PERIWINKLE

When I walk into the workout room where the self-defense classes are held, my heart sinks twice. First when I see the burly, ruddy haired shadowkind who tried to have me banished to the shadow realm when I first arrived standing at the front of the room as our teacher. Second when my gaze slides over to see Gloss standing with arms folded over her chest by the far wall.

What’s she doing in this class? It’s supposed to be for reform students.

“Wonderful,” Fen mumbles next to me.

I summon all the good spirits I can for her benefit. What kind of a friend will I be if I drag her down rather than cheering her up?

“Maybe we’ll learn something to fend her off,” I murmur, and consider it a win when I get a giggle.

As more students arrive, it gets harder to keep up my optimistic attitude. Mirage bounds into the room with a flip followed by a somersault, but the next couple of beings who pass through the doorway are the brawny woman and her clawed friend, Vim, who got angry with me in the Mortal Geography class.

The moment they notice me, their eyes narrow, as if they’re psychically debating with each other how to best demolish me into kibble.

A few of Gloss’s reform student friends sashay in next, giving her a wave—and our teacher coy looks through their lowered eyelashes. Lust laces the air like overripe plums.

One of them drops her voice to a sultry tone. “How are you today, Gnash?”

If she’s trying to flirt, he doesn’t appear to be interested. “Looking forward to finally getting this class started, Tansy,” he says gruffly, scowling at the doorway.

A few more students trickle in, including a couple who go to stand by Gloss. There are five beings now who I haven’t seen in my past reform classes.

It’s a smaller class than usual, the schedule calling for only level 1s and dividing us up into four different rooms. Why would they bring in extra beings on top of that?

Fen must pick up on my confusion. She tips her head closer to mine. “For the self-defense classes, the teachers ask trusted higher-level students to help with the hands on exercises. Unfortunately, we don’t get any choice in who those students are.”

Gloss glances our way at that exact moment. Fen clamps her mouth shut even though I can’t see how the other woman could have heard her.

Gnash claps his hands together, punctuating the sound with a slight growl. All twenty or so pairs of eyes in the room snap to our teacher.

He prowls from one side of the room to the other. Fen mentioned to me that he’s a tiger shifter, and the powerful feline influence comes through in his gait even in human form.

“Today, we’re going to focus on hunters,” he says. “Out of the three types of mortals who approach shadowkind with malicious intent, some would say they’re our biggest concern. Their strategies for incapacitating shadowkind can be just as debilitating as human sorcery, but many of them are looking not just to capture us but to outright destroy us.”

A shiver races over my skin. The one rare upside to the shadow realm is that while I could starve there to the point of being the thinnest shade of myself, I’d never actually die.

But in the mortal realm, we’re all mortal too.

Mirage springs forward with a burst of his fox ears from his head and a sharp-toothed grin. “To end us they have a great thirst, but there’s nothing to fear if we smash them first.”

My lips twitch at the singsong rhyme, but Gnash simply glowers at the shifter. “Less smashing, more avoiding attention. Put your ears away.”

Mirage chuckles and compiles with a nimble backflip. I’d imagine it’d be hard for any hunters to catch him.

Gnash’s peeved expression doesn’t change. He stalks over to the five higher level students and hands out batons with streamers of yellow fabric. I think gymnasts—those humans who tumble around a lot like Mirage does—use those.

And hunters?

The tiger shifter gives all of us an ominous look. “One of the hunters’ primary weapons are like whips but with streams of concentrated light. If the light hits you, it’ll damage your essence—temporarily disabling you if they get in a good blow. So if you encounter a human wielding one of those, you dodge as well as you can until you have a chance to make a run for it.”

He motions the higher-level students forward. “Gather in groups of three. Take turns avoiding the whip. The fewer times our student helpers manage to make contact, the higher your grade will be.”

Fen and I hurry over to join a skinny, pointy-chinned male shadowkind who’s moved to the far corner of the room, away from Gloss. That doesn’t stop the haughty woman’s gaze from following us with a disdainful sniff.

“I’ll go first,” I volunteer. It’s just a ribbon—no big deal.

The skinny guy lashes it toward me. A sheen on the fabric gleams beneath the overhead lights as if it really is glowing.

