by Sarah Kuhn
Still, I’d allowed myself to relax a little. As my fabulous Aveda Jupiter lifestyle got farther and farther away from me, I wondered what it would be like to settle into a normal routine. Especially now that I didn’t have to worry about burning down any more buildings.
I had to admit: when I thought about fully embracing normalcy, I felt a little twinge of discontent. It was that same twinge I’d experienced when Aveda had declared her return to superherodom, and I couldn’t quite figure out what it meant. I knew I didn’t actually want to be her. The sheer pageantry of her existence was definitely not my speed. And I’d always wanted to be normal. So what was wrong with me?
Aveda squeezed my hand a little too hard, snapping me out of my thoughts. She hopped from foot to foot, her face apprehensive. We were positioned off to the side of the store, Nate standing in front of Aveda to shield her from view while Lucy threaded her way through the crowd, checking for security risks. Shasta stood under her hideous new sign, her red-lipsticked mouth stretched into a grin. She was clad in a blue polka-dot fifties-style dress, the skirt swishing back and forth as she moved. I wondered how she was coping without Maisy. After the Big Maisy Takedown, Rose brought Shasta in for questioning. She’d claimed not to know anything about Maisy’s powers, that she’d thought Maisy was only trying to rule the city in a figurative sense. She’d even offered up her DNA, which had tested all human.
Still, she’d lost a best friend who’d given her a sort of coolness by association thing. That had to hurt.
“Welcome, everyone!” she screamed, her smile widening even further.
“Remember,” I said to Aveda, “you don’t have to put on any power displays today. Just be yourself.”
We’d decided to hold off on telling the public about the change in Aveda’s power until there was an organic opportunity for her to use telekinesis. Then Bea would send out a press release about how the fire had been replaced with something even better.
Well. Something different. Not necessarily better.
Aveda lifted a hand to her mouth then quickly lowered it before she could bite her nails. “What if I’ve forgotten how to talk in front of people?”
“Never. And if you freeze up, just steal a trick from that horrible kiddie beauty pageant show you can’t stop watching. It’s not too late for you to get a spray tan.”
“Glitz pageants are serious business, Evie,” she sniffed, her voice finally taking on its usual imperious cast. “I will have you know . . . oh. You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
“A little bit.” I gave her a push. “Now get up there. I think this is your cue . . .”
“And here she is!” bellowed Shasta. “Our honored guest and ribbon cutter for the Small Business Crawl: Aveda Jupiter!”
Aveda glided up to the store entrance, waving to the crowd with both hands. They ate it up, camera-phones flashing as they took in the glitter of her costume, the brightness of her smile, the sheer scope of the hair sculpture sitting on top of her head.
Then she tripped over an uneven bit of pavement.
“Oh, shit!” I leapt forward as she stumbled, her palms nearly planting on the ground before she clumsily righted herself.
“She’s okay,” Nate murmured.
“Aveda!” Shasta exclaimed, her mouth shaping itself into a look of worry. She wasn’t as good at the whole fake concern thing as Maisy was. “Are you all right?”
“I’m perfect!” Aveda flashed her dazzling smile and brushed aside a strand of hair that had escaped from her nest of braids.
“Jeez,” I said to Nate. “Now that I’ve actually walked in those shoes, watching her do it is way more stressful.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I got a new sign for my shop,” Shasta said as Aveda joined her next to the store entrance.
“Lovely!” Aveda said.
“I wanted to have something extra-special for your appearance,” Shasta continued. “And we all know how much you adore borderline tacky displays of glitz.” She gave Aveda’s outfit a once-over. “Well. Maybe not so borderline.”
“That I do,” Aveda said without missing a beat. “Though for the record, I would like to note that Aveda Jupiter is not keen on adding extra letters to words just for the heck of it.” She gestured to Shasta’s sign. “Proper spelling is very important.”
That got a big laugh and a few “hell, yeahs” from the crowd.
