She is right. The mayor’s two hulking escorts are standing at attention, scanning the crowd, hands folded in front of them, just like in the movies. “I guess they don’t know what kind of company they’re in,” I say.
“It doesn’t hurt to be careful,” Jenna replies.
I watch her watch the crowd, still not sure who I’m looking at. With the dress and the lipstick and the eye liner she looks like she’s home from college or something. And I suddenly sense this gap between us, that maybe is only a crack but feels more like a canyon. I feel like a little boy tugging on her dress, trying to get her attention, afraid if I don’t try to step over, I’ll never get across.
“So, Jenna, I was thinking. About last Wednesday . . .”
Jenna turns and smiles at me, then looks over my shoulder. She gives a curt wave. My instinct is to turn and look, but I know if I take my eyes off her, I’ll lose my nerve and won’t say what I want to say.
“Sorry. About Wednesday?” Her eyes literally sparkle.
“Yeah. I don’t know about you, but for me, I think something, you know, kind of shifted between us.”
“Really?” She takes a sip from her glass, looks at me, then behind me again.
The dry-cleaned trousers are itching my legs furiously, and I somehow resist the urge to scratch. “Changed, somehow. I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but I just felt like maybe you and I . . . we . . . are you all right?”
She keeps looking over my shoulder. Finally she turns back to me and fixes me with her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Drew,” she says.
And I can see it in her eyes. Not like “Sorry I’m only half listening to you,” but really sorry. Like “Sorry for your loss” sorry. Like “Sorry your dog got run over by a truck last night” sorry. Really, seriously sorry.
That’s when I smell him. I smell him before I see him. A blanket of Right Guard and Irish Spring barely hiding a layer of pure testosterone.
“Hey there, Bean.”
Gavin McAllister slaps me on the shoulder. His hair is gelled even more than mine, and I can almost taste the alcohol tinge of mouthwash on his breath. He is wearing a grin wider than a mobile home and a black tie.
I turn and glare at Jenna, who pretends there’s something interesting in her glass.
“Nice tie,” Gavin says.
“You too,” I say.
“Jenna, you didn’t tell me Andrew would be here.”
“Jenna,” I say as best I can between clenched teeth, “you didn’t tell him I was coming?”
Though he’s really only four inches taller, I feel dwarfed standing next to Gavin, the two of us looking at Jenna, who is running a finger along the edge of her glass. I think about what they say about tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. I’m pretty sure you’d need a chain saw for this.
Jenna looks at me, then at Gavin, then back at me.
Then she empties the glass in one swift swallow and hands it to him.
“Would you mind? I could use some more.”
Gavin looks at Jenna, then at me, then back at Jenna.
Jenna looks at me again, takes a deep breath, and then glances out over the crowd.
I look at Gavin. Just Gavin. I actually stare at him. Boring holes through his eyeballs with the laser vision I don’t have. Right through his eyeballs and into that big granite head of his, chipping away at the rock of a brain, wondering what it is she can possibly see in the guy.
“Sure,” he says. “No problem.” He takes the glass and retreats toward the bar. When he’s far enough that only I could hear me, I turn on her.
“What’s he doing here?”
“The same thing you are doing here. I invited him. He’s my friend.”
“I know he’s your friend, but you can’t . . .” The look on Jenna’s face stops me cold. Never tell Jenna Jaden what she can and can’t do. I’ve learned that lesson before. “You don’t invite two guys to the same rich snooty dinner party charity thingy. Haven’t you ever seen a movie in your life? Now one of us has to kill the other one.”
Jenna smirks and shakes her head, but I just keep glaring at her. She takes another look at me and stops smiling. “You’re serious.”
“Yes,” I say a little too loud. “I mean, no. I’m just saying he shouldn’t be here.” Or I shouldn’t be here, though I decide not to include that as an option.
Jenna rolls her eyes in disgust. Her hands take off and I’m suddenly outnumbered again, three to one. “You two aren’t apes. I’m not a prize.” She sticks a finger at my chest. “This is not a date. And you are being way too dramatic.”
