Chapter 22

 

It was Saturday again.

This time, Aleda had no rehearsals to attend. No musical to put on. She effectively had the day off.

So she did not much appreciate the fact that, for the third time, she was being awakened by a loud pounding at the front door.

Bloody Talia.

“Morning,” she muttered groggily in the girl’s direction, immediately heading back to the stairs. She didn’t even feel like waking up for good yet. “Mom and Papá should be home in a minute.”

Mm, bed. She could finally sleep all day if she wanted. Yeah… that sounded nice.

“Hey kid, where do you think you’re going?”

“Wha?”

“Don’t you remember? We had a deal, little Leda—or did you forget?”

Oh, damn it all. Aleda gave her a heartfelt groan.

“Scouting trip again?” she asked, her face twisted in a sleepy pout.

“Right you are! Hey, come on. Don’t make that face. It’s only until noon.”

“…Really?”

“Really. Then we’ll come back here and I can finally give you some real training.”

…Oh.

Damn again.

“Of course,” Aleda sighed, resigned.

Silly of her, to think that she would be able to spend the day relaxing. From the look of it, she wouldn’t be able to do that for quite some time. There was no helping it. She had agreed to let Talia train her to hunt until May, and until then she had to do what she asked. It was either that or admit to Mom and Papá that she didn’t want to be a hunter.

The irony, of course, was not lost on her.

At least the next few hours went quickly enough. Having spent over half of the previous weekend sitting in these woods with Talia, and half of the night every night since, a few hours on a sunny morning was a walk in the park. The question was, how was this “training session” going to go? Talia had yet to tell her anything of what she had planned, insisting that it would be better to just show her on Saturday.

Sure enough, when noon rolled around Talia trotted them back out of the woods and back to her house.

“Your turn, Aria!” she called as she walked through the front door. Mom emerged from the kitchen, covered in flour.

“What happened to you?” Aleda asked.

“I was trying to make rolls for our dinner tonight,” she said. She looked herself over and frowned. “Didn’t turn out all that well, though. I think I’m just going to have to buy the kind in the tube later.”

“That’s fine.”

“You girls going to do your training thing now?”

“Yeah. I was thinking down in the basement,” Talia said. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, help yourself! Just don’t break anything, okay?”

“Like what? There’s hardly anything down there,” Aleda protested.

“I was talking about you, sweetie.”

“…Oh. Right. I’ll be careful.”

“Okay. Have fun!”

“Well, I might have fun,” Talia teased. Aleda rolled her eyes.

Mom wiped her hands on her jeans again—getting them even more covered in flour and chunky dough—and opened the door, only to nearly run into Ryan as he was about to knock.

“Oh! Ryan, you’re here…What are you doing here? Your shift isn’t until later.”

He sighed. “I’ve been asking myself that very question.”

“Good timing!” Talia said. “Come on, big brother, we’re using the basement.”

Both Aleda and Ryan made faces at Talia, who had already turned and started down the stairs to the basement.

There was a moment of confusion as they both attempted to walk through the door at the same time, and they exchanged a brief facial shrug. She wasn’t happy with it. He, clearly, was not happy with it. There was nothing either one could think to do about it, so they were both just going to have to deal with it.

When they got to the basement, they found Talia already poking around, surveying the cramped space. Aleda hadn’t spent much time down there since her family had moved in; it wasn’t exactly the homiest part of their house. The ceiling was low, the floor was nothing but concrete, and the walls were covered in cracking paint and faded stains. The few odds and ends that they had not put in the spare bedroom were tucked in the corner.

Talia was currently sorting through these. She gave an appreciative noise and pulled out an old handgun.

“Nice!” she said, inspecting it. “Large caliber… Alex’s?”

“Nah, Mom’s” Aleda said. “That’s the gun she used when she was living in New York.”

“Oh-h, that’s right! She was hunting back then, too, wasn’t she? Before she was called.”

“Yeah. Did pretty good, too, from the stories she tells.”

Talia was already back in the pile. “Old boots…Crossbow, nice. Ooh!” she exclaimed suddenly. She produced a pair of old leather gloves, the fingers all cut off. “Come here, let’s see if these fit.”

“Er, okay… Why?”

Talia handed her the gloves. “Good for training. I’ll bet Aria used these when she was your age, too. Helps when you’re punching blocks of wood.”

Aleda raised her eyebrows and glanced at Ryan. He shrugged.

No help there.

She tried on the gloves. They were a little bit tight, but not so much that she couldn’t wear them.

“Good!” Talia said. “That’ll make things a lot easier.”

“…Make what things a lot easier?”

Talia grinned. The last time Aleda had seen that grin was when Talia had first brought her into the bar in Philly.

Not a good sign.

“Don’t let her scare you,” Ryan said over her shoulder. Aleda turned to look at him. “It’s just a few easy exercises for now.”

“See?” Talia said brightly. “I told you you’d be good at teaching!”

Ryan muttered something to himself and shut up.

“He’s right, of course,” she continued. “Today I just want to go over what we’ll be doing, anyway.”

“…Alright…” Aleda said warily.

“Right. Well…”

Talia paused for a moment, apparently thinking.

