Heroine Worship

by Sarah Kuhn

  I shook off the voice, willing it to shut up. That was the kind of voice Annie Chang would listen to. Not Aveda Jupiter.

  I was struck again by the realization that I would probably never be a true part of the team “family” Evie was so fond of talking about. But at least I could get them to see that I’d changed. I would just have to work harder to make them see it. That was my way, after all. That’s what I do.

  “If we could get back to the matter at hand,” Nate said. “Evie had just started to address the other side of the puzzling equation this incident presents.”

  “You mean that, beyond the Shruti of it all, she and our redhead Bridezilla nearly came to blows over a dress?” I said, relieved to be back on an apparently less controversial subject.

  “People do get all kinds of out-of-control over fashion,” Shruti said, toying with her braid. “Especially brides.”

  “The air in the tent did seemed charged,” I said. “Emotional. But that near-brawl was a special level of extreme crazy, was it not? And highly uncharacteristic of our Evie.”

  “Right,” Evie said. “As I was saying, I’m not really in the habit of using fire against non-powered humans. There was something disconnected about the anger I was feeling. I was sort of detached from it. And once it left . . .” She shook her head, as if trying to put her thoughts together. “It was totally gone. And I felt so confused.”

  “Which seems to match how Bridezilla felt,” I said.

  “Wait!” Bea, whipped around, hands gesticulating, and nearly dropped her marker. I was relieved to see that she seemed to have snapped out of her sulky state. Though her emotions were always extreme, she tended to bounce back quickly. Or maybe, as Evie was fond of hypothesizing, she just had a really short attention span. “This is making me think of something,” she continued. “Hold on a sec.”

  Bea trotted over to a towering, overstuffed shelf of books and papers in the corner—where she and Nate kept their various research—and pulled a massive folder free.

  “Okay,” she said, rifling through the folder as she crossed back to the white board. “So to preface what I’m about to info-dump on y’all, when we took a closer look at the scanner data from earlier, it didn’t tell us much. Except for one data point, which I may have just found a connection for.”

  Oh, right. The puppy demon excitement from earlier. In the madness of the bridal tent, I’d forgotten all about it.

  “Rose?” Bea said. “Want to share what we learned when we analyzed the scanner data?”

  “Well . . . sure,” Rose said, looking puzzled. “The data indicated our rogue puppy demon appeared in that area sometime in the last six months. The new data point Bea refers to is this: it seems this particular puppy demon never took corporeal form.”

  I frowned, my brain buzzing. “So it didn’t imprint on anything? It just stayed floating in the air in some kind of shapeless, invisible state? Has that happened before?”

  “Very rarely—at least as far as we can tell,” Rose said. “This type of reading has only shown up a handful of times on our scans over the years, and we’ve always followed up by monitoring the area where we detected an incorporeal puppy demon particularly closely after an attack. But usually the reading would disappear once we eradicated whatever demons were left over.”

  “So they literally disappeared into thin air,” Lucy murmured.

  “That’s always been our working theory,” Rose confirmed. “That they simply evaporated once we took care of their corporeal puppy brethren.”

  “It’s less of a theory and more of an unverifiable assumption,” Nate interjected. “These cases—as few of them as there were—have always been documented, but nothing happened after to indicate that the incorporeal puppy was still among us.”

  “Hence the assumption,” Rose agreed, giving Nate a nod. “We monitored these things as best we could, but these incidents were so few, well . . .” She shrugged. “We just don’t have much data, unfortunately.”

  “As you guys know, I’ve been studying all civilian-submitted reports Rose’s department has received over the years on demon appearances, trying to catalog them and put them in some kind of order,” Bea said, studying a crumpled piece of paper she’d pulled free from her folder. “Most of ’em are just cray-cray. People exaggerating what they saw or even making shit up entirely. Like, I don’t think this Roger guy actually witnessed a bunch of high heel puppy demons doing a choreographed routine to ‘Bad Romance’ at that drag bar on Turk, but—”

  “But—get to the point,” Evie said, with a slight smile.

  “But!” Bea said, stabbing an index finger in the air, “there are two instances of small groups of people sending in reports where—when they were on the scene of an attack—they suddenly felt super aggro. Just out of nowhere. They remembered feeling afraid of being eaten by demons, and then suddenly that turned on a dime and they felt pissed. And they couldn’t really say why. In both cases, they chalked it up to heightened emotions from being in the midst of an attack. Basically, they decided they got their feelings wires crossed. In their brains or whatever.”

  “And let me guess,” I said slowly. “Both of these attacks—”

  “Both of these attacks were also cases where Rose’s team picked up traces of incorporeal puppy demons!” Bea crowed, pulling another crumpled paper free from the folder. She waved it triumphantly in the air, then dumped the folder on the countertop and grabbed her marker.

  “So your theory is that these incorporeal puppy demons affect human brains?” Nate said.

  “Ding, ding, ding!” Bea sang out, scribbling a puppy with fangs and angry slashes for eyes over the Evie stick figure’s head. “Maybe when they fail to imprint like their puppy pals, they get mad and look for something else to latch on to.”

