“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.”
Chapter Eight
Teach
The sun was just breaking over the horizon when Jonah arrived at the fitness center. It was new—a state-of-theart 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
Smove 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 Ssaid. 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 than 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.
Dismissing Number Six, 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.”
SBy the end of the session, Jonah felt a little better about their prospects. “Next week, we fight,” he promised. “Gear up.”
Chapter Nine
Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl
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 Shalf 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.”