“I’m sorry I pretended to kill you.”
He snorted. “You should be apologizing to the people whose minds you manipulated.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she traced a pattern on the empty Coke can she hadn’t realized she was still holding. She couldn’t tell him she didn’t feel sorry for what she did to them. He wouldn’t understand that they weren’t real to her. That no one felt real to her anymore except him. And perhaps Lucien. Yet another opinion she couldn’t place. Was it hers? Or Kevin’s? In the past, had she been careful with the minds of strangers or careless with them? How could she not even know that simple fact about her own nature?
“Mirage?”
“I didn’t hurt them. I didn’t actually do anything.”
“Psychological trauma doesn’t count in your book?”
She twitched one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Some people like it.”
“Being traumatized?” he asked incredulously.
“No, the illusion of pain or fear. They say, if it doesn’t last long, the relief when the illusion is released can be almost sexual. There have been studies. Your body doesn’t experience any physical effects, if the illusion isn’t sustained for more than sixty seconds. And the chemicals released in your brain when you realize it wasn’t pain, but only the perception of it, create an insane high. Some people will pay Benders to do it to them.”
Justice actually blushed. “Have you ever…?”
“Whored out my ability to mind-fuck people? No. Not unless you count Kevin.”
“He paid you?”
“No, but he was sort of my Mind Bender pimp for a while there. I would do anything he asked of me. Anything. Until I exploded like a cherry bomb inside his brain.”
“Are you sorry about that? Destroying Kevin’s mind?”
“No.” Not sorry. Terrified. She hadn’t done it on purpose. She’d been glad it had happened, wanted to rip him to pieces without mercy, would have drawn and quartered him with her bare hands if she’d had Lucien’s physical strength, but she hadn’t consciously done it. And that scared the shit out of her. Because what was to say she wouldn’t do it again? To someone who deserved it less?
“But it’s wrong.”
She almost laughed. He was so very Captain Justice in that moment. Right, wrong. Justice, injustice. Guilt, innocence. He’d said truth wasn’t black and white, but apparently his morality was. Hers was more…flexible.
What made a man like him? What turned a boy into a hero? “I’ll bet you had a perfect childhood. Probably made the Cleavers look scandalous.”
“Actually, my parents weren’t around much.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “Always another crime to fight. They didn’t want me in school—too easy for a villain to kidnap me to use against them. I had nannies and tutors, but they were so in awe of my parents, and by extension me, that I never really felt close to any of them.”
She was struck again by how keen his isolation must be. How much he’d been alone—and now she couldn’t even write that feeling off by saying he had Kim now. Her chest ached and she wanted to throw her arms around him, promise he would never have to be alone if he didn’t want to…
But beside her, he was frowning. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
The words were all the reminder she needed that they weren’t friends. She didn’t have the right to his confidences. Though she wanted to.
“It’s because I’m so trustworthy,” she said dryly and Julian snorted. “I’m sorry I threw you. Or whatever happened earlier.” She waved across the room at the dent he’d left in the wall, with Lucien’s help. “I know my brain or something in there rejected you—pretty forcefully—but I do feel clearer with you. Like when I’m with you, I’m closer to myself. I remember...”
She looked at him then and forgot what she was going to say. Forgot how to form words entirely. His face was so close. His eyes—had she thought they were blue? Wrong. So wrong. There was grey in them. And green. Even tiny little spikes of gold. They were so much more than blue.
And the way those eyes looked at her. He was the first one who hadn’t looked at her like she was nuts in months. He saw her. Not the illusion of her. Never that. And God, did she ever like that. She’d never realized how invisible she felt before, how much her gift and her lack of sanity had washed away her visible self, until Julian saw her.
She tried to breathe, tried to think, but all she wanted to do was lean. Lean into him for a kiss, lean on his strong, firm shoulder and find comfort there, just give up her need to keep herself straight and fall.
But the last time she’d fallen, there hadn’t been anyone there to catch her and she’d shattered. She still couldn’t find all her pieces.
