by Tanya Lisle
Penny slipped out of a house that looked very similar to her own, her father eyeing her as she climbed into the passenger seat. Penny’s father watched her go, though only watched Indira’s car long enough to catch the license plate number before returning to candy duties. Penny looked tense next to her in a full catsuit complete with ears, pulling on the seatbelt and anxious to go. As she settled in, Indira tapped on the clock on her dashboard before turning the radio on.
“Thanks for the ride,” Penny said as Indira tried very hard not to hit any children darting out into the street in front of her. “We’re going to probably slip out halfway through and it would be kind of awkward to not have our car still there. Or, I mean, to have our car still parked there with us nowhere in sight. You know what I mean.”
Indira nodded. “You’re off on a James Bond thing, and I’m the getaway driver,” Indira said. “Or the one that has the nice limo to the initial place before the chase sequence. I get it. Now, what am I supposed to do again?”
“Just watch out for whoever is closer to Matt and get her distracted,” Penny said. “It’s possible if you can distract one of them, the other one will show up. Brittany and Laura, they… Just keep both of them off of him long enough to make sure he can get out of there.”
“Any restrictions?” Indira asked. “Like, what if they both were suddenly distracted at the same time and just have Matt disappear from the whole place without anyone having seen anything? Is that a thing that you’d be okay with?”
“Can you do that?”
Indira shook her head, making a turn onto the main road. “No, but I’m thinking there’s got to be an easier way to do this than just distracting them quietly. I mean, how hard is it to set a fire in a house? I remember last year, someone decided to play with their powers and set fire to a curtain. The place cleared out fast. We couldn’t keep track of anyone. We all got out of there as fast as we could.” Indira laughed at the memory.
“We aren’t setting anything on fire,” Penny scolded her. “It’s got to be quiet. No one should know we’ve gone off. It’s better not to draw attention to it in case anything else happens tonight.”
“What’s the deal with tonight, anyway? You’re going to try and take out one of the radio towers or something? Those things seem kind of big for a few teenagers to knock over. Even with whatever you’re packing, unless you found someone who can work dynamite.”
Penny looked around nervously, her eyes scouring the inside of the car and the passing road around them for anything that might be paying attention. “Just don’t worry about it,” she said. “We just need to make sure we can get Matt out of the party.”
Indira wondered if she should mention that the car was safe to talk in, but that involved explaining why. “What’s the deal with Brittany and Laura anyway?” Indira asked. “Why are they after Matt specifically?”
“Because he’s the only guy in town with…” Penny twiddled her fingers and raised her eyebrows. He was the only male with magic in this town. Indira nodded. “It’s not really his fault, though. I give him a hard time about it, but he’s kind of bewitched. It’s not strong, but it’s sticky and I can’t get it off of him.”
“So there’s three witches in town,” Indira said.
Penny made no move to argue, shaking her head. “I don’t know what it is about the two of them, but the one who can get Matt wins.”
“Matt’s still a virgin, isn’t he?”
“What?”
“That’s usually how these kinds of things work, isn’t it?” Indira asked. “They usually make it out to be a girl in the stories, but it works pretty much both ways. Deflowering a specific type of virgin makes some people more powerful. I went to school with a guy back in Iverson who would use it as a pickup line. I swear, he almost got someone to go for it, too.”
“Is this really just a thing people know about in Iverson?” Penny asked, incredulous. “No, actually, don’t tell me. I don’t even want to think about Matt having sex. Why would you do that to me?”
“Technically, he hasn’t had sex,” Indira said. “At least from the sounds of it. He could just find someone else, though, and then they wouldn’t be after him anymore. I’m sure if he wanted to, he’d have no problem finding someone-”
“No!” Penny snapped, going red and shaking her head. “God, why Indira? I thought we were friends!”
Indira laughed and kept driving. “And that’s why I’m helping you,” Indira said. “Now, tell me how much you like these two. Because that is definitely going to affect how the rest of their evening goes.”
Indira and Penny chatted the rest of the way, Indira slowly coming up with a plan. Once they parked, Penny helped her take off the bottom skirts of the costume and fixed up her own costume to make it a little less parentally approved before they headed in.
People were already milling about with red cups in hand, talking over the dull thump of music that permeated the air. In this neighbourhood, there were still children running around, but they seemed to know to avoid the loud house filled with teenagers. Many parents were frowning at the house from a distance as they watched their kids and steered them away from the party house, some looking like they were trying to convince them that it was enough for tonight.
“Come on, let’s go,” Penny said, looping her arm in Indira’s and pulling her forward. Penny seemed to be taking some comfort in the action, though Indira could tell why. As calm as she was trying to be, she was nervous about what was coming. It was obvious that she wanted to go off to deal with whatever they were planning, but she wanted to make sure Indira was okay first and that she was still in on the plan. “You ever been to a house party in that fancy city of yours?”
