had been a fluke that she’d happened to be there at the very same time Royce went in, but no less dangerous for all of that.
Analie was bound and determined that Freddy was not going to stay here. He was not brave and this house could cause his already frayed nerves to snap. Stripes were creeping around the sides of his neck, though he’d tugged his hoodie up to hide them. Some shifters turned when stressed. There was a YouTube video of a politician answering questions when he suddenly imploded into a sparrow.
She’d given it five stars.
Now it didn’t seem that funny at all. She turned to Royce, hoping he wasn't too peeved with her to deny her request.
“I know it’s lame of me to ask, but Freddy needs to get back. Can you help him with that?” She glanced at Freddy. He was standing still, stiff as a board. Yes, he was stressed. She turned back to Royce. “Hopefully sort of soonish?”
“Of course,” Royce replied, a touch of cat-that-got-the-canary edging into his expression. He nudged Jessica a bit to one side so he could get to his phone, tugging it out of his pocket and texting John to either call a cab or get someone who could drive to Pennsylvania on short notice.
Now Analie and Freddy both were indebted to him. Things had turned in his favor, and had gone better than expected. He’d be sure to use it—all of it—to his advantage. The thought was endlessly pleasing, since it meant that he was once again in charge of the situation and had leverage over all around him.
Life was good.
Chapter 13
A few days later, Analie was bouncing off the walls in Mouse’s living room. Literally, she was running in circles and doing handsprings that she only landed half the time. Every five minutes or so, she’d run to her bedroom and text Freddy.
WHERE R U?!
To which Freddy would reply with a street name that meant nothing to Analie, who only knew the area by its landmarks.
So she’d run back out to the living room and dash around again. At one point she did settle down enough to make sandwiches and some instant lemonade, but that calm lasted less than ten minutes. She was the epitome of a Goliath not idling well.
While Analie rushed around, Mouse was attempting to show Sebastian some of the finer points of using a curved blade like a scimitar over the various types of schlager blades he was used to. It was slow going because they had to be careful of Analie, and Mouse could not verbally explain her points, having to write everything down or get reference books to answer Sebastian’s finer questions. That didn’t temper his enthusiasm, particularly as he was getting to learn real instead of simulated combat.
He’d left Ashi and Christoph to their own devices upstairs. Thad had left for work a couple hours ago, and Sebastian was bored out of his mind without his brother around. He’d been grateful when Mouse had offered to teach him swordplay, and took advantage every opportunity he had – basically, whenever Thad was out of the house and Mouse was home.
* * *
Ashi felt a vein throbbing on his forehead as he went through his martial arts forms. Normally his daily ritual channeled his energy toward a Zen-like focus.
He was currently finding it very hard to achieve that state because of Christoph. Normally he could tune out his surroundings and just feel the flow of the movements, one into the other. There were moments during these times when Ashi felt that if he chose to strike just right then, he might split open the space-time continuum and see past the universe into Nirvana itself.
Christoph was cutting right through that.
With one comment.
“It lacks ‘oomph’ without your skirt.”
“It’s not a skirt!” Ashi bellowed, completely breaking form and turning toward Christoph.
The shopping trip had not included pants he could work out in, so he was back to wearing his old, ragged sweats. The “skirt” Christoph was referring to was Ashi’s pair of Hakama pants, which were very wide-legged pants first worn by samurai, and did indeed look like a pleated, ankle-length skirt. He didn’t wear them very often since the styles of martial arts he taught didn’t call for them. Usually he wore them when sparring, or when someone could convince him to show off a little Kendo, which meant Ashi going after the student with the worst progress with a wooden sword.
“You should get a skirt