His gaze shifted to her lips and he shifted toward her. Just that movement—barely an inch—made fear crash hard through her system and she jerked back, haunted by old mistakes.
The connection broken, Julian snapped to attention, looking straight ahead. “I should go.” He surged to his feet, moving quickly for the door.
“Julian!” He was leaving? No. For a moment that intense wanting was swallowed up by the panic of her need. Would her mind just buckle when he left? Melt into confusion again? She scrambled up, one hand braced on the wall. “Please, I… There are still so many pieces of myself I can’t put together. I know I don’t have any right to ask, but will you try again? Please?”
He stopped at the door, his face hard, unsmiling, and utterly gorgeous. “Get some rest. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. She could make it to tomorrow. She hoped.
Chapter Eight: The Great Escape
He’d almost kissed her. Somehow he didn’t think that was what Lucien had in mind when he entrusted his baby sister to Julian. The last thing he needed was DemonSpawn Wroth out for his blood. But damn, he’d wanted to kiss her.
Bad idea. Terrible idea. He’d been broken up with Kim what, a week? Mirage deserved better than to be the rebound girl. Emphasis on girl. God, she was young. Vulnerable. Trusting him to help her. He could not take advantage of that trust.
Trust. Was that why his attempt to push her thoughts onto an honest path had failed? Usually it didn’t matter if his subjects trusted him—on the rare occasions he used the more forceful side of his gift, it just took concentration. But Mirage’s gift was almost the flip side of his own—illusions and truth. Did she have to trust him, to let him in, before he could help her? And if that was the case, how did one earn the trust of a recovering villainess?
Somehow he doubted kissing her was part of the process.
Julian strode down the hallway, moving quickly toward the parking lot. He had no warning when Lucien burst around the corner, moving faster than humanly possible, and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him back toward the conference room. “Come on. We have to get her out of here.”
He immediately shifted into crisis mode, his mind sharp and clear, his body tensed and ready. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“The cops are here. The Nightwings are pressing charges. Apparently they have footage of Mirabelle breaking into one of their manufacturing plants two days ago.”
“She was caught on camera?” he asked, chasing Lucien down the hall. The super had slowed to a regular human speed, but Julian still had to work to keep up.
“She doesn’t physically disappear when we can’t see her. A camera will still catch her—if it’s running. Usually she links up with whoever controls the cameras and bends them until they shut the cameras off before she goes in, but after she broke into another Nightwing facility a few months back when Kevin was controlling her, they updated all their security cameras with a failsafe. Any time a manual controller shuts down the video feeds, an emergency back-up camera automatically fires up. That’s what caught her this time.”
“They told you about their security countermeasures?”
“Tandy Nightwing is one of Darla’s best friends. She tipped us off that Mirabelle had been caught on f
ilm breaking in, we just didn’t realize her parents were going to press charges.”
“If she broke in there before, maybe she’s just retracing her steps. Echoing old commands rather than carrying out implanted ones.” Julian didn’t know if that was better or worse, since her previous commands had nearly destroyed the city, but at least they would know what they were dealing with then. “Is she revisiting other sites?”
“We don’t know all of what she did while she was with Kevin, but we are certain she’d been in that bank vault before. That’s what she was arrested for the first time.” Then Lucien pushed through the door into the conference room where Mirage still huddled in the corner, and all speculation on her motives was brushed aside to make room for immediate action. “Belle, Code Red,” he barked, and Mirage surged to her feet, almost running to the door.
“How much time do we have?” she asked, all business as the siblings nearly plowed over Julian when he was too slow to move out of the doorway.
It was more than a little disturbing that their family had so much experience running out the back door as the cops were coming in the front that they had a goddamn code for it. Christ, what had he gotten himself into? He was Captain Justice, not Captain Jailbreak. He didn’t help people evade the law, he enforced it. So why was he running with two known criminals rather than chasing after them? And why did it feel so damn right to help Mirage escape? Aiding and abetting. Dear God.