“Once or twice,” Indira said. “Some that didn’t end in house fires, even. I’ll be fine. Text me when you need me for things.” She shooed Penny away and let her go off to assemble her team or whatever it was she was doing for tonight. Indira really hoped she would have a little fun before Uncle Ness managed to stop her from whatever stupid plan they had. Blowing up towers or whatever it was. She hoped Uncle Ness would catch them in time.
For now, Indira wandered the house, getting the general lay of things. She nodded to Alan as she passed, the tall boy nodding back before continuing his quiet conversation with another girl from their History class, and kept her mind open for the rest of the party for what the general mood was. Like most high school parties before someone came with booze, the mood was that of a bunch of teenagers waiting for someone to show up with alcohol. They knew it would be here soon, though there was a bit of a drunken effect already happening as a few people had brought some of their own to share with those who wanted it.
She grabbed a can of coke and went back through the house until she was stopped by a gentle hand on her shoulder. She turned back around to find a girl her own age, possibly a little older, dressed in a green witch’s costume that showed much more cleavage than she was expecting. Indira smiled, moving her eyes back up to Brittany’s face, and found herself wondering just how long the impeccable eyeliner and gorgeous blending of her eyeshadow had actually taken her.
“Indira right?” she asked. “I’m Brittany. Matt’s told me so much about you.”
Indira didn’t need to be telepathic to know that she was lying. She let herself be led somewhere a little quieter, Indira taking the moment to poke and prod gently at her mind to see if she would notice. “Hi,” Indira said. “You’re throwing this right? Is this your house?”
“Oh, no, it’s Laura’s,” she said. “Her parents are the ones out of town this weekend. I’m just helping out. So I hear you’re new in town. How are you settling in?”
“Pretty well,” Indira said. “Matt’s been really nice about helping me get settled. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ve let him say anything about you yet.”
Brittany didn’t even twitch at that. She didn’t care that Matt hadn’t mentioned her at all. Her interest right now was in Indira and confirming her as
sumptions about her that she’d made based on the company she kept. Apparently Matt and Penny had a habit of befriending a specific kind of person.
“I thought we might talk for just a bit. I know Penny has a habit of talking to everyone who comes through Larkdale just in case. No need to say anything about it, but if it’s what I think it is, just know Laura and I also have your back. We might not all like each other, but we don’t want to see anything happen, right? And in exchange, please keep out of our business.”
Indira let her look turn confused as she probed at her mind again. She wasn’t noticing a thing Indira was doing, and Indira made sure to attach a mental thread to her mind so that she could use it whenever she needed to. Brittany didn’t seem too bad, just unfortunately focused. Still, now it wouldn’t be difficult to distract her for a minute or two.
“I’ll keep that in mind?” Indira said, trying to look as confused about the statement as she could. “I’m not really… Matt!” she called as she saw him walking closer with a brunette on his arm, though it looked a lot more like she was the one leading him toward them.
“Hey Brit, wondering where you went,” Laura said, looking back to Indira and letting her eyes crawl over her. She was dressed in a nearly matching witch costume, though hers in pink to Brittany’s green.
“I’ll bet,” Brittany said, a grin on her face as she looked Matt over. “I was just saying hi to Penny’s new project.”
“Indira,” she said, offering her hand, wasting no time in probing Laura’s mind in the same way. It seemed that neither of them were terribly concerned, and Indira attached a thread to Laura as she shook her hand. Really, she was expecting this to be a lot harder. “Do you mind if I borrow Matt for a bit, though?”
“Go ahead,” Laura said, letting him go. Indira patted him on the shoulder and he turned to walk off with her, Indira feeling both sets of eyes watching as she led him into the bustle of the house.
Matt’s eyes were glazed over as they walked away, though it was slowly clearing up the further away from the pair of them they got. He shook his head and looked around from behind his zombie makeup, before realizing that Indira was next to him. “She did a number on you,” Indira told him, keeping her hand on his shoulder as she steered him to get a drink. She kept her hand on his arm, extending a mental shield over his mind so that maybe he could keep his wits around himself tonight. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” he said, though he didn’t seem sure what he was assuring her of. He took a root beer for himself and the pair of them found a counter to stand against. “When did you get here? What time is it?”
“You got time still,” Indira told him. “Penny’s off doing whatever she’s doing and I haven’t gotten the signal yet. Seriously, though, I didn’t think they actually had you bewitched.”
“It’s not that bad, really,” he said. “It’s not like they’re making me do anything against my will or anything like that. They just needed a hand. Penny’s worried over nothing.”
“I’m sure she is,” Indira told him. “So tell me, when does Whitten usually break out the vodka?”
Matt laughed and shook his head. “Give it another hour,” he said. “When there aren’t parents roaming around outside and there’s no chance of some kid wandering in. We’re probably a bit more careful here than in Iverson, but we do know how to throw a party.”
“Even if you guys are planning on ditching early.”
“At least we have an excellent alibi if anyone asks where we’ve gone.”
