“Bullshit,” said Connie. “Conspiracies never work the way they’re supposed to. I’ve busted enough secret societies to know that.”
Bonita smiled, adjusted her glasses. “Oh, there have been hiccups along the way. A great many. My own direct involvement in your life, for example, wasn’t Plan A. We were never supposed to meet. But the operative who was supposed to be your teacher came down with a head cold. We improvised.”
“What could you possibly gain from becoming my teacher?”
“It wasn’t you directly. But there was a young man you had a growing infatuation with, and we were worried he might screw up your priorities. By then, we’d lost two-thirds of our candidates, including the most promising ones, and we couldn’t risk losing another. So, I became a teacher to manage the situation.”
“I don’t remember any boy.”
“That’s because I’m good at my job, but if I hadn’t been there, you most likely would’ve started dating him, and there was no room in your life for boys at that moment. He was a difficult little shit to get rid of. I eventually had to have an affair with his father, leading to a divorce. Then his mother was offered a lucrative job out of state. A job she never would’ve been able to take if she’d been married. Problem solved.”
“You’ve been screwing with my life that long?”
“Longer,” said Bonita. “Even before that enchantment kicked in, it was our job to see to it that you were ready for it. In a way, you should be thanking me.”
Only Connie’s handcuffs kept her from leaping across the table and strangling Bonita.
“Thank you for what? Ruining my life?”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. You have a life, and what a life it has been.”
“You like it so much, you take it.”
“Would that I could.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Connie. “If there was a conspiracy controlling my life—”
“Not controlling,” corrected Bonita. “Guiding. You were still on your own path. We just kept you from wandering off of it when necessary.”
“Yeah. Still not buying it.”
“It would be a poor conspiracy if you did.”
“Yes, but this is me we’re talking about. I know conspiracies exist. I’ve discovered dozens of them over the years. I’m not easy to fool.”
“This is about more than your bruised ego, Constance.”
“Screw you.”
Bonita stood and paced around the room. “My dilemma is what to do with you now. I would like to let you go, but I’m not sure how that would work. Now that you’ve seen our operation, I’m not so certain it can escape your attention again. You do have a tendency to screw things up. I don’t suppose I can ask for your word you won’t come back here and cause any more trouble?”
Connie half-smiled. “Oh, I promise.”
“I thought not.”
Bonita left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her and joining Peterson behind the one-way mirror. Connie stared at her from the other side.
“She didn’t know,” said Bonita. “She thought we were part of the Area 51 group.”
“We aren’t?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “We were, but we haven’t been with them for a long time now. They just don’t know it. Or maybe they do. Maybe we work for them and only consider ourselves independent.”
“You don’t know, ma’am?”
“The best way to be wrong about something in a business like this is to assume you know something. I assume very little, and I assume I’ll be proven wrong about what little I do assume.”
“That’s a weird way to run a conspiracy, ma’am.”
“It’s the only way. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Trust that someone somewhere knows what the hell they’re doing.”
“Hell of a way to live,” he said.
“One must have faith.”
She measured Constance. Bonita had heard the stories. She’d read the reports. The weight of the universe sat on Constance’s shoulders, and the only mercy was that she didn’t understand that.
Or maybe not. The whole thing could be a colossal waste of time, a game played for no reason. The eye at the top of the pyramid was just as blind as anyone, and it wouldn’t add up to anything.
Time would tell.
“What do you want us to do with her?” he asked.
“Throw her in the holding cell. It’ll be nice to get some use out of it.”
“Do you want us to leave her an escape route?”
“Oh, dear boy, no. If she can’t escape from the cell on her own, then she’s not the woman we need.”
“But isn’t she the last candidate?”
“Indeed she is,” said Bonita. “For all our sakes, let’s hope she survived this long for a reason.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Faith,” said Bonita. “Sometimes, it’s all we have.”
20
“She’s not coming out,” said Tia.
“It’s only been two hours since she went in,” said Thelma.
Whatever Connie had slipped Tia, it had given her a small headache behind her eyes. She ordered another water, and when the barista gave her a dirty look, she bought a coffee cake to keep him off her back. He was already mad at her for falling asleep at her table.
“She’s not coming out.”
“But isn’t that what she does?” asked Thelma.
“Not this time,” said Tia. “I can feel it. In my gut.”
“Oh, your gut. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“Trust me. I’ve been in this situation a hundred times before. Except I was the one not coming out, and she was coming to rescue me. Now it’s my turn to rescue her.”
“Does it work that way?”
Tia ignored the remark, so Thelma was kind enough to repeat it.
“I didn’t think you rescued her. That’s not the dynamic, I believe. You’re just a regular person, not the hero.”
“Regular people can be heroes.”
“Oh, yes, certainly. Fireman and police officers and soldiers and average citizens who pull strangers from burning cars. I’m not disputing that. But this isn’t that sort of heroism, is it? Also, have you done any of those things?”
“I distracted you when you were going to kill Connie.”
