Silent Siren, page 2
As we pulled into the underground garage, Yven said, “I’m sorry to bring you so early. I’d have rescheduled my meeting, but—”
“Don’t worry about it. More time to warm up, right?”
“Or finish your coffee,” he replied, cutting his eyes to the tumbler I clutched tightly to my chest.
All too soon, we climbed aboard the elevator, and I hit the button for the third floor. DPP kept its indoor training facilities in one place, and the expansive suite offered everything from weight rooms to a firing range. The centerpiece, which took up fully half the floor, was a massive gymnasium large enough to play host to the occasional melee. The ceilings on that level were a solid thirty feet high, providing ample room for spectator bleachers and for anyone who felt like risking an aerial assault.
Unlike me, Yven had actual credentials for the DPP building, and so he escorted me to meet my fate. We passed through the double doors to find the gym empty but for Emarae and his second, a centaur named Tylla Zom. She’d already wrapped her hooves in the yellow padding she used to lessen the chance of an accidental fatality, and she smiled when she noticed our entrance. “Morning, Red!” she called, waving us over. “You’re here early.”
“He’s got plans,” I said, nodding toward Yven.
“Well, we’ll make the best of it. Let’s do something with that mop of yours, eh?”
My first rough practices with Emarae’s team had taught me the importance of minimizing ways to be grabbed. Sloughing off my sweatshirt, I stripped down to a black running bra much like Tylla’s, though my arms prickled with goosebumps in the cool room. I took a seat several rows up the bleachers, putting my head level with hers, and tried not to wince as she immediately began to tug my hair into a pair of tight French braids. I’d never mastered the art, but Tylla, who had long flaxen tresses and a tail, could have my hair braided and tucked flat against my scalp in under five minutes.
Glancing back toward the doors, I caught Yven staring at me before Emarae sent him on his way, and I smiled to myself to see how flustered he was on departure.
As Tylla finished her quick work, Emarae joined us at the bleachers. “Nervous, kid?” he asked.
I flinched at the last yanks on my scalp. “A little.”
“Wise,” he allowed, then climbed up and sat beside me. “Look, I know you’re still finding your feet,” he said, lowering his voice. “This will be challenging, but trust me that I’m not going to put you in a situation you can’t handle, yes?”
I nodded.
“The others understand where you are,” he continued. “It’s one thing to throw balls, but they’re not going to gang up on you with, say, heavy spells. And I won’t ask you to do something like fight Tylla alone until I think you’re prepared.”
“Quick fight, that,” she quipped.
Emarae grinned at her. “Precisely. No single combat with anyone likely to leave you unconscious with the healers,” he told me. “But I do think you’re ready to try group skirmishes—you could be quicker with your casting, but practice will help.”
“Don’t be nervous yet,” Tylla added, patting my shoulder. “You’re getting a reprieve for the first part of the morning. We’re starting at the range.”
I brightened at the welcome news. The firing range was the one place on the floor where I didn’t feel like a complete novice. My parents were never hunters, but my dad had taken me to a range when I was a teenager to learn the basics of handgun operation for self-defense purposes. As a single woman living alone, I practiced occasionally with the .38 I kept in the nightstand. While I wasn’t going to win any prizes for my shooting, I could reliably hit a target, which meant that I could outperform a few of the worst shooters in Emarae’s group.
This caused him no end of consternation, though I hadn’t understood why it was so upsetting to him. The poor shots on the team were two sorcerers, an elf, and a troll, either magically gifted or a living tank, so what did it matter if they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a pistol? “It’s about preparedness,” he’d explained. “If you can have an extra weapon in your arsenal, an extra arrow in the quiver, then why wouldn’t you want it? In the field, when we go after rogue growers and brewers and dealers, there’s often no way to know what we’ll be facing until we break down the door.”
In any case, Interdiction’s adoption of firearms was fine by me. All questions of practicality aside, I was grateful to have one scheduled event for the weekend in which I stood a fighting chance.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Red,” said Emarae as Tylla released me. “This is going to be a fun few days.”
Fun, he said.
Sure, the hour at the range had been fun enough. Had I been an agent, I’d almost have qualified on three weapons. But after we’d all had a chance to let our guard down and ease into the morning, Emarae had brought everyone back to the main gym and broken us into teams for a melee—and then another, and another. Over and over, he set us loose on each other to see how we fared when we had no weapons but our bodies and whatever magic we could wield.
For me, the answer to that was “not especially well.” By the time I hobbled out of the gym that night toward Yven, who watched my slow escape with undisguised horror, I’d acquired a black eye, a split lip, a sprained elbow, and a bum knee, plus what felt like a couple of cracked ribs—not to mention a generous assortment of cuts, scratches, bruises, and abrasions from the many times I’d landed hard on the mats. Yven hustled me to his car as quickly as I could limp, then slipped into a nearby restaurant for takeout and drove us home to the potion stash.
He hissed at the sight of my bare arms and exposed back once I wriggled out of my sweatshirt, and before I could reach for my pills, he had me planted at the kitchen table and was dabbing at my injuries with the expensive healing potion. “Don’t drink anything just yet,” he said as my hand strayed close to the painkilling draughts. “I need to know where it hurts to use this stuff effectively.”
