She poked me in the shoulder with a gauntleted finger. “You like it because you’re goofy, too.”
“Well, lucky for you, it’s Sunday afternoon. This is as quiet as it gets. Goofiness levels are down to a brisk lack of taking themselves seriously. You won’t need any weaponry.”
She grabbed her giant speaker backpack protectively, and I abandoned that argument. Going armed into Chinatown wasn’t technically breaking the rules, just tacky. Also serious paranoia. This really was a quiet day. We were the only supervillains I saw before setting foot into the mall.
Even inside, I saw only about a dozen folks in brightly colored costumes, and maybe half a dozen manning the sales tables. This place wasn’t just quiet, it was practically dead.
And every mask, pair of goggles, face plate, and glowing eye turned to watch us as we entered.
Ampexia gritted her teeth, drawing her tall (compared to me), thin frame up straight, and flicked three switches on her gloves. “If anybody so much as touches my partner, everyone here will go through life without eardrums.”
The only two mad scientists I recognized were Red Eye and Cybermancer. The former fell forward until her face planted against her tabletop. The latter took out a pair of little metal earplugs, inserted them into his ears, gave Red Eye a reassuring shoulder pat, and glared accusingly at his comrades.
The other mad scientists kept staring at me, even after Red Eye, still face-down, gave them the middle finger. Photos of my circuitry had had plenty of time to be shared around by now. Were those intent eyes burning with a lust for truly exotic technology?
I was pretty sure the rest were actually watching Ampexia. She kept herself apart from the community and was just old enough to count as an official member. Nobody took eager curiosity to the point of creepiness like a supervillain. She’d also stolen a whole lot of stuff from a whole lot of people by now.
Laying my hand on my T-shirt-loving partner’s bare forearm, I glared at the watchers and repeated exactly, “If anybody so much as touches my partner, everyone here will go through life without eardrums.”
That got appreciative smirks. At least half of the watchers turned back to their business, and most of the rest… well, they still stared, but it died down to levels appropriate to an interesting novelty.
Had I ever seen this place so unpopulated? I could actually see the faded remnants of brightly colored sales posters with Chinese writing on them, which plastered every glass surface of the regular people shops that would reopen tomorrow. Someone had left a whole bin of fruit sitting out, and I didn’t have a clue what the spiky orange things were. Asian agriculture, or mad science?
And as for the black arrow on the floor by my feet…
…that would be why we were here.
Pulling my paranoid partner by her elbow, I followed the arrow as it slid across the floor towards the far end of the building. It finally ducked into the same darkened shop Mirabelle liked to sit in.
That darkness was a bit darker than I remembered. Despite it being bright daylight not far away, I could see nothing but the roughest outlines of a female figure lounging on a throne, and the ice-blue flames in her eyes.
“You have summoned. I have come. State your business.” Lucyfar’s voice echoed around the otherwise empty room.
Stepping into the room hushed all the noises from the rest of the mall. All I could clearly hear were the ticking of my heart and the faint clicks, hums, and whines as Ampexia activated her weapons in case Lucyfar attacked.
Boldly striding to the foot of the throne, I planted my hands on my hips. “I need your help.” And then, because there was no bold way to say it, I lifted one of those hands to wave it around in a dismissive circle. “Okay, no, I don’t need it. I just want it.”
The darkness deepened. Even up close, I had trouble making out Lucyfar’s shape. Only the blue flames of her eyes remained clear. “Go on. The Princess of Darkness is listening.”
I shr—criminy, still couldn’t shrug. I tugged on a braid instead. “In a roundabout way, that’s what I need. This weekend has been miserable. I have to get back to my roots, remind myself of who I am with some gleeful and madcap villainy.”
The burning eyes narrowed. “And also to remind everyone else who Bad Penny is, both as someone to be taken seriously, and not too seriously.”
I gave her a thumbs up. “Nailed it. I knew there was only one person to come to for ideas on having a morally ambiguous good time.”
