Even Villains Fall in Love (4 page)

“Your toy place.”

Evan looked across the living room to the garage
door. “You mean my lab?”

“Yes!”

“The door was locked.” The door was always
locked. It kept minions from running across Tabitha’s path. If too
many showed up Tabitha might start wondering why he needed all
those minions.

“Not for Delila,” Blessing said.

That was not a good thing. He rushed the stairs
and found that the door was unlocked. “Delila? Sweetie?”

“Daddy!” She bounced at the bottom of the
stairs, squeezing a furry, red minion like a stress ball. “Can we
decorate more?”

“Sweetheart, how did you get the door open?”

She shrugged. “It wanted to open. I went click—”
She snapped her fingers. “—and it opens.”

“Click?”

“Uh-huh. Watch!” She sauntered over to his
locked cabinet of power tools. “Click!”

The door swung open.

“Oh, boy.” Evan stared at the door for a moment,
letting all the implications sink in. His eye twitched. “Let’s not
tell Mommy about that little trick. Okay? Just in case we need a
back-up plan for college funding.” Evan grabbed her hand. “Look at
me, sweetie. Do not click locks unless Daddy says so. Do you
understand?”

“Okay.”

Evan ran his hand through his hair. “Well, on
the bright side, you have a future as a locksmith, or a super
villain. I’m not sure Mommy is going to like that.”

“I’m going to be a super hero,” Delila said.
“Just like Mommy, ‘cept my suit’s gonna be purple.”

He frowned. Keeping the villain aspect of his
life secret from his family made sense, but there were moments he
felt he ought to spend a little more time corrupting the children.
Doctor Charm, father of four super heroes? He’d be the
laughingstock of the super villain underground.

“Daddy?” Delila patted his arm. “Can we have
pancakes?”

“Sure.” Even super villains could make pancakes.
If a former mafia don could get his own cooking show, Evan could
make pancakes. They came from a mix. Just add water—like sea
monkeys. Although the last batch of sea monkeys he’d made hadn’t
turned out well. Pancakes were easier, he assumed. Less prone to
eating red sports cars, for one thing.

He chased the girls upstairs and shouted over
his shoulder for the minions to start putting combination locks on
everything.

Two hours later, he had everything under control
to the point where he could go back to the lab.

“Master?” Hert said, a clipboard clutched in his
claws.

“Yes? If this is another request for a Caribbean
cruise, the answer is still no. If you get one, Tabby will want
one. If Tabby goes, I need to, and then the girls will want to
come. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“The neighbors took their dog on a cruise,” Hert
pointed out, sounding a touch offended. “But that wasn’t why I
needed your attention. I have the latest popularity polls,
Master.”

“Excellent! Is everyone still failing?” he asked
eagerly. “Anyone with over 50 percent of the vote might give me
problems. I need my win to look plausible to our international
neighbors; a popular candidate would ruin that illusion.”

“A failing you’ve mentioned several times,
Master,” Hert said as the lab door squeaked open.

“Yes.” Evan perused the Gallup Polls. “Good.
This is good. I think we’re still on track.” He glanced up as
Delila and Blessing approached the Morality Machine. “Girls! Stay
away from that! Hert, go look after the sprouts, please. I need to
get the machine calibrated. Are we getting any results from this
morning’s test run?”

“Nothing positive, Master,” he said as a second
minion ran up with the purchasing results. They were less than
promising. Ideally the Election Ray would focus the victim’s
thought on one particular object. His tests had sent them after
dolls, or shoes, or newspapers. On Election Day, he would persuade
the voters to focus on his name so they would write it on the
ballot, because no matter what people said, crime never paid as
well as politics.

“Master?” The blue minion who’d brought the
results quavered at his feet. “I have some correlating data that
you may find intriguing.”

Evan gestured for it to continue. “By all means,
intrigue me.”

“The results of the ray are more pronounced when
they side with an observable trend.”

“So it’s working better when people are already
thinking positive thoughts about the subject?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good to know, but not helpful.”

“You could make a large donation to a charity on
TV the night before election,” the minion suggested. “Or perhaps
save a bus full of children.”

