Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

  He let my hair drop without a flicker—or panicked freakout—of recognition and I slumped with relief. Of course he misread it. “Maybe we’ll get acquainted later,” he tossed off as he moved to the next table.

  Nobody else looked at us, and that was getting weird; the dining room’s lights were kind of dim, but it wasn’t like the tabloids hadn’t been spreading my unmasked face around recently. But none—none—of the guests or staff were giving me a Save us! look either, and that was just against human nature. I’d put being ignored before down to LA-society politeness; now it was freaky.

  Which didn’t mean it wasn’t good, since I didn’t want these social-justice redistributionists to panic and spring into hostage mode; there were too many to protect and I could all-too-easily picture someone else’s brains spread over the white tablecloths.

  And I didn’t even want to see theirs there, no matter how rude they got.

  Our robber moved on from our neighbor’s table, leaving the nice older couple there more than a little shaky. I really hoped it wasn’t their anniversary or something, and worried about the lady; she looked unhealthily pale and wasn’t breathing well.

  But this was okay. It would be okay if everyone just kept ignoring me—our robbers could sweep the room and switch to getaway mode and then I could pursue with nobody to get hurt. I wasn’t a local cape, but it was legal so long as I didn’t lose contact; I’d get somebody even if they dispersed on the streets, turn him over to the LAPD if they just—

  “No! No!” The panicked cry came from the man eating alone three tables away and our personal robber clubbed him with the pistol he’d waved at me. Screams spread as the man, halfway to his feet when the heavy weight met his head, crashed to the dining-room floor and his attacker pointed his gun. And still nobody looked at me until I launched myself with no time even for a prayer.

  “Everybody down everybody down everybody down!”

  And the lights went out—which didn’t slow me down at all. I hit the would-be shooter hard, carrying him over the table and into the next-closest—dropped him but not before crushing his gun hand while disarming him. At least he still had his fingers.

  Silk Road’s patrons and staff followed my screamed instructions, but the anarchists didn’t—they stayed on their feet, nice glowing targets in the black illuminated by their body heat in my super-duper vision. I collected and scattered guns, calling on them to surrender every time I bobbed up to give them something to focus on and shoot at in their blindness. The smart ones tried to run—also stupid since they couldn’t see—but none of them shot down.

  Even so, my heart stayed in my throat the entire time and I didn’t breathe except to keep shouting for their attention over the bangs and screams until the last of the seven were down and the crashing chaos died. And the lights came back.

  It was a wreckage but not—thank God—a bloody one. The seven had joined everyone else on the floor—I’d dropped each hard when I emptied their hands and left them broken wrists or crushed hands for good measure, and I didn’t see any injured patrons. I settled to an upright table in the center of the dining room, feeling light headed.

  “Everybody wearing a hoody will stay on the floor, and if you move I’ll hang you from the ceiling. Would everyone else please move to the walls? I’m sorry for the fright you’ve been given.”

  Tony rose from where he’d obviously, with care and foresight, gotten our neighboring couple to the floor and then crouched over them. Now he helped them up and away as staff began remembering themselves and doing the same. Some of the less shaken ones even picked up dropped guns as they moved away from my targets.

  I couldn’t see “Mei,” but then I didn’t expect to; she would be somewhere with the lights if she wasn’t gone now, and I forgot about her and tried to look menacing—not easy to do standing on a table in my kicky shoes and sparkly dress, but I’d just inflicted serious pain on all of them and their monkey hindbrains wouldn’t forget that soon.

  And I could hear sirens.

  Minutes later the dining room flooded with half a dozen blue-boys and I climbed down. Tony helped me, a totally pointless and very nice gesture. “Excuse me?” I called to our maître d'. A bit pale himself, he did seem to at least be tracking things. “Have you seen Mei?”

  He stopped giving the staff quiet orders and drew breath, looking around the dining room. “No. Not since these men arrived.”

  I sighed. “Look in your supply closets, but I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “Thank you.” He nodded and dismissed my bizarre suggestion, but he’d remember it as soon as he had a moment, I was sure of that.

