Sidekicked (22 page)

I step off and am immediately blocked by a man twice my size, holding a handheld metal detector. He waves his magic wand over me twice, like some Secret Service fairy godfather, and then tells me to have a nice evening.

“Leave the belt at home,” she said. Now I know why. The gorilla at the gate probably wouldn't have looked too kindly on a kid with containers of nerve gas strapped around his waist. I follow the few other puffins and their dates down the hall and walk through the double doors.

Jenna warned me what to expect. A charity dinner to help stamp out hunger. A bunch of Justicia's well-to-dos spending three hundred dollars on oysters so that some poor family somewhere can get a bag of rice. The dinner is being hosted by Kaden Enterprises, but the guest of honor is the mayor himself.

I've never met the man personally, though I've seen him on TV a lot lately. His slicked-back silver mane of hair and pounding fists have been everywhere since the Jacks escaped. The speech is always the same. “We won't be held victims to acts of villainy.” “A thug is still a thug, no matter how he's dressed.” “The Dealer and his Suits will be captured and brought to justice.” Bold words—especially with a gang of notorious criminals at his doorstep and most of the Supers sworn to defend the city missing in action.

And in the middle of all of it, Kyla Kaden gathers the mayor and a host of Justicia's wealthiest citizens in a closed-off banquet hall on the top floor of a hotel. It's almost like dumping a bucket of chum over the side of the boat in shark-infested waters. Not a great idea.

Unless you're fishing for sharks. I stare into the room full of men in tuxedos and women in dark evening gowns. From here they almost look like pawns on a chessboard. And I wonder if, just maybe . . . But no. It's unthinkable. A Super would never intentionally endanger the lives of so many innocent civilians. Rule number three.

This isn't a trap, I have to remind myself. It's just a date.

Of course, that doesn't make me any less nervous.

It's sensory overload, right from the start. Everyone here seems to be sprayed in something, and I get the same woozy feeling that I get walking through department stores at the mall. The sound I can cope with—a steady rumble of voices competing with the string quartet playing in the center of the room—but the smell is dizzying, like a ten-megaton perfume bomb. Save for the greenery decorating the tables, everything seems to be black and white. Even the ties are black. All but mine.

“Drew?”

Any other time I would have sensed her coming. Her walk. Her smell. But I am so busy blocking out everyone else, she gets the jump on me. I turn to face her.

“Jenna.”

But it's not really Jenna. It's not the Silver Lynx, either. This is somebody else entirely. Somebody new. Gone are the cheesy T-shirts and baggy jeans, replaced with a strapless dress, kind of a shimmering black that plays catch with the light. Her hair is tied into a knot, two blond curls snaking down over each ear. Even her glasses are different—slimmer, with gold frames. She is holding a champagne glass, though I can tell by the smell it's just seltzer tinged with lime.

“Wow. You look . . . um . . . great.” I wince. Jenna cocks her head to the side.

“Really? Um . . . great? That's the best you can do?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I guess I've just never seen this side of you before.”

She shrugs, then reaches over and readjusts my tie so that now it looks even more crooked than before.

“Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen you in anything that buttoned up before,” she says.

“It's my only suit.”

“That's not true,” she replies. She reaches out and touches my arm, so I don't really care that I'm being mocked.

I nod to one of the half dozen servers carrying plates of really expensive and disgusting-looking hors d'oeuvres.

“Fighting hunger?”

Jenna sighs, looks out over the schmoozing crowd. “Not everyone's a superhero, Drew. Most people would rather just write a check. Besides, Kyla doesn't really care what she's fighting, as long as she gets to be a hero.”

“Where is she, by the way?” I ask, scanning the crowd looking for the tallest woman I can see. Though I've obviously met the Fox before—have actually been less than three feet away from the business end of her katana—I have never had the chance to meet her alter ego in person.

“Who knows?” Jenna says. “She likes to stay on the edge. There's the mayor over there, though.” Jenna points to a tall gentleman with too-white teeth and a really expensive-looking suit. “See the two men standing nearby with earpieces? If you look real close, you can see the bulge in their suits where their holsters are.”

