Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain (40 page)

She swiveled to face me, and I lurched up, focusing behind her, on the other side of the shield. My vision jerked as I teleported and found out that Marvelous knew about this trick. Her hand was already swinging back toward me. I staggered forward another step, teleporting to the opposite side of her again. Marvelous’s other hand swung up. I had no choice. I smacked my wrist, and The Machine wrapped around it against her shield. As the shield vanished, I flipped the penny in my other hand at her while she shouted, “Boom!”

Boom was right. Blue flashed, and I felt like I’d just been tackled, knocked through the air to land with a painful jolt on the floor. My body ached, but not as bad as my head. The pain was easing quickly, so I rolled up. I tried to roll up. Another stabbing jolt in my head, and a wave of dizziness turned that into rolling onto my side.

Marvelous scratched at the coin stuck to her lapel. When it didn’t come off, she chuckled. “Bad Penny. Cute. Lift!” Weight eased away from me, and I floated up into the air. That was fine. A few seconds was rapidly clearing my head. When I felt steady, I twisted and extended a foot. Nothing happened. I couldn’t teleport while hovering in one spot like this.

Marvelous scratched at the penny some more, then gave up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re too good at this, kids. Way too good. I need to know where you get your orders.”

She stood there staring up at me, clearly expecting surrender or an argument. She hadn’t even raised her shield again. I was sure this overconfidence was the penny’s work.

I didn’t answer, I just pointed at Marvelous. Splintering noises in the distance presaged trails of spiky rock candy barreling across the floor at her.

“Boom!” she yelled again, one hand lashing out. A blue beam exploded one stalagmite. Her other hand shot out, and, with another beam, a second stalagmite exploded.

Then the rubber ball came flying across the warehouse and slammed into her shoulder. She staggered, spun, but didn’t fall down. Instead, she raised the other hand and shouted, “Lift!”

It worked. The ball spun in place in midair, immobilized. That left the final stalagmite, well behind its partners, grinding across the floor at her surrounded by rolling metal jacks. With a “Boom!” she blew the last rock candy weapon away, sending the jacks rolling past and around her.

She’d picked the wrong target. The moment they had her surrounded, blue lines of electricity arced like a web between the jacks, a lot of them intercepted and grounded by Marvelous’s body. She squealed, back arched, and I fell to the floor. The moment my feet touched down I took a step and teleported.

Even after being electrocuted, Marvelous swung around, arms lifted to fire wherever I’d teleported. Except I wasn’t down there. I’d teleported up onto the rafters, and I extended my wand and blasted her with sugar. She heard the hissing and threw herself to the side, but too late – a candy shell slimed most of her hip and one leg. It hardened instantly, and, with one leg immobilized, she fell heavily to the ground instead of rolling.

I teleported again, right over her, wand pointed at her face. As crystalized sugar spread over her body, Marvelous glared up at me. Suddenly, her eyes widened in realization, and one hand grabbed at the penny on her lapel. “You cursed me!”

“Shut up!” I yelled back. It probably was magic, and she probably could feel it. Too late. “No spells, not another word, or I choke you with sugar dust. We’re going to stay like this while my candy does its work. It’s just a tiny bit poisonous, and, by the time the shell stops growing, you’ll be asleep as well as immobilized. Listen carefully while you can, and later you can thank me. You need more dragon blood to keep your powers, right? Well, it’ll be on the market very soon. All you’ll have to do is buy it.”

That was enough. The candy had crept up to her arms while I gave my speech, and her eyes lost focus. I took a step, teleporting back to the drug crate and my unconscious friends. I shoved The Machine against Ray’s chest and Claire’s back, and they both slid upright groggily, but more awake by the second.

“Grab the bottle. We have sixty seconds, tops, before Marvelous breaks free. We’re getting out,” I ordered.

Ray took me seriously. He vaulted over the crate next to him, and when I teleported to the open doorway I turned to see him already racing toward me with the bottle of blood. Vera flew up to meet me, Claire zoomed past me, and I turned and ran for the fence.

Through the door behind me, I heard Marvelous yelp, “My clothes!” Oh, right. Did I forget to tell her the sugar shell spread by eating fabric?

“HA HA HA HA HA!” I laughed. I leaped up over the edge of the sagging chain and shouted to Claire ahead of me, “Sell the bottle fast and cheap. When Marvelous tracks it down, I don’t want it to be in our hands.”

The last obstacle to the street out of the way, I slapped my chest, jumped onto the light bike that sprang into existence in front of me, and sped away.

