Heroine Worship

by Sarah Kuhn

  “Get behind me,” she growled.

  “What?” I glared at her. “I will not.”

  “They’re after you, they won’t hurt me. So get behind me, dammit.” An amused grin broke through her ferocious expression. “Just this once.”

  She had a point. I stepped behind her, but kept my fists up and my mind ready, determined to help her in any way I could.

  “We’re here to save you, bridal queen!” Carol shrieked. “We are sorry we allowed your deceitful maid of honor to kidnap you in this fashion!”

  “We should have anticipated her treachery after all she has done!” Gwen chimed in. “Stealing the offering we left for you was the last straw!”

  “I’m not kidnapping her, and I haven’t stolen anything,” I blurted out, exasperated.

  “The offering!” Redhead squawked. “The gown in the window of the loathsome gentrifier was meant to attract our queen! Not you!”

  “Enough!” Evie bellowed, raising her fists. “And you all need to calm the fuck down.”

  And with that, she opened her hands and released a stream of fireballs into the air. They whizzed by the Bridezillas, plunking ineffectually into the fountain behind them. The Bridezillas snarled, their eyes glowing in that way that was definitely not natural. I shuddered.

  “Shit,” Evie muttered.

  “Let me help,” I said, stepping out from behind her. “Shoot your fireballs.”

  She opened her hands again and let them fly like tiny, flaming missiles: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I reached out with my mental feathers and caught them, carefully arranging them into a literal ring of fire. The Bridezillas stopped glaring and hissing at us and stared at the circle of flames in the sky. It hung above them for a moment: a fierce, glorious creation, as if a dragon had let out the full force of its monstrous breath over the city. Then I pulled on my mental feathers and slammed the ring of fire down with all my might. And they were trapped.

  “Gaaaaaaah!” I heard Gwen scream. The ring of fire was so high, we couldn’t see any of them. “We have been tricked by the enemy of our bridal queen!”

  “Do not fear, Evelyn Tanaka!” Carol howled. “We will take down your enemy and we will save you!”

  “Yeesh.” Evie shuddered. “I think I’m good.” She squeezed my shoulder. “A-plus team work. That was fucking badass.”

  “Indeed.” I was focusing hard, keeping my mental feathers wrapped around the ring of fire. I had to hold it in place until the cavalry arrived. I felt sweat pool at the small of my back and my head was starting to hurt.

  Just as I was certain I was about to collapse from telekinetic exertion, I saw Nate, Bea, Lucy, and Scott, charging over the hill. Bea was toting the trap, Scott had the scanner, and Lucy and Nate had fire extinguishers. They were a glorious sight—I could practically hear the action movie score swelling behind them.

  “We’re here, we’re here,” Lucy said, waving to us. She arched an eyebrow at the ring of fire. “Well. This is quite showy.” She grinned at me. “I mean that as a compliment.”

  “Thank you,” I said. My voice was faint, and my arms were shaking. “We think the puppy might be in the air rather than the dresses since it seems to be affecting all of these ladies, but . . .”

  Scott held out the scanner, his brow furrowing. Bea started setting up the trap. Lucy and Nate lifted the fire extinguishers, at the ready. Through my shaking and fuzzy vision, I felt myself let out a long sigh of relief. Yes, I was hovering on the edge of passing out—but it felt so good to have the team united like this, working like a well-oiled machine. Or I guess it was an extremely weird, occasionally argumentative machine wherein several of the members were currently engaged in illicit after-hours activity. But hey, wasn’t that what being a team was all about? Evie gave me an encouraging smile. I knew she felt it too, this sense of unity. I also knew she’d call it by a different name: family.

  And suddenly, finally . . . I felt it, too.

  It was strange to feel the truth of that rushing through my veins in that moment, facing down a bunch of angry Bridezillas surrounded by fire, right on the heels of an epic curry battle. But there it was. I had a family beyond the one I’d been born into, and they were pretty damn awesome.

  I heard the scanner BEEP one long, shrill note, and was vaguely aware of Scott yelling into the air.

