Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. (35 page)

There are three of Me: me when I’m Astra, me with the mask off, and the me the
newsies
insist lives a much more exiting life.

Terry Reinhold, quoting Astra in
“This is a job for…”

Some revelations should not be made over lunch.

Jacky started innocently enough, confessing complicity with Mom and Dad; I’d guessed right—she’d called them before sunrise to let them know what went down and that I was fine but ordered to take it easy. She
had
arranged to meet me after mass. Then she hit me with it.

“Terry called last night,” she said after downing a bite of pizza with an expression of absolute bliss.

“Terry Reinhold? The journalist?”

“There are other Terry’s?” She carefully tucked a long string of cheese away. After doing my interview last year, Terry had become the go-to newsy for Sentinels interviews; he’d done Jacky, and then Lei
Zi
, Seven, and Riptide as they’d each joined the team. I felt a gathering sense of doom.

“Did he want to know about last night?” Questions about talking to known mobsters—
dead
known mobsters—would be, well, awkward.

“Actually, no.” Jacky didn’t smile, but her eyes were dancing.

“Well that’s something, I guess,” I said cautiously. Maybe the Sentinels’ could avoid all the blowback from our wild adventure.

“He got a call from a friend who works for
The Daily Metropolis
, you know the one?”

Did
I; it was the Chicago-based tabloid that devoted most of its page space to the doings, real and imagined, of the city’s hundred-plus capes; only the Hollywood heroes got as much attention as we did. It was the rag that had screamed the loudest over my supposed underage status, and over the whole Atlas-Astra thing because of it.

“Well, his
Daily Met
friend sent him some pictures and asked for his opinion. When we bailed out of the car in the 7-11 parking lot Saturday, someone got some shots of us.” Jacky was working
really
hard on not grinning. Doom
doom
doom
, but I couldn’t see it.

“So they got some pictures to sell,” I said. “We had our masks on before we got out.” My panicked memory told me that yes, we did.

“Yes, we did,” she reassured me. “And I’ve got to say I’ve never seen anyone that good at getting dressed in a backseat. Something I should know?”

“
No
. Just a childhood going from school to field hockey to Foundation stuff. I can do my face in downtown traffic, too.”

“Okay.” She shrugged, lips twitching. “Anyway, here’s the money shot.” She held up her
cellphone
so I could see; it showed the two of us standing beside the sedan. I was helping Jacky with the last few buckles. Masks were on and it looked alright to me.

“So?”

She rolled her eyes. “Geez, Hope, you’re so naïve. We were caught piling out of the car? Half-dressed? Look again.”

I looked. My cape was askew—I’d straightened it when we landed on the tower—and Artemis’ costume was definitely still all about, but it was just a shot of the two of us
getting out of the car helping each other dress before taking off to answer the alert
!

I didn’t spit my salmon across the room, or scream, or yell
Oh my God
! Mom raised me better than that. But I stopped breathing until my vision cleared. My eyes must have been saucers.

“We’re…”

“Uh huh.”

“We’re…”

“Lesbian lovers.
Saphic
sisters. Chick chicks.” Now her grin split her face. “At least we will be tomorrow morning when the copy hits the checkout stands.”

I pushed my plate away, dropped my elbows on the table, and covered my eyes.

“This is— I don’t know what this is, it’s so beyond anything.”

“We’re going to raise Atlas’ child together.”

Now
I screamed. A squeak, really, but heads turned towards our corner. I glared till they looked away.

“So now I’m not just a Lolita,” I hissed when I found the air. “I’m a pregnant
bisexual
Lolita? Mom and Dad are going to
die
.”

“I don’t know—they’re already grandparents.”

“You’re lucky I don’t shoot death-beams with my eyes.”

She took another bite of pizza. “This is really good. Want a slice?”

“
So
lucky.”

In revenge I took her therapy-shopping; since she wasn’t a
fiend
of the night anymore, she really needed a new wardrobe. I needed the Bees for the full effort, and I had to read them in on the sensational revelations of tomorrow anyway. Megan was
snarkely
thrilled for us, Julie horrified,
Annabeth
ready to set fire to the
Daily Met
, and I felt better. Or not
better
, but at least strong enough not to cull Chicago’s wild newsy population the next day.

Ignoring that, the next four days should have been great. I got to hit every class, startling professors and classmates resigned to knowing me as an occasional face attached to top grades, hung out on campus with the Bees, and actually got to catch the
social
side of student life. I even introduced the girls to Jamal—and had to fight hard to keep them from turning him into a makeover project. Smart boy, he relegated them to the Big Sister’s Annoying Friends category and put up with their enthusiasm. He fell hard for
Annabeth
. Dane didn’t mind; they always do, and in his opinion it just showed good sense.

But as my ribs healed, the only updates from the Dome were on Shelly’s “
neuro
-integration process” (whatever that meant). And my public absence only fed the fireworks kicked off by the horrible story. At least The Story almost completely buried the Grand Beach Incident, but it also gave Mr.
Shankman
one more “sad example of the depravity of self-appointed heroes.”
Quin
had to be going crazy; I’d become the Bad Girl of the team, which was just surreal, and all
Quin
could do was repeat the news-point that I remained on the injured list. Meanwhile, two more
supervillain
slayings hit the news—one with a high bystander
bodycount
—and everyone seemed to be screaming for the Sentinels to Do Something.

