When Cassie saw me heading straight for her, she threw out her arms, waving her hands and squealing, “Wait, wait! Listen!”
Resisting the urge to talk over her, or to snap at Marcia for giggling, I thrust my face accusingly close to Cassie’s and waited.
It only struck me that this was a dangerous position to be in with someone who’d kissed me (AAAAAA) last time we’d met when Cassie launched into her guilty and whispered explanation. “The other kids were taking photos, and videos! I thought you either really wanted those, or really wanted them to not happen, and the safest thing to do was to short circuit them all and fry their memory!”
Sure enough, at that moment, a girl yelled, “My phone! I was recording that! Oh, my heart. It was only turned off. Wait, does that mean―my playlist is erased!”
A dozen groans echoed her, and the babbling conversation turned to how unhappy everyone was to lose photos, songs, and contact lists.
I straightened up (out of danger!) and softened my expression. Voice just as low as Cassie’s, I gave her an awkward smile. “Yeah, that… may have saved my bacon.”
Seriously. Those videos would have gotten around, and Mom would be able to tell I’d been fighting a robot.
Criminy. As it was, I’d been expecting to wrap this up today. I had my tearful speech to my folks all prepared! And now, the clock was ticking hard again, because my folks would hear about this fight, and soon enough they’d hear something that would tell them I’d faked it.
Marcia, backed to a merely ‘manic glee’ level of sanity, stepped up close and ground her fist playfully into my shoulder. She joined the whispering squad. “Cassie and I both know who Bad Penny really is, so… who was that?”
“And can we meet her?” asked Cassie, lighting up with interest now that the danger of my wrath had passed.
“Uhh,” I said, trying to switch my brain from physical battle mode to conversational battle mode.
“If she’s a villain, she’ll be at Chinatown,” speculated Cassie. Then her eyes lit up―literally, glowing blue with an electrical halo―and she clamped both her arms on one of mine, squeezing it to her chest. “Go to Chinatown with me tomorrow. Please! You can introduce me to her!”
Marcia straightened up, hands on her hips in sudden indignation. “If she goes, I want to go. If she doesn’t go, I still want to go. And I’m bringing Sue. Her folks go on like her powers make her a villain. You can hook her up with real villains!”
“Uhh,” I repeated, since it worked so well the first time.
Cassie snuggled up closer. “Ray and Claire are both gone to camp, right?”
“How did you know that?!”
This time, my put out tone did not scare her. She was too busy being earnest and eager. “I’ll tell you if you agree. The point is, you go everywhere with them, all the time. You’re facing a big, empty hole in your friendship routine, right? Let us fill it! You finally have time for new friends, and if you don’t find some, you’ll wish you had, right?”
My instinctive denial died, because I couldn’t find a fault with any of her arguments. Hanging around with Cassie would be wildly embarrassing, but not actually more so than when Claire and Ray were in good moods and felt like teasing me. Granted, Marcia was insane, but they both knew my secret, so they were safe in the most important way. Maybe we could find Beaddown, to provide desperately needed reason and self-control?
Moments passed, but I knew I’d lost. Time to admit it. “Fine. I guess.”
“Woooooooo! Wait until I tell Ruth!” Cassie squealed at the top of her lungs. Maybe this would be an unacceptable security risk after all.
Too late to do anything about it.
f it had been Ray and Claire, this would have been easy. Asking to go out with them was routine, something I didn’t notice anymore and my parents didn’t challenge.
But Ray and Claire were out of town.
So I said, “Hey, Mom? Dad? I ran into Cassie, and she invited me to hang out this afternoon.”
Mom’s eyebrows went up , her smile pulled up farther on one side than the other, and my cheeks upgraded to incandescent ovens. Tesla’s Agoraphobia, she knew about the kiss. Which meant my dad knew.
It took every joule of my willpower to keep going. “We’ll probably be out late. Not super late, but after dark.”
“Oh? Where are you going?”
I hardly ever had to field that question with Ray and Claire, a question made even more awkward because Mom had lost the smile and was now pretending not to be amused. My cheeks ached so bad my whole face must be hot as an oven.