“Darla’s stalling them, but that won’t last. We have fifteen minutes head start, if that.”
They burst into Mirage’s room and, quicker than thought, Lucien snatched a packed duffle from under her bed and tossed it at his sister. She caught it and slung it over her shoulder without hesitation. Lucien nodded once, satisfied, and started back toward the door, but Julian held out a hand, blocking the way. They needed to slow things down. Think. Plan. “Where are you taking her?”
“My place will be the first place they’ll look. We’ll go to Darla’s until she can meet us there and fly us somewhere safe.”
“And if they find you before Darla gets back? Or if they track her flight?”
“We’ll come up with Plan B.”
“And if Mirage has another break and vanishes on you? What then? How can you be sure you’ll be the one to find her again? She could be in Area Nine before you even know she’s gone.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Lucien snapped, squaring off aggressively.
It was Mirage who answered. “Maybe we should let them arrest me.”
Both men spun to stare at her. “You can’t be serious.” That from Lucien, though the words might as well have been pulled from Julian’s thoughts.
“Maybe Area Nine is the best place for me. At least there we know I won’t do anything else to bring about some unspecified apocalypse.”
“Hell fucking no,” Lucien snarled. “You are not going back there. There are no appeals for people held in Area Nine, Belle. Once you’re in, you’re in for good. I can’t be sure I would be able to break you out again. If they’ve upgraded their security…”
“I hate to say it, but your brother is right,” Julian agreed reluctantly. “You need help to figure this out—and yeah, some bars to keep you contained while we do that wouldn’t hurt, but no one has ever been released from Area Nine. We can’t risk sending you there.” But she couldn’t go with Lucien. Her brother was too easily tricked by her illusions. That left… “I’ll take you. I know a safe house we can use.” When Lucien started to protest, Julian tugged his gaze away from Mirage’s wide eyes and met the force of her brother’s without flinching. “I’ll keep her safe. We both know you can’t contain her, but I can. And I think I can help her get back under control.”
“That wasn’t how it looked when she was tossing you across the room with her mind.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. Wroth, we both know I’m the only one she can’t escape from. This is our only play.”
Lucien’s black expression hardened. “What do you need?”
Julian blinked, a bit startled by the sudden capitulation. He was used to dealing with heroes who dithered and wrangled to the bitter end in power plays and politics. It was oddly refreshing to deal with the snap decisions of the villain class. “Can you get me her complete file? Everything you know about her activities in the last year?”
Lucien nodded sharply. “I’ll meet you at the east side door in three minutes.” He was gone almost before the last word hit Julian’s ears, his superspeed leaving a breeze in the room.
Julian turned to Mirage. “Ready?”
“You don’t have to—”
“You can question my sudden lack of legal obedience later. I certainly plan to. But right now we have to get you the hell out of here or we lose all options that don’t end in Area Nine.”
“Okay,” she agreed, but her eyes still held doubts. He couldn’t blame her. He had doubts of his own. Foremost among them the concern that he was about to take the first step toward losing his place as the Defender of Justice. But, like he’d told her, he could worry about the ethics later. Right now, they didn’t have time for morality debates.
“I need you to turn off the cameras and cloak us.”
Mirage’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. “You want me to pull an illusion on purpose?”
Her shock struck him and Julian realized he must be the first person to ask her to use her powers, rather than suppress them, in months. All these weeks, everyone trying to help her, trying to heal her, and they’d been doing everything they could to contain her, shove her abilities in a box. Her power capacity had been growing and she’d had no outlet for it. No wonder the dam kept bursting and she went into frenzies of uncontrolled use. They’d practically forced her to it.
“Can you do it?” It was possible she didn’t have the focus for the controlled use of her powers when she wasn’t under compulsion. In which case, they were pretty much fucked.
But Mirage’s shock cleared and she smiled—a fierce, feral, wickedly joyful smile. “Oh yeah. I can do it all right.”