I jump to one side and then scramble to the other, my feet skidding on the exercise mats that cover the floor. Despite my best efforts, the ribbon catches me by my elbow.

After I’ve wriggled free, the student helper speaks up in a bored tone. “Maybe sure you keep track of all your limbs. Don’t just think about your core.”

I bob my head. I thought I was doing that, but I’ll give it a better shot.

I start tucking my arms closer to my body, but the next time he flicks the ribbon against my calf. Taking a deep breath, I prepare myself for another round.

It’s all right. I’m only just getting started. I’ve never practiced this before.

As I dodge another sweep of the ribbon, a twinge of pain jolts up through my ankles. I bite back a yelp and stumble—and feel the ribbon snagging on my wrist.

In the next group over, Vim snorts. “Looks like someone’s klutzy with her mouth and her feet. I bet you’d be scared of humans if you ran into one with a weapon like that.”

Embarrassment washes through me. I know it’s flickered in my hair before I can balance my emotions, because her eyebrows leap up.

Tansy has joined her and her brawny friend. She tsks her tongue mockingly. “Poor thing. You’ve upset her.”

I paste a determined smile on my face. “I’m all right. I’m sure we can all learn how to survive.”

The brawny woman frowns as if she’s taking that comment as an insult too. I whirl back toward my student helper before she can grumble at me.

After several more dodges, a couple more flares of pain, and a few more snags of the whip, I welcome the chance to step aside and give Fen her turn. As she begins the dance of dodging, my gaze slides over the other students.

Yellow ribbons are swishing through the air all around the room. Gnash walks between them, pausing to watch one group.

The woman next to him immediately pops her hip to the side and juts her chest out a little farther. The one who’s scrambling to steer clear of the ribbon catches sight of him and leaps up rather than to the side—maybe because that makes her skirt swish upward with a glimpse of her panties.

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He gives her a couple of tips, and she beams at him with a flirty tilt of her head. More whiffs of that ripened fruit flavor reach me.

Apparently the tiger shifter teacher has a lot of fans, whether because of his muscular power or because he’s one of the school’s highest authority teachers. When he moves on to the next group, I see one of the men there start preening rather than paying attention to the exercise.

With her lithe frame and flexibility, Fen has managed to evade all but one smack of the ribbon. When Gnash prowls over to watch her, a look that’s pure nerves flashes across her face.

She hops to the side, ducks, jerks backward, and nearly trips over her own feet. She might have been able to recover, except in her anxiety, a dribble of water seeps down her arm.

Her sneakers slip on the sudden puddle, and she tumbles into the mat face-first with the ribbon slapped across her back. A kick of tabasco-sharp embarrassment hits me a moment after the impact.

One of Gloss’s friends titters. Her voice carries across the room at an undertone, pretending she doesn’t mean to be heard. “There Drip goes piddling again.”

I clench my hands against a spurt of anger, but our teacher ignores the comment. He waits until Fen has gotten back to her feet, a wet patch on the skirt of her dress clinging to her leg.

“You’ve got to get a grip on that wishy-washy talent,” he says, and stalks off without another word.

I touch her arm. “You were doing really good for most of the exercise.”

Fen nods with a jerk, but shame still reddens her neck.

Once everyone’s had their practice, the student helpers rejoin Gnash to report on everyone’s scores. The tiger shifter notes down the numbers and then unzips a duffle bag by his feet. “For the second weapon we’ll study today, I’ve brought the real thing to show you. You won’t want to get too close.”

Using two bronze rods, he lifts a mess of shimmering gray strands out of the bag.

As the glinting object unfurls in front of us, my heart stutters so fast I lose my breath. A chill floods my entire body.

It’s a net. Like the one—the one that caught me—

Tansy’s barely muffled guffaw brings me back to the present. She’s staring at me. “She’s a wimp after all. Terrified just looking at the thing.”

My scalp is tingling—I raise my hands to my head, and an orangey-yellow glow wavers across my forearms. A few of the other students snicker.

After swallowing hard, I breathe as slowly and evenly as I can. The glow of fear fades alongside the tension whirling inside me.

