Page 69 of Tracking Snow

His fingers flex once. Heat shimmers around them, warping the air. He shoves his hand behind his back like he can hide it.

"Four?"

His throat works. His eyes shut tight, but the red glow still leaks through his lashes. The fluorescent light above us flickers. Heat keeps rolling off him in uneven pulses, turning the narrow hallway thick and airless.

"Hey, hey, you’re okay," I say, touching the side of his face. It’s hot, but I refuse to break contact.

He shakes his head, eyes clenched shut. "He shouldn’t have it. None of us should have it."

"Have what?"

His eyes open. "Magic."

I’ve never seen The Seven this shaken. Not even when I’d almost been crushed by a collapsing ceiling.

"Hey, I’m fine. You helped me with your magic," I say. "His magic wasn’t the problem. Okay, it was a problem in the moment, but he is the douchebag. Not you."

He shakes his head, more vehemently this time. "You’re wrong. I’m no different than him. My powers are destructive, evil, dirty."

"You need to stop reading all those HAM pamphlets," I joke, but it lands flat. "Hey, would you come patrol with me tonight?" I say, trying a different tactic.

He doesn’t respond at first.

"Please?" I ask. "I could really use your help. And I..." It’s hard to say because I built my boundaries after he treated me like crap and I have my pride, but I can’t keep him out of my heart.

And after what just happened, I don’t want to. Even if it’s risky. "I miss you."

A myriad of expressions shift over his face, eyes flipping through colors like a kaleidoscope before they land back on red. "Okay."

Chapter 22

Never Ever Hand Us a Baby

TWO

Snow pulls open the lavender door, and the cheerful bell chimes overhead. A stained-glass rose, pink and wrapped in thorns, catches the mid-morning light as I follow her inside Chapter Three.

I tug my hood up over my head and shove my hands in my jean pockets, feeling out of place among the bright pastels and smiling cartoon couples pressed against every shelf.

Snow and I patrolled all night, though that really meant wandering through the city not really speaking to each other. It was a companionable silence, though. It helped ease the self-hatred coursing through our veins, burning us like rivers of lava.

Every time I opened my mouth, I tasted smoke, blood, and old magic.

Four kept flexing our hand like he could still feel the drunk’s shirt burning under our palm. One had gone so quiet it made the back of our skull ache.

Six kept counting things. Streetlights. Crosswalks. Windows. A coping mechanism to keep thinking about anything but what happened.

And Seven sat at the bottom of us like a lit match dropped in oil. He burned with hot rage over the audacity of mage-kind. Over the violence they felt they could inflict on others.

Then we remembered we were exactly the same, and the spiral of shame and hatred intensified tenfold.

Neither Snow nor I could sleep, and neither of us wanted to be alone. So we hung out at a diner for several hours, nursing crappy cups of coffee and occasionally cutting into the biggest, most ridiculous pile of pancakes I’d ever seen, complete with a face arranged in fruit. Her choice, of course.

And now we are here.

Inside the romance bookstore, the air smells like paper, espresso, and lavender. The ceiling opens high above us, a second-floor railing visible over the shelves, with more pastel spines and trailing flowers tucked along the edge.

Ooh, Five breathes. Books.