Dreams of the Golden Age

by Carrie Vaughn

  “Water under the bridge. We all made mistakes.” She took another sip, considered. “You know, your father couldn’t see past his nose sometimes, but he was always there when he needed to be. Always.” Emphatic, it was a statement on her own life. A declaration that Celia wouldn’t argue, however much she might have wanted to.

  “Celia, you and Anna and Bethy will all be fine,” Suzanne declared.

  The door to the penthouse foyer slammed open and shut again, and teenage footsteps, like a herd of antelope, pounded in.

  “… I don’t care. If she asks I’m telling her, I’m not going to lie to cover your ass.” That was Bethy. Bethy swearing. The word sounded odd in her young voice. They were both growing up. At least her parents only ever had to deal with her. Celia had two of them. Double the revenge for her own teenage sins.

  Suzanne arched a brow at Celia, asking if she knew what that was about, and Celia only sighed, because she suspected she did.

  “Hey, girls,” she called to the foyer, and the footsteps stopped. A moment of quiet, and she could imagine them standing there, looking at each other, trying to figure out why Mom wasn’t in the right place for the afternoon routine. “How was school?” Celia added as a prompt. She rejected the very notion of asking, “Tell me what?”

  Side by side, a matched set in their uniforms, wide-eyed and uncertain, the two of them came cautiously into the living room, hesitating like they didn’t know what to expect. Mom and Grandma, drinking in the afternoon like a couple of degenerate lushes. It must have been shocking.

  Girls—they were young women. Anna at least was full grown. They’d long since lost their baby fat and had the lean frames they’d inherited from their athletic grandparents. They were both wearing bras, sneaking on mascara before school, and in a few short years they’d both fly the coop. Celia almost burst into tears.

  “So,” she said. “How was school?”

  “Fine,” they both said, in unison. It was kind of cute.

  “The ride home was good?”

  “Yeah,” Bethy said. Anna was chewing her lip, looking at the ceiling, the floor, the far window, everywhere but at her mother.

  “And school was boring like it always is?”

  Bethy looked at Anna, waiting for a cue. When Anna didn’t give her one, she mumbled, “Yeah.”

  It would be funny if Celia weren’t so twisted up with worry. She decided not to bring up the director’s call. Celia could see how puffy and shadowed Anna’s eyes were. Arguing about it wasn’t going to change anything, since Anna would just deny everything.

  Maybe she’d make Arthur talk to her. It would serve him right.

  “I really have a lot of homework, so I’m going to get to it, if that’s okay,” Anna said finally, pointing a thumb over her shoulder.

  “Okay,” Celia said. “I’m glad you’re home—” she called after them, but they’d already fled.

  She slumped against the back of the chair. The wine in her glass had somehow vanished. On the sofa, Suzanne looked like she was trying not to laugh. Celia glared.

  “Oh, honey, you’re doing fine,” her mother said. “Really, you’re all doing fine.”

  Time would tell, she supposed. A few more years, and maybe neither one of them would turn out to be a bank robber, or a henchman for the next master criminal to come along. Wouldn’t that be swell?

  Suzanne announced that it was time to start dinner, and the house settled into its early evening routine. Celia retreated to her office to go over a few last things and the next day’s list.

  An urgent e-mail flashed on her screen—from the assistant in the legal department. The initial report she’d asked for on Superior Construction was already done. And why shouldn’t it be, that’s why it was called an initial report. She opened the file and started reading.

  Summary: The lawyers believed they could get the lawsuit dismissed as baseless easily enough, but they thought it would be worthwhile to look into countersuing for bringing a frivolous suit. And this was why Celia hired lawyers. She definitely wanted to consider a countersuit.

