Face the Change (Menopausal Superheroes Book 3)

by Samantha Bryant

  This time he picked up before the first ring could complete. “Mary?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Thank God. I’ve been so worried about you. You just disappeared. Some of the guys at work seemed to think you’d gone off on some kind of adventure, but I didn’t believe you would just… leave. Where are you? Are you all right?”

  Mary smiled, feeling warmed by Jorge’s wall of worry. “I’m fine. It’s a long story, though. Maybe I can tell you in person. Do you think you could give me a ride?” She paused, looking around as if she’d be able to tell if the Department was watching. “I found my mom.”

  “Holy shit. I’ll be there. Just tell me where.”

  She gave him directions and a time, and asked him to bring a car that could move three adults and some stuff, then ran into the store to tell her mother help was on the way.

  Her mother was talking companionably with the old man behind the counter. Mary was pretty sure it was the same man who had always worked here, the one who wore a fisherman’s cap decorated with lures and a khaki vest with a ridiculous number of pockets. Even though it had been years since she’d come out to the family cabin—probably since her parents broke up when she was seventeen—nothing had changed. Not even the staff at the nearest store.

  He wasn’t the kind of man her mother normally found attractive—usually she preferred the nicely-turned-out-in-a-suit, tickets-to-the-theater sort of man—but Helen Braeburn was definitely flirting. She even wound a strand of her hair around a finger as she leaned across the counter. The effect was somewhat diminished by the skunk look several months without a beauty shop had given her—four inches of iron gray roots before another four of faded dyed locks—but the man didn’t seem to notice. He probably didn’t get many opportunities to flirt, and he was eating it up.

  Mary walked up and stood at the edge of her mom’s peripheral vision, eager to share her news, but not wanting to interrupt and feeling a little weirded out listening to the two middle-aged people banter. The man looked over at her and waved for her to come closer. “Oh my goodness, is this vision of loveliness the same little girl who used to come in here looking for Yoo-Hoo?”

  Mary didn’t feel like a vision of loveliness—she felt sweaty and nervous—but she knew a compliment when she heard one. She checked his name tag, a hand-embroidered one stitched onto the right breast. Pete. Oh yeah. Pete and Repeat. He always used to tell her that joke.

  She smiled broadly. “That’s me. How are you, Pete?”

  “I’m good. But you have certainly grown up. Look at you! You’re as lovely as your mother.”

  Helen smiled, patted Mary on the shoulder, and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Do you still have the hot tub out on the deck? Maybe I could come back for a soak this evening.”

  Pete’s shoulders slumped. “Well, it’s still there, but there’s something wrong with the heating elements.”

  “Why don’t you let me have a look? You’d be surprised, the tricks a woman picks up selling real estate.”

  Pete set the box of Borax, colorful tee shirts, and the other sundry items Helen had gathered to the side. “Why not? The view is nice back there anyway, and you can see the new plants the wife is growing.” The man took a few lurching steps to the front door to flip a sign that said he’d be back in fifteen minutes then led the two women through a door and up some stairs.

  Mary had never been allowed back here as a kid. It was an adults-only area. Now she saw why. There was a full bar and a juke box as well as the hot tub and some lounging chairs. Mary’s parents used to settle her in at the cabin and sneak down here late at night, once she was big enough to be left alone for a bit. She could never fathom why they’d want to go hang out with the guy who ran the little store. But a glance over the selections behind the bar showed that good old Pete knew his way around the liquor store, and both her parents liked a good cocktail.

  Mary wasn’t sure what her mother was up to. Mechanical know-how was not on her list of skills. Still, she stayed silent. She helped Pete pull off the padded cover and nodded politely as he showed them how the thermostat still read at a stubborn seventy degrees even though he’d had the “durn thing” set for one-oh-one all day. While they listened, Helen peered into the tub, dangling her fingers in the water.

