She nods. It occurs to her if Jasper knows this the impostor will too. Her phone and iPad are so much slag now in the ruins of the servant’s quarters, but the Audi has a built-in phone. Melanie’s phone rings five times before she finally answers it. “Robin?”
“I need you to get to the motel we stayed at on homecoming weekend right away.”
“What? Rob—”
“There’s no time to explain. Just do it, please? I love you.”
The last sentence came unbidden from her mouth, but it probably helps to indicate to Melanie how serious things are. “OK. I’ll see if they have our old room.”
“I should be there in about an hour. Don’t answer the door for anyone except me, all right?”
“Sure. I’ll see you there.”
The call ends. Robin leans back in her seat. Jasper looks over at her. “Perhaps we should stop at a hospital—”
“I’m fine. A little smoke inhalation is all. Maybe a slight concussion. Don’t let me fall asleep, OK?”
“As you wish, Mistress Robin. Would you like me to dispose of that club for you?”
“Huh?” Then she realizes she has the table leg in her hand yet. She opens the window and is about to toss it out when she notes the blood glistening on the tips of the leg. His blood. “I think I have a better idea.”
***
For dinner Mom makes macaroni and cheese. It used to be Allison’s favorite dish the last time she was a kid. Her palate’s become a little more sophisticated since then, but she knows Mom won’t understand that. She looks at Allison and sees only a little girl; she can’t bring herself to see a grown-up inside that girl.
“How was school today?”
“Fine,” she mumbles as she stabs at the macaroni and cheese.
“Did you make some new friends?”
Allison shrugs. She didn’t have many friends in middle school the first time around. Alan Bass had been even gawkier and nerdier than Allison is right now. It wasn’t until high school, when his body began to fill out a little, that he started to make friends, especially with the opposite sex.
“It’ll take a little time,” Mom says. “You have to give them a chance.”
“Sure.”
“Did you have any asthma problems?”
“No.”
“You didn’t use the inhaler?”
“Not much.”
“That’s good. You’re getting it under control, like I knew you would.”
Allison shrugs again. She reaches down to pat the inhaler in her sweater pocket to make sure it’s there. What she needs to ask now is going to be tough. “Mom?”
“What is it, honey?”
“I’m going to need…to need…to need to stay after school…for a…for a little while.” Her breathing is shallow by the end of this sentence. She closes her eyes and tries to relax a little bit. She doesn’t want to have an attack in front of Mom.
“What for? Are you in trouble?”
“No. It’s for…it’s for science class. I have a…a project…I want to…to work on.”
“A project? Already?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of project?”
Allison knows better than to tell Mom she wants to recreate the formula that made her son into Velocity Man, in the process curing his asthma. She’d never let Allison do that, afraid she might get hurt or—worse yet—leave the nest again. Instead, Allison lies, “It’s for…for the…the science fair.”
“Oh. That seems a bit sudden.”
“I’m really…really behind…behind the other…other kids.”
Mom gets up from her chair. She bends down behind Allison to hug her and run a hand through Allison’s white-blond hair. “It’s all right, honey. I understand. Science has always been important to you.” What she doesn’t say is: more important than me. Allison knows that’s what Mom really means.
Allison squeezes Mom’s hand. “I love you.”
“I love you too, honey. How long are you going to need?”
“An hour…maybe two.”
“Just don’t let it affect the rest of your schoolwork.”
“I won’t.” Most of her schoolwork is so simple she could do it in five minutes, with the exception of her English class, where she’s supposed to write a paper on the symbolism in Tom Sawyer, a book she hasn’t read in over twenty years. That’s what Cliff Notes are for.
They finish the rest of dinner with Mom chattering about mundane things while Allison mumbles monosyllabic replies. For dessert they have strawberry shortcake, another of her old favorites. Mom allows them to eat it on the couch while they watch TV, a rare treat with how concerned Mom usually is about keeping the living room clean and free of bugs.
Allison glumly watches the evening news to see that so far the world hasn’t fallen apart without the female Super Squad. Everything seems to be rolling along as usual. She’s not sure if she should be disappointed with that or not. Maybe there is no insidious plot at work here.
Then a picture of Elise’s mother appears on one corner of the screen. Allison leans forward to listen to the anchor say Elise’s mother has become a fugitive after unsuccessfully trying to overthrow her son. “Military officials believe she may be taking refuge on the surface. If you see her, they advise not to engage her but to call your local police department. On the lighter side—”
Allison staggers into the kitchen, one hand on her chest. She bends over the sink to try to steady herself. Mom rushes to her side. “Honey, what’s wrong? Is there something wrong with your dessert?”
Allison shakes her head. “Was it something on the TV?” Allison nods. “Oh, honey, don’t worry about that. There’s nothing you need to be afraid of. Come on, let’s get you to bed so you can rest a little bit.”
“OK,” Allison whispers. She calms down enough that she doesn’t need the inhaler. She collapses on her bed and feels Mom kiss her forehead.
