by A. J. Menden
Before I could admit to knowing about it and the fact that he might have to die again, Mayhew walked back in. “Pardon the interruption, sir, but Doctor Rath called for you. And he said to tell Miss Lainey that the movers will be here at eleven.”
I checked the clock. This didn’t give me a long time to pack. “Thanks, Mayhew.”
“Just tell him she doesn’t need them anymore and that’ll I phone later.”
I stared at him, shocked at his assurance that I was going nowhere. I had been afraid this would happen, and cowardly me, I hadn’t wanted to bring it up yet. This time I had been the selfish one, stealing a moment and not thinking about the fallout.
“Wait, I still need them,” I said.
Wesley’s attention snapped back to me. “Why?”
“I’m still going to the EHJ,” I said, knowing this was going to turn bad.
Mayhew must not have wanted to witness the fight, because he left.
“Why are you still going?” Wesley looked hurt. “You were just running from me, and it’s obvious we’re getting along now.”
“First of all, don’t assume I was leaving just because we had a fight. And don’t go bringing up last night in a snide way.”
He sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I have…”
“No tact, I know.” I looked down at the table. “Wes, I’ve been working toward joining the Elite Hands of Justice since I was a kid. It’s been my life’s dream. You know that. For God’s sake, you’re the one training me; it didn’t occur to you that someday I’d leave?”
He looked guilty. “I just assumed you’d change your mind.”
“As much as I love you, you can’t expect me to just walk away from everything I’ve worked for just to be the Reincarnist’s girlfriend. I’m sorry, but you can’t.” I felt tears spring to my eyes and wiped them away. “I wanted to be a hero, not hook up with some rich guy who’d take care of me.”
“What are we doing now? Regardless of romantic involvement, you’re my partner. We can still work together.”
“Okay, so I’d be the Reincarnist’s girlfriend and sidekick,” I amended. “I know the luster of the EHJ is gone for you, but it is a big deal to be asked to join. It’s what everyone in our set works toward.”
“They’re nothing but celebrity poseurs! I know you, Lainey, you’ll be miserable.”
“Then that’s something I need to learn for myself.” I sighed. “But don’t ask me to give it up for you. And that’s not the only reason I’m leaving, anyway. I know about the prophecy, Wes.”
He frowned. “Exactly what do you think you know?”
“I saw it while you were out on the astral plane. There was something about the dark soul and pure soul and then a Darklight that would end the world. We can’t stay together if we could somehow bring about the apocalypse. Hell, we may already have!”
“Lainey—”
“I can’t believe that you would want me to stay while knowing that.”
“Lainey—”
“I’m surprised Rath didn’t move me back sooner, since he knew about it too.”
“You don’t—”
“And it’s not like I never want to see you again, especially not now, but we just need space until the apocalypse is settled. After that, if we really love each other, we can find a way to work this out. Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I would if I could get a word in!” He took me by the shoulders. “Lainey, first of all, I haven’t finished translating that prophecy yet, so I don’t know if we have anything to do with bringing the Darklight or not. Remember, the Dragon is still the caster and still involved in some way; he may have to summon the Darklight, not us. We may fight it, I really don’t know. And second, the prophecy says the Darklight will either lead the world into darkness or save it. So even if we help this thing or somehow summon it, it may be for the good. I’m trying to find a way to prevent things from even getting that far.”
I remembered the bit about sacrifice. “Oh.”
“You should have said something earlier, love,” he complained, giving me a hug. “I could have explained.”
“Well, you should have told me about it since I’m part of the equation,” I countered.
“True.” He kissed me and I forgave him, but it still illustrated that he thought of me more as a sidekick than a partner.
“Don’t let the Dragon factor into your decision to go,” he said.
“It’s still important, and you don’t need me around as a distraction, Wes—and let’s face it, that’s what I would be now.” I saw the way he was looking at me, like he wanted to take me back upstairs again. “And I really do want to try the EHJ. Maybe I’ll hate it, but I owe it to myself to try.”
