Nathaniel and I joined the stretching group. If there’d been room we’d have gone to Magda and Cynric, and used the preparation before class to ask her the preliminary questions about Ireland, but there wasn’t room without making people move, and that just seemed rude. I tried not to pull the boss card more than I had to, and I could move us up beside Magda and Cynric when we all lined the edges for drill practice. It wasn’t worth making a half-dozen guards stop stretching and move out of our way to do it minutes earlier.

   Nathaniel didn’t like fight practice of any kind, but he’d started coming at least once a week after I insisted. I insisted after he’d ended up having to wrestle a bomber who had planned to kill him, me, and several others we loved. I didn’t want him to just rely on his otherworldly speed, strength, and dexterity. I wanted him to have actual fighting skills if he ever needed them again. Wisely, he hadn’t argued, just found time in his schedule to do it. He wasn’t great at it. It was one of the very few physical activities that he wasn’t a natural at. Claudia, who taught the main hand-to-hand class and made Magda and most of the men look tiny, said it wasn’t natural skill that Nathaniel lacked; it was the will to win. He just didn’t like being that forceful in practice, and nothing she’d been able to figure out seemed to get him out of his own way. He practiced and he improved, but he didn’t come to win.

   Cynric—Sin—wanted to win, but he was usually up against one of the professional guards and that meant he wasn’t going to win, no matter how hard he tried, but he kept trying, and in the end, that’s what counts. I didn’t win much either. The fact that I won occasionally still bothered some of the guards, especially if I was winning against someone who was more than a foot taller than me and outweighed me by a hundred pounds of muscle. Magda wasn’t one of the people I won against, but a slender figure only a few inches taller than me was stretching out on the mat, too; she was a different story. Pierette looked almost delicate as she stretched out in the nearly knee-length compression shorts and short-sleeved T-shirt. She never showed much skin in the gym, or elsewhere. She was also one of the few of the Harlequin who used the name of her alter ego that used to come with a mask and an outfit that hid everything. The idea behind the Harlequin had been that they were sexless, formless almost, and their outfits had reflected that from capes to clothing that wrapped around, or slid into, the next piece, sleeve into glove, pants into boot, scarf or balaclava on the face so the mask that hid the middle part, covered the last bit of them. Only their eyes had shone out and some of the Harlequin had gone modern and put mesh or reflective surfaces in the eyeholes so that even the color of their eyes had been a mystery. Most of them, including Magda, had gone back to the names they’d had centuries before, their birth names, or nicknames, but Pierette was now simply Pierette, in workout clothes or her assassination getup. She hadn’t been the first Pierette among the Harlequin; she had only replaced one who had died. The names didn’t change, only the people who bore them.

   Her dark hair was cut very short and the strands clung to her triangular face in an almost delicate lace. I was never sure how she got her hair to do something so perfect, and since her hair was baby fine and utterly straight, whatever worked on hers wouldn’t work on mine anyway. The fact that she’d styled her hair and put on makeup before coming to fight practice puzzled me, but maybe it made her feel better.

   Sin had spotted us and wasted a very nice smile our way. He’d been so unfinished when I met him, and now he was all handsome and sexy. I still hadn’t made the transition to what box he was in in my head, or at least not a graceful one. He put a little more heat into the smile he directed at me, as he moved his clasped hands behind his back in a shoulder stretch that didn’t actually go as far as mine did. I bowed my head so he couldn’t see the blush that crawled up my face at that last smile from him. He was over a decade younger than me, but that didn’t mean he was more flexible. He was more flexible than he’d be when he was older unless he kept working at it, but even being a weretiger didn’t make him more flexible than I was, let alone Nathaniel. If he wasn’t careful he’d turn into one of those big men who lose flexibility as they gain muscle strength. At nineteen it wasn’t an issue, but in five years it could be, depending on the training he did. He’d been a track star and quarterback in high school, but with college coming up he’d had to choose between his sports. Football was winning out, because it opened up more chances for scholarships and professional money later. He’d been offered scholarships for track, but not as many and nothing as close to home as football had offered. I thought he’d go off to college somewhere and this heat between us might cool. Maybe he’d find a nice girl his own age, but he’d made it clear that wasn’t part of his plans. The fact that I thought he didn’t have a big enough piece of my life to make him happy was my issue, not his, or so Sin had told me recently.

   Nicky and Jake walked out of the side room that was both a snack room and a place for the instructors to plan. They were almost the same height, just under six feet. Jake looked shorter, because he usually rounded his shoulders and just held himself in such a way that he tried not to stand out. His hair was brown, neither too dark nor too light, not too straight, but not exactly curly, cut short so that it was in a hairstyle that had been in style for decades and would probably still be in style decades from now. His eyes were a brown that was, again, not too dark, not too light, just medium brown. Even his skin tone was medium; in fact everything about Jake was medium. He was one of the Harlequin who most made me remember they were the ultimate spies, as well as the ultimate assassins. Jake didn’t even look all that perfectly Caucasian. We had Hispanic guards from some of the South American countries and parts of Spain who were as pale as he was, and who probably wouldn’t tan any darker. He was the man from nowhere and most-wheres. Jake always made me think he was what James Bond was supposed to be, a man who could walk into most places and go unnoticed, while his stalking horse asked for his martini to be shaken and not stirred.

   If Jake was the antithesis of Bond, James Bond, Nicky looked like he would have made a great Bond villain with all that muscle on display and the skull eye patch. It was a touch of theatricality that seemed very much like a movie bad guy. I guess if you’re as muscled as Nicky you can’t exactly hide that you’re a bad-ass, so why try? He could have calmer energy more like Jake was giving off in nearly peaceful waves. In fact, Nicky could be nearly neutral, like a good bodyguard that could sink into the background until they were needed, but he wasn’t trying to hide today. He radiated attitude that said clearly, he was the biggest, baddest thing in the room, period, end of story. It was the same kind of posturing that dogs will do either as a warning to the other dog or as a way to start the fight. He’d had that attitude when I first met him; it hadn’t impressed me then, and it didn’t really impress me now, but then I knew he was out of my weight class. The display wasn’t for me, or any woman in the room. It was aimed at the other men. If you think that’s sexist, you’re right, but it’s still the truth. Men do not see women as physical competition, with rare exceptions. Magda was one exception, but she was the only one in the room; even Pierette, who was fast enough to hit almost anyone twice before they could touch her once, wouldn’t make Nicky posture like this. It was almost as if something about teaching with Jake had freed my big werelion to be as masculine as he wanted to be with no apologies. It made me wonder just how much my attitude dampened down this part of him.