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I CRIED FOR THE YOUNG woman I had seen, the woman with pretty blonde hair. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, with her entire life ahead of her. No ring; she still hadn’t met the person she was supposed to marry. I’m not a very traditional person when it comes to fate—I believe humans can muck fate up, and I believe that’s what murder does. I cried because she was dead and because she had died without knowing it, lost in a haze of medicine and cold while magic tore apart her insides. I cried for the two I had seen only in passing. And I cried for me, because I hadn’t been able to help them and I’d tried as hard as I could—and because now more than any other time in my life, I felt the burden of what I was. If I’d been a real witch, instead of an abomination, I could have helped them.
When I stopped crying, at last, sitting up and sniffing, Tony silently handed me a wad of tissues. He had come with me outside, into the spring air, and at some point while I sobbed my rage and grief into his shoulder, he’d wrapped his coat around me. It was warm and comforting, but I could feel the cold New York wind cutting through my scrubs and I shivered.
“Do you feel any better?” Tony asked quietly.
“A bit.” I sniffed. “Actually, no. Not at all.”
“And you’re a nurse?” he asked, a bit skeptically. When I looked over, he flushed. “Sorry, that was...rude. I just figured you’d be used to it by now.”
“Everyone has cases like this.” Alicia’s words came out of my mouth without me even thinking about them. I sighed and looked down at my hands. “It was the magic that got to me.”
Tony sobered at once. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Neither have I.” I looked over at him again. “It’s not usually like this up here, you know.” He was new to the city, and I wondered if he thought this was something we were used to; by the faint settling of his shoulders, I could see that he had indeed been asking himself that very question.
“That’s a relief.”
“I’ll bet.” I found a watery laugh. “And I’ve cried all over your shirt. Gosh, what an introduction to New York.”
“It’s been a little more dramatic than I expected,” he admitted.
My smile cracked across a tear-stained face. “Thank you. I needed someone who understood.”
“I’m not sure I can understand—not like you, anyway.” He shook his head. “You save people every day. Trying to save them tore me up. How do you do it? You must be so full of hope every time, and then to have it come crashing down...”
I considered. A lot of people said stuff like this, and I didn’t usually agree with them. Usually, when people say they don’t know how I do stuff like this, it’s because they don’t want to have to rearrange their lives to do something difficult. Usually, it’s because they’re not willing to commit themselves. But Tony hadn’t run the other way when I needed him; he was saying this because he’d experienced it.
“I get angry a lot of the time,” I told him honestly. “It’s not why you’d think. Usually, when I see gunshot wounds and stab wounds and stuff, I get sad. I think, ‘why can’t we just get along?’ I know, it sounds like a five-year-old. But it’s true. What makes me angry is usually the random chance. Stuff like gunshot wounds, knifings, drugs, I think to myself that if we’re all just good enough, kind enough, we can make a world without any of that. That, we can try to fix for the future. What makes me angry is things like accidents. Chaos. The sort of thing I can never, ever fix.
“Until tonight. It’s the same here as it is everywhere—people with magic take care of their own. If you get hurt in a brawl with a werewolf, you patch yourself up. But these people, they didn’t have anything to do with our world. They got caught up in it, and I couldn’t save them.” My hands clenched. “I want to find the person who did this. We need to take care of them. It’s carelessness to let things affect civilians that way.”
“I’m not sure it’s carelessness.” Tony’s voice was low. “No one does magic that bad by accident. They knew exactly what they were doing.”
I looked over at him. I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d been so consumed with thoughts about letting magic affect civilians that his point had never occurred to me. But of course, whoever did this would have known. It was virtually impossible to work magic that dark in the first place. No one could do it by accident. I shook my head. “That’s even worse, then.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said, and then shook his head at the ridiculousness. “That sounded way too polite. Um. Let’s kill the bastards?”
I laughed, and the tears came up again so that I choked and sniffled. “That’s...yeah. Can you call the coven together? I’ll come over after my shift, okay?”
“Of course.” When I stood up and held out his coat, shivering, he hesitated. “Can I...do you want to keep this?”
I felt a laugh burble up. “I can’t wear it in there. And trust me, you wouldn’t want it after I did.”
“Fair enough.” He grinned. “I’ll see you soon, then...” He paused a moment too long as if trying to decide how to finish the sentence. “...Blair.” My name came out with a smile and an awkward lift of one shoulder.
“Thanks.” I nodded, just as awkwardly. “It really...thanks.” And I fled before my flaming cheeks could betray just how cute I thought he was.
I walked back through the hallways quickly. There was no trepidation about going back to the ER now. I dealt with all sorts of violence every day; I was prepared for that. I saw people notice my puffy eyes and red nose, but they looked away rather than embarrass me. That’s the thing about working here—everyone knows that sometimes it’s really difficult.
“How are you?” Alicia asked when I got back. She held up a Styrofoam cup. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.” I smiled and watched while she poured herself some, wondering if she’d noticed yet that I never ate or drank in front of her. “Did you see the cupcakes in the coat room?”
“Yes. You’re sweet.” Her smile was genuine. When she sighed, her face relaxing to show the lines of exhaustion and worry, I bit my lip. I hated moments like this when I could almost see the passage of time on someone’s face. The world would be lesser without Alicia in it...and inevitably, the day would come when she was gone. Maybe it was time to move hospitals again. I was getting too attached to people here.
The thought made me ponder, and it took a moment to realize she’d said something. “Sorry, what?”
“I said it was a bad start to a shift.”
“Tell me about it.” I looked down at my hands.
“That young man was nice.” She sounded like she was casting around for something to say. “How do you know him?”
“Friend of a friend.” The lies came easily now, after so many years of a double-life. “He just moved up here from...somewhere, not sure.”
“Well, he seems like a nice guy.” She smiled at me, lifting her eyebrows suggestively. “And very cute.”
I groaned. “Don’t tease.”
“I’m not teasing!” She sounded almost offended. “He’s into you, too.”
“Stop it!” But as we walked out into the hallway, I felt a flicker of something. I wouldn’t call myself prescient, any more than other people are. Everyone has a sense of these things if they just know how to listen. And at that moment, I knew that Tony was going to change my life in a big way.