“So they got some pictures to sell,” I said. “We had our masks on before we got out.” My panicked memory told me that yes, we did.
“Yes, we did,” she reassured me. “And I’ve got to say I’ve never seen anyone that good at getting dressed in a backseat. Something I should know?”
“No. Just a childhood going from school to field hockey to Foundation stuff. I can do my face in downtown traffic, too.”
“Okay.” She shrugged, lips twitching. “Anyway, here’s the money shot.” She held up her cellphone so I could see; it showed the two of us standing beside the sedan. I was helping Jacky with the last few buckles. Masks were on and it looked alright to me.
“So?”
She rolled her eyes. “Geez, Hope, you’re so naïve. We were caught piling out of the car? Half-dressed? Look again.”
I looked. My cape was askew—I’d straightened it when we landed on the tower—and Artemis’ costume was definitely still all about, but it was just a shot of the two of us getting out of the car helping each other dress before taking off to answer the alert!
I didn’t spit my salmon across the room, or scream, or yell Oh my God! Mom raised me better than that. But I stopped breathing until my vision cleared. My eyes must have been saucers.
“We’re…”
“Uh huh.”
“We’re…”
“Lesbian lovers. Saphic sisters. Chick chicks.” Now her grin split her face. “At least we will be tomorrow morning when the copy hits the checkout stands.”
I pushed my plate away, dropped my elbows on the table, and covered my eyes.
“This is— I don’t know what this is, it’s so beyond anything.”
“We’re going to raise Atlas’ child together.”
Now I screamed. A squeak, really, but heads turned towards our corner. I glared till they looked away.
“So now I’m not just a Lolita,” I hissed when I found the air. “I’m a pregnant bisexual Lolita? Mom and Dad are going to die.”
“I don’t know—they’re already grandparents.”
“You’re lucky I don’t shoot death-beams with my eyes.”
She took another bite of pizza. “This is really good. Want a slice?”
“So lucky.”
* * *
In revenge I took her therapy-shopping; since she wasn’t a fiend of the night anymore, she really needed a new wardrobe. I needed the Bees for the full effort, and I had to read them in on the sensational revelations of tomorrow anyway. Megan was snarkely thrilled for us, Julie horrified, Annabeth ready to set fire to the Daily Met, and I felt better. Or not better, but at least strong enough not to cull Chicago’s wild newsy population the next day.
Ignoring that, the next four days should have been great. I got to hit every class, startling professors and classmates resigned to knowing me as an occasional face attached to top grades, hung out on campus with the Bees, and actually got to catch the social side of student life. I even introduced the girls to Jamal—and had to fight hard to keep them from turning him into a makeover project. Smart boy, he relegated them to the Big Sister’s Annoying Friends category and put up with their enthusiasm. He fell hard for Annabeth. Dane didn’t mind; they always do, and in his opinion it just showed good sense.
But as my ribs healed, the only updates from the Dome were on Shelly’s “neuro-integration process” (whatever that meant). And my public absence only fed the fireworks kicked off by the horrible story. At least The Story almost completely buried the Grand Beach Incident, but it also gave Mr. Shankman one more “sad example of the depravity of self-appointed heroes.” Quin had to be going crazy; I’d become the Bad Girl of the team, which was just surreal, and all Quin could do was repeat the news-point that I remained on the injured list. Meanwhile, two more supervillain slayings hit the news—one with a high bystander bodycount—and everyone seemed to be screaming for the Sentinels to Do Something.
At last Dr. Beth called me in, smiled over the good, strong remodeling he found in my ribs, and ended my exile.
* * *
“She looks so…normal,” I said.
The woman on the Assembly Room screen could have been someone’s aunt. Brown hair showed grey streaks, and narrow librarian’s glasses framed a nice, lived-in face. Her mouth, lined by a bitter twist, spoiled the picture; she was unhappy and mad about it. Did she look like someone capable of summoning a demon to render victims into soup? No.
“That’s the best, most recent picture we have,” Fisher said as we all looked her over.
The Friday morning briefing played to a full room. Fisher brought us all up to speed on the Hecate investigation, and two more heroes sat at the table: Watchman and Variforce. I knew Watchman as Lieutenant Dahmer, and his fitted leather jumpsuit—military cut, green and darker green, with silver shield on the left breast and Sentinels’ patch on the right shoulder, topped by a black military beret—made me wonder if he remembered he’d gone civilian. He sat at attention.
I sat stiffly myself, wearing the armor Vulcan had worked up for me. A solid piece of molded armor covered my torso as part of my bodysuit (the cape buckled onto it) and left my arms bare. Vulcan called it a cuirass. Bracers replaced my gloves, and “greaves” and “poleyns” (I was beginning to think Vulcan was a history geek) molded into my boots protected my legs all the way up over my knees. It all looked kind of like fancy motorcycle armor, and was made of The Stuff—in this case cooked up to be stronger than titanium or ceramic composites. Vulcan had made it metallic blue to match the rest of my costume.
