Chapter Nine
Looking at the old comic-book superheroes, Batman had a secret lair from which he could monitor the world and particularly his
beloved Gotham City, but Superman had an impregnable fortress hidden as far away from the rest of humanity as it could be and
still be on the same planet. A secret base of operations vs. a hideway.
Dr. Mendell, On superhero psychology.
* * *
Capes are a pain in the butt, which is why most capes don’t wear them. Mine are made out of some kind of patented silk-synthetic
mix that’s cool and shiny but fairly resistant to damage. Apparently they’re not resistant to being slept on; I forgot to take
it off last night, and woke up tangled in cape and horse-blanket. The horse-blanket was less wrinkled.
I’d had no plans last night, but I did when I opened my eyes. Back in January, when Atlas and I returned to Los Angeles I’d left
behind all the civilian clothes I’d bought just for the scandal-inducing getaway. I’d optimistically anticipated a lot more time
spent here. Now the mountains were green with spring, the meadows covered in wildflowers, and I had the day free. Two days if I
blew off class for once.
Going back inside, I showered and changed into cargo shorts and a pink cotton cami with Bow to the princess written in white
sparkles. Bouncing down the stairs, I almost screamed when I ran into Artemis coming up from the cellar.
“Morning, Hope. So what kind of coffee did Atlas stock, anyway?” she asked.
“I— What? The who?”
“Shelly thought you might need some big-girl talk, and I got to test Vulcan’s new carrier drone. He designed it to drop Galatea,
but I stepped out a few thousand feet up and floated down. Thought I’d let you sleep.”
She’d changed into a civilian version of her daysuit—skintight and covered by sailor pants and a long-sleeved turtleneck
sweater. She had the gloves and mask ready, but with the bay-window curtains drawn she was fine inside the cabin.
“Thanks? I… Coffee?” I pulled in my scattered thoughts while Artemis stood there, completely unconcerned at having invited
herself to join my getaway. “Just canned stuff.”
She smiled, held up a bag. “I came prepared.”
Being a vampire limited Artemis to a liquid diet, so she’d become a lover of all things drinkable. Coffee, hot chocolate, wine,
beer, coolers, ale, even ice-cream (frozen liquid after all). She could brew coffee that made gourmet baristas cry, and I’d kill
for her chocolate concoctions.
Ten minutes later, the kitchen filling with the brain-melting aroma of hand-ground bean, Artemis threw herself into a chair.
“So?” she said. “Why is Shelly worried about you?” Birds sang outside, wind rattled the leaves, and my super-duper hearing
picked up the soft step of a deer. Two? A doe and her fawn? When I focused I could hear the wildlife around the cabin, but I
couldn’t hear Artemis’ heartbeat. Because being dead, she didn’t have one. And though she hadn’t inherited any of the
traditional vampire phobias from the psychotic and delusional breakthrough who’d “sired” her, naked sunlight would burn her
like a blowtorch. But she sat across from me, up in the daytime and far away from her safe urban haunts.
“Hey,” she said. “Little Miss Sunshine can’t go watery on me.”
I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “And fiends of the night shouldn’t be up past their bedtimes. You still haven’t told me where you
’ve been.”
She’d disappeared right after the public funeral for Atlas, Nimbus, and Ajax. All Blackstone would tell anybody was that she’d
been “helping the DSA with an investigation,” and although she’d texted a few times she hadn’t spilled any details.
And she’d stayed strictly nocturnal since getting back two weeks ago. We hadn’t resumed our weekly outings to The Fortress, and
we hadn’t really talked. About anything. I’d thought she’d been avoiding me. Which I could understand, since I had almost
gotten her killed.
She read my face. “Hey. You didn’t drag me along—I volunteered, remember? Hell, I owed the Anarchist big-time. If that meant
going into a daylight fight, my biggest problem with the way it turned out is I didn’t get a chance to shoot anybody. Not even a
little.”
That surprised a laugh out of me.
“Better,” she said. “Want me to shoot a few newsies for you? Just a little?”
“Aagh.” I clutched my hair, sliding down in my chair. “Just a little. You’d think they’d leave me alone.”
“In what bizarro alternate world would they do that? After the Burnout scandal with all those underage ‘sidekicks’ last year?
And we’re talking about Atlas, the Great American Hero? You can’t just show your birth-certificate, so the tabloids can claim
you’re jailbait, and you’ve got to admit that the ten-year age difference between the two of you made it look a bit squicky.”
“Nine! Nine years! And I thought you were all for it.”
“I was. When you’re in The Life you carpe the diem when you can. I didn’t know Atlas well, but Blackstone didn’t even blink at
the thought of you two. Chakra wouldn’t have cared if one of you was a duck, but if Blackstone had thought it the least hinky he
’d have warned you away from it.”
“Then what did I do wrong?”
“Disappearing with Atlas for three days? With his rep? You’d have done better to run off to Vegas. Getting married by Elvis
would have been nothing.”