She is right. The mayor's two hulking escorts are standing at attention, scanning the crowd, hands folded in front of them, just like in the movies. “I guess they don't know what kind of company they're in,” I say.

“It doesn't hurt to be careful,” Jenna replies.

I watch her watch the crowd, still not sure who I'm looking at. With the dress and the lipstick and the eye liner she looks like she's home from college or something. And I suddenly sense this gap between us, that maybe is only a crack but feels more like a canyon. I feel like a little boy tugging on her dress, trying to get her attention, afraid if I don't try to step over, I'll never get across.

“So, Jenna, I was thinking. About last Wednesday . . .”

Jenna turns and smiles at me, then looks over my shoulder. She gives a curt wave. My instinct is to turn and look, but I know if I take my eyes off her, I'll lose my nerve and won't say what I want to say.

“Sorry. About Wednesday?” Her eyes literally sparkle.

“Yeah. I don't know about you, but for me, I think something, you know, kind of
shifted
between us.”

“Really?” She takes a sip from her glass, looks at me, then behind me again.

The dry-cleaned trousers are itching my legs furiously, and I somehow resist the urge to scratch. “Changed, somehow. I mean, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, but I just felt like maybe you and I . . . we . . . are you all right?”

She keeps looking over my shoulder. Finally she turns back to me and fixes me with her eyes.

“I'm sorry, Drew,” she says.

And I can see it in her eyes. Not like “Sorry I'm only half listening to you,” but really sorry. Like “Sorry for your loss” sorry. Like “Sorry your dog got run over by a truck last night” sorry. Really, seriously sorry.

That's when I smell him. I smell him before I see him. A blanket of Right Guard and Irish Spring barely hiding a layer of pure testosterone.

“Hey there, Bean.”

Gavin McAllister slaps me on the shoulder. His hair is gelled even more than mine, and I can almost taste the alcohol tinge of mouthwash on his breath. He is wearing a grin wider than a mobile home and a black tie.

I turn and glare at Jenna, who pretends there's something interesting in her glass.

“Nice tie,” Gavin says.

“You too,” I say.

“Jenna, you didn't tell me Andrew would be here.”

“Jenna,” I say as best I can between clenched teeth, “you didn't tell him I was coming?”

Though he's really only four inches taller, I feel dwarfed standing next to Gavin, the two of us looking at Jenna, who is running a finger along the edge of her glass. I think about what they say about tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. I'm pretty sure you'd need a chain saw for this.

Jenna looks at me, then at Gavin, then back at me.

Then she empties the glass in one swift swallow and hands it to him.

“Would you mind? I could use some more.”

Gavin looks at Jenna, then at me, then back at Jenna.

Jenna looks at me again, takes a deep breath, and then glances out over the crowd.

I look at Gavin.
Just
Gavin. I actually
stare
at him. Boring holes through his eyeballs with the laser vision I don't have. Right through his eyeballs and into that big granite head of his, chipping away at the rock of a brain, wondering what it is she can possibly see in the guy.

“Sure,” he says. “No problem.” He takes the glass and retreats toward the bar. When he's far enough that only I could hear me, I turn on her.

“What's
he
doing here?”

“The same thing
you
are doing here. I invited him. He's my friend.”

“I know he's your friend, but you can't . . .” The look on Jenna's face stops me cold. Never tell Jenna Jaden what she can and can't do. I've learned that lesson before. “You don't invite two guys to the same rich snooty dinner party charity thingy. Haven't you ever seen a movie in your life? Now one of us has to kill the other one.”

Jenna smirks and shakes her head, but I just keep glaring at her. She takes another look at me and stops smiling. “You're serious.”

“Yes,” I say a little too loud. “I mean, no. I'm just saying he shouldn't be here.” Or I shouldn't be here, though I decide not to include that as an option.

