Free (LB1) Shakespeare's Champion by Charlaine Harris

went through kihon, practicing our strikes and blocks, I found myself distracted by my new neighbor. I made a determined effort to block her out of my consciousness. From then on, I felt more comfortable, and class went better. Marshall paired me with Carlton for practice. Between breaking free from each other and restraining each other, Carlton and I exchanged neighborhood news. He’d heard we were going to get new streetlights, and that the ownership of the empty lot at the corner—which I’d always thought was waste ground—had been decided among the five children of an elderly lady who’d passed away four years ago. What the new owner would do with the area, which would certainly be a challenge to fit a house on, Carlton hadn’t yet discovered.
    As I used one finger to jab the pressure point in Carlton’s upper forearm, the one that made his knees crumple, he told me that he’d found a sheet of blue paper on his car when he’d come out to get his mail that afternoon. “Nuts,” he commented.
    I hoped everyone would dismiss the flyer so thoroughly. Then Carlton took his turn and pressed too hard, and from my position on the floor I looked up at him with my eyebrows raised.
    When we had been dismissed, the blond drifted over to Marshall. Her hair flowed down to her butt, thick and straight, and though the youthful style didn’t exactly match her apparent age, the effect was definitely enough to attract lots of attention. Janet was scowling as she sat on the floor to tie her shoes.
    I was ready to go, having grabbed my gym bag and keys, when Marshall beckoned me over.
    “Lily,” he said, with a broad smile, “this is Becca Whitley, Pardon’s niece.”
    Pardon Albee, the owner of the apartment building next to my house, had passed away the previous spring. Becca Whitley had taken her own sweet time in coming to check out her inheritance. One of the tenants in the apartment house, Marie Hofstettler, a very old woman who was one of my favorite clients, had told me the same lawyer who’d hired me to clean the halls had been collecting the rent for the past few months. And Deedra had told me that when her lease had expired her rent had gone up.
    “I know I’ve been slow to get to Shakespeare to see to settling Uncle Pardon’s estate,” the blond said, chiming in on my thoughts in a way that focused my wandering attention firmly. I looked at her directly for the first time. She was narrow-faced, with strong but scaled-down features. The deep tan was freckled. Her eyes were a bright I-wear-blue-contacts sapphire, and heavily made up. She also wore candy-pink lipstick and lined her lips with a darker shade. The effect stopped short of vampiric; but it was definitely predatory.
    Becca Whitley was saying, “I had a divorce to settle in Dallas, and an apartment to clean out.”
    “So you’re moving to Shakespeare?” I asked, hardly able to conceal my amazement. I took in her long mane of Lady Clairol hair, and the cone-shaped breasts bulging at her gi, and thought she would surely stir the local roosters up. Marshall was strutting around practically wiggling his crest and crowing. No wonder tonight he’d spared me most of those wounded looks he’d been casting me the past two weeks. I had to repress an impulse to snort.
    “I think I’ll just live in Uncle Pardon’s apartment, at least for now,” Becca Whitley was saying. “It’s so convenient.”
    “I hope Shakespeare isn’t too quiet for you after such a big city,” I said. I realized that when I thought about Marshall’s interest in Becca Whitley, the pang I felt was very small, almost negligible, which was only right.
    “Oh, I’ve lived in Austin, which is really just a big town,” Becca said. “But the past few months I’ve been in Dallas, and I couldn’t stand the traffic and the pressure. See, I just got divorced, and I need a new life for myself.”
    “Any children?” Janet asked hopefully. She’d come up behind me.
    “Not a one,”