I felt a little like crying myself. Ray slid his arm around my shoulder. As The Apparition’s hug loosened, Vera turned her head and chimed bells at me.
I didn’t understand the words. I didn’t need to. “Yes. You have my blessing. I’ll miss you.”
I’d miss her for more than just her incredibly useful powers. I’d find some other way to stop bullets. Just a little bit of grief gnawed in the middle of my happiness as I watched The Apparition fly down the corridor holding Vera’s tiny hand, ducking past the petrified Librarian, until they turned into the main hall and out of sight.
I’d see them again, right? I hoped so.
I walked around the pile and peered at the wheezing Chimera. “Are you going to live?” I asked. I was pretty sure, but… well, I’d just cut his lung open!
He nodded weakly. That was a relief.
“I’m sorry, but if I’d done anything less you’d be back up in sixty seconds, right?” I asked again.
“Yep,” he whispered.
“We’re cool, kids. Or at least, we will be as soon as I swallow a hundred aspirin,” Lucyfar groaned, pushing the door out of the way of her face. “Thanks for not spraying me with that stuff that eats hair, Bad Penny. Reviled, I think you broke a few bones.”
Ray raised an eyebrow. You could just barely tell behind the mask. “Was that a compliment?”
“You bet it was,” she chuckled.
The hallway vibrated as crashing thundered out of the main hallway.
Claire jerked upright. “Maybe we missed someone.”
“Maybe someone got back up,” Ray suggested, pulling his blasting gloves tight.
We inched around The Librarian’s statue, taking extreme care not to touch it or her books until we were clear and could run out into the hallway. We got there to find the metal gateway broken down. Rubble lay everywhere. The frozen gods were gone, but a black-furred hand sticking out from under a huge black metal plate suggested Entropy was still out for the count.
Something shrieked, over and over, down the hall past the ruined wall. It came from the jungle spilling out of the pit. We had a clear run to it.
Run we did. As we ran we heard two loud, quick thumps, then a third off-tempo, then a crash. We ran through the trees out onto the landing for the stairs that wound their way down the bowl to the bottom of this miniature jungle. That bottom had been wrecked. Rage and Ruin lay unconscious under broken tree trunks. Claudia was slumped over the pedestal that should have been supporting the Orb of the Heavens. The T-Rex lay on the other side of the bowl, but as we watched it pulled itself up, stretched out its neck, and screeched like a parrot. The rainbow colored feather crest on its head bobbed up and down furiously.
It staggered toward Claudia, mouth gaping. Ray slapped his hands together, pulling out an energy ball, but he hadn’t had much time to recharge. I had to do something, so I jumped, teleported, and landed next to Claudia to wrap my arms around her.
That had been a terrible idea. The world spun and went dark, my muscles turned into knots, and I fought for breath. I couldn’t get her out of here. Through the black spots I saw the T-Rex loom over us, and a pink and purple ball of energy smash into the side of its head, knocking it on its side.
It didn’t get up. Instead, it faded into a skeleton. An obviously fake, plastic skeleton. The library’s transformation was reversing.
I got enough breath to wheeze, “Cl—Generic Girl! Are you okay?”
Her eyelids fluttered. I’d woken her up. She groaned. “I stopped Rage and Ruin. I was fighting the T-Rex, when something cold touched me. I blacked out.”
“Where did the Orb go?” I asked.
Claudia looked up. So did I. There was a hole in the roof, just about the right size, letting in fresh sunlight now that the fake sky had gone.
Claudia pushed my arms away. I couldn’t have resisted her even if I hadn’t been achy and exhausted. Without another word, she flew up into the air and sped out through the hole in the roof, the hole Vera must have burned while The Apparition possessed Generic Girl.
The logs on top of Rage and Ruin faded into nothing. So did the grass underneath, leaving them lying awkwardly the floor. The library was reverting rapidly now.
Ray hopped over the remaining debris to me, holding out a hand and carefully pulling me up. He sounded solemn for once. “I think we’ve left enough witnesses, but if we’re here when the police and heroes come, but the Orb isn’t…”
I nodded as he trailed off. “Yeah.”
He swung me up in both arms, cradling me against his chest. It felt better than ever. “There’s a side door on the other side of the Children’s section,” he suggested.
I gave myself a double check to make sure I looked perfectly normal and civilian as I pulled my bike up in front of my house. On the off chance I’d actually gotten away with this, I crept down the length of the house and crawled back in through my bedroom window.
After all that excitement, this was where goose bumps rattled me, as I opened the door to my bedroom and stepped out into the hallway.
Mom leaned out of Dad’s office immediately. “Penny? I thought you were asleep! You’ll want to see this.”
She beckoned me into the office and waved me to one of Dad’s monitors and the TV news showing on it. Dad sat in a chair by his computer, chin on his fist as he watched. Just as I walked in the same reporter who’d tried to interview me downtown came onscreen. “Reports from hostages on the scene confirm the story we’ve put together. Today, the LA Main Branch Public Library was ground zero of the biggest supervillain gang fight in history. The winners were, incredibly, The Inscrutable Machine, a group of middle-school supervillains who’ve been crushing every adult in their way. A representative of the superhero community confirms that the prize for this fight was a unique piece of technology kept secretly in the library, although we don’t know yet what it was.”