The sound of wings fluttered in the darkness. The throne, which had been hard to make out to begin with, faded into the shadows. Lucyfar drifted down from it, to stand as an inky shape looking down at me, her voice reverberating from all directions. “Lucyfar has many ideas, but do you know what she likes most of all?”
“Talking in the third person?” asked Ampexia.
I broke into a huge grin. Oh, yes. ‘Sarcastic teammate’ was just what the Inscrutable Machine needed.
Something in the back of the room coughed, then clunked. The shadows began to fade, ever so gradually. The first thing they revealed was Lucyfar, in a black leather bodysuit with strategically placed pentagrams. Her chin lifted proudly, she said, “Lucyfar does enjoy referring to herself in the third person. Lucyfar has always wanted to be celebrated in a Norse saga. Great is her skill with the warrior’s axe, and fantastic does she look in an Icelandic side-fastened tunic.”
Ampexia jerked her thumb at the outside world. “Should I go get lunch, maybe take in a movie, while we wait for her to get to the point?”
That got a peal of laughter from Lucyfar, and she draped an arm affectionately around my shoulders, leaning against me as she cackled. The darkness continued to ease, until I could see the whole empty room, and the clunky little machine in the back corner with the big funnel and accordion-pleated barrel body.
Lucyfar is naturally tall, and I am naturally a shrimp. This interaction just about draped her chest over my face. I wouldn’t have noticed, except the pentagram painted over her bustline rearranged when I looked at it, spelling out ‘My demonic horns are up here’ with an arrow pointing towards her head.
While I wondered just how much money she’d spent on that joke, she got her composure back. “Actually, what I love most is corruption, twisting the souls of good children to wickedness. Tell me, daughter of heroes, what is the most completely unethical, devious, unfair, and deliciously satisfying thing Penelope Akk wants right now?”
…
…
The answer clicked into place, and my grin returned with it. “I want spying devices. Lots and lots of spying devices, because I know the most fun and unscrupulous way to use them.”
Ampexia’s voice rose in disbelief. “That’s it? You could have told me in the first place. We don’t need this doofus.”
Lucyfar waggled a finger in denial. “Too late! You have invoked the doofus, and the doofus is going to ride this train all the way to hilarityville.”
Ampexia cracked her knuckles, gripping first her right fist, then her left. “I’m not a fighter, but stealing expensive, exotic audio and broadcast equipment? This is my jam.”
hat brought us, with terrible inevitability, to lurking around the corner of a building in Burbank, watching the edifice of Echo’s Tower. Except for six geometrically placed, perfectly pruned little trees, it sat in its own small square of shiny white pavement, and looked an awful lot like a lighthouse. A twisted lighthouse whose hexagonal sides spiraled like a unicorn horn, sure—and the rotating thing at the top looked more like a reception dish than a lamp—but basically a lighthouse.
I shaded my eyes, pretending that the bright sunlight on all that white could still sting. “I always thought this was farther out of town.”
Ampexia looked surprised, lifting her goggles up both so I could see her raised eyebrows and she could stare disbelieving at me without lenses clouding her view. “Are you kidding? You’ve never been here? Echo worships your old man. Most of these goobers do. And they think your mother
could take Mourning Dove without breaking a sweat.”
“An accurate description,” said Lucyfar.
Ampexia ignored her, pulling another cartridge from her belt and plugging it into her backpack, then inserting two wireless plugs into her gauntlet. “Almost ready. This is my booby trap detector. I stole it from that guy who makes booby traps for everyone’s lairs.”
I pursed my lips. “Good plan.”
Lucyfar gave a quick golf clap. “Yeah, nice one. I knew he had to have built in a backdoor for himself.”
“And this,” Ampexia said, sliding a thin, black flash drive into a USB slot, then snapping that slot in to lie flush with the rest of the glove, “Will tell me if Echo is home.”
I gave her a wry half-smile. “You’ve run into Echo before, I take it?”
She sneered, and snapped her goggles back into place. Unlike the brown leather and brass edging pilot goggles favored by us mad scientists, hers were mostly black rubber, and looked like she’d stolen them from a race car driver. “He takes me personally because I’m music-themed. I can never tell if he wants to adopt me, arrest me, or ask me out. Heroes are just as goofy as villains.”