  “Have you checked the circuit breaker?” she asked. When Pete walked away to do so, Helen winked at Mary, then closed her eyes. Within moments, steam began to rise from the hot tub. Mary gasped. She’d had no idea her mother could use her powers for something like this.

  The numbers on the thermostat rose steadily. Seventy-five. Eighty. Ninety. Ninety-nine. One hundred. Mary cleared her throat, and her mother opened her eyes, smiled at the reading, and pulled her hand out of the water, wiping her fingers on her shirt.

  “Pete?” she called. “I think it’s working.”

  Pete came back, wiping his hands on a rag and grumbling a little to himself. He stopped short when he saw the steam in the air. “What on earth?” He bent over the gauge to peer at it over the top of his glasses. “Well, that’s just odd. How did it get up to temperature so fast?” He looked at Mary, who shrugged, and Helen, who smiled. “You do have a way with machines,” he told her, reaching out to shake her hand, then looked up at her in surprise when their palms made contact. “And hot hands.”

  “I do tend to run a little warm,” Helen admitted.

  “Well, warm hands, warm heart, I guess. Let’s get you ladies back to your groceries.”

  “What was that all about, Mom?” They were nearly back to where Mary had stowed the stolen Honda they’d used as a getaway car. She hadn’t wanted to leave it near the store where it might be easily spotted, so the two women had a hike to get their bags in the car before they could drive back up to the cabin.

  “Just having a little fun. Girl’s got to get her kicks somewhere.”

  Mary didn’t respond. She still freaked out every time her mother used her powers, and though heating a hot tub seemed pretty innocuous, she felt worried. Nothing like the hurling fireballs earlier, though. Her mother seemed… normal.

  “So, he’ll come.”

  Helen nodded. “I thought he would. You have a way with men.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that men want to help you. You have a vulnerability thing going for you.” Mary huffed, but her mother fluttered her hand to wave her off. “Relax. It’s not a bad thing. It will definitely help us now.”

  Mary still felt a little insulted. She’d called in a huge favor for her mother in reaching out to Jorge. Her own life had been at risk, too, in getting away from the Department. Her mother ought to be a little more grateful for everything Mary had done for her. Still, this was better than the angry muttering of the past two days.

  “So, what will we do after we get the stuff from the storage unit?”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “Wait?”

  Helen lifted the bags up to her shoulders to shift the grip. “Sure. Once we have her things, Cindy will come to us.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, I’ll get my chance.”

  The bags of groceries Helen had been carrying fell to the ground, spilling their supplies onto the path. Helen’s hands had apparently melted the plastic handles. At least they were within sight of the car. Mary shuttled the stuff by the armload, trying to still her feeling of panic. Her chance for what? Mary had a bad feeling that what her mother wanted from Cindy Liu wasn’t just answers.

  She shuddered, remembering the feeling of ash falling on her skin after her mother had disintegrated that poor nurse back at the Department facility. It had smelled of charred meat. She rubbed at her arms as if the ash still dusted them.

  “What’s this stuff for?” Mary held up the box of Borax.

  “Fireproofing.”

  Mary set the box into the trunk along with all the other supplies. Her mouth was suddenly very dry.

  Sally Ann Wings It

  Sally Ann Rogers
stared at the Director for a long moment. She’d walked into his top floor office expecting to leave with carpet burn after he dragged her across it. After all, their mission in Indiana had ended in a near-complete disaster. Sure, they’d rescued Patricia O’Neill, but the kidnappers had escaped them, and one of her team had been shot. The Director had been reticent since their return a few days earlier, and she’d taken that as a bad sign of things to come. He was probably only waiting on Leonel’s recovery before he showed her the door for her failures.

  Instead, he had blindsided her by announcing that he intended to take the organization public, partnering with law enforcement and the City of Springfield. She thought he had to be joking and laughed.

  He hadn’t joined in.

