Reid blinked. “I don’t know. What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?”
Benjamin whipped around and faced me. “Name five elements.”
I chewed on my lip while I thought. “Is that a trick question? I’ve only heard of four. Earth, fire, wind, and air, right?”
He faced Ember. “Spell ‘Virginia’, please.”
“V…e…r…j…i…n…y…a.”
Benjamin gazed sadly at Marco. “There’s a major holiday this week. Do you know what it is?”
Marco shrugged. “We don’t celebrate civilian holidays.”
Benjamin went quiet then, nodding curtly and picking up his paper and reading in silence.
We all finished our juice and went back to training, finishing up a bit later.
Benjamin didn’t even speak when the power came on and the rest of us whooped for joy. When Captain Drummond stopped by, wearing civilian clothes and sunglasses, he didn’t say a word while he filled out his superhero registration form.
After she left, Benjamin bade us goodnight and disappeared into his room, slamming his door so hard that dust fell from the ceiling.
I sheathed my knife and turned to Ember. “Dare I ask what his problem is?”
She glanced at Marco and Reid, who were wrestling. Marco had Reid in an impressive hammerlock.
She turned back to me and spoke in a low voice. “No, I don’t know what his problem is because he’s been using evasive thoughts since the police station. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. You told him I’m a telepath, didn’t you?”
I blushed. “I’m sorry. He was asking—”
“—and you told him without a second thought. Jill, I get that you like him, but has it ever occurred to you that this whole thing is one big fact-finding mission for him? He just asks and asks about us, and then when he senses me in his head, it’s all boring thoughts. Or thoughts about you two kissing. Ugh.”
I crossed my arms, my blush returning. “Just because you find his thoughts boring or distasteful doesn’t mean he’s hiding something. He’s really smart. Maybe you just don’t understand what he’s thinking about.”
“Every time I try to get into his head to see what’s up, he immediately starts reciting anatomy terms, translating what we’re saying into Latin, or worrying about his sister. I know that kind of behavior. Everyone back home did it when I was around.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
Ember glared at the ceiling. “And now he’s singing a song in his head. He’s doing this on purpose, Jill. He’s hiding something. I think his little outburst just now is connected to it.”
“You’re wrong.” I let out a long breath and added, “But I’ll talk to him about it later.”
“Good luck,” Ember muttered. She turned around. “Marco, let go of him. He’s turning purple.”
I wandered upstairs, my head spinning. The light nausea in my stomach at Benjamin’s sudden mood swing didn’t bode well. My instincts were telling me that something was seriously amiss with my newest teammate, and I had no idea what my investigation would reveal.
Additionally, Ember was adamant that Benjamin wasn’t acting in good faith. Something had gone wrong earlier and the way he’d slammed the door had been just a bit…hostile.
No, you’re reading too much into it. Remember the card? It’s not that big of a deal.
Perhaps this was Patrick’s legacy: reading too much into nothing. Who knew how long it would take before I stopped reading a thousand words into one angry sigh.
There was no light shining under Benjamin’s door, so I slipped into my sleeping bag and closed my eyes.
The sound of the front door shutting made them open.
Patrick was here.
I jumped out of my bag and grabbed my knife. I was on the landing in the space of a breath, every sense attuned to my surroundings. He was here, and I’d kill him. I’d drive my knife into his brain so fast that he’d never know what hit him. He’d made a huge mista…
A wooden creak to my left made me jolt. Benjamin’s door was open, slowly moving back and forth in the breeze from his open window. He wasn’t in his sleeping bag.
I inhaled the swirling dust mote in the hallway, locking on to his spicy scent, and followed it down the stairs to the front door. My eyes narrowed as I pulled open the door and began to track the “ex” supervillain’s trail.
31
Benjamin’s scent pulled me nose-first into Downtown, where we’d met the month before. Leafy trees bedecked with Spanish moss arched over the silent avenues and boulevards, forming a ribcage of sorts that shrouded me in shadows as I walked down the sidewalk. The darkness was one of the reasons I enjoyed patrolling in the wealthy district—I could see my enemies, but they struggled to see me. I could appear like the boogeyman and disappear just as quickly.
The other reason was the rooftops.
I scaled a tree and hopped onto the first roof in a block of row houses. These weren’t the rundown, fire-trap type homes that I’d seen in Northside. No, these were four-story mini mansions. Their tiny yards were mowed by hired crews, and across the street was a manicured dog park. Large luxury vehicles were parked in front of every house.
Benjamin had turned down this street—hence the rooftop escapade. From my new vantage point, I could see him as he checked behind himself every so often. His hood was pulled up, but the height, carriage, and gait were distinctly his. I silently hopped over the narrow gap between two houses and watched him detour from the sidewalk to a gnarled old tree in a community lot.
He stuck his hand in the hollow of the tree and removed a small box plastic bag. From the bag he removed a small box with multiple antennae, fiddled with it, and then tucked it into his hoodie’s front pocket. When he was done with his task, he hurried across the street at normal speed and pulled out a house key.