Grateful to be off my feet, I let him work on the parts of me that I couldn’t reach—and some of the parts that I could. As he squatted by my leg, still in his dress clothes, and massaged the potion into my throbbing knee, I said, “Dinner’s getting cold. Come on, I’m not dying.”
“Could have fooled me,” he muttered, pressing a potion-soaked cotton ball against a bruise on my calf. “What happened? Did they gang up on you?”
“Yeah, since I actually did well with my spells a few times. Emarae said I should take it as a compliment.”
“I’d hate to see his insults, then.” Glancing up at me, he asked, “Do you want to visit a real healer? This is good stuff,” he said, shaking the dregs of the potion in its vial, “but if you’d like, I’ll call Canna and drive you out there.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “And Pars wasn’t pretty by the end of the day, either, so I’m sure she’s got her hands full. Let’s eat, eh?”
Yven didn’t seem convinced that I wasn’t about to spontaneously combust, but he reluctantly put the potion aside and brought our dishes to the table. “Want me to reheat that?” he asked as I took a bite.
I shook my head. “Perfect as is. Thank you,” I said, and winced as I tried to smile with my lip still healing. “So, how was your day?”
He chuckled and sipped his wine. “Less painful than yours, I imagine. At least Emarae won’t have another of these on the schedule for three months.”
“Joy.” I had no idea what was in the delectable sauce smothering the chicken cutlet in front of me, and it was taking every ounce of my restraint not to swallow my food whole. “Speaking of schedules…”
“Yes?”
I drank to give myself a few last seconds to collect my thoughts. Extending this invitation wasn’t a spontaneous decision, but I didn’t want to sound like an idiot when I did so. “Uh…so, Wednesday week. Any plans?”
Yven frowned in thought. “Nothing pressing, I don’t suppose. Why?”
“Well, um…it’s Christmas, right,” I said, picking up speed, “and Aunt Lily has been making a nice luncheon for the two of us for the last few years, and I was just wondering if you, uh…if you wanted to come. No pressure. She’s cool with it if you’re interested,” I assured him, “but if you don’t want to take time off work…”
He waited until my voice faded, then put down his utensils and flashed a little grin. “Thanks. That sounds nice.”
I didn’t think he was humoring me, but I couldn’t be sure. “Really, you won’t hurt my feelings if—”
“No, no, I’d be a fool to turn down a meal at your great-aunt’s. Just one question.”
“Shoot.”
He regarded me with a look of utter solemnity. “Do I need to acquire curly-toed shoes for this event?” I groaned, and his façade cracked. “Coordinating red ensemble?” he teased. “One of those hats with a puffball on the end? Something sparkly?”
“Jerk.”
“I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
A discarded couch pillow flew into my hand with a gesture over my shoulder, and Yven laughed as he blocked my toss at him. “Let me have my fun, yeah?” he said. “I’ve seen the decorations…”
“If you give me a hard time, I’m going to hold you down and make you watch Christmas movies. Elf, The Santa Clause—”
“I’ve already watched the one with the reindeer in which the guy wants to be a dentist, so scratch that off your list.”
That surprised me. “You know about the old Claymation movies?”
“Sure,” he replied, nodding. “It’s not like human films are forbidden. We had a library of them at school, all subtitled. Finally got a copy of The Matrix in my last year there, and one of the sorcerers in my class actually worked out a spell to mimic bullet time. He did a demonstration at lunch one day while wearing a black leather trench coat and almost got shot in the leg.”
“Seriously?”
“Geekdom isn’t unique to humans.” He smiled to himself at the memory. “While Pars and I were interning between the end of school and starting at DPP, we had an apartment together and not much in the way of social lives, so we’d rent movies most weekends, drink, and critique. It got easier once we were employed and fluent in English, and I had a pass out of the Pactlands—I was under strict orders to stop at a video store on my way back and grab whatever looked interesting.”
I tried to recall what had been popular in the early 2000s, back when my viewing library had been capped at a PG rating, then smirked as a thought occurred to me. “Did you ever watch The Lord of the Rings?”
He squeezed his eyes closed and offered a pained sigh. “Once. The last of the three had come out in extended edition on video—well, DVD by then—and we decided to get drunk and watch them straight through.”
“Oh, that’s sad.”
“You’ve never watched them?”
“I mean, I was about ten when the last one dropped, so it took me a few years to get to them, but I certainly didn’t marathon the trilogy.” I laughed at his evident distaste. “How uncomfortable was it?”
“The booze could have been better. The humans in obvious prosthetics were just weird. And Pars stayed sober enough to remember a handful of terrible lines, which he used to deploy whenever I got on his nerves. You know what made it so much worse?” he said, leaning closer to me. “I’m absolute shit at archery. Pistol, no problem, but don’t put a bow in my hands and expect anything good to come of it. Pars would not let that go.” He reached for his wine, then cut his eyes to mine. “All right, confession time: who was your favorite character?”
“Of the Fellowship?”
“Exactly.”
