Narcissus in Chains Chapter 42

In the interests of honesty, I have to admit, the first paragraph of this chapter, minus the first clause in the first sentence, and the last clause in the last, is good:

WHEN THE LAST policeman had wandered away, the last emergency vehicle driven off, the summer silence settled over the house. The kitchen was a mess— broken glass ground into the floor, blood drying to black-red puddles on the polished wood. I’d never get all the blood out from the crevices in the wood. It would be there forever, a reminder that superior fire power had prevailed, but not without cost.

I don't like the first clause because policemen responding to violent murder and gunfights wouldn't wander away. I'm not even confident that they'd leave at all. Anita did not kill all the snakes. They could come back. Given that these are weres and (apparently) always waiting for a chance to take out someone in a weak moment, someone else could show up and try to kill Anita. Anita could jump town. If I were the police, if I could get it past Anita there would be cops parked in her driveway overnight. If it were not okay, there would be cops parked across from her driveway in the most visible car I could assign to the job.

And I don't like the last sentence because it's all about how badass they are, and also because it's wrong. They did not have superior firepower. They had good people. There's a big difference.

But I like the emotional connotation of everything else. Police interrogation allows for a certain level of adrenaline rush to remain. The drama is still there. But when they're gone and you have to pick up the bits and pieces of your life, you don't have your action-mode to protect you from the emotional fallout. And if Anita had not been so callious through the rest of the book, I'd say her crack about blood in the woodwork was an attempt to distract herself from how her friends had been shot and killed in her kitchen.

Of course, that gets blown when she talks about calling Raphael and telling him about his people. It sounds like she's contemplating picking up Richard's dry-cleaning. She doesn't really want to, but it's the right thing to do.

And then she freaks out.

I'm not going to criticize Anita for crashing. That's the normal reaction to this shit. But guys? This woman should not be walking right now. In a forty-eight hour period she's found out she's potentially a shapeshifter, been raped mentally, been raped physically, found out she has become a sex-pire, been manipulated into four-way sex, been dumped by her fiancee, had to rescue a friend first from a slow and awful death and then from being deaf for life, been reaccepted by her fiancee, been dumped by her fiancee again, and been shot at by a dangerous snake gang. She's going to have PTSD tonight. 

Nathanial tries to comfort her. She tells him no. He forces her to accept a hug. Guys, even the post-trauma comfort in this book is rapy.

And then Micah shows up.

He is perfectly manly. He looks like a girl. He is beautifully perfect. He has a broken nose that doesn't ruin the perfection of his face. Ect. Ect. Ect.

Anita supposes that either lust is like love, or there's two kinds of love. You know what? I hate Micah with passion and fire because he's a fucking rapist, but if fucking him will make the author stop writing like this, I will gladly provide the bedroom. (I could always put cayanne pepper in the sheets)

And they hug, and hug, and Micah starts purring, and there is more hugging and it is described as spooning, and right when I think I need to go get a bucket for Applebloom, the chapter ends.

So things that happened in this chapter:

-cops left (offscreen)
-Anita freaked the fuck out
-Nathanial hug-raped Anita
-Micah is hot.
-Spooning is fun.

This is not a chapter. Chapters have things that are plot related happen. But the ending is on its way. We can't hope for all that much.