Black Snow

by Lena North

  “I didn’t know what to think.”

  “What did I do to deserve you?” he murmured, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand.

  “I thought you were a criminal,” I clarified because I didn’t understand the soft look in his eyes.

  “And stayed with me anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have just asked me, you know.”

  “But as long as it was only something I’d come up with, then it felt okay. If I’d asked, and you’d told me that, yes, you were indeed a thief… Then I would have had to leave.”

  He blinked, once, and then he started laughing.

  “What?”

  “I get what you mean, as weird as that logic was, but honey I promise you… Except for the shit we do together, I have not broken a single law in my life. I’m totally boring.”

  I had to laugh too. Boring was not a word that fit him. We’d known each other a while, but now we were practically living together, and I’d lived in a small house with Dante for a couple of years, so I was used to sharing space with a huge man. I washed away the small pieces of hair left in the sink after Nick had shaved with a smile of recognition, and didn’t raise my brows when he strolled through the living room in his underwear. It was a huge difference living with your boyfriend compared to a beloved, older cousin, though. Nick challenged me in ways that Dante never had, partially because that’s who he was, but mostly, I suspected, because he seemed to always know when he’d reached the end of my patience. I had no such limitations, though, so we argued sometimes but it was in a way that didn’t matter. It wasn’t for real.

  “Yeah, Nicky, that’s totally you. The most boring guy I know,” I said with a wink.

  He still smiled, but added, “I mean it. Just ask me next time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Want to take the bike up the mountain to check out some old anchors I found just outside Prosper?”

  I snorted out laughter, but a climb would be nice, so I nodded. “Let’s see if the others can make it too.”

  A couple of our buddies came, and we spent the evening spread out on the cliff wall, making sure the anchors were secure and adding a few new ones. When we were sitting at the top, I told them about the crazy drop I’d had to do in the echo cave. Bones, the one who I’d started our informal group with, shook his head and his face closed down.

  “I’ll talk to the idiot,” he muttered.

  “He’s just frustrated because of his shoulder,” I said.

  Being shut out from our activities for so many months would make me crazy too, and I didn’t think too much about it. I explained how Cim had added tons of warnings, that I could have misunderstood the instructions, and finally how my phone wasn’t working, so I hadn’t been able to check them.

  Jeems, the other friend, sighed.

  “Get a new one, stupid.”

  “I’ll get one for you tomorrow, babe,” Nick said calmly.

  The other two suddenly started grinning widely.

  “Finally,” Jeems said.

  “What?”

  “Babe?” Bones snorted. “We’ve been waiting for the two of you to hook up like, forever. Sniffing around each other like two dogs in hea –”

  He cut himself off when he saw the look on my face, but it didn’t stop another snort of laughter.

  “Only bitches are in heat,” Nick informed us with totally fake seriousness.

  That made the three of them laugh, and I poked Nick in the ribs with my elbow.

  “Did you just call me a bitch?”

  “Yup,” he said, took a deep swig of water, and added, “Woof-woof.”

  Another round of laughter ensued, and I had to laugh with them. It was weird, I thought. They'd been good friends for many years, and I didn’t know their real names. When we started out, we’d used nicknames and had agreed that it was better to not know anything else because we wouldn’t be able to rat each other out in case we got caught somewhere we weren’t supposed to be. I’d also found it funny that they thought Snow was just a nickname. Nick had calmly told everyone his name was Nick, and it hadn’t matter that Jeems came up with several cool names for him, he’d just pulled her long pony-tail teasingly and insisted on being called Nick. I smiled at the memory and how I’d thought that I didn’t have any friends. I’d forgotten this group.

  “My real name is actually Snow,” I said quietly.

  “What?” Bones muttered.

  “I just wanted you to know that my real name is Snow. Snow Black.”

  “Really?” Jeebs breathed. “That is such a cool name. Your parents must be awesome.”

  “They’re dead, but yeah. They were,” I said, surprised at how easily the words slid across my lips.

  “I’m Domenico d’Izia,” Nick said.

  The other two looked at each other, and then Jeebs said, “Jenny Tucker.”

  Bones sighed and shifted a little.

  “You don’t have to share, Bones. I just wanted you to know who I am.”

  “You can’t laugh,” he grunted, and continued quickly, “Gunnar Macanus.”

  At first, I was stunned by the fact that his name was Gunnar because it didn’t fit him at all. Bones was a tall, wiry guy with black, spiky hair and enough metal pierced through various body parts to set off a metal detector just by approaching it. Then I realized what his last name was when one didn’t say it just quite so quickly. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood and breathed through my nose.

  “How do you spell that, man?” Nick asked, calmly but in a seriously strained voice.

  “Exactly like you would expect a drunk-ass dad doing it when he claimed some stupid links to ancient fucking ancestors. And forgot the g.”

  “Why didn’t you change it?” Nick asked, and his voice was still completely emotionless which I guessed was a clear indication that he wanted to laugh his butt off.

  “It’ll cost me a whack. Ancestral name, misspelled or not, something about administration fees all the fuck over. Two grand, at least. I don’t have a job that gives me that kind of cash, and with my name, I can’t seem to get one.”

