From one of the third-story windows, a man was climbing over the sill. Hardhat came running. “Where?”
“To the right!”
Drummer Boy dropped the hose and made a dash for the window, as if he could actually catch a falling body, but it was too late. Hardhat only laid one of his I beams down before the victim landed.
“Motherfucker!” Hardhat shouted. Drummer Boy gave an angry shake of an arm.
They had no way of getting inside. They couldn’t pull anyone out.
“Would somebody do something?” Curveball yelled. She kept saying that.
Hardhat, sweat and soot smearing his face, turned on her. “What the fuck you want me to do? Blow pixie dust out my ass? I’ve been doing something!”
Gardener tried to step in. “Arguing isn’t going to help anything.”
“At least we’re good at that,” Hive said, and he actually smiled.
Then they all started shouting at each other.
Some team, Ana thought.
“Maybe I can make it look like we’re doing a good job,” Wild Fox said, flicking his fox tail. Suddenly, another Wild Fox—a young Asian guy with floppy black hair and a quirky grin, fur-covered fox ears, and a luxurious fox tail poking out the back of his jeans, swishing like a banner behind him—ran from the building, carrying the latest teen pop star in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and planted dozens of kisses on him.
Ana looked at him. “I thought your illusions don’t show up on camera. That isn’t going to help us.”
He frowned. “Crap.” The vision before them popped out of existence.
Then, an air horn blared. The flow of water from the fire hose slowed and stopped, cut off from another source. Floodlights snapped on, drowning the area in blazing white light. The seven Hearts squinted against the glare.
Inside the building, the fires died as the feeds from gas nozzles shut off. Four people walked from the building—perfectly safe, uninjured. They were stuntmen, wearing protective suits and helmets. A fifth climbed off the stunt mat set up at the side of the building. Hollywood magic at its finest. They removed their masks and smirked at the seven aces as they passed. The three who’d actually been rescued weren’t any less accusing.
From a side doorway leading into the Hollywood backlot, a woman emerged. She wore designer jeans and a fitted, cream-colored blouse. With her statuesque frame and long brunette hair, she was already stunning, but one feature stood out above all the others: her wings, mottled white and beige, spectacular even folded back.
Peregrine crossed her arms and regarded the seven would-be heroes, who avoided her gaze. “That was a little underwhelming. But I think I’ll save any more criticism for the judges. Go home and wait for your next call.”
A half-dozen cameras captured the failure from every angle.
Team Hearts had their own Humvee for use during the show, tricked out and painted with their logo. The marketing gurus had thought of everything.
Hardhat drove, and for a long time no one said a word.
Finally, Hive broke the silence. “Well. That could have gone better.”
Crammed into his seat in back, Drummer Boy snorted a laugh.
After that, the seven passengers glared silently out their own windows. The camera planted in the dashboard captured an image of profound disappointment, and it would play on millions of TV sets for all the world to see.
Ana Cortez—Earth Witch, so-called—thought through the scenario again and again, and wondered what she could have done. Dug a hole. Dug a ditch. Undermined the building. And what good would that have done? None. Now the team had lost, and one of them would get voted off.
Almost, she wished she’d get the boot so she could go home and forget about all this.
Team Hearts headquarters was a sprawling West Hollywood manor, with a gated driveway, stucco walls, a luscious lawn and flourishing garden—the kind of place that played well on television and promoted the fantasy of a Southern California paradise.
All of it was just a backdrop for the drama.
Curveball—Kate Brandt—stormed from the garage into the combined kitchen and dining area. In her, the stunned disappointment of their failure had changed to fury. Jaw set, she turned on her slower teammates.
“They should have given us some kind of warning. If we’d been able to plan—”
Hive laughed. “That’s the whole point. We’re not supposed to plan. We’re supposed to face the unknown. Battle the unexpected.” Arms raised, he flashed his hands to emphasize his sarcasm.
