by Jim Butcher
"Then what gives?" I asked her. "Why are you being like this?"
She turned around, green eyes hard and fierce and wet. "You are my husband. And I..." The tears fell from her eyes and she said, in a very quiet voice, "And I hate it that I can't be the one to help you."
She looked small and frail. Lost. Vulnerable. If I hadn't gone over to her and held her, I think something in my chest would have broken open.
She leaned against me again. Her shoulders shook a little, but she didn't let me see her face when she cried.
"I want to help you," she said. "Instead, here I am crying on you. For the second time today. God, that ticks me off."
"What does?"
"Adding to your burden. Being extra weight."
I kissed her hair. Then I put my hand on her shoulder and lifted her chin with a finger, so that her eyes met mine. "MJ, there's more to it than costumes. You've got to understand that. Maybe you don't throw punches for me or blast people with cosmic rays, but you do more for me than you know. Having you in my life makes me stronger. Better. Don't think that you aren't helping me. Don't think that you're a burden. Not for a second."
She didn't look convinced. But I hugged her again, and she hugged back, a tacit, temporary agreement to disagree. "So," she said. "What's the plan?"
"Research online," I said. "And I'm going to call some people."
"For help?"
I hedged. "For information," I said after a moment. "These three are here because of me. I can't ask someone else to fight my battles for me. But maybe someone will know something about them. How to beat them some way other than..."
"Killing them," she said.
"Killing them." I looked at the clock and said, "Okay, tell you what. How about we spend a little while getting you ready for your test, huh?"
She looked up at me, blinking. "Are you kidding?"
"Not even a little," I said. "MJ, this is just another freak of the week.
It isn't the first time someone's come gunning for me, and it won't be the last. If we start calling a halt to life every time some psycho with a bone to pick walks into town, we'll be spinning our wheels until we retire."
"I'm going to assume you meant that to sound encouraging," she told me, arching an eyebrow.
"I'm trying," I said, nodding. "Look at it like this. Next week, this is going to be over, and I'll be making wisecracks about it to you while you drop me off at school and tell me how your rehearsal is going. Unless we let the latest set of bozos scare us out of living our life and you don't get the license and don't get your part. So. Give me the manual and we'll get you set for the test. We can even go out to the car and I can coach you a little if you like. You can get to bed early, I'll stay up and research things for a while - it'll be fun."
"Fun," she said, her tone flat - but there was, at least, a flicker of life in her eyes again, something that might eventually grow into a smile.
"Studying is fun," I said.
"Once a nerd," she said, sighing, "always a nerd."
"You want to skip the written and go to the car instead?"
She folded her arms. "What if I do?"
"Give me a minute, and I'll go borrow a crash helmet and make sure my life insurance premium is paid up."
She gave me an arch look.
"Does the car have air bags?" I asked. "Because if it doesn't, I can web us in nice and safe."
Mary Jane rolled her eyes heavenward.
"Now he gets creative with the webbing."
* * *
"This is the car you bought?" I asked her. My voice echoed in the parking garage. The acoustics magnified my skepticism.
"I was kind of in a rush," she said. "And there wasn't much of a selection."
"And this is the car you bought?" I asked. "A lime green and rust red Gremlin?"
'Actually," she said, "it's just a lime-green Gremlin."
I leaned closer and flicked a finger at the car's fender. The rust red paint was, in fact, simply rust.
"I got a really good deal on it," she said.
"No air bags," I noted, walking around the car. "Too old for them."
"It's also all metal," she responded. "Being a really heavy car is really the next best thing."
I snorted. "Well," I said. "You can obviously drive. After a fashion, anyway. You took the car to the test, right?"
She raked some fingers through her hair. "Well. Yes. Though we stopped at the written. I was going to tell them my husband had driven me to the DMV, then went for coffee."
"Mistress of deception, huh?"
"Give me a break. I was working under pressure," she said. "And yes, I can drive. I mean, more or less. I didn't smash into anything on the way home, anyway. But everyone kept honking at me whenever I even came close.
