Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (12 page)

I turned to see Steven Clayton with a full-bore cringe on his face. “There’s no business like show business, huh?” He did not answer me, but I had a feeling that I knew more or less what he was thinking by the expression on his face.

Scott sat with his head down, trying to ignore the flare of the police and ambulance lights. The fire trucks were further up the hill by now, and the whole scene was consumed by people in formalwear being asked questions by uniformed emergency personnel. First aid was being administered, and by Scott’s reckoning, about a thousand photos were being Instagrammed per minute.

“You know,” he said to Kat, who was sitting on the ground next to him, “for a bunch of people who had a decently close brush with death tonight, your friends don’t seem overly concerned.”

Kat stirred out of her torpor, her dress still damp from where she’d gone in the pool. He held out a hand and drew the moisture to him, pulling it free of the fabric and out of her hair. He pulled a stray tear as well, though he didn’t say anything about it as it glistened through the air toward him, reflecting the red and blue light.

“That guy—the red-haired bum guy—he really does want to kill me, doesn’t he?” Kat asked.

“Seems like,” Scott said after a pause for thought. “I mean, he’s following you around with intent.”

“What did I ever do to him?” she asked, blinking. Another droplet came oozing out of the corner of her eye, subtle and small.

Scott shifted uneasily where his ass met the hard concrete curb. “You exist. Some people don’t need any other reason.”

“At least Sienna did something to him,” she said, sniffing slightly, “you know, to make him mad—”

“I don’t think she actually did …”

“—I’ve never even met him before and he hates me enough that he wants to kill me,” she said quietly. She averted her gaze, watching her cameraman taking shots of the house as the firemen turned their hoses on it, streams of water sailing through the night to put out the small blaze still burning in the wreckage of the home. “I’m sorry I treated you like a stalker earlier.”

“Hm?” Scott roused himself out of a perfectly good stupor. He hadn’t gotten used to Pacific time yet. “Oh. Right. Yeah, I’m sorry you did, too. Any chance you’d be willing to fix that in edits?”

“I’ll talk to Taggert about it,” she said, staring blankly at the scene and all the chaos unfolding within it. “I’m sure he’ll want to portray you and Sienna both as heroes trying to protect me. I don’t see how you could look like my enemies after coming to my rescue like that.”

“Maybe,” Scott said. He had his suspicions otherwise. He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry I seem like a stalker.”

“You’re not,” she said, shaking her head. “You never did. You just … you remember things I don’t.” She met his eyes carefully, her green ones still glittering with heartfelt emotion. “I’m sorry that I can’t. I’ve seen the pictures … we seemed happy together.” She looked around until her eyes alighted on Sienna, and a hint of jealousy marred her pretty features. “Not as happy as the two of you seemed before I left, but still … It can’t be easy to watch her catch the interest of a guy like Steven Clayton.”

Scott felt his skin tighten around his eyes, his lips twisting up into an involuntary smirk. “Sienna? Why does everyone keep saying we were together? We’re just friends.” He nodded his head toward her, where she stood, very uneasily, next to Clayton, answering the questions posed by an African-American woman in a suit with a badge hanging out of her front pocket. “If she, uh, y’know, ends up dating America’s most eligible bachelor—”

“He’s
People Magazine’s
Sexiest Man of the Year,” Kat said with a dash of impatience.

“Whatever the case,” Scott said, “I’m happy for her.”

Kat made a face like she’d swallowed a lime slice. “Yeah. Happy for her. Me, too.”

Detective Meredith Waters of the LAPD had the sort of long-suffering look that I suspected I’d worn on more than a few occasions myself. She watched me with dark, wary eyes as I answered every question she asked, and she still kept a close watch on me when she started directing her questions toward Steven, who answered them with a lot of florid expression, the sort of thing he probably learned as an actor.

“… when I came out of the pool, the guy was gone,” Steven finished, his voice a low, smooth, sexy rumble. “Sienna rounded everyone up and got them to a safe distance from the house. A few minutes later—boom.” He made an exploding gesture with his hands.

I waited for Detective Waters to quibble, to ask another question, to pick at his story like she’d picked at mine. “All right, Mr. Clayton,” she said, a lot more warmly than she had at any point during my ‘interrogation,’ “you’re free to go.”