“Ryan?” she asked finally. “What was the first thing Dad taught me?”

“He didn’t. I went to the roof one day and found out you’d destroyed my dummy.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, smiling fondly at the memory. “It was an alien invader, and it would have abducted us all if I hadn’t stopped it.”

Aleda stared at her for a moment, one eyebrow sharply raised, then shook her head and shrugged. “Actually?” she mused, “I’m not that surprised.”

“You’re getting used to her,” Ryan said. “Careful—next thing you know, you’ll start to think she’s making sense.”

Aleda snorted; Talia pouted at her brother.

“Be nice,” she chided. “You’re sleeping in my apartment.”

“I pay half the rent.”

“…Mine.”

“Okay.”

“Now, where were we?”

“Easy exercises?” Aleda offered.

“Right! Easy exercises. Well, the first thing to remember is that you’ll be a lot stronger once you’re called.”

“How strong?”

Ryan bent down and dented the floor with his fist.

“Not quite that strong,” Talia admitted. “Ryan’s a bit of a freak. But you’ll be able to lift a few hundred pounds without breaking a sweat. That means you’ll also be able to do quite a lot of damage to demons without any trouble. They’ll still be able to hurt you, though, so I recommend a little bit of acrobatics.”

“Er.”

“Talia, not everybody is a gymnast,” Ryan pointed out.

“Oh, come on. Even you can do a flip!”

“Well, true.”

“I think I should mention,” Aleda interjected, “That I’ve never done a flip in my life.”

“Don’t worry, it’s easy! The hardest part is getting used to going upside-down. But that’s what we’re here for!”

“’We’?” Ryan questioned.

“Yes, ‘we’,” Talia said. “Alright, little Leda, watch this.”

She looked hard at the ceiling, jumping a few times and tapping it with her hand. Finally satisfied, she lept and spun backwards in the air, landing gracefully on her feet. Aleda gaped at her.

“I can’t do that!” she protested.

“Not yet, you can’t. You’ll get there. Now, did you see how I tucked in my legs while I was in the air?”

“Yeah.”

“When you’re in a tight space like this, you’ll spin faster and lower if you tuck in as soon as you’re off the ground. Outside, of course, you can stay in the air as long as gravity will let you. Either way, it’s a good way to confuse whatever you’re fighting, especially if they think they’ve got a hold of you. With me so far?”

“I think so.”

“Good! Now, turn around.”

Slightly confused, Aleda turned so that her back was to Talia. The other girl stepped close and gripped her hands firmly so that Aleda’s palms were pressed down on hers. Ryan stepped close as well, facing her.

“Talia…?” Aleda said nervously. “What are you doing?”

“Flipping you, silly! When I tell you to, jump as hard as you can and tuck in your knees. Ryan’s going to help you flip and make sure you don’t bang into the ceiling.”

“Oh, geez…”

“Ready? Jump!”

Caught slightly off guard, Aleda faltered in her jump. She did manage to get a few inches off the ground, though, and Ryan quickly caught her below the knees. With his help, she made it completely over Talia’s head; Talia, for her part, knelt down and pushed her up by her hands so that she landed behind her, albeit awkwardly.

She smoothed out her shirt with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Not bad,” Talia said. “For your first time, anyway.”

“I feel like an idiot,” Aleda admitted.

“You’ll get over that. Alright, get back here.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re doing it again.”

“No!” Aleda exclaimed, horrified.

“Come on, again.”

She whimpered a little and obliged.

“How many times do I have to do this?”

“Just a few more for today, then we’re moving on to something different.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Great.”

She flipped again. It wasn’t much better. By the fourth flip she managed to land on both her feet. By the fifth she didn’t feel so much vertigo while she was in the air.

“Not bad!” Talia said. “Okay, I think front flips next.”

“Merciful heaven, more flips?”

“And handstands after that, I think.”

“What happened to ‘easy exercises’!?”

“Just wait, you’ll thank me later.”

“I doubt it.”

“As rare as it is that I agree with Talia, she is right—you’re better off learning to do these things now,” Ryan interjected.

“Not you, too?” Aleda groaned. He scowled at her.

“If you’d rather get yourself killed, be my guest,” he growled.

“Ignore him,” Talia said, putting her arm around the other girl. “He’s just cranky because he just got older.”

“Older? How old are you now?”

“He’s fifty-five now. Aren’t you, Old Man?”

“When did this happen?” Aleda asked, baffled.

“Thursday,” Ryan admitted grudgingly. “The fourteenth.”

“Wha-… But then why didn’t you say anything? We sat out there all night, and you didn’t even tell me it was your birthday!”

“I don’t celebrate my birthday.”

Aleda stared at him for a moment. When it became clear that no further explanation was coming, she turned and stared instead at Talia.

“We always celebrated his adoption day when we were kids,” she explained. “Dad always said that celebrating a birthday was just celebrating when somebody new joined the family, so that’s what we did.”

“And when’s that?”

“Spring.”

“April eighteenth,” Talia clarified again. “Don’t worry, we always do something big and embarrassing for him.”

Aleda smirked at him. “He must love that.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes back at her. “It’s terrific. Can we get on with this, please?”

“Whatever you say, Old Man.”