by E. C. Myers
Papa’s chair creaked as he stood. Jimmy Vanille came closer and studied the face of the person he thought was his wife. “You look exhausted.”
Trivia tipped her head in acknowledgment. That was kind of a rude thing to say to someone, but that was Papa: He said whatever he was thinking. That’s where Trivia got it from, except not so much with the saying part.
“Probably because you’ve had such a busy day. Trivia.” He snapped his fingers and the door to the study slammed shut behind her. She jumped. “No more running, kid.”
Trivia glared at him. How did you know?
“You’re wondering how I figured it out? If you want to know whether someone is lying to you, it’s all in their eyes.”
Trivia turned to look at herself in the mirror over the credenza. One eye was brown like her mother’s, the other was pink. She had been pushing her Semblance all day, and she was tired—too tired to maintain her mother’s appearance for long.
“Besides, I know my wife well enough to tell when it’s not her—if only because she is uncharacteristically quiet. And I know my daughter. That’s enough, Trivia. Please, no more charades.”
She let go of the illusion and put her hands on her hips. Charades?
“Poor choice of words. But thank you, that’s much better. You are never to impersonate your mother or me again. In fact, you are not to use your Semblance in this house ever again—preferably at all.”
He sat down at his desk and steepled his fingers. “What are you wearing?”
Trivia spun around in her gown and then curtsied. Do you like it?
“You’ve been on quite a tear today. I don’t know what you were thinking. Drugging your teacher? Really, Trivia?”
Trivia cupped her hand and mimed taking a swig from a bottle.
“She does not have a drinking problem. Her tea was laced with sleeping powder. Her only mistake was trusting you. A mistake we’ve all made at one time or another.”
Trivia crossed her arms.
“Right. And there was the little matter of her record. I found the article in your room, which I’m sure you hoped I would. Did you think that would excuse your actions? Did you think I wasn’t aware of what happened to that student at Patch? That’s why I hired Aurelia. I wanted someone who knows how to handle a child with an untrained Semblance, someone who couldn’t be hired anywhere else. It’s much easier that way to buy their silence.”
Trivia stuck her tongue out.
“You know what I mean. Regardless, she won’t be coming back here.”
Trivia widened her eyes.
“Don’t act all shocked and innocent. I didn’t fire her. She quit. I gave her a generous severance package to avoid any uncomfortable conversations with the law, as well as one of our cars.” He shook his head. “Though I would have fired her. She may have underestimated her student’s abilities, costing her life, but it can be just as bad to underestimate what someone is capable of. And if she ever breathes a word about this family to anyone, she won’t get off so easy.”
He leaned forward and rested his arms on his desk. “Speaking of getting off easy. What was the point of your crime spree all over town?”
Trivia scratched her head.
“You don’t know? The only reason you aren’t in jail right now is because I convinced all those businesses not to press charges. I try to keep our family out of the public eye, but today you threw all that away. I had everyone on the alert for you, and I knew exactly where you were and what you stole.”
Trivia frowned. Could he be telling the truth?
“Why did you feel the need to take those things? We give you everything you need. Everything you ask for.”
Trivia held up the parasol.
“We have plenty of umbrellas, Trivia.”
But I wanted this one, she thought. I wanted something of my own that didn’t come from you. I wanted to see what I could do on my own for once.
“If you’re ever going to speak up for yourself, now’s the time,” he said.
She groaned and reached for her Scroll.
“Don’t bother. I don’t want to read another of your excuses. I want to hear my daughter’s voice for the first time. Say something, anything, and all is forgiven. We’ll make this right, kid.”
She looked down at the floor. She twisted the tip of the parasol into the lush green carpeting.
“All right. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” He slumped back in his chair. “I’ve already paid for everything you took, double what it was all worth. And you will be donating all of the stolen items to charities.”
Trivia ground the parasol tip deeper into the carpet. Just like that, he had taken away the best day of her life. She had thought she was being cunning and powerful, but daddy had paid everyone off to look the other way. The things she had claimed for herself were just more stuff her parents had paid for.
She drew the parasol back and hurled it at her father. It flew straight and fast, like a spear, and the tip struck him in the face, knocking him and his chair backward. He bellowed as they toppled to the floor.
He pulled himself up. He had a cut over his right eyebrow. A couple of inches lower and she would have struck him in the eye. He touched the wound delicately and winced, examining the blood on his fingers.
She should have felt bad, she supposed, guilty for hurting him, but she didn’t feel anything.
He gaped at her in shock. “Trivia! What has gotten into you?”
No, she did feel something after all. Satisfaction.
She had done something unexpected, uncharacteristic—surprising even herself. And unlike everything she had done today, that act couldn’t be erased. She had done something that had made a real impact.
She walked slowly toward her father. He held his ground, waiting for a sign of apology. Was she imagining it, or did he seem wary of her?
She walked past him, bent down, and picked up her parasol. She examined it carefully for damage.
He reached out toward her, but stopped short of placing his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? What do you want?” he whispered.
She glared at him. I want you to leave me alone. I want to be far away from here.