  “No, wait, I can help you! Please! Come back!” he bellowed.

  I shook my head, trying to get rid of the fuzziness that seemed to be overtaking my vision. Spots appeared in front of my eyes.

  “Annie?” Evie said uncertainly. “You’re shaking. Are you . . . ?”

  “Shit!” I growled. One section of my fire ring vanished for a moment, and I pulled the two ends together, closing the circle once more.

  “It’s gone,” Scott choked out, his voice tight with frustration. “The puppy. It was here, and I was able to connect with it, but now . . .”

  A sickly feeling slid through my gut.

  “Lucy, Nate: can you . . . ?”

  Without further prompting, they lifted the extinguishers and sprayed the blaze. Once the white smoke cleared, it became apparent that my sickly feeling had been correct. There was no one there.

  The Bridezilla squad had disappeared into thin air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “THEY MUST HAVE slipped out when I lost control and allowed that space to appear in the ring of fire.” I shook my head, frustrated.

  We were back at HQ, gathered in Nate’s lab, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. I couldn’t believe Evie and I had done all that awesome teamwork for nothing. That I’d let the Bridezilla squad escape.

  “I know you’re already caught in an Aveda Jupiter ‘always in a fight, I do my best’ shame spiral, but you did everything you could,” Evie said firmly. “We all did.”

  “So was that the puppy?” Bea said. “Or something else entirely? Scott, you connected with it, right? That’s what you were yelling about?”

  “Yes, it was the puppy and yes, I managed to connect to it,” Scott said, frowning contemplatively. “Its thoughts were a big, chaotic mess this time. I think it’s still in conflict with its human helper. And I tried to reach out and let it know I could help it, but . . .” He shook his head. “I at least got some information I think we can use. So first of all, Annie’s right, the brides escaped when that space opened up in the fire.”

  “When I let it happen, you mean,” I grumbled.

  Evie poked me in the arm. “No shame spiral. That ring of fire was still fucking badass.”

  “I could feel the puppy’s relief in that moment,” Scott said. “It’s still in its weakened state, and it was happy to have the opportunity to escape.”

  “How was the puppy affecting so many Bridezillas at once?” Nate asked. “Was it in the air again, like we hypothesized it was in the bridal tent and Cake My Day?”

  “No. It was definitely in a dress,” Scott said. He paused, looking grim. “Actually, here’s the really freaky part: I’m pretty sure it was in all of them.”

  My stomach dropped. “So now it can possess multiple dresses at a time?” I said. “How is that . . . how is it . . . ?”

  “Wait a minute.” Bea held up a hand, her brow furrowing in concentration as she tried to work it out. “When we captured that piece of it in the Marcus Wong gown, we thought the puppy could only send out one little piece of itself at a time—and that little piece was the only thing we’d been chasing around.” She smacked the countertop and shook her head at Nate. “We totes made an assumption based on limited data.”

  “We, ah, ‘totes’ made a logical assumption based on existing data,” Nate said. “Aside from the bridal tent—when we thought it was in the air—we’ve only witnessed it possessing or trying to possess one person at a time.”

  “Until tonight,” I said, gnawing on my lower lip.

 
“Maybe not—maybe we just didn’t realize . . .” Bea began. “What if . . .” She hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “What if it’s been using dresses since the very beginning? If it can possess more than one dress at a time, it could’ve been in both Evie’s dress and the dress of the redhead bride she was fighting with in the tent. And hey, if it’s not limiting itself to wedding gowns—’cause what the Bridezillas were wearing tonight was bridal adjacent at best—maybe it was in Cakezilla Carol’s dress during her bakery meltdown?”

  “Are we thinking it has the ability to split off a bunch of little pieces of itself all at once and send them into multiple dresses?” Lucy said. “And that it’s had that ability for a while now?”

  “That means we have who knows how many Bridezillas to worry about,” Evie said, looking grim.

  “Hold on,” Nate said. “As Scott said, it’s still weakened. And as the puppy conveyed to him back at Pussy Queen, splitting itself off is the cause of it being weakened. So in theory, the more Bridezillas there are, the easier it should be to contain this thing.”

