“You’ll be breaking out of buildings with hurt feet. I suggest you learn how.”
Match point for Miss Lutra, because Claire offered no retort except to thump into the house on her crutches.Miss Lutra let her almost reach the hall before saying, “You do have a visitor. I told her that you would be home in just a minute.”
…technically true. Note to Penny that should have been unnecessary: Play games with a Lutra, and she plays games back.
Claire stumped around into view. She could really move on those crutches now, when she wasn’t putting on a pity show for her mom. When she saw me, her face lit up with delight. “Penny!” Then her smile froze, along with the rest of her. “Woah. The other Penny.”
Lifting up the briefcase, I laid it with a distinct thud on the coffee table, and gave Claire a wicked grin. All the more wicked, because Claire was now wearing the only suit of unbugged clothing she owned, one of those white stomach-baring T-shirts and shorts combinations, both tight enough to make boys weak in the knees.
My steel heart clenched painfully in my chest as I drank in my best friend’s presence, but I couldn’t show it. Instead I fiddled with the latches of the briefcase, all business. “I’m here to offer you the chance to do something wildly inappropriate.”
She sighed, and collapsed onto the cushions at the other end of the couch, eyes lingering on the dull-gray case. “I might as well hear what you have to say.”
Ha ha ha! GOT HER.
Opening up the case, I lifted out the resealed bag of trackers. There was no way for her to know it had been a lot more full when I arrived. “I want you to place one of these bugs in each piece of biological Penny’s clothing.”
“And what makes you think I would ever betray my best friend?” Claire asked coldly.
Leaning back, I draped an arm along the back of the couch, and looked her straight in her elegant blue eyes. “Reason number one: You’re hoping to use the signals to spy on her yourself. Reason number two: Just thinking about doing this is filling you with glee. Reason number three: Your mother would do it.”
“Claire knows that’s not true,” lied Miss Lutra from the kitchen.
The aforementioned Claire stared at me, squinting behind her glasses. Finally, she whispered, “You are the real Penny.”
Throwing my hands in the air, I roared, “YES.”
Smiling and merry now, Claire raised a warning finger. “Not so fast. I’m not completely convinced. Let’s say instead that both of you seem just a little weird to me. However, in the interest of discovering the truth, I suppose I will do the deed you request.”
Another couple of seconds of silence, and I reached out a hand. She took it, and I squeezed, glad just to feel her touch again. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
She let out a groan. “I might have some idea. Every day at ballet camp I asked myself why I was stuck surrounded by vapid theater girls instead of back home with you.”
There was no way I was releasing my grip on her hand, so I rubbed my face with the other. “I’m trying to think of this as camp. Making new friends, sleeping in a different bed, random creative projects and field trips, and staring at the calendar for hours hoping every day brings me closer to home.”
“It’s not worse than ballet camp,” said Claire, face hard and voice flat.
I raised a skeptical eyebrow.
She tried to pull her hand free. I didn’t let her. She gave me a smile, patted my gripping hand, and then raised the other in a fist, letting her anger consume her, burning in a grimace across her face. “I hate ballet. I hate ballet so much. Getting up at dawn, two hours of stretches and squats on your tiptoes, lying on planks and extending your body and holding that pose until your muscles scream, and then the entire rest of the day repeating the same dance routine over and over and over. I swear the top girl was cheating. She had a super power. She could fly. I know it.”
I admit, she had my sympathy. “That sounds painful and dull and lonely. At least supervillain camp is exciting.”
Looking down at my clenched fingers, she said gently, “I need my hand back, Penny, please.”
Considerable willpower was necessary to let go, but I did. Claire climbed to her feet, grabbed two fistfuls of shining platinum hair, and ran in circles around the living room furniture shouting, “AAAAAAUGH!”
By the end of the first lap she was hobbling in obvious pain on her bandaged feet, but she kept it up for two more before dropping back onto the couch. She took five deep breaths, staring with wide, wild eyes into her lap, until at the end of the fifth she settled against the arm rest and asked me pleasantly, “So, what computer game are you playing?”
