Heroine Addiction (11 page)

I raise the tester to read the green digital letters as they flash across the undersized screen on the tester's flattened side.

MORRIS KEMP
, the readout proclaims,
%99.66 accurate.

My breath hitches as I fumble the tester in my shaking fingers, nearly dropping it onto the body.

“Told you,” Dr. Hale says from the hall.

She didn't, and she didn't have to, but the sentiment stands.

All right, I surrender. I officially have no damn clue what the hell is going on.

9.

Once my powers stretch back to life, I give Nate a hasty farewell and teleport back to my apartment, eager to get the hell away from the morgue. Unfortunately it's just a matter of switching up one dead space for another. Five minutes after I get back I'm stomping through the living room grumbling random theories under my breath like some crazy conspiracy nut.

Wonderful. One day dealing with my family and I'm tipping right back into frustrated lunacy.

What I need is a sounding board. I need a completely unbiased person to bounce ideas off of, someone who won't waste time with silly arguments. Someone whose mind whirls with possibilities, and above all someone who can keep their mouth shut.

I need Troy. 

“So what do you think?” I say a half-hour after I teleport to his house and pop him back to my place. I attempt to sound cheerful and helpful but fail miserably. “Got any brilliant writerly ideas?” 

Troy refuses to look away from the sloppy set-up on my living room wall as he sits on the floor with his back against the end of the couch and his gangly bare legs stretched out before him. He simply lifts his empty glass and shakes it in my direction once again, the slowly melting ice cubes jingling a musical request my way.

Frowning, I snatch the bottle of scotch from the end table and pour him another drink. “You know I apologized already, right?”

Troy smirks up at me, his face pulled so tight I almost cringe, and says, “Consider it part of my writing process.”

He fixes his attention on the wall once again, nursing the glass of scotch with all of the enthusiasm of a sleepy puppy. It takes me a long moment to summon up the courage to sit beside him on the floor, my fingers still wrapped around the bottle as I rest it on my drawn-up knees. I avoid glancing Troy's way mostly out of guilt, still a bit shy after what I did. I suppose I could have at least given him a warning or asked him if he trusted me or something equally trite before bringing him here, but I have not been having the best day by a long shot, and it's already later at night than I usually tend to stay awake anyway.

At least Troy doesn't appear to have that problem. If he's been wiped out by anything, it's his sudden disappearance from his house and reappearance in my apartment, not to mention the ensuing fumbling and rambling most people wallow in after hitching a ride with me on one of my teleportations. His brown hair sticks up in all directions, twisted wild by Troy's trembling fingers thrusting through the shaggy masses in frustration. Apparently I grabbed him right before he settled in front of his computer for the night, right after he changed into baggy boxers and a gray T-shirt a couple of sizes too big. He must have shrugged on the worn-thin plaid robe to hide his mile-long legs, scrawny and pale, like some stick figure brought to life.

Lines of ink mark his fingers, accidental streaks of color sprinkled across his knuckles. Sometimes he twirls his pens when he's blocked, that much I notice at the cafe. He's not exactly agile. He drops them a lot, which gives me plenty of opportunities I never have the nerve to take to assist him by bending over to pick them up while wearing my tightest dresses. Mostly I just stare as he does it himself and let Dixie tease about my strange taste in men and wonder when in heaven's name I turned into a damn wallflower.

I think I need mental help. Or an intervention.

“Are you angry?”

He chuckles at that, soft but harsh, steel wool scratching across my eardrums. “No, I'm just … I'm just stupid, I guess.”   

“I wouldn't have brought you here if you were an idiot. Particularly if you were any more idiotic than I currently feel. I haven't felt this moronic since Private Patriot dispersed amnesia gas into the underground mall –”

Troy groans, shaking his head. “I guess this is what I get for burying myself in my writing.”

“I don't exactly advertise my past.”

“Oh, you don't have to,” he retorts. “I imagine People magazine and US Weekly do just fine all on their own.”

It's not an exaggeration, really. Departing for the great unknown and opening Tea and Strumpets in a one-cow town in the middle of nowhere lends itself to puff pieces and “Where are they now?” stories, all liberally sprinkled with cheery pictures of me pouring coffee for Mrs. Santamaria arranged next to dated images of me from way back when. I've only allowed three since I left the business, however, all fawning complimentary pieces with little actual substance.

I imagine my official Brigade studio portraits would look nice sized down to fit between an update on my love life that starts out, “Speculation that Miss Noble lied about her bisexuality to create controversy to assist her exit from the Fairness Brigade abound ...”  Fortunately I left the superhero field at just the right moment, if you're morbid enough to call it that. I left my old life in between the Lemur getting arrested for routinely doing unspeakable things to his underage sidekicks for the previous two decades and an alien craft crashing into the Lord Disturbio Plaza building and killing hundreds.

I just wasn't interesting enough to beat those, and slipped out of public life like a wet fish through clumsy fingers.

“You're not going to tell anyone, I hope,” I say quietly.

He shoots me a disbelieving smirk, but I know he understands what I'm getting at. It's not the regulars whose coffee orders I've memorized or Dixie and Tara I worry about. It's some superhuman reporter or caped gossip blogger I fear tracking me down, picking up a scent and following it all the way back to Tea and Strumpets. I managed to shake most of them after a while, but now it's eager young pups straight out of journalism school searching for the salacious secret that any woman who's not completely straight or wearing a purity ring simply
must
be hiding.

They can harass me all they want when I'm in the city, but this is my home, damn it.

“Yes, now is the perfect time to ask me that,” he says, but his voice teases more than anything else. “Which part am I not supposed to be telling anyone again?”