“What’s the matter, Periwinkle?” Gloss asks in a crystal-smooth voice. “You can’t let yourself get that worked up over a little silver and iron, or they’ll catch you without even throwing the net right on you.”

A little silver and iron. As if those aren’t the two substances most toxic to shadowkind.

I give myself a little shake. Even though my hair has stopped glowing, I can’t totally shed the lingering wisps of terror.

“Not so tough now,” the brawny woman jeers.

Do they think this is a joke? They have no idea what can happen to you if one of those nets wraps around you.

“We need to watch out for those things—and learn how to escape them,” I say, as emphatically as I can. “You should all listen to the lesson instead of trying to hook up with the teacher.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made another blunder. A mix of anger and humiliation wafts toward me from all around the room, like over-salted vindaloo curry.

Gloss glances toward Gnash. “Since this one is so sure of herself after all, maybe she should be the first to get a close look at the net.”

Every particle of my body recoils, but the tiger shifter beckons me forward. The presence of the noxious metals nips at my skin the closer I get. As I walk up to the gleaming mass, my ankles throb.

I wobble, and Tansy barks a laugh. “Look how shaky she is after all her big talk.”

Her friend sneers. “There goes her hair again, like she’s pissing herself with light.”

My shame curdles alongside my distress. My teeth jar against each other, my jaw aching.

I stop a couple of steps from the net and hold myself rigidly still. More snickers bounce through the room. My stomach churns.

I don’t like this feeling. It’s too much like the worst times—I can’t let myself dwell on it—can’t let myself get too upset.

Can’t admit to the man who wanted me kicked out that I might not be able to handle this lesson.

Just breathe. Settle my emotions. Let them go. No one’s actually going to hurt me here.

Gnash’s growly voice penetrates my attempt at meditation. “Once you’re trapped in one of these nets, you’re stuck. If you see one, even feel this amount of silver and iron, you hightail it in the opposite direction as fast as you can. If humans throw one at you, throw yourself as low as you can and dash or roll at top speed. We’ll practice with regular rope nets.”

He nods for me to step back. As I retreat, my legs sway again.

The brawny woman strides past me, stomping her heel very purposefully on my toes. “Now who’s the wimp?”

I never insulted her. I only wanted to help everyone.

But all I feel are the glares and the smirks. The muttered snark aimed my way. My pulse pounds in my head.

Gnash is just putting the metal net away when the peal of the bell signals the end of the class period. “We’ll do the practice nets next session,” he announces as we head for the door, and my nerves scatter all over again.

To feel those bindings pressing against my skin—the coarse texture, the interlocking pattern—

I hurry down the hall as fast as I can go, not thinking even of Fen. A mocking call reverberates after me: “I don’t know if you can run fast enough, weakling.”

I dig my fingernails right into my palms.

I just have to get away. Somewhere quiet and alone, where I can simmer down.

A door up ahead shows only darkness through the small window. The label above the frame calls it the Media Room. With a renewed burst of speed and a jab of pain through my lower legs, I push inside.

I stagger to a halt at the edge of a big dark room. The only light emanates from display screens behind glass booths along the edges of the space. But a handful of beings are sprawled across sofas opposite the door, watching an image start to play on a larger projector screen.

“Mortals all over the country have been watching this show for the last ten years,” one of the shadowkind tells the others in an eager voice.

Then the bouncy tune of a sitcom opening theme fills the air.

The sound jolts me back more than a year to the dim room that held cages blazing with light, to the small TV always buzzing and jangling off to the side.

His favorite show. Every day, that song. No matter what he was doing to us—

The horror rolls over me, too suffocating for me to shove it away. A whimper spills from my lips.

I hurtle back into the hall, throw myself forward, and stumble into a chemical-smelling space that looks like a supply closet—

And the thick, dark agony I’ve tried to tamp down roars out of me.

It sears through everything around me as forcefully as the joyful glow did the other day at the wedding. Terror and anguish and fury blare together into an onslaught of misery.

Through the flood, I feel a yelp and a rasp of pain. A shudder and a sharp sting as if my darkness has sliced right through someone’s essence.

I’m hurting them. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry, so sorry.

I don’t know how to stop it.