Playing For Keeps

by Mur Lafferty

  Time slowed. Michelle, Barry and Alex were far ahead. Logic had won a battle with The Librarian and she now sprinted in bare feet a couple of paces ahead of Tomas, who ran in fits of speed followed by a slow jog, using his brief superstrength to power himself forward. Colette trailed behind them.

  After Colette, there was Clever Jack. He had stepped out from an awning and faced them, the pleasant smile plastered on his face. He pointed a gun at them.

  Superpowered luck. That meant instant sharpshooter, even in the dark, even with his eyes closed, even behind his back, tied up and hanging upside down. Peter’s legs carried him forward in slow motion, and he heard a low, slow curse from Keepsie beside him.

  For a small woman, Keepsie seemed quite dense as she slammed into Peter, shoving him aside so that he fell just as the gun emanated a puff of smoke and a very loud noise. He fell, hard, his head pounding.

  Then, everything sped up to double time. Keepsie lay on her back, a hole in her shirt right where her heart was. Her eyes were wide and her mouth opened and closed as if she were a drowning fish.

  Peter scrambled over to her and held her hand tightly. “Keepsie, listen to me, you can’t die, hold on, you can’t die.”

  She looked at him and he saw brief outrage in her eyes. She tried to speak but failed.

  “You can’t die. That’s the part of your power I was going to tell you about. If someone tries to kill you, that would be stealing your life, and it won’t work.”

  Peter felt the hot barrel of the handgun against the base of his neck. “That’s really neat,” Clever Jack said. “But I bet I can still kill you.”

  21

  Keepsie’s chest burned. She fought for every breath and tried to will her heart to beat regularly again. She could barely comprehend what Peter had just said. Then Clever Jack was above them both.

  “No—” she managed to say, but even she couldn’t hear herself above the shouts.

  A foul jet of excrement shot over the three of them missing Clever Jack’s head by inches, as Ian yelled, “You lying son of a bitch!”

  A second later, Michelle’s car door, no longer bearing Barry, whizzed towards them, clipping the back of Clever Jack’s head. He crumpled, falling over Keepsie’s outstretched legs.

  Ian whooped. “How’s that luck now, you bastard?”

  Peter, his hands visibly shaking, took the gun out of Clever Jack’s lax grip and pulled him off of Keepsie.

  Keepsie relaxed back on the pavement and concentrated on breathing, even though the air was filled with the stench of Ian’s attack.

  Hands lifted her and she opened her eyes without realizing she had closed them. She lay on the car door while Michelle ran down the sidewalk. She looked for Peter and found him talking to Ian, talking over Clever Jack’s body.

  “Peter,” she croaked, but no one responded. She blacked out.

  * * * * *

  “Damn, Peter, you were right. It didn’t even break the skin,” Alex said.

  “Yes, but the bludgeoning effect of the bullet to her heart still could have killed her,” Peter said.

  “Except she couldn’t die that way,” Alex said.

  “Well. Yes.”

  Her breath came easier. Her heart beat loudly in her ears, a frightened yet steady rhythm. She felt uncomfortably exposed, and realized they’d removed her shirt and covered her breasts with it in order to better see what the bullet had done to her. Thank God I decided to wear a bra today.

  She raised her head and saw Michelle, Alex and Peter with her. Michelle held her hand. She squeezed it and smiled.

  “No offense, guys, but sometime I’d like to wake up and not have the two of you arguing about my health,” she said to them.

  “Welcome back,” Alex said. There were dark circles under his eyes and he staggered back a bit. Peter helped him to a booth where he lay down.

  They were in her bar; Keepsie lay on the floor. Tomas, Barry and the Librarian sat at the bar, eating. Ian sat alone in a booth, watching them. Doodad stood, outrage gleaming in his frozen eyes, a couple of feet from her. There was a definite scent of cheeseburgers on the air. Colette had been busy.

  The door to the kitchen opened with a bang and the short, stocky cook stormed out. Her face was red and eyes wide, but bore with her a plastic basket of a cheeseburger and cheese fries. Keepsie already knew they were for her; Colette knew exactly how she liked her burgers. Employing a Third Wave cook had its advantages.

