Текст книги "Bite Club"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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“Interesting news travels quickly in a town as boring as this,” he said. “Also, I tend to monitor police broadcasts. Your name was mentioned in connection with the investigation. I made a few calls to find out the rest. So, do you think he was trying to develop some sort of drug?”

“Myrnin, Doug was stinky, but he wasn’t crazy. There may be people in Morganville who will just take any old thing to see if it gets them high, but he just saw that blood boilunder the lights. He wasn’t not going to try to sell it as a drug.”

“You’d be very surprised what people get up to. But, in any case, it’s possible someone else understood the potential of it, and Doug was simply collateral damage.” Myrnin sighed. “I understand it was quite bloody. What a terrible waste.”

He didn’t mean of Doug, of course. He didn’t know Doug, and Claire doubted he would have really cared. No, Myrnin was talking about the waste of plasma.Which made Claire shiver, and reminded her again that no matter how cute and cuddly Myrnin could sometimes be, there was something about him that just…wasn’t quite right.

Not for a human, anyway.

“Frank!” Myrnin yelled, making her jump. “Do you have any insights to share? At all?”

Frank Collins’s voice came out of every speaker in the room—the old radio set in the corner, the newer TV mounted on the wall, the computer on the antique desk, and Claire’s own cell phone in her pocket. “You don’t have to yell. Believe me, I can hear you. Wish to hell I could shut you off.”

“Well, you can’t, and I need your particular expertise,” Myrnin said. He sounded smug and a little bit vindictive; Myrnin didn’t like Frank, Frank didn’t like anybody who drank plasma, and the whole thing was just plain weird.

Because Frank Collins, Shane’s dad, had once been a badass vampire-hunting criminal, and then Mr. Bishop had made him a self-loathing vampire, and now he was…dead. She was listening to a dead man speaking over the radio.

Well, not dead, exactly. After Frank had died saving Claire and Shane, Myrnin had scooped out his still-sort-of-living brain, stuck it in a plasma bath, and hooked it up to a computer. Frank Collins was now the brain that ran Morganville, and, thankfully, Shane didn’t know.

Claire could honestly not imagine how thatconversation was going to go when he found out. It made her ill to even try to imagine it.

“This would go easier if you’d show your face,” Myrnin said. “Please. You may be assured that by please, I mean do it, or I’ll put an injection of something nasty in your plasma.”

“Myrnin!” Claire blurted, wide-eyed. He shrugged.

“You have no idea how difficult he’s been lately. I thought Adawas a problem, but she was positively the model of decorum next to this one,” he said. “Well? I’m waiting, Frank.”

In the corner, a faint shadow appeared, a blur of static that resolved into a flat image on the three-dimensional background. He wasn’t bothering with a color image; maybe Frank thought shades of gray made him look more badass.

If so, he was right.

His computer image looked years younger than Claire had last seen him. He had grungy good looks, though his hair was long and messy, and he still had a wicked bad scar on his face. He was dressed in black leather, including a jacket with lots of silver buckles, and big, stomping boots. “Better?” his voice asked. The image’s mouth moved, but his voice still came in surround sound from the speakers. “And if you mess with me, I’ll hit you back, you bloodsucking geek. Don’t think I can’t.”

Myrnin smiled, fangs down. “Well, you can try,” he almost purred. “Now. Let’s have a chat about the criminal elements of Morganville, since you have such a fine and intimate acquaintance with them.”

Frank’s 2-D avatar didn’t have much in the way of facial expression, but, then, Frank in 3-D form hadn’t been big on emoting, either. His voice, however, was full of sarcasm. “Always glad to be of help to the vampire community,” he said. “We all know there is no crime in Morganville. And the humans are all just happy to be here. It’s paradise on earth. Ain’t that what it says in the brochure?”

Myrnin lost his smile, and his dark eyes got that dangerously hot look that made Claire nervous. “I suppose you think you’re irreplaceable in your current position,” he said. “You’re a brain in a jar, Frank. By definition, you are eminently replaceable.”

Now Frank’s avatar smiled. It seemed just as artificial as the rest of him. “Then pull the plug, if you think you can do better.”

Myrnin’s gaze slid to Claire, and she felt that chill again, the one that rushed from the bottom of her spine right up to the top of her head. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She knew he’d always thought she was a better candidate for the brain-in-a-jar thing—which meant he thought she’d be easier to control. Frank had just been at the right, or wrong, place at the right time to take her place.