Sitting to my left, Variforce looked bothered .
“Are we sure Dr. Millibrand is this Hecate person?” he asked. “From what I understand, we have only circumstantial evidence and hearsay connecting her to Mr. Moffat’s murder.”
“Which is why we don’t have a General Warrant out for her arrest just yet,” Fisher agreed. “But we are circulating her picture to all the CAI teams and police precincts.”
A former US Marshal, Variforce came to us as a new recruit through the Department of Superhuman Affairs; his ability to project and manipulate articulated variable-property force fields made him great on offense and defense, and Blackstone was serious about ramping up our fighting strength. His black and silver spandex bodysuit flaunted a physique as tight as a Chicago Opera Ballet dancer’s, but he looked anything but girly.
“However,” Fisher continued, “we do have a General Warrant for this man.” A point and click brought up a shot of Mr. Early’s bodyguard from Saturday night. I looked at his dark, heavy-jawed profile, and swallowed, remembering the sick snap when he twisted his boss’s head around.
“Sheriff Deitz passed along Astra’s description, along with corroborative descriptions from the neighbors. ‘Villain-X’ is Sergeant Jason Leavitt, formerly of the US Army. Sergeant Leavitt finished serving four years in military prison last year, for improper actions during his unit’s deployment in Iran. He is an A Class Atlas-type who experienced his breakthrough during basic training, and he is considered extremely dangerous by the DSA. If you find him, you are to serve the warrant with all the force you need to bring.”
I looked across the table at Watchman; I remembered his easy humor, but he wasn’t smiling now. One of his own, gone bad. He caught my eye, and nodded.
Another click, and we were looking at a split-picture of two men, the guy on the right a ratty-looking blond and the guy on the left a dark-haired… average kid. The kind of kid you expected to see behind a counter asking “Do you want fries with that?”
“We still don’t have a complete roster of Villains Inc.,” Fisher said. “But from your own encounter, we know these two; Tin Man and Flash Mob. Tin Man appears to have stepped up his game, from remote-controlled housebreaking robots to serious threats like your dragon last week. Flash Mob is a military nut who was turned down by the US Marines for psychological reasons. He loves big guns, big explosions, and can spontaneously generate twenty or so short-lived duplicates—all just as cra
zy as he is, and determined to have fun before they disappear.
“Hecate, Tin Man, and Flash Mob are all what the military calls force projectors. Since force projectors don’t engage in fighting directly, it’s very hard for us to prove their involvement in any specific crime; you can imagine how valuable this made them with the Outfit.”
Fisher brought up Kitsune’s picture next, his Yoshi Miyamoto-face. “We have had no luck following Kitsune’s trail,” he said. “However, Jenny followed a hunch that our shapeshifter’s chosen codename, being Japanese, might mean that our suspect is, in fact, Japanese. Combining it the latest name and face Astra provided for us, she found this.”
The picture changed to the redheaded half-Japanese Kitsune I saw in the attack on the Dome.
“This is Rei Pascarella. Her mother’s maiden name was Mari Miyamoto; she changed her given name to Mary when she married Johnny Pascarella. Ms. Miyamoto was the daughter of Yoshi Miyamoto, a Japanese businessman.”
“Was, Detective Fisher?” Blackstone asked.
“Yes, sir. Mary and Johnny Pascarella, and their daughter, were killed in a home-invasion gone bad five years ago. The murders remain unsolved, but a flag in the case-file leads to our Organized Crime Division; it appears Johnny was a wiseguy who was quietly negotiating to turn state’s evidence and get out of Outfit. Internal Affairs couldn’t find any evidence of a leak, and now it’s a cold case.”
“And Mr. Miyamoto?”
“Disappeared three years ago. He had no other family, and it took us awhile to get his information from Osaka Prefecture in Japan.” Fisher brought up a picture of a grandfatherly Japanese gentleman.
“Right,” Rush laughed. “And what are the odds it’s coincidence?”
“None at all,” Fisher said. “Jenny gave us this.” The push of a button de-aged the face and I stared at the Yoshi I met in the club. “We are proceeding on the assumption that Kitsune is in fact Yoshi Miyamoto, aged 78, of Osaka Japan. And the ten million was never his objective; he’s here to collect on his debts.”
* * *
When the briefing broke up, Chakra and Quin stopped to welcome me back. Artemis waved and then disappeared, but Fisher took me aside before I could follow her.
“Got a few minutes, kid? And a place?” He held up his pack of cigs and I grinned.
“Blackstone? Can we have the room?”
Chakra took Blackstone’s arm and gave us a wink. “Play nice,” she said as they left. I picked up an empty coffee cup and slid its saucer over to Fisher. “Instant ashtray.”
“Thanks.” He lit up, sighed. “Glad to see you’re alright. Nice look.”
“My ribs approve. What have I missed?”
“Five more hits, two in public—hard to say which side hit which. Garfield is ready to take the investigation from me and hand it all to Organized Crime. Has Kitsune been in touch with you again?”
I shook my head. “Why would he?”