  Tony chuckled beside me. “Do I want to know?”

  “Not really.” I recognized the expression on the officer headed towards me, and sighed again. Debriefing time. Turning to Tony, I looked him over. His jacket was rumpled and he’d loosened his “hangman’s noose,” but he was still in better shape than numbers Three and Four. And he’d acquitted himself surprisingly well back there…

  “I can’t believe I’m going to ask this, but— Would you like another date? A do-over?”

  His half-smile spread to full, without a trace of irony or sarcasm as he looked around at the trashed room and back at me.

  “I’ll need to check my insurance, but sure.”

  He could be Number Six.

  Document 43.5284, recovered text file.

  To Blackstone:

  I’m sure you’ve received the official police report. I’ll write it up tomorrow and explain whatever doesn’t make sense in the debriefing when I get back. After searching all of the “anarchists” turned up no Verne-Tech, I discreetly spoke to the maître d' about signals-jamming and mental manipulation and he privately confessed that the Silk Road employs a high priced witch to maintain anti-eavesdropping and anonymity charms to shield the restaurant’s patrons from unwanted surveillance or attention. I don’t think he knows how powerful they are, but they explained my weird anonymity and Shell’s silence, and they’re harmless enough that I promised not to tell anyone official. I do recommend Ozma look at them and write up the basic technique of the anonymity charm for the DSA to know about without telling them where it came from. Banking some favors with Veritas and his people may pay dividends later.

  Speaking of Veritas and favors, he’s called and asked me to join a special DSA-CAI task force trying to trap a superhuman serial killer. I said yes and am leaving LA tonight, so Quin’s celebrity-dating scheme will have to wait. Please tell her that I’ve let Tony know and that I look forward to seeing the ducks when I return.

  Sincerely, Hope.

  Killing Sleeping Beauty

  by Marion G. Harmon

  “The problem with making yourself the sword of justice is knowing when to stop chopping.”

  Jacky Bouchard, aka Artemis.

  He was trouble in a cop-suit. Looking up at the ringing of the shop’s silver bell and seeing him push his way into Beantown made me reconsider my open-door policy. Not that I didn’t like Detective Paul Negri, but since I’d slipped from being on the side of the angels—or at least the law—the New Orleans Police Department and I didn’t have much to do with each other. I’d fallen from grace when I became the completely deniable enforcer for the Midnight Ball—New Orleans’ completely deniable vampire familia headed by the Master of Ceremonies—and Paul was too much of a straight-arrow to not take my defection personally.

  Not that I’d had any real choice.

  At three in the afternoon, tourists and locals packed the small coffeehouse. I’d been up for two hours, and sat at my “office” table where I could watch over things while working on the shop’s books on my epad and sampling our latest delivery of Ethiopian shade-bean. He ignored the serving counter to push through the close-packed little tables to my corner.

  “Paul.” I lowered my cup, careful to set it on its Beantown coaster (I hadn’t named the place Beantown for Boston, but tourists from New England loved to buy them). Edwardo appeared at Pau
l’s elbow with a Peeler’s Cup, the special house blend we complimented to any officers of the law who crossed our door. Half of the uniforms on night patrol in the French Quarter dropped by at least once a night for theirs.

  “How are you, chère?” he asked as soon as Edwardo left.

  “Emerson send you?”

  He winced. My accusing him of being here on orders from his boss was probably unfair, but he hadn’t exactly earned fairness. “It’s good to see you, Jacky.”

  “You too. Emerson send you?” I put an impatient edge in my voice, but looked past his head. I wasn’t being rude; eye-contact magnified a vampire’s influence and I wasn’t going to push him, even accidentally.

  He sipped his Peeler’s Cup, grimaced. The stuff was bitter and strong, meant to shock the half-asleep mind awake and set the drinker’s nerves dancing. It wasn’t drunk for pleasure, though a lot of uniforms had told me there wasn’t anything else like it once they’d gotten used to it. Kind of like fang-addicts.