That could always change.

Frank must have figured that out, too, because he said, “You touch my kid’s girl, and I’ll end this miserable town. You know I can.”

“Ada couldn’t pull that off, and she had much longer to think about it than you have,” Myrnin said, suddenly back to his old self. “So let’s abandon the empty threats, shall we? And get back to the subject. I need to understand who in this town might be willing to kill for a sample of vampire blood.”

Frank’s laugh was dry and scratchy and full of contempt. “You want me to print out a phone directory? Between the people who want to figure out how to kill you faster, the ones who want to protect you because they have money riding on it, and the ones who just dig the whole undead look, it could be anybody.”

“A list of anyone who is known to be making antivampire weapons, then,” Myrnin said with icy precision. “And anyone who might possibly be researching how to use vampire blood as a drug.”

“That ship sailed last century,” Frank said. “Everybody knows it makes a crap drug. No real high to it. Makes you stronger for a while, but it’s got no bump, and the fall’s worse than steroids. They tried combining it with other stuff, but there’s nothing you can add it to that vampire blood won’t break down in a hurry.”

Silence. Myrnin was surprised, Claire realized; he hadn’t known humans had even thought about any of this. And it bothered him. If it bothered Myrnin, it would make the other vampires crazy. “How far back does this go?”

“It was already old news when I was in high school.” Frank shrugged. “People kept on trying, but nothing ever worked. So I think you can write off the drug angle. Now, the killing-your-kind-better motive…that I can believe. It would have been at the top of my Christmas list.”

Frank was still identifying vampires as you, not us, which was interesting. He’d been a vampire a relatively short time, and Claire knew he’d been forced into it; it wasn’t something he would ever have chosen for himself. He took a special delight in seeing the vamps one-upped.

“Then I’ll need a list of those people,” Myrnin said. “We’ll need to interview them.”

“No.”

The word came out flat and final. And it rang on the cold stone of the lab’s walls and floors, until Myrnin repeated it very softly. “No?”

“No. I was one of them, and I’m not going to put their names on a piece of paper for you and yours to go out and hunt down.”

“Maybe your son knows,” Myrnin said. He said it in a very offhand way, and without looking at Claire. He was staring at Frank’s flickering image. “Maybe I should ask him instead. Forcefully.”

Frank’s image shifted, and Claire could actually feelthe menace coming off it now, like an icy wind. “Maybe you shouldn’t even think about going there.”

“Oh, I do,” Myrnin said, and raised his eyebrows. “I think about it quite a lot.” There was something fey coming out in him in response to Frank’s defiance; it was something Claire hardly ever saw. Maybe it was a guy thing.

She picked up the first pointy thing that came to hand—a pair of scissors—and jammed them against Myrnin’s back, not intohis back, stabby-wise, but enough to make an impression.

“Ow,” he said absently, and looked over his shoulder at her. “What?”

“Leave Shane out of it,” she said very quietly. That was all. No explanations, no threats.

Myrnin turned very slowly to face her. That strange, uncomfortable light in his eyes was still glittering, but as he stared at her, it faded, like someone turned down a dimmer switch. “All right,” he said. “Since you ask so nicely.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“I’m aware of that. The sharp point in my back did make it clear.” He caught her wrist in one of those lightning-quick vampire motions and took the scissors away from her. He put them in the pocket of his lab coat. “Wouldn’t want you hurting yourself.”

“No,” Claire said. “You think that’s your job.”

A quick flash of a smile, not a very nice one, and Myrnin turned back to Frank. “All right, my unpleasant friend, we’ll have done with threats, both yours and mine. Please, for the sake of young Claire here, will you be so kind as to provide me with a few places where I might look for a murderer?”

“The mirror’s a great place to start,” Frank said. “But if you’re talking humans, I can give you maybe two names. We’d be better off if they were off the streets, anyway.”

“Détente,” Myrnin said. “How lovely.”

THREE

Claire wasn’t needed for the actual investigation. Myrnin wanted to do it himself…a fact that left her a little bit worried, not so much for him as for the people he was out to question (not very nice people, granted, if Frank Collins had decided they were worth losing). She left a message for Oliver, figuring that it was his problem now, and headed for home.