My whole upper body slumped forward. I boggled, looking past her, not really seeing anything but my suddenly exploding thoughts. “I could have been having fun in my free time instead of seething. I actually got a computer and intended to play games, then forgot. Wait, it’s been… ‘Princess of the Closet Monsters’ is out!”
Standing up, I gave Claire a polite nod. “If you will excuse me for one moment.” Grabbing my braids, I pulled them out away from my head and ran around the living room three times shouting, “AAAAAAUGH!”
When I fell back onto the couch, Claire put her arms around me, hugging me to her and stroking my head. “There, there. I completely understand. I’m not even going to try for cheerleading when we get to Upper High. I’ve neglected my nerd roots too long. Claire Lutra will be all intellectual, all the time.”
I gave her my most my skeptical look, and then blinked. “We’re supposed to pick specialties. What are you going to go for?”
“Languages,” she answered immediately.
“Say what now?”
She held up both hands. “Honest! We both know the regular job market will never hold anything for me. Being able to travel the world, read and speak anything, is a great skill for a thief, especially when you’re stealing super power related artifacts. You never know if you’ll have to read a tablet in Russian or Sumerian or what.”
I smirked. “Sounds like more of a treasure hunter thing.”
“I’m sure I’ll be sharing a lot of classes with Ray. We’ll be split up a bit more than at Northeast West Hollywood, but with some wheedling and a delicate touch of mind clouding, I believe I can arrange we share the maximum classes possible.” She fluttered her lashes, hair curling and turning more gold than silver.
Leaning against her, I rubbed my nose. Not that it ever itched, but hey. I also pulled my folded-up letters home out of my pocket, and gave them a dour stare. “I just have to get camp wrapped up by then. Keep thinking of it that way, Penny, and you can get through this.”
Claire reached out greedily and snatched the letters from my hand. Flipping through a couple, she exclaimed, “These are cute!”
I grabbed them back and shoved them into my coat again. “They feel like I’m talking to myself, sometimes.”
“Keep writing them. No matter how this turns out, your mom and dad will know you love them. Besides, the ‘I’m at camp’ code you’re writing in is so adorably Penny.” She finished up her advice with an encouraging hug.
My smile returned. Pushing myself upright again, I said, “Thanks. And thanks for believing in me. Getting to see you again brings me back to myself.”
With a flourishing shimmy, she sat up straight herself. “Well, of course. Without my best friend, I was practically unrecognizable at camp.” Leaning forward, she pulled the briefcase off her coffee table and into her lap, turning regal and businesslike. “Bear in mind, officially I remain on the other you’s side. Any doubts I may have do not change that.”
Her greedy stroking of the rough, gray plastic case cover made me grin. I had no fears of her turning into a partisan zealot, nope. Composing my face again to match hers, I stood up and gave her a bow. “So be it. I will just have to win on my own merits. After all, proving that I’m the better Penny Akk is the point, isn’t it?”
mpexia could spend forever browsin
g in that little mad science music shop on Melrose, which is good, because we’d been there awhile.
I peeked out through the tiny gaps between posters on the main window, and saw nothing but the hole a superhero left on the sidewalk moments before we ducked inside.
That had been followed by two bickering voices:
“Are you crazy? You could have hurt someone!”
“I swear I saw that killer robot everyone’s talking about.”
“All I see is dust. A vast, choking cloud of dust, because someone is trigger-happy.”
“It will be here. It’s probably taking aim at your voice right now.”
So, it seemed a good idea to stay inside and out of sight for a while. Hiding in a basement would be an even better idea, but no way would I let myself be chased out of living what I had left of my life.
My attempt to ponder safety issues was cut short. Ampexia grabbed my elbow, and hauled me across the shop to a display case. “So, check these out! Pretty sweet, huh?”
I checked the sign above the table. “Those are speakers?”