  “Sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  That single word held an ocean of slurs and mocking and ridicule in it, and all the amusement seeped out of me.

  “I’ll just call you Bones,” Nick said casually.

  “Yeah,” Jeebs breathed. “Me too.”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “Thanks,” Bones muttered. As he let his eyes slide over the three of us, glitter started in his eyes, and he snorted, “Yeah, yeah. You can laugh now.”

  And we did because he gave us that. Gunnar McAnus. Oh. My. God.

  I was in a happy mood when we got back home, and so was Nick. He immediately backed me into the wall inside the door and started to kiss me, and I wasn’t complaining about his enthusiasm, but I was a bit surprised.

  “You’re very, um, vigorous, Nick,” I said between kisses.

  He backed off and grinned.

  “I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “What?” I squealed when he picked me up and carried me toward his bedroom.

  “I lost my emotions for more than six years, Snow.”

  “I know, honey.”

  He put me down on the bed and stepped back to look at me. His brows were narrowed, and he had a small wrinkle between them.

  “You don’t get it?”

  “What?”

  “No emotions,” he said again. Then he moved his hand up and down in front of him and said laconically, “Anywhere.”

  It took me two seconds to figure out what he meant.

  “You were impo –”

  His hand covered my mouth so quickly I didn’t have time to stop speaking, and the rest of the word was murmured into his palm.

  “Babe. If we could avoid the use of that word, I’d really appreciate it.”

  Oh. Okay, I could underst
and why he’d want to, so I nodded, and he removed his hand.

  “You’ve had your emotions back for a while, though,” I said instead.

  “I’d met you,” he countered. “Wasn’t sure you were ready for… vigor.”

  His crooked grin was sweet but it turned wicked as he pulled off his shirt, and I smiled back at him, leaning back and unbuttoning my own.

  “Am now,” I said.

  ***

  Wilder waited outside the Uni building when I got out of class.

  “Hey, peeps are worried, thought you wouldn’t clock me so I figured I’d be safe to check in.”

  My brows went way up on my forehead when I heard her greeting.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Can we break that down?”

  “Yup,” she said and sat down, watching me calmly with those yellow eyes.

  “Peeps?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Worried?”

  “You don’t respond to messages.”

  Oh, crap. My phone.

  “Clock you?”

  “Heard you were in a hissy fit with Dante, Jinx, and Da.”

  I was in a what?

  “I was so not in a hissy fit,” I protested. “Dante said Nick wasn’t welcome in Marshes, Jiminella was totally taking Jamie’s side even when it was clear he was lying out of his butt, and Hawker was an ass. Me? I called them on it, and walked away.” I glared down at her and added slowly, “Calmly.”

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  I was seriously on my way toward an actual hissy-fit, but I sat down.

  “Okay, except that was not what I heard. I heard Jinx crying about you making mistakes with some criminal, and Dante was growling in the background. Da… Well, I know what he did and let’s just say we are on a relationship hiatus for the time being.”

  “You’re not talking to your father?”

  “He was an ass,” she stated calmly. “Happens all the time, so we take a little break in the father-daughter part of our relationship every now and then. We’ll be good again when he sees the light.”

  Huh. She was very relaxed about fighting with her father.

  “I fell into a cave, so my phone is broken, Nicky is getting a new one for me today,” I informed her.

  “You fell into a cave?”

  “Yeah. Long story.”

  “Okay,” she said evenly.

  Our eyes met, and as we both giggled, I remembered why I’d liked her since the first day we met, on the beach outside Marshes. She was very cool.

  “Why don’t you and Nick come up to Double H? Mac’ll throw something on the grill.”

  “Will Hawker be there?”

  “Hiatus.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “That we fight?”

  I nodded, and she grinned.

  “We fight all the time, Snow. It’s in our genes.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. It’s in yours too. I have some old texts you should read, they’ll explain a thing or two.”

  Suddenly I wanted to have that connection, with her and with my roots.

  “Right. I’ll check with Nick when we can make it,” I said.

  “Cool. Olly said he was someone I’d like. Also said he was hunky.”

  “Say again?”

  “Well, maybe not exactly like that. Said he was levelheaded and that Jinx called him hot.”

  I grinned because of her interpretation, but mostly because I had a boyfriend that was smoking hot. I’d dated boys and men that were more handsome than Nick, but I wouldn’t have described either of them as hot. Not even remotely.

  We talked a while longer, but it was mostly her relaying news from Marshes and Norton. Then she told me coolly that she knew she wasn’t supposed to talk about my parents but that she didn’t give a shit and her view was that I should visit Norton. I was about to protest when one of my classmates came running. It looked like she was close to tears, and since I was eager for any distraction, I called out to her.

  “Snow, oh my God, have you heard!?” she wailed.

  Since I hadn’t heard anything that warranted tears, I raised my brows and shook my head slightly.