She expected to find everyone there, but when she unlocked the front door of the house on Lot Street, it sounded quiet. Way too quiet. They weren’t a studious bunch, her housemates. If Shane was home, there should have been game noise; if Eve, loud music. If both, shouting plus boththose things.

Michael wasn’t home, either, because she didn’t hear guitar.

“Helllooooooooo,” she called, as she locked the door behind her in standard Morganville precautionary measure. “House ghost? Anybody?” Not that they had a house ghost anymore, but it always seemed polite to ask. Weirder things had happened.

Silence. Claire dumped her book bag on the couch, on top of a sweatshirt someone (Shane) had left balled up there, flopped down, and stretched out. She rarely had the house to herself; it felt nice. Strange, but nice. When nobody was moving around, she could hear something like a low, electric vibration from all over—walls, floors, ceiling. The life of the house.

Claire reached down and patted the wooden floor. “Good house. Nice house. We should do a repaint or something. Make you pretty again.”

She could have sworn that the house’s low hum cycled, like a very faint, approving purr.

After half an hour, she got up and checked the table and other likely spots for any sign of notes left behind, but there weren’t any hints about when she might expect anybody to show up. She was about to go upstairs to study when the flyer caught her eye. It had slipped off the kitchen table and was lying curled against the wall. She picked it up and smoothed it out.

The new martial arts gym. Not likely Eve was there, but for Shane, it was definitely a safe bet that was where he’d gone off to. Claire tapped the paper thoughtfully, then smiled.

“Why not?” she asked. The house didn’t answer or have any opinion one way or another. “I could use the exercise. And I’ve gotto see this place.”

She raced upstairs, changed into a pair of low-riding sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that advertised The Killers, and at the last second, added the gold Founder’s pin to her collar. It scratched, but better that than getting caught outside without Protection. After all, she hadn’t gotten martially arted yet.

It was still light out, but fading fast toward twilight. Cold wind twirled the leaves in the gutters, and as she walked, Claire wished she’d thought to bring a sweater. A few cars passed her, some with blacked-out, vampire-friendly windows, but nobody paid her more than a glance that she could tell. The new gym was located in one of the less-trafficked parts of town, near a bunch of warehouses that had seen better days and businesses with long-ago-faded closed permanently signs in the windows. In all that industrial devastation, one neon sign still glowed, with a red-and-green dragon swishing its tail.

The storefront looked newly renovated, and Claire could swear she still smelled fresh paint. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot and lining the street. With surprise, Claire recognized Eve’s black hearse; she didn’t expect Eve to be a fan of sparring. Well, people probably wouldn’t have bet on her showing up, either.

There were no windows to look in through, so Claire pulled open the heavy metal door and walked into a large tiled area with a wooden counter. A buffed-up guy of postcollege age sat on a stool behind it, reading a magazine. He had a lot of tattoos, and a particularly sharp buzz cut. When he glanced up and saw her, his sandy eyebrows went up.

“Here for class?” he asked.

“Uh, maybe. I just want to check it out.”

“All right. You can do a pay-as-you-go for the first couple of visits, but after that, it’s a monthly fee, no refunds.” He shoved a clipboard at her, along with a pen. “Fill out the forms. It’s ten dollars.”

Ten was a lot for just checking it out, but Claire put her name on the papers, along with her address, phone number, medical history, and all the other stuff that was asked about exercise and mobility. Some of it seemed pretty intrusive. She handed it back, along with her faded ten-dollar bill, and got a sticky name tag to slap on her T-shirt. Then the bouncer—she couldn’t think of him as a receptionist—hit a hidden button, and a sharp, electronic buzz sounded.

“Push the wall, right there,” he said, pointing. She pushed, and it opened, cutting off the buzz. It swung shut behind her as she stepped through, and if it locked, she couldn’t hear it over the noise.

Amazing that she’d missed it on the other side of the barrier, because this gym was working.The clang of free weights hitting supports. Solid, heavy clunks from the weight machines as men and women sweat, grunted, and worked at the stations. Whirring wheels on exercise bikes. And in the center of the room, a large open space with mats in the middle, and about thirty people dressed in white martial arts clothes, kneeling with their hands on their thighs, all facing in toward the middle.

