14. Jagger #2
The pen hits the table with a plastic clatter that bounces off the kitchen walls. Sabine pushes back from her chair, stands, and points down the hallway toward the bedroom with the same rigid authority she once aimed at a DMI clerk who tried to shortchange her on filing receipts.
"Prove it."
My brain stalls.
"The bedroom. Now."
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. No sound comes out. Eleven years of staring down fugitives and crime lords and one particularly unhinged warlock who threw acid beetles at my face, and a five-foot-five accountant in a cream cardigan just emptied every word from my skull.
She crosses her arms. "Are you coming or not?"
I stand. The chair scrapes back. The Snarbo bolts fully under the couch and refuses to surface. Wise.
Sabine is already halfway down the hall, her comfortable flats clicking against the hardwood with the tempo of someone marching into a board meeting she intends to dominate.
I follow. My boots make the floor creak in protest with every step.
The hallway is narrow enough that my shoulders brush both walls, catching on the small framed print of a lakeside cottage she bought at a flea market three Sundays ago.
I straighten it without breaking stride.
She pushes open the bedroom door. Her pastel duvet is pulled tight with hospital corners.
The decorative pillows are arranged in descending size order, largest against the headboard, smallest in front.
A single lavender candle is on the nightstand next to her reading glasses and a mechanical pencil.
And on the dresser, folded in a precise square, sits my black t-shirt. The one I slept in. The one I left behind when I wrote that note and walked out like a coward. She washed it. She folded it. She kept it on her dresser next to a ceramic dish that holds her earrings.
The air leaves my lungs.
Sabine stands at the foot of the bed, arms still crossed, chin at that devastating angle.
"Open the closet."
I reach for the closet door. Slide it open.
Her clothes hang on the left side. Organized by color, then by garment type, then by season. Blouses give way to blazers give way to exactly three cardigans in varying shades of oatmeal. Everything faces the same direction on matching wooden hangers.
The right side is empty.
Not unused-empty. Prepared-empty. She cleared it out.
Rearranged the shelf above to make room for something taller.
A set of five heavy-duty wooden hangers hang at a wider spacing than hers, sized for broader shoulders.
Below them, is a boot tray on the closet floor, large enough for my size fifteens.
"I measured your boots before you left," she says behind me. "The tray is custom. It took four days to arrive."
I cannot turn around. If I turn around she will see my face and my face is doing something I have not allowed it to do in over a decade.
"Check the bathroom."
I walk to the bathroom. My reflection stares back from the mirror above her sink, grey-skinned and silver-pierced and completely wrecked.
On the left side of the vanity: her toothbrush, her face wash, her lavender soap in a ceramic dispenser.
On the right side: a new toothbrush in black packaging.
A bar of unscented soap. A hand towel in dark charcoal hung on a separate hook, positioned at my height.
Below the sink, the cabinet door is slightly ajar. I crouch. Inside, next to her neatly organized toiletries, she has stacked a basic first-aid kit with supplies scaled for someone my size. Large-gauge bandages. Industrial antiseptic. Butterfly closures wide enough for Orc skin.
"You get hurt constantly. Your previous medical strategy appeared to be 'ignore it and bleed on things,' which is neither sustainable nor hygienic."
I stand. My knees crack. The bathroom is too small for me. Everything in this apartment is too small for me, and she rearranged every square inch of it to make room anyway.
I turn around.
She stands in the doorway with her arms crossed so tight her knuckles press white against her sleeves. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. She is not crying. Sabine Lin does not cry. She reorganizes.
"You said you wanted to earn the right to sit at my table. I am saying I already set you a place."
My arms glow. Not amber. Not the warning color. Something warmer. Something I have never seen them do before, a deep, steady gold that pulses in time with my heartbeat.
"You bought me a toothbrush."
"It's a basic household item. Don't read into it."
"You measured my boots."
"Spatial planning requires accurate dimensions. That's just math."
"Sabine."
"What."
I cross the distance in two steps. The bathroom doorway groans as my shoulders fill it. She tilts her head back to look up at me, and the angle is steep because the difference between us is absurd, and her jaw is set but her pulse hammers visible at her throat.
"You kept my shirt."
The fracture splits wide open. Her lip trembles once. She catches it between her teeth and kills it.
"It was already laundered. It seemed wasteful to throw away a perfectly good—"
I cradle her face in both hands. My palms span from her jaw to her temples. She is so small. She is so impossibly, terrifyingly small, and she bought heavy-duty hangers and a custom boot tray and a first-aid kit built for a monster.
Her hands uncross and land flat against me, fingers spread wide. Not pushing. Pressing. Feeling the heartbeat that matches the gold light crawling up my arms.
"Don't leave again," she whispers.
"No."
"I mean it. I will find you. I tracked a crime lord through six shell companies. You would take me half an afternoon."
"I know."