Superheroes Anonymous (17 page)

If I listened really closely, I heard a tiny
twang
every time she did it.

“You're part of the speed team!” I said.

She grinned and brushed sweat off her brow with her wrist. “Guilty as charged.”

“How do you
do
that?”

“It's velocity-­based. I can alter kinetic energy around me, basically changing gravity to make me faster or slower.” As she talked, she stretched out her shoulder, then cracked her neck. “I've been able to do it all my life, but I never realized I was doing it until I was outrunning every boy in my hometown.”

“In races?” I said. “Or were they chasing you?”

She smirked. “I run pretty fast, but I'm fastest in shorter, sharper movements. If I'm going long distances, I'd rather have a bike.”

I nodded, and since we were taking a break anyway, reached for my water. Only to have it kicked out of my hand. “Hey!”

“You want your water?” Angélica asked. “Earn it. Come at me.”

“Here we go again,” I said, but I readied myself. Knowing what I did now about how Angélica's unique abilities worked, that time when I got a kick in, it wasn't because I was lucky.

I'd never seen a woman with a bloody nose look prouder.

 

Chapter Sixteen

W
HEN
I
DRAGGED
myself to my room, sore and more than a little tired after the session with Angélica, I found Guy leaning against my door, his hands in his pockets. He was in his regular clothing, dressed like a college student on spring break again, and I remembered that he kept a place in Miami. How he traveled between Florida and the Davenport complex so quickly, I had no idea, but I figured he probably had to dress “in character” all the time these days.

My heart leapt at seeing him. I was used to that reaction at seeing Blaze, but not Guy, even though I
knew
they were the same person, I nearly tripped over my own feet.

“Hey,” Guy said, standing up so fast that I nearly suffered sympathetic whiplash. His wince, however, was all for me; he gestured at my cheek. “Ouch.”

“You should see the other guy,” I said.

“I have to ask: when you say the other guy, you do mean Angélica, right?”

“Yeah. Don't worry, I didn't run into any bad guys between here and the training rooms.” I'd actually forgotten about my cheek. I imagined by this point, the bruise was probably in its ugliest stages. “I slipped a little. I don't think she actually meant to hit me that hard.”

“Hey-­a, Gail,” said a new voice, and I turned to see Vicki strolling toward us.

“Hey, Vicki,” I said. Since she lived down the hall, I was used to seeing her coming and going. If she was in a rush, it was always a bit like getting brushed with the very edge of a potent tornado. Today, she was kitted out in her superhero getup, dressed from head to foot in unrelenting black. Her matte white mask was hooked at her hip. “You two wanna come in?”

“I'd love to, but I don't have too much time if we're gonna hit up the Annals.”

“The whats?” I asked.

Guy cleared his throat. “I had an idea for a way we might track down Mobius or Chelsea, and Vicki wanted to come along because I think she can help. If you're not too tired.”

“Oh, neat. Let me just dump my bag.” I'd showered at the training rooms, thankfully, so the reek of
eau de Gail
wasn't strong enough to repel nearby superheroes. “Give me two minutes.”

“Take your time.”

Inside, I dropped my bag and choked down a crap-­cake, washing it down with orange juice. There really wasn't time to do my hair, and I didn't have my makeup or anything cute to wear, which was really starting to get old. I sighed at the bruise on my cheek before I stepped outside.

“Ow. That looks really bad,” Vicki said when I stepped back out into the hallway.

“It looks worse than it feels,” I said. “Should heal soon. Just part of the whole get-­hit-­get-­healed-­by-­the-­thing-­giving-­me-­and-­saving-­me-­from-­cancer cycle.”

Vicki blinked at that one a ­couple of times. “I have to wonder—­if you have cancer and you're, you know, healing yourself and only giving yourself cancer all over again, why's Angélica beating the hell out of you?”

“I think she's teaching me how to fight,” I said. I was tired enough to ignore my tweaked pride. I might be learning to hold my own against Angélica, but I still ended up on the mat more often than not.

“But why?” Vicki asked. “That's what I'm talking about. You're exerting yourself with all of this healing all the time. I'm a little worried. Can't they just put you in Superheroes 101 instead?”

“In what? Is that a real thing?”

“Ray Goldstein teaches it,” Guy said, as we entered the elevator together. “Everybody goes through it during their initial time at Davenport.”

