“I heard that. Now, out.”

“So commanding.”

“Yes. Out.”

It didn't take me long to undo these knots. Once I got the hang of it, I'd proven quite adept at getting out of things. That said, as usual when I learned something new, I was leaking power all over the place, so I had to swim again when we were finished. Anyan perched on the edge of the Charles River, his back toward me, glamouring the hell out of both of us as I stripped down and once again plunged into the Charles. Both the river and I could feel the ocean nearby, and we desperately wanted to go meet it. For a second, I let myself merge with the current, feeling everything it felt and only just managing to hold myself back from plunging madly toward the sea. When I finally emerged, admittedly rather oily and smelling slightly off, I was still happier than I'd been in days.

I rather regretfully dried myself with one of Ryu's expensive towels, certain that river water was not good for fine linens. I popped my clothes back on and returned to where Anyan sat waiting.

“All righty. What's up next?”

We'd already worked on my shields for quite a while, and Anyan had given me some really good tips on where I could strengthen them while at the same time conserve some energy. Eventually, I would build up my defenses to where I could use them to block or carry physical objects, as the others had with the trees at Au Bon Pain. But I wasn't there yet.

That said, the barghest was a good teacher. Anyan was like Nell, patiently building on skills. But he'd go in with me eventually and show me where I was doing something wrong or how I could do something faster or more efficiently. When it had become clear I wasn't getting the shields trick, he'd pulled out a rope, much to my evident consternation. It made sense, however, once I realized what he wanted to teach me. It did help me understand how power could manifest, and, if I did get captured, what Anyan was teaching me would work on most sorts of bindings. You just had to ante up the force to get out of handcuffs, or use a shitload of power if the bindings were magical. But the old probe and push/pull was all you really needed to get out of anything, as long as it was less powerful than you. The trick, however, was not to break your own bones if the binding was too strong.

“Now for something completely different,” the barghest rumbled. He put his hands on my shoulders and settled me squarely in front of him.

“Have you taken any self-defense courses?” he asked.

“Me? No. I've always been of the ‘turn tail and flee' persuasion.”

Anyan snorted. “I've chased you. I'm sorry, Jane, but you couldn't outrun a sloth.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Listen, buddy, just because you can go all hellhound doesn't mean you get to judge other people's running ability.”

“When we get back to Rockabill, I'm going to make you start jogging. You're slow as shit, no matter what form your pursuer. Your mother could probably outrun you as a seal.”

“You are not getting me to jog. There is not a force on earth that can make me jog. And I can outrun a seal, fercrissakes. And speaking of my mother, it's not my fault I inherited her build. I was engineered for comfort, not speed.”

Anyan laughed. “Okay, fine. But now we live in times that do call for speed. So we're going to work on some basic self-defense.”

“Really? How is me trying to kick somebody like Jarl in the tchotchkes going to do anything? He'll just wallop me with his mojo and I'll be down for the count.”

“Why would you kick Jarl in the decorative knickknacks?”

I sighed. “ ‘Tchotchkes' is too good a word to limit in meaning. It should be used often, as much as possible. And don't tell me you didn't know exactly what I meant when I said, ‘Kick Jarl in the tchotchkes.’”

Anyan eyed me appraisingly. “Okay, I'll give you ‘tchotchkes.' If you give me ‘frabjous.’”

“ ‘Jabberwocky' frabjous?”

“Yes. Nice ID.”

“I'm good like that.”

“Well, ‘frabjous' is my favorite word. And I feel both ironic and less metrosexual when I say ‘frabjous' instead of ‘fabulous.’”

“Do you say ‘fabulous' that often?”

“Again, you'd be surprised. I am an artist, remember. There is a lot of ‘fabulous' in the art world.”

I grunted, struck again by the fact that I didn't know shit about Anyan. I knew him as a dog, and I was getting a handle on him as a fierce warrior, but he was also this guy who lived in Rockabill and made art. He had a whole “human” life I knew nothing about.