  The basket landed beside Keepsie. “Eat. When you’re done, think about what we’re going to about the heroes and villains. This is going to kill our business.”

  Keepsie sat up, the ache in her chest subsiding. “I’m not sure, Colette. I think business was hurt when the heroes shut us down, actually.”

  Colette shook her head. “Bureaucracy I can fight. My dad is a lawyer. But the Good Lord did not give me superpowers to fight heroes and villains; he gave me powers to feed people.”

  “We’ll think of something, Colette,” Keepsie said.

  Colette shook her head and went back to the kitchen. “Now if we could just get that nuclear girl on our side, we’d save a bundle on electric bills to heat this place and power the goddamned stove.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Peter asked.

  “Oh sure,” Keepsie said, picking a cheese fry from the basket. “She deals with most any kind of stress by stomping around and cooking. She couldn’t do that outside, but here she’s in her element.”

  Keepsie levered herself off the floor, waving off Peter’s offered hand. She picked up her lunch—or was it dinner?—and put it on a table at the nearest empty booth. She left her friends, dragging the supervillain behind her and entered the Men’s room. She exited without Doodad.

  “Everyone uses the women’s room from now on.”

  “You got it,” Colette said.

  Keepsie returned to her food and motioned her friends to sit. “All right. Peter, what the hell were you talking about after I got shot, and why aren’t I dead?”

  Peter and Michelle exchanged looks. “I...have to go check on the bar trays. I think if I sharpen the edges they’ll be very Xena-like,” Michelle said, and went behind the bar.

  Peter sat down slowly, as if he wanted to do anything but.

  “What’s wrong? You said I was invulnerable or something, which is wrong cause that sure as hell hurt,” she said.

  Peter didn’t meet her eyes. He sighed. “During the last couple of days, I’ve used my powers more often than I’ve ever consciously used them in my life. I’ve never wanted to find out secrets about people, because what I find out is usually something I didn’t want to know. But, well, in the past couple of days I’ve discovered that I can do more than the Academy, my father, and even I knew I could.”

  “Wow, really? Like what?”

  Peter picked up a napkin from the table and fiddled with it. “I can track people if I can get a good enough scent. That’s how we found The Librarian. I also found out that I can learn the extent of someone’s powers. I discovered that your life is one of your possessions. You can’t be killed. I assume that you can grow old and die, and you can sicken and die, or die in an accident, but no one else can take your life from you.”

  There was something he wasn’t telling her. She studied him for a moment. “You’re serious?”

  He finally met her eyes. “Well don’t take my word for it—you survived a lightning strike, a spear to the chest, deadly fire and a gunshot to the heart. What do you think?”

  Keepsie sat back. Her first thought was an incoherent desire to never let the Academy know this information, if they hadn’t figured it out already. Not that there was much of an Academy left. But she had no idea what Timson would do with this information.

  “Man. I’m sort of immortal, you’ve found out all sorts of powers, and Michelle can lift a grown man on a car door. What other stuff do we know?”

  Peter studied his napkin again. “Well. We need to discuss Ian.”

  Keepsi
e looked automatically at Ian, who stared at them from his booth with an unsmiling face. “I feel like I don’t know him anymore, Peter,” she said, not looking away from Ian’s gaze. “I don’t think we can trust him.”

  “He saved my life, he and Michelle. Well. After you did, of course.” He balled the napkin up in his fist and gave it a tight squeeze before setting it down and pushing it away from him. “Plus, he has given us information about Clever Jack. Information that I confirmed with, ah, my newly discovered talents.”

  “Oh? What’s that?” Keepsie said.

  “Clever Jack has a weakness. And it’s a big one.”

  He opened his mouth again and Keepsie held up her hand. “Wait. I want to hear it from Ian.”

  Peter closed his mouth and nodded. He beckoned Ian over.