“It's totally boring. Like I care what some superheroes in the fifties were up to.” Vicki's eye-­roll was so impressive that I nearly asked her to mentor me in that instead. “But when I mentioned it to Angélica, she said you weren't going to take it, not for a while yet.”

“Huh,” I said. I'd had an average interest in superheroes before Davenport. Which was to say, I checked the Domino site for gossip, paid attention when I heard my favorites mentioned on the news, and tried not to fall asleep in history class when my teacher sanitized the most interesting bits from the stories and the daring rescues of Kurt Davenport and the Feared Five. “Why's that, do you think?”

“She gave me that snooty look only Madame Angélica can do—­”

“Vicki,” Guy said, laughing.

“—­and said it wasn't exactly any of my business even though that's a blatant lie because I am your superhero mentor.” Vicki gave me an emphatic nod.

“ ‘None of your business' is Angélica's way of covering up the fact that she doesn't know something,” I said, and both of my freakishly tall new superhero friends gave me surprised looks over that. “What? It is.”

“You learn something new every day. At any rate, we figured since you weren't taking Superheroes 101,” Guy said, “we'd go to the Annals instead. Luckily, there's a set here, so we don't have to 'port.”

“We don't have to what?” I asked.

“Teleport,” Vicki said. “You're not cleared for that.”

“There aren't any superheroes with that power,” I said, giving them both suspicious looks.

“And Davenport's just a regular company,” Vicki said facetiously.

“Back the trolley up—­you're telling me ­people can actually
teleport,
as in here one second, gone the next?”

“Oh, Girl,” Vicki said, placing one hand on my shoulder and the other over her heart, like I was some sweet child she'd taken in off the street. “Are you in for a surprise.”

As we walked to a part of the complex that I'd never visited before, they took turns explaining that teleportation did indeed exist, but it was such a rare power that there were less than two dozen ­people worldwide who could do it. In addition, the power had to be cultivated carefully—­years of study, apparently—­and Davenport had built special facilities to move between all of its different locations. The 'porters worked on a network, transferring ­people between these facilities.

This was, incidentally, how I discovered that I was not in Chicago anymore.

“This entire complex is in
New York City
?”

“We're really good at not telling you things,” Vicki said.

I gave her a sour look. “You think? What's next, you're going to tell me we're secretly sisters who were separated at birth?”

“Maybe?” Vicki shrugged. “My mom took off, and Dad wasn't real big on sharing the family history. But we don't look that much alike so . . .” She trailed off, possibly at my horrified look, and grinned. The famous dimple appeared. “Girl, relax. I'm messing with you.”

“She has eight siblings and is actually lying through her teeth, yes,” Guy said.

“There are eight ­people in the world that potentially look like you?” I asked Vicki.

The grin only widened. “We're a menace to society.”

“So that stuff you just told me about your mom and dad?” I asked.

Vicki made an “eh” noise and wiggled her hand. “Gotta keep the origin story interesting. Oh, look, we're here.”

I looked over in surprise. Usually, going anywhere in Davenport meant half a mile of walking down long, identical hallways, past the indoor courtyards with the simulated sunlight, and into new parts of the complex. This had been a simple elevator ride though when I looked at the panel by the door, I noticed we were no longer in the sublevels like the ones that housed my apartment but actually aboveground.

“Davenport Tower,” Guy said.

I swiveled on my heel to look at both of them, no longer shocked but accusing. “I've been living in the basement of Davenport Tower this entire time, and nobody thought to mention it to me?”

“Surprise?” Vicki asked.

“And here I've always wanted to see the top of Davenport Tower,” I said. There had been so many movies—­and so many dramatic saves—­off the top of the tower. At one point, it had been the tallest building in the world, and it still drew quite a few tourists for its art deco style every year.

And the entire time, I had been living just below it.

“This part of the building's only open to Class Cs and above,” Guy said, wincing a little as I turned my stare on him. “Technically, you're still in your adjustment period until Cooper says so, but we figured we'd, ah—­”

“What your super straight-­laced boyfriend here means to say is that we're breaking you out and breaking the rules, Baby Girl,” Vicki said, propping an elbow up on my shoulder as we waited for the doors to open. They were taking an awfully long time to go about it, and my bones felt weird, like something was humming, so I suspected we were being scanned. Whatever these Annals were, they definitely felt important.

Guy made a choking noise. “You know that's just the media,” he said to Vicki. “We're—­we're not really dating. I'm not her boyfriend, I wouldn't force my attentions on her—­”

“We understood you the first time,” I said, and my voice came out surprisingly testy. I flinched.