  “In theory, yes,” Scott said. “But there’s another piece of information I picked up. Or that I think I picked up. The puppy was reluctant to share this with me, but—”

  “But your mind-meld game is strong,” Bea said, giving him a solemn nod.

  “Something like that,” Scott said, giving her a half-smile. “From what I was able to piece together, the puppy/human combo is looking for a way to restrengthen itself. And somehow, it’s decided it needs . . .” He hesitated, swallowing hard.

  “Spit it out, Cameron,” I said.

  “It thinks what it needs,” he said slowly, “is another human.”

  “What?” Lucy gasped.

  “How would the other human fit into the current puppy/human configuration?” Nate asked.

  “And once it gets that human, once it restrengthens itself?” Evie said. “What Bridezilla-related horrors are we in for?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said ruefully. “It escaped before I could get anything else out of it.”

  “So we still don’t know what its ultimate plan is,” Bea said. “Looking at it from another angle, what kind of human does it need for this restrengthening? I’m assuming the other Bridezillas aren’t worthy, since the puppy/human combo doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of them in that way. It’s mostly using them as its own personal zombie horde—using them to attack.”

  “Really just to attack me, in this case,” I muttered.

  “Although you mentioned, Aveda, that the brides seemed to be displaying enhanced abilities?” Nate continued.

  “Yes,” I said, calling up the memory. “They were moving faster, and their eyes had a weird glow. I mean, maybe they’re all trained sprinters who’ve discovered some innovative new cosmetic technique, but I kind of don’t think so.”

  “Could that be a result of the cumulative time they’ve been affected by the puppy?” Bea mused. “Maybe the more it gets into your clothes, the more demon-y you get?”

  “That makes me wonder how long some of these ladies have been affected,” I said. I thought back to the bridal chaos at Marcus’s shop the day Shruti and I had visited, and the crowd outside after the shop had closed. “Because we’ve definitely been seeing some truly bizarre bridal behavior these past weeks. And tonight, it escalated. I blamed it on the pressures of wedding planning and the so-called bridal complex, but . . .” I trailed off, frowning.

  “Back to my question,” Bea said. “Who’s the puppy’s—and its human’s—ultimate match?”

  Silence fell as we all considered this. What did this bizarre, mashed-up entity want? Who was it looking for?

  I found my gaze wandering to the white board, which still contained Bea’s drawings. The smiley-faced Shruti. The angry Evie, veil jutting out of her head like a crown . . .

  “Evie!” I gasped.

  She turned to me. “What?”

  “No, I mean . . .” I strode over to the white board and pointed to Bea’s drawing. “It wants—they want—Evie. Remember, the Bridezillas kept saying she was their queen? I thought it was hyperbole, an exaggerated version of all the adoration the brides of San Francisco seem to have for you, but . . .” I turned back to the group. “Maybe she’s it. She’s the human they need to gain full strength.”

  “That’s a bit of a data deficient leap,” Bea said.

  “Wait a minute,” Evie said, “there’s actually at least one other, er, data point that backs this up. Remember at the fountain, when one of the brides mentioned the ‘offering’ they made to me, the gown in the window? They must have been referring to—”

  “The Marcus Wong dress!” I crowed. “That could be why he was blackmailed into re-making it. Why it was displayed so prominently in the window. They were trying to tempt Evie with it. Little did they know how much you actually dislike that dress,” I added, arching a brow at Evie.

  “So I have to draw this thing out,” Evie said, taking a deep breath and straightening her spine. “One last time.”

  “No,” I said. I planted my hands on my hips and turned to face her, giving her my best Aveda Jupiter steel. “No more ‘Evie as bait’ plans. I forbid it.”

  “That’s not how a partnership works,” Evie said, giving me her own steel. “You don’t get to forbid anything. We’re in this together, remember?”

  “Okay, I . . . strongly advise against it,” I amended, frowning at her.