“I don’t make public appearances. Too many
people want me for questioning. And buses never are in danger when
you need them to be.”

“We could arrange for the danger, Master. Such a
small matter...”

Evan glared at it. “None of that! I’m charming.
I persuade people to give me what I want. I insinuate myself into
their lives. I don’t threaten them. Threatening is for thugs.”

“Yes, Master.” It slumped its shoulders and
slouched away.

“We’ll find another way,” Evan said. “All I need
is for them to have one thought: Evan Smith for president. Once we
can transmit that message, the rest is taken care of.”

Hert pursed his pale lips. “We could change the
output from persuasion to pure suggestion. It wouldn’t be as
subtle, but we could loop the message.”

“Distance hypnosis?” Evan drummed his fingers on
the worktable. “I’d need to switch the tertiary capacitor to handle
the energy load, but it could be done.” He nodded. “Let’s break
down the machine and see if the magnet can handle the phase
change.”

Chapter Six

Tabitha bewitched me. I dreamt of her,
pursued her in a way I’d never chased after a woman before.
Usually, women came to me. Even villains have standards, and no one
can boast about forcing a woman. Brute strength doesn’t have the
delicious flavor of well-performed seduction.

The Morality Machine didn’t compel, it
just lowered her inhibitions. A super hero in bed with the villain?
I can think of few things more taboo. Under the influence of the
Morality Machine, Tabitha was perfectly herself—utterly confident,
always in control—but living with the constant suggestion that she
wanted me in every way possible.

***

Evan bent back over the Election Ray. “Hert! I
need a hand over here!”

“At once, Master.” Hert hurried over.

“Help me get the logistics box out. I must have
something moving on the wrong frequency. It’s days like this I wish
we lived near a college. What I wouldn’t give to have a live test
subject from the correct demographic nearby.”

“Do you wish me to unlock the Wi-Fi again,
Master? I’m sure some geek will wander by to borrow it.”

“Tempting—”

Glass shattered on the far side of the room.

Evan moved before he’d even processed what
happened. “Girls?” He grabbed Delila’s hand, looking for blood.
“Are you okay? What did you do?”

Tears trembled in Blessing’s eyes. “I wanted to
see Mommy!” Blessing cried. “I smashed Mommy!” She clung to Evan’s
leg, sobbing at his kneecaps.

Evan pulled Delila and Blessing close, away from
the busy minions sweeping up glass, as he tried to process what
happened. The Morality Machine was broken. Pieces of the miracle
that made sure Tabitha loved him were scattered at his feet.
Conductive fluid, red as blood, seeped from a slashed tube.

He licked his lips. Words escaped him. Not sure
what else to do, he picked the two girls up. They were real, solid,
something that would ground him in the here and now. No matter what
else happened, Tabitha would never leave the girls. But still, he’d
never turned off the machine. Even with the girls, he’d considered
it too risky. There were too many variables for him to accurately
calculate the possible results.

Theoretically, Tabitha wouldn’t change much.
She’d be frostier. Inhibited perhaps, inattentive, less forgiving
and more likely to question what he did in the lab. Super heroes
were defenders of the right; they adhered to a strict moral code.
One that didn’t involve villains.

She thought Evan was reformed though. That might
buy him some time. As long as she didn’t find out what he was doing
in the lab, she might not notice he’d lied to her about his day
job. Oh, sure, the sex might taper off for a few nights, but
nothing too drastic. All he needed to do was fix the machine. This
was a minor setback, a few hours of work. Nothing he couldn’t
fix.

Taking a calming breath, Evan walked in a circle
around the broken Morality Machine. He couldn’t even tell what had
happened. For destruction this catastrophic, it didn’t compute.
There were safeguards, redundant features. He’d had the minions try
to destroy the machine before he originally turned it on. The thing
was built like a tank.

“Sweetheart, what did you do?” he finally asked.
Scaring little girls was what super villains did, not the loving
husbands of super heroes.

“Blessing tried to pick it up,” Delila supplied.
“But it got stuck.”

He looked at the little girl in his arms. She
was tall for her age, but not tall enough to reach the crystal
focus that floated in a magnetic field six feet off the ground.
“How did you try to pick it up, sweetie?”

