Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3)

by Samantha Bryant

  “Flygirl.” Leonel knelt and held out his hands in a boosting position. Jessica understood immediately, and Leonel helped vault her into the air.

  On the headset, he could hear the report. “At the back of the crowd. It’s a woman with short dark hair. Fuerte, your three o’clock.”

  Leonel came running down the stairs and pushed into the crowd, trying to gently shove reporters and bystanders aside. Police officers tried to direct the crowd, but no one seemed to understand that they needed to evacuate. Leaving crowd control to the officers and other agents, Leonel scanned the plaza. “I don’t see her.”

  Jessica’s voice spoke in his ear. “To your right, behind the red van.”

  Leonel ran the few steps to the van but didn’t find anything. Suddenly the air around him grew hot, and the van was on fire. Behind him, Leonel could hear the beginnings of panic running through the crowd and prayed the officers would be able to get the onlookers to safety. Scanning for something—anything—he could use, Leonel spotted a fire hydrant a few yards away.

  He ran to the chunk of metal and ripped the clamp off the front of the fireplug, dropping it onto the pavement where it cracked the concrete. When water didn’t immediately come shooting out, he dropped to his knees to look at the device more closely. Pulling on years of experience in assisting on David’s plumbing jobs, he located and flipped a valve, releasing a fierce stream of water that hit a white car across the street, scooting it up tight against the curb and denting the door, probably drenching the interior.

  Frustrated, he grabbed the fireplug and wrenched it sideways, aiming the stream at the flaming van. There was a horrible screeching sound as the metal bent, but then water shot at the van.

  Leonel jumped up and yelled, “Where is she?”

  The answer didn’t come through the headset but from the street behind him. “Right here, macho man.”

  Leonel turned around to find a woman standing on the empty sidewalk. Her hands were held low and out to her sides, each alight with fire. She looked different—her hair had been dyed and she wasn’t wearing any makeup—but it had to be the same woman. How many fire-throwing women could there be in Springfield?

  “Helen?”

  The woman looked up, squinting. Realization spread over her face slowly, and she smiled thinly. Leonel had never seen such an angry smile. “It is you. I was right.” Helen raised the flames higher. “I know you. You were there the night of the fire at Cindy’s house. You were working with Patricia.” She took a step closer. “And at the college. You threw me into a wall.” She raised her arm high, and Leonel looked around for where he might be able to duck for cover.

  “I’m sorry. You burned my friend. I—”

  A fireball landed at Leonel’s feet, turning the puddle into steam. Leonel stepped back, preparing to fling himself at the woman, to knock her down.

  “Where is she?” Helen’s face purpled with rage.

  Leonel carefully avoided looking up. If Helen didn’t know where Jessica was, Leonel wouldn’t be the one to tell her. A fireball flew, and Leonel ducked into a roll as he’d been taught, coming closer to Helen, the fireball bouncing across the wet bricks behind him before sizzling out. Helen’s voice cracked with anger and tears. “Where is Cindy Liu?”

  “I don’t know.” Leonel was relieved to be able to tell the truth, relieved Cindy and not Jessica was the target of the madwoman’s rage. Sirens echoed through the streets and Helen seemed to come into herself, hearing them. She created a wall of fire a few inches in front of Leonel and raised it taller than either of them. Leonel threw himself back away from the heat, then ran in a wide loop around the flames. By the time he got to the other side, there was only empty sidewalk. Helen Braeburn was gone.

  Cindy Made a Monster

  Sometime during the night, Cindy awoke. She took a moment to take in her surroundings and listen carefully, but she couldn’t identify anything that should have wakened her. The bed was lush and comfortable. For a woman living in hiding, Dr. Ayres certainly had classic taste. Cindy herself had never bothered with her surroundings much, accepting places to live as they were and only haphazardly making changes. It had simply never occurred to her to invest her time or energy into things like choosing a bed or curtains.

