Burning Bridges. Laura Anne Gilman

both in the closet. The snow was falling again outside, based on the dampness of his shoulders and hair. Normally snow on Christmas Eve would be a thing to delight in. This year, it was just cause for sighing and shrugging. The weatherfolk were reporting a record seven feet of the cold stuff so far for the winter, coming up on the record from 2001, and there were still two months of the season to go.

      She’d gotten too used to Sergei being here, maybe, for the old early warning tea-urge to kick in.

      Wren had all the curtains drawn across the windows, and in the corner, instead of a tree, there was a metal candelabra in the shape of a Christmas tree with thirteen green candles burning. She saw her partner studying it, and knew that he was seeing Lee’s work in the turn of the metal branches, and the solid but somehow delicate design of the base. It hurt, still, to look at it, but it was a good kind of a hurt, now. It was a remembering kind of a hurt, as well as a missing hurt.

      For a borderline klepto, she didn’t have many belongings—she’d take something she liked, and then discard it when she got bored—but this, and the fabric painting Shin had sent her all the way from Japan, were more than things. They were gifts.

      She looked up at her partner, now, indicating the piles of holiday cards in front of her. “Why do I send these things out, anyway?”

      “I have no idea.”

      If you sent them out early, they were an unwelcome reminder that the holidays were coming and you still had too many things to do. If they arrived during the holidays, they were just tossed with the rest of the cards in some sort of display that just meant another thing to clean up after. And if you sent them too late, you looked like a slacker. You just couldn’t win. But this year at least it gave her hands something to do, and occupied a portion of her brain so that she wasn’t always circling around back to the thing she couldn’t actually do anything about.

      Sergei slipped off his shoes and sat down on the floor next to her, wincing as his expensive slacks came into contact with the floor. “Been cleaning again, have you?”

      Wren sniffed, smelling the wood oil she had used on the floor. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “And it was on my to-do list.”

      “You’ve never had a to-do list in your entire life.” She wrote things down, but for memory-jogs and references, not to keep things orderly or organized.

      “In my head. My head is stuffed full of to-do lists.” A whole list of things to keep her hands busy. “Here,” and she pushed a small pile of invites across the floor to him. “As long as you’re here, be useful and stuff these in the envelopes.”

      He obligingly started placing the cards inside the addressed envelopes, and tabbed the stamps on them without being asked.

      “I miss licking stamps.”

      She shook her head; her hair, still wet from the shower she had taken once the bathroom was spotless, slid pleasantly on the back of her neck. She had taken extra care with her appearance tonight: a long velvet skirt and sleeveless top in a deep purple the exact shade of shadows. She had even used eyeliner to give herself what she thought was a slightly exotic look. But her hair was merely combed through and left to dry by itself. There was only so much fuss she was willing to go through, even for Sergei. “You’re a sick, sick man.”

      “True. But I brought dinner, so I’m forgiven.”

      She had heard him messing about in the kitchen just after he entered the apartment, even before he took his coat off. “Yeah? And do we have a Christmas goose resting in the oven?”

      She looked up at him again as she said it, and did a classic double take at the crestfallen look of “surprise ruined” on his face.

      “A goose?” She did not squeal—she never squealed—but the noise was apparently enough to restore some of Sergei’s self-satisfaction, even as she launched herself onto him in an exuberant hug. “Goose!”

      The world, apparently, could go to hell in a snow-covered hand basket, so long as one had goose for dinner.

      “I invited some people over for dessert, later,” she said, letting him up after appropriate thanks had been offered and accepted.

      “Oh?” They had never actually spent Christmas Eve together before, so he couldn’t know if this was normal or not.

      “Well, Bonnie. And P.B.”

      “You had to actually invite him? I expected him to appear the moment the refrigerator door was opened.”

      “Hush. Yes, for dessert. Also a couple of Bonnie’s friends, a bunch of PUPs”—the rather grandiosely named Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigators—“and P.B. said he would bring some ‘cousins’ he wanted me to meet.”

      “So this is more of a working get-together, then.”

      Wren twisted her mouth as though tasting something sour. “I like Bonnie, and she is a neighbor. And it’s never a bad thing to be on good terms with PUPs. And although most of the fatae don’t seem to have any religion as such, I have yet to meet one who didn’t love sweets.”

      “Then I’d best get dinner warmed up, or we might not have a chance to finish before the sugar-craving hordes descend.” He leaned forward to kiss her again, and then got up off the floor, more slowly than he’d sat down.

      “I’m getting too old for this,” he said, stretching out his back. “Would you mind terribly actually buying some comfortable chairs, at some point?”