I’d made it this far by not directly lying, so I answered, “Chinatown.”
That got a moment of silence, and Dad to step in from the hall.
Before I had time to really worry, Mom gave me an encouraging smile, then looked back at Dad. “We really should have told her sooner. I’m as fallible as the next human when there are no good numbers.”
“She’s already been there on a field trip,” Dad reminded her.
“I know.” She walked around the table and closed her arms around my head in a warm hug. “It’s fine, honey. Go right ahead.”
Dad showed up next to her, giving me a whiskery, apologetic grin. “We’ve tried to give you space from the super powered community, Pumpkin. The more you were ready to handle complex social and moral issues, the better you would be prepared to navigate it. With Claire, you’re already friends with one child of a supervillain, and more were inevitable. We knew sooner or later you’d meet villains socially. It’s no surprise you already have.”
Mom let go, at least to the point of resting her hands on my shoulders. “As long as you stay out of trouble, it’s not our business. Who you know is definitely ‘personal.’ By choosing to fight Bad Penny, you’ve made it clear you choose to be a hero. We’re proud of you.”
I stood there, boggled. That went better than I expected. Maybe my expectations were the problem. Everything they’d said was true, and it was clear to me by now that heroes and villains might fight like tigers on the job, but off duty, most of them didn’t mind socializing. If my folks felt the same, something like this wouldn’t be a big deal to them. Maybe a moderate deal, but that’s it.
Boil this situation down to its essence, Penny: You have permission to go!
Cassie’s sister Ruth was not a good driver. Lucyfar drove like an acrobat on a tightrope, all perfect control and impossible-seeming feats of timing and agility. Ruth treated the road like she owned it, and nobody else had the right to be in a car at all.
I had the front passenger seat, and from the back, Cassie could easily see me nervously clinging to the handle above the car door. Leaning forward, she gave me a grin. “We can’t let Rachel drive at all. Road rage is a lot worse with someone who can actually chase down a car and claw it to death.”
Ruth chuckled. Marcia, in the middle of the back seat, sounded wistful. “I wish you’d let her. That would so be awesome.”
Sue, in the seat right behind me, had no comment. She’d hardly spoken since we picked her up. All too clearly, she still blamed me for Marcia’s madness.
I’d never visited Chinatown in a car before. Roadblocks under the dragon-decorated gate kept it closed during weekends, but the exaggeratedly Chinese security robot pulled one aside long enough for Ruth to drive through. She found a spot to park behind a building, invisible from the street leading up to the neighborhood.
As we all got out of the car, she asked, “I take it you kids would rather wander around without me?”
“Yes, ma’am!” chimed Cassie, as respectfully as if they weren’t siblings.
Her purple-haired, silver-tattooed older sister smirked. “Well, you have a chaperone.”
We followed her pointed stare across the car to Sue. Cassie let out an awkward giggle. Marcia pouted. I blushed. A lot.
We’d gotten started even later than I expected, but it still wasn’t sunset yet. That left the areas farthest from the central mall sparsely occupied. Yo
u know, here a woman juggling knives alone, there a man blasting the side of a building with eye beams that left the brickwork renewed, shiny, and fresh.
Technically, we were all in civilian garb, but I had mad scientist goggles around my neck, Cassie had glowing blue hair, Marcia had an unhinged, demented grin plus spasmic clenching fists, and Sue walked in a puddle of darkness that sometimes swallowed her clothing, leaving her in a dark bodysuit like Lucyfar could manifest. We got a lot of waves, thumbs up, and someone threw an apple at Cassie. She fried it in the air, Marcia tried to punch it, and Sue made it disappear a half-second before it hit Marcia’s fist. Quiet and uneventful, really.
While hardly packed, we found most of the villains relaxing inside the mall. No obvious fistfights, not a lot of sales or henchman recruiting. Just people in costume standing around talking.
…or rather, standing around flirting.
Criminy, was it Evil Valentine’s Day, or something?!
