“You’d better get going,” she told Joann. “You don’t really fit in here, you know? You’re making people nervous.”
Joann just smiled. “I get that a lot. So, can you give me a hint about what you’re all doing here?”
The joker glared. “What, you think I’m going to spy for you?”
“I’m just curious. I’d hate to see you all get in trouble.”
“You mean more trouble than I’m already in, with my parents’ friends sending people like you after me?”
“There’s trouble, then there’s trouble,” Joann said. “Just be careful. Don’t get in over your head if you can help it. I don’t know exactly when or where you’re going to launch the protest you all are obviously planning, but you might think twice about putting yourself in the middle of that.”
“Thanks for your concern,” Katrina shot back, full of sarcasm and contempt.
She wasn’t a kid, Joann reminded herself. She should give the young woman some credit.
Katrina picked up two pieces of charcoal, one with her normal hand and one with a snake limb, which curled around it and wielded it like a sword. She bent over the paper and used both pieces to add marks, swoops and whirls and lines that built into a picture. Katrina’s work was beautiful. With just the one color, she’d created a shaded series of images on the paper, a cobbled street turning into a rain of flowers that in turn transformed into a woman’s curling hair, and the woman’s strong face was upturned, determined. Someone else had been wandering the streets and looking at Mucha’s art.
“It’s nice,” Joann said, inadequately.
Katrina flashed a smile that managed to express both gratitude and sarcasm.
“Hello, I’m Erik.” The young German man returned, putting his arm protectively around Katrina and glaring at Joann, who tried very hard not to smile with amusement. “And you are?”
“I’m Joann,” she answered calmly. “You’ve got quite a community here, Erik. I wish you all the best.”
“And what do you want here?”
“I’m just a tourist, passing through and admiring Katrina’s work.” She didn’t expect anything different than the look of stark disbelief he gave her. “I’ll let you alone. You all have a good evening.”
After nodding to them both, she slipped out of the basement and back to the street.
Joann was followed most of the way back to the embassy, which didn’t surprise her at all. Probably the spooks Ray had spotted staking out the hotel. Tour security had spent enough time warning the delegates that they would likely all be trailed by some kind of foreign intelligence agents if they went into the city, she didn’t expect herself to be any different. At night, in the dark, they were easy to spot, mostly because foot traffic had thinned. There were two of them a couple of blocks behind her, one on each side of the street. The one on her side was of average height, with close-cropped dark hair atop an angular head. He wore a suit and a brown leather jacket and appeared to be looking for an address, checking a card in his hand against street markers posted on building corners and signs above shop fronts. Since he’d been doing this for the past ten blocks, Joann didn’t quite believe his attempts to find a particular address. Not to mention the fact that every five minutes or so, he glanced across the street to his partner. This second man was large, half a head taller than the people he passed on the sidewalk. This was the only clear detail about him. He wore a long overcoat, the collar turned up, hands hidden in the pockets, and walked with his shoulders hunched to his ears. His steps were steady, but slow. He moved like a man walking through a storm, though the sky was clear, the air cool but not uncomfortable. She might have overlooked him as simply an old man lost in thought during an evening walk, except that the smaller man in the leather coat kept looking at him, and the large man would occasionally nod back.
No matter how the medieval streets of the old part of the city twisted and jogged, turning abruptly and merging into squares before breaking off again at an odd angle, they kept on her. This was their city, after all—she pegged them as local, not KGB.
Through the Old Town and along the main tourist drag back to the hotel, few lights illuminated the streets, but those few were enough. Joann pushed her cloak back over her shoulder and raised a hand as if feeling the air for new rainfall. She focused on the lights and breathed in. Two streetlights, one ahead of her and one behind her, sparked and went dark. A faint tracery of light followed her hand, the sign that the electricity was now part of her. She felt it hum along her skin, warming her flesh, and even her in bones. Almost pleasant, if she didn’t have to worry so much about what happened next. She was a human capacitor, a burst of lightning contained, wrapped in an insulting cloak to keep it all from roiling out—right until the moment she wanted it to.
