Vicious Grace by M. L. N. Hanover Page A

which put him on the large side, even for a guy. His scrubs were powder blue, and an ID tag much like Kim’s hung from his neck. The rage in his eyes unsettled me.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about some—”
    He moved in front of me, blocking my way with an out-thrust chest. A red flush was climbing up his neck.
    “You were thinking?” he said. “You’ve got to be shitting me. That’s you thinking ?”
    I looked at Kim looking back at me. I had hoped—expected, even—outrage and maybe an echo of my own sudden fear. Instead, she was considering me like I was an interesting bug. Everyone at the nurses’ station had turned toward us. All the conversations had stopped. A nervous glance over my shoulder, and I saw the patients in the fishbowl rooms staring at me too. I lifted my hands and took a step back.
    “Look, I said I was sorry. I just bumped—”
    “You piece of shit.”
    His voice was low and shaking with rage. I felt the cold electricity of adrenaline hitting my bloodstream. Kim didn’t say anything.
    “You piece of shit ,” he said again.
    The fear didn’t leave me—nothing simple as that—but an answering rage started to bubble up alongside it.
    “Hey!” I said. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ve had about as much—”
    The red-haired man drew in a long, rough breath.
    And so did everyone else.
    Each nurse at the station. Patients watching us through the open doorways of their rooms. Breath is a small thing, a subtle thing, until it’s coordinated, and then it’s devastating. A moment ago, I’d been having a surreal encounter with the poster boy for steroid rage. Now, that soft, vast sound made me something very small in the middle of an unexpected battleground. I felt myself go suddenly, dangerously calm. It wasn’t quite the I’m-not-driving experience of being in a fight, but I could feel myself leaning in toward that. The man’s breath quickened, and the other people matched it. I took a step back. His hands were balled into huge fists.
    “Kim?” I said, but her breath was keeping time with the sharp panting that rose up all around me. Whatever this was, it had taken her too. I licked my lips and pulled my qi—the vital energy that fuels magic and life—up from my belly and into my throat.
    “Kim,” I said, pushing the power out into my voice. “Wake up.”
    I didn’t take my eyes off the red-haired man, but in my peripheral vision, I saw her fall out of the pattern. She put a hand to her head and looked around. The red-haired man was trembling now, shaking with barely restrained violence. Two of the nurses behind the station put down long gray folders and stepped out into the hallway behind him. A blond woman in a business suit came out of one of the patient care rooms, her hands at her sides like claws. King Mob, closing ranks. Their synchronized breath filled the space: a single, huge, animal sound.
    “Jayné?” Kim said.
    “Just stay cool, and when I tell you to run, run,” I said. And then, “Okay. Run! ”

FIVE
    We bolted.
    Behind us, the mob roared with a single voice. Kim and I burst through the doors at the ward’s entrance hard enough that my arm stung. Kim took a sharp left, and, only skidding a little on the traffic-polished linoleum floor, I followed her. She ran like a sprinter, her body straight and aligned, her arms pumping along with her stride, her hands flat. She’d kicked off her shoes.
    Just as we reached the wide, triangular space before a bank of brushed steel elevators, the red-haired man caught up. He surged up behind me, swung a wide arm, and pushed Kim’s racing body into the wall. The impact sounded like a slap, and she fought to keep her balance before she fell. Between one heartbeat and the next, I found myself quietly behind my eyes while my body took over. I ran toward the elevators, the red-haired man hard behind me. Like something out of a Hong Kong action flick, I ran up the closed metal door, pushed off,