People in cars can be really rude."
I tried to imagine this scene, and had to keep myself from wincing. "Okay then. Let's get in and start with signals and right-of-way."
"Signals?" she asked. "Right-of-way?"
I couldn't help it. My lips twitched. "I'm not laughing at you," I said.
"I'm laughing with you."
She gave me a very stern look.
I held up my hands. "All right, all right. I'll be nice. Get in the car, and we'll go one step at a time."
We got in, but she didn't put her key in the ignition. "You're a good man, Peter Parker," she said quietly. "I love you."
I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
"You know," she said. "We never made out in a car when we were teenagers."
"We didn't have a car," I pointed out. "Plus we weren't dating."
"All the same," she said. "I feel cheated."
She leaned over, pulled my mouth gently to hers, and gave me a kiss that rendered me unable to speak and gave me doubts about my ability to walk.
We got to the driving lesson.
Eventually.
Chapter 10
I CLICKED THE PRINT BUTTON and my printer wheezed to life - though at this point, I doubted the dissertation on magical systems of power that it was currently reproducing would be helpful except maybe in an analytical retrospective, long after the fact. I muttered under my breath, and tried the next batch of Web sites, looking for more information, as I had been since Mary Jane went to bed.
There was a sudden, heavenly aroma, and I looked down to find a cup of hot coffee sitting next to my keyboard.
"Morning," Mary Jane said, leaning over to kiss my head. "I thought you weren't going to stay up all night."
"Marry me," I said, and picked up the coffee.
She was wearing my T-shirt, and I could not, offhand, think of anyone who made it look better. "We'll see," she said playfully. "I'm baking cookies for Mister Liebowitz down the hall for his birthday, so I might get a better offer."
"I always knew you'd leave me for an older man." I sipped the coffee and sighed. Then I glowered at the stack of useless information by the printer.
"How'd it go?" she asked.
I made a growling sound and sipped more coffee.
"Peter," she said, "I know that in your head, you just said something that conveyed actual information. But when it got to your mouth, it grew fur, beat its chest, and started howling at the moon."
"That's right," I said, as if reminded. "You're a girl."
That got me a rather sly look over the shoulder. Doubtless, it was the fresh, steaming coffee that made my face feel warm.
"I take it your research didn't go well?" she said, walking into the kitchen.
"It's this magical crap," I said, waving a hand at the computer. I got up from my chair, grabbed my coffee, and followed her. "It's such hogwash."
"Oh?"
"Yes. It's like we're reverting to the Dark Ages here. Which you're not actually supposed to say anymore, because it's not like it was a global dark age, and to talk about it like the whole world was in a dark age is Eurocentrically biased." I sat at the kitchen table. "And that's pretty much what I learned."
&nb
sp; "You're kidding," she said.
"No. Eurocentrically biased. It's actually a phrase."
"You're funny." She opened the refrigerator door. "Seriously, nothing useful? Not even in the Wikipedia?"
"Zip. I mean, there's all kinds of magical creatures on the net, God knows. But how do you tell the difference between something that's pure make-believe, something that's been mistakenly identified as something magical, something that's part of somebody's religious mythos which may or may not have a basis in life, and something that's real?" I shook my head. "The only thing I found that was even close to these Ancients turned out to be an excerpt from a Dungeons and Dragons manual. Though I did run across a couple of things that led me to some interesting thoughts."
Mary Jane continued on, making breakfast and listening. I wasn't sure how she did that. Heck, I had to turn off the television or radio to be able to focus on a phone call. "Like what?" she asked.
"Well. These Ancients might have superpowers and such, but they still have the same demands as any other predator. They have to eat, right? And they're thousands and thousands of years old."
She nodded, then frowned. "But I thought that the super-powered types only started showing up kind of recently. I mean, fighting Nazis in World War Two, that kind of thing."