She’d left the cobbled medieval streets and now walked along modern asphalt, with a modern steel drain grating on the far corner between her and the agents who trailed her. This, she targeted, sweeping back her cloak and flicking out her arm, sending a bolt of power arcing to the metal. A crack like thunder echoed, and sparks rained. Joann turned the corner, using the explosion to distract from her exit. Her bolt of lightning shouldn’t have done too much damage—scorched the asphalt maybe—but it sure looked exciting.
Let them try to figure that out. They didn’t think they could follow her all the way back to the hotel unscathed, did they? A couple of blocks later, she ducked into a doorway to take a look, and sure enough, she seemed to have lost them. She brushed her hands together in a show of satisfaction.
Back at the hotel, Joann had maybe an hour to relax and get some sleep before going back on duty. Billy Ray caught her in the hotel lobby on her way in; likely, he’d been watching for her.
“Have a nice walk?” Ray asked, raising an eyebrow, leering, or that might have been just the odd shape of his mouth and jaw.
“I did indeed. I had company most of the way, couple of our friends from across the street I’m guessing.”
“They give you any trouble?”
“Nope, not even a little.” He didn’t need to know that she might have been a little excessive in her effort to lose them.…
“I know, you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, don’t remind me.”
She pulled off her hood, exposing her head, her close-cropped dark hair, her smile. She felt a static charge a tickling across her cheeks and scalp, the ambient energy in the room calling to her from the wiring, the light bulbs, and even from Ray’s beating heart. She’d have to put the hood back up in a minute before the hum turned into an itching, then a burning. She’d suck power in, then launch it back out in a blast that she couldn’t control.
“Ray, you’re just itching to have a go at taking care of me, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “You flirt harder than anyone I know, hon.”
“Is that what this is?”
He took a step toward her—a dangerous step. Energy poured off him, his ace-fueled strength flowing, and all she had to do was reach out and touch that craggy cheek.… He knew it, too. For all that he was grinning, his gaze was clouded. Maybe just a little bit afraid.
“One of these days I’m gonna try it, just to see what happens,” he said, when he was just a handspan away from her. All she’d have to do was lean forward to kiss him.
“You know where to find me,” she said, putting her hood up as she slipped around him and walked away. Behind her, he chuckled.
Joann couldn’t remember a time when her touch did not kill. Her first victim had been her own mother. That time was a blur, thankfully. The accident, the fear, the days of trying to figure out what had happened, and realizing that it was all her fault. Sequestered in the hospital, her father holding her while she cried. He wore a hazmat suit to prevent the least stray contact until the doctors could figure out the exact nature of her murderous ace. Thick rubber, slippery plastic, and a hissing gas mask were between them. He could hold her, but not touch her; she would never feel a gentle skin
-to-skin touch of kindness again. He couldn’t kiss her to make it better.
She spent a lot of time thinking about how different her life would have been if her father hadn’t stayed with her, if he’d blamed her instead of forgiving her. Rejected her and her freakish powers instead of embracing her—metaphorically, at least. On the days she wanted to wail and break windows and rip off her own flesh, he was there to talk her down. Would she have been able to live with herself, if he hadn’t been there to reassure her that this would all be worthwhile, someday?
“This power of yours, of course it’s dangerous. It can be destructive, if you aren’t careful. But so can electricity, knives, cars—and these are tools we need. Joann, you have to figure out a way to make this thing good. Use it to build things up instead of break things down.”
Because of her father, she’d gone into government service instead of to an institution. Most days, she knew she’d taken the right path. She chose her ace name, Lady Black, herself, and it had many levels of meaning. It was the color of the absorbing side of her cloak, and the color of her skin. It represented the danger of her dark power. The title, the Lady, reminded people to treat her with respect.
