by Dunne, Lexie
“Pretty much.” Kiki sagged. “My grandmother redefines meddlesome in a deadly way.”
“So what’s her endgame?”
“She wants me safe from Cooper. That’s always been her goal. Look, she’s a villain, but she loves me. I’m family. And Rita Detmer will do anything for family.”
Another thought occurred to me. “Rita doesn’t care about anything that’s not her family, right? But I’m not family. Why all of the trouble to keep Cooper away from me?”
“Because she’s not done with you,” Guy said, looking up. “She’s got more plans for Gail, doesn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so.” Kiki looked miserable as she curled in on herself.
My heart lodged in my throat. “What does she even want from me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Naomi said, making the three of us look over at her. She’d been so quiet that I’d forgotten she was there. “She thinks you can take Cooper out.”
“Of course she does,” I said. I was starting to get another headache, but this time it didn’t feel like it came from deteriorating Mobium. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “She didn’t perhaps give any hints about why she would think this, did she?”
“That’s the thing about Villain Syndrome.” Kiki gave all of us a long look in turn. “They’re not really the kind of people who share with the class.”
“Perfect.” I kept my gaze on Angélica’s slack face. “That’s just . . . great. I’m—yeah, I need a minute.”
“Take as much time as you need.” Kiki pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll go make us all something to eat.”
I stayed where I was as Kiki left. Naomi, apparently deciding Kiki was the juiciest source of information at the moment, took off after her. I listened to Guy breathe, deep breaths that were so even, I knew that he had to be deliberately controlling them. I wasn’t the only one Angélica had taught that trick to, it seemed.
“I thought,” he said after a couple of long minutes had passed. “I thought that Brook would be the worst news I received today. I mean, I got you back, and out of prison, and for a while you were safe, and I thought Brook would be the worst, but it’s not even close.”
“It’s not every day you end up in the middle of a conspiracy perpetrated by the world’s first supervillain,” I said, my voice distant to my ears.
He kept breathing like that, in and out, slow and even.
When he punched the wall, the entire building shook. I watched him, feeling curiously empty. Being told everything I thought I knew was wrong was not a feeling I particularly cherished. But then, the last month of my life had been full of so many twists or turns that now all I felt was exhausted and somehow cut off from everything.
The phrase Why me? did come to mind.
Guy punched the wall again, this time only shaking the attic. He dropped to his knees and seemed to sag. “Seven years,” he said. “And that’s not even touching what these bastards did to you, too.”
“That beach is looking better and better, isn’t it?” I asked. “We could go now. Nobody would blame us.”
“If Kiki’s telling the truth, Lodi will pay for everything they’ve done.” Guy’s jaw clenched. “And so will Cooper.”
“Is she telling the truth?”
“I don’t know.” He looked worn-out.
“How powerful is Cooper, though? If he’s as scary as she says he is, why doesn’t anybody suspect him?”
“You never suspect the truly evil ones,” Guy said. “But Kiki’s one of the smartest people I know, and she’s clearly terrified that he’s stronger than anything Davenport can throw at him. So maybe she has a point.”
And Rita Detmer somehow expected me—tiny Gail Godwin, the person who hadn’t even realized she had powers not once but several times—to somehow take out this monster. And his organization, I realized. Rita didn’t believe in small goals or simple plans.
I dropped to the floor next to Guy and hugged him because I couldn’t think of anything else I could possibly do. He hugged me back, and I turned my face toward Angélica’s chamber. “You have to admire the insanity of it, I guess.”
“Always finding the silver lining.” Guy shook his head.
“I’m on the run from one company, another company is trying to kill me, and a crazy old woman expects me to kill a guy who’s invulnerable. Silver linings—and you—are all I have right now.”
“Yeah,” Guy said, and he sighed.
