Vicious Grace

Afterward, we students cleared the dishes, Ex brewed a pot of Café Du Monde French roast and chicory, and with our coffee cups in hand, we walked down the cold, dark path to the barn. Stars filled the sky like flakes in a snowstorm.



Trevor waited for us by the practice mats. He wasn’t in his gi, for which I was secretly thankful. I had hired him to kick our collective ass into shape, but having at least part of a night off sounded very, very appealing. He had an old monitor hooked up to a cheap DVD player sitting on a folding table at the edge of the mat.



“All right,” Trevor said, crossing his arms. “What did you see out there today?”



We were all silent for a moment. Chogyi Jake spoke first.



“I think we focus too much on Jayné.”



“You do,” Trevor agreed. “The morning session, you practically ignored Aubrey. There were three times you could have taken him out, and instead you focused fire on her. And you”—he pointed at Aubrey—“put yourself in harm’s way each time in order to protect her.”



“I . . .” Aubrey said, then sighed. “I didn’t mean to.”



“Ex, on the other hand, was just the other way around,” Trevor said. “Focused too much on taking Aubrey out of the picture. You people have to play the whole board. And we can work on that. What else?”



I raised my hand.



“I can’t hit the broad side of a barn,” I said. It was the truth. I’d never been good with firearms, and I didn’t seem to be getting much better. The only time in my life I’d even gotten close to hitting my intended target, it had been point-blank range with a 30–06, and the wizard I’d been shooting at caught the bullet anyway.



“No,” Trevor said. “You really can’t.”



I was a little embarrassed that he’d agreed so quickly. There’s something awkward about being self-deprecating when everyone around you thinks you’re stating the obvious. I looked down at my hands, but Trevor had already turned to his DVD player.



“And the shooting is only part of the problem,” he said. “This is the training session from yesterday.”



Ex and Aubrey both glanced over at me, nervous on my behalf.



“I am sorry about that,” I said.



“Don’t be,” Trevor said. “Just watch.”



I popped into life on the screen. The camera had been set up at the corner of the practice mat we were all sitting on now, high on a tripod so that, through its glass eye, I looked even smaller than I actually was. The audio feed scratched and echoed. We weren’t going to watch the whole session, then. Just the bad part. On the screen, Trevor stepped toward me.



Even with the camera angle, he looked big. We circled each other, Trevor lunging in one direction, me scrabbling to get away from him. Now that I was watching from outside, I could see what he meant about my needing to keep one leg strong, even when I was moving fast. He shifted, and the Jayné on the screen side-stepped toward the wall. I squinted and held my breath.



Trevor paused the frame.



“Look here,” he said, pointing at my legs on the screen. “See how her hips are behind her? And her elbows are in at her sides. She’s like this.”



He took an awkward stance that I thought exaggerated my position, but the others nodded.



“Defensive,” he said. “She’s trying to engage the fight, but she’s also trying to back away from it. Women do that all the time. Hardest thing to teach a woman is to stop being nice in a fight. So all this? It’s normal. Now—”



He took off the pause. On the screen, Trevor rushed me. I danced back a step, my arms pulling into my body, and then he was around behind me, one thick arm around my neck, the other digging into my spine while he bent me back.



“I’m pushing her here,” he said. “Making her uncomfortable.”



In the moment, it had felt a lot more like he’d been trying to kill me. The on-screen me flapped her arm, trying to tap out, give up, say uncle. I could see the fear in my expression. And then I dropped, curling to the side. On-screen Trevor grunted, the arm that had been around my neck suddenly at a strange angle. I hammered an open palm into his side twice, making him yelp on the second strike. And then he was airborne, crashing into the barn wall hard enough to make the camera shake. It was over in less than a second. I felt chagrined, watching myself hurt him. And maybe a little pleased. Trevor paused again, backing up frame by frame until he was once again choking me as I bent backward.



“There,” he said, then shifted to the next frame forward. I didn’t see any difference, except that maybe in the second frame I looked a little more angry than scared. “Right there. That’s where she changed. See how her knees bend? She gets her center back. Her feet dig into the mat. Right there, she goes from a white belt fresh off the street to someone who can kick my ass. And that, ladies and gents, is not normal.”



“What do you make of it?” Chogyi Jake asked, leaning forward.



