Page 261 of Slashed Bonds

The twins. From the stairs, where they’ve been sitting one above the other like a totem pole, identical black jackets, identical faces, one of them with his chin on the other’s head.

“Mori. Want anything?”

“Um.” I think. My body answers before my brain does, which is new. “A mocha cookie crumble. And a jar of pickles.”

Silence.

The specific silence of eight people turning their heads to look at one person with pure, slow, unified disgust. Even Knox lifts his head.

“What?”

“I love you, Mommy,” Nikolai says, grave, “but that combination sounds absolutely disgusting.”

Maddie’s laughing. Bent over, phone pointed at the floor.

“Twins!” she manages. “Get three mocha fraps and three jars of pickles. We have to test the vision.”

“At this rate,” Cassian says, still writing, “buy the whole pickle section. And ten fraps.”

“Aww.” Valerie, from the doorway of the station, arms crossed, grinning. “Don’t we love a supportive team effort. I’ll take the frap. You lot can keep the pickles. I’m not about that life.”

“Don’t hate it till you try it.”

The twins. In unison. One wink from each of them, perfectly timed, and they’re up the stairs and gone, and I can hear the bell on the laundromat door above us ring when they go out.

Greenie watches them go. Then he watches Maddie not watch them go, which is a thing she does with her whole body, and his jaw does a small movement and he looks at the floor.

Three Alphas and a pink Omega and a staircase. That’s a conversation that’s going to happen in this house before the semis or after, and I’m going to be out of the room for it. Deliberately. With pickles.

Maddie catches my eye. Reads it off my forehead the way Viper does. Mouths shut up with no sound and a grin.

Pickles. I want pickles. I’ve wanted pickles since Tuesday. Lessard’s new chemistry’s been in me nine days and it’s given me an appetite with opinions, and the opinions are brine.

The gala’s in four days. That’s the other thing with a countdown on it in the lobby of a gym, under the 5. Roz handed the dress code around with the invitations like a woman distributing summonses, black tie, and then looked at the three of them and added actual ties, and then looked at me and said nothing, because Maddie had already said it for her. We’d gone to a store with lights on Thursday. The card came out. The dress is black, long, with a back that isn’t there, which is becoming a theme, and it’s hanging in my room with a tag still on it because I haven’t believed it yet.

A gala. In a ballroom. With Naomi Vance in it, married by then, and a woman with green contacts waiting for the ink to dry.

Dox’s documents go out that night. That’s the part only four of us in this basement know. Not to press. To the phones of forty people in a ballroom who’ve come to decide where their money goes, in the gap between the entrée and the speeches, with the Vance name on the program and a wedding announcement in the centerpiece.

And I’ll be standing there in a dress with no back and a butterfly on my hand, watching a woman’s face when her phone lights up. I’ve been imagining that face for a week. It’s better than the pass hitting my shin pads. Barely.

I’d asked Viper, in the car, what she was going to wear. She’d said the truth, and turned up the radio.

I sit in the chair.

It’s a good chair. Black leather, heavy, the kind that tilts and locks, and Valerie’s station is the one at the back with the best light, a lamp on an arm she swings over my hand. The machine’s on a tray beside it. Not the kind I’ve seen before. Heavier. A reservoir on it where I’d expect a cap of ink.

Different process. Killian said. Said it in a car with the engine running like he was handing me something he wasn’t sure I’d want to hold.

This morning’s still in my legs.

That’s the other thing I’m carrying into this chair. Halloran built a shadow lineup out of the second unit and dressed them as Hellsing Ross. Okonkwo as Theo on the dot, told to open his mouth before the drop. Marchetti as Rhys on the wall, told to go glass-and-out every backhand. One of the twins as Dorian, drifting high on the kill and sliding to the weak dot whenever the puck went strong side. Pruitt as Silas, dropping early in the net. And for two hours we ran it. Not drills. The game. Five days early, against a version of them built from tape, and I’d like to report that the version lost.

Dubois tapped Okonkwo’s left glove on the way through the circle and Okonkwo flinched without an old break to blame, and Cassian had the puck back before the flinch finished. Seven times. On the eighth, Okonkwo swung at Dubois with his stick and Halloran blew the whistle and said that’s what he’ll do too, be ready for it, and Dubois grinned with blood on his lip.

And the slide.

Twin-Dorian went to the weak dot on the third kill, exactly on the beat the tape promised, and I was there. Already. My shin pads took the pass before his blade did and the sound was the sound I’ve been imagining for a week, and the whole bench heard it, and nobody cheered, because you don’t cheer in practice, but Killian turned his head from the point and looked at me across the ice for a full second and nodded once.