Even to my mad-science-acclimated eye, very few of the items on the display case looked like speakers. One was an apple, for Tesla’s sake! An actual, bright red apple that I was currently unable to eat. A shame, because it looked super juicy. No blemishes, perfectly ripe. Next to it was a rubber kitchenware box containing a dozen or so firecrackers. At least the vertical cylinder with all the knobs and hammers and gears looked musical.
Pride of place certainly belonged to a mason jar of soap bubbles, floating peacefully without popping.
Her phone already out of her pocket, Ampexia plugged a cord into it, and the other end of the cord into a USB slot on the jar lid. That lid irised open, and the bubbles hovered out like they’d been blown by a gentle gust of wind. As they circled above the jar, echoey, liquid notes fluttered in no pattern I could identify, until the music whispered barely identifiable words. “Ampexia is now online.”
“Going to get it?” I asked, resisting the urge to poke one of the bubbles. I wanted to so baaaad. Willpower, Penny!
She shook her head, dull blonde ponytail flopping around. “Nope. Maybe later, if I get an inspiration. Every instrument has its own opportunities, and I don’t want to waste one if I won’t use it.”
Apparently intent on working down the list, she unplugged her phone from the mason jar, and next, into the apple. Just stuck the plug in through the flesh, scrunch. Only having grown up around this stuff prevented me from being totally surprised when the apple shivered, and out of the stem grew a tiny tree. It never even reached two feet high, but a woody trunk grew in sudden jerks, twisting at sharp angles and extending spiky branches that bent the same way. Every twist of the trunk came at a ridged joint, making it look like it was made out of segmented wooden tubs. The whole thing looked… robotic, in fact, especially when the miniature tree stopped growing and burst into brightly colored flower, each triangular petal extending separately. Yellow, red, blue, red, yellow, red, red, blue—the flowers whirled into existence, and then the whole thing went still.
The apple had long since shrunk into the trunk of the tree-let, which stood on a splayed star of roots.
Leaned in only a few inches away, Ampexia studied the botanical sound translator intently. “Cool. I may come back for this one, but if someone who will use it more comes in…”
The owner, a man much too young to have such a tremendous, bramble-thick brown beard, nodded. “Indeed.”
Personally, I grinned. My new partner lived in a world of music I did not comprehend, and it was fun to watch.
The other oddities on the bench she passed over, moving to the next rack, where a battered, normal-looking guitar lay. Of course, if it were normal it wouldn’t be in here, and neither would it have a USB port in the neck.
Ampexia picked it up, turned it over several times, lay it back down, and plugged in. She tapped away at her phone for a minute, and the guitar began playing itself.
Strings plucked themselves, a gentle, quiet melody. Mournful, even. In fact…
“Is that ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’?” I asked. Cassie played a recording of it for me once, but that had been played on an electric guitar.
Ampexia nodded silently, her arm sweeping up to hold her palm out to me, urging silence. Scowling with furious concentration, she listened through the rest of the song. Only then did she address the store owner. “I can’t tell it wasn’t played by a human. Who made this?”
“Paradisio Extravaganza, eighty years ago. Five times, the plugs have been changed. None know how he originally programmed them. Them, I say, for there was originally a small orchestra.” He stood stiffly, exchanging a solemn look with Ampexia as if they were describing a funeral, or a birth.
Ampexia grabbed her chest, fingers digging into her Boreal Network T-shirt. (A completely different shirt from last time, this time with a pixelated bicycle.) “A whole band,” she wheezed. “I’ll find it. I’ll find them all, and steal them all so you can reunite them.”
His mustache and beard moved, suggesting a wry smile underneath. “And then shall you steal them back from me.”
She pulled her head back, just a touch shocked. “No. I will do what it takes to get these instruments a proper home, but you will get paid. You’ve always done right by me, and I will do right by you.”
