Tekgrrl

  “What about a scientist then? You’re always helping them out.”

  “They don’t like women smarter than them.” I sighed. “There really aren’t any quality single men in this town.”

  The stylist shot me a glare. “What am I, chopped liver?”

  “No quality, single, straight men,” I amended.

  “With this new look, they’ll be flocking to you. You won’t have to hunt them down.” The stylist took my drape off with a flourish and turned me toward the mirror. “Ta-da!”

  I hardly recognized my reflection. I had been transformed from someone trying to rebel into someone, well, glamorous. Nowhere near as glamorous as Kate or Selena, but someone less hard and more feminine. My wavy hair was now a dark chocolate brown with red highlights dancing among the waves, and the light blonde around my face somehow made my eyes bluer.

  Lainey was grinning. “I love it! Do you love it, Min?” She looked nervous.

  I was still staring at the stranger in the mirror. “Wow. I’m…pretty.”

  “Never knew you had it in you, huh?” The stylist grinned. “Make sure you sing my praises now.”

  After practically promising the stylist to skywrite his name, and paying roughly the same amount as that would cost, Lainey and I headed out onto the street, pushing Emily in her stroller while managing my shopping bags and browsing stores I hadn’t already visited. The pursuit of my new, more stylish look had resulted in the dropping of vast amounts of cash.

  I pointed out a lingerie shop. “You should go buy something.”

  “You know I’m never wearing that as a uniform,” Lainey replied.

  We both cracked up. “No, I meant for Wesley.”

  “But then it won’t be on long.” She winked, and we started laughing again.

  And that’s when the jewelry store across from us exploded in a shower of shattered glass and smoke. Alarms were going off everywhere; people were screaming and staggering away. A man in blue armor came clunking out of the hole in the window, arms laden with jewels. His armor might be protecting him from any damage he might incur should the cops get there in time, but it also slowed him down. A lot. Dummy.

  “Who’s that?” Lainey asked, checking to make sure Emily was all right.

  “No one I’ve ever seen. Must be a new one.” The EHJ kept a database of criminals and heroes alike, and it usually kept us in the know. “It’s almost cute when some random slob gets delusions of grandeur.”

  “Can’t we even enjoy a simple afternoon off?” Lainey complained, but her eyes shone and I could tell she loved it. She didn’t get out heroing much since becoming a mom, and, well, if I were honest, even before that, since Paul first instituted rules about the newest person always sticking around home base. “Fire spells and that kind of thing aren’t going to work on him. What have you got?”

  I dropped my bags and patted my pockets. “I don’t think I brought much. I wasn’t expecting armed robbery by a guy in a robot outfit.” My fingers found a small round button in my pocket, which I pulled out. “Oh. I brought a disabler.”

  “What does that do?” Lainey glanced over to where Robot Man was making his very slow getaway. Cop cars roared up at the end of the street.

  “To a human, it’s a bit like a Tazer: shocks them so they can’t move. Don’t know what it will do to his suit. Might short-circuit it temporarily so he can’t move.”

  “He can barely move as it is.” We turned back just in time to see the cops open fire, but their bullets ricocheted off his plates. The man in the suit retaliated by blowing up one of the cop cars. “It’ll have to do,” I said.

  “Hit him with it, I’ll see if I can’t pry the armor apart.” Lainey tagged a woman with two small kids who was backing into one of the stores. “Hi, can you watch her for just a moment? I’ll be right back, thanks.” She pushed Emily’s stroller inside, along with the shell-shocked woman and her kids, and shut the door behind her. With a few quick mumbled words in Italian that I barely caught, she locked the door with magic. “The protective ward will hold, but not for long. I’m still learning. How close do you have to get to hit him with the disabler?”

  “A few feet away.”

  “We’ll have to fly, then.” Lainey grabbed me by the arms and lifted me up. We were soon flying into the war zone where bullets flew.

  “Schermo,” Lainey said, and several bullets hit an invisible wall around us.

  “You’re going to have to set me down and get away before I shoot this thing off; it’ll hit anyone within radius,” I said.