I ran to the back of the house and saw what I’d hoped to find: a small balcony, probably connected to a bedroom. I swung over the ledge and hung there for a second, getting a feel for the strength of the eaves. When I was sure of their integrity, I lowered myself in a slow, measured way onto the balcony’s rail, coming into a perch like a cat.
Through the window, I could see a man’s bedroom, if the men’s clothes strewn everywhere were any indication. Various posters of lady action movie stars papered the wall, leaving little doubt about whose bedroom I was looking at. A framed picture of Benjamin and a group of friends sat on the bedside table. I was right. They were all in evening wear, probably at the same prom where his date had ditched him for an hour.
A quick, forceful turn of the handle broke the lock of the balcony door, and I slipped inside. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when Benjamin came in, but I’d do something. How dare he come back here? Even if he wasn’t selling our secrets to his family—acid bubbled in my stomach at the thought—he was jeopardizing everything I’d worked for by showing his face at his family’s home.
Footsteps on the stairs caught my attention. I sat on the bed and crossed my legs. I really did want to hear his reason for being here.
Benjamin walked into the room, but he was looking over his shoulder.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Benjamin.”
He yelped and fell into the wall, his hand at his side and grasping at nothing. “Jillian! I—how did—why are—”
“You have ten seconds.”
He put a hand to his chest to steady his near-hyperventilation, his heart jackhammering against his ribs. “Ten seconds to what?”
“You know damn well what.”
I stood, noticing how his eyes traveled up and down my form. He wasn’t admiring me; he was sizing me up.
He worked his face into a glare, though his eyes betrayed fear. “I came to get one of my nursing textbooks, okay? I’m the new medic. Do you think I’m here to tell my family about you? Do you have that little faith in me?”
Defensive. Accusatory. Trying to throw me off by making me feel faithless. Nice try.
>
I kept my expression grim. “And you couldn’t go to the library, a bookstore, or literally anywhere else because…?”
I had him.
He averted his eyes. “Fine. I did want my nursing textbooks, but some other things, too. Personal effects.”
He retrieved a backpack from his open closet and began to walk around the room, shoving small items into the backpack: the picture from his bedside table, a leather-bound journal, a small shooting trophy from JROTC.
While he worked, I walked to the bedroom door and casually leaned against the wall, biding my time. Just how gullible did he think I was?
After a minute more, he shouldered the backpack and faced me, an ugly scowl plastered on his face. “You can escort me home now.”
I slammed his bedroom door shut. He jumped.
Oh, I’m sorry,” I said with exaggerated surprise. “Did that seem angry to you?”
He backed up. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me.” I locked his door. “You aren’t going anywhere until you explain your little attitude this evening, and then we’re going to talk about something Ember told me.”
There was a long silence as he looked at me, probably calculating what I’d said and how he was going to respond. Finally, the straps of his backpack slid down his good arm and he sat on the edge of his bed. “I’m dealing with buyer’s remorse. Hate me for it maybe, but it’s the truth.”
“What’s buyer’s remorse?”
He clapped a hand over his face. “What’s buyer’s remorse,” he muttered to himself. “Of course you don’t know. Well, Jillian, it’s the feeling you get when you spend your entire life wanting to be a superhero, and then when you actually get on a team you find out that they’re all…you know what, never mind. Let’s just go home and forget the whole thing.”
My chin quivered as the sickening slime of embarrassment crawled through me.
“They’re all what?” My voice cut through the unpleasant quiet like one of my knives. “What’s the end of that sentence?”
His sheer level of contempt had wedged itself into my brain, severing his words from my feelings for him and allowing me a level of objectivity I’d never been able to have regarding the boy I’d met in the café.
I realized right then what I’d failed to see before: Benjamin was smart, he knew he was smart, and had little respect for anyone he deemed unintelligent. He’d dismissed and derided Eleanor’s ex-boyfriend, mocked Reid for believing something unusual, and time and time again used his cocky sarcasm when someone questioned his vast pool of knowledge.
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Listen, we need to go—“
“We’re all stupid? Finish what you were saying. We’re all what?”
“Uneducated!” He jumped to his feet. “My God, what kind of upbringing did you all have? I mean…I mean…what kind of heroes don’t even bother to find out what civilians are celebrating? What would you do when the fireworks went off, stand there like idiots and wonder what they are?”
He picked up his backpack and chucked it into the corner.
“I know what fireworks are,” I ground out. “Don’t you dare stand there and accuse us of being idiots just because we aren’t as…as…as informed as you are.”
He snorted. “Great, so you know fireworks. That’ll help you fight crime. And if someone gave you a ransom note, could you read it? Do you even know what ransom is?”
“I can read and write.” My voice was like steel. “And I know how to cauterize a hand after cutting a finger to send along with a ransom note. I know how to emotionally manipulate a police officer to make her do what I want. I know how to kick down a door so it’ll open instead of splinter. I know how to calm children down when their father tried to kill their mother. I know how to protect the people in this city when nobody else can. My entire education revolves around that goal.”