Claire looked quickly around, and although she recognized some of those doing the straight exercise stuff, she didn’t see Shane or Eve among them. She edged around toward a stair-climber not in use and stepped on so she could get a better vantage point of the class in progress. Whoever had used it before her had set it to murderous levels; she had to back off on the resistance almost immediately, and so she almost missed Shane, who was sitting facing the mat at an angle.

She spotted him only because he got up and walked to the center of the mats. He wore his uniform well, she realized, like he’d done this before. Maybe he had. He had that look, the one she recognized from watching him fight, though those had been more down-and-dirty street things than martial arts bouts. He wasn’t looking at anything but the man facing him.

Shane was a pretty big guy for his age—broad shouldered, kind of tall. And he had at least a foot on the man facing him, who looked frozen at the age of about thirty. The vampire instructor,Claire thought. He had long hair he’d tied back in a ponytail.

They bowed to each other formally and settled back into some kind of stance, almost mirroring each other.

Shane kicked, high and fast. The vampire ducked and let Shane’s momentum spin him out of position, and with one economically placed, almost gentle push, sent him tumbling to the mats. Shane rolled and came up with his hands out, ready to defend, but the vampire was just standing there, watching him.

“Nice attack,” he said. “But I can move out of the way of a kick. You’d do much better to move in close, reduce my reaction time. It’s the only real chance you have, you see. You need to remember how much faster we can move, and how much more observant we are of things like shifts of weight and eye movements.”

Shane nodded, shaggy hair rippling around his hard, intent face, and took two quick, light steps in to close the distance. He struck as he did it, and even though he didn’t land the punch, he came closer. The vampire’s open hand stopped it less than an inch from his face.

He hadn’t flinched.

“You’re quick,” he said. “Very quick, and unless I miss my guess, very well accustomed to fighting all sorts of enemies. You’re young to be so angry, by the way. That can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on who you’re fighting. And why.”

Shane fell back into a waiting stance and didn’t answer. The vampire gave him a little one-more-time signal, and Shane went for a punch…but it was a distraction, and this time, his kick actually hit the vampire in the side of his knee, forcing a shift in balance.

The vampire, without seeming to even think about it, spun and kicked Shane right off the mat. He tumbled across the wood floor and into the kneeling students like a ball into bowling pins. They scattered.

Claire gasped and gripped the stair-climber handles more tightly, resisting the urge to jump off and run to him. He was already rolling up to his feet—slower than last time, granted—and walked back to the mats. He put his right fist against his left palm, put feet together, and bowed.

The vampire bowed back. “Again,” he said. “I congratulate you on being the first to actually touch me. Now see if you can hurt me.” He bared his teeth in a savage little smile. “Come on, boy. Try.”

Shane settled into attack stance again, and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t all about the polite martial arts form at all. He went all street fighter, and the vampire wasn’t prepared for it. In fact, despite the vampire’s being faster and deadlier, Shane got him off balance in two quick, well-placed punches, swept his legs out from under him, and sent him on his back to the mat.

And he didn’t stop there. Claire gasped and stopped climbing, frozen, as he dropped down on the vamp, slamming both knees into the man’s chest, and pantomimed ramming a stake into his heart. There was something savage on Shane’s face, something she remembered seeing before, but only when he was fighting for their lives. A real, deep, burning hatred.

Shane didn’t move. He was staring down at the fallen vamp, and the vamp was locking eyes with him. Then, slowly, he stood up, hand with the invisible stake falling back to his side.

The vampire rolled up to his feet in one fast, fluid movement, keeping a healthy distance between them. He stared at Shane for a beat too long, then did the formal bow. Shane echoed him.

“You have a gift,” the vampire said. It didn’t sound like a compliment, exactly. “I think you’re too advanced for this entry-level class. See me later. I think you may be suitable for some advanced placement.”

Shane bowed again, stepped back, and took his place at the edge of the floor, kneeling down.

A thin blond girl got up to take his place, looking terrified. Claire didn’t blame her. Shane had brought a sense of real violence into the room, and that had gotten everyone’s attention; the sound of weights clanging and people talking had hushed and slowed, if not stopped.

Claire realized she was standing still on the stair-climber, and began pumping her legs again, mind not on the exercise at all, even though her calf muscles were already burning. She couldn’t stop looking at Shane now. She could see only a thin slice of his face between the others, but from that she knew that he wasn’t paying attention to the blond girl getting her ass kicked—gently—in the middle of the floor. He was staring straight ahead, face set and still, and if the victory had given him any kind of peace or triumph, she couldn’t see it.