“You need an alibi?” Indira asked with a raised eyebrow. Matt pushed off the counter and Indira followed him as he led her through the house to the living room.
“Well, so long as you spend the evening with him, you’ll never get locked away,” he said, nodding to a pirate talking to a girl with a very tight bodysuit that Indira was pretty sure was actually one that was used by heroes. “And I think he’ll be pretty happy to cover for all of us.”
Indira followed Matt closer as he let himself into the conversation, Kyle looking happy for the relief. He was dressed as a pirate, less the eyepatch and with his hooked hand abandoned on the coffee table. Next to him, jumping to her feet and smiling broadly at Indira, was Esther, wearing something that definitely wasn’t a costume shop costume. Matt gave her a push into the room.
“I told you that you’d look great in that,” Esther told her, coming forward to pull her to the couch. “I like what you did with the makeup too.”
“Thanks for the help,” Indira said. She looked over at Kyle and appreciated the loose shirt that was so thin she might be able to see through it with enough light. Esther wasted no time in turning Indira around and pushed her down next to him on the couch.
“Not a problem,” she said, dropping down next to Indira. “I was just telling Kyle about heroes in the city and he still doesn’t believe me about half of the stuff about all the regulations they have on the young heroes program.”
“Because it’s mandatory?” Indira asked, looking between the two of them. “Yeah, you have to register if you want to be a hero and you’re under twenty-one.”
“But how would they catch you?” Kyle asked. “If you’re wearing a mask then it can’t be that hard.”
“I think you underestimate how bloody it is post-fight,” Esther said. “It’s so easy to find anything on the ground you need. And now that just about everyone has a blood sample on file somewhere, it gets a lot easier to match up who has what. And once they know, they just get you privately and you’re either enrolling or you’re going off to hero juvie.”
“That’s insane, though,” Kyle protested. “They can’t just keep people from being heroes because someone says so. Not if they’re trying to do something good, right? And they can’t possibly catch everyone with powers out there. What if they miss someone? Or they find some way to change their DNA or-”
“So there’s a few holes. I don’t really know every piece of it, you know. You know my mom wasn’t exactly working in the system.”
“I just don’t get why.”
“It’s got to do with mortality rates,” Indira told him. “A lot of kids were dying with the old way of just let them do whatever, so now it’s mandatory to get enrolled, get trained, get a mentor, learn to work with the police, all that jazz. They don’t reveal your identity if you don’t want them to, but they do keep it all on file in case you go rogue or something.”
“But if you were doing it for a good reason-”
“You murder someone, they still gotta take you in, dude,” Esther said. “They’re a little more careful about it, I hear, but they are still going to try to put you up for manslaughter if you do anything illegal, no matter how good you really are. A lot of people used to start good, go permanently bad, then just keep saying they were brainwashed over and over again, or under deep cover or something. You need to regulate that shit when the person doing it can blow up buildings with their eyes.”
“But what if you never register? How do they know about the people who are unregistered and have powers? Like, if you never become a hero, you never have to register, right?”
“That’s a whole different thing,” Esther said. “Indira, you went to public school, right?”
“You didn’t? Private?”
“Homeschooled,” Esther said.
“So they don’t have anything to track whether or not you have powers, just if you decide to help people?” Kyle asked. “And then if you help people, then you get put in some database, but if you’re some asshole with powers that you use against people, they don’t know and no one has to deal with that?”
“Right, you don’t have the powers test here,” Indira asked.
“The what?” Kyle asked.
“Oh, right, those things,” Esther said. “I only had to take that once. That’s only in the big cities, though.”
“What’s the powers test?”
“They always talk about it like it’s a universal thing,” Indira said. “It’
s this thing you take. Once every two years. They check to see if you have any powers and, if you do, then they see how they grow and develop. It’s mostly to keep kids from going nuts when they discover they have them by catching them early, I think. And putting locks on a couple of them.”
“They lock away powers too?”
“Unless you really want someone to be able to force you to do things against your will,” Indira said, sensing his disbelief and oncoming outrage. “There’s kids who might accidentally set their houses on fire or blow something up because they’re having a bad day. Or a good one. You know those tragic backstories they always talk about when heroes come up in the news? The program is trying to stop all of those.”
“You know an awful lot about this,” Kyle noted.
Indira laughed and waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t go getting your hopes up,” she said. “I grew up around a lot of people with powers. A lot of my friends tested very positive. I know a girl who had a mark put on the back of her neck as an inhibitor because she could make people do anything she told them to do. They figured it was probably not a good idea to leave her with that ability.”
“But she might not have-”
“Oh, she definitely would have,” Indira said with a laugh. “She’s required to keep it because that’s on the list of absolutely not allowed to keep powers. Nothing that will cause an atomic level explosion, nothing that will cause anything to be poisoned or die as a key component of the ability, nothing that can force people to act against their will. This stuff got drilled into us because we just end up having so many kids move into the core wanting to become a hero and then ending up in the morgue, you know?”