I wanted to be offended by her offering preferential treatment to the pretty boy over the federal agent, but—let’s face it, I was a disaster with a reputation for chaos and he was an upstanding famous person with an ass you could play racquetball on.

Oh, shit, did I just say that?

Detective Waters turned her attention back to me. “Now, you say you’ve had contact with this particular villain of yours before?”

I rolled my eyes. “First of all, he’s not
my
villain, I don’t—you know, personally own him or anything—”

“But you’ve had an encounter with him before,” she said, “in Atlanta?”

“No.” I shook my head.

She gave me that doubting look. “Listen, Ms. Nealon, I’ve heard stories about you. Every cop has. This Atlanta thing you were involved in—”

“I was in one of the Carolinas when that mess kicked off,” I said, “I got there at the end. One of my associates, Augustus Coleman, he was the one who took on Captain Redbeard.” Which was my new name for this dude with the phase-powers. Eat your heart out, Cisco Ramon, I can name villains, too.

“Uh huh,” Detective Waters said. At least, unlike a lot of the other people I’d dealt with tonight, she was sincere—she sincerely did not like me or want me to be here. And hell, if I’d been her, I would have sincerely wished my troublemaking ass out of town. “Does your … associate … know this man’s name?”

“Well, I think he kind of dug up the earth and buried him in it, so … maybe?” I shrugged. I’d put in a call to Augustus, but he and Reed were off on an assignment and on Central time. Presumably they were both sleeping right now, because I hadn’t heard back from him.

“Maybe?”

“I don’t know if names were exchanged before he started ripping the ground beneath the Captain’s feet,” I said, keeping it just this side of snotty. “If he followed the clearly laid out Conventions of Metahuman Battle, as well as Ms. Manner’s Simple Rules for Introductions, then we’re golden. If, on the other hand, he was in a desperate fight for his life against about a dozen metas all at once,” crossing the snotty line at about supersonic speed, “he might not have gotten the name before he closed up the earth on this guy.”

Detective Waters took a sharp breath, and by the way her lips were pressed together, I knew she was counting the hours until she could go home. “Uh huh,” was all she said, though.

My phone buzzed, and she and Steven looked at me. I let it go a couple times before I made a show of checking who was calling. “Oh, goody,” I said when I saw the screen read “Andrew Phillips,” “this night just keeps getting awesomer. How could it possibly get any better?”

“You want to get a drink?” Steven asked nonchalantly.

My phone buzzed in my hand about five times until Detective Waters, the ire rising in her voice said, “Are you going to get that?” I heard jealousy, but I’d also just heard the hottest guy in Hollywood ask me out, so it was possible I was suffering auditory delusions. Could Wolfe change his voice to play ventriloquist to the stars? A fleeting image of him with his hand up—

Oh, snot rockets. (That was what Dr. Zollers was telling me to say in place of my old standby, OH SHIT. Neither of us was holding our breath on me quitting swearing. Besides, I had more pressing personality issues to work on.)

“I’ll be right back,” I said, probably sounding more shell-shocked than I had after the battle. I stepped away from the two of them and pressed the answer button on my phone. “Waffle House,” I said.

“What?” Andrew Phillips’s voice came through the speaker, a little tinny. I heard him shifting around, checking to see if he’d called the right number. “Oh, ha ha.”

“No, seriously,” I said, “if you’re calling to place an order for waffles, press one. For all non-waffle related inquiries, please hang up and call someone else.”

“I heard you met the president,” he said in the same dull tone of voice he always used.

“Did you? What did he think of our waffles?”

“Will you knock that off? I know it’s you.”

“Jeez, you must be the only guy in the world who doesn’t like waffles—”

“If you think smarting off to the president of the United States was a good idea—”

“—maybe a blue waffle for you?”

“—you’re even closer to the edge of getting fired than you ever have been, you realize that?” Phillips said, ignoring my rather crass reference.

“Oh, noes.”

“What are you even doing in California?” Phillips asked. “I don’t remember sending you on assignment to LA.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to reimburse for my travel so I didn’t think you’d notice,” I said, looking at my fingernails. They were dirty. “We received a credible threat of meta attack, so here I am, as fits my job description.”

“You’re not supposed to go on assignment without permission,” Phillips said, the tension evident in his voice. “Your assignments are up to my discretion.”