  But what was interesting was the summary of the company itself. She had expected to discover that it was a subsidiary of a subsidiary, and that tracing the holding companies back far enough would reveal which of her crosstown development rivals was throwing up roadblocks. But the report wasn’t that complicated. Superior Construction was only a few years old, and it didn’t have much real history at all. It had never been awarded a contract with the city—it was unclear that it had ever made bids on any projects, which the lawyers found encouraging because proving West Corp hadn’t damaged their business would be that much easier. But the details still nagged at Celia; she couldn’t help but think this was all smoke and mirrors. Most telling: The company had a CEO and board listed. But the ultimate ownership? Hidden behind the law firm that had drawn up the incorporation papers. Which meant the whole thing was a front that apparently existed for the sole purpose of making Celia’s life difficult. And she had a pretty good idea who might be behind it.

  But suspecting that Danton Majors had thrown up a fake company to derail West Corp and proving it were two different matters.

  Before dinner, she drifted to Anna’s room, stepping softly and listening carefully, not eavesdropping so much as feeling like she was edging toward a minefield. She didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Steeling herself, she knocked softly on the door frame. “Anna?”

  Celia expected to hear shuffling as Anna stopped whatever she was doing to arrange herself in front of her homework instead. But she only heard music playing softly from her computer.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mind if I peek in?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Anna said, and Celia cracked open the door.

  Anna was lying across her bed in front of an open book. History text, looked like. So the kid really was doing homework; Celia never doubted. The girl looked up, blinking expectantly. She’d changed out of her school uniform and into grubby jeans and a T-shirt. Her red hair was loose, flopping around her face, and she chewed absently on a fingernail. She looked comfortable. Like a normal teenager. The sight filled Celia’s heart to bursting.

  “Everything okay?” Celia asked. “You’ve seemed a little preoccupied lately.” Understatement. Celia was fishing. But barging in here informing her that her father knew very well she was sneaking out wouldn’t make her any more chatty.

  “Fine. Mostly fine, I guess. Stressed out at school and the usual. But okay.”

  “Good,” Celia said, mentally flailing because she didn’t want the conversation to end there, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “That’s good. You know, if you need help, if there’s anything I can help with…” More flailing. Celia could wrap the city’s wealthiest and most powerful around her finger, but she couldn’t talk to a teenager.

  Anna’s brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

  It shouldn’t be so difficult to say out loud, but it was. Wasn’t going to get any easier, but Celia brushed past the moment anyway. She was protecting Anna, she rationalized. No need to dump any more problems on the kid. “There’s a lot going on right now. It’s getting hard to juggle.”

  Was that a smile flashing on Anna’s lips? It might have been. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the beach house a lot,” Celia said. “We should take a trip out that way. Maybe for spring break.” The planning committee nonsense would be all wrapped up by then. She’d be just about done with treatment. Maybe by then she could drop some of those balls she was juggling.

  “Yeah, that’d be cool,” Anna said, and sounded like she meant it.

  “All right, then. I’ll put it on the calendar.”

  “Okay. Cool.”

  With that, Celia quit while she was ahead, left her daughter alone, and retreated. For one brief, brilliant moment, she and Anna had been on the same page, and Celia took that warm feeling and held on to it tightly.

  TWELVE

&n
bsp; DIRECTOR Benitez must have called Mom about her falling asleep in class—she certainly threatened to—but Anna couldn’t figure out why Celia didn’t confront her about it. Instead, Mom had shown up at her door with that weird, probing conversation. Not that Anna was complaining. But it was becoming clear that everyone around here was acting wonky, and Anna was afraid it was her fault. She was the one throwing the family off, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

  She splashed cold water on her face to try to keep it from looking so worn and trod very quietly for the rest of the evening, hoping no one would notice her. Dinner was tense. Not even Bethy talked but kept looking at everyone as if waiting for them all to explode. Anna wasn’t going to be the one to light that fuse.

  And Dad just kept watching her. She repeated her favorite insipid pop song to herself over and over again, filling her mind with it, so he couldn’t possibly see what was really there. His wry smile when he finally looked away was downright insulting, like he knew her tricks and saw right through them. He was just waiting for her to crack, and she wouldn’t. She refused.

