1
PANDORA
I was seven the first time Uncle Slayer showed me how to wield a knife, in a cabin tucked into the woods. Papa had been there too, joking about all the ways I could screw it up, but Uncle Slayer guided me to skin the rabbit and cut it open to remove the insides.
“Don’t be squeamish,” Papa had said, and I remember wondering what I could possibly be squeamish about.
“I can’t believe you’re squeamish about this!” I shout at Samantha. “You aren’t going to break my legs with a measly little kick!”
The gym is nothing like the cabin—as long as I stay out of the large hall with the bleeding walls. This training room has mats and padding and a punching bag in the corner. The mirrors along the walls show off Samantha’s wobbly movements from every angle.
At least she dressed for training. I didn’t even think she had any appropriate clothes, but she’s in a pair of workout tights and a beige t-shirt, and her blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She isn’t even wearing any makeup.
Compared to her, I’m positively dressed up. I hadn’t bothered to remove my earrings, and my shirt is a loud, neon pink with a snakeemblazoned on it in white. I’ve got my brown hair in two braids that swish every time I demonstrate a dodge.
Samantha scowls at me. “I’m not afraid of breaking your legs,” she retorts.
She doesn’t try the kick I’d shown her, though.
“Maybe we should go back to the punching bag,” Carly suggests. Carly’s got the same black workout tights as Samantha, but she’s wearing a baggy blue sweater over her shirt. She tied back her thick black hair too.
We look like a proper workout class.
Samantha casts a grateful look in her direction. “I think that would be better,” she says. “I need to practice more before I try this out on a person.”
I roll my eyes. “You can hit me. I know you want to. Every single time I annoyed you, you were imagining slapping me a few times. Right, Sammy?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps at me. “Unlike you,Panda, I don’t get off on hitting people.” She takes a few more steps away from me. “This is stupid. I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea.”
I take a step closer to Samantha. “Because you need to know how to defend yourself, and the school only offers lame karate classes. Or boxing, I guess, if you want to join River in beating your fists bloody.”
Sheneedsto know how to defend herself. She can’t be helpless anymore.
Samantha can’t get caught again.
I won’t allow it.
Carly huffs loudly. “There might be classes in town?”
I shake my head. “Where? Harmony’s got like, five people living in it. They’re probably shocked when a cat gets stuck up a tree. They aren’t teaching women how to fight.”
“Harmony isn’t that small,” Carly retorts. She stands up from where she was sitting on the mat and walks over to me. “It’s great thatyou’re trying to teach us, Pandora, but maybe you aren’t the best one for the job?”
For a split second, my vision goes hazy, but I smile through it. “I’m definitely the best person to teach you how to destroy men. But we can skip the kicking. That was a dumb idea anyway. How are you going to overpower a man with your muscles alone? Let’s work on knives instead.”
“That sounds like an even worse idea,” Samantha says. She huffs out a frustrated sound. “All right, fine. Let’s try this again.”
“Good!” I clap her on the shoulder and get into position. “You won’t have the strength to overpower most men, so unbalancing them and fighting as dirty as possible are your best bet. If you don’t have a knife?—”
“Why would she have a knife?” Carly mutters.
“If you don’t have a knife,” I reiterate, “then it’s attacking the groin, the armpits, and the knees. So come on, unbalance me.”
For all of her complaints and hesitations, Samantha has been paying close attention to what I’m teaching her. She might be reluctant to put it into practice, but I haven’t missed the way she’s watched me with narrow, careful eyes.
She doesn’t want a repeat of getting taken against her will.
She thinks I haven’t noticed how jumpy she is, how she flinches from shadows and barely leaves her room unless it’s for class. But I’m not blind, and it’s obvious that the ordeal with the Bouchard Syndicate has left a huge mark on her.
