“I got scared. Everything I knew was here. Everything I’d loved. Everything I’d hated. I’d already shut down my practice, sold my condo. Needed to get my head together. Did some volunteer work treating some of the homeless supernaturals, the ones Gabriela’s been trying to help. We got to talking. She was up front about everything. About the challenges and the bullshit and the violence. Scared me at first, but she was doing good things, and I figured if this is the world I live in then fuck it, live it all the way. I started working for her. I’d spent my life denying that this was the world I came from and once I took it on, everything was good.”

“You don’t seem good.”

“Because you came back, you fuck,” she says, voice filled with a barely controlled rage. “Everything else in my life had been squared away. I’d cut my ties, I’d started over. I stayed out of the Westside. Changed my routines. And then you had to fucking show up again and bring all your shit with you. It was like I’d finally gotten something I’d wanted and it turned out to be a trap.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Apologize for existing? I’m sorry she got caught in my orbit again, but I’m not fucking apologizing for who I am.

“It’s not even you,” she says, before I can jump in. “It’s our world. The whole goddamn thing. You know the fires at Vernon are still burning. People are still dying from toxic smoke. I know you didn’t do that. We did that. All of us. So, no. I’m not all right. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be all right. I can’t deny my magic, just like I can’t deny that I went to medical school, or that I’m white. I have an ability to help people, but why bother? When I was doing trauma at County I’d see the same guys come in every few months with new gunshot wounds. I’d patch ’em up, but they’d just go out and keep getting shot. There’s no point. I don’t even know why I’m trying. Magic’s not power. It’s a fucking curse.”

I’ve heard it enough times to know she’s crying and trying not to. I think back on what I would have said when we were together. Comforting words, everything will be all right. Something to cheer her up.

Instead I say, “Yes. It is a curse. And you’re fucked. So what? We’re all fucked. We’re more fucked than most people because we know what’s on the other side of the curtain. This is your life. And you’re stuck with it.”

“Great pep talk,” she says.