“Speaking of subtlety,” Nova muttered as they started down a jogging trail. “I’d been wondering if she could do that in civilian clothing. I wasn’t sure if there was something in the Renegade uniform that allowed her to switch between forms without losing her clothes, or if it was a part of her power.”
“I wonder about those details sometimes too. Like, Simon can make his clothes disappear, and also small objects if he’s holding them—but he can’t touch a car or a building and make the whole thing disappear. It’s interesting to figure out the extent of someone’s abilities. Of course, that’s what we have training sessions for.”
“Could Danna carry an object around with her, do you think? Not just clothing?”
He pondered the question, trying to remember if he’d ever seen Danna disappear with a weapon, but she’d always been more comfortable in hand-to-hand combat. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask her when we start Agent N training next week. Wouldn’t make much sense to equip her with a neutralizer gun if she’s just going to lose it the first time she transforms.”
Nova grunted in agreement. “I suppose we’ve all got weaknesses,” she said. “Even the magnificent Monarch.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS A LITTLE BIT like being at the Renegade Parade again, with all the costumed kids and the booths full of cheesy memorabilia. The excited children all around her were adorable, even if their faith was misguided. Nova couldn’t help but think of Evie, who would have been only a little younger than Ruby’s brothers. If her family had lived, would she and Evie have been raised to love the Renegades as much as these kids did? Would Evie be among them now, wearing Thunderbird wings or a Dread Warden mask, preparing to run and tumble her way through a series of competitions to prove she could be a superhero … or at least a sidekick?
Or maybe Evie would have turned out to be a prodigy, like Nova and their dad. Like Uncle Ace. She’d shown no sign of powers when she was alive, but she was a baby, and a lot of prodigies didn’t develop abilities until later in life. Nova tried not to dwell on questions that could never be answered, but thinking of it made her heart ache.
“Nova?”
She startled. Adrian was watching her, his brow creased.
“Are you still thinking about that helmet?”
The helmet.
For once—no, she hadn’t been. A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “My sister, actually. I … I think she would have enjoyed something like this.”
Sadness echoed in Adrian’s expression. “I’m sorry. I forget that you had a little sister.”
She didn’t respond, though she knew what she was supposed to say. It’s okay … it was a long time ago …
But she’d never understood why that should make any difference. The loss of Evie still hurt every day.
“I know it’s not the same thing,” said Adrian, “but … I think Max would enjoy something like this too.”
Nova sighed. Adrian was right—Max would have liked the Sidekick Olympics, though the Bandit was far too powerful to be relegated to a mere sidekick role. Having experienced life in the tunnels for so long, she had some idea of how hard it must be for Max to be always inside his quarantine, watching the world pass by outside his prison. He missed out on so much. He missed out on the entire world.
“I wish he could be here,” said Nova. “I wish they both could.”
Their eyes met, mirrors of unfulfilled wishes, and Nova noticed a streak of gray dust on Adrian’s cheek. She frowned and reached up to brush it off. Adrian stilled. “You’re filthy,” she said and, now that she was looking, she spotted cobwebs clinging to his shoulder, and smudges of dirt on his sleeves. “What were you doing today?”
“Eh—nothing worthwhile,” he said. “Just a stroll through some defunct subway tunnels. You know, typical Saturday morning.”
“Subway tunnels?”
“It’s kind of a long story, but … I was given clearance to talk to Winston Pratt after the presentation the other day.”
One of her toes clipped into the trail and Nova stumbled. Adrian reached out to steady her. “You what?”
“I thought maybe I could learn something about the Anarchists. Don’t get excited; he didn’t say anything useful. But he did say that if I could bring him this puppet of his, he would give up some information.”
A puppet of his. Hettie. He had let Nova play with it occasionally when she was little and it had always felt like a great honor.
“So I went looking for the puppet, but of course, everything was gone. All that’s down there now is a bunch of dead bees and some stray trash.”
Nova scowled. She hated to think of the Renegades picking through her home, analyzing and inspecting everything they found.
“Speaking of bees,” said Adrian, his tone lightening, “how’s your uncle’s beekeeping business?”
She laughed at the unexpected absurdity of the question. She’d nearly forgotten about the lie she’d told him in an effort to explain away Honey’s hives in her backyard. “Uh … not great, to be honest. But he’s not the type to give up.”
Adrian grinned. “That must be where you get it from.”
It was obviously a compliment and Nova felt her neck warming. “Oh yeah, stubbornness is definitely a family trait.”
Unbidden, Ace’s words turned through her head, reminding her that this was not a casual weekend outing. She had a mission, and Adrian was a part of it. Earn his trust. Earn his respect. Earn his affection.
It shouldn’t be that hard, she had been telling herself all week. Adrian was handsome, talented, honorable, kind. So why did every nerve in her body rebel at the thought of faking attraction to him? Of flirting with him, merely for the sake of flirting? Of pretending to be interested?
The answer was thrown back in her face, and she fidgeted with her bracelet.
Because maybe it wouldn’t be fake.
And to discover that she actually liked him, against all her better judgment, would cost far too much.