  “And what’s your alternative: Aveda Jupiter as bait with no backup? Because I forbid that,” Evie said.

  “We just said no forbidding!” I protested. “I propose something all-new and all-different. Both of us as bait.”

  She gawked at me, her annoyance dissolving into genuine surprise. “Wh-what?”

  “They want you for their queen, whatever that means,” I said. “But they also seem drawn to anyone who tries to attack, hurt, or even slightly disagree with you.”

  “So you’re going to do one of those?” she said. Despite the urgency and potential danger of the situation we were discussing, her lips start to twitch.

  “I’m going to pretend to do all of those,” I said. “We’re going to leak the details of our feud to the media—meaning Maisy—”

  “We’re having a feud?” Evie interrupted. Now she wasn’t even trying to hide the amusement overtaking her face.

  “We are now,” I said, making my tone as imperious as possible. “Because I, supreme diva that I am, have not listened to any of your wishes for your wedding and am intent on making it the biggest spectacle possible and also all about me. I cancelled your adorable garden venue reservation, rented out the Palace of Fine Arts, invited the whole city—”

  “You did?” Evie said, suddenly looking far less amused.

  “Well. I will,” I amended. “Once we’re done talking here. Also.” I paused for maximum dramatic effect. “I’m totally wearing white.”

  “You are not!” shrieked Bea.

  “It’s a ruse, Bea,” I said. “To make the puppy and the Bridezillas think we’re fighting.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry, I got caught up in the moment.”

  “Hold on,” Nate said. “Before we all get caught up in the moment, what’s the plan after you draw the Bridezilla squad out? We don’t know how many of them there are or if they have some kind of enhanced abilities.”

  I nodded. “As kickass as Evie and I are together, we need help.” I faced the team and planted my hands on my hips. “We need the whole team. Bea, you and Shruti can help us contain the bridal mob. Lucy, you and Rose can work civilian crowd control. Nate, you’ll man the traps—we’ll need to set up more than one. Scott, do you think you can get that piece of your spell working that will pull the puppy out of the dresses, even if they’re bonded tightly?”

  “I can try,” he said. “And if that doesn’t work, you and
I can use the guiding spell/telekinesis combo to get the dresses off of them and into the traps.”

  “Shruti can probably help us with that too,” I said, my brain whirring. “I had a tough time getting Evie’s dress off of her back at Pussy Queen using just telekinesis, but if we combine our skills, I think we can handle it.”

  He nodded. “I can also try communicating with the puppy again, see if I can try to appeal to it or at least get more information.”

  “And if we can contain the puppy—the whole thing this time—maybe we can finally flush out its human counterpart and stop them both for good,” I said.

  I took a deep breath and looked at every person in the room in turn. Every member of the team. Every piece of my weird little family.

  “We got this,” I said. “Those Bridezillas better check themselves: the dynamic duo has morphed into a full-on fucking super-team.”

  Once we had a plan, things moved fast.

  In order to preserve the illusion that Evie and I were really fighting, I was going to storm dramatically out of HQ at a certain time (which had been “leaked” to Maisy by Bea) and spend the night elsewhere (at my parents’ house in Pleasanton—maybe not my first choice, but it was far enough out in the middle of nowhere that there was less of a chance of Maisy or some other paparazzi tracking me down than if I went for a standard hotel). I had Shruti send over the whitest, puffiest, most ostentatious monstrosity she could find for me to wear tomorrow. Everything was ready.

  And yet, as I attempted to stuff my poufy dress into my overnight bag, I felt a twinge of uncertainty. Our pursuit of the stray puppy demon had proved to be unpredictable at best. Who was to say it—and its human counterpart—didn’t have yet another set of tricks up its sleeve? What if the things we were preparing for didn’t even occur and instead something way worse happened—

  No. Nope.

  I took a few deep, calming breaths and attempted to brush the feeling aside. I didn’t know why I was even allowing myself to think that way. When there’s superheroing to be done, Aveda Jupiter always rises to the occasion. I had a duty, a plan, a mission—and that was that.