Jenna rolls her eyes in disgust. Her hands take off and I'm suddenly outnumbered again, three to one. “You two aren't apes. I'm not a prize.” She sticks a finger at my chest. “This is not a date. And you are being way too dramatic.”

I don't even know where to get started with all of that.

“What do you mean, not a date?”

She looks around her, palms up, exasperated. “Does this look like a date to you?”

I have to admit I wouldn't expect the mayor to come along on Jenna's and my first date. But then I look at the way she's dressed and her hair all done up, and I think about the fact that the shirt I'm wearing is actually ironed, and I honestly don't know what to think.

“Okay. Maybe I'm overreacting,” I say. “But what do you expect? You kissed me.
Me
.
I'm
the one you kissed, in case you've forgotten.”

I stop.

Because she does that thing. That thing girls do where they look sideways and then down and then chew on their bottom lip. I know that look.

“You're kidding me.”

“Drew.”

“You're not kidding?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“I don't believe it. When did you kiss him?”

“Why is it any of your business?”

“Was it the same day? Right before I almost got my brains bashed in? Did you kiss Eric too? Mike?” Please say she didn't kiss Mike. I really would have to kill
him
.

One of the servers walks by and sticks his platter between us, probably in an attempt to shut us up. “Endive?” he asks, pointing to a plate full of white, leafy things wrapped around what seem to be pieces of moldy cheese. I feel like I might throw up. I shake my head.

“No, thank you,” Jenna says, much more tactfully, smiling at the server, who shuffles away.

“If I had known you were going to act like this, I wouldn't have invited you.”

“If I had known you were inviting him, I wouldn't have come.”

She rolls her eyes again. I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks. This could be the moment, right here. If I don't say the right thing right now, then she will transform back into just-a-friend Jenna or, worse, slip away entirely.

“Jenna,” I say.

She turns and stares at me. “What?”

“Excuse me. Am I interrupting?”

Gavin is suddenly next to us, holding Jenna's glass in one hand and something on a cracker in the other.

And I smell something. Something besides the champagne and the Gruyère. Something entirely out of place, hidden in the walls or in the ceiling. I recognize it from H.E.R.O. training. From one of my test tubes. It was one that I missed the first few times, and so Mr. Masters drilled it into me. It's cyclotrimethylene trinitramine. Otherwise known as cyclonite.

The most common ingredient in C-4 explosives. I tackle Jenna just as the ceiling comes crashing down.

A
t least now I know what evil smells like.

We all tumble like dominoes, the whole black-and-white crowd careening off each other. The force of the explosion knocks some of the guests over, causes others to bathe themselves in their drinks, but mostly just results in a lot of smoke and noise.

And a huge hole in the ceiling.

Jenna and I look up at the same time but stay low to the ground. People are screaming and scrambling. One of the waiters is actually trying to pick crab cakes off the floor. It's hard to focus on anything in all this chaos. Then I feel something heavy on my back.

I turn to see that Gavin McAllister is gone. In his place is a creature covered in black-and-gray rock. His pants have ripped; his shoes are in shreds. He has taken off his jacket and torn his shirt, but he's still wearing his tie. I wonder if anyone has seen the transformation, but he had been standing behind us, and all eyes are on the gaping, smoking chasm above us.

Stonewall gives me a nod, and I nod back. I have no idea what we are nodding about, but given the circumstances, I am suddenly not opposed to his being here.

Far to our left, the mayor's two bodyguards already have their pistols drawn and are speaking into their wrists, hopefully calling for backup. The mayor is crouched behind them, pushed back against a wall. Down the hall, you can hear the smoke alarms going off, a pulsing screech that makes my head hurt. I try to peer through the smoke.

Suddenly there is a blast of light from the new hole in the ceiling, and one of the mayor's guards goes down, clutching his shoulder, his gun skidding across the marble floor. The other guard spins around, looking for the source of the attack, when a black boomerang hurtles toward him, knocking his weapon from his hand, then circling back and catching him in the back of the head before returning to its owner.