“Why here? Why not Memphis?”
“Too many people know me in Memphis,” Tyler said. “This is a great music town, too, and nobody would look for me here.” He snorted. “Who knew this was going to turn into the center of the Weir universe.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He paused. “I thought of trying to get in touch with you after I settled here. But a deal’s a deal, and it seemed like you were doing fine in Memphis. You’re almost grown, and I didn’t want to mess that up.”
“It got messed up anyway,” Emma said. They both sat and stared down at the table. When Emma couldn’t stand the awkward silence any longer, she said, “So? Now what?”
Tyler twisted his napkin between his fingers. “First a question, Emma…did you tell anyone you were coming here?”
“No,” Emma said. “You told me not to.”
He nodded, looking relieved. “Good. That’s good.” He paused again. “Look, you’re welcome to stay with me. We can get you enrolled in school and all, see how it goes.” When she made a face, he said, “Aw, come on, it won’t be that bad.”
Emma thought about it. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choices. It could be risky, moving in with a stranger, but she’d chance it if it kept her off the streets and out of foster care. No law said she had to stay if he turned out to be crazy dangerous.
“You’d have your own room,” Tyler persisted. “We can fix it up, any way you like.”
He really wants this, Emma thought, scarcely able to believe it. After all this time.
“The thing is—I’m used to doing pretty much what I want,” she said. “Coming and going as I please. Sonny Lee didn’t nanny me much. I don’t want to move in and have you all of a sudden setting up rules and curfews.”
“If you live at my house, you’ll go to school,” Tyler said. “These days, you can’t make a living without schooling. No drinking, no drugs, no friends in the house when I’m not there. No staying out all night when I don’t know where you are. Most everything else, we can talk about.”
“Sounds like a lot of rules,” Emma observed.
“Well. You don’t have to sign anything,” Tyler said. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
“Is there a place for a woodshop?”
“A woodshop?” Tyler raised his eyebrows.
This is my father, and he knows nothing about me, Emma thought.
“I rescued some things from Sonny Lee’s shop on my way out of town. Things he left to me. They’re big tools—that take a lot of space. If you got a place to put them, it’s a deal.”
The sun was just breaking over the horizon when Jonah arrived at the fitness center. It was new—a state-of-the-art facility with glass walls overlooking the lake, funded by the Anchorage Foundation. The adaptive equipment and tailored exercise programs received considerable media attention. Medical personnel came from all over the world to learn from the Anchorage experience.
Hidden under the skin of the Anchorage was another school—an academy to train Nightshade assassins in the specialized skills needed for their work as shadeslayers.
It wasn’t all assassination, of course. Operations also needed healers, weapons designers and fabricators, intelligence and tech experts. Savants interested in joining Nightshade trained under Gabriel’s lieutenants—shadeslayers expert at evaluating gifts and determining their usefulness to the cause.
Slayers were at a natural disadvantage when it came to fighting shades. Shades never hesitated to risk their borrowed bodies in a fight, since they felt no pain and could simply move into another body if the old one suffered heavy damage. Shadeslayers didn’t have that option. So considerable time was spent on weapons training and weaponless fighting techniques. All slayers were expected to schedule time in the gym…even those who, like Jonah, got plenty of practice in the field.
Jonah’s physical gifts and fighting experience made it difficult to match him with an appropriate sparring partner. Alison came closest, and he sparred with her at least once a week. Charlie, when he was in town. Since those two weren’t always available, Gabriel had hit on the strategy of matching Jonah against entire packs of slayers-in-training.
Jonah’s sparring sessions were closed to the public.
On his way to the gym, Jonah stopped in the armory and selected an array of shivs and cutting blades.
As he left the armory, he looked up at the board. Today it was a group of nine who had been training together. They must be getting close to deployment. Gabriel wouldn’t have assigned them to Jonah otherwise. Whatever Jonah thought of Gabriel’s priorities in this fight, it was important to prepare slayers with the skills they needed to survive.
In the gym, nine preps stood in a jittery half circle, masked up and ready for bloodshed, their numbers displayed on the outside of their scoring vests. Jonah recognized one or two of them from their voices, their builds, and the way they moved. He didn’t know most of them, though. He didn’t mingle much with the preps. He didn’t mingle much with anyone.
When Jonah appeared in his street clothes, a surprised murmur ran through them. One of them—Number Six—said, “You’re fighting like that?”
Jonah shook his head. “You can ditch the fighting gear,” he said. “We’re not sparring today.”
“We’re not?” Number One ripped off her mask, revealing a scowl. “Why not?”
“This is the first of three sessions,” Jonah said. “Today, we’re going to review weapons and theory.”
This was met with the usual chorus of groans. Newbies were always eager to fight Jonah. Until they actually did.
“All right,” Jonah said. “Let’s review what you’ve covered in class. What equipment do you need for a riff—minimum?”
Number Three raised her hand. “Doesn’t it depend on what kind of shades you’re hunting?”
“Explain what you mean,” Jonah countered.
“Well…you need shivs for free shades, and cutting blades for hosted ones.”
“And a mask to cut the stench,” Number Six said, holding his nose.