He clenched his hand into a fist. “Get out! Go to your room!”
She opened the parasol, turned, and strolled toward the door, twirling it behind her on her shoulder. She jiggled the knob, but it was locked.
She snapped her fingers the way her father had. The door unlatched and opened. Papa growled.
Neopolitan was outside his office waiting for her, as always. Her friend clapped a hand to her eye and took a pratfall backward dramatically. She popped back up, mouth open in soundless laughter.
Trivia smiled. That had been pretty funny. In fact, right now she was in a brighter mood again.
Today had been the perfect day.
As Roman approached Broken Memories, swinging his cane and whistling a jaunty tune, the shop’s lights went dark and the neon OPEN sign fizzled out.
Roman reached the shop door and jiggled the knob. Locked. He tapped gently on the glass with his cane and waited.
“Bisque, I know you’re in there. Your hours are posted right here, and it’s still an hour before closing.”
He saw a figure shift behind the counter at the back of the store. “I had to close early today! Something came up!”
Other figures moved around. Roman peered through the glass. A Scroll lit up in the darkness. He heard a sharp, “Switch that off!” before the screen went out.
“You still have customers inside. Come on, Bisque. I’m just picking up what you owe me.”
Roman tapped again on the glass. Harder. WHAM. The glass cracked. He hit it again—harder. WHAM. The crack spider-webbed throughout the reinforced pane.
“Now.” WHAM. “Look.” WHAM. “What.” WHAM. “You.” WHAM. “Made.” WHAM. “Me.” WHAM. “Do.”
The glass shattered and small gems of glass cascaded down.
Someone screamed.
Roman stepped through and flipped the light switch. “Looks like you’re still open after all! Guess we’ll see if you can really fix anything.” He whipped out his cane and knocked a computer screen off the workbench, sending it crashing to the floor.
“In my experience, some things are harder to mend than others, and the healing process can be long and painful.” Roman looked at the customers huddling on the floor behind a display of Scroll-charging cables. One of them, a pimpled boy with messy brown hair, was holding his Scroll up, recording video of Roman.
Roman sighed and pointed his cane at the boy. “Drop it, hero.”
“N-no!” The boy stood up, still holding his Scroll up in his shaky hands.
Roman waited a beat and then he activated the targeting reticule on his cane. It took the kid a second to realize what it meant.
“Three … two … ,” Roman counted.
The boy dropped the Scroll with a yelp.
Roman shot the Scroll just before it hit the floor. It flipped up into the air, the holographic screen blinking out. The boy fumbled and caught it. The electronics sizzled and popped as it died, releasing a tendril of gray smoke.
“That Scroll, for instance. Pretty sure it’s dead.” Roman squinted his right eye and aimed at the broken Scroll in the boy’s hand, which lined up dangerously close with the boy’s heart. “No bringing that back to life.”
“Enough!” Bisque said. “These are my customers. Please! Let them go.”
“Of course!” He lowered his cane and gestured with it toward the door. “Thank you for your business. Please come again.”
The four customers hesitated for a moment, but then the boy with the broken Scroll went for the door. When the others saw he had made it out, they followed suit.
“Four customers. Glad to see business is booming.” He aimed at a shelf of repaired electronics and fired his weapon. An old video game console exploded.
“No thanks to you. Please stop! These things aren’t cheap to replace.”
Bisque loved machines more than he did people, and he seemed able to coax almost any broken device back to working order, no matter how far gone. That was just a cover of course; his real business was reverse-engineering the latest Atlas tech and cloning it for the black market. He was highly skilled and highly sought after—both from people who wanted to hire him, and the police who wanted to arrest him.
“Speaking of cheap.” Roman strode toward the frazzled technician. “Lil’ Miss and the Spiders devote considerable resources toward keeping you up and running. But when I come to collect our fee, you try to hide? You can’t escape us any more than an insect caught in a web can free itself. You’re just stuck.”
Roman hooked his cane through the short man’s suspenders. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“I can’t keep paying these higher rates, Mr. Torchwick. Monthly payments were bad enough. I was just getting by. But double that is going to do me in.”
“You’re a savvy businessman. What’s the cost of not paying?”
Bisque placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward. “If I could just speak to Lil’ Miss Malachite, I’m sure we could work out a deal.”
“You speak to me, and I speak to Lil’ Miss. This is the deal.” Roman smacked the cane down on the counter, half an inch from Bisque’s fingers. The man jumped back and cradled his hands to his chest.
“Careful! My hands are worth more than you’ll ever be.”
Roman froze. “So that’s it. You think you’re better than me. Because you went to school? Learned a trade?”
Bisque’s eyes widened. “No. No, I didn’t say that!”
“Maybe I’m too stupid to read between the lines.”
Bisque shook his head. “No! I misspoke.”
Roman walked around the shop, his cane out and dragging the devices on the shelves to the floor. He left a trail of broken Scrolls, toy robots, cameras, clocks, and other junk.
When he had made it all around the room and back to Bisque, pale and quivering, Roman smiled.
“All right. You want to make a new deal? Here’s my best offer. Left or right?”
“What does that mean?”