Everywhere I looked, I saw someone hitting on someone else. A guy in spandex whispered into the hair of a woman in spandex, and she slipped him a knowing look and a little card. Another woman, stocky, shorter than me, red-haired, the picture of a dwarf out of any computer game, enhanced that fantasy appearance by lurking inside an empty store with a villain more lizard than man, and more dragon than lizard. He leaned over her―not hard to do―while they both looked into each other’s eyes with the same sly smile. A huge lumberjack sat at a table with an armored amazon just the same size, arm wrestling. That ceased to be comfortably innocent when she slammed his hand down in victory, grabbed him by the lapels, kissed him voraciously, and they started arm wrestling again. Even that pair of wolf and blond, shiny-breastplated villain were here, standing very close indeed, with the blond guy’s arms folded over the wolf’s chest.
Dial it back, Penny. Maybe you’re overthinking things. Cassie, scrupulously platonic in her friendly behavior, made me more jittery than Ray at his most salacious.
Sly, knowing grins were a supervillain specialty. The spandex couple might be passing stolen secrets. The dwarf and reptile just talking. Wolfie and Golden Boy could easily be teammates so used to each other they had no sense of personal space, like Rage and Ruin.
I was stuck with the smooching arm wrestlers, but for all I knew, those two were married. Although that prospect terrified by itself. Their kids would be as big as Bull.
Yeah. I was nervous because of Cassie, who was a perfect gentleman, except whatever the female version of that was. ‘A perfect lady’ didn’t quite fit. Cassie was too tomboy. She walked beside me with an air as casual as Little Witch. Said witch sat barely visible at a table up on the mezzanine, drinking tea across from a guy with black and white stripes in his hair and giant tail.
Relax, Penny. Chill. Let Cassie be friends.
Although, Note to Penny: Little Witch had been here a lot. Maybe she’d been mind controlled to become evil?. Marvelous was her friend and mentor, right? I’d pass it along.
Eyes wandering, eyebrows shifting like a seesaw, Sue said, “So, I mean, what we here to do, exactly?”
“Get in trouble?” asked Marcia, jerking to hopeful attention.
Cassie folded her arms, sparks crackling in her hair. “We’re here so Penny can introduce us to whoever’s pretending to be her, remember?”
I glanced back up at the mezzanine. Little Witch had caught my eye at all because I had been worried Master Scorpion would be here.
Might as well say it out loud. “No sign of Master Scorpion, thank goodness. I was worried he’d make a scene if we brought Marcia.”
Marcia tossed her short black hair. “The old guy with the muscles and the silly mustache? I see him all the time, like he’s stalking me. He never says anything. I figure he’s crushing, hard.”
Cassie, safely facing away from Marcia, rolled her eyes and smirked. Sue facepalmed. My expression no doubt expressed skepticism, because Marcia grinned hugely at us all, and clasped her hands behind her head.
“Go on, don’t believe me! I love being the crazy one. It’s pure freedom.”
Turning my thoughts back to the actual topic at hand, I twirled one of my braids through my fingers. Hmmm. “The easiest way to find her would be to find Lucyfar. That shouldn’t be hard. She loves being visible.”
Marcia’s grin became a faint smile, then disappeared. Closing her eyes, she pressed her hands together by her chest, and went still. Very, very still, like she tried to turn into a statue.
This did not please Sue. She waved her hands in desperate denial, and stammered, “No, no. Don’t do it. Like, that is so totally a bad idea.”
Lines of darkness flickered over Marcia, like black electrical sparks. She completely ignored Sue’s desperate denials, and the sparks built in strength, sizzling audibly.
In the distance, someone yelped, and Marcia’s aura went out.
Three seconds later, Lucyfar stormed down the stairs from the upper level. More accurately, she stomped one third of the way down and slid on the rail the remaining two thirds. Hopping off, she leveled a finger at Marcia, marching up so close that finger was half an inch from turning ‘point’ into ‘boop.’
“Did you think I couldn’t follow that back to the sender, little girl?” the Princess of Lies demanded.
Marcia grinned gleefully. “I was counting on it.”
The two crazy people stared at each other. Lucyfar’s baleful glare grew slowly into a smirk to match Marcia’s grin.
Finally, Lucyfar wheeled around, threw her arms loosely around my and Marcia’s shoulders, and let out a gay laugh. “So, now that I’m here, what can I do to corrupt and lead astray you naïve children tonight?”