Jonah ignored this. “Number Three—if you free a hosted shade, what do you have?”
“Oh,” she said, getting the point. “You have a free shade.”
“Right,” Jonah said. “You have a free shade, and so then you need a shiv to finish the job. If you free a shade, it simply goes looking for another host. So don’t leave home without both shivs and cutting blades. What else do you need?”
They all looked at each other, seeming at a loss.
Jonah fished his Nightshade pendant out of his neckline. “Sefas. What do they do?”
“They allow us to see unhosted shades,” Five said.
“I know you don’t have these yet, but you will when you deploy. Now.” Jonah spread an array of shivs on a table. “What can you tell me about these?”
“If you stick a free shade with one, it dies,” Number Six said. He’d been fidgeting and rolling his eyes throughout Jonah’s presentation.
“Elaborate,” Jonah said. “How are they made?”
“Do we really need to know all this? I mean, come on. We’re fighters, not metalsmiths.”
“Number Six, you’re excused.”
Six blinked at him. “Wha—?”
“You’re not ready for deployment.”
“But I’m the best fighter in this group,” he protested. “I win every match I—”
“Don’t worry. Get your head straight, and you can join the next training session. If you can’t, we’ll find another role for you to play.”
“That’s bullshit,” Six said. “I’ve been training for this for months. We’re not allowed to make a joke? We’re not allowed to ask a question? You act like we’re some kind of—of holy warriors.”
“The people we’re hunting were your friends and classmates, Six,” Jonah said. “Here or back at Thorn Hill. The difference between you and them is that their bodies were too damaged to survive. Maybe they took in more of the poison th
an you did, or maybe their bodies were smaller, or maybe they were more susceptible for some reason. Maybe they were killed during a mission. Can you imagine what it’s like to spend day after day hunting for a body? To have people recoil when you come near them? To know that your body is decaying around you and your survival depends on killing someone else before it falls apart?”
“But…I don’t get it,” Number Six persisted. “You’ve riffed more shades than anybody else! Anyway, everybody knows shades don’t feel pain.” Heads nodded all around.
“Hosted shades don’t,” Jonah said. “But a free shade screams when you kill it with a shiv. You can’t hear it, but I can. They’re as eager to go on living as you or me.” His voice softened. “My point is, we’re not bloodthirsty butchers. If you begin to love this job, it’s time to leave. Our mission is to protect the public and put shades to rest in the kindest way possible.” Even as he said this, he felt like the world’s biggest hypocrite.
Six broadened his stance, like he was putting down roots. “Is it true what they say about you? Is it true you secrete toxins through your skin, like one of those poison frogs?”
“You’re dismissed,” Jonah said. “We have work to do.”
No doubt believing he’d found a chink in Jonah’s armor, Six warmed to his subject. “So is every part equally deadly? Is kissing enough, or do you have to, you know, get to second base? Is that why you’re so sentimental about shades?”
For a long moment, Jonah just looked at him. Looked at him until Six dropped his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Jonah said, emotionless. “Why don’t we find out?” Gripping the hem of his tee shirt, Jonah pulled it over his head and tossed it aside, drawing a collective gasp from the class. Now bare-chested, he extended his gloved hands toward Six. “Come here.”
Six’s eyes widened, and he backed away. “N-no,” he said.
“I promise I won’t kiss you, all right?” Jonah said.
Six fled the gym. Jonah turned back to the others. “Soldiers need to know how to take care of their weapons. They are the tools of the trade. What’s the difference between sharpening a shiv and sharpening a cutting blade?”
“You use different stones to sharpen them,” Number Four said. “If you use the wrong whetstone on a shiv, it destroys the runes, rendering it ineffective.”
“Which would be a nasty surprise, if you’re counting on it, out in the field,” Jonah said. “Let’s talk methods. You encounter a hosted shade—a shade inhabiting a body. What’s your weapon?”
“Cutting blade,” Five said promptly.
“What’s your method?”
“Dismemberment.”
“Why?”
“A hosted shade can’t be killed as long as it inhabits a body. Our goal is to render the body uninhabitable. That frees the shade.”
“Ah,” Jonah said, looking at Three. “Now you have a free shade. What’s your weapon?”
“Shiv.”
“Method?”
“Impalement.”
By the end of the session, Jonah felt a little better about their prospects. “Next week, we fight,” he promised. “Gear up.”
The conference room at the high school was stuffy and hot, and Emma couldn’t help feeling like she and Tyler were besieged. Outnumbered, anyway. Three teachers, a counselor, and somebody called an “intervention specialist.” All members of Emma’s “team,” as Ms. Abraham, the counselor, kept pointing out.
Then why did she feel like they were playing on the other side?
Emma stole a glance at Tyler. He’d put on a collared shirt for the occasion—the first time she’d seen him in anything other than a T-shirt in the three months she’d been there. He kept pulling it away from his neck as if it was too tight. His face gleamed with sweat. Not glad to be there, but at least he’d shown up, she thought, with a rush of gratitude.