  “No problem,” Lainey replied. She reached down and touched the disabler. “Spinta di potere.”

  “What did you just do?” I asked.

  “Gave it a bit more kick. Good luck.” She dropped me down behind Robo-Dope.

  I pushed the button before he could turn around, and a shock wave burst out from me, pushing me back with its power. Lainey wasn’t kidding when she said she gave it a power boost! I was barely able to retain my footing.

  It hit the criminal’s armor square in the back, visibly weakening the seams. Making a strange creaking noise, the guy did a face-plant onto the ground. Looked like he was decommissioned.

  Lainey landed next to me. “Shall we see what’s inside?” She rolled the guy over on his back and, using her overly strong fingers, she pried the helmet off, revealing a very sweaty and very geeky-looking teenager.

  Lainey looked up at me. “It’s a kid?”

  “I’m impressed. Did you make this yourself?” I asked. It was bit comic-book, but not bad.

  “It’s my dad’s,” the kid admitted. “He’s an engineer. I thought it would be fun to try it on, like in a video game.”

  “What kind of video games do you play, kid? Street Villain Seven?”

  Lainey sighed. “This is what I have to look forward to. Or worse, this is who’ll want to date my daughter.” She reached down and pried the hands of the armor open, taking back the goods that had been stolen.

  “My dad’s going to be so pissed,” the kid whined.

  “Gee, ya think?” I might have become a rebellious teen, but at least I never stole my parents’ inventions to go on a joyride-and-robbery spree. They should thank their lucky stars. This kid even blew up a cop car!

  Several officers had swarmed into the jewelry store and returned, and a few others now surrounded us.

  “Gentlemen, I believe this is what you want,” Lainey said, holding the kid up by his arms as he squirmed and tried to get away. “Go easy on him if no one was hurt. He’s young and not too bright.”

  The police told us they’d just lost a cruiser, and then they handcuffed the kid, who was crying about being grounded for life. He would be lucky if that’s all he got.

  “Wow, that was fun,” Lainey said, grinning.

  “Hon,” I replied, “we need to get you out more.”

  “Tell me about it.” She walked back to where she had stashed Emily with her impromptu babysitter, and broke the ward while I gathered up my bags. Surprisingly, I hadn’t lost a single one.

  I heard unmistakable sounds behind me, and I turned to look. Sure enough, some paparazzi had shown up. Well, we were in the celebrity district; they may have been stalking other prey and gotten sidetracked. They’d managed to beat any regular reporters to the scene.

  Lainey appeared carrying Emily in one arm and pushing the stroller with her other hand. “Uh-oh.”

  The photographers immediately started clicking. “It’s Phenomenal Girl Five!”

  “Was this a new villain?”

  “Have you fought him before?”

  “All in a day’s work,” Lainey said, clutching Emily a bit closer. The baby didn’t seem to like the flashes.

  “Just a mixed-up young kid we turned over to the authorities,” I said, edging closer so we could escape the swarm together.

  The photographers looked at me. “Who are you?”

  I frowned. “Tekgrrl!”

  “No way, you’re way hotter,” one of th
em said.

  I tried not to be insulted but was flattered at the same time.

  “Okay, take your picture and then back off before I start swinging this thing,” Lainey warned, motioning at them with the stroller.

  Yep. All in a day’s work. We grinned and posed for the photographers.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Can’t leave you two alone for a moment,” Toby teased as soon as we walked in the door at EHJ headquarters.

  “You’re kidding me. It’s on the news already?” I dumped my packages off in the hallway.

  “News travels fast in this town,” Lainey said. Emily gave a gurgle of agreement—or it might just have been her way of saying the shoulder of Lainey’s shirt, which was now wadded up in her tiny fist and covered with drool, didn’t taste good.

  I noticed Toby looking me over. “What?”

  “Your hair.”

  “Yeah, I had it done. That’s where Lainey and I were before the chaos broke.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen it any natural color since you were a scrawny twelve-year-old with big blue eyes behind pop-bottle glasses.”