Anyan ignored my grunt, thank the gods. I really needed to stop grunting at handsome barghests.

“You'd also be surprised at how often a surprise physical attack works on our kind. Especially when they're powerful, like the Alfar.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. That's how I was able to take Jarl so easily when he was throttling you. If I'd thrown a mage ball at him, he'd have had shields up automatically. But he wasn't expecting a physical attack, and I got a chunk out of him before he could react. Then he was wounded, in pain, and never quite recovered his equilibrium. So I threw him at the wall. Another highly effective strategy, but probably not appropriate in your case… Anyway, the Alfar, especially—but this goes for any being with a lot of power and control—aren't used to getting thrown off balance. Pain can really unnerve them. They're used to sitting behind their shields and lobbing attacks that never allow anyone to get close to them. If you can do something that hurts, like break their nose or get in a good bite, you can really upset their control. Once that happens, they find it hard to reestablish their calm because they're not used to anything getting to them in the first place.”

“Huh,” I said. “That makes sense. Although I'm not so adept at either the nose breaking or the biting as barghests. You've got bigger teeth.”

“All the better to eat you with, my dear.”

To my horror, I felt my cheeks flush hot and, most assuredly, red. There was an awkward half-second pause before Anyan cleared his throat.

“Right, well, what I'm going to show you is a pretty standard technique to break a wrist hold. But you can also incorporate a knee to nut the guy in the forehead. Or nut him in the… tchotchkes.”

With that, he made me grab his wrists and he showed me his trick. It was all very absurd, since he towered over me by more than a foot. But it was actually a really cool move, not that I would ever admit that to him. Because I'm so flexible, like a halfling bendy straw, I was really good at the wrist thing, as I could bend mine practically double. Of course, it didn't matter with Anyan, because he could practically wrap his fingers around my wrist twice. Barghests had extra-big paws as dogs, and there was a direct correlation to their human form's hands and feet.

I refused to allow my brain to conjecture about any other legendary “big hands” correlations.

When we were done, I was tired physically, but revved magically. My dip in the river had been just what the doctor ordered. But the swimming had also made me really hungry. On our way back toward Commonwealth Avenue to catch the T back to Ryu's, we stopped at a little food stand, which looked like an old train trolley, to get something to eat. My stomach was yowling so loudly that Anyan could hear it over the traffic noise.

I got a falafel wrap, and he got the vegetarian chili. We eyeballed each other's food as we ate and ended up swapping—without speaking a word—when we'd eaten exactly half. After we finished our snack, we looked at each other, looked at the trolley, and then went and bought a rice and lentil wrap to share. It was delicious, and a mistake, at least on my part. I was bursting at the seams. Especially when the lentils and rice started to expand in my stomach.

I stretched out on the bench, groaning, when Anyan got up to throw away our garbage.

He came back, laughing at me. He picked my feet up, keeping them in his lap when he sat down. I was surprised at the close contact; we'd only ever touched when he was a dog. Except when he was carrying me. Or healing my numerous injuries. Or when he was teaching me to nut people in the forehead. Anyway, we almost never touched except under weird circumstances. So such casual physical proximity kinda threw me. And when I get thrown, I always use the same tried-and-True method to recover: I babble like an idiot.

“Why can I never stop eating? If I wasn't a swimming addict, I'd weigh eight hundred pounds. I'd be one of those people Jerry Springer has to remove a wall to get at. They'd have to take out my bedroom wall, load me on a flatbed, and haul me to Chicago on an eighteen-wheeler. And all so that Jerry could point out, over and over again, that I was really, really fat.”

Anyan listened to me rant, a smile on his face. He looked so relaxed, it made me relax. Which was stupid, since this would make a perfect moment for Conleth to attack. But I could also feel Anyan's power, strong and steady, beating around us. He might look like a lounging, if oversized, biker-grad student, but he was still on duty. So I went ahead and shut my eyes, soaking up the weak February sun falling on our little bench. And tried very hard not to belch garlic into the cold winter air.