We stayed like that, both staring at the chamber holding Angélica, for a long time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I stayed by Angélica’s side after that. Part of it was worry that if I left her alone, she would vanish, and the nightmare would return, and she would be dead again. I needed some kind of link, a reassurance that I wasn’t going crazy, that I hadn’t actually helped kill her. I didn’t realize how much that fear had been pushing into my mind, how much it had permeated the cracks and seeded my doubts over the past week, until it was out there in the open for me to pick it apart. After all, I didn’t remember those two weeks I’d been unconscious. There was a blank space in my life, and while I wasn’t really worried that I’d been somehow programmed to work with Brook, it had apparently been on my mind.
But no. That, like everything else about me, was a lie. Just like what had really happened to me with Mobius, just like the leukemia they’d told me I had. Just like everything I’d learned since waking up at Davenport.
Guy disappeared half an hour into my vigil and returned carrying the couch from downstairs, which he set in front of Angélica’s chamber. He kissed me on the top of the head and left. I suspected he needed his own alone time, so I didn’t say anything.
Naomi silently brought up a plate of food and left it without saying a word.
“Everything I thought I knew was a lie,” I said to Angélica as I dug into the grilled chicken. It was remarkably similar to the meal Dr. Mobius had given me ages ago in this very house, but I tried not to think about that. “And they lied to you, too, about me.”
Unlike me, she’d noticed, and she’d paid the price for it.
“First they told me it was an accidental thing, the Mobium. And then maybe it was intentional. I can do things now, and I don’t even know I’m doing them, and that’s a little scary. I wish you were here to show me how to do everything and not stuck in a weird Snow White glass coffin. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were alive. I feel like I should have. Or I should have tried harder to avenge your death like one of those old kung fu movies. I’m sorry. I’m a bad student.”
I chewed without tasting the food and talked. At first it was venting, the way I’d done whenever I didn’t like what she was teaching me. Of course, I said. Of course I would somehow end up in the crosshairs of some kind of gigantic conspiracy. Never mind that my life had already sucked enough.
But at least I didn’t have cancer. I wished Kiki could have found some way to tell me that earlier. If nothing else, she would have saved me a lot of time in the quiet moments, when my brain wasn’t occupied and drifted back to the constant, underlying fear that the Mobium was killing and healing me at the same time. But I really didn’t want to think about that, so I employed an old tactic from my days of constantly being kidnapped: I focused on other things. Like the source of my current troubles.
“I don’t think you’d like Rita,” I said aloud. I folded my legs under me, rested my hands on my knees, and propped my chin on the tops of my fists. “Though I also worry you two would get along like a house on fire, you twisted sadist. But I guess you mostly told me the truth, and I don’t think she’s ever told the truth in her life. Like grandmother, like granddaughter.”
After that, I talked about Detmer. There was so much that I’d been through that I didn’t feel comfortable telling Guy or Vicki about, not without upsetting them. But Angélica probably wouldn’t remember anything about being in that
chamber, so I told her about the food and how I could now say I’d tried snails—not my thing—and how much she would love the gym.
“It’s even better than Davenport’s, and you know Davenport’s. It’s nothing to shake a stick at. But wow, this place—if it weren’t for the involuntary imprisonment and the fact that I was basically one badly timed sneeze away from being killed by any of about fifty enemies? It probably would have been perfect. I mean, sure, I never saw myself becoming an IRS agent or a villain, but I don’t know. After the week I’ve had, burning a few buildings to the ground in rage seems more and more like a reasonable response.” I thought about it. “I won’t, I promise. But I can understand the urge. I wish you were awake.”
She’d tell me it would be okay, after all. I wouldn’t believe her, like I didn’t believe any of the others, but it would be nice to hear.
I drifted off, throat sore from all the talking. Curled up on the couch, facing my friend, I fell asleep.
An explosion woke me up.
Or at least, that was what it felt like. The entire house shook, and the walls shuddered, and it knocked me clean off the couch. In an instant, I’d rolled over, crouching on all fours and looking around me. Was it Raptor? Had she found me again?