  “Hmm,” Lucy said. “That is most intriguing, but the puppy demon trace we found was at Pussy Queen, not the bridal tent. How did it get from one place to the next?”

  “Corporeal puppy demons have been known to travel,” Nate said. “They’re not bound to their portal location. Who’s to say the incorporeal version would be any different?”

  “Great,” I said, groaning. “So are we saying there’s an incorporeal puppy demon on the loose? A stray? Just floating around in the air?” Frustration welled in my chest. I prided myself on my ability to punch, kick, and/or telekinesis any kind of demon monster into submission. But something that was invisible and had no form for me to actually punch? I had no idea how to fight that. I brought my hand to my lips, then hastily lowered it. I bit my nails when I was stressed. Raggedy-ass fingernails would not be a good look for a maid of honor, especially one who was in the process of reclaiming her superheroine mojo.

  “What happened to the people who reported those ragey feelings?” I asked Bea. “Is it possible the puppy demon kept following them around?”

  “Apparently, they went back to normal,” Bea said, with a shrug. “Like Evie and Bridezilla. But there were a handful of people who reported these feelings at each attack and not all of them reported back in later. So it’s sort of impossible to know unless one of them also had a supernatural incident afterward.”

  “But it appears none of them did, correct?” Lucy said. “Or surely we would have heard about it.”

  “Maybe,” Bea said. “But like Rose said, there’s so little data. And we’re not sure if the scanners always picked the incorporeal puppies up. So there’s no way of tracking that.” She lifted her shoulders in a helpless sort of shrug.

  “In other words, this area of study on the puppy demons contains a lot of unsupported suppositions and half-theories,” Nate said, his brows drawing together. “Which I really do not like.”

  “All right,” I said, blowing out a long breath and resisting the urge to cram my nails in my mouth. “What we need is a plan that attempts to connect some of these dots. To make the half-theories full.” />
  “We could start with the scanners,” Lucy said, turning to Rose. “True, we have no way of knowing where the puppy went after the bridal tent, but maybe we could start with the surrounding area and go from there?”

  “I can organize my people,” Rose said, nodding. “Get them to canvas with the scanners.”

  “We should probably scan Pussy Queen again, too,” I said. “Just to be sure.”

  I looked over at Evie, expecting her to pick up the thread. Ever since she’d come into her own, she was usually the one to rally us, to bring us together and set us on the path of a plan. But she’d gone quiet during the last part of our discussion, and I noticed she looked a little pale. Something was obviously bothering her and I didn’t think it was the fact that she had almost forgotten to use a garment bag to transport her dress. I nudged her in the ribs.

  “We can set up a special inbox for people to send us tips about anything they might witness that’s out of the ordinary,” she said, snapping to attention. Her voice was faint. “Keep an eye out for it that way.”

  “Hello?” Bea said, waving her marker around. “We’re totes forgetting the most important part.”

  “Which is?” Nate prompted.

  “How do we catch this thing once we find it?” Bea said, drawing a little net over her cartoon puppy demon. “I mean, if we’re picking it up on the scanner, but we can’t see it, if it doesn’t have an actual form—”

  “Good point,” Evie murmured, going even more pale. Seriously, what was wrong with her?

  “Did the techies who developed the scanners ever come up with anything that might be useful in that regard?” Lucy asked Rose.

  Rose looked thoughtful. “We have these trap . . . things,” she said slowly. “The ones we used to contain the leftover corporeal puppy demons. If the portal was still open, we’d catch them and dump them back inside. If not, once they were in the trap for a while, they’d sort of disintegrate.”

  “Ooh!” Bea whirled back around, her eyes dancing. I felt that little wave of her emotions again, a brief rush of giddiness that was akin to a drip of morphine. “Maybe we can see about recalibrating them for the incorporeal puppies? Can I play with—I mean, work on one of the traps? I have some ideas based off the scanner tech that I—”

  “Yes, okay.” Rose smiled at her. “But only in a supervised environment.”

  “What about getting them into the trap?” I said. “Once again, we have the whole ‘they’re invisible and don’t have bodies’ problem.”

  “I might have an idea for that,” Scott said.

  I twisted to look at him, surprised. He’d been so silent this whole time, I’d forgotten he was there. He stared back at me with that strange, blank affect he seemed to have lately. Well, at least when it came to interacting with me.

  “I’ve been working on a spell I think I can modify—something that separates different supernatural elements present in the atmosphere,” he said slowly. “If I can adjust it just right—once the scanners sense the puppy presence, I might be able to find it, grab hold of it, and guide it.”

  “Guide it right into the trap!” Bea crowed.

  “Aw, look at all of us, using our different skills,” Lucy said, clapping her hands together. “It’s like we’re the X-Men. Only with less clones and intergenerational family drama.”

  I glanced over at Evie again, but even Lucy’s joke didn’t seem to be enough to draw her out of whatever funk she’d plunged into.

  “Let’s get to it, then,” I said.

  The room dissolved into random bits of conversation as we began to disperse. I moved closer to Evie.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong? You went all quiet.”