“No idea. But why did he reach out to you the second time?” He shrugged, obviously not expecting an answer.
I thought about Saturday night’s Kitsune-dream. It hadn’t faded like dreams normally do. “There is one thing…” I said. And I told him.
He took a long drag when I finished, stubbed out the cig.
“Burning hounds, huh? And she kills them?”
“That’s what the fox said.”
“Then there’s something I want you to see.”
Chapter Thirty Four
Only a decade into the superhero era, we are already seeing recycled names. Possibly this is because there are only so many cool superhero codenames. Certainly in the case of Watchman, Chicago’s new Sentinel, it’s not a legacy-name; its previous owner was a B Class aerokinetic who worked for Night Patrol in San Francisco. The Sentinels paid Watchman’s estate an undisclosed sum to acquire all copyright and trademark rights to the name, just so their newest Atlas-type recruit wouldn’t be called Awesome Man.
From Terry Reinhold’s City Watch Column
* * *
When Fisher said he wanted to show me something, it was usually a body. He never said it was, but I was getting good at anticipating the need to disassociate from the next thing I saw. I didn’t have anything scheduled till the afternoon training sessions and I’d been ordered to take it easy anyway, so I checked out with Dispatch while Fisher called ahead. Dispatch listed me as Active, allowing Watchman (who’d stood up for me since Sunday) to fly out to Washington. Since Fisher wanted to talk enroute, he drove me down to the Cook County Morgue.
To my surprise, the Chief Medical Examiner took time for us herself. Dr. Abigail Sinclair had a warm Southern drawl and a laugh that dripped like honey. She smelled like vanilla, wore pearls with her suit, and liked to touch whoever she talked to—which was mostly Fisher. She took us up two floors to a smaller examination room where she’d laid out two bodies.
“Here we are, sugar,” she said. “I kept our last two; we couldn’t keep the family from claiming victim number one.”
Fisher shrugged. “Shouldn’t be a problem, Doc. Can you tell Astra what you told me?”
Snapping on some gloves, she twitched aside the cover over the first body to bare the head and torso. I swallowed.
“The medical term for this is cooked,” Dr. Sinclair “Call me Abby” said. “Which is impossible.”
The body hadn’t been burned, even I could see that. It—he—still had his dark shock of hair and thick eyebrows.
“The victim’s clothes were intact,” she said to me. “Not even singed, and he collapsed in the middle of a crowd. Until then nobody noticed him. The first reading of his core temperature was ridiculous; he couldn’t have been alive, let alone walking down a street, and the degree of...baking…indicated he’d been that hot for hours.”
Fisher watched me, and I forced myself to think about what I was looking at. There was something wrong about it, and not just the condition of the body.
I opened my mouth, and a different question spilled out. “Was it… did it hurt?”
“No way to tell, kid,” Fisher said softly. “But I don’t think so. Witnesses said he was just walking slowly, and dropped without a sound. Like he’d passed out. The others were the same.”
That helped, but he didn’t offer anything else, which wasn’t like him. Even Abby looked puzzled.
When I took a step closer, the wrongness grew. I spun to look at Fisher.
“This is—”
“This is what?”
“Magic.” The body didn’t have the same too-real feeling of the special room in the Dome, but it was close—like a lingering smell or fading after-image.
Fisher didn’t blink. “And the other one?” I stepped around to the second table, shaking my head when Abby offered to uncover the body. “This one, too. But… not as much.”
He snorted. “That one is the second victim, found on Tuesday. Our man here died last night. Dr. Cornelius told me about your ‘sensitivity’ before he skipped town, and that it might last awhile. Good to know he was right.”
Abby looked interested. “You can sense supernatural effects, honey? That would be very useful. We get a few ‘cause unknown’ cases every year, and we’ve got no magic breakthroughs on staff to sniff out curses.”
I must have let my panic show, because Fisher shook his head. “We can talk about that later, Doc.” He took my elbow. “We really need to be going.”
“But—”
“I’ll call. Promise.” He got me out of there quick, leaving the doctor with her mouth open, and didn’t say anything else until we were back in the car.
“Wow,” I said when I could trust my voice. “You’d better apologize with wine and candles.”
He glanced at me. “You’re laughing.”
“Yes,” I giggled. “And thanks for the save. Ugh!” Shuddering, I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to get the image of the dead man out of my head. What a wonderful first day back… Think of kitties. “Those were some of the hits you talked about?
”
“Actually, no. The first case didn’t even cross my desk—Garfield gave it to Phelps. I caught the second. He’s a John Doe, but his face came up in our image recognition software.”
“Huh? How?”
“After you told me Mr. Miyamoto was probably Kitsune, I pulled the security footage from The Fortress. Nemesis found his target because victim number two pointed him out. The weird bit is that, looking at all the tapes, number two got plenty of room—like everybody could smell him and gave him lots of space, but nobody even looked at him. He had to grab Nemesis to get his attention. You can watch the files if you want.”
Wearing the Cape: Villains Inc. Page 23