  She and Teddy didn’t have an outing planned that night, and Anna had the luxury of a long, splendid sleep.

  The morning brought the news that the case against Scarzen had been dismissed and the guy walked. The defense lawyer argued that the evidence was obtained illegally. The DA argued that the anonymous tip gave probable cause that allowed the police to search the premises. Defense came back to say that because no one knew how the original tip was obtained, it could not be admissible, and therefore the subsequent police search was illegal. And the judge threw it out.

  “The judge is crooked, want to bet?” Teddy said at school. “Scarzen must have paid him off.”

  Anna thought he might be onto something. Everyone knew he was guilty, so how had he been let go on a technicality? Anna looked it up. There’d been other cases where evidence obtained by anonymous tips, or even provided covertly by superhuman vigilantes, had decided cases, so why throw such evidence out now? Crooked judge. Made perfect sense, because if the justice system were infallible, the city wouldn’t need superheroes.

  They made a plan to spy on the judge that night. They figured there must be some evidence of a payoff, which meant bank statements or deposit stubs. Probably made as anonymously as possible. Maybe they only had to point out that the deposit was there and let the authorities take over. Teddy could go insubstantial, reach into any safes the guy had, and pull out any records. Paper was light enough he ought to be able to make it go insubstantial, like he did with his clothing.

  “We can’t send it to the cops,” Teddy decided. “It’s not like they’ll thank us for helping after the last time.”

  Anna asked, “Well, then, assuming we get the evidence, who do we give it to?”

  “How about the Commerce Eye?” Teddy said. And why not?

  She researched the judge, Roland, found his house—a very nice brownstone in the Upper Hill neighborhood. They would stand out, walking around in all black, so they’d have to keep to backstreets to get there. She studied his pictures, his schedule, whatever she could glean from websites and news stories. Fortunately, with the news about the case being dismissed there was quite a lot out there. He didn’t have much in his history suggesting he’d been bought by the drug lord. He was considered fair, if a bit of a hard-liner. Maybe they were wrong about him, and Scarzen really had been let go for a good reason. Maybe they were just looking for trouble. But that wasn’t what her instincts said. And one thing all the superhero memoirs said—and even her mother when she was talking about a business deal—was that you should listen to your instincts. If something didn’t feel right, it meant something was probably wrong.

  Unless you were a paranoid schizophrenic like Plasma. But never mind.

  If they didn’t find anything at Judge Roland’s house, then no harm, no foul. But if they did, they were justified.

  They were getting better at this. Anna hesitated to call them “good” just yet. But they didn’t have to spend as much time on logistics, and they no longer fumbled putting on their masks.

  They made excuses about studying at the library for a group project and took the bus. With her power, Anna had a bead on the judge, who was due to be out of the house for a legal society dinner, along with his wife. He was a social guy and went out most nights, they didn’t have any live-in staff and their kids were grown and out of the house, so the place would be empty. It would also likely have an alarm—so they wouldn’t go in through the door. Teddy would climb the fire escape behind the building and phase through the back wall.

  Anna played a more active role this time, as lookout rather than just navigator. They had exactly until the Rolands returned home from their dinner, and Anna would have to say when that was. Teddy would set his phone to vibrate, and she’d call him to give a warning.

  They arrived earlier than they expected and had to wait in the clean-swept alley behind the brownstones for the Rolands to leave. They seemed to take forever, and she and Teddy huddled in the shadow next to a Dumpster.

  She explained for the millionth time the kind of thing he needed to look for: bank statements, hidden safes, weird-looking deposit slips, anything that didn’t look like it belonged. Take pictures of everything, put it all back the way he found it.

  “How am I supposed to know what’s weird looking?” he argued in a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” she argued back. “Haven’t you ever seen a bank statement or balance sheet? They just look a certain way.”