I blinked. “No way.”
Dad waved a hand at the screen. “The real story is a bit more complicated. The Inscrutable Machine went out of their way to protect innocents caught in the fight, then defeated all the other villains in the building to steal the Orb of the Heavens themselves.”
Mom leaned forward in her chair, folding her arms over her lap as she stared at the screen. It failed to offer anything more interesting than distance shots of the library. “I believe they were sending a message. Not to us. The superheroes have accepted them. Now the supervillains have to as well.”
Dad looked over at her and frowned. “Do you think they gave the Orb to Spider?”
She nodded. “I think so. I’ll contact the Expert and have him contact Spider. It would be unlike either of them to lie about this.”
Dad stared at Mom for a few more seconds, then the screen, and then sighed and pushed himself up out of his chair. “I have to get going. Echo is sure the bomb isn’t a bomb, but, whatever it is, it’s powerful and he doesn’t want to move it. He thinks it may be Conqueror technology.”
Her face completely expressionless, Mom mused, “Three associations with Conqueror tech in a week. That’s a bad pattern.”
Dad came down hard on that idea. “One thing Spider wouldn’t do is sell us out to the Conquerors. Judging by their performance today, neither would The Inscrutable Machine.”
Slowly, Mom nodded, a thoughtful frown replacing her scarier Audit face. “No. They’ve made that very clear. They’re not crazy or rogue. They’re thirteen-year-old professional supervillains. We have to accept it.”
I’d had enough. I walked out of Dad’s office, out the kitchen door, and leaned against the house to stare at the road. The Inscrutable Machine were still supervillains. More supervillains than ever. What had I accomplished today?
The front door clattered as Dad stepped out. He glanced over at the mailbox as he passed, and with a curious frown picked up a pink envelope and tossed it to me. “Mail, Pumpkin.”
No return address or postmark. “Penelope Akk,” in elegant formal script. It looked like
an envelope for a party invitation.
It was another letter from Spider.
While my Dad climbed into the car, then pulled out onto the street, I opened up the envelope and read the letter inside.
Bad Penny,
You most likely expect me to be angry. On the contrary. I owe you a rare and sincere apology. I treated The Inscrutable Machine as children, and you punished me for my hubris, reminding me why respect and courtesy are the best ways to conduct a professional relationship. It is true that I got what I wanted today, but I am very aware that I got it only by luck. In every way that’s important, you bested me.
I hope that you will be willing to forgive me, and will work for me by your own willing choice in the future. You have a great future ahead of you as supervillains, and I would like to be part of it.
Sincerely,
Spider
I laid my head back against the bricks. What had I accomplished today? I’d saved a lot of people from being hurt, set yet another record for wildest thing I’d ever seen in my life, had my first kiss, made the person blackmailing me beg for forgiveness instead, had a fantastic amount of fun, and made myself a legend.
I hadn’t intended to be a legend as a supervillain, but now The Inscrutable Machine had a reputation to maintain, and a lot of fun to have in the process.
I felt good. I felt so good, I had to laugh.
“HA! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!”
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Richard Roberts has fit into only one category in his entire life: ‘writer.’ But as a writer he’d throw himself out of his own books for being a cliche. He’s had the classic wandering employment history – degree in entomology, worked in health care, been an administrator and labored for years in the front lines of fast food. He’s had the appropriate really weird jobs, like breeding tarantulas and translating English to English for Japanese television. He wears all black, all the time, is manic-depressive, and has a creepy laugh.
As for what he writes, Richard loves children and the gothic aesthetic. Most everything he writes will involve one or the other, and occasionally both. His fantasy is heavily influenced by folk tales, fairy tales, and mythology, and he likes to make the old new again. In particular, he loves to pull his readers into strange characters with strange lives, and his heroes are rarely heroic.
ary, close the door. You are not going to the party."
I have no idea how my Mom knew about it. I couldn’t figure out how any mother would know about it, much less mine. “Yeah, Mom, I’m going to the party,” I answered, in a monotone loud enough to carry into the bedroom.
“No, you’re not,” she barked back angrily, “Mary Stuart, I forbid you to take even a step out that door.”
I stepped over the threshold so fast my foot might have moved itself. What was she going to do? Threaten to lock me in my room? Like this time would be different?
She must have heard the door squeak. “Mary, it’s not safe,” she called after me. Her voice was suddenly pained, urgent. “I’m only thinking about you.”
She was going to try that? Seriously? I yanked the door shut behind me and kicked one of the empty cans off the porch. I thought maybe she yelled, “Mary Stuart!” again from the other side, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. Wasn’t someone supposed to come and tell you off if you name your child after a British queen?
The cold October air was refreshing, although my short skirt—not really that short—and stockings were draughty. I wasn’t going trick-or-treating, but at least I could dress up a little. Trick-or-treating would have been more fun than this not so secret rave, but I hadn’t been invited, so I was going. And despite my mother’s so-convincing claim of being worried about me, I’d be safe. If I were two years older, maybe not. If I were even an early bloomer, maybe not. Right now, I had nothing even the most desperate jerk of a boy wanted.