  “Huh? Oh.” She studied her hand, opening and closing it into a fist. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about . . . what I did back there. At the bridal tent. I’ve gotten so much better at controlling my power, it’s easy to forget . . .” She swallowed and closed her hand again, leaving the rest unsaid. But I knew what she was thinking.

  How destructive it is. How I could have hurt someone. Or worse.

  I laid a comforting hand on her arm. “You have gotten great at controlling it,” I said. “But it sounds like our friend the invisible puppy demon might have been controlling you.”

  “And we have no concrete way of finding it,” she said, her frustration spilling over. “So what’s to stop it from making me . . . from making any of us . . . ”

  “Don’t go down that path,” I said quickly, squeezing her arm. “We will find it. And we’ll take care of it.”

  Even as I said this, a tremor of uncertainty ran through me. We couldn’t see it, and that meant I couldn’t punch it. And that was a problem. But I couldn’t let Evie sense my worry. Especially not with her big day coming up. A stressed-out bride would definitely not make for a perfect wedding, one of the crucial end points to my maid-of-honor mission.

  I schooled my features into what I hoped was a soothing look. It was a mirror of the one she’d been prone to giving me when she was my personal assistant and I was in a good diva rage about something.

  “Why don’t you go lie down?” I said. “Get some rest. Or get Nate to lie down with you. And don’t get some rest.”

  She managed a little giggle. “Okay. Thank you.” Her giggle sounded forced, but she gave me a small smile and squeezed my arm before wandering off.

  It was enough to make me feel a small surge of triumph. Enough to make me feel like I’d come back from the dress faux pas. Enough to make me feel like I was on enough of a mojo-reclaiming roll to take on the last obstacle in the room.

  I marched over to Scott and tapped him on the shoulder. He was standing next to a small desk he’d set up in the corner of Nate’s lab, to work on spells and other bits of magical research. And he appeared to be rearranging a stack of papers that looked like forms. Hmm. Forms for what? Was he getting into Nate’s whole spreadsheet thing?

  He turned and gave me yet another blank look. “Yes?”

  “We have to plan that engagement party,” I said, making it a command rather than a request.

  “Okay.” Still blank. Still detached. Still acting like I was some kind of nobody—a pesky, inconsequential gnat that could be easily swatted away.

  Well, you know what? Aveda Jupiter was no fucking gnat.

  He made a move like he was about to walk away. I stepped in front of him and put my hands on my hips.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Stop what?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “You know what!” I yelped, dismayed to hear that rising note of frustration in my voice.

  No. Nope. I was in charge, here: Aveda Jupiter. Get out of here, Annie Chang. I threaded that steel back into my voice. “You’ve been acting like a freaking robot toward me for months! Ever since—”

  Ever since you held my hand that night when everyone else was asleep. Ever since you told me everything was going to be okay. Ever since I thought you might take it further than that and—

  I brushed the thought away. This was not about getting soft and mushy over him again. This was about working together on the wedding. For Evie. “—ever since . . . a long time,” I finished, holding my head high. “I know you were mad at me for being a bad friend to Evie. But you and I were also actual friends at some point. And I thought we’d been making progress recently as far as getting back to that. Weren’t we?” I tried to make that last bit sound like a stern “so straighten up” directive rather than a pathetic plea.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure of the correct answer. His face remained maddeningly blank. I stifled my inner scream.

  “Then why are you acting like this?” I growled.

  He stared back at me, silent. And I couldn’t squelch my frustration anymore. I was doing everything right. I was being a good friend, I was working efficiently on
all of my missions, and I was reclaiming my mojo. I was being as honest as I possibly could be with him and he couldn’t even give me the courtesy of a slightly varied facial expression?

  I was suddenly transported back to one of the many days we’d all been sitting together in the junior high cafeteria: me, him, Evie. I was working diligently on my sixth grade presidential campaign while the two of them goofed around. The campaign had been incredibly important to me. Not only would a win secure me a modicum of power in all of the important student decisions affecting our school, but it would also show my parents that I was way better than Cousin Sophie, who’d only managed class secretary. I figured Scott and Evie knew I was working, so they’d keep talking amongst themselves and leave me alone. But Scott could never seem to rest until he’d annoyed me to the point of yelling at him. That day, he’d discovered a new trick wherein he stuffed as many grapes in his mouth as possible and talked through them, rendering his voice cartoonishly marble-mouthed. He kept trying to talk to me, kept leaning in closer and closer with his dumb mouth stuffed full of grapes, until finally, he spit out a little of the juice. Right on the pristine mock-up of my campaign flyer. I’d felt my simmering irritation finally boil over. But I didn’t yell at him.

  Instead I impulsively did the same thing I did now. I reached over and flicked his arm.

  “Ow!” he yelped, just as loudly as he had back in sixth grade. “Did you just flick me?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged, trying to look superior. I couldn’t believe he had reduced me to something so childish, but I would still own it. He stared at me in disbelief and shook his head. He shook his head for a long time, as if trying to shake something loose. And slowly, the disbelief turned into something I hadn’t seen forever from him: an actual smile.

  “You flicked me,” he said, as if this was the punchline to a joke I didn’t know. “Just like in sixth grade.”

  “Well, did it snap you out of it?”