“What if you couldn’t for some reason?”
“Give me a single scenario where I couldn’t disarm a human faster than they could take a shot at me.”
“I—there’s—well, that’s the point though. I can’t come up with every possible scenario, and neither can you.”
Claire stared out the window for a minute as Nova began a third plaza loop. She let her mind calm, her gut settle, and her instincts take the lead. Okay, someone knew now. Turned out she’d been wrong to wish she could tell a friend, but on the plus side, Nova was the best person to find out. Nova’s view of the world was crystalline, calm, dependable. Not to mention…
“It’s your fault anyway,” Claire said.
“Excuse me?”
“What were you writing a year ago, Nova?”
Slowly her friend’s head turned toward her. Without looking away from Claire, Nova jerked the steering wheel in a sharp right and hit the brakes. The car skidded to a stop on the shoulder.
“You started prowling for human predators because I reported on the violence against human women?”
Claire shoved her fingers through her hair and looked out the window. “I hadn’t known before I read your piece. I mean, I knew it’s different for human women. I didn’t knowhowdifferent it is. How common it is.”
Nova didn’t speak for a full minute. Her way with words was special, but for big topics, she often needed time to collect them. Sometimes Claire had to bite her lip not to hurry her friend on in the conversation. Tonight Nova’s silence was reassuringly familiar.
“You got mad,” Nova said.
Claire faced her and spread her hands. “Of course I got mad. Everyone should be mad about it.”
“But you weren’t mad only at the predators or the systems that enable them; you were mad at yourself.”
“Well. Yeah.” She tried to laugh it off, but Nova’s steady teal gaze wouldn’t let her. “Ember’s been my best friend since grade school. Tough, protective, forceful,humanEmber. And I still didn’t know what it’s like to be her. I mean, I’d never even asked her. After I read your piece, I did.”
Claire’s eyes burned. As if stupid tears would help her explain, or help her protect, or make up for the years of failing to ask. She blinked them away.
“And?” Nova said quietly, ever the collector of other people’s perspectives.
“And Ember confirmed all your stats, but more than that, she told me a few stories. She’s not a survivor, but she knows women who are.Multiplewomen. She told me there’s a survivor living in her own pack, a mate of one of the wolves. It’s so sick, Nova. I can’t stand it.”
“And you’re you, so you decided to take action.”
“I had to. These scummy guys can’t touch me. I’m not risking anything. I’m not even giving up anything but a few Saturday nights—or, you know, the tips from the bar if I worked those nights, but whatever. And Teresa’s such a good manager, I don’t even have to worry about the business when I’m not there. And look, I’m not naive anymore, I know only some of these guys get charged, because again—crappy systems. But I’m trying. I’m doing what I can as a woman, for other women. For women who don’t have my speed, my strength, my physical resilience. Being a vampire is a gift, Nova. I want to be responsible with the gift. I want to use it for good.”
Claire couldn’t be literally breathless, but she felt what must be similar after the avalanche of words. They’d been building in her, month after month, as she did this work with no one to tell.
Again Nova sat quietly. Then she reached across the console and took Claire’s hand in a vampire grip that would bruise a human or a wolf. Claire held onto her hand as a wave of emotion tried to flood her eyes again.
“You are absolutely unique in the world, friend,” Nova said. “And I love you.”
Claire’s laugh broke a little. “I love you too.”
“Nobody else knows about this, I assume.”
“There’s no reason for anybody to know.”
“Again, because you’re you.” Nova stared straight at her, still gripping her hand. “I want to help.”
“What do you think you’re doing with your investigations and your writing? That’s your greatest gift, your best way to help.”
“But I’m resilient too.”
“Nova.” Claire took her friend’s other hand and matched the potency of her stare. “I go into a human club looking like that”—she nodded to Nova’s phone in the console between them—“wearing the strongest earplugs I could afford, which still aren’t enough to save me from hours of pulsing club beats.”