Still, if she was ever going to sneak useful information out of Adrian or use his loyalty to undermine his fathers, she had to get close to him.
She had to …
Her thoughts trailed off as her attention fell on a crop of trees around the north side of the lake. Her feet halted and she glanced around, spotting a small playground not far away. Her breath hitched. “Do you know where we are?”
“That seems like a trick question.”
She grabbed his sleeve and started walking again. “The statue glen is this way.”
“Statue glen?”
“Yeah, you know. You had that drawing of it in your sketchbook, the one you showed me when we were watching the library. The statue of the hooded figure?”
“Oh—right. You said you used to go there when you were a kid?”
“Only once.” Nova couldn’t quite explain the giddiness that was surging through her limbs. Her feet sped up almost of their own accord. They rounded a corner and the paved path turned one way, while a smaller gravel trail led into a strip of dense woodland. “My parents brought me to that playground, but I wandered off and found…” Nova pushed back a low-hanging branch and froze.
She stood at the top of a rough, moss-covered staircase. The steps curved down into a small ravine, surrounded by towering oak trees and dense shrubs. “This,” she whispered.
She descended into the glen. The clearing was not much bigger than the bedroom she shared with Honey at the row house, with a short rock wall set in a circle around the edges. A wrought-iron bench on one side faced a solitary statue.
Nova felt like she’d stepped back in time. Nothing had changed, not since she was a little girl.
“This is silly, but … until I saw that drawing you’d done, there had been a part of me that thought maybe this place was my own little secret. Which makes no sense. Probably thousands of people come here every year. But … being so little when I found it, I guess I felt like it belonged to me. Like maybe I’d imagined it into existen
ce.” She chuckled and knew she would have been embarrassed to admit this to anyone else, at any other time. But being here again was so surreal she couldn’t bring herself to care.
She circled the statue. It was exactly as she remembered, if maybe sporting a touch more moss than it had back then. A hooded figure dressed in loose robes, like a medieval monk. The face carved beneath the hood was amorphous, with closed eyes and a contented smile and rounded features. Its hands were stretched toward the sky, like it was trying to catch something.
She did not know how old the statue was, but it looked like it had stood there for a thousand years. Like it would stand there for a thousand more.
“I’ve only known about this place for a couple years,” said Adrian. “Though I’ve been back to sketch a handful of times. How old were you when you found it?”
“Four or five,” she said, trailing a finger along the statue’s sleeve. “That night, I dreamed about it. This was before I stopped sleeping, obviously, and to this day it’s the only dream I can remember in perfect detail.” She surveyed the glen. The woods were so dense here the sounds from the festival could no longer be heard. Only bird melodies and rustling leaves. “I dreamed that I was walking through a jungle, with flowers bigger than my head, and a canopy so dense I couldn’t see the sky. The whole place hummed with life … insects and birds … Except I kept coming across things that didn’t belong there. Concrete steps that were covered in moss, and vines dangling from street lamps instead of trees…” She swirled her hand through the air, tracing the vines from memory. “It was Gatlon, but it was in ruins. Just a jungle now, all overgrown. And then … I found this clearing, and there was the statue. It was facing away from me at first, but even before I got close, I knew that it was holding something. So I walked around it, and I looked up, and…” She paused, feeling like she was back in that dream, drowning in the sense of wonder she’d almost forgotten.
“And then you woke up?” Adrian guessed.
She snapped her attention away from the vision and glared at him. “No. The statue was holding something.” She hesitated, feeling childish now, and a little defensive.
“Are you going to make me guess?” said Adrian.
She shook her head and tried to temper the emotion she felt at the memory. “It was holding a … a star.”
Only in saying it out loud did Nova realize how ridiculous it sounded. “Whatever that means,” she finished lamely.
“Dream logic,” said Adrian. “Or … possibly nightmare logic. I can’t tell if this was a good dream or not.”
Nova chuckled. “It was a good dream. I’m not sure why, given that all of civilization had collapsed, but … it was a really good dream.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “My parents were furious when they finally found me, and they never brought me back to that playground. But I never forgot about that dream. I must have fantasized about finding that star for years afterward.”
“Funny how some dreams stick with you,” said Adrian, sitting down on the grass and stretching his long legs in front of him. “You’re lucky. Most of the dreams I remember from childhood were nightmares. Or … a nightmare. I had a recurring one for years.”
Nova sat down next to him. “About what?”
He squirmed. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not important.”
“And mine was?”
“Yes,” he insisted. “Yours was amazing. A jungle? Collapsed civilization? A statue holding a star? That’s epic. Whereas mine was just…” He waved a hand carelessly. “You know. A nightmare. I don’t even remember that much about it, other than how much it terrified me.”
“Let me guess,” said Nova, cupping her cheek in one hand. “You used to dream that you arrived at HQ only to realize you’d forgotten to put on clothes that morning.”
He shot her an annoyed look. “I was, like, four. HQ didn’t even exist yet.”
“Oh.”