A subtle reminder that my new teammate was an obvious teenage runaway. Maybe someday she would trust me enough to tell me why. Until then, she was also someone who appreciated not being pushed.
Lucyfar, with demonic sensitivity, nodded and said, “So true. Hey, why couldn’t we bring the goat? I want to play with the goat!” She practically vibrated with excitement at the idea.
Ampexia let out a faint growl of disgust. “Because this operation has to be quiet. If Echo knows his tracers were stolen, it won’t take him long to find them. I’ve got a pretty good idea of where they’re stored, so I’ll slip in and out.”
She pointed up at the windows near the top of the tower. It occurred to me that Ampexia knew an awful lot about Echo and his tower, but was that any surprise? A practical villainess knows her enemies.
My teammate demonstrated her practicality now. From our hidden location, she fired out a wire thinner than a shoelace to strike the base of the tower. A few button presses on her gauntlet later… and she let out a frustrated sigh. “No good. He’s inside. We’ll have to come back later. Do you two want to grab some pizza? You’re not so weird you don’t like pizza, right?”
“Patience is for mortals,” said Lucyfar, walking past her and out into open view.
Ampexia grabbed the back of Lucyfar’s collar, and I grabbed Ampexia, helping her reel the queen of slinky leather madness back into hiding. “I told you, he can’t know we were here!” my partner hissed.
Lucyfar tossed her long, gloriously shiny black hair, unabashed and infernally confident. “He won’t know you were here.”
She started walking again. I laid my hand on Ampexia’s forearm this time. “Nobody does a distraction like Lucy.”
My ponytailed partner scowled at me. “You’re the one who wants these bugs.”
Ignoring us both, Lucyfar resumed her march. We couldn’t see the front door of the tower from here, but she took her place far enough in front of it that we could at least still see her. Shiny black knives materialized in the air around her, and swooped in to begin carving graffiti on the tower’s white stone walls. Thanks to the hexagonal shape, I could see a few letters—for all the good that did me. They looked like… Hebrew? Languages were so very, very not my specialty.
Several seconds later, the sound of a window slamming open echoed over to us, and a man shouted, “Lucyfar, what do you think you’re doing?!”
“You owe me a date, big boy!” she called back up to him.
Not that we could see him, but Echo sounded understandably exasperated. “What are you talking about? And stop that!”
Still scratching away at his tower, Lucy folded her arms under her chest and glared up at him defiantly. “The thing with the space pearl, remember? Lucyfar said smoochy times, or she would leave it in the giant oyster where it belonged.”
“It was a broken Conqueror Orb, and you dropped it again as soon as you brought it up, and that was two years ago.”
Black-clad shoulders shrugged, and Lucyfar’s imperiousness turned instead to callous indifference. “Sure. How do you spell ‘kissing in a tree’?”
Scratch scratch scratch went the knives. The one on our side was carving hearts.
“Lucy, I’m not stupid. The last person you went on a date with got fired out of—don’t write that!” He sounded so horrified, I was starting to wish I could sneak around and see the show, instead of just hearing it.
Still dismissive, Lucyfar said, “Until I see you in front of me puckering your lips, I’m going to be here indulging my artistic muse. I’ve got a lot of ideas and you’ve got a lot of wall space, so no hurry.”
For several seconds, Echo didn’t respond. True to her word, Lucyfar kept writing. People across the street were stepping out onto their balconies and staring with binoculars.
Finally he let out an aggravated whine. “I’m coming down there, but it is not to kiss you!”
The window slammed shut. I looked at Ampexia. “Echo is leaving the building. I guess that’s your cue.”
She nodded. Quietly and nimbly for someone carrying a backpack as big as herself, Ampexia ran across the square to the back of the tower. She stuck four different devices against it, checked her gauntlets again, and started to climb. Hover, mostly. I couldn’t hear anything, but I knew from experience the vibrating disks on the bottom of her pack operated as jets.