  “Nice insult hidden in a compliment, Tobe,” I retorted, frowning. “Don’t make me go looking for the photos of you rocking the acid-washed jeans and feathered hair.” Sometimes it was easy to forget that Toby was in his forties, since he looked around twenty-five. Must be nice to be related to the Reincarnist and age slower than normal.

  “I was meaning you look nice. Grown-up. Mature. A new Mindy.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “That was the look you were going for, right?”

  “Leave her alone,” Lainey said. “We’ve all gone through phases we’d rather forget.”

  “Sometimes whole lifetimes,” Wesley joked, walking into the room and kissing Lainey hello. Ah, young love. It was enough to make me green—with envy or nausea, I wasn’t sure. “I just heard the word ‘forget.’ What are we talking about?”

  “Mindy’s new look.” Lainey nodded to me.

  Wesley turned from making a goofy face at Emily to give me a once-over. “Looks nice.”

  “Thanks. It’s just a new hair color and cut.” I explained, starting to feel a bit self-conscious.

  “And I saw you had a bit of excitement,” Wesley pointed out, taking Emily from Lainey, who absently wiped at the drool-covered shoulder of her shirt and then gave up. “You two did well containing the situation so quickly.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, good job, team,” Toby said with a wink.

  “The police seem to have the matter in hand, but was it anything we need to investigate further?” Wesley asked.

  Lainey shook her head. “Just a dumb kid out for a joyride in his dad’s body armor. We had more trouble with the paparazzi than him, honestly.”

  Wesley frowned. “Yeah, I saw that. I thought we discussed how we didn’t want Emily’s picture in the news.”

  Lainey matched his frown. “Yeah, well, there’s not much I can do when they mob us in the street. I thought it was best to let them get their one picture in and then come out swinging if they didn’t back off.”

  “You could have flown away.”

  “Wes, we’re in the public eye. The more we try to hide her away, the more they’re going to try to get pictures of her. They’ll start talking about her not being real, or like she’s an alien or something—like that actor and actress the tabloids are always claiming have abnormally big heads that hide a third eye…”

  “That’s because they are aliens,” I put in. “And they do have a third eye.”

  Wesley and Lainey’s attention turned to me.

  I shrugged. “The Swiftes. We had to work security at one of their functions because they had a bunch of ‘out-of-towners.’”

  Toby started laughing. “I remember that! Simon got smashed and hit on that woman with four arms.”

  “That wasn’t all she had,” I remarked. Simon Leasure, before he was fired from the EHJ when his craving for publicity had him making unwise deals with villains, had been a bit of an unrepentant ladies man.

  Wesley ran a hand through his hair. “I know we can’t hide Emily forever, but I want to do it as long as possible. We don’t even know if we got rid of all of the Dragon cultists.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Lainey soothed.

  The door whispered open and Luke walked in. “We all holding a meeting in the hallway or something?” he asked, looking around at the four of us.

  “No, Lainey and Mindy were just telling us about their girl-time that turned into a police action.”

  “Some kid hijacked a mech suit,” I told him. “It was on the news.”

  “Sorry I missed it,” Luke said, moving closer. “Nice hair.”

  I touched it. “Thanks.”

  He nodded. “Are we on for patrol tonight?”

  “You bet.” I was a bit surprised he had remembered us discussing it, after being distracted all night by Selena, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to spend some time with Luke. My friend.

  But speak of the glamorous devil. Selena swished up in a crisp white shirt and black pencil skirt and heels. With her hair up, she looked like a stereotypical secretary. As if to illustrate the point, she carried a personal organizer, stylus poised and ready to jot something down. She flashed us all a bright smile, and it might not have been my imagination that she focused on Luke just a bit longer than the rest of us. “Excuse me, guys, but, Toby, the secretary from downstairs just called up and your three o’clock is here.”

  Security had tightened since the Reincarnist showed up. We used to be a bit more lax and show multiple tour groups around; random civilians were in the museums downstairs at all hours. Not only had our fight with the Dragon changed things, but having a possibly world-ending kid in the mix meant we had to watch who was in our building.

