Sable stands behind me, scissors in hand, jaw set in that familiar way that means she’s concentrating and absolutely does not want commentary. She’s draped a towel over my shoulders—one of the good ones, apparently, because she slapped my hand away when I tried to adjust it.
“Don’t move,” she says.
“I’m not moving,” I say.
“You breathed.”
“I require that.”
She snips anyway.
Little pieces of my hair fall onto the tile, dark against the pale floor. The kitchen smells like citrus cleaner and coffee and whatever synthetic starch Roxy tracked in from her last ‘experiment.’ The window’s cracked open, letting in the city’s hum—hover traffic, distant voices, the low thrum of a place that learned how to live again without screaming.
Behind us, something crackles.
I glance sideways.
Roxy stands on a chair she absolutely was not allowed to climb, goggles pushed too far down her snout, tail swaying with malicious joy. She’s holding a bag of plasma marshmallows—pink, semi-translucent, faintly glowing.
The cat is on the counter.
The cat should not be on the counter.
The cat looks resigned.
“Roxy,” Sable says without looking up, “what are you doing?”
“Science,” Roxy replies proudly, winding up her arm.
“No throwing?—”
Too late.
The marshmallow arcs through the air in a beautiful, terrible parabola and splats against the backsplash, erupting in a harmless but spectacular flash of blue sparks. The cat yowls and leaps off the counter, vanishing down the hall like it’s late for its own funeral.
I wince. “Direct hit.”
Roxy cheers. “AGAIN!”
“Absolutely not,” Sable says flatly. She pauses, scissors hovering dangerously close to my ear. “Voltar. Why does she have plasma marshmallows.”
I consider my answer carefully. “In my defense?—”
“Voltar.”
“—Tugun said they were ‘educational.’”
She exhales slowly through her nose. “I am going to invoice him.”
Roxy throws another marshmallow.
This one sticks to the fridge and hums ominously.
Sable snips a little harder than necessary.
“I miss danger,” I say.
She freezes.