  “Professor Jones, Snow. He was in a car accident, just a few hours ago. He’s… Oh my God, he’s dead…”

  She started crying, and another classmate put an arm around her shoulders, murmuring quietly. My mind whirled with the news. I was sad that one of my professors was dead, of course, I was. But Professor Jones was the one who I’d collected samples for, and who had received the code sheets in my package. They had him under constant surveillance, waiting for some unknown bad man to pick up the papers. Wasn’t it a too convenient coincidence that he’d just passed away in an accident?

  “Have to tell Hawker,” Wilder murmured.

  Well I wasn’t going to, but if she wanted to brief her dad, I couldn’t stop her, so I said just as quietly, “Okay.”

  “Or not,” were her next, surprising, words. She didn’t hesitate to clarify. “He’s got tons of buddies in Prosper PD, he will hear soon enough. I’ll tell Torres instead. That’ll piss Da off.”

  She wanted to make her father angry? If there hadn’t been a gathering of weepy classmates in front of us, I would have asked what the hell she was thinking, but there was so I didn’t.

  “Everyone who wants to can come to the faculty. Gives us a chance to talk about what happened, and remember our dear Professor Jones,” one of the girls said.

  Her reaction seemed a bit over the top to me because we’d had the Professor in one class, and he was a quiet, standoffish kind of man. We’d joked a lot about how beige he was, from his light brown hair to the cardigans in various shades of light brown and his tan, suede shoes, but I’d thought that none of us knew him well. I realized immediately that I’d have to go to the gathering, though. If he still had the code sheets, I might be able to sneak into his office and find them.

  I didn’t share my plans with Wilder. It was such a long shot and if I failed – when I failed – there was no need for anyone to have even more proof of my idiotic rookie status. I also had no clue what I’d do with the papers, but I would talk to Wilder if I managed to get my hands on them, I decided. She was nevertheless preoccupied, so we said our goodbyes quickly, and she was on the phone before she was three steps away from me, presumably talking to Joao. I went home to Nick, who thought it was beyond unlikely that we’d find the sheets, but agreed it’d be worth a try.

  We had dinner before we left, thinking that if we went later in the evening, there would be more people at the gathering, and darkness to help hide us in case someone was watching. As we rolled up to campus, I asked my bird to do a fly-over and scan for Hawker’s crew who according to Wilder waited for someone to try to get their hands on the papers.

  “Salt and pepper, backside of the ugly yellow building, although he’s leaving and in a hurry. Pepper and a little salt on the roof of the building to the left, watching the entrance.”

  I interpreted that to mean Miller was on the ground outside the biology building. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the other one she’d spotted would be Mill’s nephew Kit. They grayed prematurely in their family, and I hadn’t noticed any gray in Kit’s hair, but we’d never been close, so I didn’t spend much time with him. He’d also behaved like an asshat toward both Miller and Mary recently, which made me avoid him entirely.

  As we approached the big double doors, I looked up at the building where Kit would be, and a tiny flash gave him away immediately. It probably had been a reflection of light in his binoculars, I thought, and I sighed. What an idiot. Then I flicked my fingers in a mock salute toward him, took Nick’s hand and walked into the building.

  There was a surprisingly large gathering at the biology faculty. It seemed to consist mostly of students, although I recognized many of the older people as University staff or guest lecturers. It suddenly occurred to me that Dante and Jiminella might show up. Wh
en I looked around, I couldn’t find my tall cousin, and they usually caused quite a stir on functions like that, so I was pretty sure they weren’t in attendance. Jamie was there, though, and I took a step toward him. He turned away immediately, pretending that he hadn’t seen us, and I stopped.

  “Let him call the shots,” Nick murmured. “He lost, so let’s give him that.”

  “Lost?”

  “You, babe.”

  Oh. I still wasn’t sure Nick was right about Jamie harboring feelings of eternal love for me, but if he did then letting him decide how we moved on would be the right thing to do. Jamie left almost immediately, and I heard him say something about a shift in the ER.

  We’d strolled through the crowd and were both looking for an opportunity to slip out and find our way to Professor Jones’ office when I recognized a couple of the guys from our group of friends. One of them was Graw who was our main asset when we base jumped, partially because he was good although mostly because of his ability to open locks. It occurred to me that we’d likely need that skill in just a few minutes, so when my eyes met his, I twitched my head subtly to the side, indicating that he should come with us. Then we ambled casually toward the door leading toward where the restrooms were located.

  It was ridiculously easy after that. Graw met us in the corridor and without a word, we turned a corner and made our way to my professor’s door. I pointed on the lock and raised my brows. He nodded, slipped his tools out of his pocket, opened the door in less than ten seconds. Then he nodded at me again and disappeared back toward the gathering.

  The door closed behind us with a soft snap. I walked over to the big desk and started to search the drawers. At first, I found absolutely nothing at all of interest, but then I jumped and gave up a small squeal. In one of the drawers, hidden under a stack of folders, there was a small pile of photos. Of my beige professor. In an outfit that was far from beige and in a setting that was unexpected and horrid in equal measures.

  “What?” Nick murmured from the long table by the side wall.

  “I found some pictures,” I whispered. “Kind of kinky.”

  “Bring them.”

  “Wha –” I squealed but lowered my voice immediately to a quiet whisper, “What?”