. My brain still itches in a specific spot over that.
Our people. My mind trips on it.
As The Seven has made very clear many times, I am not one of them. I’m human. Otherwise, I’d be stuck wherever Ariel, Cinder, and Goldie are.
The fact I’m not makes me sick to my stomach. I greedily pour another large glass and down the rum, feeling helpless. Rap doesn’t comment, just calmly watches me tuck away her incredibly rare booze.
I keep drinking because if I stop, I’m going to feel the soft press of The Seven's mouth against my forehead again. I’m going to see him bleeding on the pavement, white eyes wrecked, begging me to believe he wasn’t trying to hurt my friends.
I’m going to watch it happen all over again, the moment his body hit the ground after Red's wolf ate up his powers. I'll remember the way the world went silent except for the sound of my own breathing when Four died in front of me.
I shouldn’t care. Red was trying to protect her husband. Four was burning him, could have even killed him.
But my chest keeps tightening around the empty place his heat left behind. My skin feels too cold, my mouth too full of all the things I can’t say without sounding like a traitor.
So I drink, hoping the liquor will burn away my grief. Rap’s fingers keep playing in her hair. It’s something she’s started doing since Queenie came last night.
The seat at the end of the bar sits empty. Ryder's seat, the one he's claimed since he decided Rap needs a shadow, where he’s parked so he can watch the door and her at the same time.
"Ryder didn’t want to come in tonight?" I ask.
"I closed the bar." Rap's chin lifts. "No bar, no shifts, no security detail. He doesn't get paid to watch me drink."
"He offered to do it for free," Geanie says to me, ratting Rap out immediately.
"He offered a lot of things." She swirls her glass and studies the legs the liquor leaves on the crystal.
Whoa. Does that mean what I think it means? But asking about the boss’s sex life is very, very off-limits. Unless she offers it, which usually means a casual hookup she had out of town on vacation.
"He argued with me on my own stoop for ten minutes." Rap rolls her eyes as if she’s remembering what happened in vivid detail. "A whole speech about his bad feeling." She throws up finger quotes around the glass she is still holding.
Geanie perks up. "Was it romantic?"
"It was insubordinate." Rap knocks hers back in one swallow, and Geanie mouths romantic at me anyway.
"I have a gut feeling The Seven is working for someone else," Rap says, changing the subject. "And I’m beginning to suspect I know who that is, but the why doesn’t make any sense to me."
Before I can ask her to say more, a heavy banging falls on the door.
We pause and look up.
"I thought you put a sign on the door," Geanie says.
"I did," Rap says, sipping her drink unbothered. "They’ll figure it out."
The knock came as loud sonorous bangs this time. The air fills thick with tension as we stare at the door.
Still, none of us move to get it.
The door breaks with a tremendous crash and swings open, smacking into the wall.
Wood splinters across the floor. The warm night air punches into the room. The three of us jerk to our feet as white jackets flood the entrance, boots crunching over broken glass and scattered wood. Two of them are still holding the battering ram.
HAMs.
A lot of HAMs.
Of fucking course.
They had an axe to grind against Rap, Poison Apple, and me. I just didn’t expect them to show up with literal axes.
Switchblade already open in her hand, Lilah’s hair is slicked back and her smile is sharp enough to count as a second blade. Behind her, Wrecking Ball ducks through the destroyed doorway, shoulders almost brushing both sides of the frame.
"We heard Poison Apple is closed," Lilah calls. "But we figured we’d drop by to make sure it’s a permanent closure."
Rap’s glass lowers slowly.
Geanie makes a strangled sound beside me. It’s almost absurd the way the tiny orange cats smile on his chest as twelve-armed purist dickwads file into our bar with bats, pipes, chains, crowbars, and bottles stoppered with burning rags.
"This is a hate crime," Geanie says, voice gone high and offended. "And a fashion crime," he adds with a sniff, eyes flicking to their jackets.
No one laughs.
"Touch my bar," Rap says coolly, still from a seated position, "and I’ll bury you under it."
She says it, but there are too many of them. I may be a kickass female, but unless an army shows up, the three of us are well and truly fucked.
"Ladies, gents," I stand, stumbling a bit, realizing the liquor has rudely turned my knees to jelly. I glare down at them. I wasn’t drunk when I was sitting. But I guess I’ll have to work with what I’ve got, so I start again in a voice meant to calm the room.
"Is this about the magic thing again? Because I still think that none of you have had a personalized experience that really helps you connect to what magic is all about, or what supernatural powers can do for you. Allow me to demonstrate."
With that, I lift my closed fist to my face and start to blow on my thumb. I make sure to puff out my cheeks and put a lot of effort into it as my middle finger slowly but surely unfurls until I’ve inflated a perfect message tailored just for our newcomers.
"Eh?" I say, my gaze bouncing between it and them with awe and open expectation, as if I’ve done the most amazing magic trick of all and am waiting for my applause.
"Leave the blue-eyed freak to me," Wrecking Ball says.
"To us," Lilah corrects. Then she puts two fingers up to her mouth and lets out a piercing whistle.
Windows explode inward from the left.
Then the right.
Glass rains over the tables and couches as rocks crash through them from the outside. Oh goodie, there are more of them.
One of the HAMs hurls a fire bottle toward the far wall. It bursts against the shelves near the lower liquor display, flames racing over spilled alcohol in a hungry orange line.
Rap moves first.
She throws her empty glass straight into a man’s face, grabs the Jolly Roger bottle by the neck, and swings it like a club.
I’m already moving, one dagger in my hand, the second sliding free from the thigh holster under my skirt. My body snaps into the old rhythm. Weight low. Knees loose. Blades reversed.
Wrecking Ball sees me and grins.
"Little twig," he says, before throwing a punch I easily dodge even in my inebriated state.
"Big mistake." My knuckles crash into his nose. A loud crack reverberates against my fist as blood spurts from his broken face.
He yells, hands covering his face.
I shake out my throbbing hand. "Ouchies."
Geanie throws a barstool at someone. It hits with a terrific crash. "I hate violence," he shouts, grabbing another stool. "I am built for the entertainment industry."
He throws the second barstool, but a HAM catches it with both hands and drives it into him. The legs crack against his chest. Geanie stumbles, gasping, right into the swing of a bat.
The sound is dull and awful.
His pink kitten shirt flashes as he drops behind an overturned chair.
Oh fae lords, no. My heart flutters painfully fast and hard as I try to keep up. There’s only one of me, and everything is moving too fast.