The delegates had meetings and tours all the next day. This was another stop where the stated mission of the tour on paper and in reality didn’t quite match up. Ostensibly, the delegates were meant to observe with impartial interest an Eastern bloc Communist government’s innovations in treating the wild card virus, and report on conditions experienced by victims of the virus. In reality, they were treated to another dog-and-pony show of sparkling clean institutions and carefully staged interviews with handpicked and coached jokers and even a few aces in controlled settings. Czech officials presented a middle-aged man who could telekinetically rearrange the print in any book to read as The Communist Manifesto. Ideologically impressive, no doubt, however questionable the ace’s actual usefulness was. The American delegates were polite enough not to ask how many of Czechoslovakia’s more powerful aces were working for intelligence agencies or had been recruited by the KGB, and the Czech guides were polite enough not to offer the information.
Joann’s excursion in town last night illustrated that at least some of the country’s virus victims went unnoticed by the system. The country didn’t sequester all its jokers, which made it marginally better than some, she supposed.
In her role as bodyguard and babysitter, Joann accompanied one of the tours, mostly made up of American politicians and WHO officials rather than the celebrities, who were off with Billy Ray playing photogenic tourists in the Old Town. After so many weeks of this sort of the thing, the routine was established: Dr. Tachyon grilled the rather stunned local medical professionals, who stammered answers in rough English or sometimes French, or spoke through interpreters. The politicians looked on, feigning interest through glazed expressions. Cramer was here, but Joann hadn’t had a chance to speak with her about Katrina. That came after hours, while most of the other delegates were sipping afternoon drinks in the hotel bar, and the congresswoman once again invited Joann to the front room of her suite.
“I found her,” Joann said, and Cramer let out a sigh. “She’s not interested in coming home. Or even talking about it, really.”
“Is she all right? She’s not in trouble, is she?” She was sitting at the edge of a straight-backed chair with scrolled detail, pulled out from a breakfast table.
That depends on how you define trouble. “I think she’s all right,” Joann said, carefully neutral. “But like I said, she’s an adult. If she doesn’t want to talk, we can’t make her.” She hoped this would be the end of it.
“Do you think … I would like to talk to her, Lady Black. You know where she is; can you arrange a meeting?”
Not only was this way outside Joann’s normal responsibilities, Cramer was bordering on using her position to gain special consideration—a minor abuse of power practiced by politicians from time immemorial, but still an abuse, if Joann chose to call her on it. She didn’t want to go hunting down the wayward artist again.
“Ms. Duboss was certain—”
“Her family is worried about her, you must understand that. If I could talk to her myself, at least then I’d be able to give her parents firsthand information about her. That can’t be so difficult, can it?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The formal embassy reception was tonight. She really didn’t have time. But truth be told, she was curious herself. Another trip to the city center, and maybe she’d get a hint about what the kids were up to with their protest plans.
When she arrived at the curved alley with the basement art commune, the place was blocked off with police cars, roof lights flashing. A couple of uniformed cops loitered, looking bored. More cops were passing in and out through the basement doorway, carrying posters torn from the wall, stacks of paper, and even buckets of paint and art supplies. They took their haul to a short moving truck parked at the other end of the alley and tossed everything in, unmindful of how it landed. If she asked, she was certain they’d tell her they were collecting evidence, no matter how haphazard the process looked from the outside. These guys were standard law enforcement, not scary secret service or the like. From her vantage, lingering at the corner to watch the proceedings, eavesdropping on conversations in a language she didn’t understand, she couldn’t guess what crime they were investigating, if that even mattered. They’d found the artists’ base, and they’d shut it down.
In New York, a crowd of onlookers would have gathered at both ends of the alleys, elbowing each other and pressing forward for a better look, and half a dozen cops and barriers would be on hand just to keep back the public. Here, there was no one. Passersby pointedly walked on, heads bowed and gazes averted. Lingering at a scene like this drew unwanted attention. Joann took the hint and left.