  Still, it was nice to spend time in a room that had been put together with a plan. The dark reddish wood of the sleigh bed matched the nightstand and dresser. The deep green duvet matched the towels in the bathroom. The lamps even matched each other. Cindy felt a little uncomfortable in the face of it all, as if she had been faking her adulthood all these years.

  When it was clear she wouldn’t drift back to sleep, she decided to go find a snack. Dr. Ayres had said she should make herself at home, so that’s what she would do. Throwing off the comforter, she sat up, digging her toes into the plush carpet. She pulled a sweater on over the children’s pajamas Mekai had picked up for her. Maybe Dr. Ayres would have some decent tea.

  Cindy crept down the stairs, walked into the kitchen, filled the kettle at the faucet and set it to boil while she opened cabinets and looked for tea. She smiled with honest pleasure when she found a tin of Darjeeling tea and a tea ball. It had been far too long since she’d had a real cup of tea.

  “Can you make a second cup?”

  Cindy hadn’t heard Dr. Ayres enter the room, but she wasn’t upset to see her. She grunted her assent and pulled down another mug. “Do you have a pot?”

  “On the third shelf.”

  Cindy looked up, frowning. This was a tall woman’s kitchen.

  Dr. Ayres stepped closer. “I’ll get it, dear.” She reached up and pulled down the pot and set it on the counter, patting it with her long, graceful fingers, then stepped back to a safe distance. Cindy looked down at her own stubby fingers and felt again she had missed something—having grown older without really growing up. Maybe she could get it right this time. She stood admiring the other woman’s long, white hair rolled up atop her head and the matching nightgown and robe set she wore while they both waited for the kettle to boil. Even awake in the middle of the night, the woman looked put together and poised.

  When it whistled, Cindy moved the kettle off the burner, poured a little water into the pot to warm it, swished it around and dumped it back out, then added the filled tea ball and the hot water. She carried it over to the small table in the corner, where Elizabeth Ayres had seated herself, then went back for the cups. “Do you like anything in your tea?”

  “No. Just tea.”

  “Excellent.” Cindy sat down in the other chair and rested her hands on the sides of the teapot, enjoying the warmth on her fingers. They didn’t ache anymore like they had before her experiments had youthened her, but the heat still felt lovely. She saw that Dr. Ayres similarly cradled her teacup, though it wasn’t yet warm.

  The woman smiled at her. “You couldn’t sleep?”

  “No. I don’t sleep as much as I used to. I think it’s adolescence.” She sighed. Cindy wasn’t looking forward to going through all that again.

  “I don’t think that’s what’s going on with me.” There was rich humor in the woman’s voice. She reached for the pot, and Cindy pulled back her hands so the other woman could pour tea for them both. Almost simultaneously, they picked up their mugs and breathed in the steam.

  “What do you think of what your father has done?” Dr. Ayres spoke quietly as if the question weren’t loaded.

  Cindy looked toward the stairs. In another bedroom, her father slept. She took a sip of tea. “He’s a genius.” Even to her own ear, she didn’t sound convinced. Dr. Ayres looked at her steadily. Her blue eyes seemed deep and full, vibrant against the papery paleness of her skin.

  Cindy looked down at her tea. She poured more, though she had not finished her first cup. All the while she could feel the doctor’s gaze boring into her, and her skin grew heated. “Well,” she finally said, “he was a genius. Now? I’m not sure he’s even still sane. You should be glad you don’t know the whole story.”


  “I heard enough. When he was young, your father was an idealist. We all were. We were going to save the world.” Dr. Ayres refilled both their cups. “I’d still like to. But, Anton? I think he’s forgotten about the world and is only trying to save himself.”

  “I’m trying to save him, too.”

  “Have you asked yourself why?”

  Cindy looked up sharply, but the other woman’s face was kind and curious, not judgmental or disapproving. “My mother died a year or so ago,” Cindy said. “We weren’t close at the end—maybe we never really were. She said I was cold, heartless, like my father.” Cindy stood up and took her empty cup back to the sink and cleaned it out. “Of course, that was meaningless to me. I had never met him. And I took her stories with a grain of salt. The bitterness of love gone wrong.”