While they discussed legendary musical mad science, I had a free moment. Digging out my phone, I punched up the custom app I’d gotten with the briefcase of trackers. Ampexia had been right about stealing from the best. We’d even had time before I visited Claire to separate the signals into two sets. Now I called up the map of LA. The two dots were nowhere near each other. Excellent. The parasite was out away from home, without awkward best friend interference, at Melrose and…
Criminy. She was down the street from me right now.
HA!
A sudden sense of looming snapped me out of my evil anticipation. Ampexia stood right next to me, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “I’m sure I mentioned how creepy it is when heroes bug people.”
Putting my phone away, I unslung the mega-plow instead. “But it works. Time to contact my target.”
We ducked out of the store. Two mad science-armed teenagers walking down Melrose did not get much attention, but they did circle around me when I started moving in little rushes from fake cover to fake cover.
When Ampexia caught up with one of those, I asked her, “Can you provide some theme music?”
“Yes,” she said, and kept walking.
A few blocks farther, and I identified the location of Parasite Penny’s tracking blip. She was at the burger place I usually ate at when out shopping here. Although it’s not like I usually bought anything on Melrose. ‘Goofed around with Ray and Claire’ would be a better description.
Would Mom and Dad be with her? They shouldn’t be a problem, only an uncomfortable complication. Leaning against the very last building, I checked that the plow was powered up, and the weather sponge ready on my wrist. I wasn’t here to fight, but I’d be foolish not to expect violence from the thing in my body.
I let out a sigh. “I wish I could have brought Gerty. Having that kind of power behind me would make this a lot more comfortable.”
Ampexia shook her head, two swift, fierce motions. “No way.”
“Yeah, I know. It was hard enough keeping her in the truck. No way she could resist putting on a big show walking down this street. A big, destructive show. I’m having a hard enough time keeping heroes off me.”
“Something to think about if you go full supervillain,” she said.
I shr—criminy. I went for a twisted half-smile instead. “Yeah, but then I’ll only have them on my butt when I’m in costume.”
She said nothing, in alert and watchful rather than bantering mode. Her unspoken criticism was correct, of course. I was delaying the moment.
Rounding the corner, I strutted with all the arrogance I could muster into the dining court
yard of the restaurant.
No parents. Neither was the parasite goofing around with Ray and Claire. She was only goofing around with Ray.
In fact, from the way they sat at a corner to each other on the little square table, and the soft way he watched her eat, this was a date.
My teeth clenched so hard it hurt. I had to force myself to relax again. Ray wasn’t to blame, but how dare she take advantage of him?
Stalking now, I crossed between the tables to meet them.
Ray noticed me first. She was busy pigging out, shoving a burger into her mouth like an organic rock crusher. A pile of empty plates suggested he’d already satisfied his super-metabolism. Now he had nothing to do but watch her, until I appeared. Now he watched me, completely silent. I’d known him for years, and I couldn’t read this expression.
What had it told him about me?
The parasite didn’t notice me until I was actually standing next to the table. When she did, her hand dove immediately into her pocket. I swung my own weapon up.
Faster than either of us could react to, Ray grabbed our wrists. The parasite held a black-and-purple diagonal striped box in her hand, about the size of a gun clip on television. She had her thumb hooked into the funny little recessed trigger.
His eyes still wide, his voice soft and face sad, Ray said, “Please don’t fight.”
Locking my eyes on the parasite with a furious glare, I said, “That’s not why I’m here. Thank Tesla, because this crazy monster is going to blow up my body before I can get it back.”
She smirked. She preened, leaning her head back to look down my nose at me, even though she was seated. Her other arm came up, showing off a blue bracelet of overlapping hearts, with a knob of tiny, raw electronics that extended like a bronze web around the sides. It snuggled right where I kept my Machine. “Once I stopped denying what I want, I asked my power to make me a shield against my own bombs.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Great. So you’re just going to blow up my boyfriend.”
Her smirk turned into an outraged glare. “I can shield him, too!”
I waved my free hand at the rest of the restaurant, which was trying very hard to ignore us. “Okay, you and he live, and it’s only the civilians who die.”
You Believe Her Page 24