I don’t even know where to get started with all of that.
“What do you mean, not a date?”
She looks around her, palms up, exasperated. “Does this look like a date to you?”
I have to admit I wouldn’t expect the mayor to come along on Jenna’s and my first date. But then I look at the way she’s dressed and her hair all done up, and I think about the fact that the shirt I’m wearing is actually ironed, and I honestly don’t know what to think.
“Okay. Maybe I’m overreacting,” I say. “But what do you expect? You kissed me. Me. I’m the one you kissed, in case you’ve forgotten.”
I stop.
Because she does that thing. That thing girls do where they look sideways and then down and then chew on their bottom lip. I know that look.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Drew.”
“You’re not kidding?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I don’t believe it. When did you kiss him?”
“Why is it any of your business?”
“Was it the same day? Right before I almost got my brains bashed in? Did you kiss Eric too? Mike?” Please say she didn’t kiss Mike. I really would have to kill him.
One of the servers walks by and sticks his platter between us, probably in an attempt to shut us up. “Endive?” he asks, pointing to a plate full of white, leafy things wrapped around what seem to be pieces of moldy cheese. I feel like I might throw up. I shake my head.
“No, thank you,” Jenna says, much more tactfully, smiling at the server, who shuffles away.
“If I had known you were going to act like this, I wouldn’t have invited you.”
“If I had known you were inviting him, I wouldn’t have come.”
She rolls her eyes again. I can feel the heat rising to my cheeks. This could be the moment, right here. If I don’t say the right thing right now, then she will transform back into just-a-friend Jenna or, worse, slip away entirely.
“Jenna,” I say.
She turns and stares at me. “What?”
“Excuse me. Am I interrupting?”
Gavin is suddenly next to us, holding Jenna’s glass in one hand and something on a cracker in the other.
And I smell something. Something besides the champagne and the Gruyère. Something entirely out of place, hidden in the walls or in the ceiling. I recognize it from H.E.R.O. training. From one of my test tubes. It was one that I missed the first few times, and so Mr. Masters drilled it into me. It’s cyclotrimethylene trinitramine. Otherwise known as cyclonite.
The most common ingredient in C-4 explosives. I tackle Jenna just as the ceiling comes crashing down.
22
CRASHED
At least now I know what evil smells like.
We all tumble like dominoes, the whole black-and-white crowd careening off each other. The force of the explosion knocks some of the guests over, causes others to bathe themselves in their drinks, but mostly just results in a lot of smoke and noise.
And a huge hole in the ceiling.
Jenna and I look up at the same time but stay low to the ground. People are screaming and scrambling. One of the waiters is actually trying to pick crab cakes off the floor. It’s hard to focus on anything in all this chaos. Then I feel something heavy on my back.
I turn to see that Gavin McAllister is gone. In his place is
a creature covered in black-and-gray rock. His pants have ripped; his shoes are in shreds. He has taken off his jacket and torn his shirt, but he’s still wearing his tie. I wonder if anyone has seen the transformation, but he had been standing behind us, and all eyes are on the gaping, smoking chasm above us.
Stonewall gives me a nod, and I nod back. I have no idea what we are nodding about, but given the circumstances, I am suddenly not opposed to his being here.
Far to our left, the mayor’s two bodyguards already have their pistols drawn and are speaking into their wrists, hopefully calling for backup. The mayor is crouched behind them, pushed back against a wall. Down the hall, you can hear the smoke alarms going off, a pulsing screech that makes my head hurt. I try to peer through the smoke.
Suddenly there is a blast of light from the new hole in the ceiling, and one of the mayor’s guards goes down, clutching his shoulder, his gun skidding across the marble floor. The other guard spins around, looking for the source of the attack, when a black boomerang hurtles toward him, knocking his weapon from his hand, then circling back and catching him in the back of the head before returning to its owner.