It takes me a moment to realize what he's searching for, a gentle wave of his free hand towards the far wall directing my gaze back to the matter at hand. Oh, right. I'd almost forgotten about my ludicrous family problems. Sighing and blowing a lock of hair from my eyes, I say, “Preferably any of it, actually, with a focus on the fact that Wavelength has been having a torrid love affair with the Quiz Master for the past five years.”

Troy grimaces and reaches up to scratch absently at his scruff. “You had to say it out loud, didn't you?”  Another swift toss of the glass empties it, and he signals for me to pass him the bottle.

I make a face, but hand it over anyway.

“How did your family even manage to cover this up?” 

He removes the cap from the bottle, ready to pour another glass, then glances my way and cocks an eyebrow. When I hold up my hands in surrender, he has the decency to place the empty glass on a coaster on the coffee table before taking a healthy swig of scotch straight from the bottle.

“My dad's the most powerful telepath on the planet,” I point out. “If he doesn't want you to notice him kissing a notorious reformed criminal in Oktoberfest Park, you won't. Plus, there's the plastic surgery machine –“

“Okay, okay, I think I know too much about your family already.”

He scrambles to his feet, stumbles around a bit before righting himself. There's a moment where I'm terrified he's drunk too much and is of no use to me anymore whatsoever. But his eyes clear as he stares at the wall, at my tiny handwriting made sloppy from stress. The seconds drag by, taking him with them, leaving me still sitting on the floor in an ungainly sprawl.

“I don't mean to be a bother,” I say after a couple of minutes pass, the silence stifling, “but my dad's the one who's telepathic, not me.”

He ignores me for a moment, tapping out a silent tune with the bottle dangling from his fingertips against his thigh. Then he freezes, a soft “Huh” rising from him before he blurts out, “Tell me again what you said to your dad at that dance club about the Quiz Master.”

My brow furrows as I try to remember the exact wording of what I'd said, the words clouding in my mind beneath a cacophonous cover of trumpets and laughter and confusion screaming through my mind. “I said that Morris told me Dad had been missing for three days, and Dad said he'd take care of it.”

“You didn't elaborate?”

“What would there be to elaborate?”

“I need you to think, Vera,” Troy says, his voice curt as he turns around and crouches before me. He looks for the briefest of moment like he'll reach out to grasp me in a reassuring clutch, his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs teasing the soft skin of my neck. Instead he settles back on his ankles, an uncomfortable angle, and says, “Pretend your dad only knew what any guy on the street would know about your family. Pretend that he thinks that the Quiz Master is his enemy. What exactly did you say to him?”

I nod absently in silent understanding, my eyelids sliding shut in a heartbeat. I run through the memory filed away in my mind, weave through smiling swing dancers frozen in time in my head. I filter out the din of live music and mingled conversation, focusing on the words my father and I shared.

"To be honest, I'm here on behalf of Morris. According to him, you've been missing for three days."

"Don't worry, sweetie. I'll take care of Morris, all right?"

A dead cold weight sinks in my stomach.

“I think I may have given him a vague idea that Morris contacted me to imply that he'd kidnapped my father, presumably with the intention of forcing me into a dangerous situation,” I murmur. “At least, that's how Dad would have taken it if he … you know, wasn't Dad.”

Troy sighs,  “Would he have read your mind to double-check?”

“He doesn't read his family's minds. Haven't you read his autobiography?”

He pushes to his feet and scans the floor for his slippers in an obvious attempt to avoid looking at me. “Right. That must have been a quote that came later in the book than the puffed-up glory stories from his college days. I threw the book onto my lawn when I hit that adverb-laden anecdote about turning back the Martian bird people invasion all by himself. I think it may still be out there under my grass collecting moisture, mold and more bad literary reviews as we speak.”

I block him out as much as I can manage, mentally snatching at the loose threads from today while attempting to uncover where my father's reaction might fit into it all. So let's say the man who returned to my mother with open arms and a dimmed smile really isn't who he says he is. He arrives at their condo as though nothing is out of the ordinary, as though their public cover story of white picket fences never ended, and imagining my mother's reaction to his surprise arrival slips my arms around my chest in a sorry effort to warm myself up.

“My mother would have noticed,” I rasp out.

“Would she want him back enough to fake it?”

Would she?  Mom would strong-arm every reporter at the Town Crier if it meant she could stop living the lie she's been suffering through the past few years. God knows she's got more than enough experience with lying through a bright clenched smile to smokescreen anybody at this point. It doesn't matter what my father might have told her before he packed his bags and left. A magically dim Everett Noble would be a public relations gold mine for her, easy and affectionate and buying into the traditional-family lie enough to tilt it towards reality.

“I want to be adopted,” I groan, letting my head drop into my hands.

Troy puts the bottle on the kitchen counter, slowly tightening the cap back on. “I can't help you with that.”

“Any other bright ideas?”

He glances around, a little dazed, possibly more than a little exhausted, and murmurs, “I should probably go.”

I frown. “What's so bright about that?”

“You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow. You need time to rest before you do something you'll regret. And I'll do a hell of a lot better trying to help you sort this mess out if I can head back to the privacy of my own place and talk to myself like an escaped mental patient. So I should probably start walking home before it gets late enough for the first-shift folks in town to start hitting the road and catch me in this,” he says, doing a dramatic turn in his robe.

I giggle in spite of myself, on the verge of tears. “I stand corrected. That's brighter than I would have thought for this time of night.” I take a deep steadying breath, then say, “You know, I can give you a ride.”

“And I can throw up on your pretty dress. We all have our talents.” He pauses to bless me with a gentle smile. “Go to bed, Vera,” he says, heading for the steps down to the sidewalk.

He's still looking at me when I take the easy way out and teleport into the bedroom, materializing right under the blankets like the pro that I can be. His surprised laughter carries through the apartment, nudging me towards sleep, and a moment later the far-off click of the downstairs lock pushes me over the edge.