“Oh, give me a break. Your entire ‘education’ was designed to keep you pliable and weak. You don’t even have a choice about what you can do with your life.”
“I chose to lead a new team! I chose to stay here and take in a criminal—”
“There it is again. I’ll never be anything but a criminal to you guys, will I?”
“And I’ll never be anything but a stupid hick to you, won’t I?”
Benjamin exhaled heavily. “I never said you were stupid. That’s—that’s not—”
“You called me stupid in the library. ‘Don’t be stupid. There are worse things than battle injuries,’” I mimicked.
“Don’t twist my words. Yeah, I said that, but you know very well that I’d just been tossed around by Patrick and my sister was missing.”
Okay, sure. But he wasn’t getting out of trouble.
“Twist your words? Well, how’s this? You called me an idiot when you called Eleanor’s ex-boyfriend an idiot for not knowing what euthanasia was. Oh, that reminds me: when we were kissing, was that an act of charity on your part, too? Because you obviously seem to think that stupid people like me don’t deserve attention from the likes of you. Should I feel honored that the great book-learned Benjamin Trent sunk to my pliable level?”
Something I said must have bothered him, because for the first time he looked uncertain.
“You’re right. I…I was unkind when I talked about Eleanor’s ex the way I did. And no, I didn’t kiss you as charity,” he added, embarrassed. “I did that because I wanted to, and I sensed you wanted to, also.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I’m sorry for being an ass.”
“I don’t care.”
And I didn’t. I didn’t care if he was sorry—he’d endangered all of us by coming back here for trinkets. He’d insulted me and mine even though we’d taken him in and given him his life-long dream. He’d made me feel special and then mocked me. Maybe he was cute and interesting, but I could do better than this, both personally and professionally. I had that much self-respect, at least.
His face fell. “What do you mean, you don’t care?”
“I mean if you want to be surrounded my smart people so much, you can stay here. Tell your family that we held you against your will or something. I don’t care. You’re not coming back with me.”
I turned to unlock the door, intending to leave the house like a normal person.
He was in front of me in a blur, his hand held up like a crossing guard. “No. I’m not letting you leave until—”
His face was against the door before he could squeak, his arm twisted behind his back in a submission hold.
“What did you just say to me?” Nobody held me against my will. Those days were over.
His breathing picked up again. “Okay, that was wrong of me. But hear me out.” His words were slightly muffled from having his cheek against the wood. “If you leave me here, they won’t accept me back without questions, and they will get the truth out before long. They’re good at that. I was seen with you all, and then I disappear? My parents aren’t dumb. I’m tainted by my association with you guys, and there will be consequences for me if we meet again. I have nowhere else to go.”
I was about to reply when I noticed the goosebumps on his arms that made his hair stick up. His fear was real.
I let go and stepped back, watching warily as he straightened his sling. “Before we go back, I’m going to ask you some questions, Benjamin, and I want straight, honest answers. Do you understand me?”
He swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Why are you so afraid of your family?” I’d seen him with his siblings on separate occasions, and they were certainly familial, if not overly warm. I doubted they’d kill him.
Yet, he took a shaking breath. “My family has a long and violent history with superheroes. There’s a lot of emotion there. If it comes out that I was with you, that emotion will override any love for me.”
I swung his computer chair around and straddled it. “What was your role in that history?”
This was the most important part. Harboring a supervillain could
get us into trouble beyond his comprehension. Even if we weren’t hauled before a tribunal, teams could unite against us if they suspected he wasn’t bona fide. When the chips were down and we needed friends, nobody would volunteer to help us.
I’d already started coming up with a few cover stories that hinged on us supposedly not knowing who he really was, but all of them would be shot to crap if, say, the Baltimore team knew him. Considering that he used to live just miles from their territory, it was a plausible threat. I needed to prepare for every eventuality.
Benjamin sat down on the bed again and stared at his shoes. “I’ve been involved in fights against teams before. They’d show up on jobs sometimes, and it came to blows.”
“The Baltimore team, right?”
“No. It was the New York City team and the D.C. team.”
That was a surprise.
New York City’s famously effective team was forty strong across five boroughs, the biggest in the country. This fresh-faced mini-villain had faced them and lived?
And Washington D.C.’s team, the Patriot Fighters, were a showcase team that reported directly to the President and protected the White House. As far as I knew, they didn’t actually patrol or engage in regular superhero activities. The chances of them locking horns with the Trents seemed slim.
“You’ve been busy,” I said as I worked through his words, doubt swirling with the desire to believe him. “Have you ever killed a superhero?” I wasn’t sure what I’d do if he said yes.
He shook his head quickly. “No, I’ve never killed a superhero. Or even tried…unless you count the warehouse.”
“I don’t. Now tell me,” I said, tilting my head towards him. “Are those jobs and fights the extent of your past?” I enunciated every word.
He looked me square in the eye. “Yes.”
“Is that why you work so hard to keep Ember out of your head? So she won’t hear you thinking about your fights against superheroes?”
He looked away. “Yes.”
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