SHANE

I wasn’t always like this. I know people think I like to fight, and, yeah, maybe they’re right—I do—but I didn’t when I was little. I just wanted to fit in and get along. The usual crap in a town where not fitting in got you a whole lot of trouble.

I guess the first time I hit somebody was in elementary school, which is pretty standard for guys, but it wasn’t because I was personally getting attacked. No, I threw the first punch.

I hit a guy named Terrence James because he was shoving around my best friend, who was littler and couldn’t stand up to save his life. I was about Terrence’s size, and there was something about seeing a big guy pick on a little one that made me see red.

Yeah, I’m not that complicated. I know why I felt like that. My dad. My dad, the guy who was okay when he was sober, but was a mean drunk. He didn’t hit me much, not then, but he was scary, and he’d always liked to push people around.

Felt good to push somebody like him around for a change. Punching Terrence didn’t feel nearly as good, though. My knuckles felt like I’d broken them into little pieces, but after the first horrific shock the pain was a good kind of pain, and it all fed into a red haze of euphoria as I looked at Terrence lying on his back, tears streaming down his face, telling me he was sorry and that he’d never do it again, ever.

And that’s how I discovered that I liked that feeling, that righteous, hot feeling of winning for what I thought was the right cause. I wasn’t afraid of a little pain to get there, either, which is a huge advantage in a fight. Let’s face it: most people don’t like to get hurt, so if you show you’re okay with it, they’re going to get a little bit weird. And maybe walk away. I don’t mind a win by default, as long as I win.

When I got older, people pretty much left me alone. I had that pit-bull mentality and a useful amount of height and muscle, both of which I probably owed to my father. Girls liked it, too, but not the right kind of girls, generally. I won most fights, lost a few, but I never quit. I took boxing and wrestling in high school and did okay, but I didn’t like the rules that much. I was a street brawler.

I guess I was on track to being my dad—maybe not as bad, but let’s face it, it wasn’t easy to resist the black hole that was Frank Collins, and I’d always done what he said. He liked that I could hold my own in a fight. After my sister and mother died, well, it got worse—a whole lot worse. Sending me back to Morganville to scout out the weaknesses had been a real show of faith from my dad, but the farther I got away from him, the more I realized that I didn’t want to be him anymore. He’d taken it too far.

Meeting Claire made me realize that I could be something different. Something better. The first time I saw her, black-and-blue but with this strange little core of strength…I recognized something we had in common. We didn’t quit. And we suffered for it.

I started out wanting to protect her, and the more I was around her, the more I realized that she was one girl who could take care of herself. I wasn’t used to chicks being equals—and Claire was, and is. She’s not that physically strong, but she’s quick and smart and fearless, and if sometimes I get overprotective about her, she’s the first one to remind me of that.

But I want to be ready, if it comes to a fight again—which it will. Not just against the normal human bullies and criminals; those were a piece of cake. No, I want to be able to defend her against the vampires, and that is a whole lot harder. Weapons are good, and I never turn those down, but the reality is I can’t count on always having one. I worry. There have been a couple of times—more than a couple—when only the fact that Michael had vampire strength he could throw in with mine had saved us.

And that really bothered me. I couldn’t depend on Michael, either. Or anybody else.

Mixed martial arts—that was the ticket. Hit your guy however you can, and put him down fast. My kind of fighting, and something that could work on vampires, if you knew what you were doing. I’d been itching to try it, and when the flyer came in the mail, it seemed like somebody up there liked me after all.

Michael had pulled me off to the side after Claire left to say he didn’t think it was a good idea. I told him to stuff it, but in a nice way, because even though he’s got fangs and a thirst, he’s still my bro. Most times. Took me a while to accept that, but I’m almost okay with his whole night-stalking lifestyle now.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be able to kick his ass if I have to, though. The chance to learn martial arts from a vampire…that was way too good to pass up.

I know how to do the real kind of martial arts. I mean, I had karate until I was thirteen and decided I was too cool for it. So I know how to put on a gi and tie a belt and be formal on the mats. Turned out that was good, because the instructor—some dude named Vassily, with an Eastern European accent straight out of an old movie—wanted to start out that way.