“Right,” Guy said, and the elevator doors opened. “Well, here we are.”

A long hallway, lushly carpeted, stretched out in front of us. Along each wall, I could see portraits, hung at even intervals. “You brought me to a portrait gallery?”

“This is a memorial,” Guy said. “Superheroes who make their mark are put in this gallery. Most of them gave their lives fighting the good fight.”

“Most?”

“Not all of them are dead.” Guy paused.

“And it's not exactly good luck to be in here,” Vicki said, as the elevator doors closed behind us. “There's some dumb superstition that if you're in the Annals, maybe your life expectancy isn't the greatest.”

“Neither of you are in here, right?” I asked, looking at the first portrait. Captain Fallout had died in the fifties, but he was famous for throwing himself over a bomb that would have destroyed a small mountainside town in California.

“Nope,” Vicki said, drawing the word out. She flexed. “Not for lack of trying, though.”

“Sam is,” Guy said. “After he saved Chicago from Deathjab, they considered him worthy enough to be in the Annals. But anyway, I thought we could look around, see if anybody reminds you or Vicki of Chelsea.”

“What?”

“Siblings and children of superheroes tend to become supervillains,” Guy said.

“Like the Trouble Twins and the Snuggler?”

“Who were all really hot,” Vicki said.

Guy and I stared at her.

“What? They were. So what if two of them were evil?”

“Anyway, to kick things off . . .” Guy gestured at the first portrait beyond Captain Fallout. The sober, hazel eyes of Kurt Davenport looked back at us. He looked to be in his prime at the time the portrait had been painted, a virile man in a dark suit. Apparently he hadn't wanted to be painted in the Raptor uniform, though the suit was as black as the cape he'd always worn.

“Just to double-­check: Kurt Davenport
is
dead, right?” I asked. “I remember hearing that he died.”

“Yeah, he passed away some time ago.”

“But I still see stuff about the Raptor all over the Domino's website,” I said. A thought occurred to me, and I remembered the smiling blue eyes of Eddie Davenport as he shook my hand, eons ago at the office. “Hold on—­it's not
Eddie
, is it?”

“Nope,” Vicki said. “Eddie's totally boring—­”

“For a lawyer-­turned-­CEO who runs Davenport Industries,” Guy said, his voice dry.

“—­So the Raptor's actually Jessica Davenport.”

“Raptor's a woman?” I tried to remember what the press had said about Jessica Davenport. They'd grown bored of her when she hadn't had a wild-­child phase. Instead, by all reports, she lived a secluded, private life, as opposed to her brother's high-­flying, talk-­of-­the-­town ways. If she was skulking about the back alleys of New York City every night, though, that explained it.

Guy and Vicki both grinned, like they were in on some great joke. “Everybody's always surprised by that,” Guy said. “Sorry. Didn't mean to make it seem like we were making fun of you or anything. Jessie's the Raptor now. And I imagine her son will take over for her when she decides to retire.”

Jessie Davenport, though never married, had two kids with her ex. Harry and Lydia Rosemund, I remembered. They were occasionally on the covers of the tabloids, with other rich kids. “Isn't he fifteen?”

“Next month, and he can't wait to fill his grandfather's shoes.” Guy shrugged. “He'll probably feel different when he realizes that the hero life isn't glamorous. But until then, he and Jessie have a deal—­Harry goes to school full-­time, finishes college, and she'll take him on as a sidekick. Probably the only way to keep him out of trouble.”

“So the superheroing business really is a family thing, isn't it?” I asked.

“Right. And powers can sometimes be hereditary,” Guy said, pointing at the portrait next to Kurt's. The plaque proclaimed him to be Marcus Davenport, and I vaguely remembered hearing that Eddie and Jessie Davenport had had a younger sibling. He'd passed away about a decade before, as far as I remembered. The man in the portrait looked slim almost to the point of emaciated, his cheeks puffed out and his eyes—­hazel, unlike his brother's—­sunken in his face. “Marcus unfortunately inherited his mother's abilities, Villain Syndrome and all. It drove him mad. He's here because Kurt wanted it, but it's kind of controversial.”

“Sad,” I said.

Vicki cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable with the somber mood, and slung a friendly arm across my shoulders to pull me forward. “C'mon, let's go see if we can find somebody who has Chelsea's chin or something.”