I shrugged. "Maybe. But maybe not, too. I mean, most of the super-powered folks who have shown up are mutants. I've heard some theories that it was nuclear weapons testing that triggered an explosion - "
"So to speak," Mary Jane injected.
" - in the mutant population, but that doesn't make much sense to me. I mean, the planet gets more solar radiation in a day than every nuke that's ever gone off. It doesn't make sense that a fractional increase due to nuclear weapons tests would trigger the emergence of superpowers."
"Worked for the Hulk," she pointed out.
"Special case," I said. "But I think that maybe what we're seeing - the rise in the mutant population - might be as much about the total population rising as it is about a sudden evolutionary change. We've got about six billion people on the planet right now. Two thousand years ago, the estimate is that there might have been three hundred million. If the occurrence of powered mutants is just a matter of genetic mathematics, maybe it just seems like there's a lot more mutants running around these days. I mean, they do tend to be kind of eye-catching."
She was making omelets. She assembled them as quickly and precisely as if her hands were being run by someone else's head while she carried on the conversation with me. "And you think that explains how these things ate before? By feeding on the occasional mutant with some kind of totemistic power?"
"Potentially," I said. "Even a reduced population might be able to sustain the Ancients. They only eat once in a while, sort of like a boa constrictor. Felicia thinks the last time Mortia ate was in the forties.
Morlun told me that feeding on me would fill him up for a century or more."
"Tastes great," Mary Jane said. "More filling. I agree."
I coughed. "Thank you," I said. "But, ahem, getting our minds out of the gutter, think about it for a minute. How would people have described someone with, say, Wolverine's gifts, back when? He'd have been called a werewolf or a demon or something. Charles Xavier would have been considered a sorcerer or a wizard of some kind. Colossus would have been thought to be some kind of gargoyle or maybe a fairy tale earth-creature, like a troll."
She lifted her eyebrows. "So, you're saying that maybe a lot of folklore and mythology might be based on the emergence of mutants, back when. Like if... say, Paul Bunyan was actually a mutant who could turn into a giant."
See what I mean about brains? My girl ain't slow. "Exactly. Ezekiel told me that the African spider-god Anansi was originally a tribesman who had acquired spiderlike powers. Sort of the original Spider-Man. That he got himself involved with gods and was elevated to godhood."
"Actual gods?" Mary Jane asked, her tone skeptical.
"Hey," I said. "I ate hot dogs with Loki a few months ago. And I saw Thor flying down Wall Street last week."
She laughed. "Good point. You aiming for a promotion?"
"Not if I can help it," I said. "But think about it. Say, for example, something really odd happened and I joined up with the Avengers. All of a sudden, I'm running around with a new crowd, gone from home a lot, hanging around with Thor, all that kind of thing. If it was two thousand years ago, it sure would look like I'd been accepted by beings with incredible powers, whisked off to their world and welcomed into their ranks."
She nodded. Then asked me, "Would that be so odd? For you to join a team like that?"
"Captain America doesn't think I'd be a team player," I told her. "We've talked about it in the past. And there was that whole thing where I wanted to join the Fantastic Four, but when they found out I was looking for a salary they got all skeptical about me."
"You thought the FF got paid?" Mary Jane asked.
"I was about sixteen," I said. "I thought a lot of stupid things."
She smiled, shook her head, and started dishing up the omelets. "Eat up, Mister Parker. Get some food in you."
I took the plate from her and set it on the table. "Anyway. I didn't make a sterling first impression on the superhero community. And I've had all that bad press, courtesy of the Bugle.
So there's always been a little distance between me and Cap and most of the other team players."
"It just seems..." She paused, toying with her fork. "You know. If you were part of a team, it might be safer."
"It might," I said. "But on the other hand, the Avengers are pretty upscale when it comes to villainy. They take on alien empires, aggressive nations, superdimensional evil entities, that kind of thing. I mostly do muggers. Guys robbing a grocery. Car thieves. You know - here, New York, with real people. There's no friendly neighborhood Thunder God."
