Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) (13 page)

“Oh, shit,” I said, and the paramedic turned his head as Captain Frost came wandering up, his oxygen finally put aside.

“Hey,” Frost said, chucking a thumb over his shoulder, “isn’t that your ex?”

Before I could construct an answer, and apropos of the moment, the building fell down in front of me in a long, controlled destruction that sent a billowing cloud rushing over me and obstructing my vision. When it faded, I was left spitting out dust and smoke, and blinking out the remainder of the cloud from my eyes.

“Yes,” I said finally, wishing Captain Frost had kept his stupid oxygen mask on so that he couldn’t speak from his stupid mouth. I caught a glimpse of Scott Byerly through the fading haze, and he was looking at me again, but harder this time, like he didn’t care if I saw. “Yes … it is.”

When Jamie felt the building start to go, she knew there was no way she was going to be able to stop it. It was too much tonnage, too much uncontrollable force and not enough counterweight. She felt the pull, knew it was coming, knew the firefighters were clear, and then there was only one thing to do for it.

She hitched as many gravity wells into place as she could to slow it down, to control the collapse, and she let the building fall.

The floors came down, one by one, and she used the gravity channels she’d set up to push the debris inward rather than letting it bloom uncontrollably outward. It took some doing; she had to set up the pushes so that they didn’t catch too much weight in any one place, destroying the other buildings around the fire site. The bricks came caving in, the floors burst, and the remainder of the top floor collapsed onto the one below, which could not hold the weight.

At every turn she tried to anchor, to push inward, to hold it back, to buy a few more seconds, to break the fall of each story as they came down. It was exhausting, it was frantic, and she wasn’t even sure she was doing any good. Anyone caught inside was doomed regardless of her efforts; this was intended to spare those below from a fall to any side. She pushed it in toward itself, pushing a gravity channel, the biggest yet, right into the center of the building like a black hole. She dumped all the little pieces, pushing them off from the buildings around and funneling them right into the center of the mass, like water circling a drain, and watched it all fall together.

It was, in its way, rather spectacular. Especially from above.

When it was all in motion, she felt herself go weak, the nets she’d cast to catch falling pieces of the building gone, the only remaining channels in place the ones she was using to hold herself aloft and the massive one at the center of the building collapse. The ones holding her up were faltering, and she walked herself backward, landing a little harder on the building across the street than she’d intended.

Jamie’s legs buckled when she hit the gravel rooftop, and she fell, collapsing as she heard the job finish across the street with a thundering boom. She killed the last channel, the one at the center of the building collapse, landed on her backside hard, then slumped, pitching over, her head hitting the rooftop as the exhaustion came over her in a wave.

She’d never done anything like that before. The scale, the scope of taking apart even the top floor of a building as surgically as she had … it had taxed her powers to the utter limit. She raised a hand up in front of her eyes and it shook like the muscles had been through a hellacious gym workout after years of couch living.

“Did … it,” she mouthed, staring up at the cloudy sky above. She felt like she was lying in her pillowy bed after a long day. And it had been a long day, hadn’t it? She blinked, and the sky was dark, like someone had switched out the lights. It must be time to sleep, she figured, and she closed her eyes and drifted off right there.

It didn’t take long for Scott to ditch the furtive looks and come wandering over to me. Which was good, because I was sitting there in a combination of dread and utter exhaustion and couldn’t muster the motivation to get to my feet just to go speak to him. Though part of that was because I had realized shortly after seeing him that he wasn’t alone.

He came shuffling up coolly, hands in his pants pockets, his partner at his side, hanging back a little. His partner didn’t wear a suit, because he couldn’t really fit in one when he was using his powers. His arms were the size of hams, and he wore a black mask with a slit for his eyes and his mouth, and when Scott came to a halt a few feet away from me, the dude took up position behind him and crossed his massive arms in front of him in a totally forbidding way.

“Sienna,” Scott said, with a note of obvious disgust.

“Scott,” I replied, cool in my return. My gaze flicked to his partner. “Gimp.”

Guy Friday’s eyes narrowed beneath his mask slits. “My name is—”

“Yancy,” I said. “I know.”