“I thinked about it, Daddy. Like when I want
water. I think about it, and it comes to me.”

“Uh-huh.” Evan set Blessing on the ground. “Can
you think something else over here? A pencil maybe? Or a cup?”

Blessing nodded with a stoic look on her face.
She scrunched her eyes shut and Hert’s clipboard floated toward
them, hovering to a halt inches from his nose.

“I see.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin.
“Telekinesis. That’s going to make life fun. Later, Daddy will show
you how to pick up all your toys by thinking.” As soon as the
election was over he was going to dedicate himself to finding out
the genetic mechanism for super powers. What he wouldn’t do for
telekinesis!

“That’s not fun!” she protested, and the
clipboard clattered to the floor.

He smiled. “Cleaning never is, but it still
needs to be done. Now, Delila, how did the crystal get stuck, and
what did you do?”

“I clicked it, Daddy.”

“Clicked it?” Evan frowned at her. “I thought we
agreed you weren’t going to click anything anymore. Clicking is
bad.”

“But Blessing wanted to see Mommy!”

“Then you should have asked Daddy. I have other
pictures of Mommy.” He took a moment to center himself and refocus.
The idea that the Morality Machine might break had never invaded
even his worst nightmares.

“Daddy?” Delila asked, tugging at his sleeve.
“Are we in trouble?”

He studied his broken machine. There were
probably worse things that could happen, like an asteroid the size
of Mars crashing into the Pacific Ocean, but on a scale of one to
ten this was a thousand. “Just a little bit.”

The anguished wails of the unjustly accused
began again. Delila sobbed, clinging to his knee like a limpet.
Blessing’s lip trembled.

“Everyone upstairs!” Evan ordered. “Hert,
salvage what you can, then send a cooking minion upstairs.”

“Do you still want me to lure in a test subject,
Master?”

“No, that’s on hold for now.”

“But, sir! Your deadline!”

“A few hours won’t hurt anything,” Evan said, as
much to himself as to his minion. He needed to fix his Morality
Machine, but first he needed to figure out exactly what the girls
could do. Plans boiled in the back of his mind. It was like opening
the cupboard and finding a gold mine. Super powers might turn out
to be the magic wand that could fix everything.

Of course, the ethics involved with using
children as evil minions was sketchy at best. It probably went
against child labor laws. But that was neither here nor there. All
he had to do was wait for them to hit their teens and order them to
not rob the bank. Kah-ching!

Upstairs, Evan lined the girls up on the
couch and paced. “All right, ladies, it has come to my attention
that you’ve been keeping secrets from Daddy. Now, as a super
villain—
former
super villain—I can
understand your need for secrecy. In some cases, I will applaud it.
For example, I will never need to know what partially digested food
looks like, so kindly don’t regurgitate on me.

“However, I do need to know if you are
developing any skills that might make your kindergarten teacher
scream next fall. This is very important. Delila can click things
open. Blessing has telekinesis.” He raised an eyebrow at the other
two. “Any more surprises for Daddy?”

Maria looked at the ceiling, then the floor.

“Maria? What do you want to tell Daddy?”

“Sometimes, I make stars.”

“Stars?”

She cupped her two little hands and light pooled
into her palms. As she pulled her hands apart a trail of sparkling
stars the size of quarters strung out in front of her.

“May I see?” He held out a hand, but waited for
her to nod. Evan reached gingerly for a star. It burned hot even a
hand’s width away. “Do they burn things?”

“Only if I forget them, Daddy.”

Oh, goody. His daughter was a firebug. “That’s
going to make camping trips exciting. Don’t play with stars in the
house. Angela?”

“Angela knows what we’re thinking,” Delila
offered.

“I do not!” Angela shouted. She stood up with
her hands on her hips, looking exactly like Tabitha in a fighting
mood. “Delila knows everybody’s secrets! Not me!”

“What do you do?” Evan asked Angela.

She shrugged a thin shoulder. “Sometimes I know
when people are sad. Sometimes I make them happy.”

His inner evil genius squeed like a manga
fangirl at her first Comic-Con. “You influence people’s
feelings?”