“If we’re being honest…” I shrugged. “Always kind of partial to Gimli.”
“What, the dwarf?”
“He was funny!”
“Okay, that’s it,” said Yven, jabbing one finger toward the door. “Get out.”
“I’m sorry,” I teased, “was I supposed to pick the pretty blond?”
He ran a hand through his short, lightly tousled hair, which was almost pale enough to pass as white. “Do you not like blonds?”
“Never said that, did I?”
No, I had nothing against blonds, particularly not the one giving me sly looks from the other side of the table, but I couldn’t afford to be plain. What was growing between us was dangerous enough without adding blatant flirting to the mix.
“I’m glad you’re coming for Christmas,” I said instead. “Aunt Lily’s a pretty good cook, and I always eat too much.”
“Looking forward to it,” Yven replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Actually…better. Thanks for patching me up.”
“Any time, Rosie,” he said, and smiled as I returned to my dinner.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
I didn’t want to crawl off Yven’s nice couch in the dark on Saturday morning. The potions had worked well, and I wasn’t quite such a case for urgent care after a few hours of treatment, but when I compared the battering ahead of me to my current state of cocooning in the cool room, buried in blankets and surrounded by flowers, I saw no incentive to stop playing dead.
But Yven was up and quietly making the biscuits I loved, and the dim glow of the stovetop light was aggravation enough to keep me from slipping off again. Resigning myself to my fate, I untangled the covers from around my legs, mumbled a greeting to Yven, and shuffled off to the shower.
When I emerged fifteen minutes later, slightly more conscious and glowing pink from the hot water, I wiped the steam from the mirror and studied my face. The discoloration around my eye had vanished, and my lip had mended itself. The scratches on my forehead and cheeks had healed without a trace of scarring, and when I searched the rest of myself, I found only faint indications of the worst deep bruising, pale yellow splotches on my skin. My ribs were still slightly tender, but my knee and elbow felt good as ever. That healing potion was almost miraculous, I decided, though I sincerely hoped Yven hadn’t paid for it out of pocket. Having experienced its effects, I could understand why a single vial would cost him a month’s salary—and his art lessons weren’t worth nearly that much.
Yven, who was more of a morning person than I could ever aspire to be, was in good spirits over breakfast, pressing carbs upon me and keeping the coffee hot. It being the weekend, he’d opted for an eggplant-colored sweater over perfectly creased khakis, looking far more presentable than I was in my pajamas and towel turban. He had little on the day’s schedule—some light reading, a touch of housework, a lunchtime meeting with his tiny club of orchid afficionados—and I envied him as I struggled into a fresh sports bra and attempted to braid my wet hair.
As before, Yven drove me to DPP with plenty of time to spare, but he paused outside the gym and pulled his phone from his pocket. “If you break anything, even more ribs, call me,” he quietly insisted. “Emarae can’t force you to train injured, and let’s get you to a healer before I have to carry you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to reassure myself.
“You have my number. I’m not doing anything today that can’t be postponed.”
I would have hugged him, but we were in public, so I settled for patting his shoulder. “Have fun,” I said, then lifted my half-emptied travel mug in salute and strode into the gym for round two, hoping the nice troll on the team wouldn’t throw me into the wall again. He’d been very apologetic after the fact, but ow.
To my shock, the second day wasn’t nearly as bad as the first had been. While we had a short melee in the morning, most of our time was spent in breakout sessions—weight training, speed drills, and plenty of practice with offensive and defensive magic. In the midafternoon, Emarae took me into a small training room to work with me individually, and he grunted with satisfaction as I repulsed some of his blows.
“You’re growing more familiar with your spells,” he said, sending a small fireball my way. As I scrambled to deflect it, he added, “The director asked to see some of the recordings.”
“What recordings?”
“From yesterday. I tape the melees for later diagnostics,” he replied, casually flicking a wave of naked force toward me.
I blocked it, though the strain left me panting. “And?”
“And he’s pleased with your progress. As am I.”
Another quick fireball made me drop to my knees to avoid a burn. “Then he’s blind.”
Emarae chuckled and waited until I’d pushed myself off the mats to strike again. “Not at all. Consider how far behind you began. You’ve made excellent progress just in the last month, Red—I look forward to seeing what you can do in a year’s time.”
If I was going to be hanging out with Emarae for a full year, I’d need gallons of healing potion. “Maybe then I won’t get my ass handed to me in a melee.”
He paused, then cocked his head and regarded me curiously. “You understand this isn’t false praise, right? I don’t do false praise, but I will tell you when your performance is notably good.” Folding his arms, he said, “In truth, I was expecting you to be a disaster when the director brought us together, but kid, you’re intuiting. Maybe you don’t have a formal education, and I’m sure there are spells beyond your skill that others your age could manage, but considering how recently you began working with magic at all…you’ve been remarkable. Might find a use for you in Interdiction yet.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “If not for that slight issue with my background…”
“Look, if the director’s willing to ignore that, then I’m not going to second-guess his judgment. You’re all right,” he said, then surprised me with a blast of force that sent me skidding across the mats on my back.