That was how a professional supervillain does it.

drove up to Northeast West Hollywood Middle and kept going. A couple of kids my age were walking past. I didn’t know them, but I really didn’t want to be seen entering my secret lair. City blocks down that way were huge, so I circled through the residential section on the other side and back around. There, nobody was obviously watching. That would do. I pulled up, dismissed my light bike, and walked across the schoolyard to the double doors that disguised my lair’s elevator.

The shudder as that elevator pulled to a stop on my laboratory level felt good. The job was neatly wrapped up, and I could look ahead to new things.

First things first. I refilled my candy tank, hacking off chunks from my block of sugar and feeding them in to be compressed. When I topped the tank off, my sugar block had been reduced to a pile I could have bought in a bag at the grocery store. That would need attending to. Sugar couldn’t be hard to get, and the gold Claire and Ray sold off would get me a couple hundred bucks worth, right? By then I’d be able to afford more.

Stealing the dragon blood hadn’t taken long. The drive down to Santa Monica and back had taken way longer. I still had a good chunk of the afternoon. I could kick my super power into gear and make us some more equipment, as long as it wasn’t candy based.

I could make zombie rag dolls for Claire. She’d gotten a kick out of the teddy bears in the warehouse. With her bear pajamas, a toy box theme would be perfect for her!

My phone roared. That would be Claire calling me right now. I flipped it up and quipped, “You’ve reached Penelope Akk. To speak to the mad scientist, press one. To order an army of robotic minions, press two.”

Claire didn’t give me time to think of a three. “Are you coming, or what?”

Goofball me, I felt a little panicky. “Coming where?”

“The other half of the operation! You said you wanted to sell the bottle right now!”

I didn’t know Little Armenia, but it was only a few blocks from my house. It was just an itty bitty neighborhood I’d hardly ever set foot in. I met Claire and Ray at the corner of Edgemont and Los Feliz, and we walked down to meet Claire’s fence.

It didn’t look like a bad neighborhood, but maybe it was. Three supervillains in costume walking down the street didn’t get a glance from the residents. Claire held the bottle, and Ray walked like a bird with his hands clasped behind him, grinning maniacally. Vera floated by my shoulder, which I was getting used to. She also stopped to rubberneck constantly, which I was also getting used to.

Whether we looked ridiculous or like bad news, nobody paid the slightest attention. Not even when we stopped in front of the big church. Claire pointed across the street, and we crossed over to stand between two rather cool brown and red three story wooden houses, the kind with sloping roofs and outcroppings where you’re not sure just how many stories they really have. They looked like apartment buildings, fusing together way up at the top but leaving a tiny alley between the buildings locked off by a metal gate.

No, not locked. Claire opened the gate right up, led us down the shadowy path of sick grass and broken stones, and pointed at the metal fire escape. “We go up those. The fence is on the roof.”

The ladder hadn’t been lowered to the ground, but Ray jumped up, grabbed the railing on the second floor, got his feet under him and then jumped up again like a monkey to grab the next level. Fine. He wanted to be that way? I spun in place and took a step backwards, focusing on the stairs I could see but couldn’t reach. My teleport rings deposited me at the base of those stairs, and I turned and aimed for the next set. Metal rails clattered as Ray climbed them, Claire’s grappling hook thumped and hissed, and as I set my foot down on the edge of the roof with my last teleport, her and Ray’s feet hit the tar paper on either side of me.

The roof of this building was crazy. Parts of it sloped sharply like towers, but a wide section in the middle stayed flat to accommodate the little extra building spanning the gap. Claire slid up to that on her frictionless bear feet and knocked on the heavy wooden door.

“What do you want?” a man’s heavily muffled voice demanded.

“We’re here to shop,” Claire chirped back, putting on the cute.

It didn’t work this time. “Halloween was a month and a half ago.”

Leaning forward and doing his bird act again, Ray offered, “I could kick down the door if you like.”

I swatted him in the chest with the back of my hand, which hurt my hand much more than it did him. Good grief, he had chest muscles now, too. What had I done? I tried to put the sting into my voice instead. “Reviled, treat our contacts with dignity.”

Ray lifted his hat in one hand, bowing low. “You’re right. I apologize, Sir. I merely wished to suggest we have the powers to accompany these costumes.”

The door opened—slightly, jerking against a chain on the inside. The gap allowed a guy, maybe college age, to peek through at me. Actually, not at me. He aimed his sullen, suspicious stare at Vera first, then down at me. He didn’t exactly sound angry, just frustrated. “You can’t come in. My grandmother won’t do business with you. She hates technology.”

I raised an eyebrow, although no one could see it behind the visor. “E-Claire, your contact didn’t call ahead?” The name “E-Claire” only made the guy at the door scowl a little more.