  His square jaw jutted out obstinately, making him look even more like one of the Baldwin brothers before they got fat. But if he thought the gesture accentuated his masculine charms, he was wrong. Sally Ann thought it made him look arrogant and childish at the same time. These were not qualities she wanted in the man who held her life and that of her team in his hands.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” Of course he wasn’t. The Director didn’t joke unless you counted sneaking up on people. If he said he was taking the Department public, he meant it. “How exactly do you expect to make that work?” she asked. “Have a press conference?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “I’ve already got an arrangement with the mayor. He hasn’t forgotten the things we’ve covered up for him over the years. Officially, we’ll be consultants. That leaves us free to step away from one another should the need arise.”

  Sally Ann stood and walked over to the windows and stared out at the city she’d called home ever since she’d been recruited by the Director for his covert group of agents. The skyscraper across the street glistened in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Beautiful. She really had come to think of Springfield as her own.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of this plan, though. It was a big step. One that might blow up in their faces, even get them killed if the wrong sorts of information got out. But one with possibilities. If they no longer had to hide, the work could be easier. They could utilize the alert systems to track suspects, use the press and the news. She thought of the now-missing Helen and Mary Braeburn. A public presence would put more tools in their arsenal.

  Instead of turning to talk, she spoke to her own reflection in the glass, smoothing her hair down on her forehead where the humidity threatened to undo her work with the flatiron and leave her frizzy. “So, you tell the city we exist. Then what?”

  “We save them.”

  It wouldn’t be that simple. They both knew it. But the idea was already worming its way into Sally Ann’s brain. The Director stepped up behind her silently, laying a hand on her shoulder. His face reflected in the window was distorted—his chin appeared diminished and his brow more sloping.

  “Sometimes it’s better to out yourself before someone does it for you. The best secrets aren’t deeply buried. They’re out there unheard in all the other noise.” He waggled his fingers in a smoke-and-mirrors pantomime.

  He had a point, even if he was a complete cheeseball about it. The Department worked behind the scenes and it still would. But having a public face could deflect attention from the things they wished to keep hidden while letting people feel as if they were in the know. The business of secrets was half in keeping them, half in letting people think they already knew the truth.

  There had already been moments they couldn’t keep secret, like the fight with the tank in the streets of Tall Oaks. They could spend less energy spinning it and creating cover stories if they could just say out loud that it was them, dealing with another situation beyond the capabilities of ordinary law enforcement. Sally Ann found herself nodding along, catching the Director’s enthusiasm.

  “There are more and more odd cases. It’s getting harder to keep them a secret, especially when everyone and his grandmother has a cell phone that can take video,” the Director continued.

  Sally Ann frowned. No one could yet explain why so many more unusual cases were cropping up. Only two years ago, the first Liu-vians showed up on the scene. Before then, there hadn’t been any cases nearly so dramatic. Most “freaks” had more subtle skills, like Sally Ann’s talent for reading emotional imprints on paper or Agent Driver’s uncanny adeptness with motor vehicles.

  Leonel and Jessica were not so subtle. Leonel had unmeasured strength, and Jessica could fly. They both worked for the Department now. It was good to have these super-freaks on the Department’s side. Their support would be vital against the freaks taking a less lawful road. Freaks like the ones that had escaped them in Indiana or the ones responsible for the recent string of robberies here in Springfield that seemed to involve some kind of mind control. Dangerous freaks.

  In the past few months, cases seemed to be popping up all over the country. Not only in Springfield, where Dr. Liu was clearly the catalyst with her experiments and supplements that interacted strangely with some users, but everywhere. It wasn’t widely known yet, but that was changing, thanks to people’s grandmothers and their videophones and conspiracy nuts with websites and YouTube channels.

  Sally Ann crossed back to the desk and glanced at the reports she and the Director had just been scouring: a boy in Emporia, Kansas, who shot lightning from his fingertips and killed his own best friend; a man in Livonia, New York, who seemed to be disappearing; a girl in Saskatchewan who could put people to sleep with her singing. And that was just today’s reports. The people had different ages, races, ethnicities, geographies. There didn’t seem to be a commonality, at least not one Sally Ann could spot easily.