“You’d be a great distraction,” he said, and then sighed. “And you’re right, I can’t ask you to give up everything for me. That’s not fair. Alright, so a little space, and after this Dragon mess is settled, we’ll try to work something out.”
“You know, your son runs the EHJ, for God’s sake, you can make time for a visit. Maybe you’ll decide you want to come back to work there,” I hinted.
“And hell could freeze over.”
I smacked him. “Sarcasm will not win you points.”
“I just know how things work in the EHJ.”
“Stop sounding like a superior old man.”
“I am a superior old man.” His mouth twitched in humor. “I’ll start working on the I-told-you-so dance for when you decide you hate it there and miss me too much.” He was messing with me now, trying to tease me so I wouldn’t fall apart. I appreciated it.
“Well, when I’m making the world a better place and you get lonely, I’ll expect you to drag your antisocial butt in to change your member status back to active for good,” I said with a bittersweet smile.
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Yes, we will.”
He sobered. “I’m going to miss you, Lainey. And I’m not going to let this be the end.”
My heart warmed. “Good. And I’ll miss you, too. But you get so into your work, you won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“Trust me, I’ll notice.” He slid a hand around my waist. “Now I’ll have a whole new set of explicit memories to dream about.”
I smiled at him. “I’ll dream of you, too.”
“Keep sending those kinds of dreams and I’ll be rejoining the EHJ sooner than you think.”
“And then I’ll do the I-told-you-so dance.” I kissed him lingeringly, knowing that would be all for a while. But this wasn’t the end; it was just a pause, if he wanted it to work as much as I did.
I could only pray he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I entered the EHJ headquarters with a bit of trepidation. I had been there before, of course, but never with a platinum access card in my hand. I got in the elevator, swiped my card across the scanner, and the penthouse level lit up.
“Welcome, Phenomenal Girl Five,” the elevator said in its electronic voice.
“Thanks.” I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. I was excited to start the job I had been working toward forever, but also sad. I didn’t know how or if things would work out with Wesley. He had quit the team, and I had joined it. He had his own life at the mansion, and now I was a good distance away from it.
Don’t become that girl, I told myself, the one who gives up on moving away to a different town or a better job because of a guy. If we really love each other, our relationship can survive some distance.
The doors pinged open and I was in the largest, most posh penthouse I had ever seen. Everything from the hardwood floors covered with expensive rugs to the priceless works of art on the walls screamed wealth. And in between all that, every technological toy known to man and alien was stuffed in the rooms.
As I stood there gaping, a six-foot-tall woman with long black hair who was more glamorous than a movie star glided up. Aphrodite—she didn’t need her powers of enthrallment to snare people�
�s attention.
“Hello, Lainey.” She held out a manicured hand. “I’m Kate Hughes, we met at your preliminary interview. Welcome to the Elite Hands of Justice.”
“It’s great to be here.”
“You have your card, of course, and Mindy has entered your codes into our mainframe. Any personal guests have to be cleared by a senior member before security will allow them up. Se nior members are, of course, myself, the Magnificent, White Heat, and Doctor Rath.”
“Alright.” Who was I going to invite here? It’s not like I had a lot of friends, except Wes, who had only founded the team. I’d think they’d let him in.
“If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you around.”
She led me through various rooms—living area, kitchen, dining room, training room, and lab—one after the other in a whirlwind tour.
“Where is everyone?” I asked as we left the lab, a huge state-of-the-art facility. How in the world did all of this fit on one floor?
“All in the meeting room. I’m supposed to take you there next. This way.”
She opened a set of double doors that led to a chamber that looked like a cross between a boardroom and the headquarters of NASA. Monitors lined one wall, tuned to various news stations and what looked like security cameras. A large glass table occupied the other side, and sitting around it, looking bored, were the rest of the members of the Elite Hands of Justice. All turned to stare at me.
