Turning to Suzie, Patricia suggested that she arrange for food for the group. Suzie nodded and walked out, too, her cell phone already in her hand.
Alone with Cindy at last, Patricia let the scales ruffle up her neck and down her arms. Leaning over her friend, she waited for her eyes to open. She didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later, Cindy’s eyelids fluttered again, and she blinked a few slow times. Patricia knew the moment her vision came into focus, because Cindy flung herself back and squealed, sounding like the child she appeared to be. “Patricia! What the hell?”
“That’s what I want to know,” she responded. “What the hell are you doing? What have you done to us? What were you trying to do to Jessica?”
With a suddenness that took Patricia by surprise, Cindy’s eyes filled with tears. Fat tears rolled down her face, and she made no effort to wipe them away. Cindy never cried. Even when her fiancé had died, she had cried very little, and only after consuming a great deal of alcohol. Patricia never knew what to do with tears. They made her suspect manipulation or feel embarrassed for the people who couldn’t control themselves. In this case, she felt mostly confused. She wanted to hug her old friend and fling her across the room at the same time. She stood and stared at the woman-child on the couch, trying to decide what the best thing to do might be.
“Can I have some water?” Cindy blubbered out the request, wiping her face on the backs of her sleeves.
Patricia turned without saying a word, grabbed a bottle of water from the little cart that Suzie had thoughtfully brought and left in the main hall, and then stalked back to the room.
Cindy was standing at the window, swaying a little, unsteady on her feet. Patricia grunted to get her attention and threw the bottle of water to her. It landed at her feet, and Cindy bent to pick it up. Patricia stood with her arms crossed over her armored chest, waiting. Cindy downed the water quickly, in one long drink and then stood there, crinkling the bottle in her hands. Patricia cleared her throat.
“They forced me to retire,” Cindy said. Her voice was flat and quietly angry. Patricia wasn’t sure what she expected, but this seemed a strange place for Cindy to start her confession. She raised an eyebrow and then realized Cindy probably couldn’t see the gesture when her armor was up. It didn’t matter; she went on. In a torrent of words, she told Patricia how the company she had been working for came to her and told her they had put a new mandatory retirement policy in place. They wanted to make sure they had jobs available for younger scientists, ones that would serve the company for many years. Ones that wouldn’t put a strain on the company by using the medical insurance and their sick leave. They hadn’t said that, of course, but Cindy knew that was part of what they were after.
“I was in my prime, doing the best work of my life, and, suddenly, they told me that I was too old!” The seeming-teenager vibrated with fury. “I decided they would never do this to another woman, that I would not be limited by a silly thing like expected lifespan. Not when I could extend it.”
Patricia heard the fervor in her friend’s voice and grew even more concerned. The last time she had sounded like this, she had ended up getting arrested for vandalism. Cindy had called it activism, but the police called it breaking and entering and destruction of property. The hospital had called it misplaced vengeance for the death of her lover. Patricia saw it as unchecked grief.
Cindy went on at some length about her experiments and the success she had found, first on animals and then finally on herself. She said the things that had happened to Patricia and the other women were not part of her plan, but lucky accidents. Patricia had choked on the thought that Cindy believed they were lucky. Lucky to have had their lives uprooted and irrevocably altered without their consents? Anger began to win over her concern, and she stepped toward the window, intending to grab Cindy and shake some sense into her.
She had just rounded the couch where Cindy had slept off her drugs when she spotted the cell phone on the floor in front of it. Her own cell phone. It must have fallen from her pocket when she leaned over Cindy. She bent and picked it up, pulling in her claws on her right hand so she could operate the device. A message had been sent. “They have me at the college. Reed Hall.”
Patricia ran from the room yelling for the others. Behind her, she heard Cindy laughing.
hat afternoon, Helen had used a side entrance to the hotel and gotten to her room unseen, so far as she could tell. That was good, as she was sure she looked a mess. She was dirty and bruised and bloodied. Her hair felt like a rat’s nest on her head. She was happy to note, though, the fire proof clothing had performed. There were no holes in her clothing! At least, not holes caused by fire.