The three Jacks jump down from the new hole in the ceiling, dressed perfectly for the occasion. When the Jack of Spades lands, the whole floor shakes. The third guard—the fairy godfather from the elevator—bursts through the door, his weapon ready, but another blast from a diamond eye sends him spinning to the floor, unconscious. There is suddenly a lot more screaming. I scoot a little closer to Jenna, who reaches for my hand.
“Everyone. Quiet. Please,” the Jack of Diamonds says, patting the air. His voice sounds a little like James Bond, the new one, not the old Scottish guy who everybody likes better. Suave, ponderous, but with a hint of menace. “May I please have your attention?”
The crowd is still frantic, guests scrabbling across the floors, skittering behind overturned tables, like bugs under an upturned rock. With a nod from the Jack of Diamonds, the Jack of Spades suddenly roars and lifts his shovel and brings it down on top of one of the tables, smashing it in two with a splintering crack. Everyone suddenly freezes.
“Thank you,” the Jack of Diamonds says. “Sorry to crash the party, ladies and gentlemen. We don’t plan to stay long. We’ve only come for the guest of honor.”
The mayor is still pressed against the wall. The guard who had his gun knocked from his hand by the Jack of Clubs is standing in front of him. I can see his pistol about thirty feet away, though I don’t imagine it would do him much good even if he could get to it. He’d be zapped, bludgeoned, or pulverized before he even got a shot off.
“We have to do something,” Gavin whispers.
“Sure,” I hiss. “Remember what happened the last time you faced off against just one of these guys?” I nod to the fissure of chipped white rock along Gavin’s side. Even in this form, he still has scars. I turn back to Jenna, who is now crouched beside me. “Where’s Kyla?” I ask, though she knows full well who I mean.
“I don’t know,” she says. “She’ll be here.”
“But soon, right?”
Jenna doesn’t say anything. I can see that look in her eyes, though. She slips off her glasses and slowly sets them on the chair beside her, then kicks off her high-heeled shoes.
“Oh, no,” I say.
The Jack of Diamonds takes several steps toward the mayor, his hand extended as if asking for a dance. “The Dealer requests the honor of your presence, Mr. Mayor, so if you would please . . .” The Jack of Diamonds’s artificial eye is glowing, a dull orange that pulses in rhythm with his heartbeat. In a blink, it could burn a hole the size of a grapefruit through any one of us.
The mayor doesn’t budge. Nobody moves. The servers hide behind their silver platters. Those who are crouched next to doors eye them, calculating their chances. I hear somebody whisper, “Just go,” and see a man struggle to his feet and scramble toward one of the exits.
The Jack of Diamonds merely glances that way, and a beam of bright orange light tears through the room, hitting one of the ceiling fans, which comes smashing down at the runner’s feet. The man freezes in place, paralyzed. The Jack rubs the temple beside his artificial eye, then turns his attention back to the mayor. “Please, Mr. Mayor, just come quietly. Otherwise, one of my colleagues will be forced to make an example.”
The Jack of Diamonds raises his hand, and the Jack of Spades reaches under a nearby table and pulls a young woman out by the neck like a baby kitten, lifting her effortlessly into the air, her feet kicking beneath her, her black shoes tumbling free. He really is gigantic—the biggest man I’ve ever seen. Even bigger than the Titan.
I press down hard on my fingernail. Just in case. Though at this point, I have no expectations. The Jack of Spades lifts the woman even higher. I think he’s just going to snap her in half.
“Let her go.”
I look up to see Stonewall take two steps toward the three Jacks, his granite hands formed into small boulders by his side.
“You again?” the Jack of Diamonds says. “Haven’t we been over this once already?” Beside me, I can see Jenna’s muscles tense.
“Get ready,” she says.
That’s funny, I think to myself. Just last week I found myself saying the exact same thing. Then I got trampled.
Except those were teenagers. These are the Suits. And we aren’t even full-fledged sidekicks yet. But I can see the look in Jenna’s eyes, and I know it makes no difference to her.