I was okay the first couple of passes, when he got me up to spar. It was like fighting anybody else, no big thing, until he started using vampire speed and strength on me. I couldn’t help it; that made me angry, and anger kind of makes me forget the rules. I went for his knee. He hit me like a wrecking ball smashing a wall, and next thing I knew, I was shaking it off with a giant ache in my chest. I’d been lucky. He could have caved in my ribs and Swiss-cheesed my heart if he’d hit full strength.

Then don’t let him hit you again, loser. I could almost hear my dad’s voice, dry and mocking. He was dead now, but in my mind he was always there, always watching, and always judging. He’d hated vampires. I didn’t much like ’em, either. We’d always had that in common.

I didn’t think about walking away. I went back to the mat and bowed, and the second I got a chance, I attacked with everything I had. Full-on blitz. I knew I was going to get hurt, maybe badly, maybe killed, but I wasn’t going to be humiliated. Not by a vampire. No way in hell.

I got him. Hard. I could see the shock in his face, and the rush of rage, and as I stood there with the bloody taste of victory in my mouth, I actually wanted him to go for it, come get me, because, damn, I felt alive, actually alive…….

But he shut me down, said something I didn’t register, and bowed me off the mat. I don’t remember leaving or kneeling down. I just remember thinking,Next time, next time, next time, regular as a bell ringing in my head and drowning out every other thought.

I watched him go through the rest of the class. He didn’t hurt anybody else, but he could have. He wanted to; I could see it in flashes in his eyes. They’re all alike, you know. Hunters. Even Michael’s got it, though he hides it, and sometimes I pretend like I don’t see it, either. You have to be ready for them to turn on you.

Because if you’re not ready…somebody you love could get hurt.

I closed my eyes and imagined Claire. She always made me feel better. But although I could see her face, her smile, almost feel her presence, all I could think about was how easy it would be for them to take her away from me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

It occurred to me that what the vamp had said to me was that he’d see me later. Some kind of special class? Hell, yeah. I could do that. I needed to do that.

I needed to understand how to fight them, one on one, without help or weapons or hope.

Only the vampires could show me that.

Still…sitting there, hands on my knees, breathing fast, I couldn’t help but feel that even though I’d won, even though I’d done the impossible…somehow, I’d lost.

And it was first of a whole lot of losses.

Watching Shane kneeling there, so closed-in and so…cold, Claire felt a little sick. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like how he’d just fought, and she didn’t like how he looked afterward. Shane was usually happyafter a fight, not…angry.

This whole thing is a bad idea,she thought. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true.

“Hey,” said a low voice at her back, and Claire looked back to see Eve standing there. For the gym, she’d dispensed with the Goth makeup, but her tight T-shirt had a pink skull with a bow on it, and there were a skull and crossbones in rhinestones down the sides of her workout pants, too. She’d tied her straight black hair back in a shining ponytail. It was about as unadorned as Eve ever got, unless she was in disguise. “Did you see that? What the hell was that? Did Shane just go all Wolfman, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Claire said, and jumped down from the exercise machine. “But—”

“Boyfriend’s got issues,” Eve finished. “Yeah, no kidding. So, you came to spy, too?”

“Too?”

“Really, come on. Do you see me as the heavy-sweating type? So very not.” Eve looked her over critically. “And you aren’t, either, but you can pass for it, probably. Did they make you pay the ten bucks to get in?”

“Yeah.”

“This is so much less fun than I’d hoped. For one thing, nobody here is worthy of being ogled, and if they are, they’re way too sweaty. Or scary. Or both.” Eve gave a theatrical little shudder. “What do you say we do something else?”

“Like what?” Claire was still distracted by the sight of Shane, kneeling like a statue at the edge of the sparring space. He was still in that other world, looking off into the distance. Scary.

Eve gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Let me ask you this. Have you ever fenced?”

For a second, Claire thought she meant the traditional kind of thing, like hammering pickets onto rails in front of a house, but then she figured it out. “Oh. You mean with swords?”

“Exactly. If I’m going to sweat, I’m going to sweat in a cooler way. Follow me.”

“Wait. You fence?”

“I took it up in high school,” Eve said. “Come on, walk and talk, walk and talk. That’s a girl. Yeah, I had to have a sport, but I don’t like those icky team things. Fencing seemed retro cool, and plus, there were pointy things you try to stick into your opponent. It seemed like a good idea.”