Back in the hotel room, she pulled the curtain and locked the door, setting the security chain. It wouldn’t stop that brute of a man, Leonel, if he came, but she didn’t think there was much danger of that right now. They weren’t trying to get to Helen. If anything, they were probably trying to hide from her, as well they should. When she got her hands on the three of them, she was going to burn them to ash.
In fact, she would have burned them to ash already, if she knew where to go. Crossing to the kitchenette, she turned on the television and flipped through the channels looking for local news. It took a few minutes to get to any interesting bits, during which, Helen peeled off her tunic shirt and leggings and washed them out in the sink. Dr. Liu had warned against using harsh detergents or washing machines, saying that the chemical preparation would weaken, and the clothes would no longer stand up against her flames.
Her leg was throbbing, as was her head, so she took more of the painkillers she had taken from the Urgent Care office. She didn’t have time for this crap. She needed to know where Dr. Liu was. She needed to get her back. Taking the painkillers reminded her to check on her other pills. She pulled the gym bag out from the closet. There were eight boxes of Surge Protector pills, the only boxes she could find in the entire city. They would hold her for a while. She took one, wondering briefly if it made any difference that she was also on painkillers, but shrugging off the concern.
The news came back on after the commercial, and she focused her attention on the television screen, wrapping herself in the comforter from one of the beds. There was a picture of Jessica’s house, smoke billowing from the roof. The authorities were investigating the cause of the fire and reports from the neighbors of an altercation that took place in the yard. Pictures of that bitch Jessica and her mother were shown on screen, and information was asked about their whereabouts. Artist sketches of Leonel, Patricia, and Helen herself were shown next, and people were asked to call the number if they had any information. The reporter ended with a brief video clip with a boy of maybe ten or eleven years old who swore Mrs. Roark had flown above her house, and that fireballs had been flying. Her indulgent smile said that she didn’t believe the story and didn’t expect the viewer to, either. That was probably good.
There had been too much on the news here lately that could expose Helen and Dr. Liu. Patricia had apparently been involved in a fight at the mall, and she had also let people see her in her lizard form after breaking into Dr. Liu’s house. That woman was incautious. Dangerous in more ways than one. Helen looked forward to taking her down. After this kidnapping, she knew that Cindy wouldn’t stand in her way anymore.
Helen let the TV run while she took a shower. She had to shower mostly seated as the foot didn’t want to take any weight. It was swollen and purple. Helen didn’t touch it, knowing she would find it painful and tender to say the least. She had Jessica to thank for that. The impact that little flying squirrel had hit her with had been astounding. Helen’s anger blazed through her, literally heating her entire body until the room became filled with steam, which billowed out into the hotel room when she opened the door and hobbled over to the closet, trying to ignore the pain that shot up her leg.
She had one more set of fireproofed clothes. The bright ones. Cindy had laughed at her, but Helen had wanted a costume set. If she had these p
owers, she might as well look, as well as live, the part. So, they had treated a pair of red leggings and a long yellow tunic. Helen had sewn a picture of a flame onto the shirt. There was a pair of red high top sneakers, too. Dr. Liu had said she didn’t think she could do anything for the rubber souls, but she could treat the cloth material at least.
Helen would only be able to wear one of them because of the leg injury. The other foot, she slipped back into the plastic boot and tightened the straps to support the injury. That left the mask and cape, both red. Helen checked herself out in the long mirror on the back of the bathroom door and grinned. She looked amazing. She held one hand out in front and allowed a ball of flame to gather there. “They call me the Flamethrower!” she told the mirror, wishing she could get a picture.
Squashing the flame between her hands, Helen went back to the kitchen. Her phone was on the floor. It must have vibrated off the counter. She picked it up, happy to see the screen had not cracked. There was a new text message. She didn’t know the number, but it had to be from Dr. Liu: “They have me at the college. Reed Hall.”