The irate hero that stormed in wasn’t Jessica Davenport.
“Where is she?” Vicki ripped off her mask. “I want to see her now, you had no right to lie to us like this—”
“Vicki, calm down,” Kiki said as she hurried into the attic after Vicki.
Vicki was having none of it. “Where is she, Gail?” she asked.
I rose to my feet and pointed. Vicki vaulted over the couch and crossed the three feet of space to the chamber. When she looked inside, she gasped. The look she shot Kiki was full of poisonous anger. Without warning, she turned and punched the glass, shattering it and sending shards everywhere. And as Kiki and I gaped, she reached in, scooped Angélica up one-armed, and set her on the couch where I’d been sleeping.
“You don’t get to play life or death with us,” Vicki said, rounding on Kiki. “That’s not your call to make. This stops now.”
Kiki gave her a distressed look and climbed over the couch as well. She ignored the glass all over the place and began to probe Angélica’s face and neck with her face. “Now you’ve done it,” she said. “It looks like she was in there long enough, so she’s okay. No thanks to you. You might have killed her.”
Vicki made a scoffing noise and stood back, arms crossed over her chest. She gave me a little nod, a jut of the chin. “Hey, Gail. Feeling better?”
I nodded. “Didn’t know you cared so much,” I said. “Are you and Angélica even friends?”
“We’re coffee buddies sometimes. I’m more pissed off on principle.” Vicki looked down at the destroyed chamber that she was leaning against. “What’d I just break, anyway?”
“You fighters are all the same,” Kiki said under her breath as she carefully turned the still-unconscious Angélica onto her side. “Punch first, ask questions later. If you’d let me explain—”
“Guy called and filled me in. Needless to say, I’m not impressed.” Vicki swung about to look at me. “How’s it feel to be in the middle of things?”
“Not great,” I said, completely honest.
“I’m here for you, Gail.” Vicki rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me a tiny shake. “And for your trainer. See? Looking out for you, like a good mentor.”
I decided not to say anything about the fact that Kiki had gamed the system to make her mentor not because of compatibility but because Vicki was too powerful to cross. I had a feeling that, out of everything, would break her heart the hardest.
Pounding on the stairs made all three of the conscious people in the room look over as Guy, Naomi on his heels, burst inside. He skidded to a halt, took one look around, and relaxed. “Hurricane Vicki strikes again, I see.”
“Hi,” Vicki said.
Guy wandered over to the couch, concern etched on his face as he looked at Angélica. “Is she okay?”
“No thanks to the masked menace over here.” Kiki glared.
Vicki dusted a piece of lint off the shoulder of her uniform. “You don’t exactly have the moral high ground here. Look what you’ve done to my friends.”
“Kept them alive against my grandmother’s best attempts to use them like tissue paper?” Kiki’s chin firmed up.
“Because of you,” Vicki said. “You could have come to me at any time for help. God knows I’ve wanted to punch Cooper in the face for a long time.”
“You have?” I asked, as the first time I’d met Vicki, she’d been flirting with Cooper pretty hard-core.
The others ignored me. “Right,” Kiki said, glaring at Vicki, “you would have believed me. Sure. Because you don’t give me the same suspicious looks everybody else does—”
“Were we wrong?” Vicki asked.
“And even if you did believe that I was telling the truth, I’m pretty sure you would have screwed it up!”
“When have I ever done that?” Vicki asked.
Kiki made a strangled noise and gestured at the glass all over the floor, and I realized maybe she had a point. “You’re lucky you didn’t kill her!”
“I could say the same for you!”
“I was saving her life.”
“After you put her in danger by not telling any of us anything!”
“Gail,” Guy said quietly, sidling up to me. “You might want to get out of the blast radius.”
“Not without Angélica,” I said, as if I was in danger, so was she.
Guy sighed like I had a point. He grabbed Vicki by the scruff of her uniform, Kiki by the back of her Cubs tee, and picked them both up, setting them on the other side of the couch. “You want to argue,” he said, “you do so away from the patients. Take it downstairs.”