Man. I was used to working with way too few toys. Most mad scientists collected a whole arsenal for circumstances. I kept losing stuff and had to work with two or three at a time.
A clack of a door signaled Echo emerging from his fortress. His slender yellow, white, and brown figure walked up to Lucyfar, and they resumed their argument—quieter, alas. Still, what I couldn’t hear of embarrassing dialog, I could see in her rubbing up against him playfully while he waved his arms around.
Ampexia crawled in a window. Barely a minute later she emerged, just as Echo gave in and tried to give Lucyfar a quick kiss on the lips, only to be grabbed in both arms and hauled into a ferocious makeout session.
Note to Penny: If people think you’re crazy, they can’t tell when you’re scheming something serious. Shades of how Claire’s mother always looked like she was lying, even when she was telling the truth.
Determinedly ignoring the ridiculous antics, Ampexia recovered her tools and snuck back over behind the cover of a wall with me. Holding up a briefcase, she opened it. In neatly padded depressions, it held plastic bags full of tiny beetle-shaped devices, a couple of flash drives, a portable tracker, and even an instruction manual.
I applauded quietly, and didn’t hide my wide-eyed admiration. “Wow. That was fast. You’re a real professional.”
She smiled, grimly pleased. “Get in. Get the goods. Get out. Steal from the best. Now let’s get moving before we’re noticed.”
Nodding, I took the briefcase and stroked it with wicked anticipation. “Yes. It’s time for stage two of my plan. It’s a shame Lucyfar will be busy, because this is where I get evil.”
knocked on the front door politely, and waited until it was answered. Bobbing in history’s smallest curtsy, I asked, “Good evening, Miss Lutra. Is your daughter at home?”
Claire’s mom looked down at me with a small, amused smile. I knew quite well that Claire was not at home, because there would be light and music from her bedroom. Get her out of the public, and my so-theatrical best friend turned into a geeky cave dweller.
A good description of me, come to think of it.
“She has stepped out for a minute, Penelope. Something about being too stubborn to let her ankles heal.” The bluest eyes in the world watched me with cynical curiosity and sly entertainment. So, same as normal.
“Well, then, it’s a good thing you would never let a supervillain on the run walk into your daughter’s bedroom to use her for a diabolical scheme,
” I said, and stepped past her into the house.
No exquisitely manicured hands grabbed hold to stop me. On the contrary, Miss Lutra wandered into the kitchen and fiddled with her computer tablet as if I didn’t exist.
Ha! Like daughter, like mother.
Humming faintly and with a happy bounce in my step, I wandered back to Claire’s bedroom, laid the suitcase full of tracking devices on the bed, and opened it up. Sliding open the door to Claire’s closet… Criminy. So many costumes! She’d already had a fondness for short skirts and shirts that showed off either her midriff or the cleavage not many other fourteen year olds had. Since getting her super powers, Claire had added to that collection with actual costumes. Random bits of armor, fuzzy things with animal ears, catsuits, gowns—this closet would make any dedicated cosplayer proud.
Concentrating on the actual clothing first, I slipped a bug into the corners of pockets and behind folds of cloth where they wouldn’t be visible. The finest of mad science, the tiny devices burrowed into gaps and became even harder to see. When I finished the closet, I moved to Claire’s dresser, and bugged the slightly less provocative clothing there. Every item got a tracker, except for whatever was in the underwear drawer. The underclothes I’d witnessed the occasional times Claire stripped in front of me were embarrassing enough.
I was just closing the briefcase again when I heard the front door rattle. Claire’s muffled voice shouted, “Mom, you locked me out again!”
Oopsy doopsy! I grabbed the case and ran up the hall to the living room, where I plunked myself down on the couch and attempted to look casual. Ha! When you’re a robot, nobody can see you sweat.
I heard a key rattle, the front door open, and Miss Lutra ask, “What kind of cat burglar in training needs to use the front door?”
“I’m not breaking into any buildings with hurt feet,” Claire answered, in exactly the same whimsically sardonic tone. If you didn’t know them, it might be hard to tell their voices apart.
You Believe Her Page 23