The campus wasn’t even ten minutes away. Cindy would be free in a matter of minutes.
essica’s conversation with Nathan hadn’t gone well. In fact, she had hung up on him and turned off her phone at the end of it. She hadn’t expected support, exactly, but she had thought he would, at least, be relieved to hear she was okay. She had barely gotten a sentence out when he began yelling at her, demanding to know what had happened to their house, but not giving her a chance to answer.
At least she knew the boys were safe at their other grandmother’s house. Nathan’s mother would let them stay up too late and ignore all their dietary rules, but they would be safe in her care. She’d deal with Nathan when this was all over. She knew now that it was unquestionably over. There would be a lot of turmoil yet, many battles over things like money and the boys, but knowing the marriage was over filled her with a feeling of relief. She could stop pretending, stop trying to make it all right.
The call ended, and Jessica turned to her mother. Eva sat very upright in the chair across the room. Everything about her posture spoke to her anger and stress. Jessica hated that she had gotten dragged into this. She hated Dr. Liu for messing up all their lives. She could hear the heated conversation, muted and indistinct through the thin walls, and hoped Patricia ripped off one of the woman’s arms.
“How’s your arm?” Jessica asked, taking the chair next to her mother and pulling back the sleeve to look at the reddened skin.
Eva pulled her sleeve back down over it and pushed her daughter’s hands away. “It’ll be fine. Suzie gave me some salve for it before she left to get the food. I’ve gotten worse burns trying to make cookies.”
Jessica smiled at her mother’s joke. She had inherited her lack of aptitude for all things kitchen from her mother. But she raged inside that Dr. Liu’s flunky had hurt her mother. She wanted nothing more than to get her hands back around that woman’s neck. But she had no idea where she even was now. They’d just left her in the yard in their haste to get away. Jessica felt so impotent, so unable to do anything that would help. She didn’t even know how to comfort her own mother.
The two women sat in silence. Jessica closed her eyes and leaned back her head. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. She wanted to curl up in the chair, rest her head in her mother’s lap, and cry for a while. It was just so much to deal with. She was just an ordinary mom and a wife, not a hero. How had she gotten mixed-up in all this? How would she get back out of it?
It was hard to imagine this ending well. Her brain ran scenarios that frightened her. She saw Leonel on fire, her mother crumpled on the ground. She imagined Patricia bleeding from beneath her scales. She envisioned Nathan pulling away from her in horror, Dr. Liu’s intensely focused eyes. Her body shook. She wasn’t sure if she was angry or scared or some impossible combination of both those emotions at once.
Still, when it had mattered, when she had really needed to, Jessica had managed to use her limitations as strengths, hadn’t she? She could hardly believe she’d done it now. She’d thrown off her weights, thrown her body at the woman with fire for a hand, and had taken her down. And she hadn’t drifted off into outer space. In fact, she had flown. She pulled the necklace from beneath her shirt and looked again at the emeralds. She felt certain they were the difference. Something about those rocks had made her able to control her flight for the first time.
“I’m so proud of you,” Eva said.
Jessica jumped. “What?”
“You heard me. I’m proud of you. You were amazing. I owe you my life.”
“Don’t be silly. I owe you mine, Mom. At least three times.” She patted her mother’s hand, her other hand fondling the crystals in the bag around her neck.
Suddenly, Eva gripped her fingers hard. Jessica looked to see what was wrong. Eva was staring open-mouthed across the room, toward the windows. “Are those flames?”
Jessica jumped from the chair, flying across the room in a single long jump and landing by the window. Her mother gasped, but she hardly noticed. Pulling the blinds to one side, she peeked out at the quad. At first, she didn’t see anything, but then she saw them, balls of fire, flying through the air and landing in the grass and trees. They fell in high beautiful arcs, streaking like comets across the evening sky.
That was when she heard Patricia yelling and realized it was her own name being called.
atricia ran into the hall at the same time as Leonel, Jessica, and Eva, still yelling for the others to come. “It’s Helen!”
