When the Villian Comes Home

by Gabrielle Harbowy

  “Can you still be a strong woman, a strong villain, and allow a man to—”

  “Could the Red Rebel or the mad Dr. Gibraltar have used a mind control dev—”

  The Shoehorn? I wondered, hooking a right into the mall proper and leaving the Sears behind. No, absolutely not. I needed good quality heels if I was going to jump back in the game, reinforced this time. Though Shoehorn might do for flats for the wedding…

  I sniffed the air. Oooh, Cinnacakes!

  Normally I avoid sugar and refined foods. Everyone has a cameraphone and an upskirt fetish these days—even a high-ranking villain such as myself can not afford a spare pound or two—but three weeks is plenty of time to work a sweet cinnacake off. Even with extra icing.

  “Send me home from work,” I muttered, standing in line for the cake. Next door, on the bench outside the Eternal 16, a broad-shouldered man hunched over several overflowing shopping bags, an expression of mingled boredom and irritation twisting his mouth. The way he slouched gave the impression of being pot-bellied but I could tell he wasn’t. His hair was dusted with grey, but it was oddly spotty and flaking across his right shoulder.

  In fact, I realized, he looked like one of mine who’d had to rush into his civvies. I eyed him closer, inching forward in the cinnacake line. Arms like that, he wasn’t a bruiser, that much was obvious, but he wasn’t weak either. Unless he had abilities. That was possible.

  The kid in line behind me poked me in the shoulder to get my attention. I almost punched him in retaliation but realized that I’d been brooding on the graying gentleman instead of paying attention to the line. The acne-riddled clerk was smiling helpfully at me, finger poised over the cash-register as if he were about to punch the doomsday button.

  “Miss? What kind of cinnacake can I get you today?”

  His voice was quiet, it couldn’t have carried all the way to the bench, but the grey-haired man glanced up. Our eyes met.

  Simultaneously we recognized one another.

  Shit, he mouthed, straightening and rapidly looking up and down the wide corridor filled with shoppers. I did the same. This was not the place for another showdown.

  “Damn it all to hell,” I muttered, stepping out of the cinnacake line. I’d been looking forward to that cake too.

  “Miss? Miss, don’t you want—”

  “Changed my mind!” I called over my shoulder. My hand hovered near the ridiculous purse—I kept an emergency pack in all the absurd bags my persona carried—but I didn’t want to whip it out just yet. Something about the way Captain Fabulouso’s shoulders slumped back down made me realize he wasn’t up for Round 2 today. At least…not yet.

  Rolling his eyes at my caution, Captain Fabulouso—well, his persona—waved me over and patted the bench beside him.

  “Truce?” Cap asked.

  “Never, hero,” I replied, but sat beside him anyway. Very close inspection revealed that he was hovering a micro-space above the bench, not actually sitting on it. A wise precaution—the bench was only wrought iron, after all, not graded to hold that kind of density or weight without buckling.

  “You want to pick a spot to do this?” he asked, running a hand through the flaking grey in his hair. “I don’t have that much time before my…before I have an appointment.”

  “Family member in there?” I hazarded, peering into the Eternal 16, trying to spot someone who might conceivably be willing to be seen with this hunched and sad civilian. “Wife? No, flashy’s not your style. Daughter?”

  Cap hid his flinch but his pupils contracted.

  “Who in the world could sleep with you?” I wondered, surprised, setting my bag between us and leaning back. “Wouldn’t you snap them in half?”

  “Seriously?” he demanded, aggravated. “You’ve stumbled onto my alter ego and you want to know how I have sex?”

  “You have a kid,” I pointed out. “You’re an alien. Unless your daughter’s an alien too, I’m thinking that physiologically it’s just—”

  “Wishes,” Cap ground out. “I was gifted wishes from—”

  “The Genies of the Material Plane?” I guessed. “Titania’s Fae Hordes? Ooh, I know, those squeaky green guys from Dimension—”

  “You are very annoying when I’m not punching you,” he interrupted. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “You broke my heels,” I explained, suddenly annoyed now that he’d reminded me. “And got me—well, not fired exactly. Put on probation. Sort of.”

