LITMIR.BIZ

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slowed, hoping to discourage her, wanting to stop that chiming song. It didn’t work.

      She concentrated on the sound of her feet hitting the pavement, the cars that drove by, a stereo with too much bass, anything but that chiming song. As she rounded the corner onto Crofter, the red neon sign for the Crow’s Nest reflected on the faery’s fur, emphasizing holly-red eyes. Like the rest of downtown Huntsdale, the building that housed the grungy club showed how far the city had fallen. Facades that were presumably once attractive now bore telltale signs of age and decay. Scrubby weeds sprouted from cracked sidewalks and half-abandoned lots. Outside the club, near the deserted railroad yard, the people she passed were as likely as not looking to score—seeking something, anything, to numb their minds. It wasn’t an option she could indulge in, but she didn’t begrudge them their chemical refuge.

      A few girls she recognized waved, but didn’t motion for her to stop. Aislinn inclined her head in greeting as she slowed to a normal walking speed.

      Almost there.

      Then one of Seth’s friends, Glenn, stepped in her path. He had so many bars in his face, she’d need to touch them to count them all.

      Behind her, the wolf-girl paced, circling closer until the pungent scent of her fur was chokingly heady.

      “Tell Seth his speakers came in,” Glenn started.

      The wolf-girl, still on all fours, nudged Aislinn with her head.

      Aislinn stumbled, clutching Glenn’s arm for balance.

      He reached out when she tried to step back. “You okay?”

      “I guess I just ran too fast”—she forced a smile and tried to look like she was winded from her run—“trying to keep warm, you know?”

      “Right.” The look he gave her was a familiar one: unbelieving.

      As she started to walk past him, to reach the shortcut to Seth’s, the door to the Crow’s Nest opened, letting out discordant music. The thump of the drums beat faster even than her racing heart.

      Glenn cleared his throat. “Seth’s not good with you going through there”—he gestured toward the shadowy alley alongside the building—“alone. He’d be upset, you know, if you got messed up.”

      She couldn’t tell him the truth: the scary things weren’t the guys smoking in the alley, but the lupine fey growling at her feet. “It’s early.”

      Glenn crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.

      “Right.” Aislinn stepped away from the mouth of the alley, away from the shortcut to the safety of Seth’s steel walls.

      Glenn watched until she turned back to the street.

      The wolf-girl snapped at the air behind Aislinn’s ankles until she gave in to her fear and took off jogging the rest of the way to the railroad yard.

      At the edge of Seth’s lot, Aislinn stopped to compose herself. Seth was pretty together, but he still freaked out sometimes when she was upset.

      The wolf-girl howled as Aislinn walked the last couple yards up to the train, but it didn’t bother Aislinn as much, not here.

      Seth’s train was beautiful on so many levels. How could I be upset here? The outside was decorated in murals that ran the gamut from anime to abstract; beautiful and unexpected, they faded into one another like a collage that begged the viewer to make sense of the images, to find an order behind the colorful pastiche. In one of the few warmer months, she’d sat with Seth in his odd garden studying the art and realized that the beauty wasn’t in the order, but in the unplanned harmony.

      Like being with Seth.

      It wasn’t just paintings that decorated the garden: sprouting like unnatural trees along the perimeter was a series of metalwork sculptures Seth had made over the past couple years. Between those sculptures—and in some cases twining around them—were flowering plants and shrubs. Despite the ravages of the lengthy winter months, the plants thrived under Seth’s watchful care.

      Heartbeat calm now, Aislinn lifted her hand to knock.

      Before she could, the door swung open, and Seth stood in the doorway, grinning. The streetlights made him look a bit intimidating, illuminating the bars in his eyebrows and the ring in his lower lip. His blue-black hair fell over his face when he moved, like tiny arrows pointing to pronounced cheekbones. “Starting to think you were going to bail on me.”

      “Didn’t know you were expecting me,” she said in what she hoped was a casual voice.

      He gets sexier every day.

      “Not expecting, but hoping. Always hoping.” He rubbed his arms, mostly bare under the sleeves of a black T-shirt. He wasn’t bulky, but his arms—and the rest of him—had obvious definition. He lifted one eyebrow and asked, “You going to come in or stand there?”

      “Anybody else in the house?”

      “Just me and Boomer.”

      His teakettle whistled, and he went back inside, calling out as he went, “Picked up a sub earlier. Want half?”

      “Just tea.”

      Aislinn already felt better; being around him made her feel more confident. Seth was the epitome of calm. When his parents had left on some mission thing and given him everything they owned, he didn’t go on a binge. Aside from buying the train cars and converting them into a trailer of sorts, he’d kept it pretty normal—hung out, partied some. He talked about college, art school, but he wasn’t in any rush.

      She stepped around the piles of books on the floor: Chaucer and Nietzsche sat beside The Prose Edda; the Kama Sutra tilted against A World History of Architecture and a Clare Dunkle novel. Seth read everything.

      “Just move Boomer. He’s sluggish tonight.” He gestured toward the boa napping on one of the ergonomic chairs in the front of the train—his common room. One green and one bright orange, the chairs curved backward like the letter C. They had no arms, so you could sit with your legs up if you wanted. Beside each of them were plain wood tables with books and papers stacked on them.

      Carefully she scooped up the coiled boa and moved him from the chair onto the sofa on the other side of the narrow room.

      Seth came over with two china saucers. A matching cup with blue flowers sat on each of them, two-thirds full of tea. “High Mountain oolong. Just came in this morning.”

      She took one—sloshing a bit over the edge—and tasted. “Good.”

      He sat down across from her, holding his cup in one hand, the saucer in the other, and managing to look strangely dignified—despite his black nail polish. “So, anyone out at the Crow’s Nest?”

      “Glenn stopped me. Your speakers came in.”

      “Good you didn’t go inside. They got raided last night.” He scowled briefly. “Glenn didn’t tell you?”

      “No, but he knew I wasn’t staying.” She tucked her feet up, pleased when Seth’s scowl faded. “So who’d they get?”

      She sipped her tea and settled in for the latest rumors. Half the time she could just curl up and listen while he talked to the people who filled his house most nights. Then she could pretend—for a short time, at least—that the world was as it seemed to be, no more, no less. Seth gave her that: a private space to believe in the illusion of normalcy.

      It wasn’t why she’d started visiting him when they met a couple years ago; that was purely a result of learning he lived in a house of steel walls. It was, however, one of the reasons she’d recently started having the wildly stupid thoughts about him, thoughts about giving in to his flirting, but Seth didn’t date. He had a reputation as a great one-night stand, but she wasn’t interested in that. Well, she was interested, but not if it meant losing either his friendship or access to his steel-walled haven.

      “You okay?”

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