“Wow,” Nate said. “That was actually kind of honest? Unrehearsed? Like something she just blurted out. She may be taking a page from your book.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “Unless she’s also planning on doing something horrifically embarrassing.”
“I am fairly certain only you can pull off ‘horrifically embarrassing.’”
“From now on, I’m only going to embarrass myself in private.”
He slipped his arms around my waist from behind, pulling me against him. “I like the sound of that.”
I rolled my eyes. But I was smiling.
“Now,” said Aveda, “where is this ribbon I’m supposed to be cutting?”
“Oh, uh . . .” Shasta’s eyes darted back and forth. “There’s no physical ribbon.”
Aveda cocked an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“We’re trying to reduce waste,” Shasta said. “So the ribbon is a metaphorical one. But before we begin, would you like to say a few words? You’ve been through so much lately! How are you holding up?” She gave Aveda and the crowd a big grin. I noticed there was lipstick on her teeth.
“Time for Aveda to slip in the ‘protecting San Francisco is my duty, my love, and my life’ bit,” I murmured to Nate. “Remind everyone that Aveda Jupiter always holds up just fine.”
Aveda opened her mouth, then hesitated. “You know, Shasta,” she said slowly. “You’re right. It has been a rather challenging couple of weeks.”
I blinked in disbelief. Was she actually admitting to something resembling weakness? In public?
Aveda looked out into the crowd, her gaze finally resting on me. “I can honestly say I couldn’t have gotten through it without my incredibly patient team. Particularly my best friend, Evie Tanaka. Not to mention Rose Rorick and her hardworking demon cleanup crew. I’m lucky to have such dedicated compatriots in the ongoing fight to keep San Francisco safe.”
I couldn’t help but grin back at Aveda, warmth surging through me.
“Well. That’s different,” I said.
I leaned back against Nate, studying Aveda. There was definitely a surreal quality to watching her in public after embodying her. Like I was watching the sparkly glitz pageant version of myself.
But the real me was in the crowd, drinking in the warmth of the sun and Nate’s arms around me.
I thought again about the whole being normal thing.
Here I was, spending a nice day with my boyfriend. I’d just given my friend a decent pep talk. And my little sister was at home making nerdy spreadsheets instead of trying to drunkenly take over a karaoke bar.
These were all normal things. Nice, normal things.
And, you know, I could be normal without being mundane. I’d finally accepted my own supernaturalness; had embraced it, even. I could still use my fire, but for everyday-type stuff. Like lighting candles. Going camping. Heating up Hot Pockets when the microwave was broken. The possibilities were endless! The normal possibilities! The—
My giddy train of thought was interrupted when I caught a flash of something familiar out of the corner of my eye. I craned my neck, scanning the crowd. It was probably nothing.
But just for a moment, I was sure I’d seen Stu Singh’s signature fedora.
Eh. Well. Lots of people wore fedoras. Especially in San Francisco.
“Everything okay?” Nate asked.
“Yup.” I allowed my head to drop back against his chest. “I think I’m just tired—whoa.”
This time I’d seen a flash of gold. A daisy. Just like the one Maisy had worn during our mall confrontation.
Nate frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. I’m going to get some water.”
I darted off before he could protest, pushing my way through the crowd, trying to spot the elusive bit of gold. That Maisy gold.
I was so intent on zoning in on any flash of yellow I could find, I nearly ran into Lucy.
“Hey!” She grabbed my shoulders, steadying me. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw Maisy. I know that sounds nuts,” I continued, as her eyes widened.
“Let’s not discount that theory,” Lucy said. “Who knows what evil demon princesses are capable of?”
We started elbowing our way through the swarm of people. I kept almost pouncing on people with random hair adornments, some of which were not even in the flower family. After I nearly tackled a woman wearing a very un-daisy-like beret, I stopped moving and turned to Lucy.
“I think I imagined—”
“You’re looking for me.”
