Iron Night

by M. L. Brennan

  I turned back to the task, feeling lighter. Gage would’ve laughed at that joke, I knew. And he also would’ve recognized, as I did, that there was a certain truth to the matter. So the first thing I did was check under the bed, then at the bottom of his closet, then in his bottom drawer, and when I found the box I was looking for, I immediately walked it out to the Dumpster.

  • • •

  We spent the rest of the day boxing things up. Knowing that his parents might take a long time to unpack on the other end, and wanting to spare them anything unexpected, Suzume and I took much more care with the packing than I think either of us had ever taken with ourselves. Everything was completely sorted into similar boxes—there would be none of my usual moving experience, where I’d just throw toiletries in the same box as winter sweaters. We also wrote out inventories of each box—both on the side in black Sharpie marker and on included sheets of paper.

  “This must be how Martha Stewart packs,” had been Suze’s only comment when I’d told her the idea. Other than that, we hadn’t talked much.

  Other than one quick pizza run around eight, we worked without pause. By the time we’d finished it was almost one in the morning and we were both completely wiped out. Suze and I sat on the floor of the room, staring at the results of our work. The bed frame and mattress were the only items that had belonged in the apartment, but everything else had been stripped down and packed. We’d even taped cardboard around Gage’s dresser to prevent it from getting scratched up during its trip down to Florida.

  “This is why I bought a house,” Suzume said after taking a long swig of her beer, then failed to control her shudder. I felt a brief twinge, remembering that my last conversation with Gage had been about me buying shitty beer. “I got so sick of having to pack up all my stuff.”

  “Yeah, it does suck,” I admitted. “Last year my landlord jacked up my rent. I got incredibly pissed off and started looking for a new apartment, but then I remembered what a pain in the ass moving is, and . . .”

  “Knuckled under?”

  “It was the three flights of stairs with no elevator that did it.”

  Suzume nodded sagely and took another drink. The silence between us was comfortable.

  “So,” Suze said after a long minute, “are we crashing here or heading back to my place?”

  I thought about it. I’d swept up the broken glass basically on autopilot, and Suze had scrubbed the tiny blood stains while I’d packed Gage’s clothing. Once those two signs had been gone the room had looked so deceptively normal that it was easy to imagine that Gage had just left without warning. Keeping busy had helped me ignore the thought of Gage’s body lying on the floor just last night, but it all came flooding back at Suze’s question. I looked over at the window, with its taped garbage bag. There was a small but noticeable breeze, and I wondered whether my landlord would actually have it fixed before winter.

  “You don’t have any of your stuff. I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable,” I offered.

  “I threw an overnight bag in your trunk this morning while you were showering,” Suze said calmly.

  “Oh, good.” I paused. “You’d be uncomfortable, though. I don’t have any sheets that would fit this bed.” Gage’s room had a double, but I made do with a single mattress.

  “Nah, I’m good with the couch.” Suze continued looking at me.

  I thought for a second. “Suze, do you want us to stay here?”

  “That’s not what’s important. The real question is, do you want to stay here?”

  I considered, then answered slowly. “This is more than just tonight. You’re asking if I’d be okay living here, even though I found Gage’s body here.”

  She shrugged. “We packed up everything Gage owned in a day. I could go get some more boxes and we could have you out before Monday.”

  “Do you think I should want to go?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not saying you should want one thing or another. I’m saying that if you don’t want to stay here, we’ll pack you up and move you out. If you do want to stay here, I’ll go put my jammies on and crash on your couch. There’s no right answer, Fort.”

  It took me a long time. While I thought, Suze just sat quietly, her eyes almost closed, taking small sips of her beer, looking completely relaxed.

  Finally, I said, “Go get your jammies.”

  She nodded once. “Okay.” She stood up and stretched, then looked down at me. “Probably the better choice anyway. Three flights of stairs would’ve made moving a real bitch.”

  • • •

  I woke up once that night, one of those abrupt surges into wakefulness. I lay perfectly still for long minutes, straining my ears, but I heard nothing beyond the usual night sounds of the apartment. I retrieved the Colt from its hiding place under my bed and walked into the living room, intending to check Gage’s room.

  In the glow from the streetlight streaming in from the windows I could see the black fox on my sofa, completely dark except for the brilliant white tip of her tail. Her paws were tucked under her, and her head rested on the arm of the sofa as she watched the open door to Gage’s room. I knew she heard me, because one of her long furry ears twitched sharply in my direction, swiveling like a radar dish. After a moment she turned to look at me, and I could see the gleam of her dark eyes. She wagged her tail twice, making a soft little thump against the nest of sheets and quilts I’d made for her, then turned back to continue her watch.

  I felt a warm sense of comfort. I backed out of the room as quietly as I could. I thumbed the Colt’s safety back on and slid it under the bed again. As I got under the covers, I called out, once, “Suze?” and heard her immediate yip of acknowledgment. When I closed my eyes again, I slid back into a dreamless sleep.