She kept an eye out for her friends, the two agents who’d tailed her yesterday. She had a sinking feeling they might have been the ones to put the cops onto the basement hideout—after she’d shown them the way there. They didn’t seem to be around at the moment. But then, they didn’t need to be.
At the next intersection, a figure reached out, and an orange bundle of tentacles twined around her arm. At the first hint of a touch, Joann leapt backward, getting herself out of reach and wrapping her insulating cloak more firmly around her.
Katrina Duboss, wearing a different sweater, shawl, and bohemian peasant skirt today, stood at the corner.
“Do I really gross you out that much?” she said.
“My touch kills,” Joann said. “You could have died, if you’d gotten skin.” The girl paled. And yes, Joann got that reaction a lot. Almost worse than the lack of touch was the necessity of explaining it to people—and the look of pity they donned when they understood the implications.
“You’re an ace?” Katrina asked. She squinted, peering under Joann’s hood. “Ace, or joker?”
That was a philosophical question for the ages, wasn’t it? The way some people recoiled from Joann in fear, she might very well be a joker, no matter what she saw when she looked in the mirror.
“Let’s walk, Katrina.” Joann gestured ahead, and she and Katrina continued on, side by side. The joker kept a healthy distance between them.
Joann was about to start the difficult conversation when Katrina asked, “Is it worth it? Being an ace, if that’s the price you have to pay for it?”
Nobody had ever put it to her in such blunt terms, but the question was elegant. Elegant and unanswerable—no one had given her the option of paying a price for her ace. Both the power and the price had landed randomly.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t always think of myself as an ace. I’m just doing the best I can with what I have.”
“Yeah. Me, too,” she said.
After a few more steps Joann asked, “Did everyone get out okay?”
“Oh yeah. We saw them coming. No thanks to you.”
Even if Joann hadn’t led the police to their basement
, the kids were going to blame her for it. So be it, especially if it kept them from embarking on any potentially dangerous protest plans.
“Representative Cramer wants to meet you in person. You think you can take a few minutes for her? There’s a café near the hotel where you two should be able to get together without drawing too much attention.”
“I don’t want to talk to her. She’s just trying to pander to my parents.”
Couldn’t fault the kid for being perceptive. Joann tipped her head in acknowledgment.
Katrina said, “Why are you even working for Cramer? I looked you up—and the WHO tour. This seems way outside your job description.”
“I was curious. You and your friends are obviously planning something. Or you were.”
“Still are. This isn’t going to stop us. We got out everything we needed, and they can’t stop us. We can go tonight, if we want.”
Something about the look in her eye, the way she smiled, made Joann think this wasn’t hypothetical. “What exactly are you planning?” Joann asked.
“You’ll have to read it about it in the papers tomorrow.”
“This isn’t a game, Katrina. If these guys arrest you for doing something they don’t like, you’ll be in for a world of hurt. The embassy—your parents—might not be able to bail you out.”
She grimaced. “Oh, I know. My parents wouldn’t lift a finger to help me. The raid was just about intimidation. A scare tactic. It didn’t work.” She spoke with the chin-up, fist-clenched conviction of youth and righteousness.
“Is that what that Erik guy said? Is he putting you up to this?”
“Because a deluded little thing like me couldn’t possibly have my own opinions about it? Or maybe I’m just so grateful that any guy will even look at a twisted-up freak like me that I’d do anything for him?” She held up her arm, and the snakes writhed. Glinting light across the orange scales made her look like she held fire. “I’m not doing this because of Erik, or because I’m crazy, or trying to get back at my parents, or part of a cult, or anything. I’m doing this because I want to, because it’s a good thing to do, because I can help. I can use my trust fund money for something good instead of just going on fancy useless shopping sprees or whatever. Because Prague is beautiful, and Mucha and Dvořák and Kafka lived here, and because as stupid as it may look from the outside, protests like this are working. They’re going to work. And it doesn’t hurt to dream, does it?”
Wild Cards IV Page 45