Chapter 10. Jenny
Jenny
“What the hell is that?” Ronnie pointed to a squirming, squawking bundle of brown and white feathers in the grass strip behind our parking lot. He parked the van, turned off the engine, and grabbed a wooden cudgel with iron bands from beside his seat.
I peered out the window. “Red-tailed hawk. Do you have work gloves in here?”
“Glove box.” He pointed.
“Who keeps gloves in the glove box?” I leaned past Temple, who was still snoring, and opened the glove box. In addition to old leather work gloves, there were two pairs of padded winter gloves, blue mittens that looked hand-knit, and a small box of latex gloves.
I hopped out of the van and pulled on the leather gloves as I approached the hawk. Its raspy squawks grew louder. “Easy, boy. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?” Ronnie stayed several steps behind, cudgel in hand.
“The males are smaller.” I waved him back. “Put that thing away. The poor guy weighs three pounds, tops, and he’s obviously scared.”
“A Kensington has to be prepared,” he said, but he returned the cudgel to the van.
“I thought that was the Boy Scouts.”
The hawk was tangled in a thin white net. The ends were weighted with large black buttons.
“What happened to it?” asked Ronnie.
“Mice.”
He stared at me like he was trying to figure out if I was messing with him.
“Second Life Books and Gifts is . . . special. Temple’s family built the house two centuries ago, and they’ve lived here all that time.
” I crouched and slowly reached toward the hawk.
“They put all sorts of spells on it. Over time, their magic seeped into the house and the grounds. It grew into a repository for the Finns’ power. ”
“Like a battery?”
I chuckled. “Right idea, but more like a nuclear plant. Temple can draw on that power for his spells, and the house responds to him and his needs. Once the house realized Annette and I were Temple’s friends, it started doing the same for us.
And over the generations, it seems to have affected the mice, too. ”
The hawk snapped at my glove. Inch-long talons clamped onto the leather. I’d have bruises on the flesh beneath. I encircled his body with my other hand. “You’re all right. I just want to see what they did to— Oh, those thieving little punks.”
“What is it?” asked Ronnie.
“My dental floss went missing two weeks ago. The mice used it to make their net.” I recognized the buttons, too. They were from one of Annette’s long winter jackets. She’d be pissed when she found out. “Do you have scissors in that van?”
He returned moments later with a pair of old kitchen scissors. The gloves complicated things, but I began snipping the strands of the net the best I could, being careful to avoid the feathers.
“The mice are hunters,” he said. “Is that your influence?”
“I retired from hunting a long time ago,” I said firmly, ignoring the pang of emptiness and regret that accompanied the words.
“The mice started this all on their own about two years back. I think a bird must have gotten one of them, and they’ve been out for revenge ever since.
They go after owls and the occasional eagle, too.
” I freed the right wing, and the hawk promptly bludgeoned my arm with it.
“For a while, they were trying to capture smaller birds, like grackles and doves. I think they were hoping to ride them. We’d find birds with little reins and harnesses made from wool or twine or whatever else the mice could steal. ”
“Awesome.” He knelt and held the hawk’s right wing while I worked on the left. “You didn’t look retired when you were tossing me out of my van last night.”
“If that had been a true hunt, I’d have put an arrow through your left eye before you knew I was there.”
He laughed halfheartedly, like he wasn’t sure whether I was joking. “If you were trying to get away from that life, why move in with Annette Thorne and Temple Finn? That’s like a recovering addict renting a room in a crack house.”
“Word of advice. Don’t compare this place to a crack house out loud unless you want to wake up in the middle of the night with sewage backing up in your bedroom.”
He glanced at the house. “No offense intended.”
I got the other wing loose, set the scissors on the grass, and slowly pulled the remnants of the net free.
“Originally, I came here to help Temple break a financial curse and work through the aftermath. I called Annette in for backup. Once we untangled all of that, I realized I didn’t want to leave.
This felt like home in a way no other place had.
It felt safe. We understood one another. Also, Temple’s cooking is to die for.”
The hawk shook off the last strands and launched himself into the air, flying fast and hard like he wanted to get as far away as possible.
Ronnie watched the hawk go. “Why didn’t the mice finish him off?”
“Maybe they wanted him to warn other hawks to stay away.” I gave him his gloves and walked toward the house. Then, just to mess with him, I added, “Or maybe they ran out of gunpowder for their cannons.”
· · ·
Ronnie lunged at me with his knife.
I slapped the outside of his hand hard enough to send the wooden practice weapon clattering across the basement floor.
My other hand formed a claw that clamped on to the front of his throat.
“You shifted your weight onto your back leg before you struck. You might as well have shouted, ‘It’s stabbing time!’”
I let go of his neck. He pulled back and rubbed his hand.
Annette would have disapproved. I could imagine her grumbling. “Stop teaching the wannabe killer how to be better at it.”
But I couldn’t shake how much Ronnie reminded me of myself at that age. Weaker and less skilled but with the same dreams of saving the world, the same burning need to prove himself.
I didn’t want him to make the same irreparable mistakes I’d made. And if he was like me, a good workout would help him open up. It might even give me a chance at getting through to him.
