47. Whistle While You Work
Whistle While You Work
SNOW
Iteleport across Poison Apple with a stack of clean glasses balanced in my arms.
The gold flash drops me behind the bar beside Rap, who jerks so hard she paints a streak of black across the fresh wood.
"Faefucks, Snow."
"Sorry."
I set the glasses beneath the counter as Rap goes back to touching up the scorch marks left behind by the fire. Most of the broken windows have been replaced, the damaged furniture has been hauled out, and the last of the blood scrubbed from the floor.
Four stands beneath the fairy tree, using little bursts of flame to burn away the blackened ends of its branches without touching the healthy growth. I can feel each spark of his power from here.
I can feel all of the magic in the building.
I’ve used Goldie’s ability to teleport in and out with supplies. Cinder’s magic to pull the blood from the stained wood floors so I could wipe it up and make them as good as new again. Or at least back to the scuffed-up, worn floors we know and love.
"Is it kind of annoying she knows how to use our powers better than we do?" Goldie asks Cinder from where she’s paused sweeping the floor.
Cinder reclines across one of the tufted couches with a rag draped over her stomach and one boot propped on the armrest. She lifts the rag and wipes the same three inches of wood beside her before dropping it again.
"I might be more bothered if it weren’t taking so much of the workload off the rest of us."
Over at the entrance, Ryder lifts the new front door into its frame, the replacement for the one HAM turned to splinters. He balances the slab of oak with one arm and seats the hinge pins with the other, and his biceps strain the sleeves of his black tee to their structural limit.
Rap's brush has stopped mid-stroke.
I follow her stare across the room, straight to the doorway. The pin drops home. Ryder rolls his shoulder, clocks her looking, and gives the door a lazy test swing. "Boss?"
"It squeaks," Rap says, and attacks the scorch marks with sudden devotion.
It does not squeak. I say nothing, because I enjoy being alive.
I fight my smile.
The world is full of currents I spent my entire life reaching for.
Now they reach for me. Four's fire pulses from the tree in warm little heartbeats.
Goldie hums bright gold at the edge of my senses.
Cinder runs underneath it all, slow and deep and red.
My own magic rises to meet each one, mirror-bright, ready to be any of them.
And threaded between them, the human currents. Rap finding urgent new work directly facing away from the door. Ryder at the doorway, admiring his own hinge work. Geanie already retelling the story of his black eye to an audience of one mop. These walls held blood and fire. Today they hold this.
I always knew myself best.
Even when I forgot the magic, my body remembered it. The hunger led me to magic-kind, to Poison Apple, to every snack cake that let me borrow an ability for a few minutes. It led me to The Seven.
And it led me directly into a wall yesterday when I teleported before deciding where I wanted to land, but personal growth has setbacks.
"Catch," Geanie calls out. He sports a black eye and has been nursing a concussion since that night the HAMs came, but he has no problems using it as bragging rights.
A roll of paper towels flies over the bar. I reach for Rosie’s power and stop it in midair.
The roll floats in front of me.
A laugh bursts out of my chest before I can contain it.
I’ve levitated at least fifty things since Seven gave me back my powers. The excitement keeps hitting me fresh every time.
Rosie’s magic stays the easiest. Her power was the first one I mirrored, stamped into mine before Queenie tore everything else away. Every time something rises at my command, I feel Rosie’s hand wrapped around mine and hear two girls trying to swallow their laughter in the dark.
I float the paper towels into my hand.
Ariel watches me from where she is painting over a slightly burnt beam.
"What?" I ask.
"You have the exact same face you made after eating your first Magic Morsel."
I grin at her before popping next to her and grabbing her in a tight hug.
"You were there for all the hungry years," I say. "When I was whiny and envious of everyone instead of being satisfied with myself."
"Is that what you think that was?" Ariel pulls back and searches my face. "Snow. Part of you was taken before you could even miss it properly. You spent fifteen years grieving magic you didn't know was yours. Of course you were hungry. You weren't envious. You were remembering."
Remembering.
My whole body goes still around the word. The hunger that dragged me to this bar, to snack cakes, to every mage who'd let me stand close to their light. I thought it was a flaw I couldn't train out of myself. It was a memory I couldn't put down.
I spent fifteen years believing Rosie got sick and died while I failed to save her. Then I almost lost Ariel.