Stonewall takes another step. Jenna pulls herself up onto the balls of her feet, and I see the twinkle form in the Jack of Diamonds’s eye.
Then there is that moment again. When I kind of see things just before they happen. Like the twitch of a finger before a gun is drawn or how somebody licks their lips before they are about to say something. I see the mayor about to stand and his guard about to crouch, ready to go for his gun. I see the Jack of Clubs raise his arm for a throw and the Jack of Spades lift the woman higher before tossing her aside.
And then there’s a flash of white outside the window, and the moment suddenly shatters with the pane of glass, and everything speeds up again.
The Jack of Diamond fires and Gavin just manages to dive out of the way, collapsing into another table, breaking it in half. Jenna launches herself, full speed, in the direction of the mayor, the Silver Lynx’s reflexes kicking in, dodging fallen chairs and crouching bodies.
I turn and see the Fox, the only Super left, swinging in through the broken glass, a blur of red and white delivering a swift kick to the Jack of Diamonds before drawing her sword and turning just in time to parry a blow from the giant’s shovel. The Jack of Spades grunts as the Fox ducks and spins, catching him behind the knees, sending all four-hundred-plus pounds of him crashing down. All around us, the guests are back on their feet, running for whatever exit is closest, screaming at the top of their lungs, driving a spike into my skull with the sheer volume of it. Ahead of me, Jenna flips over a table and pulls the mayor out of the way just as another chandelier comes crashing down. I can’t believe she can still move like that in that dress.
“Drew!” she yells.
“Coming!” I yell back.
I shake my head, trying to clear it, and then stand up and scramble after her. Everywhere, people are running, tripping, clawing, shouting. The sounds of explosions fill the air as the Jack of Diamonds fires again and again at the Fox, who backflips and twists her way around the blasts. I manage to make it to Jenna, who has pulled the mayor behind a table. There is an exit maybe fifty feet away.
“You have to get him out of here,” she says. She doesn’t need to shout for me to hear her, but she does anyway.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. Just take him and go.”
The mayor looks at us like we are crazy. His three armed guards have been replaced by two middle school honors students. I guess he doesn’t feel like he has a whole lot of options at this point, because he stands up when I tug on his shirt
and follows me as we bolt for the exit. Behind us, there is another explosion of glass as two more windows shatter under a shovel’s swing. I see a blur of white and hear a splinter of bone as the Fox delivers a swift kick to the Jack of Spades’s ribs. The exit beckons to us with its glowing green letters. And for a moment, I think we might actually make it.
Then I hear a familiar sound and skid to a stop, the mayor careening into me as a black baton whistles by and lodges itself in the wall beside us, stuck tight. I look up to see the Jack of Clubs walking determinedly toward us, his wicked mustache curled in on itself, one hand pulling a long, evil-looking knife from his belt. I threw a whole block of them at him just a few days ago, so I’m guessing this is probably some kind of perverse poetic justice. I stand in front of the mayor, frantically considering all my options. The Jack of Clubs raises his blade, and I just manage to step right, nearly tripping over my feet as the slash narrowly misses. A second strike almost scalps me as I duck. It’s not too different from self-defense training with Eric, I think. Except Eric’s not really trying to kill me.
The Jack lunges, and I somehow manage to not only dodge the knife but also to deliver a kick to the man’s shin, though it only elicits a sneer and a growl. The Jack takes a step back, and I frantically run through the list of attacks I’ve learned, trying to pick the one I have the least chance of screwing up.
The Jack slashes with his knife again.
And I choose to fall on my butt.
Though I at least keep myself from being skewered, I barely manage to get to my knees before he is standing over me again, his twisted mustache curled twice over, his eyes like pools of black ink.
Just as he is about to strike, a rumbling black boulder bowls into him from out of nowhere. Stonewall has both blocky arms around his villain, and the two of them slam through several chairs before collapsing to the floor.
Sidekicked Page 17