“Try again,” I said.
This time, he tried to surprise me by throwing the knife as soon as he picked it up. I gave him points for mixing things up, but he still telegraphed his attack, making it easy enough to deal with.
“Okay, so you can catch knives,” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Your form was good. The knife would have stuck me point first in the throat.”
He took a bamboo shinai—a kendo practice sword—from the weapons rack and gave it a twirl. “My parents used to train me. Swords, bows, guns. Throwing knives. Anything that can kill monsters.”
I adjusted my grip on the knife and motioned for him to come at me. “Sounds a lot like my childhood.”
He circled to my left. “Were your parents Hunters of Artemis, too?”
“I was adopted. My father was an actuary. My mother was a dental hygienist. They didn’t know about my after-school job.
” I almost missed Ronnie’s next attack. I twisted out of the way, but my back twinged in protest. I tapped his chest with the tip of my knife.
“My mentor was named Felipe Aguilar, and if he were training you, these wouldn’t be wooden weapons. ”
“How many kills did you have?”
“You want to know my high score?” I straightened. “Did your parents teach you this was a game?”
His face darkened, and he turned away. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Tell me about the harvester.” I kept an eye on his stance in case he tried to catch me off guard again. “Was that the first monster you tried to kill?”
“I helped with a pixie hive outside of an elementary school outside of Birmingham, but I don’t think that counts. Ma did most of the work. I just sprayed the hive with Raid when she was finished.”
“How did you feel when you stabbed the harvester?” I thought back to my first real fight. “Were you afraid? Exhilarated? Did you feel powerful and righteous?”
He cocked his head. “Not afraid—I wasn’t scared or anything. More like I was in a dream, like time slowed down and sped up all at once.”
I understood that feeling all too well. “What was it like the first time the knife pierced her skin?”
He lowered his sword. “Her?”
“The harvester was female.”
He glanced away, and I could have killed him eleven times in the pause that followed. “There was hardly any resistance. I didn’t expect it to be so . . .”
“Easy?” I returned the knife to its place in the rack.
“Felipe taught me that killing was easy because it was my calling. The hunting and tracking and all the planning and preparation were work, but the actual killing? Landing the blow that takes a life? That was nothing. A split second for the knife to slash a throat or the arrow to pierce a heart.”
He leaned his sword against the weight bench and picked up one of the dumbbells. “This is starting to sound like a lecture.”
“How old are you, Ronnie?”
“Seventeen. And before you ask, I got my GED more than a year ago.” His face turned red as he struggled to curl the dumbbell. I didn’t tell him it was one of my warm-up weights.
“When I was your age—” Goddess, I sounded like such a stereotypical old woman.
“Felipe sent me on my first hunt when I was thirteen. By the time I turned fifteen, I was one of the best Hunters the Guardians Council had ever had. It wasn’t enough.
I wanted to do more. So, I brought my friends into it.
We called ourselves the Slay Team. Stupid name, I know. ”
Felipe had been furious. He’d threatened to strip me of my powers for violating the Council’s laws of secrecy.
Hunters were supposed to work solo. We weren’t even allowed to talk to our counterparts on other continents, except through our mentors.
But as months passed and Felipe saw how effective the Slay Team was, he began to come around.
“I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to them,” I said.
“What happened?”
“Exactly what I wanted. I taught them to kill.”
“To kill monsters,” he said. “Right?”
“That’s right. Monsters . . . many of which were intelligent.
They could talk and threaten and beg for their lives.
Sometimes, we hunted and killed things that looked and acted human.
In the beginning, the team struggled with it.
Kayla wanted to quit. Thalia started drinking.
But they got over it. The guilt faded. Then it went away completely. ”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Ronnie.
“I turned my friends into weapons, just like Felipe did to me. And it broke them.”
He was listening, though he tried to look disinterested as he switched to two-handed curls with the dumbbell.
“The violence spills over,” I said. “Someone shoves you in the hallway, so you react the way you’ve trained to: quickly and violently.
We sent three bullies to the hospital that first year.
Soon, everyone else knew to keep their distance.
In our senior year, Kayla killed a teacher over a bad grade on her Hamlet essay. ”
“Damn . . . Was that when you retired?”
“Unfortunately, no. The team broke up, and I went back to working solo. I didn’t hit rock bottom until I was twenty-three.” I picked up a pair of escrima sticks. “Don’t let this become easy.”
“Do you still talk to any of them? The ‘Slay Team’?”
Old, familiar pain tightened my chest and stomach. “Kayla and Raj both died. Alex lost an arm and an eye. Emily and Thalia survived mostly intact, but only because they got far away from me.”
“If this life is so destructive, why try to help me?”
So I know exactly what I’m up against if I have to stop you.
“Because I know you’re not ready to walk away, and I want you to live long enough to become more than just a killer.
Now let’s work on your breathing. You’ve been taking a quick breath before you attack.
It’s one of your tells. Take a series of deep, slow breaths instead.
It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, making you calmer and more clear-headed.
When you think you’re ready, come at me. ”
“Wait, you’re telling me Jenny Winter has a little intern now? Who the fuck is this guy, and where the fuck did he come from?”