  Her betrayer, her Judas, her Benedict Arnold. Her friend who worked a cash register at Seventh Sity Surfer. The guy who had gotten himself arrested defending her bar. The guy who had given Alex’s info so they could recover from Academy’s torture. Clever Jack’s ally. And eventual betrayer.

  He didn’t sit at the booth but stood next to it. Keepsie looked up at him. “So what’s Clever Jack’s weakness, Ian?”

  He looked as if he expected the question. “Clever Jack’s luck is innate, like a cloud or something around him. But he can focus it. While he’s focusing it, there is still enough luck protecting him from one, maybe two attackers. But more than that and someone will have a pretty good chance of hitting him.

  “Like when he was trying to shoot Peter, you missed but Michelle hit,” Keepsie said.

  Ian nodded. “He pretty much said it to me, without actually saying it. I think he thinks I’m dumber than I am. I’ve got to start carrying my night school diploma with me, I guess. Anyway, I thought the double attack could get him off Peter. And then Pete checked out my story with his shiny new skills, and said I could come back here and talk to you. You know, when you were back up and running.”

  Running. Keepsie felt like she could never run again. If she had a chance to just lie down in a bed—provided her bed wasn’t cinders by now—just for a moment, she would be able to cope so much better.

  “So now what?” she asked Ian.

  He shifted his weight and looked at Peter. “Uh, what do you mean?”

  “Now what for you?” Keepsie felt mean all of a sudden, and wasn’t willing to let him back in so easily. “You’ve been on our side, the villains’ side, what’s next? Joining the Academy?”

  Ian looked hurt, and Keepsie felt both vindicated and guilty. He looked at the floor. “I fucked up. That’s all. I wanted to give the heroes as much shit as they’d given us, and I felt like you guys were just rolling over. I didn’t know Clever Jack was going to hurt innocent people.”

  “Conveniently forgetting his past, I suppose,” Peter said.

  Ian shrugged. “It’s like, when you see him in the papers, he’s bigger than life. The past couple of days, he seemed a lot more like us, pissed off at getting the shaft from the Academy. And you have to admit they’re pretty twisted themselves.

  “I guess I did forget what he’d done in the past, and just wanted to be with the winning team for once.”

  He took a deep breath. Keepsie and Peter didn’t say anything. Peter relaxed back into the booth as if he’d heard this before.

  “And?” prompted Keepsie.

  “Well, after you guys started going against him, he got mad and started talking about killing you. He sent me on recon to find out who was left at the bar. I headed there with the intention of warning you, but I saw you guys coming back to the park, so I doubled back and followed you. By the time I got there, Clever Jack was telling that glowing chick to kill the heroes and then he grabbed me and said we were going to rule the city as soon as we got rid of you guys. That’s when I started sticking really close to see if I could stop him. So when you guys escaped the hill, he left Light of Mornings to do her thing and fry the heroes while he went running after you. We slipped past you when you stopped to watch the fight. Clever Jack was so focused on you guys that he didn’t see me run ahead to catch Michelle and Barry. I’m sorry we didn’t catch him in time to stop his first shot.”

  Keepsie ran her hands through her hair and sighed. “Ian, how can we trust you?”

  “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I’m back, dude, I’m on your side!” he said.

  Keepsie looked at Peter. “So does your new superpower let you see if someone is telling the truth?”

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t think so. I can test emotions and track people, but not truth. I think being a human lie detector would put me in the hero range, frankly.”

  “But you said yourself that you didn’t know about this talent till today,” Keepsie said. “So you may be able to, you just don’t know.”

  Peter looked from her to the table, and then to Ian. “I—well, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Hey, Keepsie, can you leave us alone for the test?” Ian asked.

  “What? Why?”

  “Oh, I just want privacy, I guess. Everyone’s been staring at me since I got here. Can we go into the storage room?” he said.

  Keepsie narrowed her eyes. What were they hiding? Her heartbeat sped up as she entertained the notion that he had courted Peter to the villains’ side and that they were both going to double—or triple, at this point—cross her.