“We were engaged, and nothing happened!”
“Great title for your autobiography. Nobody’ll buy it.”
I moaned.
“This conversation is undoing my therapy.”
“Really? You killed how many Bad Guys in LA, got tortured by a sadistic nut-job and waxed him too, and this is what you talk to
Dr. Mendell about?”
“I don’t talk to her about LA. Or Reno. Not since she certified me for duty.”
“Coffee’s ready.”
She got up and poured, then did something arcane with the cans and packets she’d brought. English cream. Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Other
stuff. She never asked what I wanted, but I always wanted what she made.
“So what were you doing Blackstone wouldn’t talk about?” I asked, blowing on mine. Habit: I could have drunk it boiling.
For a moment she looked really, really dangerous, like an evil Snow White.
“Let’s just say the ‘vampire’ population of New Orleans has declined. On that note, good news: I’m not contagious.”
“You can’t make other vampires?”
“Nope. Not without psycho-Vlad to empower me, anyway. And since he’s ashes floating in Lake Michigan…”
Her smile stretched ear to ear, and I sighed, relieved. I’d occasionally worried that the Department of Superhuman Affairs would
conspire with the Center for Disease Control to lock her up as the potential vector for a vampire-plague. After all that’s what
her maker had planned. I sipped the coffee and settled back with a deeper, blissful sigh.
“But the whole Atlas-scandal has been going on awhile,” Artemis said. “Why is Shelly worried now?”
So I told her.
* * *
“Are you brain-dead?”
I’d only ever seen Artemis this mad once, the night I’d tracked her down in her hideout under her old family home. She’d shot
me in the eye to make the point. It had stung
“Blackstone is going to get pureed and you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m sorry!”
I forced my hands down, wrapping them around my cup. A mistake; I squeezed too hard and it shattered, splashing coffee across the
kitchen. Déjà-vu. I leaped up and grabbed a dish towel.
“I told you, Shelly and I thought we could find his killer first!”
“Of all the blonde— Look, you can’t just catch the guy who’s going to do it! You said the police think this guy’s a contract
killer! You catch this guy, whoever would have paid for the hit is just going to hire somebody else! So Blackstone doesn’t end up
in a box—he’ll still be dead!”
“Oh.”
I dropped the towel and sat on the floor, felt a crunch. “Dammit!” Reaching under me I pulled pieces of cup out of the seat of
my shorts, stuck my finger in the hole. I tried to laugh, and realized I was shaking.
“Hope,” Artemis said, but I couldn’t stop.
No no no no.
“Hope!”
Minuteman. Killed by a gang-banger. Impact. Died in Israel. Ajax. Nimbus. Atlas. All gone down together in LA. Now Blackstone.
“Shit!” Artemis isn’t nearly as strong as me, but she took an iron grip on my chin and pulled my head around.
“Look into my freaking eyes!”
And I fell into cool pools of blue.
“Better?” She pulled back and I nodded limply, the screaming panic only an echo, back to the shadow of fear of the past few
days.
“That’s amazing.”
“It’s a benefit past donors get. Panic attacks? You need a better therapist.”
I opened my hand and ground bits of coffee cup dribbled down to the floor.
“Or I could grind your beans myself,” I giggled wetly.
She relaxed. “Done?”
I thought about it, and nodded.
“Good.” She pulled me to my feet and kicked a chair under me, the big-sister again.
But she still looked dark and dangerous, waiting for a target. It was like having a dragon sitting in my kitchen.
“And I’m sorry,” she said. “Your idea is a good one—it’s just not big enough.”
“It’s not?”
“Not even close. Look, this isn’t your kind of job. I’m Blackstone’s apprentice; threat-analysis is what we do. Just to be
clear, all you’ve got is that, in the timeline before the Big One changed everything, this banker was killed? And later
Blackstone, both by the same method?”
I nodded again.
“And no discovered connection between them?”
“No.”
“So there are four possibilities.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “It’s completely personal; the killer’s an Outfit
hitter; he’s an independent contractor to the Outfit; or he’s an independent contracted by someone else. If it’s the first,
great; we catch him and we save Blackstone. If it’s the second, we catch him we might be able to tie him to the Outfit and save
Blackstone. If it’s the third or the fourth, the Outfit, or whoever else is going to hire him, will just get someone else. You
follow?”
“But—”
“So we have to find the killer, you bet. But we don’t assume it ends there. Not by a long ways.”
She made some calls—one of them to Seven, sketching the problem and ordering him to climb inside Blackstone’s tux and stick
close until the danger was past. His superhuman luck would have to protect the both of them. Then she went to bed. The windowless
basement was perfect (I realized I’d been tense the entire time she’d been upstairs), and Artemis had explored the racks and
piles of camping gear and made a nice little nook before I’d woken up. She threw herself down on an open cot, and looked up at
me.
“Take the light bulb with you?”
“Okay.” I unscrewed the single bare bulb that lit the cellar and went upstairs, softly closing the door.