Feeling very self-conscious, I brushed some hair out of my face and stammered, “H-hello.”
Six pairs of eyes stared back at me.
“Everyone, this is our newest member, Phenomenal Girl Five, Lainey Livingston,” Kate said, going to an available chair, leaving me to stand in front of everyone by myself.
Doctor Rath, sitting at one end of the table, tapped on a small clear keyboard in front of him and a hologram of the building popped up. “Maintenance is bringing your things up to your quarters,” he said. “Room G.”
“Yes, sir.” I didn’t even know where the quarters were; we seemed to have skipped that on the tour.
“Did everything go alright with the Reincarnist?”
Well, that was one way of putting it. I nodded. “Just fine, sir.”
“So what’s the new one like?” asked a woman about my age, with short black hair streaked with magenta, looking up from the bit of machinery she was tinkering with. I recognized her as Mindy Clark, a.k.a. Tekgrrl, who had a way with machinery and could invent almost anything that came to mind. I guess that’s one bonus to being experimented on by aliens. “He as much of a stick-in-the-mud as the last one?”
“He’s nice,” I said. Did I just call Wes nice? Not that he wasn’t, but could you use nice as a descriptor for someone you’d been intimate with?
“Hardly how I’d describe the last one,” Simon spoke up. “I’ll bet you’re glad to escape from your sentence early, Lainey.”
“No. I’m happy to have this opportunity, but I enjoyed working with him,” I replied, trying hard to avoid looking at Rath. It sounded like I was talking about an old boss instead of my lover.
Oh, God, I am talking about an old boss! What kind of person sleeps with her boss—and then leaves him?
“You don’t have to be so polite on our account,” Mindy said. “Well all know how he was. You can say what you really mean.”
God, let’s not. “I meant it. I liked working with him.”
“Ugh, why?”
“I did as well,” said a well-defined man with warm, latte-brown skin and a calm manner. It was Luke Harmon, also known as Sensei, a martial artist with a photographic memory and insanely quick reflexes.
Mindy shot him a quick look. “He was okay, I guess, Luke, but he was just so rigid. The new one’s at least kinda cute—in a stuffy sort of way.”
“Robert had a certain appeal,” Kate said with a secretive smile. “And he wasn’t always so rigid…”
I stared at her. No freaking way did she mean that like I thought.
Mindy rolled her eyes. “Please. If it’s male and a hero, you’ve been there, done that.”
“Jealous? I’m the goddess of love, I can’t help it if men are drawn to me.”
“Goddess of whoredom maybe.”
“Ladies—and I’m being generous with the term—we do not need to discuss this,” Rath said.
“Yeah, I don’t want to hear about how bad the Reincarnist is in bed,” Simon said.
“He wasn’t.” Kate smiled again. “Academic types can be very fun.”
I’m sure I turned pale. Rath shot me a look, as if waiting for me to leap across the table and attack. Was he psychic?
“Kate, I don’t want to hear about your escapades before me!” said a man with close-cropped brown hair and a serious expression, distracting me from my violent intentions. He was one of the se nior members, Paul Christian, a.k.a. White Heat. I hadn’t known they were together, and I couldn’t picture an eternally young goddess with a stuffy, forty-something scientist who’d given himself heat-molecule-manipulation powers through illegal experimentation.
But I couldn’t picture her with Robert, either.
Rather, I didn’t want to.
It was before me, I reminded myself. Can’t get mad about that.
Honestly, if he had a thing for tall, gorgeous stick figures with black hair, how in God’s name did he end up with me?
“And I don’t want to hear about it, either,” Rath said. “Remember who you’re talking about, Kate.”
“Sorry, Ben.” She winked at Paul. “You’ve nothing to worry about, baby.”
“And Lainey doesn’t want to hear about it, either,” Rath said. “A little decorum in front of the new member please, children.”
