Villainous (22 page)

She doesn’t want it.

Then Joey gets to keep it. Good for him.

I focused on my make-up for a moment as Bianca stood behind me. The condensation from the ice had smeared my mascara, so I had to fix that, too.

Did you do it for Mary?
Bianca asked.

I paused, the mascara wand hovering a centimeter from my eye for a second before I resumed.
I should have done it a long time ago, before Mary was left alone in the house with him for all those years. Then it would have meant something.

Bianca stood silently as I put my make-up bag back into my purse and turned my chair toward the door. After a while, she sighed.

You scare me sometimes, Val, you know that?

Coming from Lady Nightmare, that was quite the compliment.
Are you going to rat me out to Joey and the boys?

No. No, of course not.
She looked over her shoulder as though she was afraid one of them might be eavesdropping.
But watch your back. They’re out for blood. And don’t tell Sonia.

I wasn’t even planning on telling you.

We left the restroom just in time for Sonia to descend upon us in a panic and herd us toward our seats. I spotted Dave in the front row, defying Sonia’s orders by not only making eye contact with but speaking to Bianca’s wife, Sara. But she was one of the few people in the church who didn’t have a reason to kill White Knight, so it was okay. When he saw me, he smiled, and I could survive the funeral and the speech therapy and whatever else life threw at me as long he was there at the end of the day to smile at me like that. I parked the wheelchair beside him, and Bianca slid into the pew behind us next to Sara.

Elisa sat next to Dave, her phone in her lap as she texted Carlos discreetly. She’d had her ups and downs over the past few months, but it finally seemed like the worst was behind her. To her right sat Irma, who had knives up her sleeves just in case any of the other mourners mistook me being in a wheelchair for weakness. And then there was Eddy, who despite a long and complicated history with my father had said it was harder to bring himself to graze me than it had been to kill his former boss.

I looked at my father’s coffin and couldn’t regret putting him in it. Bianca had been right when she’d accused me, but she’d been wrong when she’d assumed I’d killed him for Mary. Really, I’d done it for them: for Dave and Elisa, and to a lesser extent for Irma and Eddy. Now Dad’s plans were done. There would be no more attempts to manipulate me into taking over after him, no more times that my family would get caught in the crossfire of his schemes. He’d never try to have Dave killed again or twist Elisa the way he had Mary. The threat of Mr. Lucifer was over.

I guess that means I’d beaten the bad guy and saved the day. How heroic of me.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, a big thank you to everyone who read
Hero Status
. I didn’t expect there to be nearly so many of you, and your support made it possible for me to publish
Villainous,
so thank you!
I hope you enjoyed the sequel as much as the first book. An extra big shout-out to everyone who left a review or comment online. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.

As always, I need to thank my marketing team—er, family. I mean family. All kidding aside, I always knew you’d support me but was blown away by how enthusiastically you promoted my book. You’re all amazing, and I love you. <3

Ashley and Jillian have my eternal gratitude for beta-reading this on such short notice. It would be a much worse book without your feedback.

And finally, thank you to Shelley Holloway for editing and AngstyG for cover art. You guys make me look like a pro!

Note from the author

Val and Dave will return in book 3 of the series,
Almost Invincible
. Visit
www.kristenbrand.com
for news on that and other projects.

Continue reading for a preview of

Fight Crime! (A Love Story)

A free online serial coming in early 2016

Part 1

Valentina Belmonte was waiting for a police van. She stood in an alley between two warehouses, drinking a mango smoothie as she watched cars pass by. The other side of the uneven, pothole-filled street had some kind of office building. She should have talked her way in there so she could have waited in the air-conditioning. The shade of the warehouses brought the temperature down from ninety to maybe eighty-eight. Summer in Florida. How the heck did other supervillains work here?

If this was any other job, she’d be in costume, but her costume had long pants, knee-high boots and no small amount of black leather. She’d have gotten heatstroke twenty minutes ago if she’d worn that thing. So today, the Black Valentine was breaking the law in her civvies: the shortest pair of denim shorts she could find and a sleeveless shirt that showed off most of her midriff. And as a bonus, she didn’t have to worry about anyone spotting a masked supervillain lurking in an alley and calling the cops.

Not that there were many people around to notice her. Two men had come out of the warehouse for a smoke break about twenty minutes ago, but Val had telepathically convinced them to ignore her and hadn’t had any trouble since. She sucked on the straw of her smoothie, trying to get the last bit of mango goodness from the bottom of the cup. Sweat dripped down the nape of her neck despite her hair being pulled up in a ponytail, and her skin felt sticky and gross. Once this job was over, she was celebrating with a dip in a pool somewhere.

A wolf whistle cut through the ambient noise of the street, directed at a woman passing on the sidewalk. “Hey, honey!” the younger of the two warehouse workers called. “You’re looking sexy today. Where you going?” The woman sped up, her mix of anger, shame, and fear hitting Val’s telepathic senses like a wave. “You’re just gonna ignore me?” the man hollered after her retreating back. “Learn to take a compliment, bitch!” He went back to talking with the other man, who was chuckling.

Val looked at the cat-caller’s smug, entitled face for a moment. Then she went inside his mind, found his bladder control, and knocked it out. A smell like ammonia filled the alley, and the other man’s chuckling stopped.

What he felt wasn’t quite the same as the woman’s mix of emotions, but it was close enough.

Oh, and there was the police van. Val’s afternoon was looking up. She tossed her empty smoothie cup onto the ground and strode out of the alley. The street’s speed limit was only thirty-five miles per hour, not nearly fast enough for the van to get out of the range of Val’s telepathy in time. She found the driver’s mind, could feel the cool air-conditioning blasting his face and the steering wheel grasped in his sweaty hands.

Stop
, she thought.

The white van stopped with a screech of brakes. There were only two other people in it: the prisoner in the back and one guard. It was honestly a little pathetic. Val had seen shopping malls with better security. She stepped into the street, sending a telepathic urge to the three other drivers on the road to take an alternate route. Then she told the police van’s driver to go to sleep. His mind vanished from her senses, and she focused on the van’s other occupants. The guard was banging on the wall separating him from the driver, frantically trying to get a response. The prisoner was...waiting. He sat in his seat, his stomach feeling like he was on a roller coaster.

Be a gentleman and get the door for me
, Val told the guard.

The left-most of the two doors on the back of the van opened, splitting the POL from the ICE written across them in bold blue letters. The guard stared at her dazedly, but Val looked past him to the prisoner.

A lanky, teenage black boy sat slouched in the seat, wearing khaki pants, a button-up shirt that was just a little too baggy on him, and a patterned necktie. He looked like a student on the way to a spelling bee, not a juvenile being transported to his court hearing. He raised his head in Val’s direction, giving her a view of his sightless white eyes.

“I guess you’re the Black Valentine, huh?”

So he’d known she was coming. Good. He probably wouldn’t be worth it if he hadn’t.

“And you must be the Prophet Kid.” She gave him her best smile. “Congratulations. I’ve brought you your very own get-out-of-jail-free card.”