He felt it, the moment she let her powers off the leash. Nothing changed to his eyes, but the hairs on his arms lifted as that invisible wave of psychic energy rolled past him.
“Cameras down.” Her words were sharp, precise and businesslike. There was a minute pause, then, “And we don’t exist. How does it feel to be invisible, Justice?”
It felt exactly the same, but then, she wasn’t bending him. Just everyone else in range. She couldn’t bend him.
At least, in theory, she couldn’t. Though that brush of power had been huge, a behemoth of energy. He had to wonder, if she put her mind to it, if she could roll him. She was a tiny package, but damn did she ever pack a wallop. “Let’s go.”
She flashed that fierce, feral grin and grabbed the hand he held out to her, her grip firm and confident. She felt alive when she was using her powers. He knew that feeling. Knew how good it could feel to stretch that particular muscle, to push your own limits. Mirabelle had been denied that for months—at least denied it when she was in her own mind. No wonder her psyche had stayed broken—it was the only way her powers could be whole.
They ran down the corridors, Mirage navigating them through the maze of halls toward the east door. When the door came into view at the end of a long hall, they saw Lucien already standing there, rocking on the balls of his feet, with a thick manila folder in one hand and a chunky black phone in the other.
“Took you long enough,” Lucien growled, slapping the file into Julian’s hand. “Eisenmann is distracting the cops as long as he can, but they’re already in the building. The doc said to give you this.” He held up the ugly blob of a phone. “It’s a prototype they’ve been working on. Should be untraceable, but if the line you’re calling is unsecured, someone might be able to listen in so be careful what you say. Eisenmann’s numbers were already in there and I programmed mine in while I was waiting for you. Anyone monitoring our phones will be listening for
Mirabelle’s name, so when you call, she’s Kim, okay?”
Julian nodded, took the phone and turned, unzipping the duffle still on Mirage’s shoulder and stuffing the file and the phone on top of the clothes and weapons he saw inside before zipping it shut again.
He lifted the duffle off her shoulder, hooking it over his own—it was almost as big as she was and he didn’t have superstrength for nothing—but he couldn’t miss the hungry look she shot at the zipper that concealed her file. She wanted to know where she’d been, what she’d done. And who could blame her?
Maybe he could use her to solve her own problems. They’d been keeping things from her—that much he was sure of—but maybe it was time to be honest with Mirage. Stop protecting her and let her face her own demons. Eisenmann had tried the techniques that worked with other Mind Bender victims, but now it was time for the Justice method, and that meant honesty. With that file, he could give her all the information they’d managed to gather about where she went and what she did when she had her blackouts. Maybe if she could see it, it would trigger something. Maybe she would be able to fill in the blanks.
It was time they stopped treating her like a criminal they were gathering evidence against or an invalid too fragile to be exposed to her own actions. It was time to trust her to be able to handle the truth. Trust to earn her trust. So she would let him in. Let him help her. They were a team now. For better or worse.
He caught her hand, giving it a quick squeeze, and nodded to Lucien. “We’ll be in touch when we can. Don’t worry. I’ll guard her with my life.”
Lucien nodded, clasped him on the shoulder briefly, then wrapped his arms quickly around his sister, whispering something hurried and low in her ear before releasing her and stepping back. He opened the door and Julian and Mirage stepped past him into the night.
And disappeared.
Chapter Nine: Safe and Of Sound Mind
Mirage hadn’t expected much of Julian’s safe house—which was good, because it wasn’t much. Oh, it wasn’t a hovel, but it was empty, unlived-in, expressionless, and mildly depressing because of its oppressively sterile, blank-slate lack of décor. The apartment filled the second floor above an unused storefront on a street that looked like it had seen better days. The place itself was nothing special—a box of space chopped up into rooms. Galley kitchen, dining-slash-living room, and two small bedrooms with a Jack-and-Jill bath wedged between. Home sweet home.
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