"Did you call them up, at least?" she asked.
"Answering service," I said. "Who knows where they are this week? I left a message on their bulletin board system, but I don't know if they'll get in touch anytime soon since, you know. They mostly don't know who I am."
I paused. "The secret identity thing probably hasn't helped endear me to my fellow good guys, thinking about it."
"What about Reed Richards?" she asked.
"Called Mister Fantastic's lab at six A.M.," I said. "He'd been there for an hour already. He said he'd see what he could find out, but he didn't sound optimistic. And he has to take Franklin to the dentist later. He said he'd get word to me by this afternoon, but..."
"But he's a scientist," she said. "Like you. He doesn't like the whole magic thing, either."
"It isn't that he doesn't like it. It's that he likes things to make sense.
Science makes sense. Some of it can be pretty complex, but it makes sense if you know what you're dealing with. It's solid, reliable."
"Predictable?"
'Well," I said. "Yes."
"You don't like things you can't predict," Mary Jane said. "Things you can't control. You don't know the magical stuff, and it doesn't seem to lend itself to being predicted or controlled - so you don't like it."
"So now I'm a control freak?" I asked.
She looked at me for a second. Then she said, "Peter. You've spent your entire adult life fighting crime, protecting people from bad guys of every description and otherwise putting yourself in danger for someone else's sake - while wearing brightly colored tights with a big black spider on the chest. I think it's safe to say you have issues."
"With great power..." I began.
She held up a hand and said, "I agree, God knows. But an abstract principle isn't why you do it. You do it because of what a robber did to Uncle Ben. You could have controlled that if you were there, but you weren't and you didn't. So now you've got to control every bad guy you possibly can. Be there for everyone you possibly can. That's control freaky. Constructively so."
I frowned down at my eggs. "I haven't really thought of it that way befo
re."
"That's right," she said, deadpan. "You're a man."
I glanced up at her and smiled. "I'm glad you remembered."
She blushed a little. She does it much more pret-tily than I do. MJ
leaned across our little table and kissed my nose. "Eat your breakfast, tiger."
The door to our little apartment opened, and Felicia stepped in, dressed in a dark gray business suitskirt that showed an intriguing amount of leg. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and had her silver blonde hair pulled back into a bun. "Pete, we're screwed. Hi, MJ."
I was still in my shorts, and MJ hadn't gotten dressed yet, either. I sat there with a bite of omelet halfway to my mouth. "Oh. Uh, Felicia, hey."
Mary Jane gave Felicia a glance and murmured to me, "Was the door unlocked?"
"No." I sighed.
Felicia closed the door behind her and peered out the peephole. "Sorry. I didn't want to stand around in your hallway and get spotted." She looked back at us and gave me an appreciative glance. "Well, hello there."
Mary Jane gave Felicia the very calm look that comes to people's faces only seconds before they load a deer rifle and go looking for a bell tower. She stood up, and I stood up with her, taking her arm firmly. "Uh, Felicia, give us a second to get dressed, okay?"
"You bet," Felicia said. She tilted her head, sniffing. "Mmmm. That omelet smells good. Are you guys going to eat that?"
"Why don't you have mine," Mary Jane said sweetly.
"Come on," I said, and walked Mary Jane out of the room. We got into the bedroom and shut the door.
"Are you sure she isn't evil anymore?" Mary Jane asked.
"Felicia wasn't ever really evil. Just... eviltolerant. And really, really indifferent to property rights."
Mary Jane scowled. "But if she was evil," she said, "you could beat her up and leave her hanging upside down from a streetlight outside the police station. And I would like that."
I tried hard not to laugh and kissed her cheek, then put the uniform on under a gray sweat suit and stuffed my mask into a pocket. Mary Jane went with jeans and a T-shirt, in which she looked genuine and gorgeous.
"She's not that bad," I said as we dressed.
"You know that."