  • • •

  The next morning the night’s interlude seemed like something I might’ve imagined, but when I went into the living room I saw the black fox sleeping peacefully in exactly the position I remembered her. She woke up while I started putting together breakfast, padded into the bathroom, and returned on two feet, dressed in a T-shirt and a set of red argyle lounge pants. Her hair had that kind of sleepily mussed yet sexy look that I’d secretly always considered a Hollywood trick, given that every woman I’d previously seen first thing in the morning had looked like they’d been caught in the middle of a windstorm. Beth had been particularly notable in that department, as the perfect Grecian curls of her hair had required a really frightening level of maintenance and preparation before they were ready to be seen by the world.

  I’d made cheese omelets, and I slid one onto a plate and handed it to Suze. She nodded her thanks, and we spent a few minutes with no sounds filling the air other than those of mastication.

  Eventually I glanced over at Suze, cleared my throat, and brought up the elephant in the room. “You were up all night watching Gage’s room. Did you think that whatever killed him was going to come back?”

  “Fort, if I’d thought that thing was coming back, there’s no way I would’ve let you trot out off to bed. We would’ve been waiting for it with extensive firepower.” Suze took a long swig of orange juice.

  “Then why—”

  She frowned. “Sometimes shit happens, Fort, and people get killed. Meteors fall out of the sky, texting teenagers plow SUVs into pedestrians, and roaming monsters get hungry and are too lazy to just order takeout. It’s not personal; it’s just bad luck. I still agree with your brother that it was a sucky coincidence that it happened to be your roommate. But it’s been bugging me that whatever did this dumped Gage’s body in his own bedroom.”

  I nodded. That particular thought had been very uncomfortably itching at the back of my own brain. “I was thinking that it might’ve looked in his wallet and found the address. We don’t know if it robbed him as well.”

  “It’s possible,” Suze acknowledged. “Maybe even likely. Mo
st things that prey on humans will mix a mugging with dinner. But to specifically return Gage’s body to his own room is kind of excessive.”

  “It’s almost like a sick sense of humor,” I said. Suze nodded grimly, taking another mouthful of eggs. I considered what we knew again and asked, “You keep referring to food. Do you think that whatever killed Gage wanted to eat him? I mean”—and here I gulped a little, regretting that I’d made this a breakfast discussion—“most of him was still there.”

  “You told me that his hands were gone,” Suze pointed out. “And your detective buddy told you that most of Gage’s blood was gone. I called my grandmother after you passed out like a sorority girl after one drink.” I protested the characterization indignantly, but she just continued talking over me and I had to give up. “Grandmother said that there are lots of things that would drink blood, even besides your family, but the hands have her a bit stumped as well.”

  I deliberately ignored the pun. “Gage’s hand wasn’t bitten or ripped off. It was sliced.”

  “Then I have less than no idea, Fort,” Suzume said. “But it didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world to keep an eye on you last night.”

  “I do appreciate that,” I said, and I meant it.

  “You could appreciate it even more by making me some bacon.”

  “I have a whole package of tofu in there. I can fry it up and you could pretend.”

  • • •

  Perhaps it was a residual bitterness over my lack of real pork products, but Suzume suggested we try sparring after breakfast. Despite the unexpected holiday from Chivalry’s fitness regimen, I agreed that it seemed like a good idea.

  We pushed back all of the furniture in the living room to make an open space and centered the rug so that there would be a nice surface to both potentially fall onto and to also muffle the noise to avoid bothering Mrs. Bandyopadyay downstairs. Suzume hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajamas, but I’d taken the opportunity to put on my usual workout clothing.

  I’d seen Suze in action several times, and had a high level of respect for her ability to kick ass and take names. “Don’t take it easy on me,” I said as I finished stretching out.

  Suzume’s sole concession to the workout portion of our morning had been to pour herself a second cup of coffee, which she saluted me with before putting it on the counter behind her and pulling her hair into a messy ponytail on top of her head. “I would never dream of doing such a thing, Fort.”

  “No, I’m really serious,” I said, pulling my fists up into the correct fighting position that Chivalry had drilled into me, as we started circling each other. “I’ve been working really hard this summer, and I’m definitely not where I was a few months ago.”

  “I have no doubts,” Suzume said. She tossed a lazy right hook at me, which I blocked easily. “See? Last spring we’d be trying to get your nose to stop bleeding right now.”

  I dropped my guard just long enough to make an extremely rude gesture, which she laughed at. She then gave a little shrug to her shoulders and threw a quick set of three punches at me, all of which I blocked. She lifted an eyebrow at me, looking moderately impressed, and made another few hits, all of which I also blocked. We were still circling, and her smile was gone, replaced with a slight frown, as if she was working out a small, confounding puzzle. My self-confidence took a distinct step upward, and I felt good about myself, finally seeing some very real payout from my summer of physical misery.

  I made a sharp left jab, but she quickly sidestepped the blow. Her frown was now much more pronounced.

  “See?” I said, not fighting my own desire to smile.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “very instructive.”

  Five seconds later I was on my back with her arm pressed into my throat and her left knee digging into my kidney.

  “What the hell has your brother been doing?” she demanded, looking profoundly irritated.

  “Guh?” I choked out with the small amount of air I was somehow dragging into my lungs. Suze noticed my distress and took the weight off of my throat, at which point I gasped in air desperately.

