"We had hours to think about it," I said after swallowing. Belatedly, I'd thought about little else. "I got distracted by wanting to keep Artemis out of sight, and once we came up with the plan I didn't think at all. At the very least we should have had Atlas and Rook on board before Baldur walked into the hall."
"Hindsight, etc," he returned. "You're an infant in the business, and I've been a cape for two years. You let it be my call, no bystanders got seriously hurt, you're the hero of the hour, and you don't have to listen to me next time. It's all good."
He slurped his coke while wiggling his eyebrows at me, making me laugh. My mood lightened a little; he was still too full of himself, but he made it very hard to mope.
Metrocon ended with the El Paso Guard taking most of the NCAIC honors, and US network reps optioned a Man On The Border law enforcement drama with them. They certainly deserved it, but still, brrr.
We attended the huge blowout party, where informal awards were invented and jokingly announced. Atlas and I won Cutest Couple, while I snagged Sidekick of The Year. The delivery of the first was on the raunchy side, the second a half-serious compliment—which, predictably, I felt guilty about. Equally as predictably, Seven saw and teased me out of it. We finished the evening with the Hollywood Knights and shook hands all around, Rook making me promise to visit them in California and Baldur seconding him. Seven, with an eye on Atlas, gave me a playful kiss and promised to make my visit a fun one.
I was left with one very long loose end. I had to find Artemis.
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty Three
In the comics that gave us the iconography of the superhero, Superman embodied the Protector, who flew in to save the day, while Batman epitomized the Avenger, who sometimes protected but who also brought justice where society and the law failed. Protector and avenger, they shaped the two strongest superhero archetypes that have influenced the public's perception of superheroes in the real world. Although the Protector has an obvious place in modern society, the Avenger's position is more problematic.
Professor Charles Gibbons, The New Heroic Age
* * *
Artemis disappeared after the attack, but she continued to prey on my mind. The federal warrant court responsible for closing and payout on general warrants had awarded the bounty on Il Doppio to Atlas. He gave it to me, and I didn't want any of it (the thought of being paid for somebody's death was too woogy for words). I would have followed the Sentinels' usual practice of donating all warrant awards to charity, except for the fact that it really should have gone to Artemis. Being without normal means of support, she could probably use it, too.
I just had to find her again.
After a few evenings waiting for her at The Fortress I asked the staff about her and learned she wasn't a regular: once or twice a month, tops. If I wanted to cross paths with her, I'd have to meet her on her turf. My earlier research had given me a South Side neighborhood to focus on, so I used the Dome's link to the police data base to list all unsolved multiple-murders in the area for the last five years.
Bingo. Her name was Jacqueline Siggler. Her parents were Fred and Charlene Siggler, and four years ago someone had killed the whole family, in their home, supposedly with "attack dogs." They never found her body, listed her as missing and presumed dead at the age of twenty. I checked the property registry and learned that the home had never been resold. After some thought, I decided it was only proper to visit at night—she probably slept the whole day after all, to avoid a terminal sunburn if for no other reason. And I hated getting calls after bedtime myself.
* * *
The old two-story sat in the middle of a dead yard, and all its doors and windows were tightly boarded up. I'd located the real estate company that worked for the bank that held the property, and gotten a blueprint. It not only had a basement, but also a root-cellar that had been expanded during Prohibition to hold profitable and questionable liquid assets. Very promising.
Letting myself in through an upstairs window, it felt like entering a cave; the boarded up windows admitted no light, and there weren't any heat sources for my super-vision to work with. Fortunately I'd brought a policeman's flashlight, but it was still just plain spooky.
Creeping through the house, I found the place had been stripped, even of fixtures, leaving a corpse of a home. But while the house was empty the walls were unmarked. There wasn't a trace of litter anywhere. Nobody had ever camped here or tagged the place. Interesting. And a little scary.
Downstairs, I found the stairs to the cellar in the kitchen.
And almost chickened out.
Okay, so I was badder than anything that could possibly be down there, but I'd only been super-bad for a few weeks. Shelly and I had screamed our heads off over a lot of movies our parents had known nothing about, and in every one of them exploring a basement in the dark didn't end well.
"Knock knock?" I called down the stairs before starting down.
The basement echoed, empty even of junk. I found the root-cellar door at the back, a metal door with a solid lock. The kind a serial killer keeps his victims behind. Or bodies.
Stop that. It's just a door.
I knocked.
And nobody answered.
After long minutes, I took a breath and reached for the handle.
And let my hand drop.
My upbringing defeated me. I had every reason to believe Artemis' home was on the other side of the door, and I'd never broken into someone's home.
