I always compare the way I feel about my mom and dad to the way Hazel feels about her parents, simply out of a lack of other families in my everyday hemisphere to go by. Go ahead and ask Hazel about the day her mom ran out on her and her dad, trailing after some professional gambler and never looking back. Even better, ask her about the day a few years later when her dad hauled off and sucker-punched his girlfriend in full view of everyone at Hazel's middle school. Hazel turned fifteen in a foster home where the uncle sneaked into her room at night and spent her sweet sixteen in juvie. Her grandmother showed up not long after, her last bout of cancer in remission, her next round a few years down the line.
Hazel still hurts, sometimes for the obvious reasons, sometimes because even the obvious reasons don't stop her from wishing her mother would come back or her dad would get paroled.
Family. It's a goddamn crap shoot, is what it is.
I silently seethe, the lingering effects of the baconyl swirling through my mind in an impenetrable fog that's hard to miss now that I know it's there. It's just one more irritation that's not helping me restore my calm. It's a blatant neon sign that John Camden knows more than he's telling. Granted, the sum total of his interactions with me since this whole mess started has involved sneaking around behind my back, polite greetings that were probably lies, and slipping me spiked drinks. So really, at this point he's honestly given off more of an impression that he secretly wants to date-rape me rather than that he's trying to be the least bit helpful.
“All right, that's just disgusting,” I say, then shove away from the couch as I head off to the bathroom to splash some water on my face.
The problem, I realize as I'm halfway through drying my face with a hand towel, is that it's me. It's just me.
Nobody cares but me.
I could leave this alone. I could let my mother wallow in whatever blissful Stepford life she wants, and I could continue to ignore the hell out of Graham. I could even let Morris rot away in the SLB's sterile solitary morgue without anybody to give a damn about him. If I really try, I'm sure I could just handwave the sneaking suspicion that someone else has taken over my father's life, and I can return to work and pretend that the smug beaming face gracing the evening news reports above the neckline of the familiar dark blue leather uniform belongs to my father.
If I push and struggle and grit my teeth, maybe I could even pretend that I'm not the only one who ever gave a damn that for the first time in his life, my father was honestly happy with Morris, even with all of the secrets wearing him down.
Thinking about Morris just makes me think about the lair, and about that damn list.
Troy lied to me.
He lied to me.
I keep repeating the statement in a deranged daze, clearly as a distraction from the fact that Troy neither lied to me about having superpowers nor possessed the sort of relationship with me where he had ever been obligated to tell me. His powers, whatever they may be, are his own damn business. And for heaven's sake, it took a sudden family implosion for me to reveal my powers to him, making my irritation over his unnecessary secrecy more than a little hypocritical. It's not as if I tripped over my own two feet to spill rosy anecdotes of my superhero past to him.
Of course, that doesn't mean I don't reserve the right to be bitter and resentful about it when the tables turn to my own disadvantage.
“You're sulking,” Dixie accuses as she swerves around me into the kitchen of the cafe.
Huffing out an irritated breath, I shoot an annoyed glare her way. “I have to sulk somewhere,” I say, even though we both know that statement's categorically false for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that there are much more important things I could be pitching a fit over. Troy keeping his true identity a secret doesn't even make the list, in all honesty.
She slides one of the precarious stacks of dishes in her hand, all of them crumb-covered casualties of the lunch rush, into the freshly filled sink. “And this is the somewhere you chose?” she drawls.
I can't resist a childish pout. “I have to go talk to my mom. I can't do it in the mood I'm in now. I'm liable to snap her head off over the stupidest little thing.”
Dixie mutters a few choice words to herself before raising her voice to say, “You know, whatever Troy's done, I can't imagine what it could be to drive you to the point of foot-stomping and breathing fire like you are.”
Telling her exactly why I'm angry with Troy doesn't feel like something I'm quite ready to divulge to everyone and their sister, especially since I still haven't confronted him about the whole affair yet. It's not my secret to tell, quite frankly, so when I stormed into Tea and Strumpets a short while ago, I blustered something about lying liars who lie and giant lawnmowers. Sometimes I just don't make much sense when I'm angry.
I suppose I should give Troy the benefit of the doubt considering the source, but the trouble is that I am considering the source. Morris would never get something as important as potential threats to himself or his plans for world domination wrong. As pathetic as it may sound, if Morris says Troy has superhuman abilities, I believe him.
“I just can't believe you were willing to trust someone with a name like a Harry Potter character anyway,” Dixie says.
Giggles bubble up inside me before I can stop them, a white-hot thread of guilt trailing after them. Dixie made a similar crack about him the first time he introduced himself as Troy Lampwick, and the jokes got even worse once she discovered his middle name is Neville. He'd said something about it being a much-reviled family name and changed the subject, but the Harry Potter jokes still live on.