He guffawed. “It’s actually not. Fooled ya.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ll always be Guy Friday to me.” I turned my attention to Scott. “What are you doing in the Big Apple?”

“You don’t get to ask me questions,” he said snippily.

“Why? Because you’re a federal bigwheel in charge of an FBI meta task force now?” I asked, trusting he would go leaping at the bait in surprise that I’d figured him out.

His eyes widened. “How did you know—” His face darkened. “Hey! I said—”

“I’m a contractor for the NYPD.” I turned my head away from him under the pretense of surveying the damage. Really, I just kinda wanted to look away for a minute as I got the lay of the land around us; my ex running the meta task force suggested nothing good to me. He probably hadn’t gone looking for the job, since he’d been done with law enforcement. Which meant either he’d changed his mind or someone—probably President Harmon, that ass—had recruited him, and either way, he was here because he had an axe to grind with someone. Someone who was five-foot-four and sitting here in my pants, which were soot-stained and slightly burnt. “If you want to pull your federal credentials out of your pants and wave them around, there’s not a lot I can do to stop you, but last I checked—at least when I was in your job—I couldn’t forbid people from asking me questions. First Amendment and all that.” I looked back at him, composed, and smiled with irritating sweetness.

“Last I checked, the First Amendment didn’t block a punch to the face,” Guy Friday said with menace.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Did you just threaten a city employee? Because that’s against the law, even for you federal types.”

“Hey,” Scott said to Friday under his breath in an obvious command that said,
Back off!
“We’re not here to threaten,” Scott said, regaining his composure after my verbal push had set him off balance.

“Why are you here?” I asked, taking my liberty to question and running with it. “You know, as a city contractor just trying to prepare my report on the meta activity that just took place here.”

I saw a subtle twitch at the corner of Scott’s eye at having his authority challenged. His nostrils flared. “You know who we’re with. This scene is one of metahuman activity. We’re here to monitor and assess the situation.”

“Two metas just saved a bunch of people from a fire,” I said, frowning.

“Three metas,” Captain Frost said from across the way. Of course the ass was using his meta hearing to eavesdrop. “You’re forgetting Gravity Gal.”

“Two,” I said, “because you didn’t do a damned thing except cause the ground floor to steam up and then steal oxygen from those truly in need.”

Frost’s mouth dropped open, and a bevy of firemen dragging a hose stepped between us just then, saving me from whatever witless repartee was surely coming from his mouth.

“It’s a scene of meta activity,” Scott said with a shrug, like he had no control over being there.

I wasn’t buying his line of bullshit. “What? Because I’m here? Or because, wherever three or more are gathered—?”

“You’re a person of interest,” Scott said. Then, as if he’d realized what he’d said, he reddened. “But … not to me.”

“Me either,” Guy Friday said. “I find myself very disinterested in you and your off-putting personality.”

I’m not exactly sure what kind of look I shot at Guy Friday, but I know it included loathing and disgust. “You realize that’s the playground equivalent of saying you have a crush on me, right?”

“When were you ever on a playground?” Scott sniped. That one hit home.

“Yeah,” I said, ignoring his shot about my childhood, “I’m sure you guys came here from DC to see anyone but me. Right.”

“Maybe you should watch your step,” Scott said, in perfect imitation of a Jersey mobster, but with a Minnesota accent.

“I’m here because the city of New York asked me to be,” I said. “You’re here because apparently you have unresolved relationship issues.” I turned my attention to Guy Friday. “And you’ve got some sort of weird, third-grade crush, I guess, or maybe an addiction to pain, I dunno, psychological trauma—”

“Pot to kettle,” Scott muttered.

“Point is, I’m here doing my job,” I said. “You guys are verging on stalking.”

“Maybe if you weren’t a walking disaster area,” Scott said, and his gaze flicked to the burned-out building behind us.

I looked at the wreckage of the building. “Oh, no, you did not,” I said. “I go places where there’s already trouble—like a building on fire, as a not-random example—and I stop it or try to help, okay? I don’t go starting problems for the hell of it.”

“There are a lot of people who think differently,” Friday rumbled.