  She returned to the table. “I thought he was dead. I never expected to have the opportunity to know him. I guess I want that.”

  “What if you don’t like what you learn?”

  “At least I’ll know.”

  “Be careful, dear. You’ve got a whole new future ahead of you. You need to decide what kind of woman you will be, again. Don’t let your talents go to waste. Don’t let him use you.”

  “Not to worry.”

  Mekai cleared his throat from the doorway. “Good. You’re both up.” He stepped into the room, and Cindy’s gaze flitted over the closely fitting white undershirt and the soft gray pajama pants that hung low on his hips before looking back at his face. When he moved to take a chair at the table, and Dr. Ayres poured him a cup of tea, Cindy would have sworn the woman was laughing about something.

  Mekai was all business, though. “You need to see this.” He positioned a tablet where all three of them could see, then clicked the video already pulled up on the screen. It was a clip from a newscast. As it played, Cindy rose from her chair in horror. She paused the clip on a close-up of the woman’s face and pinched her fingers to zoom in on the image. There was no doubt about it. Her hair was different, but that was Helen Braeburn.

  “She’s still alive?”

  Mekai nodded, and Cindy groaned, flinging her hands into the air in her agitation. Dr. Ayres asked, “Who is this?”

  “Her name is Helen. We… we were friends. One of my supplements made her like this. I was helping her understand and control it. We were trying to understand the how and why of it. And then all hell broke loose.” She remembered Helen’s wounded expression when she’d been making her getaway from the fight on campus. At the time, she’d told herself there was no sense in both of them getting caught. She couldn’t be any help to the woman if they were sharing a jail cell.

  So, she’d run away, leaving Helen to face the music alone. An action that had gotten Helen Braeburn thrown into a wall and broken like a doll. Helen was dead, or so she’d believed, and what was done was done. Now it appeared that wasn’t so.

  She ignored the questioning look on Dr. Ayres face and turned to Mekai. “When was this?”

  “Earlier today.”

  “Where?”

  “Springfield.”

  “Did they catch her?”

  “My sources say no.” He grabbed the tablet and flicked through some still images, showing a burned-out car, scorch marks on the pavement, and a broken fire hydrant. Cindy felt sick to her stomach. “Your friends from the Department were there, too.”

  “They’re not my friends.” She snatched the pad away from Mekai to look at the pictures he’d indicated. A woman dressed in blue and white in flight across the sky. The red hair didn’t fool Cindy. That had to be Jessica Roark. And the man, shown posturing with a bent steel bar—it had to be the same one who destroyed her lab equipment and took Jessica out before she could get the answers she needed, the one she’d thought shot dead. They both looked to be in costume. There was no sign of Patricia, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there somewhere.

  “What kind of circus are they running there?” She pointed at a picture of Jessica hovering above a crowd of people who looked up at her amazed. In the photo, Cindy spotted the small African-American woman who had been part of the fiasco in Indiana, watching the audience instead of the flying woman.

  Mekai took his pad back and flicked to his messages, keying in an additional password. “They were holding a press conference. Some people think the whole fire fight was a publicity stunt, but the damage is real enough.”

  The image of Helen’s distorted face still dwelled in Cindy’s mind as she toyed with the teapot. She could feel Elizabeth Ayres’s gaze upon her and wondered what the woman was thinking now.

  “What were they announcing?” Ayres asked. Both Mekai and Cindy stared at her blankly. “At the press conference?” she prompted.

  “A partnership with the city of Springfield. Looks like a dog and pony show to announce they exist and are here to help.” He turned to Cindy. “They’re calling themselves the Unusual Cases Unit, but clearly it’s the Department. Bertrand’s group has files on these two, as well as your pyro.”

  Cindy considered that. She knew Mekai would say they shouldn’t go back to Springfield. He’d already been saying it was “hot” there and had tried to talk Bertrand out of offering them help at all. The fact that they’d been tracked to the Qmart parking lot and he’d had to fight their way out didn’t help her cause. But Cindy knew she’d hooked Bertrand with the promise of her rejuvenation formula. He’d be on her side. She’d seen the hunger in his eyes when she talked about developing her work further, making it safer and more stable.