Aphrodite swiveled her chair to face me. “She’s an experienced adult, Ben. I don’t think I’ll embarrass her.” She frowned and then studied me. “Unless you mean…” Her eyes widened. “You and he were involved!”
Gasps went up around the table and everyone stared at me again. I felt like I was standing in a spotlight with the words OFFICE WHORE tattooed on my head.
“I didn’t mean it like that!” Rath said, giving me an apologetic look.
“Don’t try to hide it now, Ben, I am the goddess of love after all. I know when love has blossomed.”
Simon looked horrified. “No freaking way!”
Mindy put a hand on her chin, intrigued. “I hope you mean with the new hottie version.”
Kate looked me over again. “Not just the new one.”
Mindy gasped. “Robert was old!”
“Not that old,” Paul spoke up. “He was my age, for God’s sake!”
“Good for him,” Luke said.
“Will y’all just leave her alone!” the blond-haired man that had been silent the whole time spoke up in a soft Southern accent. “Way to make a good first impression. Kate goes and blabs about her love life, which is not your business, and happens to mention her own history with the same guy. You sound like a bunch of gossipy teenage girls instead of members of the best hero team in the world.”
Rath sighed. “Leave it to Toby to be the voice of reason amongst the chaos.”
I recognized my savior: the Magnificent, Toby Latimer. He was, for lack of a better term, an enhanced human. He was stronger, faster, and could take more hits than an average-powered person. He could also jump large distances and control his rate of descent, almost—but not quite—like flying. He was a se nior member, and though he was in his forties, he barely looked thirty, since he didn’t age as fast as most people.
He smiled at me. “I apologize for the behavior of our teammates, Lainey. Sometimes when they get out of hand, you just have to smack them back down again. And she about rivals me strength-wise, people, so I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”
Everyone murmured apologies and looked chastised.
I squared my shoulders. I wasn’t the same slightly chubby, picked-on outsider that I used to be. I was here, and I was going to be strong. “Sorr
y to ruin your Page Twelve gossip, but that’s all in the past, because I’m here to work now.” Okay, so not that much in the past. Like a few hours ago past.
“And I do not want to hear this mentioned again. I cannot stress that enough,” Rath said. “Do any of you want to hear about your parents’ love lives?” Everyone looked sickened. “Exactly. Now you know how I felt during that entire conversation. And Kate, other people’s love lives are their business and not yours. Unless we need to know who a villain is spending his evenings with, I don’t want to hear you mentioning it again, do you understand?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Toby stood up. “I think I’ll escort Miss Lainey to her room now and help her get settled in.” He walked over. “Right this way, ma’am.”
When the door shut behind us, I turned to him. “Thanks. I needed a way out.”
He nodded. “I figured. They can be a bit much. This way to the quarters.” He led me down a long hallway with a bunch of doors. “It wasn’t so much about you as him. The Reincarnist is the subject of many a dispute around here. You either love him, or hate him and want his name erased from the roster forever.” He stopped in front of a door. “G. Here it is.” He opened the door to a small but nice room, already filled with my possessions and expensive furnishings. Man, super-movers were fast—but I should have remembered that from going to the Reincarnist’s.
“We each have our own bathroom,” Toby said, motioning to a door near the closet.
“So where do you fall?”
“Huh?”
“In the Reincarnist like/dislike debate.”
“Oh. Rath, Luke, and I all like him. Kate, Paul, and Simon don’t. Mindy’s wishy-washy. Of course, Rath and I are prejudiced anyway, being kin.”
I stared at him. “You’re his son, too?”
He laughed. “Not that close. The Reincarnist is my great-great-great-grandfather. That’s why my family’s so long-lived. We don’t come back like him, but we stick around longer than most and don’t age near as fast.” He sat down on my bed. “I’m normally not a gossip, but since they decided to blab about you, I thought I’d fill you in on the multiple love triangles goin’ on here. It’s probably for your own safety.”