Heroine Worship

by Sarah Kuhn

  “You didn’t ask.” She gave me a mildly injured look. “The personal appearances form on your website doesn’t have a place for that info. All it asks for is time, date, and if the facility in question has an adequate supply of fire extinguishers on hand.”

  “Ugh.” I couldn’t think of anything more eloquent to say. She was right. I’d have to get Bea to fix that.

  In the meantime, I’d have to deal with . . . this.

  I studied the mob again. It wasn’t actually that much of a mob. There were only about fifteen of them. Fifteen sugared-up, hyper five-year-olds, who had probably been expecting . . . I don’t know. What did five-year-olds like?

  “Mommy, I thought we were getting Queen Elsa of Arendelle!” the birthday girl shrieked. She was the one who’d been smearing frosting all over her dress. She regarded me with narrowed eyes. “She is not Queen Elsa of Arendelle.”

  No, I was not. Though I was surprised these kids had apparently never heard of Aveda Jupiter. Maybe they weren’t from San Francisco?

  “Elsa is, uh, busy today, sweetie,” the birthday girl’s mother said in the weariest voice ever. “So we got you a real life superhero. Isn’t that cool?” She turned to me, wild-eyed, like, Back me up, here?

  Birthday Girl, refusing to be placated, crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head furiously. “I want a cool superhero. I want Evie. Not . . .” She eyed me up and down, disdain leaking from her every pore. “ . . . her friend.”

  Oh. So she did know who I was. Sort of.

  “Evie is busy today, too,” I said, scouring my brain for something “cool” to say. Yes, that’s right. Suddenly, my greatest wish was to appear cool—or at least not totally dorky—to small children. “She and Elsa are, um, hanging out. Doing cool things together.”

  I heard a snort of laughter and jerked my head up to cast a glare at its source: Scott, who, for whatever reason, had wanted to stay and watch, even though I’d told him repeatedly that he was free to head back to HQ. The two poufy dress-wearing women had also opted to stay, though they were still deeply involved in their cake tasting and weren’t paying much attention to me trying valiantly to make the best of what was threatening to become a truly humiliating situation.

  “Oh! Kay!” I said loudly, clapping my hands together and plastering a huge smile on my face. “So. Even though Evie’s not here to set anything on fire, I have some pretty cool powers to show you.”

  “Like what?” Birthday Girl said, tapping her foot impatiently.

  “Like this.” I reached out with my mental feathers and grasped several packages from the teetering mountain of Birthday Girl’s gift pile. I concentrated hard and floated them through the air, making them dance in formation. I was gratified to hear a few “oohs” and “ahhs” from my kid audience. Yes. I could get through this.

  “Excuse me, Miss!” One of the poufy-dress-wearing women at the other table called out to Letta, punctuating the enthralled silence that had fallen. “This red velvet doesn’t taste very red, if you know what I mean. Can we get another serving?”

  “Red velvet is actually buttermilk and cocoa powder with red food coloring,” Letta said, in her usual monotone. “What really makes it is the cream cheese frosting.”

  “Yes, well, that’s quite lacking as well,” the woman sniffed. “And I must insist on nothing short of the best for my wedding.”

  Yeesh. Another Bridezilla?

  I blocked her out and carefully lowered the presents back to the gift table. A smattering of semi-enthusiastic applause rippled through the kids, and I gave a little bow.

  “That was fine,” Birthday Girl—the only kid not clapping—said. She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Can you lift anything heavier? Can you lift a person?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, trying like mad to excise the haughty tone that seemed to be creeping into my voice. “If you go to the Aveda Jupiter, Inc. YouTube page, there are multiple videos that show me in action, moving citizens out of danger and—”

  “Whatever,” Birthday Girl interrupted. She stomped forward, planting her hands on her hips. “Can you lift me?”

  I hesitated, realizing I should have totally anticipated that question. I glanced at Birthday Girl’s mom. Surely she’d shut the whole thing down? But she just shrugged.

  “It’s her birthday,” she said. “She can have whatever she wants.”

  “Yeah!” Birthday Girl said, giving me a mean smile. “And I want to fly.”