Vicki swiped at Guy’s arm, breaking his grip. “You’re such a hall monitor sometimes,” she said, stalking toward the door and towing Kiki behind her. I stood where I’d been rooted, feeling like I’d just brushed the edge of a deadly storm.
“I’ll get a broom,” Guy said, sighing again at the shards all over the floor. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t moved, as I’d kicked off my shoes before going to sleep. I didn’t particular relish the idea of getting the bottoms of my feet cut to ribbons. “Stay put.”
“Actually.” It was awkward as hell, but I leaned over as far as I could, planted my hands on the edge of the couch cushion. I kicked off, did a small handspring off the edge of the couch, and folded my legs over the back. It left me sitting on the back of the couch, facing the door. “I’ll stay here, in case she wakes up.”
“Resourceful as ever.” He headed back into the rest of the house, brushing past Naomi, who was just standing in the doorway gawking. She had Vicki’s discarded mask in her hands.
I gave her an odd look. “What’s up with you?”
Her jaw clicked shut. I could see the whites of her eyes clearly in the darkness. “What the fuck was that?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“Vicki being Vicki,” I said. “You get kind of used to it—”
“Victoria fucking Burroughs is Plain fucking Jane? You talked about a Vicki earlier, but—Victoria Burroughs. Oh my god, everything makes so much sense.”
“Oh, right. I forgot you didn’t know,” I said. That was just my world now, I realized, where I regularly forgot that a world-famous supermodel was also a well-known superhero. How far had I come, that it just made sense? “Yeah, that’s . . . a thing. Are you okay?”
“I kind of feel like I’m about to have an aneurysm. Do you realize I now know more about the world of superheroes than any other journalist out there, and the minute I say anything, some psycho bitch will hunt me down and kill me?” Naomi moaned and rested her forehead on the back of the couch, next to me. Vicki’s mask
dropped to the cushions, bounced, and clattered to the floor. It lay there, looking up and judging us.
I fought the urge to kick it away. “I won’t lie,” I said. “They’re not going to let you out of this house until you sign the biggest nondisclosure agreement known to mankind.”
Naomi moaned again. “I won’t be able to write a single thing without lawyers all over me. I’m going to have to quit my job. Do you know how much my parents are going to gloat when I do that? They think I should get a real job.”
“I’d say you’re less likely to wind up in the crosshairs of a supervillain if you have a ‘real job,’ ” I said, making the finger quotes in the air, “but I am living, breathing proof that that really is not the case.”
“Your life is messed up, you know that?”
“So is yours.”
Naomi took a deep breath and straightened up. She seemed to pull herself together, pushing her shoulders back, lifting her chin. “We got off on the wrong foot,” she said, sticking her hand out. “I’m sorry. Naomi Gunn, reporter, and not as much of a pain in the ass as you all think I am, I promise.”
I shook her hand. “Gail Godwin. I am as much a pain in the ass as everybody thinks I am, though the fault is mostly not mine.”
Naomi grinned, briefly. Her smile flickered and died. “I didn’t tell Chelsea—Brook, whoever the hell she is—I didn’t tell her about Guy’s weakness. When I figured out what it was, and why she wanted it, I ran. I never wanted him to get hurt.”
I took a deep breath. “So how did she know?”
“My guess? She found my notes and traced them to the same old article I did. It mentions War Hammer and a purple fireball. You can kind of draw your own conclusions from there.” Naomi pulled her arms in around her midsection, hunching over.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry you went through all of that. With her, I mean.”
“Thanks. I have to ask: what’s going to happen to us? You realize that if Chelsea—Brook—whoever she is, if she has the same thing you do, she’s only going to get stronger. Yeah, it’s selfish, but I’m a little personally invested in making sure that doesn’t happen as she probably would have killed me if you hadn’t busted me out of the hospital today.”