“There are a lot of people who think kale tastes good, or that Iowa is a wonderful place to live,” I said. “Them being terribly wrong is not my fault nor my problem.” I eyed the big guy warily, because truthfully, he might end up being my problem. I sensed him heading in that direction now. “I’m here to do a job for the NYPD, one which, frankly, is down to just monitoring, keeping an eye on things around here in case a little meta trash-talking gets out of hand.”

“Uh huh,” Scott said, plainly not buying it. I’d known him long enough to realize when he was glazing over because he’d shut down. “Well, we’re here watching, too. So keep that in mind.”

I rolled my eyes harder than usual. “If I’m the lawless lunatic you seem to think I am, then why would you warn me about that? I’m destined to get myself in trouble regardless, aren’t I?”

Guy Friday spoke first. “You know, she has a point there—”

“Because we’re the good guys,” Scott said, way too righteously. “We’re the law.”

“You’re the federal law,” I said, correcting him, “I’m the state law. So technically, we’re on the same side.” As per usual, I filled my words with sweet, sweet snark, and a little bit of hopeless, naïve idealism, because that goes well with irony.

Scott just gave me a smoky look. “Just remember … we’ll be watching.”

“Okay, Big Brother,” I shot back and staggered away, sending both him and Friday a salutatory wave. “You keep your eye in the sky on me while I go do my
hero
thing.” I practically snorted over the hero part, because it wasn’t really how I saw myself. It was, however, a nice way to dig at Scott, who I could tell was full of his mission.

Unfortunately, it looked like his mission was me, and I doubted it was something nice like, “Bake a cake for Sienna to make her feel better after a bad day.” It was more like, “If Sienna steps out of line or ends up killing anyone extra-lawfully, bring her down like Capone.”

I should have known Harmon wasn’t just going to let me walk away and make a nuisance of myself outside of government service.

“What the hell was that?” Captain Frost stepped into my path, all puffed up, his breathing finally under control.

“A confrontation,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets to keep from accidentally decking him. “Angry words exchanged, some not-so-subtle-threats, some—”

“I meant you saying I didn’t help here,” Frost said, as peeved as a poltergeist. “I went into the building and—”

I started to walk away from him. I didn’t really have anything else to say, after all; my report to Welch was going to be short and not-sweet, and include the assessment that this guy was a moron who probably spoke out of his yoga-pants-clad ass at least as often as out of his pretty-boy mouth.

“Hey!” Frost bellowed. “I’m not—” He ran after me, and wisely decided not to grab my shoulder or something similarly stupid. He came wide around and parked himself in my path, looking hurt and a little offended. For my part, I was seething inside, a lot, which might help explain why I did what I did next. “I thought we were gonna … team up,” he said softly. He eased closer to me, and I caught a whiff of crying puppy dog that had been kicked mixed with horny guy hoping to get laid. I wasn’t sure which was stronger, and neither one impressed me.

I sighed. “Listen …” I pulled out a pen and fished one of my new business cards, slightly crumpled, out of my pocket, and wrote something beneath the phone number. “This is my card.” I held it up and he puffed up a little. “If you call, make sure you mention the reference number here,” I pointed to what I’d written, “so that they can connect you through to someone who can help.” I handed it to him and then started to circle away, figuring I needed to find Gravity Gal so I could chat with her real quick and then go home.
Hamilton
would have to wait; I wanted to get out of New York before Scott and Friday got too antsy and did something dumb. Or I did something dumb in response to them doing something dumb. I may have been more restrained lately, but I was by no means an angel.

“Hey!” Frost called after me. “This isn’t a reference number at all!”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” I said, not turning around.

“It says, ‘This guy is a total jackass’!”

I shrugged and glanced back at him. He was mad again, and all that horny guy vulnerability was gone. So was the sad puppy dog look. Mission accomplished. Self-pity and rampant hormones are such an ugly combo. “I’m bad with names.”

“I’m
Captain Frost!
” he screamed in the middle of the street, sounding pretty pathetic.

“You’re a savvy internet guy,” I said. “You might consider crowdsourcing a new name. Even Boaty McBoatface would be an improvement over what you’ve got now.” And I shot into the sky, an awful lot of eyes trailing me, a few of them not at all friendly.