“I thought they’d start with something small,” Andrew Yamauchi, Wild Fox, said. His tail revealed his disappointment, hanging almost to the floor. “Rescuing kittens from trees or something.”
Hardhat—T.T. Taszycki—leaned against the counter. “Makes you wonder what the fuck is next, don’t it?”
Hive just wouldn’t let up. “Look at it this way—that farce back there was highly entertaining. It should get us a lot of air time.”
Curveball turned on him. “Would you shut up? There was nothing entertaining about that! We were awful!”
Curveball and Hive faced each other down across the too bright kitchen, and any friendly sparks that had lit between them over the last week vanished. The others lurked around the edges of the room. Even Drummer Boy, all seven feet of him, managed to slink out of their way.
Jonathan Hive was too slick. He had a studied detachment, a journalistic objectivity that went a little too far—he was always an observer. He’d put himself on the outside, and he was used to commenting on everything.
He regarded Curveball and said with wry amazement, “You’re actually taking all this seriously, aren’t you? That’s kinda cute.”
He’d failed to observe that she’d already taken a marble out of her pocket and gripped it in her fist.
Ana spotted it. “Kate, no—”
Too late. Curveball wound up her pitch and threw the missile at him.
“Whoa!” His eyes went wide, and his shoulder—where the marble would have struck—disintegrated with the sound of buzzing. The cloth of his shirt collapsed as the flesh dissolved into a swarm of tiny green particles, which scattered before the marble as he flinched away. A second later, the hundred buzzing insects coalesced, crawling under his collar and merging back into his body. The marble didn’t touch him, but hit the wall behind him. A faint insect humming lingered.
To her credit, Curveball hadn’t thrown the marble hard. She hadn’t put all her anger into it. It would have only bruised him. But it did embed itself in the wall behind Hive and send cracks radiating across the paint.
He glared at the wall, then at her. “I guess this would be a bad time to ask if you, ah, wanted to have dinner with me. Or something.”
She stomped out of the kitchen and through the French doors to the redwood porch. A moment later, Drummer Boy followed her. No doubt another camera would capture them and whatever heart-to-heart conversation they were having.
Back in the kitchen, Hive shrugged away from the wall, straightened his shirt, and for once seemed uncomfortable that he was the center of attention. Without a word—uncharacteristically without a word—he hunched his shoulders against their stares and stalked to the back of the house to hide away in his bedroom.
Seemed as good a plan as any, Ana thought, and did the same.
Break to commercial.
This was all Roberto’s fault.
A month ago, back home in New Mexico, Ana lugged bags of groceries into the trailer where she lived with her father and brother. Seventeen-year-old Roberto lay stretched out on the sofa, reading a magazine and watching the evening news in Spanish.
“You should watch in English,” Ana said. “They want you to speak English in school.”
“Being bilingual looks really good on the college applications. It shows I’m in touch with my roots. They like that. Makes ’em look all multicultural.”
She unloaded the bags on the kitchen counter, shoving aside a n
ewspaper, mail, and other trash. Roberto immediately sat up and protested.
“Hey—you’re supposed to look at that!”
“What?” She’d started unloading groceries: cans and boxes in the cupboard, hamburger and juice in the fridge.
Roberto grabbed the newspaper and shook it at her. “This—I put it out so you’d see it.”
“See what?” she said, losing patience.
“This!”
She took the paper and looked at the half-page ad he held in front of her.
Wanted: Contestants
AMERICAN HERO
Auditions in Seven Cities:
New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Miami,
Denver, and Atlanta
The Search for the Next Great Ace Begins!
The ad was simple, but the words screamed with purpose—somebody’s crazy idea. What was Roberto thinking?
“What’s this?” she said.
“Ana,” Roberto said, clearly exasperated. “The next great ace? They’re talking about you! You have to go to the audition.”
She shoved the paper at him and went back to the groceries. She had to get dinner started. Maybe Papa wouldn’t feel like eating, but if he did, she’d have supper ready.