“That she’s a typical girl white-belt until she feels directly threatened, and then turns into someone else?” Trevor said, shaking his head. He let the action play out, watching himself go flying like it was a puzzle he wanted to solve.



“Adrenaline rush,” I said. “That’s not weird, right?”



“That’s not adrenaline,” Trevor said. “That’s technique. And I can’t train it.”



We all knew—meaning the four of us who weren’t Trevor—that Uncle Eric had left me with more than just money. He’d put some kind of magical protection on me that meant I was better in a fight than I had any right to be. I was also harder than your average bear to track down using magical means. Sort of an instant ninja package. Chogyi Jake had been disquieted that we never found references in any of Eric’s places to what exactly he’d done or how exactly it worked, but this was the first time I had a hint that its mere existence might be a problem.



“Can’t you train the white-belt me?” I said. “The early one?”



He turned off the monitor. The image died, leaving all of us reflected in the dark glass.



“Miss Heller, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t train with people I can’t trust, even if that just means trusting them to be inexperienced. I’ve been at this for more years than you’ve been breathing air, and nothing I’ve seen matches what I saw there. I can train these guys, no trouble. I can help you with strength training. Flexibility. But I’m not getting in the ring with you again. I’d be stupid if I did.”



Trevor went on for half an hour, going over the recordings of Aubrey, Ex, and Chogyi Jake taking their turns. It turned out Chogyi Jake had had some previous training. Ex and Aubrey were just about the same as I had been in the first part of the recording. I drank my coffee and felt like a balloon with half the air sucked out. I understood exactly what Trevor was saying, why he was saying it, and I still felt rejected. It might have been dumb of me, but that didn’t keep it from being true.



When they were done, we walked back to the cabin, rinsed out our coffee mugs, and Trevor headed up for bed. I sat at the dinner table, looking out at the night. The clock on the wall was manufactured to look old; fake black cracks ran down the white face. It was only a quarter to eleven. It felt way past midnight. I heard Ex walking down the stairs, heard him hesitate when he saw me alone, and then come the rest of the way into the room. I knew he had a little crush on me, and I hadn’t found a better strategy than to ignore it with the same ferocity that he did.



“Hard night,” he said. He’d let his hair down, a soft, near-white flow draping to his shoulders. It softened his face.



“Disappointing, at least,” I said.



“Are we going to stay?” he asked.



“It depends,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea for you guys to get some training. It’s not like hanging out with me doesn’t put you in danger sometimes. But part of why I wanted to do this was—”



“Hey,” my dead uncle said from the front room. “You’ve got a call.”



I headed for the door. The leather backpack I used instead of a purse hung on a wrought iron coatrack. The side pocket was glowing.



“You really need to—” Ex began.



“To change that ringtone,” I finished. “I know. I know.”



I didn’t recognize the number. The area code was 312, not that it meant anything to me other than it was probably somewhere in the continental United States. Very few people called this number, and even fewer expected to find me on the other end of it. I’d changed the voice-mail message to an explanation that Eric had passed on, and that I was his niece, so that I wouldn’t have to go through it all in person again. For a moment, I thought about letting this call drop. But then curiosity won, and I thumbed it on.



“Hello,” I said.



“Jayné? Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice, tight and controlled and serious. She’d pronounced my name correctly. It took me less than a breath to place it, and then my heart ramped up. Aubrey’s ex-wife. The one who’d still been his wife the first time I slept with him. The one who’d confessed to me that she still loved him. The one who, in spite of everything, I kind of liked.



“Kim,” I said. “Hey. What’s up?”



TWO



When, fifteen minutes later, I dropped the call, Ex had gone upstairs to his room. I sat for a while with my phone in my hand. The windows looked out over the moonlit night, trees and scrub in monochrome and about a thousand times more stars than I was used to. I could call her back. I could say that something had come up. Hell, I could even tell her that I just wasn’t comfortable. What was she going to say? That I had to get comfortable? I had the choice, so I had the power.



Aubrey’s room was even smaller than mine, his bed little more than a cot. I always thought of sleep as making people look younger, but it only changed the shape of his face a little. Softened his eyes and let his lips relax. His breath was deep and regular. I sat next to him, willing my gaze alone to wake him. After about a minute, I put my hand on his shoulder. He took one breath that was almost a sigh and opened his eyes. A few months sleeping together and he didn’t even startle when I touched him.