  She put her hand into the pocket of her pajama pants to feel the bag of emerald dust and pieces. It was depressingly flat. Even though she’d stopped treating herself, sure she had stopped her backward progress and was aging forward again now, she’d still been going through the gemstones relatively quickly in treating her father. She’d ordered more emeralds when they’d been in Indiana but had not been able to replicate the effects with that new sample, even though both samples seemed to be the same on the surface.

  There had to be something she was missing. Something that happened to those gems between their removal from the earth and their use in her formulas. To figure that out, she needed her original supply. And that meant getting to Springfield to her storage unit. For that, she needed Mekai.

  “There’s more.” Mekai’s face was tight, and Cindy knew the news wouldn’t be good. “The fire woman—”

  “Helen.”

  “Helen.” He tapped the image on the screen. “She asked for you by name during the fight. It’s not in the news coverage, but Bertrand got that information through back channels. She’s looking for you.”

  Cindy gulped at the thought of Helen Braeburn finding her and exacting her revenge in flames. Then she relaxed. Helen was a real estate agent, wanted by the police. She didn’t have the resources to find her. If Cindy could wait things out here… even a few weeks might be enough.

  “You’ve got to go.” Elizabeth Ayres stood and began to put away the tea things.

  Cindy and Mekai both looked at her, stunned. Elizabeth turned and stared right back at Cindy, her gaze unflinching, sure and demanding. “You are responsible for this woman and the damage she does looking for you, Dr. Liu. I won’t let you hide here while innocents are injured. You made this mess, and you are going to clean it up.”

  Mary Finds a Lifeboat

  For the tenth time, Mary picked up the van keys and put them back down. She’d been pacing in circles and talking herself into and out of searching the city for her renegade mother for hours. Doing nothing was torture, but driving around the city in the van wouldn’t help anything either. Her mother was out there, probably wreaking havoc on the streets of Springfield, and all she could do was wait and work herself up by watching the news. She wished for the hundredth time that she had someone to call for help.

  Every channel played and replayed the firefight from the day before. No one had yet identified Helen Braeburn, but Mary knew the police didn’t tell the reporters everyth
ing they knew. And the Department definitely didn’t. The authorities hadn’t descended on the apartment yet, but it was probably only a matter of time. Would running even do any good?

  It had been a mistake to come back to Springfield. She should have kept going after they broke out of the hospital, driving that stolen Honda until the wheels rolled off the rims. They could have started over someplace new. Someplace far away from Cindy Liu, the Lizard Woman, emeralds in storage units, flying women, and all the other touchstones of her mother’s madness and obsession. But she had taken the easy way out, seeking refuge in the familiar. And she had failed to recognize how far gone her mother was until it was too late. So, here she was, waiting for the apocalypse to rain down on her head, half wishing it would just come already.

  Jorge had told her to stay put. He was right. Someone should be here in case her mother came back. But Mary was also more than a little freaked out by his cryptic comments. “They’re not going to like this,” he had said. Who the fuck were “they”? Was Jorge mixed up in this some other way than through her? She’d been gone for weeks. Anything could have happened in that time. She hadn’t even known him that well before the Department had taken her in. A physical connection did not equal a reason for trust.

  He’d been gone for hours. He hadn’t called in after the fight downtown. The burner phone he’d given her sat on the counter in front of her, silent and useless. What had she been thinking, putting her trust in that man?

  She knew what she’d been thinking. They’d been desperate for aid and didn’t have anyone to turn to. Gratitude had been her first thought, with precaution running a distant second. Mary picked up the keys again and went to the window to peer out. The road was still quiet. Just the same cars that had been there all day. Whether that was a good sign or a bad one, she had no idea. She was so jumpy and paranoid she half believed all the cars were fronts for the Department or Cindy Liu or some other crazy person she didn’t even know about yet, even though she recognized several as belonging to her neighbors.