  “Not a promotion? I’m surprised.” Cap didn’t bother to hide the resignation.

  “Dr. G’s calling it a promotion, but since I can’t go any higher without ousting him, it’s just a pay raise,” I said. “But it’s a punishment actually. The Evil Corps don’t give time off; a hench only takes leave because you’ve got a busted bone, or you’ve been shot into another dimension or something. You know the drill. No, the money and whatnot is a ruse. Dr. G’s…aggravated with me.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. There was a fantastic pair of stiletto thigh-highs in the window of the Eternal 16 that looked like they might be my size, but I didn’t dare go in with his daughter milling about somewhere inside. I might set off another fight and I really wanted to try on those boots, not reconstruct the shreds of them.

  “Honestly, I have no idea what I did to piss you off so badly,” I admitted. Even from here I could see that the boots were black leather, the zipper hidden with a cunning fold from ankle to thigh. “It’s not like I haven’t taunted you a million times before.”

  Cap sighed. “Would you believe that you had nothing to do with it?” When I frowned he laughed. “Very little to do with it,” he amended.

  “Then what—” I broke off.

  She was lovely—medium height, medium build, long glossy brown hair and large, green-edged doe eyes. She wasn’t the sort of girl you’d normally find in an Eternal 16—her skirt swirled from hip to ankle, her blouse clung in all the right places without being tight. She was, as my mother would’ve put it, a classy young lady. Her friend—definitely the sort of girl you’d expect to see frequenting Eternal 16—chomped gum with an open mouth beside her. They laughed together as the friend held up a slinky, black-edged corset dress, urging his daughter to try it on; they were close enough to the entrance for the gist of their conversation to carry.

  Prom was apparently coming and Miss Doe Eyes had a dashing, dangerous new beau.

  “You even think about it—” Cap growled beside me.

  I waved a hand, brushing him off. “Who’s she dating?”

  He stiffened. “How—”

  Not it was my turn to roll my eyes. “I was a teenage girl once, Cap.”

  “Shhh!” He glanced around to make sure no one had heard me.

  “Gang banger?” I guessed. “Goth? A handsy-sorta jock?”

  Cap’s face remained impassive.

  “Sidekick?” There was that twitch that wasn’t a twitch again. “Henchman?”

  BINGO.

  The pulse of fury was tangible. I snatched my purse out of the way and scrambled to the far side of the seat as fast as I could. For one brief instant the entire mall froze, caught in a gravity dilation that shorted out time, and then it was back, the sound surging over us in a wave like breaking glass.

  “Anyone I’d know?” I asked, hand deep in my purse in case another dilation came.

  “He’s new to henching,” Cap replied. “I can’t let her know that I know, either. That’d make him—”

  “More enticing,” I finished. I sighed. “Well…I’m sorry?”

  “No need to be,” he said. “It’s my problem to deal with. I should be apologizing to you.” He rubbed his hands across his face. “The doctor doesn’t like broken protocol.”

  “‘It’s just a job, it’s never personal,’” I quoted, mimicking Dr. G’s droll tones. “I made it personal.” />
  “No, you were just poking me. I made it personal,” Cap said. “Now we’re both in trouble.” He examined his cuticles listlessly. “I might lose my license for losing it at you like that. Threatening.” He sighed. “I wouldn’t have dropped you.”

  Like I didn’t know that already. My hair ached where he’d grabbed me but even dangling above the city I knew he didn’t have it in him to let go.

  “Pshaw. I don’t know about you, but thanks to this ‘break’ now I’ve got family functions to attend,” I teased, trying to lighten his mood. “But you think you’re in trouble. Whatever.”

  “Breaking the kid’s legs before he gets to the door would be in poor taste, I suppose?” Cap asked.

  I nodded. “We like playing Florence Nightingale.”

  “Damn.”

  We sat in silence for several seconds before he asked helplessly. “What do I do?”