A watery voice echoed in my ear.
I turned and my heart leapt into my throat.
It was Maisy. Cowering at the edge of the crowd, her back turned to all the Small Business Crawl attendees, so they couldn’t see how . . . different she looked. Her skin was gray and flaky and her eyes were sunken and underlined with bruise-like smudges. Her mouth sat at a crooked angle, as if it had been pasted onto her face. And her arms were rotting and desiccated and topped off with evil-looking claws. A wilted daisy drooped over her ear.
“Maisy,” I whispered. I reached toward her and she winced.
“Don’t do that,” she said in her awful, inhuman voice. “Don’t say my name—”
BOOM!
Suddenly the world went black and I was falling into an endless pit of nothingness and I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t see, I—
SMACK.
The world came back into focus as I landed on concrete, jarring my entire bone structure. I blinked once, twice.
I was still in front of Pussy Queen. But now I was surrounded by a bubble-like dome similar to the one that had blocked me off while the disembodied hand tried to strangle me at the mall.
A force field, I realized. It’s another fucking force field.
Outside the bubble dome, people were milling about as if nothing had changed, as if they couldn’t see us.
I looked around frantically. Nate was lying a few feet away from me, shocked but conscious. Aveda was sprawled next to him, her eyes blinking. Lucy was passed out behind me, but still breathing. Maisy—or whatever thing Maisy was now—stood in front of us, wringing her dead-looking hands.
“You shouldn’t have . . .” she started.
But then there was a blinding burst of light.
And there was Shasta. She appeared next to Maisy and loomed over us. Her eyes sparked with a malevolence so pure, it knocked the wind out of me. Maisy moved to stand just behind her.
“Maisy?” I choked out, as if maybe she could explain.
“Dammit,” Shasta growled. “It’s always about Maisy, isn’t it? Even when it’s my event. Even when I did all the work. Even when that bitch is fucking dead.” She shook her head in frustration and started pacing back and forth, her high heels clicking against the ground. Maisy, still silent, watched her nervously.
“God, you people are idiots,” Shasta snarled. “Especially you.”
I thought she was talking to me, but then I realized her eyes were focused on a spot to my left.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she said, her mouth twisting into a cruel mockery of a smile. “I looked so different all those years ago. But I always knew it was you, Nathaniel.”
My stomach turned.
Nate’s harsh features tensed up in shock and then slackened into a dull sort of realization.
And then he said, “Hello, Mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHAT THE FUCK.
That was the only thought my brain was capable of. But you know what? It seemed warranted.
What. The. Fuck.
My adorable, dorky, bespectacled boyfriend was related to Shasta? Who was apparently evil and way older than she looked and somehow in charge of this whole demon-human hybrid operation?
Was she a hybrid, too? Or something even worse?
“Leave them alone,” Nate growled. “I’ll go with you, but they don’t need to be part of this.”
Shasta threw her head back and cackled, a sound like a glass bottle being shattered over a rock. Maisy, who was still standing behind her, winced.
“Oh, Nathaniel,” Shasta said. “‘Nathaniel’ . . . what an adorably mundane human name you gave yourself, by the way. Nothing like the one I gave you. Don’t worry, I’ll come for you later. Ever since I saw you at the League benefit—and really, it was so nice to reconnect—I’ve planned on bringing us back together. But for now I’ve got other things to worry about.”
I tried to look at him, to gauge his expression. Shasta snapped her fingers, and as I turned my head, I was hit by a searing pain. It was like being stabbed all over by a million knives.
“Ah, do you like that?” Shasta said. “It’s taken me years, but I’ve finally perfected how my force fields function in your world. If you move, it will hurt like a bitch and probably damage all your internal organs. And if you keep trying to move through the pain, you’ll eventually die.” She flipped her hair, obviously pleased with herself. “My latest field is so brilliant, it doesn’t take up physical space—it exists on a whole other plane of the Earthly dimension. So they can’t see us. Or accidentally walk into us.” She gestured to the crowd in front of Pussy Queen. “They think I escorted Aveda inside after the sun got to be too much for the poor dear. Superheroes are quite delicate, aren’t they?”