  “I need your help.” Putting the cup down, he reached into his blazer jacket and slid his cellphone across the table. Its screen showed a raven-haired, fresh faced young girl, fifteen or sixteen. She looked happy.

  I studied her. “A case?”

  “I wish.” He crossed himself, something he always did when saying a prayer in his head. A prayer for her, I assumed. Which saint had he invoked? “Her name is Sabrina Garnette.”

  “I’m just a PI these days, Paul. I do security, bodyguarding, private investigations. Which of those do you want?”

  “All three, chère. But it can’t be a job.” He managed to look both annoyed and shamed, quite a trick and the conversation lost what little pleasure it had.

  “Midnight Ball business.” The words tasted sour. If Lieutenant Emerson and his team were going to lock me out, sending Paul to negotiate a favor was just shitty. “Dammit, Paul—”

  He held up his hand. “Please, chère. The boss didn’t send me. If he knew I was talking to you, it would be worth my badge.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second. The ruthless bastard probably knew right where Paul was, just not officially. Which meant if whatever this was came to light officially and in a bad way, then Paul would be the one to take it in the teeth instead of his rat boss.

  Realizing I was showing fang, I got a grip. Lieutenant Emerson was a rat and a lot of other things, but he was a good rat—he did what he thought he had to do to protect the people in his precinct, and most of the time he was right. “Okay, Paul. Tell me what your boss can’t tell me.”

  He accepted that. “The girl’s got a friend who’s got her back. Her parents sure don’t—they’re a business couple, out of town half the time. The girl practically raises herself.”

  Great, the perfect target for the kind of trouble I usually got called by the Master of Ceremonies to straighten out. The cops making the call was new. “Seems lively. So her friend thinks she’s in trouble, but can’t prove it?”

  He nodded. “She’s smart, spotted all the signs. ‘Course, Miss Garnette could just be getting into drugs—just about the same social cues—but she’s gotten into goth, too.”

  Shit. “And what have you done?”

  “We interviewed her. But we’ve got no proof she went anywhere she shouldn’t, and without it we can’t get a warrant for a physical or psychological examination.”

  One that might show evidence of bites or repeated enthrallment. I looked at her picture again. “Behavior changes?”

  “Plenty according, to her friend. She reported her anonymously.”

  I was beginning to like her friend; most girls that age wouldn’t be observant enough, thoughtful enough, and then strong enough to figure out something was seriously wrong and take steps that amounted to “narking”—the unpardonable teen sin. If that’s what this was.

  If it was, then she’d probably tried to intervene herself, first. Depending on Sabrina’s degree of enthrallment—if that’s what it was—the results could have been scary as hell.

  “We put a watch on her place for a couple of weeks,” Paul went on. “But she’s not sneaking out and we don’t have the manpower to keep it up. With nothing to use…”

  With nothing concrete, they couldn’t go in to look for more. Glancing up from the phone, I caught Paul’s expression before he smoothed it out. He was resentful, worried, tired, obviously the two weeks’ watchman. I handed the phone back.

  “I’ll talk to some people, Paul. That’s all I can do.”

  I didn’t wink, but I nodded. He met my eyes—a stupid thing to do with a vampire, even in the day—and unwound just a little, letting a little more of his fatigue show. If the Peelers Cup wasn’t doing anything for him, he needed days of downtime. Standing, he drained it, gagged a bit.

  “God, chère. That stuff’s horrible.”

  “If I’d made it for you I’d have spit in it. Go get some sleep. Or go out to the bayou where you can get furry and chase something.” I mimicked howling at the Moon. He actually laughed.

  “I just might. Be careful, chère.”

  “Because just talking is dangerous? Go away, Paul. And next time come back after dark. Acacia misses you.”