  I edged close enough to pat him on the shoulder; he probably felt me plant the tracking device but, hey, even off the job a girl’s never off the job. “You wait. You be polite. If they date for a couple of months you invite him to dinner to meet the missus.”

  That flinch again. Interesting.

  “And if they get married some day, you pay for the wedding and hope like hell your grandkids are normies. Because a toddler who can fiddle with gravity is not really in the What to Expect books.”

  My cell beeped. Dr. G’s beep. It was my turn to flinch. Cap grinned, glancing sidelong at me. “Take it.”

  “It’s cheating if you can hear us across the mall,” I retorted primly.

  He reached back and plucked the tracking device free. “So’s this. Take the call.”

  Rolling my eyes, I stood up and walked inside the Eternal 16. I pointedly ignored the girls and moved to examine the boots. They were long and lean and perfect; flipping open the cell with one hand I measured the length with the other. The buttery black leather would stretch from foot to my mid-thigh; the circumference was just wide enough to circle my leg.

  It was as if they’d been made for me.

  “Great job, Red!” Dr. G crowed on the cell, his grin filling the screen. He stepped back from the camera exposing the ring sling slung over one shoulder and across his chest. Dr. G jiggled the sling lightly, dancing from side to side to soothe the occupant. Ben’s towhead peeked just over the edge of the fabric; the infant was sagging, deeply asleep in his father’s arms.

  “We have a guest,” I said quickly, trying to cut Dr. G off at the pass. The very last thing we needed was the Captain to eavesdrop his way to the lair.

  “And an appointment for a duel,” Dr. G said, swaying from side to side as Ben, rousing, began to fuss. “Feeling up to destroying the parking lot?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  Behind me, the captain’s cell was dinging loudly. I recognized the Hero Inc. tone from here.

  “Kick some ass, dear,” Dr. G said, giving me an exaggerated thumbs up.

  “I don’t have any—”

  “Pick up the boots,” he sighed. “They’re reinforced. You’re welcome. And make sure to keep him occupied for at least twenty minutes.”

  Behind me the Captain was too busy cursing into his cell to eavesdrop on my conversation.

  “Keep him occupi—” I broke off and buried my face in one hand, amazed at how I’d been duped. I’d spent the entire afternoon doubting myself, doubting my place in the grand scheme of things and here Dr. G was, telling me without saying it outright that he’d had everything planned all along. “This entire thing was a setup.”

  “At least twenty minutes,” Dr. G reiterated. “There’s a spare catsuit in the boot box. And Red?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You still have to go to the wedding. Your mother will be broken-hearted if you don’t.” He hung up.

  Annoyed, I snatched up the boots and the box; behind me I heard the shriek as the Slinky Slyme brothers blobbed their way across the tile and swallowed Doe Eyes and her friend whole. The Captain was gone but he’d be back within seconds, blazing Red-White-Blue and crushing everything in sight.

  The new catsuit slipped on with nary a snag, the boots slid on like silk. I could feel the gravity pulse from halfway across the mall.

  Grinning, I clenched my fists and waited.

  It was good to be me.

  K.D. McENTIRE, author of young adult titles Lightbringer and Reaper from Pyr Books, can be found on the web at http://www.kdmcentire.com.

  THE SUNSHINE BARON

  Peadar Ó Guilín

  Ah, Borquil, lucky Borquil. Many the balconies of his gilded mansion: north over the spice market; east where he sipped tea at dawn; west for opium. And south? Great Borquil never looked south.

  The sun shone on the Northern capital as it did every day. Borquil had ensured it. Had grown rich: the famous Sunshine Baron! By night, a gentle rain would patter over the fields and fill a few cisterns before sliding gently seawards on the Farg River, sweet-natured these days, ‘though its name meant “angry” in the old tongue.

  “I calmed it all down,” muttered Borquil. “Me. They should be more grateful.”

  The Northerners had shown gratitude at first. The king loved him. Whole provinces voted him thanks and over the years, as Borquil grew plump and the nightmares disturbed him less and less, aristocrats welcomed him into their homes. “A foreigner no longer!” they said amongst themselves. “He is truly one of our own!” Sure, they found it odd how he refused to travel more than a day south of the Farg river, but they too were rich enough to have ghosts they’d rather avoid. As the saying went: “no man sits in his own poop.”