“Yes, but your judgment is suspect,” I said lightly. “I mean, you don’t even like waffles, for crying out loud—”

“You need to get to Washington,” Phillips said. “DC,” he clarified, probably wisely.

“Too bad, I was totes heading for Seattle as soon as we hung up. Maybe lunch with Bezos or something, bum around Pike Place Market, get some Starbucks right at the source—”

“Stop.”

“You want me to ignore the fact that a meta attacked someone on national television?” I asked, having a little fun with this. “I mean, this mess is trending on Twitter right now. Instagram photos of the carnage are spreading like blue waffles across the internet as we speak—”

“What the hell is a—nevermind,” he said, his frustration with me reaching—if not a peak, at least a recent high. I’d missed this. “You cannot operate without oversight.”

“Fine, oversee me,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Come to the coast, we’ll get together, have some laughs, watch a guy with a really epic beard of red try and kill a reality TV star, and possibly me—”

There was a click, and I said, “Hello?” I felt my eyebrows go up and nodded in silent respect, mostly to myself. I’d never gotten Phillips to hang up on me before. Maybe this day wasn’t so bad after all.

I wandered back to Detective Waters and Steven, who were both watching me, Waters with that same jaded look and Clayton with some dim interest that, uh … well, I didn’t know quite how to take it.

“Drink?” he asked me again.

I stared at his handsome face, his straight brown hair, perfectly framed for a magazine cover, and I sighed like Princess Anna. “I probably need to make sure Kat doesn’t get murdered in the night,” I said.
Unfortunately
, I did not add.

“Wow,” he said, still sincere as anything. “That’s a good point, I hadn’t even thought about that. Good for you, keeping your commitment, prioritizing it above petty stuff. You’re a good friend to her.”

I kept from laughing at the suggestion that Kat and I were friends, but only just barely. “Well, you know,” I said a hell of a lot more airily than I felt, “you gotta do the, uh, heroic thing and … whatnot.” I’d been up for like, twenty-four hours and had just declined a date with easily the most handsome man I’d seen since I first went running out the front door of my house at age seventeen. I’d dated some reasonably nice-looking guys, but none of them were movie stars, if you catch my meaning.

“You really are a hero,” he said. “Maybe some other time.” He gave me a nod and started off down the hill. I didn’t know where he was walking, but I was watching him until he disappeared into the crowd.

“You really are an idiot,” Detective Waters opined once he was gone. I turned my head in time to see that her eyeline was still following him down the hill. She shook her head and wandered off to handle the scene.

I tried to decide which I was, but ultimately just landed on “tired,” before I headed off to collect Kat and Scott and hopefully find a place to collapse for a little while—preferably somewhere that the menace of Captain Redbeard wouldn’t follow me.

I walked into one of the slickest hotel suites I’ve ever seen in my life, one that rivaled mansions I’ve cannonballed through the windows of (what? It’s not like anyone would invite me into a swank place like that—you know my rep for destruction) and stood admiring the view of Los Angeles before me, all lit up at night like I was in the middle of a city of stars.

“Ugh,” Kat said, as though these accommodations were the most substandard she’d ever had inflicted upon her beleaguered, long-suffering person. “Is this the best they could do?” Somewhere in poorer regions of the world, they would be burning the lovely furniture that appointed this suite because fuel was more important to survival than pretty things.

Here in Los Angeles, California, though, Klementina Gavrikov had completely lost perspective and thought this marble-floored, multi-floored palace was completely unsuitable for her more-than-modest needs.

“You’ve come a long way from that shack outside Kirensk,” I quipped, but she looked at me blankly because she couldn’t remember that. I could, though, thanks to her brother being in my head. I liked her better when she wasn’t too good for everything and everyone.

“Best we could do on short notice, Kitten,” Taggert said, mildly apologetic, as poor Karyn struggled in carrying a half-dozen bags while Scott followed behind with a half-dozen more. None of them were his, of course. I would have carried something, but honestly—pro tip—you don’t tie up your hands when you’re on bodyguard duty. Doing so means you waste valuable seconds dropping whatever it is to either draw your gun or—if you’re me—shoot a web of light, send a flaming blast at someone, etc. I also drew my gun frequently, because it looked more intimidating to the average meta than just holding my hand up menacingly. Surprisingly few people made the connection in the heat of the moment, realizing that they were more likely to die from one of my flame attacks than from a bullet. Go figure.