All of them started talking at once, their voices bouncing off the ceiling in the large empty foyer. Suddenly, a piercing whistle filled the air, making them all stop and cover their ears.
Patricia turned in surprise to see that it was Eva Roark, Jessica’s mother, who had deafened them. “Where is Cindy?” she asked, each word spoken slowly and heavily.
Patricia pointed at the room she had just left and watched, stunned, as Eva turned and ran into the room. She and the others followed and found Eva on the floor, grasping one of Cindy’s ankles with both of her hands as woman-girl dangled halfway out the window and kicked fiercely at her. “A little help?” Eva called.
Leonel crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed Cindy by the waist, pulling her back into the room. The doctor grabbed the windowsill and resisted, but Leonel pulled her through with little effort and tossed her into one of the chairs. Then Eva surprised Patricia again by attacking Cindy, punching her in the face and screaming at her. “How dare you! How dare you! How dare you!”
She might have gone on forever, if Jessica had not wrapped her arms around her mother and gently tugged her away to another corner of the room. Patricia stewed, haranguing herself for her stupidity. It was her phone Cindy had used to contact Helen. She was the one who had run from the room, leaving Cindy to escape.
This was not going according to plan. Not that she’d had much of a plan. She was just going to get back in the car and drive away, find a place to take Cindy Liu and then figure out what to do from there. She wasn’t good at making stuff up on the fly like this. She wanted time to research and think. She wanted to study charts with Suzie and make a recommendation to the board.
Instead, she had trapped herself, trapped all of them in a building on a college campus with a crazy woman in the body of a teenager while another crazy woman hurled fireballs at them from the quad. They should have dealt with Helen when they’d had the chance back at the house. Leonel and Cindy were both looking at her accusingly for different reasons. Leonel was probably thinking she was not fit to lead their little group, and he was probably right.
For the second time in the space of a few hours, Patricia hit her oldest friend to knock her unconscious. “Tie her up,” she said to Leonel, who was still staring at her with big, brown cow eyes. “Here,” she said, pulling off the tank top she wore over her sports bra and tossing it to him as she transformed into he
r lizard self. “You can use this.”
Then she ran across the room and jumped through the window Cindy had just been trying to escape through, breaking the glass and landing in a crouch in the garden bed outside. Roaring in rage, she ran into the middle of the quad. Only when she was already there did she realize she didn’t know where Helen was. She had to be nearby, but Patricia didn’t actually see her. “Where are you? Come out and fight me, bitch,” she yelled.
The only answer was a fireball that landed at her feet and set the grass on fire. Patricia fell backward and landed on her ass. She heard laughter that seemed to echo against the buildings, and more distantly, the sound of cars driving down the main drag on the other end of the quad. Patricia realized with a jolt how many people there were in the vicinity, how many innocents Helen would burn to get what she wanted. They had to stop her!
Suddenly, Leonel was beside her, grabbing her arm and pulling her down behind a piece of statuary, just as another fireball landed where she had been standing.
“She’s on the other side of this fountain in the little ring of trees by the street light,” he said, pointing.
Patricia peered into the night where Leonel had pointed and saw it when the next fireball formed and flew toward them.
Patricia pulled up onto her feet and turned to dash toward the trees. Just as she lunged to move, Leonel stuck out a foot and tripped her, forcing her to catch herself on the edge of the statue or face plant. “Don’t be an idiot, Patricia. If you take her straight on, you’re going to get hit.”
“Don’t you remember?” Patricia grinned, flexing to push out her spikes and armored scales. “I’m bulletproof!” Then she was off, running toward the ring of trees where Leonel had said Helen was hiding. Bulletproof, it turned out, was not the same thing as fireproof. Most of the fireballs missed making contact, whizzing past her with a crackle and pop or landing short, but eventually, one did make contact, square in the center of her chest.
Going Through the Change Page 24