  But now, how inconvenient for poor Borquil! Revolution had come to the Kingdom of the North. His aristocratic friends were losing their heads in the streets outside. And the mobs had come for his blood too. The double doors leading to his courtyard splintered and buckled under a battering ram. He had perhaps an hour to live.

  “Where are my servants?” cried the baron.

  Only Irashtal remained to him. “Fled, lord,” said the slave. “The Revolution, you see? The Talentless?” The woman’s black Southern hair had long since faded into grey, but there was no disguising the hue of her skin—tinged with gold, as Borquil’s had once been before he had bought his way to a more civilised pale colour. He had purchased too, the shiny blond curls that would allow him to take a fuller part in Northern life.

  “Wretches!” he shouted at his missing staff. “Talentless dogs!” Then he turned on his slave. “You would have abandoned me too, wouldn’t you? If the magic of your bondage allowed it?”

  The old woman was sweating.

  “Didn’t I treat you well, Irashtal? I brought you with me before war broke out in the Southlands. You would have rotted there. Instead, you eat what I eat.”

  “I am your poison taster, lord.”

  True. And she’d been much more than that once upon a time.

  He tried to ignore the splintering of his gates and the growing fear in his guts. “You were a pretty thing, were you not? The richest men in the North delighted to the sound of your voice, but I wouldn’t let them take it from you or share their beds. It is fitting we should fall now together.”

  But the slave shocked him by grabbing his arm. “Free me, lord,” she said. Her voice was still strong, still beautiful. She sang him to sleep with it most nights. She alone knew how to keep the bad dreams at bay.

  Out in the courtyard a loud crack and cheering told him the Talentless were on the verge of breaking through. Irashtal’s grip grew fierce enough to bruise his pale skin—he hadn’t known she possessed such strength. “While there’s time, Borgy. Remember what we meant to each other, back when you were the king. I beg you.”

  Yes, he had been king, if only for a few weeks, but unbelievably lucky all the same. A very distant cousin of the Southern Royals, a very poor cousin,
he was the only one left standing when rebellion came calling back home. Irashtal had been even younger than he was back then. They had fled north together before she could be married off to one of the other family servants.

  But Borquil’s silver soon ran out. He’d already begun rehearsing arguments to get Irashtal to sell her talents or her body when a royalist messenger had found him at the dirty rooms he’d been renting in the Northern capital.

  “I am the king!” he told his only friend that day. He swung her around the room, both of them young and full of laughter.

  “But surely,” she had said, “they will declare a republic now?”

  “Tomorrow,” he replied. “The messenger got here just in time. For one or two more days, I am the legal ruler of the Southlands.” It was all he needed to make his fortune.

  A particularly loud crack drifted up from the mansion’s courtyard. A great cheer sounded and the filthy poor, the Talentless, poured into Borquil’s home.

  “Let go of me, slave!” He couldn’t meet her eyes. South was not the only place he feared to look. “By your vow, I command it.” Irashtal didn’t want to release him, but the invocation of her oath gave her no choice. Her fingers sprang back of their own accord and she cried out with the pain of it.

  Down in the courtyard, blond Northerners overturned the hay-cart. Horses whinnied in panic as strangers pushed into the stables to paw at them. And glass, expensive and beautiful, shattered under grubby fists.

  Borquil’s heart thundered in his chest. The Revolution had spread from poorer cities far from the capital. Angry Talentless, raging, full of envy for their betters, had imprisoned the king and filled the streets with blood for dogs to lap at. Watching them twisted Borquil with just enough anger to overcome his fear. He strode to the balcony.

  “Stop this at once!” he called. And everybody froze. As well they might. The voice he used commanded respect, its tones deep and confident. He had bought this Talent from an army sergeant down on his luck, a man used to the chaos of battlefields far larger and more chaotic than this courtyard.