Stupidly, I hadn't brought anything to leave a note on, either. Way to go, Nancy Drew.
Sighing, I turned to go and found her standing right behind me, screamed, and dropped the flashlight. Which broke. I flinched back, my shoulders hitting the door. Even with my super-duper vision I could barely see an outline—till she clapped and the lights came on. Seeing her didn’t help.
"What are you doing here?"
"Peeing myself because someone wants to play monster!" I shot back, trying to breathe again. "Why can't you answer your door like a normal person?"
She grabbed my throat and tried to shake me, but I braced, past scared and into mad. Strong as she was, she might as well have tried to shake a statue. Giving up, she fixed her gaze between my eyes.
"And don't try any Jedi mind tricks!" I yelled. "I wrote everything down back at the Dome! I wake up tomorrow with zip in my head, I'll know why!"
"Get. Out." She drew both guns.
"Yeah, like that'll work!"
She put the one in her right an inch from my eye and pulled the trigger.
Bang.
"Ouch! Dammit!" I grabbed for her, blinking and squinting.
She misted and was gone.
Damn it.
I put my back to the door and slid down it to sit. I felt vaguely nauseated, but now that we'd spit at each other I wasn't going anywhere till it was settled. I rubbed my stinging eye and held back a sniffle. Oh, like that was going to happen.
A minute passed. And another.
With a click, the door pushed gently against my back.
"You might as well come in," Artemis said behind me.
* * *
"This," I breathed in the heavenly aroma, "has to be the best latte I've ever had."
"How's the eye?"
"A little blurry, but getting better," I said. "No permanent damage. Sorry about trespassing."
We sat at a kitchen table in the root-cellar, a cheerfully lit room decorated with framed nature posters from around the world. Chinese screens quartered off the corner of the room where she kept her bed. She'd equipped the cellar with a flat-screen TV and entertainment center, computer desk, wardrobe, and wonder of wonders, a kitchenette rigged like Starbuck's. She saw me looking at it.
"The bootleggers who expanded the root-cellar made it a distillery with water and a drain. My father rigged it with full plumbing."
I nodded, then started to giggle.
"What?" She'd taken her mask off and put her hood back. Her long black hai
r, pulled back tight into a tail, matched her eyes. She looked like a borderline-anorexic gothic cheerleader, and had a pleasantly low voice when she wasn't putting an edge on it. The corner of her mouth quirked up.
"This is a vampire's lair." I pitched my voice as deep as it would go, trying for sepulchral, then giggled again. "There's a panda on your wall."
"Damned if I'm going to sleep in a coffin just because a psycho thought he was Vlad the freaking Impaler. And if I'm stuck on a liquid diet it's going to be the tastiest stuff I can brew. You should try my hot chocolate."
"How about ice cream?"
"It's frozen liquid, and a girl can't live without it. Why are you here?"
Okay, to the point then. I opened my mouth. Then closed it.
Finally I said, "Because I really need a friend right now."
She sat back, dark eyes shadowed. "And I just won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and they're waiting outside with a poster-sized check."
I looked down at my latte and chose my words carefully.
"A month ago I was a reasonably normal high-school grad. Now?" I shrugged unhappily. "I've seen people die, nearly died myself. Twice. Half the time I feel like a fraud, the only ones in my new life I can talk to about it are my parents or the people I work with, not a good idea if I want them to treat me like an adult."
"So why me?"
"Because you've got a panda on your wall. Because your future changed too and you're not curled up in the corner eating the paint. You should be a basket case, but instead you're Artemis, scourge of Bad People. I need to tap that right now."
"I'm not a role model for anybody."
"That's not what I mean. It's like... if I stand close to you some of it will rub off?"
I met her gaze and she looked deep, probably trying to sort out the truth from the bullshit. My eyes prickled and I realized it was all true.
"I called in the fight," she said casually, playing with her empty cup.
"What?"
"The rumble with the Brotherhood and Sanguinary Boys. They'd both gotten too big and I couldn't take some of them on myself. So I watched them and called it in."
She got up and refilled, still talking.
"I misted over there and watched the whole thing. Saw your fight. You did pretty good. You did pretty good at Metrocon, too."
"Well... thank you?"
"I'm just saying you looked like you knew what you were doing."
She picked up a copy of Herobeat and showed me the cover. On it I smiled for the camera in a classic fists-on-hips pose, looking very cheeky.
I grinned. "That was a fun photoshoot."
"I'll bet. Not my world."
"So? Never had a girlfriend with more stuff?"
That got a laugh, then a frown.
"No more team-ups. I've got street cred to maintain."
"I'm thinking more along the lines of extreme shopping."
