20. Ruby
twenty
“Our client wants to know why Mr. Cross is not dead yet,” Rowan hisses at me, struggling to keep up. “And the rest of the Reds are starting to ask questions. It’s been weeks and he’s not even on the schedule yet.”
“Do we know who hired us?” I ignore the rest of her statements, keeping pace to put distance between us and the rest of the reds exiting the meeting.
“Anonymous.”
“Not really, though, right?”
“I dug Rubes, whoever wants him dead covered their tracks,” she hesitates, “and, they completed the objective.”
I pause to look at her, not following.
She pulls my braid from behind my back, a red ribbon tied in a perfect bow on the end. It’s not a coincidence that the first meeting Alice attends is the meeting in which they succeed. There are no coincidences in life. Only fate.
Fate can either lift you up or bring you to your knees, which is exactly where I find myself ten minutes later. The smallest Amelia stands in front of me with a wooden training blade in her hand. Her movements are jerky and unpolished, but we’ll get there.
“You must think of your blade as an extension of you,” I tell the girls, rising to my feet. “It is part of you, as if your hand has been replaced with hilt and steel.”
A middle Amelia stabs at the dummy in front of her, her body stiff.
“We are women. We are graceful. Killer ballerinas. Light on our feet and fluid.” I pull my knife from its sheath on my thigh. The room spins, the earth stills. I stand behind the dummy, my blade at its throat and my eyes on Alice. See me. Be me.
She twirls, her blonde hair fanning around her. When she comes to a stop she lunges forward and then loses balance and falls.
The oldest of the girls laughs, and the others follow.
Alice offers the girl a smile, but the smile is a warning that only I see. She raises her arm behind her, the training knife soars through the air. There are gasps and then a cry as blood pours from Amelia’s nose. The rest of the Amelia’s stop laughing. Alice is doubled over in giggles.
“You,” I say pointing at Alice, “stay here. The rest of you take Amelia down to Rosalie.”
The girls shuffle quickly and silently out of the training facility, leaving me alone with Alice.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “You learn to do a lot of things when you’re bored. No TV to watch, no video games to play. And you don’t go to school ‘cause the teachers ask too many questions.”
I hand her another training knife. “This time hit the target over there.”
She takes the knife from my hand, brings it back and sends it hilt over blade into the target. The hilt hits the bullseye, and the knife tumbles to the floor.
I take one of the throwing knives off the hook on the wall. She takes it eagerly and weighs it in her hand. She brings the knife back, throws it, and the blade sinks into the bullseye.
“Again,” I say, handing her another one.
She does it again.
I hand her another, but this time I instruct her to throw it at the dummy and to hit him in center chest.
She does as she is told. Remarkable is an understatement.
“Pick up that sparring blade.” She picks it up. Touches the blade across her fingers. She’s not scared of it. She’s intrigued, curious even.
“Slice his throat.”
She moves silently, like she must have in the meeting, like I witnessed the night I saved her. Soft on her feet, sure of her steps, she reaches the dummy, but fumbles with the knife. The tip hits the dummy in the shoulder and bounces off, sending Alice sprawling.
I offer her my hand, but she shakes me off.
“Tell me,” I say, “How did you do it? Those girls have been trying for weeks.”
“It was so easy when you were all looking at the screen. I just had to wait until nobody was looking. Besides, the other girls, they’re too loud, and they don’t know how to wait. They just move quickly to try and get things over with. Sometimes you need to move slowly to not be seen.”
So much wisdom in such a little girl. Maybe she should be teaching stealth. She attempts to slice the dummy’s throat again, only this time she moves with the practice blade in her hand, its hilt shoved down the sleeve of her shirt.
Be one with the blade. She repeats this method over and over again, flawlessly.
She could have been a dancer. A real dancer. She could have curtsied on stage and had flowers thrown at her feet.
Instead, she dances with death.