“No, it was more like … there was this thing, watching me, all the time. I called it the monster, because I was original like that. Half the time I couldn’t even see it, but I would know it was there, waiting to…”
“To what?”
“I’m not sure. Kill me, maybe. Or kill my mom or all the people I cared about. I don’t think I ever had a dream where it actually did anything, other than lurk in the background, waiting to grab me or chase me.” He shuddered. “In hindsight, it’s probably not that surprising. I grew up surrounded by superheroes. Every time my mom left our apartment I didn’t know if she would ever come back. And the news was always full of stories of people getting kidnapped or being found dead in gutters … What was my subconscious supposed to do with all that information?” He shot her a wistful smile. “I can see why your subconscious thought it would be better to just let the whole city collapse.”
A surprised laugh escaped her, and though she knew Adrian was joking, she wondered if there was a hint of truth to his words.
“Nightmares,” she mused. “I don’t miss them.”
Adrian’s face softened, and she couldn’t quite look away. Her nerves tingled.
“We should probably get back,” he murmured, without breaking eye contact. Without moving at all.
“Probably,” agreed Nova. But she couldn’t move either. Anticipation mingled with nervousness. Her heart pounded like a mallet.
Earn his affection.
She glimpsed his hand resting in the grass and tried to work up the courage to touch him. She tried to channel Honey Harper, imagining what she would do. A brush of her shoulder, a graze of her fingertips?
The thought of it made her shiver.
What would Honey do?
Nova’s gaze skipped down to Adrian’s lips.
She gulped and leaned forward.
Adrian took in a sudden breath and, before Nova knew what was happening, he had jumped to his feet and started brushing himself off. “Yeah, wow, we need to hurry,” he said, glancing at his wristband. “Don’t want to be late for … uh … jousting or … whatever it was…”
Nova gaped up at him.
Sweet rot. She had tried to kiss him and … he had rejected her.
So, that’s what that felt like.
Mortification overtook her, and she was grateful that he seemed determined not to look at her, as it gave her a moment to gather her wits and shove down her disappointment.
Shove it far, far down inside.
So far down that she could almost convince herself it wasn’t there at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NOVA WASN’T SURE which riddle was more frustrating.
Adrian, who had gone from trying to kiss her at the amusement park to acting like she had a contagious, incurable disease.
Or Ace’s helmet, which was trapped inside an unopenable box.
Nova wasn’t fond of riddles in general, but of the two currently plaguing her, she found it far less uncomfortable to focus on the chromium box, and so she had spent all morning sitting at the front desk outside the artifacts warehouse contemplating just that.
How do you open an unopenable box?
How do you destroy an indestructible material?
What could be strong enough to safely get past the chromium and free Ace’s helmet from its prison?
Nova still didn’t have the answer, but she knew who did. Captain Chromium. He had made the box. He must know how to unmake it. And though Nova wasn’t sure what she could say to him to get him to give up this secret, she knew she would have to try.
Before Ace faded away into nothing.
She was caught up in a very long, very clever, very imaginary conversation with the Captain when the elevator doors dinged and none other than her second riddle strolled into the reception area. Nova jerked upward. “Adrian?”
He was practically bouncing on his feet as he hurried to her desk. “It’s here,” he said, beaming.
She gaped at him, feeling like she should know what it was, but all she could think about was the helmet.
; “Excuse me?”
“I was thinking that all that stuff from the tunnels had probably gotten thrown away after it was checked for evidence, but I talked to the head of crime-scene investigation this morning and she told me it’s all been brought here. They don’t throw anything away until an investigation is closed, so right now all the Anarchists’ stuff is supposedly just sitting around in a stockpile somewhere, waiting to be tagged and categorized and”—he waved his hand absently toward the vault—“whatever it is that happens here, exactly.”
Nova studied him, her stomach dropping. “Winston’s puppet.”
Settling his elbows onto the desk, Adrian leaned toward her. “Exactly. On top of that, I’ve gotten approval from both the Council and Winston’s counselor. He can have the puppet in exchange for information, just as long as Snapshot checks it first to be sure it isn’t hiding some secret magical power.”
Winston’s puppet. That he was willing to trade information for.
Nova swallowed. “Oh. That’s … great.”
“Is Snapshot in?”
The door to the filing room opened, but it was Callum, not Snapshot, that strolled out. He froze as soon as he saw Adrian. “No way! Sketch in the flesh! I’m a total fan.”
“Oh, thanks,” said Adrian, accepting a firm handshake with a bewildered expression.
Nova gestured between them. “Uh … Adrian, Callum. Callum, Adrian.”
“Are you here to check something out?” said Callum. “We’ve got a feather quill that I think you’d really like.”
“Oh yeah?” said Adrian, though he quickly shook away his interest. “No, thanks. Actually, I was told there’s a place here where they’re storing all the stuff that was confiscated from the Anarchist holdings in the subway tunnels?”
“Sure, there’s a storeroom in the back. But I’m warning you, it’s a mess back there. It’s on my list to get cleaned up, but…” Callum shrugged. “Hey, maybe that’d be a good job for us to do together, yeah?”
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