The bell over the door rings out a greeting, and the two of us peer out into the dining room to spot Troy himself tumbling into the place, saddled with his usual stack of battered cheap notebooks, dropping pens behind him as if he's leaving a trail so he can find his way home later. I wonder for just a brief moment if he ever plans on joining this century and hauling along a laptop one of these days, but watching him dump his belongings onto the couch in the front of the cafe like he owns the place reminds me that I'm still stupidly, irrationally mad at him.
Dixie frowns as she sidles up beside me. “Speak of the devil and he shall arrive,” she says.
“It's not like he has anything better to do,” I reply.
She tilts her head in agreement. If Troy has a social or professional life elsewhere, we've yet to see any evidence of it.
I silently remind myself that I am absolutely not allowed to teleport him to the middle of Death Valley and leave him there. I head out into the dining room and ignore the curious looks of the one or two lunch-rush stragglers, striding straight up to Troy and ordering, “You. With me. Now.”
Breaking the bounds of politeness, I latch onto his wrist and teleport before he can turn me down.
I don't take us far, just to the shaded porch behind the cafe, littered with Dixie's old but comfortable lawn furniture and Tara's overgrown flower arrangements. It feels more like a misplaced jungle than anything else. It's quiet and solitary, hidden from prying eyes and ears just as long as the back door of Tea and Strumpets is firmly shut as it is now.
The second Troy realizes we're not in the cafe anymore, his expression darkens. “Vera, was that really –”
“Why didn't you tell me you have superpowers?”
You would think from the stunned look on his face that I just slapped him hard across the cheek. His shock is short-lived, quickly shuttered behind an irritated mask. “Because I don't tell anyone. No offense, Vera, but that includes you.”
“You can't have done it for very long. Do you still have your SLB clearance?”
“I always have my SLB clearance whether I want it or not,” he grumbles, more to himself than to me. His eyes flash a silent warning as he gives an aggravated scratch to the tangled mane of his hair. “Look, I don't want to talk about this. If I didn't want to talk costumes and code names when they asked me to cram into spandex underwear every day of the goddamn
year, I sure as hell don't want to have a nice involved chat about it now.”
“What can you do?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
He narrows his eyes, and for a moment I wonder if he's doing something to me I don't know about and definitely wouldn't enjoy. “Apparently I cause hysterical deafness when I ask for privacy,” he grinds out past gritted teeth.
“Troy, please.” I reach out without conscious thought to place a calming hand on his forearm, but he shifts away from me before my fingers connect. “I don't want to ask you to help. Not like that. Whatever that may be.”
“Why not? You don't seem to have a problem asking me for help in every other regard.”
“That's an entirely different level of help. 'Look at this and tell me what I'm not seeing' is nowhere near 'use your superpowers to help me make all of this go away.'”
“Oh, please. I can already see where your train of thought is going and my brain already feels like it's melted.”
I frown, more than a little hurt that he'd think I of all people would stoop to using someone for their abilities. If anybody knows better than that, it's me and my progressively growing list of ex-friends and ex-significant others who broke it off for no other reason than my refusal to eliminate their need for international air fare. “You know, I'll have a little trouble steering the conversation down these crystal-clear train tracks you're imagining if I don't even know what model engine I'm driving.”
Troy makes a face. “I hate this metaphor already.”
All right, so he isn't the only one, then, I think sullenly.
A thought darts through my mind, distinct and insistent. “They paid you to leave the business, didn't they?”
He gives me an impressed look. “Lucky guess?”
“You have no job and I've seen your house. I know what a lazy subsidy looks like.”
Troy grimaces but doesn't deny it, a small blessing. At least he respects me enough at the moment not to make lousy excuses as to where his money really originates.
Lazy subsidies aren't common, and they aren't advertised from the rooftops by the powers that be. The less powerful you are, the less likely it is you may have even ever heard of them. It's not much of a loss. If you've never heard of them, chances are you'll never be powerful enough to qualify for one anyway.
My mother has never been able to qualify for one, no matter how non-existent her physical limitations are, but Dad has, and presumably would have started receiving hefty checks in a private deposit if he didn't have the Noble name to keep him in costume for as long as he might like to stay there. Graham's chances are slim, and mine are nonexistent. But Troy lives off one.
Scruffy, frayed Troy Lampwick. It really is always the quiet ones, I suppose.
The SLB hustled him off to a little town in the middle of nowhere bereft of other superheroes or former superheroes (other than me, of course) and for good reason. Troy gets paid by the SLB to stay home, eat spontaneously concocted sandwich monstrosities, watch game shows and – above all else – not use his powers. Powers which, considering what it would take to entitle oneself to a fat weekly paycheck for life to do nothing, would have to be substantial.
Since removing someone's abilities has never had the best of success rates, you get a choice. If you're not suicidal, you get to spend the rest of your life carefree and financially sound, and in exchange you're leashed, ordered never to use your powers again, constantly monitored by the SLB's ever-vigilant faraway watchdogs. One false move, one wiggle of your fingers, and you'll be wiped out of existence so thoroughly your own mother won't recall your birth.
They only fund your carefully monitored early retirement in a bid to keep you honest and docile.
And Troy's been very docile indeed.
Well, for someone with superhuman abilities, at any rate.