“I’ll be right down the hall if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
Mom leaves the door open. Allison opens her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She wanted to believe there was no plot, but now she knows for sure something about all of this stinks. Elise—even when she was Lord Neptune—would never accuse her mother of trying to seize power. Elise had never been that interested in being a king in the first place; she would have welcomed her mother taking over. Whoever this Lord Neptune is isn’t the same person.
What about Alan Bass? Her breathing turns shallow again as she thinks of what he might do to Sally or Jenny. The thought of their dismembered corpses appearing on a news report while she sits in front of the TV eating strawberry shortcake and doing her homework is enough to make her reach for the inhaler again. The medicine soothes her temporarily, but she knows the only real solution is to get that formula to work.
***
Elise is at her mother’s side when she finally wakes up. She sits straight up and might have tried to roll out of bed if Elise didn’t grab her arm. “Mother, it’s all right. It’s me.” She snaps on a light, but from her mother’s gasp she knows this doesn’t help. “I know, I look a little different.”
“What did they do to you?” Mother asks, running a hand through Elise’s hair.
“That’s not important right now. Who did this to you? Was it Neptune?”
“Not him. Some of his guards. They were trying to keep me from escaping, from finding you.” She manages a smile, which displays a couple of broken teeth. “I suppose you found me.”
“Why would he do this to you? You’re his mother.”
Mother looks into Elise’s eyes as she says, “I’m sorry, my daughter. I tried to stop them, but I could not. He is the king. No one would listen to me.”
“What are you talking about? What has he done?”
“He’s taken your daughter. He claims she is his child by right. As an heir to the throne, she belongs with him.”
Elise can barely force herself to ask, “And Erek? What did they do to him?”
/>
Mother looks down at the bed. “They killed him. He fought bravely, but there were too many of them. When I saw what they’d done, I tried to take the child. I snuck into her room at night to take her away. They stopped me before I could get her out. I barely escaped with my life to find you.”
Elise rests her head on the bed and begins to sob. Her husband is dead. Her daughter is in the clutches of a madman. And there’s nothing she can do to stop him. She screams impotently into the blankets while Mother pats her back. She and Paul try to tell her everything will be all right, but how can it be? The man she loved more than anyone above or below the surface is dead.
“We can still get Ariel back,” Mother says.
Elise shakes her head. “No we can’t.” She explains what the government did to her, how they made her as normal as anyone on the surface. Neptune had wanted them to do it so he could take Ariel; she’s the last threat to his power, the only possible heir. It doesn’t matter that she’s a helpless baby, not to someone so mad with power as Neptune.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Elise says and sobs again. The only way for her and Paul to get down there would be with a submarine and there’s no way they could get access to one of those. It wouldn’t do much good anyway unless they wanted to level all of Pacifica with torpedoes. At the moment, she wouldn’t mind that.
“There may be a way,” Mother says.
“How?”
“There’s an old legend my mother told me and her mother told her down through the ages. It’s said that there is a temple of Poseidon where the first Pacificans were born. If it still exists, perhaps you could regain your gills.”
Paul scoffs at this. “You want to go chasing after some old fish story?”
“What other choice do we have?” Elise shoots back. She turns to her mother. “Where would this temple be?”
“There’s only one way to find it.” Mother reaches into the folds of her dress to take out a green seashell, the one that turns into the royal scepter of Pacifica. “Take it, my daughter. It can lead you there.”
“How?”
“Listen,” Mother says before she passes out.
“What does that mean?” Paul says.
Elise stares at the shell. She can’t hear anything. Then she remembers that this is a seashell. What do they always tell little children about seashells? She puts the shell to her ear. A voice that sounds like her birth father’s says a string of numbers. Elise stares at the shell again for a moment. What could that mean? She puts her ear to the shell again. She hears only the same numbers.
“Where’s your phone?” she asks Paul.
When she enters the numbers into a mapping app, a location pops up. The Aegean Sea. Of course. Where else would a temple to Poseidon be but Greece? She turns to Paul. “You want to take a little cruise?”
***
The last time Starla went to a carnival, she was a fourteen-year-old boy back in Rockford. When she shattered every bottle in the pitching game and sent the rings for the ring toss into the next county the carnival lost most of its fun. After that the closest she’d come was when Apex Man had apprehended Clownface on the grounds of a carnival after it closed.
Now that she doesn’t have superpowers anymore, she can actually enjoy the carnival visiting Atomic City. She has a stick of cotton candy in one hand while her other clutches Billy’s. She presses close to him, where she always feels so much safer.
Since the disastrous trip to Rockford, she has gained a new identity. Billy is the last person she expected to know how to get a fake ID, but he insisted he knew someone at the DMV who could make one for her and add her to the state’s computer system. So now if a cop asks for her ID, she can flash the driver’s license for Star Smith: twenty-three years old, five feet tall, a hundred pounds, black hair, and blue eyes—with corrective lenses. Her address is listed as Greta’s house, where she still lives.
On the night she got her new license, she and Billy went back to Starla’s old apartment to celebrate. She opened the door thanks to a set of keys Billy had retrieved from her former office for her. Other than a layer of dust, the apartment was the same as before she left. “What are we doing here?” Billy asked.