At last Dr. Beth called me in, smiled over the good, strong remodeling he found in my ribs, and ended my exile.

“She looks so…normal,” I said.

The woman on the Assembly Room screen could have been someone’s aunt. Brown hair showed grey streaks, and narrow librarian’s glasses framed a nice, lived-in face. Her mouth, lined by a bitter twist, spoiled the picture; she was unhappy and mad about it. Did she look like someone capable of summoning a demon to render victims into soup? No.

“That’s the best, most recent picture we have,” Fisher said as we all looked her over.

The Friday morning briefing played to a full room. Fisher brought us all up to speed on the Hecate investigation, and two more heroes sat at the table: Watchman and
Variforce
. I knew Watchman as Lieutenant
Dahmer
, and his fitted leather jumpsuit—military cut, green and darker green, with silver shield on the left breast and Sentinels’ patch on the right shoulder, topped by a black military beret—made me wonder if he remembered he’d gone civilian. He
sat
at attention.

I sat stiffly myself, wearing the armor Vulcan had worked up for me. A solid piece of molded armor covered my torso as part of my bodysuit (the cape buckled onto it) and left my arms bare. Vulcan called it a cuirass. Bracers replaced my gloves, and “greaves” and “
poleyns
” (I was beginning to think Vulcan was a history geek) molded into my boots protected my legs all the way up over my knees. It all looked kind of like fancy motorcycle armor, and was made of The Stuff—in this case cooked up to be stronger than titanium or ceramic composites. Vulcan had made it metallic blue to match the rest of my costume.

Sitting to my left,
Variforce
looked bothered .

“Are we sure Dr.
Millibrand
is
this Hecate person?” he asked. “From what I understand, we have only circumstantial evidence and hearsay connecting her to Mr.
Moffat’s
murder.”

“Which is why we don’t have a General Warrant out for her arrest just yet,” Fisher agreed. “But we are circulating her picture to all the CAI teams and police precincts.”

A former US Marshal,
Variforce
came to us as a new recruit through the Department of Superhuman Affairs; his ability to project and manipulate articulated variable-property force fields made him great on offense
and
defense, and Blackstone was serious about ramping up our fighting strength. His black and silver spandex bodysuit flaunted a physique as tight as a Chicago Opera Ballet
dancer’s
, but he looked anything but girly.

“However,” Fisher continued, “we do have a General Warrant for
this
man.” A point and click brought up a shot of Mr.
Early’s
bodyguard from Saturday night. I looked at his dark, heavy-jawed profile, and swallowed, remembering the sick
snap
when he twisted his boss’s head around.

“Sheriff
Deitz
passed along Astra’s description, along with corroborative descriptions from the neighbors. ‘Villain-X’ is Sergeant Jason Leavitt, formerly of the US Army. Sergeant Leavitt finished serving four years in military prison last year, for improper actions during his unit’s deployment in Iran. He is an A Class Atlas-type who experienced his breakthrough during basic training, and he is considered extremely dangerous by the DSA. If you find him, you are to serve the warrant with all the force you need to bring.”

I looked across the table at Watchman; I remembered his easy humor, but he wasn’t smiling now. One of his own, gone bad. He caught my eye, and nodded.

Another click, and we were looking at a split-picture of two men, the guy on the right a ratty-looking blond and the guy on the left a dark-haired… average kid. The kind of kid you expected to see behind a counter asking “Do you want fries with that?”

“We still don’t have a complete roster of Villains Inc.,” Fisher said. “But from your own encounter, we know these two; Tin Man and Flash Mob. Tin Man appears to have stepped up his game, from remote-controlled housebreaking robots to serious threats like your dragon last week. Flash Mob is a military nut who was turned down by the US Marines for psychological reasons. He loves big guns, big explosions, and can spontaneously generate twenty or so short-lived duplicates—all just as crazy as he is, and determined to have fun before they disappear.

“Hecate, Tin Man, and Flash Mob are all what the military calls
force projectors
. Since force projectors don’t engage in fighting directly, it’s very hard for us to prove their involvement in any specific crime; you can imagine how valuable this made them with the Outfit.”

Fisher brought up
Kitsune’s
picture next, his
Yoshi
Miyamoto-face. “We have had no luck following
Kitsune’s
trail,” he said. “However, Jenny followed a hunch that our
shapeshifter’s
chosen codename, being Japanese, might mean that our suspect is, in fact, Japanese. Combining it the latest name and face Astra provided for us, she found this.”

The picture changed to the redheaded half-Japanese
Kitsune
I saw in the attack on the Dome.

“
This
is
Rei
Pascarella
. Her mother’s maiden name was Mari Miyamoto; she changed her given name to Mary when she married Johnny
Pascarella
.
 
Ms. Miyamoto was the daughter of
Yoshi
Miyamoto, a Japanese businessman.”

“Was, Detective Fisher?” Blackstone asked.

“Yes, sir. Mary and Johnny
Pascarella
, and their daughter, were killed in a home-invasion gone bad five years ago. The murders remain unsolved, but a flag in the case-file leads to our Organized Crime Division; it appears Johnny was a
wiseguy
who was quietly negotiating to turn state’s evidence and get out of Outfit. Internal Affairs couldn’t find any evidence of a leak, and now it’s a cold case.”