  Toby nodded and straightened his jacket. “It’s that politician. If you’ll excuse me.” He turned to go back to our private elevator.

  Selena gave me a friendly smile. “Your hair looks very nice, Mindy.”

  Why did she have to be nice? It made it harder for me to hate her.

  “Lainey, hon, you’re going to have to show me again how to work this computer system,” Selena said.

  “As long as I’m not taking back secretarial duties, sure,” Lainey replied, following her down the hall.

  “Good. Mindy, since you have some free time, I thought we might go over the security network,” Wesley was saying to me, ignoring the drool leaking from his small child. How do parents just brush that off like it’s not happening?

  “Great,” I said in what I hoped was a cheery tone. An afternoon of tinkering around with the Reincarnist, who would likely be critical of everything I did. I was having flashbacks to my training years.

  At least he was eye candy this time around.

  By the point I finished going over new security system ideas with Wesley, who seemed to delight in picking apart anything I did no matter what body his soul was in, my head felt like I had an ice pick jammed into my right eye. My migraine had returned with a vengeance. I retrieved my bags from the hallway where I’d left them, feeling like my head was going to literally explode. I bumped into Kate coming out of the kitchen carrying a green bottle of water.

  “Hi, Mindy,” she said, sounding distracted.

  “Hey, Kate.” I barely glanced up, but what I saw forced my gaze back to her face. “Are you okay?” Her usually flawless eye makeup looked smudged, and underneath looked a bit red and puffy.

  She gave me a false smile. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

  I called her bluff. “Because you look like you’ve been crying.”

  “Oh, it’s just allergies,” she said, waving a hand dis-missively and taking a sip from her bottle. But I noticed her hand shaking. She might fake a cool demeanor, but I could tell she was upset.

  Kate and I had never exactly been close. Her beauty and powers of attraction and love meant that men flocked to her, so she wasn’t exactly
popular with any ladies, and she did nothing to mend that fence. In fact, she seemed to almost delight in her gift, like she was a queen and we were nothing but her ladies-in-waiting. But seeing her upset and trying to hide it, well, that put her back on the ground with the rest of us mortals. And with how she and Paul were acting earlier, clearly nothing was right with them.

  I could have been mean and dug further, but I decided to let it go. Frankly, my head hurt too much to cope. “They can be bad this time of the year.”

  “Yeah,” she said in a quiet tone. Then: “Your hair really looks nice, Mindy. Very sophisticated.”

  “Thanks. Everyone seems to like it. I hope you feel better.” I hoisted my packages and started to go.

  “Thank you,” she echoed quietly, and disappeared down the hall.

  Part of me wondered about her situation, but my pounding head was telling me that my teammates’ drama would have to wait until a time when every sound didn’t seem extra loud and when Kate’s perfume didn’t make me nauseated. I made it to my room, dumped my packages down—the poor clothes would be wrinkled forever—and went into my bathroom. As I removed my makeup I could smell Kate’s scent on me, and it was making my headache worse. I gulped down a migraine pill and some water and hit my bed without even bothering to take my clothes off. Pulling the sheet up over me, I soon fell into a fitful sleep.

  I was back on Kalybri, in a small but well-lit room that was almost too bright for my eyes. I was dressed in a white linen wide-sleeved unisex shirt and pants, the requisite uniform of every other student. The golden color of the other students’ skin made the uniform look almost ethereal on them; I looked like a ghost. But I was used to not fitting in.

  I stared at the holo-pad in front of me, mentally translating the Kalybrian script into English, the swooping curls and symbols into letters and numbers. This was history class, and if Earth students think learning native history is boring, they should try learning a whole other race and planet’s.

  I wasn’t the only student whose mind was wandering. Kalybrian students sat in holo-pad chairs, all lined up in a row, facing the teacher. They were supposed to sit up straight, but I could see the delicate slump in the shoulders of the student in front of me and hear the subtle shift in the chair of the one behind. I was sitting next to the open window, and the exotic and spicy scents wafting on the breeze practically begged me to fly outdoors and explore the alien flora and fauna.