“Being a good distraction is hardly the sort of heroism one needs for something like this. Do you know anything about stealth, martial arts, infiltration? Are you perhaps a master of disguise and simply neglected to mention it up to this point?”
Tia had faced this truth before. Many times. She wasn’t an extraordinary person. She was, at best, an above-average person. She wasn’t meant to live out fantastic adventures. She was supposed to be living in the suburbs with a husband, two kids, and a job she tolerated.
Here she was instead.
Thelma said, “If I were you, I’d go back to the motel and wait for Constance to make her daring escape. Although if you wait long enough, I bet the place will explode when she does. Might be worth sticking around for.
“Maybe if you’re lucky, she won’t come out. Congratulations. You’re off the hook. You can go back to your ordinary life.”
“What life?” asked Tia.
In a way, Tia was just as much a victim of Connie’s destiny as Connie herself. In another way, it was worse. Connie got to go on fantastic adventures, had fame and fortune, had seen and done things most people couldn’t imagine. Tia had been along for about twenty percent of it, but nobody cared about her. She wasn’t famous. She hadn’t saved the universe. She’d saved a cat stuck in a tree once and gotten a scar across her shoulder as repayment.
“I’m through being the goddamn maguffin,” she said. “I’m the scrappy sidekick.”
“And that’s significantly better?” asked Thelma.
“You bet your ass it is.” Tia gulped down her water and, with all the steely determination she could muster, marched out of that coffee shop and into the talle
st, widest man she had ever seen, wearing a butler’s uniform.
“Pardon me.” She tried to get around him, but he intercepted.
“I’m going to need you to come with me, miss,” he said.
She looked up at his face for the first time. His face was as wide as the rest of him, with a chin that took up most of it. A scar ran across his nose, and he had two different-colored eyes.
“Oh, shit.”
Tia knew a henchman when she saw one.
He jabbed her in the arm with something pointy.
“Son of a bitch.” The world turned blurry. “But I’m the scrappy sidekick.”
She fell into the man-mountain’s arms as the world went black.
She woke up in a small white room. It wasn’t the nicest cell she’d ever been in. That would’ve been that cult of demon worshippers in Beverly Hills, who had locked her up in a luxury townhouse apartment. This place was more like a minimally furnished break room, complete with a small table, refrigerator, and microwave. She lay on a semi-comfortable sofa.
She covered her eyes from the bright track lighting. Her current headache didn’t appear to be getting along with her previous one, vying for sole occupancy in her brain by attempting to shove each other out of the back of her skull.
“Guess your rescue didn’t go quite as planned,” said Thelma from Tia’s pocket.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Touchy, touchy.”
“How long was I out?”
“About an hour.”
Tia closed her eyes, but in the dark, her headache was harder to ignore. She opened them as she sat up.
“How long does it usually take for Constance to save you?” asked Thelma.
“I don’t know. It varies. Might be any minute. Might be a week. Once, it was a whole month.”
“Do you ever worry she won’t?”
“Sure. She’s not perfect,” said Tia. “One of these times, she probably won’t. Once, I was captured by fire worshippers and five seconds from being thrown onto a bonfire. Thought I was done for sure. Another time, there was this giant chimpanzee . . .”
She lay back down and covered her face. She wasn’t up for reminiscing about all the times she’d been useless in the past.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” said Thelma. “You’re just a person.”
“I don’t need your sympathy.”
Tia checked the refrigerator. It was filled with a variety of snacks and sandwiches. Most were labeled. She picked up an egg salad sandwich marked DAVE’S and peeled back the plastic, took a bite. She wasn’t fond of egg salad but needed something to settle her stomach.
“Should you be eating that?” asked Thelma.
“I’m sure Dave won’t mind. And if he does, I don’t give a shit.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Tia sat at the table and had another bite. “Yes, the old poisoned egg salad sandwich trick. Never fails.”
If she choked on the bite, Connie was sure to save her. And if Connie didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Tia was nothing more than a hostage. Connie didn’t need her.
Nobody needed her.
The door opened, and the hulking butler with the different-colored eyes entered, carrying a tray with a teapot and some snacks. Tia didn’t consider running past him. There wasn’t a point.
“Oh, I wish you hadn’t done that.” The giant butler frowned. “Dave’s going to be pissed.”
21
Connie was not going to escape. She’d decided that shortly after being thrown into the cell. She was going to sit here and ignore every instinct she had.
She noted, despite her best efforts not to, that the guard checked on her every fourteen minutes and that there was a blind spot where the camera couldn’t see. The bars of her cell were just wide enough that, if she employed the right focused breathing technique, she could squeeze through them. When the guard came to check on her, she’d knock him out.
If they were smart, they’d send in more than one. But they wouldn’t send in enough. They’d foolishly think two or three would be adequate, and she’d beat the hell out of them, grab their keys, and begin the next stage of the escape.
Not this time.
This time, she’d sit in this cell and not do a goddamn thing.
This time, she’d show the universe who the hell was boss.