  “Well . . . all right.” I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous. I’d moved plenty of actual people before—but in those cases it had been instinctual, necessary for their safety, and hadn’t come with such obvious liability issues. I reached out with my mental feathers and wrapped them around Birthday Girl, lifting her a little ways off the ground.

  “YEAH!” she screamed. “Higher!”

  I raised her a little bit higher.

  “HIGHER!” She insisted. “I said I want to fly.”

  I tightened my hold, making sure it was secure, and lifted her up higher, higher, higher—until she was nearly touching the ceiling.

  “Yessssssss!” she shrieked.

  “I said I wanted another sample of red velvet, bitch!”

  The words cracked through the air, disrupting my concentration. Bridezilla again. Or maybe Cakezilla? I tried to block her out. Birthday Girl was finally having a good time, and I didn’t want to ruin it.

  “Carol,” I heard her companion say, “we can get more cake, we just have to—”

  “No!” Carol growled. I heard a smacking sound and then glass shattering against the floor.

  “Wheeeee!” screamed Birthday Girl as I moved her around a bit, trying to simulate an actual flying experience. “Best birthday ever!” I doubled down on my focus, blocking out everything except my mental feathers, my hold, and Birthday Girl floating through the air.

  “Like I said, I’m happy to provide you with additional samples,” Letta said to Cakezilla Carol. “But you really need to settle down.”

  “Settle. Down?!” Carol bellowed. “This is my wedding we’re talking about. A once-in-a-lifetime event—”

  “Um, this is actually your third wedding,” her friend murmured.

  I swooped Birthday Girl lower, close to the ground, trying to give her a bit of a ride. She giggled.

  “—and I will not have my guests eating this garbage—”

  I’d been concentrating so hard, I hadn’t realized Cakezilla Carol was on the move. But suddenly she was crashing into my field of vision, suddenly she was blocking Birthday Girl from my view, and suddenly I felt my mental feathers evaporate, unable to hold something I couldn’t see.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!” Birthday Girl let out a piercing scream and I heard an ugly-sounding crunch and oh no, no, no . . .

  Chaos erupted immediately.

  Usually I’m the first to act when chaos erupts. But this time, I was rooted to the spot, my vision clouding over, caught in some kind of frozen fugue state. I heard Birthday Girl’s mom screaming, all the kids screaming, Birthday Girl’s inconsolable wails, Cakezilla Carol stomping off, Cakezilla Carol’s friend trying to placate her . . .

  And all I could think was, Goddammit, Aveda Jupiter. You really fucked up this time.

  I was finally snapped out of my fugue state by a familiar voice: gentle, mellow, soothing: “See, it’s just a scratch—she’ll be fine.” Scott.

  I shook my head, forcing the room to come back into focus around me. Scott was kneeling next to the sprawled out Birthday Girl, his hands cradling her elbow, and speaking very sincerely to her distraught mother as the other kids looked on.

  “Scott . . .” I forced my legs to move, crossing the room to them. “I—I’m so sorry,” I said to Birthday Girl’s mother. “I lost my hold, I couldn’t see her and—I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Annie.” Scott agai
n. Still with that soothing voice. “She wasn’t too far off the ground—her elbow got knocked around, but I used a Level One healing spell and now she’s just fine.”

  Birthday Girl beamed at him adoringly and who could blame her? He was easy to adore.

  “To be safe, take it easy for a few days,” Scott said to Birthday Girl, giving her his charming, lopsided grin. “Even Queen Elsa needs her rest. No more flying, okay?”

  “No flying!” she agreed with a giggle.

  “Now that that’s taken care of, can we get back to what’s important?!” a voice bellowed behind us, and I whipped around to see Cakezilla Carol advancing on Letta.

  “I need more red velvet,” she growled. “Now.”

  “Hey!” I darted over to them, planting myself between Letta and Carol. I may not have Scott’s amazing soothing powers that worked on the brattiest of five-year-olds, but I could at least handle this. “This is no place for that kind of behavior,” I said, giving Carol my best imperious look. “Why don’t you cool off? Take a walk around the block.” I inclined my head at Carol’s friend, who scurried to her side and laid a hand on her arm.