That would help. I had a long walk in the dark through increasingly empty neighborhoods. I was headed right out of town, and it would be a few miles. The walk didn’t scare me. I liked the cold air and I’d walked over most of the city when I had to. It would be downright boring.
At that thought, I reached up to pull my headphones—
“Damn it!” I yelled out loud. A mother and her little kid in a bumblebee costume gave me a nervous look. I stomped on.
I’d left my music player at home. It would have been useless and stupid looking at the party, but who cared? It would have made the walk much less boring. A night like this begged for Les Miserables. Music with a story and real emotion would be better than whatever latest hot number they’d be playing at the party. I predicted the current hit would be as shallow as a paper plate and either be bragging or whining about how much sex the singer was getting.
Well, you’re not going back to get it, Mary. I’d just have to enjoy the view. A residential neighborhood wasn’t exciting, but I could see a trick-or-treating group up ahead and another down a side street. Some of the older kids in the more elaborately silly costumes might be my classmates.
The four in front of me each had a flashlight in a plastic pumpkin bucket, but had no adult with them. Who let them out like that? Right on cue, a high school boy walked past them from the other side, grabbed one girl’s trick or treating bucket and yanked it out of her hands. She shrieked, and he laughed and ran.
There was the adult, somebody’s mother, stepping out of an open door and shouting, “What’s going on?” She was too late to do anything.
Jerk high schooler didn’t even want the candy. All he wanted was to hear a helpless little girl cry. Like the arrogant bully he was, he ran right past me like I didn’t matter.
I stuck out a foot and tripped him. He hit the sidewalk hard. The basket and the candy went flying.
He weighed twice what I do and was a boy besides. He started to push himself back up to his feet, and a growling, “Little bitch!” didn’t sound encouraging, so I kicked him hard between the legs. Now he yelped like a little girl himself, curling up tight. He looked up, and I stared right back. I’d happily kick him in the balls again, and he was in too much pain to dodge.
He knew it, and like the cowardly bully he was, he scrambled awkwardly up and ran away.
I turned around, and the mother and kids were a lot closer. They’d stopped. They all looked stunned. The girl in the unicorn costume really was my classmate, Chelsea. No surprise, since I was still in my neighborhood. The boy with the bird wings was Patrick Flint, in third grade. I didn’t know the other two.
Bending down, I picked up the bucket and threw it over to Chelsea. “You’re out of luck on the candy,” I almost apologized.
“Thanks,” she answered.
“Should you really be out trick-or-treating by yourself, hon? Wouldn’t you rather join us?” her mother asked, sounding nervous.
“I’ve got a party to go to,” I replied, and started walking. That was one reason.
The other was the relieved look on their faces as I passed them.
My hands twitched for the headphones I hadn’t brought with me. This would have been a fine night for ‘On My Own’. I knew just how Eponine felt, except I wasn’t in love with anybody to smooth it over. I kept walking. It would be a long, dull walk to the party.
I had to leave all the residential neighborhoods behind, and keep walking right out past the freeway that makes the edge of town. That was one of the reasons I was determined to go. For a secret Halloween party, they’d pulled out the very last stop. It was being held in the Old Moonshiner’s Estate. The house nobody wanted to buy, nobody’d been able to declare a historical treasure, and nobody’d gotten around to tearing down. Oh, and nobody wanted to set foot inside. You know, the house everybody says they tell mon
ster stories about but nobody actually does. I’d never gone in, I guess because no one ever actually did tell me one of those stories.
As a haunted house, it was pretty great. Straight out of the Addams Family. Dead trees, a hill, boards fallen off the windows. Normally they were dark and spooky, but rainbow lights peeked out of every hole tonight, and the building was mostly holes. One of those holes had a front door blocking it the last time I’d looked. Now it had Felicia Innsmouth blocking it. Eesh.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she groused as I stomped up the stairs, “I’m not letting The Littlest Bitch into my party. What are you, nine? Go away, Mary.”
“Screw you, Felicia. On second thought, the line’s too long,” I snapped back. There, the social amenities had been observed.
She still reached her leg across and blocked the doorway. “You’re not getting in, Mary,” she repeated sourly.
So I glared at her, stomped back down the stairs, walked down the side of the building, and climbed in heavily through the empty hole that used to be a window. While Felicia watched, I might add. I was inside now. What was she going to do, make a scene and ruin her own party?
That girl had more money than god. She’d almost made this collapsing hulk of a building livable. The rugs alone must have cost a fortune, and while there weren’t many lights, every one was a different color. The stereos all played different music too, and this room thumped manically with dubstep. I started to grin. A high school boy glanced down at me and wandered off, uninterested. I grinned a lot more.
There was a big room in the middle of the first floor. That was the dance pit now, and a couple of dozen middle and high schoolers were trying to pretend they had rhythm. A lot of them were drunk, so I followed the smell to a table draped in orange and black and crowded with booze. Right next to it was a table draped in orange and black and crowded with candy. I thought that was pretty funny. As far as I’m concerned, candy and alcohol are the same thing. At a certain age, people went from one to the other.
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