She sat on the old cot and considered what she knew and what she didn’t know. She’d always known her fate wasn’t entirely her own. The enchantment that Thelma had placed on her had taken away much of Connie’s control, but she had always believed she was making some of the decisions. She couldn’t necessarily choose the destination, but she could pick the route.
That was all a giant lie.
Magic was one thing. Magic was larger than any single person. It broke the rules of physics and operated under its own logic. She had enough experience with it to know that you didn’t beat magic. Not easily.
Secret societies and conspiracies were something else. She busted secret societies all the time, and almost none of them knew what they were doing. But this latest one had been behind the scenes, screwing with her already screwed-up life. The worst part wasn’t finding that out. The worst part was that she’d never suspected it.
With a life of endless adventure under her belt, not much surprised Connie. But this surprised the hell out of her.
At the age of twenty, in a relatively quiet March that started with raising Atlantis and ended with having to sink it again, she’d struck a silent bargain with her life. She’d do what it wanted her to do, but she’d do it her way. She had the adventures. The adventures did not have her.
Her curse said she was supposed to have an ordinary life along with an extraordinary one. That’d never been true. The extraordinary had always gotten in the way of everything else, but she could find moments of relative normal.
Those moments had never been real.
If the deal was broken, she’d stop playing the game. She’d sit in this cell, and if the cosmos wanted her out, it would have to do so on its own. No help from her.
The floor beneath her feet vibrated.
She folded her arms and scowled. “Damn it.”
The floor sank into the ground, taking the entire cell and Connie along with it. The hidden elevator fell several dozen stories deeper into the earth down a shaft carved from rough rock. It came to a slow stop in a room filled with guards loaded with paramilitary gear.
The leader smiled at her. She knew he was the leader because he was the only one not wearing a mask and because he was dressed in a white suit. There was a wrinkle in the right lapel. She thought she recognized him, but she hoped she didn’t.
“Hello, Constance,” he said.
“Who the hell are you now?” she asked. “On second thought, I don’t care.”
“No need to be hostile. My name is Root. I promise you we have nothing to do with Mrs. Alvarado and her organization. We don’t approve of their methods.”
Connie took measure of the guards. Their assault rifles bothered her less than their masks. The gunmetal-gray design was a cross between a robot and a skull.
“You’re not part of Alvarado’s group?”
“God forbid. We were once associated with them, but our goals diverged,” he replied, still smiling slyly. He was a man with secrets, just begging you to ask for them so he could keep them from you.
She said, “I have to say, then, that this is a hell of a trick. Sneaking a platoon of death soldiers into an enemy base without setting off any alarms.”
“This isn’t their compound. This is ours, located several thousand feet beneath theirs. Hidden where no one would ever think to look. A secret base under a secret base. It’s quite clever, don’t you think? That way, we can keep an eye on them, and if someone comes poking around, they’ll always stop at the first secret base. Who would think to look for a second?”
The outlandishness of his explanation put her at ease. It was ridiculous, but she accepted
ridiculous.
“Aren’t you worried they’ll catch on once they notice I’m gone?” she asked.
“Your ability to escape is well established. I doubt they’ll be terribly surprised by your disappearance.” Root gestured toward the only door out of the room. “After you?”
She’d play along for the moment.
They walked, and the guards trailed behind them. The walkway outside the room was a steel corridor with high arched ceilings and a polish that made it gleam. Secret base construction was a specialized business, requiring ninja-like stealth, cutting-edge architecture, stylish interior decorating, and technical know-how. Connie had enough experience to know a good lair when she saw it.
“Nice. Who’s your contractor? Lairs, Incorporated?”
“Yes, they cost a little bit more, but I find they’re worth it. You get what you pay for.”
The pie factory above their heads was deliberately ordinary, even in its secret areas, but this secret secret base had gone all in. From the moving walkways to the clear glass elevators to the lighting that was warm and flattering, this was the work of the best. Even the logo stamped here and there had that professional touch. Many supervillains, by virtue of their egos, didn’t like to subcontract out graphic design work in some mistaken belief it compromised their integrity, and it showed. If she had a dollar for every secret society that used a fist or an eye or a scorpion surrounded by a generic Latin phrase, she’d be rich. She was already rich, but she’d be richer.
This group’s logo was a series of carefully arranged triangles that gave the impression of two eyes, a nose, and rows of pointed teeth. It hinted at a skull but didn’t overstate.
Skulls were everywhere. Not just the masks on the guards. The nonmilitary personnel had skull patches stitched on their shoulders. The logo was painted over every door, on the floor every fifty feet. A forklift driving down the hall had a chrome skull bolted to its roof. Connie had never met anyone this devoted to skulls that was up to any good.
The tour was comprehensive, and Connie wasn’t invested in it. This wasn’t her choice, so why bother? She’d been shown enough lairs by enough evil masterminds that there wasn’t much to make her care. There were labs, where people in hazmat suits experimented with strange chemicals. There were training areas, where soldiers honed their skills, such as standing around and appearing quietly menacing. There were a cafeteria, a laundry room, and a rec room. Minions had to be taken care of and entertained somehow, though most tours skipped those parts.
The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Page 13