  “Seriously, what is wrong with Chivalry?” Suze continued, undeterred. “You’ve been blocking every punch I threw at you instead of trying to move out of the way, you are doing nothing with your legs except for shuffling, and you were completely unprepared for the most basic sweep I could come up with. What have the two of you been doing all these months?”

  I scooted out from under that kidney-jabbing knee before I answered, wary about exactly what would happen if Suze put all of her weight onto it. “This is how Chivalry fights, Suze.”

  She gave a derisive snort. “Your brother has all the vampire bennies going on, Fort. Inhuman speed, strength, and accelerated healing. Remind me what you have again?”

  I sighed. “A degree in film theory and a can-do attitude?”

  Suzume’s expression spoke volumes. “You’ve got at least a century before you catch up with Chivalry and can fight like a Victorian gentleman defending the honor of queen and country. Let’s do our best to keep you alive until then.”

  As she gave me a hand up, I had a very sinking feeling in my stomach about the direction that this morning was going in.

  “Right.” Suze pulled her hands up again, and there was a distinct gleam in her eyes that boded poorly for me. “Now, this is the kind of gutter fighting that you’ll actually be up against.”

  What followed was a forty-minute demonstration of all the things that Chivalry had decided didn’t apply to the way real men fought. It was extremely illuminating and rather painful, given that Suze seemed to direct an inordinate amount of her strikes to my throat, kidneys, or knees.

  “I’m leaving out most of the groin hits for today,” she said cheerfully at one point, circling me at a safe distance. “But you need to start working on making your height work in your favor.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I’d finally managed to block her latest attack toward my legs and was feeling a bit better about myself. A second later I made nose-first contact into my rug as Suze slipped behind me, gave me an extremely painful kick in the back of my right knee, and rode me to the floor with one arm wrapped around my neck in the perfect position for a good throttling.

  “Well,” Suze said, as I gagged, “I’m shorter than almost anyone I get into a fight with, excluding my own family. This means that if I want to hit someone, I usually have to get inside their strike zone. I use a lot of what I learned from my mother and aunts, but I also took some Krav Maga classes because I like that the whole point of that style is to end a fight fast instead of being showy. So you’ll notice”—she tightened her arm slightly for emphasis—“that most of what I aim for are the most vulnerable parts of the body. Your face, neck, groin, knee, eyes, and joints are all good spots for me. You”—and after one last, almost affectionate, choking she let go and let me wheeze—“have been aiming punches at the center of my body only.”

  “Point taken,” I said as I pushed myself upright again. “Dirty fighting.”

  “Not dirty—effective,” Suze corrected. She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, looking obnoxiously fresh and pleased with herself, in a bizarre reflection of how Chivalry always looked at this point in our lessons. “Also, knock it off with your two-point contact system.”

  “Huh?”

  “This,” she made two quick jabs at me, each of which I blocked. “You’re using just your fists. Have you heard about muay Thai?”

  “Does it come with a little umbrella?”

  She grinned. “Not quite. It’s a fighting system that relies on eight points of contact—punches, kicks, elbows, and knee strikes. With your freakish height it actually might be a good fit.”

  “Let me put that on my to-do list.”

  “Good, and while we’re on that—” And with another of those incredible bursts of speed, S
uze had dropped to one knee in front of me and I felt a sharp prick just under my rib cage. I froze, then looked down very carefully. An open switchblade was in Suze’s right hand, pressed against my skin with just enough pressure that a single drop of blood had welled up and was slowly staining the fabric of my T-shirt. The heel of her left hand was resting casually against the handle of her knife, innocently placed yet clearly prepared to add an extra boost of muscle to send the blade slicing into some fairly critical organs.

  Suzume lifted one eyebrow slowly. “Questions?” she asked.

  “One,” I managed, being very careful not to move. “Exactly where did you get that from?”

  She gave me a slow, feral smile. “I always try to keep one stashed. You can always try to pat me down and figure out where I had it.”

  “I’ll take a rain check on that.” I moved backward carefully, keeping an eye on her. “So I assume that your lesson here was that I should be prepared for anything?”

  “It’s pretty hard to be prepared for anything,” she scoffed. “The lesson here is much simpler: always bring a knife to a fistfight.”

  “And in a knife fight?”

  Suzume gave me that bright, brilliant smile that made me catch my breath for a second. I told myself sternly that it was just all of the injuries my body had suffered, possibly combined with some head trauma.

  • • •

  As easy as Suzume had made wiping the floor with me look, we’d both needed showers before being fit for the company of the outside world. While Suze was taking hers, I pressed a bag of frozen peas against my abused kidney region and called my brother. Chivalry hadn’t called that morning, which was unusual—lately he’d made a daily check-in whenever I wasn’t meeting up with him at some point in the day, apparently to make sure I was doing lots of push-ups on our off days. My call went straight to voice mail, so I hung up and tried the mansion. This time I was connected—but to my mother.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Madeline explained, “but Chivalry is very occupied with his wife at the moment. It’s horribly inconvenient.” I winced. My mother was not known for her empathy.