  “No.” Carol shoved her friend so hard, she stumbled backward. “Get out of my way,” she hissed at me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think so.”

  “Raaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!” Carol let out a cry of anger so raw, it sounded like an animal baying at the moon. I was so startled by the sound, I didn’t react fast enough when she charged me with enough force to knock my body out of the way.

  Then she went for Letta’s throat.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “YOU CAN QUESTION them if you want.” Rose gestured to the two disheveled women slumped behind one of Cake My Day’s marble tables. The bakery wasn’t quite the disaster area it’d been after weathering a demonic attack, but it was still a mess, cake and broken plate pieces all over the floor. Carol, the woman who’d gone after Letta, stared into space and toyed with the can of Sprite in front of her, as if tapping it in just the right way would unleash the secrets of the universe. Hard to believe that a mere thirty minutes ago, she’d been wreaking pastry-related havoc. Her friend, whose name was Gwen, rubbed her back in a soothing fashion.

  I’d managed to jump up and get Carol in a chokehold before she reached Letta. As soon as I’d gotten an arm around her neck, she’d gone limp and then seemed confused. Just like Evie and the redhead Bridezilla in the tent.

  We’d sent the birthday partiers home, and Scott had called Rose, who hustled over with several members of her team, as well as the scanners and one of the traps she and Bea had been working on—a small gray box that popped open and closed with the touch of a button. Like the scanners, it looked ridiculously old school (and ridiculously Ghostbusters-influenced), but I was hoping it would be effective. Rose had detained Carol for questioning and her team was scanning every inch of Cake My Day. So far, they hadn’t turned up anything.

  Where had our little stray puppy demon gone?

  “Letta’s not pressing charges,” Rose said, nodding toward the counter area. Letta was cowering behind a towering cookie display, looking like a moderately more alert version of her usual gloomy self.

  “Really?” I said. “Cakezilla Carol almost ripped her throat out!”

  “She said, and I quote, ‘Everyone gets a little worked up over pastry sometimes.’” Rose shrugged in a “what can you do?” sort of way.

  “It is sort of not her fault,” Scott pointed out. “If we’re going with the theory that this was our friend the lost puppy demon again.”

  “Where did that thing go?” I grumbled.

  “We’ll keep looking,” Rose said, gesturing to her team, still hard at work scanning the bakery. “We can’t hold her much longer, so if you want to ask her something, do it now. But honestly, she mostly just seems confused.”

  I frowned. “Then I doubt there’s anything useful I’ll turn up.”

  “You never know,” Scott said. “You can be pretty intimidating.”

  I gave him a look. But I was suddenly suppressing a smile again, like when he’d given me that dumb cakey grin. And my heart was suddenly beating a little bit faster, like it had when I’d seen him tending so gently to Birthday Girl.

  Oh, no. Nope. That definitely would not do. Especially not when there was evil to be vanquished, a rogue puppy demon to pursue, and maid-of-honoring to be accomplished in the midst of it all. No time for sappy, Annie Chang–style feelings.

  “Let’s take them somewhere quiet,” I said briskly. “Like Letta’s office in the back. I’ll try asking them to go through the experience again. Maybe something in their responses will give us a clue. And Scott . . .” I paused, a wisp of an idea floating through my brain. “Why don’t you move around the room with one of the scanners while I’m talking to them? Maybe the puppy demon will make a return appearance. We’ll take the trap with us, too.”

  “Won’t that look weird?” Scott said, as Rose passed him the scanner and trap. “Me pacing, waving that thing around?”

  “So be stealthy,” I said.

  “Stealthy—got it.” Scott took the scanner from Rose then flailed his arms around like an air traffic controller. “So like this?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “No.”

  “How about this?” He did a few supremely dorky dance moves, dangling the scanner like a robot arm.

  My lips twitched. “No.”

  “How about—”

  “Stop trying to make me laugh!” I blurted out. “This is serious.”

  He grinned at me—and this time, it was definitely smug. The same grin he’d given me a million times throughout junior high and high school, whenever he’d gotten me to break or giggle or respond to him in a way that let him know he’d gotten under my skin.

