Page 8 of Knife Thrower

“Do you? Logan eats fire for a living and calls it therapy. Rowe likes a bear better than any of us. Marek hums to the dead. Jonah won’t kill a spider, but he’ll break a man’s spine in six places and apologize afterward. Silas was raised to be a saint and became an illusionist. We’re a traveling asylum, brother. We have a brochure.” I jab the knife at the ring. “You want a normal catcher, hire one. The normal ones flinch when I sneeze. She’s not normal, and neither are we. Give her a shot.”

He exhales through his nose. The rings on his gloved fingers click against the cane.

“One test,” he says at last. “Twenty feet. If her hands shake, she’s done.”

“And if she catches?”

“Then you don’t get to whine about it anymore.”

“I make no promises.”

I’m already reaching for the case.

I choose six throwing knives, eight inches each, with balanced steel and plain grips. I don’t pick the showy ones. If she’s going to catch something, I want it clean.

She stands on the mark at the far end of the ring with her vest folded on the bench behind her. Her sleeves are rolled to the elbow, no gloves, no wristband. Nothing between her skin and my blades but air and whatever’s going on in her head.

“Handle only,” I call. “Catch the blade and I’ll gut you personally.”

“I know how it works,” she says flatly.

“Do you?” I challenge, hoping to get a rise out of her.

“Throw the knife, Pike.”

Something hot slides down my spine. I grin and tip my head at Elias, who has moved to the edge of the ring with the cane planted in front of him like a headstone.

The first one goes slow, a lazy arc with a lot of spin. Her hand comes up, and she plucks it out of the air at chest height. She turns it in her fingers and sets it in the sawdust at her feet.

Second one, faster. Third, from behind my back. She takes them one after the other and lets them fall. Her elbow doesn’t drift. Her shoulders don’t rise. I watch for the signs I know by heart: the gulp, the sweat at the temple, the pupils blown wide. Nothing. Her pulse ticks in the pale skin of her throat, easy as a metronome.

I’ve thrown at drunks and dancers and one very brave cousin of Deke’s. Nobody stands like that. Anybody sane looks at a blade coming toward their face and their body language screams this is bad. Her breathing doesn’t even change.

“Two,” I call.

I fan a pair between my fingers and let them go together, one high and one low. She catches the high one with her right hand and the low one with her left. The steel doesn’t rattle. Her arms don’t shake.

Behind me, Elias clears his throat.

There’s one knife left in my hand, and I know I’m being an asshole, and I do it anyway.

I turn it in my fingers once and throw it wide, left of her shoulder, aimed to pass a hand’s width from her ear. A clean miss. A lesson in humility. Any catcher worth the stage would let it go and grin.

She doesn’t let it go.

She steps into it. Half a pace, shoulder first, a movement so small the bleachers wouldn’t catch it. Her hand closes on the handle, an inch from her own face, the blade humming past her cheek. Her eyes never leave mine. Not the knife, not my wrist. My eyes.

The tent goes silent.

She lifts the knife and offers it to me, handle first, from twenty feet away.

“That one was wide,” she says.

My mouth has gone dry. “It was supposed to be.”

“I know.”

I look at her hand around the handle, the tendons steady, and I try to think of a word that describes her. Nobody is that calm about being that close to dying unless they’ve made a private peace with it.