Roman lifted his eyes skyward. “It isn’t hard. Choose one: Left or right?”
“But what am I choosing from?”
“That would be telling.”
“L-left?”
“And we have a deal!” Roman grabbed Bisque by both suspenders and lifted him up and over the counter. He turned and slammed the little man down onto his back on his workbench.
“Now don’t move, or I might miss.” Roman stepped back and lifted his cane over his head.
Bisque held up his hands. “Please, don’t!”
“You think I enjoy this, Bisque?” It’s only my favorite part of the job, he thought. Crime doesn’t pay, especially when you work for Lil’ Miss. But he could at least have some fun with it. “Just give me what you owe and I’ll leave.”
“I can’t, Mr. Torchwick! I don’t have the money. But I’ll pay you extra next time, I promise.”
“Look at this place. You aren’t going to have enough to pay me next time, either. You’re probably planning on skipping town. But that’s going to be harder with a broken leg, I think.”
Bisque squeaked.
“Left, did you say?” Roman lifted his cane again and prepared to smash in the man’s left knee.
“That’s enough, Roman.” Chameleon stepped into the store, her skin shifting to its normal bronze—except for the left side of her face, which vanished into the colors behind her to hide the scars crisscrossing her cheek. She didn’t wear much clothing these days, both because it thwarted her natural camouflaging abilities, and because when she chose to show herself, it could be quite distracting.
“Cammie. You’re getting much better at the camouflage thing.” No wonder she had fallen back into Lil’ Miss’s favor. Her Semblance had value in her work, when she could hide herself in plain sight and overhear all sorts of information. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Too long,” she said. “Let him go.”
“Hey, I don’t interrupt you while you’re working.”
“This isn’t your job, Roman. I know you’ve been doing a little side hustle.” She tilted her head.
Roman stepped back, drawing his cane behind his back.
“Does Lil’ Miss know?” he asked.
“What do you think? She knows all … eventually. You’ve been collecting double payments from businesses, for a while now.”
“Who figured it out?”
She put a hand on her hip. “That would be telling.”
“So I guess I’m fired.”
“No one gets fired. Spiders are in the family for life. When they get out of line, they get squished.”
Roman nodded. “I knew this day would come. But I hoped it wouldn’t be you.”
“I requested this assignment.” She crossed her arms. “I finally realized I was just a side thing, too.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” He laughed. “I know hiding is kind of your whole thing, but it sure looks like you came here unarmed.”
Her skin flashed crimson. “That’s not why, you idiot.” She scowled. “I wanted to understand. I thought you were happy. Why aren’t— Aren’t we good enough for you?”
“I’ve never been happy, and I expect I never will. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to try to stop buying happiness.”
Roman walked around her, stepping sideways, to keep her in his sights—and maneuver himself closer to the door. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could beat her. He figured there would be others on the way. If they weren’t already waiting for him. He resisted the urge to glance out the window. You did not want to take your eyes off Cammie.
Her skin crept closer toward purple. “Do you even know what you want, Roman?”
He spread his arms. “I want more. I want everything! I want people to know my name.”
“You’
ve got that,” she said. “There’s already a bounty on your head, and everyone in Mistral, crooks and Huntsmen alike, are going to be looking for you.”
Something was up. She didn’t have to tell him that. Oversharing wasn’t in her nature, and she wasn’t one to put off a fight.
“I’m impressed Lil’ Miss is putting big money on this,” Roman said. “She didn’t get where she is by spending frivolously.”
“She has to. It’s the only way she can separate herself from the scheming and double-dealing you did in her name. You haven’t just lost her protection. She …” Cammie sighed. “She needs you gone for good.”
Roman tilted his head, considering. She was being very particular with her words, unless he was imagining it. And she still wasn’t trying to hit him. He didn’t know if he should dare to read into any of that.
Then she disappeared as she took on the colors and shading of her background. She really had gotten better at that. But, like everyone, she had a tell.
Roman glimpsed a subtle shimmering on his right, like heat radiating from pavement on a summer day. He spun and lashed out with his cane, blocking Cammie’s roundhouse kick. Her clothes were made out of some fancy new material that adapted to light, the result of Atlesian experiments with cloaking technology—with actual cloaks. In a rare crime deal some years back, she had shared her intel about a secret transport from Argus with Lemon, a crime lord in Kuchinashi. In exchange, she had run the operation to hijack it. And in true form, Lil’ Miss has gotten away with the entire shipment.
Invisibility cloaks were a hot commodity in the Mistral underworld, especially for a network of spies. And her own tech geniuses had figured out how to make the material adapt to Cammie’s Semblance.
Lil’ Miss took care of her own, he’d give her that, he thought wistfully. And she was just as fastidious about making sure that those who crossed her got what they deserved.
Roman blindly blocked Cammie’s flurry of attacks, relying on his senses to detect her mainly by hearing and anticipating her movements. When she moved fast, sometimes her skin and her invisible clothes lagged behind a bit, causing the background to tear and stutter. Not everyone would know to look for that or be able to react quickly enough, anticipating where she would be instead of striking where she had been.