“Ana!”
“I don’t have time. I can’t take time off work. I can’t get to Denver. Besides, they’re not talking about me. I dig holes, that’s all I do. There’ll be people there who can do big things. Flashy things. Fireworks, you know? They won’t want me.” She was just la brujita.
She expected more whining from him, her name spoken in an almost screeching voice. She didn’t expect him to turn quiet, and very, very serious.
“You’re wrong. The things you can do—you’re an ace. You could move the world if you thought of it. You have to try. It’s your chance to get out of here.”
Get out of here? She’d never even considered it. Roberto had the better chance of that. And someone had to take care of Papa. “Roberto. I can’t.”
“Ana. You have to.” A tricky smile grew on his face. “I already called Burt. He gave you the week off. I got Pauli to loan me his truck. I’ll drive.”
This was definitely a setup.
They left the night before the auditions, packed a cooler with sodas and sandwiches, and stopped at a rest area near Pueblo to get some sleep. Before dawn, they continued for the final three hour drive to Denver. Ana spent most of the ride listening to Roberto’s chatter.
“So maybe you don’t make the show. But even if you do nothing else but dig wells for the rest of your life, you can do better than Burt. You oughta be getting paid more than what he’s paying you.”
Burt didn’t pay well, but he paid under the table, saving everyone a lot of trouble. She put away as much as she could for Roberto and college.
“I hear you can make a ton of money in off-shore oil rigs. You should try that.”
“I don’t think I could do that kind of drilling.”
“You could try, couldn’t you? Or maybe houses. You could dig foundations for all the houses they’re building around Albuquerque. Don’t you think?”
It was flattering, how earnest he sounded. He should have been the one born with the ace. He’d have made better use of it. “Maybe,” was all she said, and he finally dropped the subject.
When they arrived at the stadium at around 8 A.M., the parking lot was already full and a line stretched along the sidewalk. She and Roberto stared, amazed. At first, she’d been surprised auditions were being held at the football stadium—surely, that many people wouldn’t show up.
“Wow. This is crazy,” he said.
Even a brief glance at the line revealed that these were potential contestants, not spectators. Ana saw a woman with four legs and diaphanous green moth wings, a seven-foot-tall man with long, sharp-looking quills sprouting along his head and down his neck like a Mohawk, and another man with green skin and glittering red eyes, faceted like gems.
Among them stood dozens who looked entirely natural—but what could they do?
Roberto said, “You get signed up. I’ll find somewhere to park.”
She didn’t think she’d have the guts to stand in that line without Roberto backing her up. But he’d gone through all the trouble to get her here. He’d be disappointed if she chickened out. She climbed out of the truck and watched her brother drive away.
A petite Asian woman holding a clipboard and wearing a headset with a microphone marked the end of the line. She had tribal tattoos crawling up both arms. Ana couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to shift, literally crawling. She tried not to stare.
She asked Ana for her name, then asked, “What can you do?”
“I dig holes,” Ana said.
The woman raised a brow, but gave a tired shrug as if to say that wasn’t the worst thing she’d heard all morning. She handed Ana a square of paper with a number on it—“68.” “All right, Ana, we’ll be getting started soon. We’ll have chairs set up for you on the sidelines. When your number is called, you’ll talk to the judges, then show us your stuff. You need any props? Any kind of target or anything?”
Dazed, Ana shook her head. “Just some ground. Some dirt.”
The woman smiled. “You’ll have the whole football field. Assuming it doesn’t get blown up before you get in there.”
Denver was the second-to-last audition. The woman seemed to be speaking from experience.
Secretly, Ana sort of hoped the whole thing blew up before she got in there. She shouldn’t have had that sandwich this morning. Her stomach was churning.
People were still joining the line. The guy in front of Ana was practically bouncing, rocking on his feet and gazing all around him with a face-splitting grin. He was about her age, twenty-one maybe, a clean-cut white guy with thick brown hair.
