The usual gossip swirls around me, and I do my best to tune it out.
Rankings... Days up top... Top ten... Relocation...
I slide my tray over the counter in front of the steam table, scrutinizing my options through the condensing fog. Grilled summer vegetables, sautéed winter vegetables, baked root vegetables... Gaia’s vegan menusare a carnivore’s nightmare. I’d stab someone for a bacon double cheeseburger right now, and I regret not hitting a Burger King one last time before Fleur found me.
“Welcome home, Jack,” Holly says through the steam. The wordhomegrates, but I force myself to smile back anyway. It’s hard watching Holly age down here. The more powerful the Season, the slower we’re supposed to age when we retire, but it feels like a pretty shitty reward. Holly must not have been a Season for very long. Every year she spends in retirement, there are a few more wrinkles around her eyes and wiry gray hairs on her head. She smells like menthol. I can’t tell if it’s her arthritis cream or the scent of old Winter magic clinging to her long-retired bones. There’s an old black-and-white photo of Holly in a trophy case in the Winter training center down the hall. She was a knock-out back then—seventeen, with full lips, a sparkle in her eyes, and glossy blond hair styled in switchback waves so tight you could almost ski down them. The photo was taken in 1969, the year Holly retired from her region in Michigan to work here—the same year Amber arrived—a fact that’s hard to reconcile as Holly’s age-spotted hands set a bowl of clear broth on my tray.
I frown at it. “Seriously, Holly?”
The loose folds of skin under her neck wobble as she shakes her head at me. “You know the rules. Hospital diet restrictions for two weeks after waking.”
I look past Holly to the other attendants, hoping one of them won’t know me. But I’ve been in this place too fucking long.
I lean over the steam table and lower my voice to a whisper. “Come on, Holly. You’re killing me.”
The tight wrinkles around her lips soften. “It’ll be our secret,” she says, sliding a handful of saltine packets onto my tray before shooing me along. “Now go on. You’re holding up the line.”
As I lift my tray, a set of doors swings open behind her. Boreas, the Winter food services manager, pushes his way through, his dolly loaded down with empty vegetable crates that mask all the contraband he sells to students on the sly. He acknowledges me with a nod. “Good to see you, Jack. Need anything?”
Besides a shovel to dig my way out of this place? “Nothing I can think of,” I tell him.
“Let Chill know his stuff came in. I’ll drop it by sometime tomorrow.” Boreas backs through another set of double doors, dragging his dolly behind him.
This. This is what Chill and I have to look forward to after a few decades of promotions—a glamorous retirement from our lives of magic and violence. Our golden mortal years will be spent in mundane service to Gaia and Chronos, smuggling beef jerky and weed down the service elevators for petty cash, like Boreas and his kitchen crew.
Appetite gone, I carry my tray into the dining room, right into Doug Lausks and his damn patch. It’s embroidered with his rank, and I can’t help but wonder how many Seasons he must have shit on to get promoted so fast. His cold blue eyes lock on mine, old vendettas shimmering like steel inside them.
Noelle was right. He’s never going to let me live this down.
Noelle Eastman and I were just sparring partners. That’s all. I never should have agreed to take her back to her room after her argument with Doug. But she was upset, and it seemed like the right thing to do. Icould blame what happened next on the bottle of smuggled peppermint schnapps we shared, but that would be a lie. I was depressed and lonely, and when she leaned in to kiss me, I let her. And I’ve felt shitty about it since.
Head down, I veer around him. His best friend, Denver, steps right in my path, knocking into my tray. The contents go flying, glass and silverware skittering brilliantly over the tiled floor. Every Handler and Winter in the room cranes their necks to see what’s happened. Chill turns lazily toward the commotion and his smile dissolves.
“Look who’s back.” Doug kicks a pack of crackers off the toe of his boot. “Barely out of the chamber and you’re already starting trouble.”
I throw a pointed look at the healing break in his nose. “Apparently I’m not the only one.”
Doug massages the knot in the cartilage. The yellow-green bruise that straddles it matches the one circling Denver’s left eye. Glass crackles under Doug’s boots as he encroaches into my personal space. “It’s a great story, Sommers. You should hear it.”
I take a step back. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Too late.” The knuckles of his left hand pop softly at his side. I watch it warily, half expecting him to throw a punch at me. “Gaia wants to see you in her office. Now. Your Handler, too.” His lip twitches at my shocked silence. Denver hauls Chill up by the back of his shirt and ushers him roughly toward the hall. The fear in Chill’s eyes as he and Denver march past is enough to gut me.
Doug gives them a head start toward the Crux before shoving me through the double doors after them. As soon as the doors swing closed behind us, he starts into me.
“I had an enlightening conversation with your girlfriend, Sommers.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, Noelle and I—”
He turns on his heel and grabs me by the collar. “Don’t you even utter her name.”
“For Chronos’s sake, Doug! We’re just friends.”
“I was talking about Fleur.” He lets me go with a shove.
Fleur’s name is a punch to the throat. I have to force myself to keep walking. To keep my voice steady as we resume our slow march to the Crux. “Somebody gave you bad information, Lausks. Last time I saw Fleur, she dragged me over a mountain and put a knife in my spleen.”
“You sure about that? Because I’m betting the only bad information the Control Room’s getting is coming from your Handlers’ reports.”