  Something had shifted. Closing in on the vectors was as difficult as explaining why Leonel’s soap had changed him into a man but hadn’t done a thing to anyone else they’d tracked down who had used it, other than make some nice suds and get them clean. There were too many variables. They were too busy dealing with the consequences to devote the time to researching the reasons.

  “Consider our Ms. O’Neill. She’s been caught on film several times now, even made the evening news and been featured in the tabloids. She’s practically a celebrity.” The Director’s mouth had pressed into a flat line, but Sally Ann couldn’t escape the impression he was pleased rather than upset by the breaches in secrecy, that this was somehow exactly what he wanted to happen. He looked like the proverbial cat that had swallowed the canary. The question remained: who exactly was the canary?

  Soon there wouldn’t be any more plausible deniability. Sally Ann could feel the truth of it. There were simply too many witnesses. It would change the nature of their work, going public. But that might be for the best. As she looked into the Director’s fervent face, Sally Ann’s doubts seemed to melt away. She was overcome with a feeling she should trust this man and his intuitions. After all, she’d done so up till now, and he’d never let her down.

  A suspicion crept across her consciousness. There had to be a reason she was in here with the Director—just her, not the whole team. “What exactly do you have in mind for this big announcement?”

  “We’ll need a bit of spectacle, I think. Some showmanship.”

  “Like a flying hero?”

  The Director looked down at his desk, shuffling some papers, and Sally Ann suddenly understood what she was doing here. She sagged. “You expect me to talk her into it?”

  “Well, the two of you do share a special bond.”

  Sally Ann barked a short laugh. “Yeah. We’re sisters under the skin, all right. You’re a right bastard sometimes, you know.”

  The Director stretched his face into a mask of mock horror. “Me?”

  “What do you suggest I say? She has kids. And after what happened with Leonel… I just don’t know.”

  “Tell her the city needs her. It won’t even be a lie.”

  “Her city needs her?” Sally Ann smacked her own knee, laughing. “This isn’t the fifties. Patriotism isn’t t
he selling point it once was.”

  The Director’s mouth tightened unpleasantly. “What would you suggest?”

  Sally Ann considered for a long moment, not liking the manipulative paths her mind wandered. Maybe she had spent too much time playing in the shadows. “We should be honest with her. Tell her we need a public face for the group and she’s the woman for the job.”

  “Honesty, huh? Not my first thought.”

  Sally Ann shook her head. No, it wouldn’t be. The Director was about as transparent as a lead-lined safe.

  “You think that’s what will work?” he asked.

  Sally sighed. “She’s been through enough, sir. She should get to fly into this with her eyes open.”

  “I leave it in your hands.” The Director turned and moved back toward his desk, already pulling up documents on his tablet before Sally Ann could even leave the room.

  She stopped at the door. “What are we calling this thing?”

  “The Unusual Cases Unit.”

  UCU. Not too bad.

  Sally Ann headed straight to the gym. She wanted to lay the Director’s scheme out for Jessica immediately before she could talk herself out of it. And the gym was the most likely place to find her. After Jessica had recovered the emeralds—one of the few good things to come out the mission in Indiana—she was nearly always in the gym, finding out how far she could push herself. Today, the techs were running speed tests, seeing how quickly Flygirl could traverse the training floor under different conditions.

  Sally Ann keyed in her entry, pushed the gym doors open wide, and looked around. Sure enough, there Jessica was, crouched on the railing of the observation platform. She had cut her hair almost as short as Sally Ann’s. The longer strands blew in her face when she flew, she said, and she was tired of eating her own hair. The sleek style with jagged points of hair gelled down against her cheeks looked good on her. Sally Ann grimaced at the sudden vision her imagination conjured up of Jessica dolled up for a photo shoot. She wondered if they’d want her to wear a cape.