  The first “person” I talked to was a ghost; not like Casper, the ghost who lived in my coffee shop, apartment, and PI office (Acacia called him Charley) but a cyber-ghost. I didn’t even need to leave my table. I could have gone to the Department of Superhuman Affairs for this (I was their civilian consultant here in the Big Easy), but Gray and I cordially detested each other. At least I detested my sometime-DSA handler; I had no idea what he thought of me—the man had the polar opposite of charm, and he used it knowingly.

  Shell answered as soon as I inserted the earbud and slid on the special shades she’d sent me just a month ago. The “reality plus” projector in the shades painted her virtual image directly on my eyeballs so that it looked to me like she’d taken the chair emptied by Paul.

  “Hey Jacky! What can I do for you?”

  I snorted. Shell usually presented virtually as an older teen—which she chronologically was, having lost three years while she was “dead” and then a few more months because she was actually a backup—but lately she’d been presenting a bit more mature. I didn’t see many personalized t-shirts anymore, and her red hair was cut shorter in a shoulder length doo. She wore a military-style blue and white jumpsuit with a Chicago Sentinels patch on it.

  “I need to know everything about somebody fast.”

  “And you can’t get your DSA contacts to do it for you?”

  “No.” I didn’t elaborate.

  “Gotcha. Who?”

  “Sabrina Garnette. Local teen.”

  “Okay… Sabrina Eleanor Garnette, seventeen.” She projected an image of the girl’s yearbook picture and I nodded.

  “That’s her. What can you tell me?”

  “Nice Garden District address, good school grades until recently, no juvie record, no electronic footprint you wouldn’t expect. She’s not on any sensitive lists.”

  So she wasn’t a known or suspected breakthrough. That had been the first thing I’d thought of checking off; it could also account for the behavior changes and Paul’s people wouldn’t have known if the DSA hadn’t seen fit to tell them. And they wouldn’t have; if Sabrina had appeared on the DSA’s radar as a quiet breakthrough, the only way they’d share was if someone with her suspected power-set became active.

  If I’d asked Gray, he’d have asked why I wanted to know.

  “Good to hear. Can you send me her address, electronic receipts, and your best maps of her neighborhood and home?” Her financials (and I’d bet her parents had given her a personal account and debit card) were the first thing to check; Paul couldn’t without the warrant.

  “In your super-secure mailbox as we speak. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s—yes. How’s Hope?”

  “Doing a job for the DSA right now.” Shell’s whole body said she wasn’t very happy about it, and I
kept myself from smiling. She probably didn’t think that Hope should be on active anything yet, still working up her arm after the hit she’d taken in Tokyo. “Oh! I’ll send you the news report of her latest date.”

  “I could use a laugh. Want to run a surveillance job with me?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Midnight Ball business?” Ever since she’d had a chance to meet the Master of Ceremonies, Leróy, and Darren during our Littleton adventure, she’d been deeply fascinated by what I did down here. It wouldn’t hurt to show her something that was at most PG-13.

  “Maybe. You in?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then I’ll call you tonight. Later.” I removed and stashed the shades and earbud, opened my Shell-secured epad mailbox to study what she’d sent me while finishing my drink. Sabrina did have a debit card, and lucky me, she used it on a regular taxi service. Some of those debits had been made after dark, and a follow-up note to Shell got me a record of those fares from the cab company. (Hope hated it when Shell used her 22nd Century quantum-computer powers to hack any system she needed to loot for information, but I’d always figured that when you knew a Cyberspace Goddess it was stupid not to ask for divine favors.)

  One taxi fare put Sabrina at Angels three months ago.

  Shit.

  If I was the enforcer for the Midnight Ballroom that Paul and his boss thought I was, I’d have gone right to the Master of Ceremonies. Of course they also thought I was a loyal minion of the DSA (which made them just as unhappy—cops hate feds). Paul asked once how I kept my loyalties straight, one of our more heated conversations. The easy answer was I didn’t. I had zero loyalty to any organization—government, criminal, or otherwise. What I did have were personal loyalties, and I could number them on one hand. I liked MC, sort of, but he wasn’t on that hand and he knew it. It served his purpose that the rest of the Midnight Ball didn’t know it.