“This is so cool,” he said. “This is going to be so cool. I so totally can’t wait to do this.”
“What do you do?” she asked.
“It’s a secret.” His grin turned knowing.
What could any of these people do, and how did her power compare? She was from a small town in the New Mexico desert. She’d never met another person infected with the wild card virus, and here she was, surrounded by them. Sixty-eight of them. More, because the line now stretched a dozen people behind her. A woman with feathers for hair. A young boy whose fingers were long, boneless, prehensile.
She was just another person in the line. It was almost a comfort.
Ahead, the line shifted, shuffling forward in the way of crowds. A renewed bout of nausea gripped her stomach.
Where was Roberto? It was going to be okay, she told herself. She’d dug a thousand holes in her life. She could dig this one, then go home.
She rubbed the shirt over her chest, feeling for the medallion she wore around her neck. It was the emblem of Santa Barbara, patron saint of geologists, miners, and ditch diggers, the image of a gently smiling woman with a chalice in one hand and sword and pickax in the other. Her mother had given it to her before she died, many years ago now. Most of her life, but Ana still remembered. So she wasn’t on her own. A part of Mama was with her.
The wild card had killed Mama—she was a latent, and it finally killed her when Roberto was born. Ana carried that part of Mama with her, in her power.
Please, Mama, get me through this.
The production company offered water, sodas, and sandwiches for lunch, and Ana forced herself to eat. They didn’t want anyone passing out before they had a chance to show off. That was what they called it, showing off. To Ana, it had always just been her job.
Some of the normal-looking people weren’t aces at all. They stood before the three judges, glaring dramatically, and nothing happened. Ana caught one of the exchanges.
The lead judge—at least the one who talked the most, the journalist, Digger Downs—asked the man, “What is it you do?”
“I can control your mind.” He grinned wildly.
Downs stared back. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. And you’re going to let me on the show. I’m going to be one of your contestants, and I’m going to win!”
“Right. Sure. Next, please!”
“Hey, wait—”
Security hustled him away before he could get in another word. The auditions continued. For every dozen duds or fakes, someone came along who left the audience gasping.
Early on, a woman who called herself Gardener—slim, black, and intense—trailed a handful of seeds on the ground, in front of the judges’ table. Instantly, they grew into trees, towering conifers that left the judges in their own little forest. Auditions halted for an hour while one of them, the strongman Harlem Hammer, uprooted them and cleared them away.
Later, a good-looking, dark-haired guy in his twenties stepped onto the field and flexed his fingers. Donning a cocky grin, he flung out his arms like he was throwing a ball, and a stream of glaring blue flames jetted from his hands and struck the frame of a gutted car. A layer of frost and icicles formed on the metal, even in the midday heat. Then he fired yellow flames at the pile of Gardener’s uprooted trees, which caught fire. Assistants were on hand to put out the flames with fire extinguishers. Finally, he faced the judges, hands raised, and he was on fire. His head and hands burned with writhing purple flames, and he was smiling, unharmed. He called himself the Candle.
This was exactly what Ana meant when she told Roberto there’d be flashy stuff here.
“Sixty-seven!” one of the production assistants called, checking her clipboard.
“Sixty-seven, Paul Blackwell!”
“Yes!” the guy in front of her exclaimed, then dashed for the field. He hadn’t been able to shut up about how cool his power was.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and Ana wondered if he was another one of those nats who claimed vast mental powers. Then, one of the judges—Topper, the former government ace—sneezed. And sneezed again. And couldn’t stop sneezing. Then the Harlem Hammer sneezed. Both of them were incapacitated, wracked with violent seizures of sneezing.
And Downs—he gripped the edge of the table, caught in some seizure of his own. He wasn’t sneezing, but his eyes rolled partway back in his head, and his body twitched, almost rhythmically. Oh my, Ana thought.
Inside Straight Page 5