Curiosity tempts me to ask what he can do, what such a scrawny unkempt mess of a man might be able to do that would frighten the SLB enough to hide him away like this, but I should know as well as anyone that looks mean nothing when you're estimating someone's power. Once you save Boston from a mind-controlling tantrum-throwing toddler who enslaves the entire city for an enforced game of Duck, Duck, Goose, you learn your lesson on books and covers, and fast.
Sighing, I tilt my head until I snag his uneasy gaze once again. “I'm not trying to get you to do all my work for me, for heaven's sake,” I assure him.
He nods at that, distracted and disbelieving, a jerky bob of the head more than anything else. “Then what am I?”
It takes me a moment to dredge up an appropriate comparison. My crush on him isn't exactly something I'm interested in advertising, and neither is it the reason I've latched onto him more tightly than usual since this whole thing started. “You're training wheels,” I hear myself say, and while I don't know where the analogy came from it fits quite nicely in my head. “I don't need you to take over, I'm just going this alone and I need to know there's someone else around who knows what's going on and isn't going to start an argument with me every step of the way.”
“So I'm a crutch.”
“Oh, no. You'd be a lousy crutch.” I give him an assessing look, the corners of my lips tugging upwards of their own accord, unable to completely conceal my amusement. “Definitely training wheels. Lightweight, easy to remove, but fondly remembered.”
Troy grimaces, his mouth a grim twist, but it's impossible to hide the color rising in his cheeks or the twinkle in his eyes. “You could put that in a Hallmark card.”
“Oh, shut up,” I say, but my words have no heat, and we're both smiling when I steer him back into the cafe.
16.
The sky is clogged with sickly gray clouds that threaten to burst forth with a good cleansing rainstorm when I pop onto the sidewalk outside of the Rafters a little later that afternoon. A sandwich and a quick power nap did nothing to refresh me, although I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't bothered to change out of my party dress. I still smell a bit like a campfire, alas, but it's a small price to pay for making a dent in the Dad enigma.
After the past two days, I'm done knocking. I shove open the door, tensed and ready to leap out of the way should the security systems decide I'm threatening enough to microwave.
My breath shudders out of me in thinly veiled relief when nothing happens.
“Miss Noble, I see you haven't been blown to smithereens by explosive devices,” John's familiar voice says. He stalks towards me from the kitchen entrance under the staircase, and for a moment I'm sure he's going to sweep me into his arms and give me a relieved hug, but he catches himself and stops a few feet away from me. “How nice of you to come and inform some of us you're not flat enough to slide under doors.”
I blush at the reminder. “Sorry.” I murmur. “Are you all right?”
John cocks an eyebrow. He turns towards the kitchen entrance and walks towards it without comment. I take the silent cue for what it is and trail after him. Tucked away the way it is, the kitchen's never been a large room with much space for anyone bigger than a teenage underwear model to navigate, but everyone who's on the Brigade or has been in the past learns to make do. I always thought the kitchen had its own fantastic abilities when I was little, the quick and precise way John would manage to make everything from a cheese sandwich to a six-course meal for visiting dignitaries appear from its depths in the blink of an eye. I still do even now, as John sweeps through the place gathering a glass from a cupboard, ice and grape juice from the fridge, a tiny vial of bright green liquid from his pocket.
We exchange a long and steady look before he pulls forward the blender and sets to the task of whipping up my favorite smoothie.
Attempting to be casual about the whole thing, I lean against the counter next to him and cross my arms. “Where is everybody?”
“Meeting in the conference room about the robot wreckage recovery,” he says, dumping the beverage's ingredients into the blender one by one. “There's no news or clues about who might have programmed
the robots to attack the city just yet, but the teams have plans to venture into the warehouse district later based on an anonymous tip.”
I shoot John a sly look as he starts the blender, then wait for it to stop before saying, “Should you be telling me quite so much about what's going on in there?”
“Probably not.” He grins before pouring the blender's contents into the glass and handing it over. “Down the hatch,” he says softly.
I sigh, then down the drink.
John stares at me, oddly satisfied. For a moment, I suspect that he almost appears to be proud of me for some reason, possibly because I've gone from shilling coffee to bouncing around the east coast like a kangaroo high on sugar all in the space of two lousy days. I almost feel the urge to inform him I'm not actually making a permanent return to professional superhero work, or at least attempt to ask him once again what his place in all this is even though I know I won't get a straight answer.
As soon as I finish the drink, I pass the empty glass back to him as the thin fog crawls through my brain once again, tinged with an unwelcome wave of brain freeze from the ice in the smoothie.
Grinning, he gifts me with a respectful nod, and in a moment he's gone so quickly I nearly question if he was ever there at all.
Teleporting has turned right back into the bad habit it's always been, it seems, as I pop out of the kitchen and up into the common room before I can bring myself to worry whether or not someone will spot me and cry foul. The lights have been dimmed already when I materialize just outside of the conference room, hiding my appearance as I peer into the room through the slim window along the doorway.
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