“Our goal, Emma, is to all work together for a positive educational outcome,” Ms. Abraham said. She frowned at her laptop screen as if she didn’t like what she was seeing. “Although you were admitted as a junior, you have less than half of the class credits you’ll need for graduation. Which means you have some catching up to do.”
“She’s taking a full load, right?” Tyler said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “What more can she do?”
“First and foremost, she needs to pass the courses she’s taking,” Ms. Marmont, her algebra teacher said. “We’re midway through the semester, and her current grade in Algebra One is…let’s see…sixty-eight percent. She has to pass both Algebra One and Algebra Two to meet the core standards.”
“I don’t get it,” Tyler said. “Emma’s good at math. She does all kinds of measures and calculations in the shop.”
“The shop?” Ms. Beaumont, the intervention specialist, raised an eyebrow.
“Her woodshop,” Tyler said.
Emma’s team looked at one another. They had nothing to say.
“I’m good at word problems,” Emma said. “Problems where you know where you are and where you want to go and there’s a reason to get there.”
“Many colleges are looking for calculus these days,” Ms. Abraham murmured, typing a few notes into her computer.
“What if I don’t want to go to college?” Emma said.
It was like she’d sprayed a flock of hens with a hose. Everybody started squawking at her at once, a mingle of What are you thinking? And Let’s not be hasty and Don’t sell yourself short.
Ms. Abraham raised her hand to quiet them. “What would you like to do, Emma, after high school?”
“I want to be a luthier,” Emma said. Met with a circle of blank looks, she added, “I want to build guitars.”
“That’s great, Emma,” Ms. Beaumont said, “but how do you want to make a living? What are your plans for a career?”
“What I said. I want to build guitars,” she repeated stubbornly. Even though she knew that wasn’t on the official list. She had a plan, after all.
They all looked at one another. They wanted to roll their eyes. She knew they did.
“In a classroom, I can’t help but feel boxed in—sitting in the same spot, every day, while people talk at you. I need to move around. I need to make something real—that I can hold in my hands. Something out of wood.”
“Perhaps there is something in career and technical ed,” Mr. Boyd, her English teacher suggested.
“What about automotive technology?” Ms. Beaumont suggested, scanning a list. “Or audio engineering?”
“That doesn’t sound like what I want,” Emma said. “I was in an apprenticeship program in Memphis. I’d like something like that.” Apprenticeship program sounded more official than I helped my grandfather in his shop.
“I don’t think we should rule out the idea of college just yet,” Ms. Abraham said, pushing back from her desk. “You’re just two months into your junior year. We’ve arranged for tutoring in language arts and math. You’ll need those skills, whatever you do, and a high school diploma gives you lots more options. I’m going to refer you to Ms. Britton to test for special needs. I don’t find any evidence that you’ve been evaluated for that.”
Thumbing through a file, she pulled out a sheet and handed it to Tyler. “Mr. Boykin, I’d appreciate it if you would fill out this questionnaire and return it to me in the next few days.”
Emma read the title upside down. Does My Child Have ADD/ADHD?
Ms. Abraham followed Emma’s gaze and put her hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Emma. Everybody has a different learning style. We need to figure out what works for you. Meanwhile, I’ll find out if any of the CTPDs in the area offer a woodworking track.”
“CTPDs?” Tyler asked.
“Career and technical education,” Ms. Abraham said. “We used to call them vocational schools. When we have all that, we’ll meet again at the end of the semester.” She paused. “You also need to come to class, Emma. None of this matters if you’re not in your seat. If your attendance is good, there are waivers we
can apply for when it comes to testing and the core curriculum. But your attendance in Memphis was—what’s the word I’m looking for—awful. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Emma said.
They drove back to Tyler’s in silence, worry on both sides. She still thought of it as Tyler’s, even though he’d done his best to make her feel at home.
Her father lived in one of those neighborhoods that teeter on the knife’s edge between chic and shabby. From the outside, his house had crossed to shabby a long time ago, but inside it was all beautiful oak woodwork and rooms big enough to throw parties in. And, surrounding the house, the remains of an overgrown garden.
It was a lot of house for a single man who never had any visitors. Not one, since she’d been there. Emma was used to all the comings and goings at Sonny Lee’s shop. Tyler’s place seemed designed more to keep people out than welcome them in.
It was fitted out like a fortress, with iron bars behind the leaded windows and dead bolts on all the doors. It was good Emma had a knack for tools and devices; otherwise she’d never have mastered the alarm system.
“You must have a lot of crime here,” Emma had said, when he gave her the tour.
“Better safe than sorry,” Tyler said. He led her around the house to show her all his hiding places—the gun safe behind the bookcase in the office, and the regular safe hidden at the back of the closet in his bedroom.
He had her unlock and lock it several times. The combination was her birth date.
“What do you keep in here?” she asked as he locked it back up again.
“I have some things put away for you, Emma,” he said, “that I want you to have after I’m gone.” It was like he was just sitting in the eye of the hurricane, waiting for the wind to start howling again.
He took her to the shooting range and taught her how to fire his gun, with both hands on the grip, feet spread apart to provide a good base against the kick. It was something that near strangers could do together.