  But Peter wouldn’t do that. He was one of the few left she could trust. She looked at Peter, who returned her gaze with an intensity that made her uncomfortable.

  She threw up her hands. “Fine. Whatever. Get Tomas to stand outside the door in case you need anything, Peter. I’m going to eat for the first time in—” she couldn’t remember her last meal, so she just stuffed some fries into her mouth.

  “Right. We’ll be back soon,” Ian said.

  “You going to be OK?” she asked through her mouthful of fries as Peter slid out of the booth.

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t think he’s lying, for what it’s worth. And remember, he never betrayed us. He was honest with us since the beginning. It was Clever Jack he betrayed. Get some food into you; you are going to need the energy, I’m afraid.”

  Keepsie allowed herself a moment to appreciate the meal; Colette was her best find at the bar, making it the best bar food in town through her superpower. The burger was a perfect medium, with a slice of cheddar on the bottom of the burger and a slice of provolone on the top. She liked her burgers with only mustard and onions, something no cook alive had ever understood or respected, but Colette knew it without asking. She knew the best thing to cook for anyone, and could prepare anything to be the best.

  During one drunken night back at her apartment, Keepsie and Michelle had challenged Colette to an Iron Chef kind of competition where she had to prepare both spam and haggis to perfection. Her Spam mincemeat pie was phenomenal, and her traditional haggis made Keepsie wonder what all the fuss was about.

  Collette had considered a career in culinary arts, but very few people would hire a Third Waver. It was an unfortunate rumor that their untrained powers would end up being more of a liability in the end than a boon, so Colette wasn’t able to work in the best restaurants in the world, as she deserved to. Neither was Vincent, Keepsie’s janitor, hired by the cleaning services of the United Nations or the CIA. His hands were actual dirt magnets; all he had to do to leave an area spotless was to pass his hand over it.

  Lost in thought, Keepsie realized she had polished off her burger and still wanted more. The door to the kitchen slammed open and she jerked around.

  Colette stamped toward her, carrying two small round cakes on a plate.

  “Here, thought you’d still be hungry,” she said.

  “Thanks. Are the guys still in the closet?” She took one of the cakes and bit into it: chocolate with a caramel center. Perfect.

  Colette snagged the other cake for herself. “Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing in there, but Tomas said he can only hear th
em talking.”

  “I wish I knew what they were talking about.”

  “You, I suspect,” Colette said.

  “Huh?”

  “Do you want to know a secret?” Colette said.

  “Please. There have been too many these days,” Keepsie said, getting annoyed.

  “One thing that science has never studied, so no one knows this but me, but when someone is falling in love, they start to unconsciously prefer food that their beloved does. Now, this doesn’t mean that a blue steak kind of man will suddenly start ordering salad to impress his lady, but very subtle things will change. The temperature that they like their fries. The amount of salt. Suddenly ordering strawberry when vanilla used to do just fine. The number of olives in—”

  Keepsie finally interrupted her. “How is this important now?”

  Colette paused. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re on the run from the heroes and the villains. We have a friend who we can’t trust, half of us are in need of a hospital, so where does love fit into all this?”

  Colette smiled at her, a very small smile. “Nowhere, I suppose. Everyone else is discovering new and exciting uses for their powers. I figured I’d tell you about one of mine.”

  Keepsie felt bad. “I’m sorry, Colette, I didn’t mean to discount it. I’m just not thinking straight, that’s all.”

  Colette slid out of the booth and walked towards the kitchen and nearly bumped into Peter and Ian coming out. She said something to Peter in a low voice and Ian laughed. Peter looked startled and watched her go into the kitchen, color rising in his face.

  While Ian did not have his usual swagger, he looked considerably more relaxed. Peter fiddled with his sleeves of his t-shirt— Keepsie’s sleeves—as he reached the table.

  “He’s loyal, Keepsie. I am as sure as I can be without actually reading his mind,” he said.

  Keepsie nodded, staring at Ian. He grinned at her. She fought the urge to grin back; she was still unsure. Half of her wanted to laugh, the other half wanted to kick him out.