  “Hey, you wanted to be friends,” he said, as if I should have known better.

  Let’s face it: I should have.

  Rose cleared her throat. “So like I said,” she began, “we can’t hold Carol for much longer, and I really need to wrap things up here—”

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry. Some people on my team are incapable of behaving in a mature fashion.”

  I turned away from Scott before he could respond and stalked over to Cakezilla Carol and Gwen.

  “Ladies,” I said, projecting Aveda Jupiter authority, “if you’ll follow me, I’d like us to have a little chat in Letta’s office.” Cakezilla Carol’s eyes widened and she seemed about to protest—but then she gave a meek nod, stood, and shuffled behind Scott and me as we headed into the back area of the bakery. Gwen followed her.

  Letta’s office was roomy, but dimly lit. A single rickety lamp cast a soft glow over the Hoarders-level clutter and the remainder of Letta’s porcelain unicorn collection, which was positioned haphazardly all over the room. Unicorns seemed to be shoved into every available corner and shelf, their tiny eyes boring into us from all sides, their rainbow manes flickering in the hazy light in a way that almost seemed eerie. I suppressed a shudder—really, who wanted to conduct an interview surrounded by miniature unicorns?—and gestured for Carol and Gwen to sit in the two chairs in front of the messy desk. I took the seat behind the desk. It just seemed right. Scott positioned himself in the far left corner of the room, cocked an eyebrow at me, then very solemnly patted one of the unicorns on the head. I frowned at him: Cut it out. Unfortunately I didn’t have quite the level of near-telepathy with him that I had with Evie.

  Cakezilla Carol was still clutching the Sprite can in a death grip. The index finger of her other hand started tap-tap-tapping the lid. Gwen kept patting her on the back, trying to soothe her.

  “So. Carol,” I began.

  She reluctantly met my eyes, and I realized that she didn’t just look confused—she looked scared. Hmm. I hadn’t thought much about how I was going to go about talking to this woman. If she was scar
ed, my trademark Aveda Jupiter Intimidation Tactics probably weren’t going to work on her; she’d only retreat further into her shell. She didn’t seem to be a fan, so I couldn’t use that to my advantage. And I didn’t exude a friendly, comforting vibe that would make her feel instantly at home, like we were just a couple of gals chatting in a totally non-threatening manner.

  I suddenly wished Evie was there. Because that’s exactly what she would do. But everything had happened so fast, and now there was no time to call her, and my unfriendly uncomforting vibe would just have to do.

  “So,” I said again. “About what happened earlier—”

  “I’m sorry!” Carol interrupted. Her finger tap-tap-tapping on the Sprite can picked up in speed. Taptaptaptaptap. “Like I told Sergeant Rorick, I don’t know what came over me. One minute, I’m here with my maid of honor, stuffing my face with delightful red velvet. The next, I can’t stop focusing on why the red velvet doesn’t taste exactly right and how I need it to be exactly right, exactly perfect for my big day and . . . and . . .” Her lower lip trembled.

  “It’s okay, Care,” Gwen said. “It’s your wedding. Every bride gets a little crazy over her wedding.”

  I glanced over at Scott. He had moved a fraction to the right and was scanning the area inch by inch, his brow furrowed in concentration. But nothing yet. No light, no beep.

  “Have you had any feelings of rage recently?” I asked. “In that out-of-control way?”

  Carol shook her head slowly, her Sprite can tapping ceasing for a moment. “Just the usual things,” she said. “Like, my future mother-in-law wanted to add seven hundred of her closest friends to the guest list, but I doubled up on yoga classes and felt totally better. Or, you know, the printer I wanted to use for my invitations went out of business and the replacement I found doesn’t carry extra thick rose-tinted cream card stock—”

  “I told you, the ivory will be great,” Gwen said. She was obviously repeating something she’d already had to say a million times.

  Something flashed in Carol’s eyes. The briefest hint of a feeling that looked a whole lot like anger. It was there and gone in a split second, but I still saw it. I looked over at Scott again. Still scanning. Still nothing. No puppy demons among us. Cakezilla Carol’s simmering discontent seemed to belong only to her.