She sat back down, still studying me. "So where do we start?"
"With a proper introduction." I took a deep breath. Fair was fair. "I'm Hope Corrigan. Pleased to meet you. Oh, and this check is for you."
Chapter Twenty Four
No we're not your daddy's villins/
we're not chillin' then we're killin'/
we want you, best be willin'.
From Murder Night, by Freakzone
* * *
Artemis conducted regular and random patrols, but she did a lot of her surveillance remotely; it's easy to plant cameras and bugs when you can mist in and out of anywhere. After that night we started meeting at The Fortress just after sunset a few nights a week.
We got along well; she called me Little Miss Sunshine and I called her a bloodsucking fiend of the night. One night just before Thanksgiving found us at the Sentinels' table, sipping drinks and cape-watching. Three weeks and I was 'coming home' (yes!). I'd already started planning how to introduce Artemis-Jacky to the Bees.
Tonight Wisteria sat at a table with her deliciously muscled "sidekick." I hoped it went well—we'd talked a couple of times and he was really nice. By now I could recognize the real capes among the sidekicks and wannabees. I could even tell the difference if they were from out of town, partly because the Beautiful People in the room were less likely to be working heroes. People come in all shapes and sizes, after all, and a breakthrough doesn't usually include a physical transformation. Capes are more likely to be physically fit than the average civilian, but so are cops and I've seen lots of donut-hounds in uniform.
Despite the reality, the old comic book stereotypes remained; I smiled, thinking of Atlas' muscle-suit. The actors and actresses who played capes on TV and in the movies always looked good and fit, even the ones not in romantic roles. I’d be willing to bet that the actress they picked to play me in the next season of Sentinels would be taller. A lot taller. I wondered if the model who'd done me at Metrocon could act.
Looking at Wisteria, I sighed. Whoever they picked would certainly be much better endowed. Superheroines in the comic books always seemed to be at least D cups and possess amazing anti-gravity powers. In reality a lot of padding, much more gratuitous than mine, went on. It was the same principle as Atlas' suit.
I eyed Artemis as she listened to the band. Crash Course: a new hero-band ensemble, but actually pretty good—they'd fronted for Have No Fear. Like Wisteria, Artemis fit the stereotype of the "hot amazon." Not a D cup, but tall and curvy in an obviously fit way. Unlike lots of capes, she could play herself on TV just fine. From what she'd told me about her high school life she'd been one of those you can hate me because I'm beautiful kind of girls. I sighed again and she said something.
"What?"
"So are you guys ready?" she repeated.
Right. I'd told her about President Touches Clouds' scheduled visit. Another sigh, with a twist of laughter.
"It's not until December, but the Secret Service liaison is already doing a "threat review" of all known V and Vs—that's villains and vigilantes and includes you. Blackstone's ready to kill him. And the President wants to do a flyover of the city with Atlas and me. Her security detail hates the idea as much as Atlas does, so I've got another book of procedures to memorize, courtesy of the Secret Service."
When I first heard the news I'd thought of how much the Secret Service must hate having to try and protect an aerokinetic president who could fly.
"So—" My earbug chirped and I jumped.
"Sorry. Excuse me a moment." I leaned back and put my hand to my ear.
"Yes?"
"My dear lady," came Blackstone's voice. "It appears we are needed at the Freakzone concert. Can you be at the Dome in five minutes?"
"Yes sir. Riot?" Please no—the Bees were there. It was all Annabeth talked about on our last web-call.
"Oh my, yes. On the program in any case."
I bit my lip. "Can I bring help?"
"If she's willing, most definitely."
"Right. Five minutes." She. So he'd known. I'd have to ask him how and see if the old magician would reveal one trick. I disconnected.
"Emergency. Can you come?"
Artemis gave me a look. "What did I say about team ups?"
"Please. This could be bad. Blackstone thinks it's a good idea, and I have friends there."
She didn't ask where there was. I held my breath.
"Let's go." She dropped some cash on the table.
I flew more slowly than normal and she followed along, barely visible fog in the night. We arrived at the Dome together. Landing, I realized the bay's security system wasn't going to recognize her. Before I could decide what to do, the doors opened and my earbug chirped again.
"Bring her down to the lobby," Blackstone instructed.
Meeting us there, he gave Artemis a polite nod.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Artemis. Astra, if the two of you could proceed to the Assembly Room; most of the rest are ahead of you."
"No no no no no!" Artemis was muttering. "This isn't happening! Do you know how long I've manag
ed to stay under the radar?"
"Not as long as you think," I whispered, "But thanks for coming." I squeezed her hand as I pulled her along.
* * *
Wearing the Cape Page 15