For one awful second, I can see it. Ariel too still, eyes closed. Ariel's skin gone gray while I scream her name and get nothing back.
My arms constrict around her until she makes a small oof sound.
"I'm going to get paint in your hair," Ariel says, but her arm folds around my back.
"If anything happened to you, I would lose my fucking mind."
"I know."
I let her go and reach behind the bar. I pick out a bruised apple from the garnish bowl, hold it on my flat palm, and let Rosie's magic lift it into the air between us, slow, spinning, defying physics.
Two girls wanted more than beige pajamas and lights out at nine. One of us had to carry the wanting for both.
"She’s always with you," Ariel says, voice thick. "That’s so cool."
The apple drifts down into my hand, and it fits. "Yeah, it is," I say with an equal roughness in my words.
Four appears beside us and holds a steaming cup of coffee out to Ariel.
She accepts the cup and peers at the label. "Extra hot caramel latte, oat milk, two shots?"
"I watched them make it," he says. "Then heated it another ten degrees."
Ariel takes a careful sip. "Your application for forgiveness remains under review."
"I’ll draw you another bath tonight."
"Extra hot?"
"I’ll boil you like a little lobster."
"Progress," she says, lifting the coffee in approval.
The Seven has been staying at our apartment since we recovered all my friends. He loves the tiny kitchen, the fire escape, and the fact that Lucifer joins him on the roof in the middle of the night. Lucifer’s new flutterbun friend, Angel Puff Puff, has moved in too.
I found them asleep together on the couch this morning again. Angel Puff Puff had his head tucked beneath Lucifer’s chin. I can’t believe I actually called Lucifer cute for that. But with a new friend and a couple cans of tuna, things have taken a real turn for the peaceful.
Four heads toward the collapsed shelving unit blocking the hallway. His eyes flash from red to purple as Two takes over. He phases through the twisted frame, grabs it from the other side, then pulls it free of the debris.
The Seven has been doing the work of at least seven men since cleanup started.
Which feels fair, since he is seven men.
He also hasn’t stopped apologizing.
He apologized at Brightpath while cutting everyone free. Again at the hospital while the doctors checked the chemicals in their systems. Then individually once we were back at Poison Apple.
He gave them the full truth. Every person he took. Every place he delivered them. Every order Queenie gave him. He turned over the laboratory records, financial accounts, HAM contacts, and the names of every person who helped conceal the experiments.
Then he announced his intention to turn himself in.
Red pointed out that he took a bullet protecting her and could have left her and Brexley to Queenie’s men.
Goldie reminded everyone that he freed us, restored my magic, and gave the investigators enough evidence to dismantle decades of Queenie’s work.
Rap begrudgingly admitted that Poison Apple would have been completely burned to the ground if it weren’t for him, and she, Geanie, and I would have been tinder in that flame.
Cinder said those choices mattered, though they didn’t wipe out the ones that came before.
Queenie was locked away in a specialized prison, not only because she is being prosecuted for countless heinous crimes, but because with her magic Midas touch, she can’t be allowed to go free.
The irony of it still hits me in a bone deep place. I’m just grateful The Seven have all turned the corner on blah blah magic is bad bullshit. They are learning to really lean into the fun of what they can do, and what I can do now.
The Seven have been cooperating with the investigation into his mother and will accept whatever comes from it, but nobody allowed him to walk into a police station and take full responsibility.
Also, he’s my boyfriend now. So everyone and their boyfriend have been informed that murder is off the table.
Brexley asked if maiming counted.
I told him it did, and he did, in fact, already chew up The Seven’s arm really good, so count it.
Forgiveness has come in pieces.
Goldie forgave Five first after he sneezed three tiny pigs into existence and spent an hour chasing them through the bar before she gathered them in a shoebox.
Red currently tolerates One, mostly because he took the bullet.
Ariel has accepted coffee and baths from Four while maintaining a detailed list of his remaining offenses.
Kiki returned to work at Pumpkin Coach Club, but promised to come to the reopening party, then informed The Seven that her forgiveness would depend on the quality of the apology present he selected.
I accidentally mirrored her divination power when I last saw her.
For three seconds, I knew exactly which gift he should buy her and that Lucifer would vomit inside my left boot the following morning.
But once I’d done it, Kiki pointed a finger in my face. "Do not touch my powers without asking."