  “Easy for you to say, your mom’s a financial genius. My parents are a librarian and a mechanic, I’ve never seen a bank statement in my life.”

  She sighed. “You’re looking for numbers with a lot of zeros after them.”

  “Okay, fine. Are they gone yet?”

  They were lingering by the front door, and she couldn’t tell why, only that they weren’t moving. “No.”

  They sat side by side on the concrete pavement. The ground was cold, and the air had a crystalline feel to it, like it was about to snow. She thought of Teia, but Lady Snow and the Trinity weren’t out tonight. They were at home, where they were catching up on sleep like sane people. She and Teia hadn’t talked in days. Anna kept waiting for her friend to call, but she never did, and Anna didn’t want to be the one to back down.

  She wrapped her coat tighter around her and hugged her knees. Teddy started tapping his foot. The alley was quiet, which should have been a relief. No one was going to find them back here. But she’d be happier once they had what they came for and moved on.

  When she shivered, Teddy looked at her a moment, then said, “Here,” and stretched his arm over her shoulders.

  Her first thought was to shrug him away, but his arm settled against her, and it was warm. She just had to scoot an inch or two to be sitting right against him, so she did. His arm tightened around her, just a little. Her heart pounded, she was blushing, and then she felt a lot warmer. She couldn’t really look at him. He didn’t move, as if he worried that even twitching a muscle would make her flinch away. But she’d stopped shivering, so she huddled with him and didn’t say a word.

  After five or so minutes, Teddy whispered, “Um, Anna, can I ask you something?”

  She forgot to chastise him for using her real name. “Yeah?”

  “I know it’s early to be thinking about, a few months out yet, but I was wondering, if you wanted to go to prom this spring, would you maybe want to go with me?”

  For some reason, in that moment, she thought about Eliot and immediately felt guilty for it. “Um…” she stammered and tried to come up with a response, because she hadn’t thought much about prom—except when she’d met Eliot in the gym, and she didn’t really want to think about that right now. It was still months away, like Teddy said. And she honestly hadn’t thought about Teddy. Not until he put his arm around her, anyway, and now they were sitting here and she was having trouble focusing—

  Judge Roland and his w
ife were gone, out of the house.

  “Hey, they’re gone, it’s time!”

  She shoved him to his feet. He looked stricken, staying rooted for a moment like he really was going to wait for an answer, but she gave him a push, and he nodded, vanishing before he’d gone two steps toward the brownstone.

  She was alone in the alley, but she heard his footsteps slapping ahead into silence.

  She waited, again. The air felt much colder without Teddy’s arm around her. She had to think about that, what it meant, and what her answer was going to be. They were trying to fight crime, she didn’t want to think about fancy gowns and awkward school dances.

  She imagined how disappointed he’d look if she told him no, and she didn’t want that either. God, why’d he have to bring that up tonight? Couldn’t he have waited until daylight when both of them were dressed like normal people? No, he had to wait until he was dressed as Ghost, because then he had all the courage.

  Tracking his progress, she followed him up the fire escape to the third floor, where Judge Roland had his home office. Teddy phased through the wall, which meant he didn’t trigger the burglar alarm, which was wired to the doors and windows. Anna held her phone closer, in case he needed her.

  She’d about decided he didn’t need her help at all when her phone vibrated, and she clicked it on. “Rose, hey Rose.”

  “Yeah,” she pressed the button and answered.

  “There’s a safe in here, I reached in and managed to phase a bunch of papers out, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

  “Anything that looks like a bank deposit slip, anything that shows a lot of round numbers in a column. Lots of zeros,” she reminded him.

  “It all has lots of zeros,” he said, plaintive.

  She sighed. “Then just take pictures of it all. You remembered to put on your gloves, right?”

  “Of course I did.”

  She checked in with Judge Roland—still out and not anywhere near the town house. They were safe, with time to spare. Teddy was rushing down the fire escape, still invisible, and she mentally tracked his progress.