“I thought this way we could be alone,” she said. It didn’t sound very sexy in her chipmunk voice, but Billy took the hint.
They went back to her bed, a bed that had never been used for sex before. There was some fumbling with buttons before they got their clothes off. Once they did, they landed on the bed with a cloud of dust that made them sneeze and then laugh.
Billy looked down on her and smiled. “You’re so beautiful.”
Her face turned warm. “Not as beautiful as before.”
“I like you better this way.”
“You do?”
“Before you were so…intimidating.”
“Like Xena, Warrior Princess?” Starla asked, thinking of something a pervert named Ty Lecau had said about her.
“Sort of, yeah.”
“And now that I’m ugly, it’s easier for you to be with me?”
“What? No!” He rolled off her to stare helplessly at the floor. “I’m not explaining this very well.”
“I think you made it perfectly clear,” she said. She pulled the sheet up to cover her chest, such as it was. She should have known Billy wouldn’t like her body as much now that she was so tiny. “I think you should go.”
“Starla, please. I’m sorry. I meant…before I didn’t think a guy like me could ever have a chance with someone like you. I wasn’t sure why you were even hanging out with me. I mean you should have been dating a quarterback or a movie star or something.”
“And now that I’m so little and plain I’m good enough for you?”
“That’s not what I mean. Forget it.” She watched him gather up his clothes and dress. “I’m sorry,” he said before he walked out of the bedroom.
The moment she heard the front door click, she jumped from the bed, the sheet covering her like a toga about six sizes too big. “Billy, wait!”
She caught him on the stairs. She was grateful she was a few steps up so she could kiss him on the lips without having to get on her toes and possibly lose her balance. “I’m sorry, Billy,” she said. “Don’t go. Please?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“No, of course not. I just—” she trailed off as she heard a door somewhere open and realized she was standing on the stairs clad in only a sheet. “Let’s go back inside.”
She sat with him on the couch, looking down at the floor. “I’m sorry about that.”
“No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t saying it right. I don’t have a lot of experience talking with girls like this.”
“I don’t have much experience talking with boys like this either.” She took his hand. “Actually, you’re my first.”
“Really?”
“Yes. What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“I’m sorry—”
“I’m teasing.”
They returned to the bedroom. This time there was no awkwardness between them. Billy might not have been with many other girls, but he did at least understand the mechanics of sex. For her part, Starla ran her hands over his body and let him work. When she finally came, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before, a moment of pure, unadulterated joy.
While they snuggled on the bed, he ran a hand through her hair. “I really do think you’re beautiful.”
“Even though I look like a geek?”
“Especially because you look like a geek.” He kissed her again. “You’re my geek girl.”
“Thanks. I think.”
Everything after that has been wonderful. She and Billy have gotten everything into the open and their relationship is stronger now because of it. And for the first time since the Feminazi used that alien weapon on her, Starla feels comfortable being a woman. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t have superpowers or maybe it’s that she’s in love with someone who loves her back
, but she can’t imagine ever going back to the way things used to be.
Then she sees her past approaching her in the form of Stan Shaw with Kate King pressed to him the way Starla is to Billy. It’s amazing to see Kate so completely head-over-heels in love with Stan. Why hadn’t she been that way before? Had losing Stan for a year finally shown her what she was missing?
Starla nudges Billy in the hope she might steer him away from here before Kate and Stan see them. But she’s too late. Kate waves to them; Billy waves back. Stan, Starla notices, glares intently at her, as if this is her fault.
When she closes in, Kate says, “Well, this must be the mystery woman I keep hearing about.” She holds out her hand to Starla. “I’m Kate King. I work with Billy.”
“Star Smith.”
Kate’s eyes narrow, though not to glare at her like Stan. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” Starla’s heart beats faster as she waits for Kate to realize who she really is.
“She works at St. Jerome’s,” Billy says to bail her out.
“Oh, right. You did a story on that, didn’t you, Stan?”
“Yes,” he growls.
“Cute piece. Little Orphan Annie making good and all that,” Kate says. “Is that how you and Billy met?”
“Yes,” Starla mumbles. She yearns to escape from Stan’s glare, but she can’t without it looking suspicious.
“I took some pictures of her and we hit it off,” Billy says. He seems to have picked up on the tension while Kate, despite all her reporting acumen, has not.
“So where are you two crazy kids heading?”
“We’re just walking around,” Billy says.
“Well, why don’t you walk around with us?”
“Maybe we should give them some privacy,” Stan says.
“What’s the matter, afraid I’m going to uncover some dirt you missed on your big story?”
“I think these kids would rather be by themselves,” Stan insists.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud. We can call this a follow-up interview and bill the whole thing to Larry.”
“I really think—”
Kate ignores him to take Starla’s arm. Starla notices his eyes turn red for a moment, his infrared vision coming on as it does when he gets angry. Kate is still oblivious to the tension as she asks, “So how’s the city been treating you so far?”
Girl Power Omnibus (Gender Swap Superhero Fiction) Page 36