She grinned. There was still lipstick on her teeth.
“What do you want?” Aveda asked. I was heartened to hear her usual imperious tone.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Shasta strode toward Aveda, her heels clicking ominously. I willed myself not to shrink away from her as she came to a stop and planted her hands on her hips, looming over us. “As you may have realized—or maybe not, since you’re all so stupid—I’ve been slowly infiltrating San Francisco society, one local celeb at a time.” Shasta snapped her fingers, and gray, rotting versions of Stu Singh and Tommy Lemon appeared behind her. “I know you thought you took out my demon-human hybrids, Aveda,” Shasta said smugly. “But these guys can easily reconstitute themselves after being burned to bits. And their limbs can be detached—” She nodded at Stu, who gamely demonstrated by breaking his arm off and waving it around. “Or expanded.” She grinned at Maisy, who held out her taloned hand. It inflated before our eyes, just as it had during our karaoke battle, morphing into a gigantic, menacing claw. I shuddered. Apparently Shasta’s minions could move through the force field, no problem.
“Why, Tommy managed to inflate his entire being during your Yamato face-off so he was nearly as big as the movie screen—pretty cool, eh?” Shasta said, grinning as Maisy deflated her hand back to normal size.
Do something, I thought frantically. You have to do something. You have to—
What? What could I do? Set Shasta on fire? I’d landed with both arms twisted awkwardly underneath me and the force field was making it impossible to move. If I tried to conjure up a fireball from my current position, I’d incinerate myself.
“But back to what I want,” Shasta purred. “I need one final minion. And it’s you, Aveda. It has to be you.”
She reached down, grabbed Aveda’s arm, and dragged her away from us. Aveda cried out as the force field stabbed in
to her.
“No!” I screamed. I attempted to sit up and nearly passed out from the pain. My stupid arms were still pinned beneath me.
“Mother,” Nate said. “Please.”
“Oh, hush up, all of you,” Shasta said irritably. She dumped Aveda in front of her minions. “I need peace and quiet for my hybridization ritual.”
Shasta grabbed Aveda’s arm again and started to yank her into a standing position. Aveda screamed.
Do something. Do something. You have to—
“Your plan sucks,” I blurted out. I had no idea why I’d said that. I didn’t even know what her plan was, exactly. But my haphazard insult had the desired effect. Shasta dropped Aveda’s arm, whipped around, and glared at me.
“Excuse me?” she hissed. “My plan is amazing: fabulous demon princess reinvents herself as a successful businesswoman, cozies up to the Bay Area’s most notable figures and converts them into demon-human hybrids, thereby creating her own cabal to run the city. What sucks about that?”
“Just the city?” I countered. “Not, like, the world?” All I could think was this was like the dopey Heroic Trio villain who only wanted to take over China.
“We’ll start with San Francisco,” Shasta said. “And move on to the world from there. Now if you will kindly stop interrupting me . . .”
This time, she didn’t bother with Aveda’s arm. She just grabbed Aveda by the hair and wrenched, attempting to pull her to her feet. Aveda’s face twisted in pain and she screamed again, but she resisted with all her might, planting her hands on the ground and dragging her weight forward, pulling Shasta toward her. Shasta blew out a frustrated breath and let go.
I couldn’t help but wonder why none of Shasta’s minions were helping her. They were all just sort of frowning in her direction, looking put out.
Okay, I thought, trying to get my scattered thoughts in order. Maybe I can use that.
I desperately wanted to look at Nate, but I knew the force field would retaliate. I had no idea what he knew about all this, what he even was, what . . .
No. Don’t think about that. The priority right now is getting us out of this. The priority is making sure we don’t die or get turned into freaky hybrids.