Marcia gave a little bounce, rocking forward and back. “Sue’s parents think only villains have shadow powers, so I thought, why not let her actually get to know some villains?”
Cassie didn’t say anything, letting another golden opportunity to mortify me pass. I’d expected a comment about ‘date night,’ or something.
That left me free to correct Marcia. “We’re here to see Bad Penny. I thought she would be with you.”
Lucyfar went ‘pfft’ so forcefully her bangs fluttered. “Your good twin finds all this maleficent gloom and flesh sack depravity uncomfortable. She’s hanging out with the doll makers, because they’re the most boring people she could find.”
Translation: Robot Penny was maintaining a low profile for my sake. Man, I did not deserve her.
Cassie held up her hand. “I can find them! They’re people Marcia and Sue should meet. Especially Sue.”
Said apprentice of darkness gave Cassie the skeptical sneer. Not a big team player, Sue.
Lucyfar shook her head, and took a step back. “No way I’m letting those stuffy sad sacks infect me with their terminal brooding disease. You kids struggle in futile desperation to have fun. I need to discuss division of loot with Squish.”
With that, the Morning Star, first of the fallen angels, and general queen of mischief, trotted back up the stairs the way she came. Cassie, true to her word, took the lead. Beckoning with one hand, she guided us out of the mall and up the street away from downtown. From the way she kept looking around, she followed clues, not a memorized location, but she certainly did seem to know where to go.
A block away, Cassie stooped down and pulled up the shutter of a closed store. The buildings on either side were merely locked. Only the shops inside the mall cleared out for supervillain party use.
This was not a shop. An open door between black-painted windows revealed a mostly open room. That is, it had a lot of clutter, but not a lot of furniture.
Dolls and statues made up ninety percent of the clutter. Cloth dolls sat or stood everywhere, in piles, along shelves, on the boxes that comprised most of what furniture the room did have. Stone statues ranging from knee high gnomes to hulking ceiling-brushing gargoyles stood in front of the shelves lining the wall. Smaller statues, many of them the kind of painted plastic figurines you could buy in comic
shops, decorated the shelves along with the dolls.
Something nagged me about all that, and after a second, I figured it out. None of them lay slumped or toppled over. All the stuffed dolls had natural postures, some standing unsupported. The few lying down did so in some very human way, like an ancient, grimy burlap thing with its head in the lap of a new, fresh doll with a plastic head. While I watched, the newer doll stroked the old doll tenderly.
Ah.
The not-a-shop contained four more conventional people, along with the living dolls. A wrinkled old woman in the most stained, beat-up dress I’d ever seen huddled in a rocking chair, cradling one of the larger cloth dolls in her lap. It had flame red hair and mismatched eyes, one button and one semi-realistic plastic. The old woman’s hair might have been red once. Hints of color peeked out from under the bonnet. Now, it was mostly white.
Next to her loomed a man who, well, loomed naturally. Not merely tall, he stood rigidly upright, arms tucked behind him, in a frayed but expensive suit. He reminded me of a butler, with his chest puffed out and looking down his nose at us. He also might be as old as the woman, but slim and in better shape. Where she looked like a prune, he had a desiccated, desert-mummy face.
On closer inspection, he also had a skull theme going on. Skull belt buckle, skull cufflinks, pattern of tiny skulls on his tie, that sort of thing. Nothing that really leaped out, but if you looked closely, yeah. Skulls everywhere..
Robot Penny sat perched on the largest crate, facing the old woman, but she scooted around to see us. On the smaller crate next to her hunched a character I’d seen selling magical items on previous visits to Chinatown. Male, female, I didn’t have a clue. It was short, around middle schooler size, and wore so many clothes, with two robes as the outer layers, that it became… a shape. Mittens, ski masks, and bandages wrapped over the masks hid everything the robes didn’t.
“I must check if my charms are working,” it said in an echoey, distorted, but soft voice as soon as we pulled up the garage door. Hopping off its crate, it shuffled out past us in an obvious hurry, and headed for the mall.
Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis Page 22
