Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (28 page)

That was quite a mouthful for Joss. It must
have been what she was thinking about when she was totally quiet on
the way over. “So wait, are you saying that you’re going to fight
Marco because you know he wants to fight you and that’s why he set
this up? Because on TV people usually frown on walking into that
trap.”

“And then the character does it anyway.
Because they know there really isn’t another choice. And then they
kick ass.”

“This isn’t TV.”

“This would be so much easier if you weren’t
here.”

That pissed me off so bad I wanted to grab
her and shake her. So I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I thought
we settled this already,” I snarled. But I could hear other stuff
in my voice I hoped she wouldn’t.

She moved into me, threading her arms
through mine and pressing herself against me. “We did. I’m not
asking you to let me do this by myself. I don’t even want to go in
there by myself. But I still hate taking you into this. It seems
like I’m choosing Matt’s safety over yours. Or like trying to get
even with Marco, or putting him in his place, is more important to
me than you are. And it’s not true.” Her voice was tight,
small.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets and held
her. “So you find yourself in a situation in which you have no
choice but to walk into that store and deal with what happens,
but…you feel guilty about making the choice? The choice you don’t
actually have.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“That’s messed up, Marshall. Especially
since most of what you’re upset about is the idea that I might get
my eye blackened—like that’s some new thing—which is actually
my
choice, not yours. Because, as you may recall, you’re not
the boss of me.”

“Jesus, are you guys
done
yet?”

I stiffened, ready to snap at Maddy who had
no idea what Joss and I had been through. But Joss pushed away from
me and said, “Yeah, let’s stop thinking about it and just take care
of it.”

We rounded the corner, moving quietly past
the dark windows. I wanted to think that Marco was just being
Marco, that all this was just him wanting to flex his muscle, feel
like a big guy. That he’d be satisfied just giving us a few bruises
and sending us home humiliated. I mean, we were just kids. I was
caught between believing that because it was still believable, and
letting my mind run away with me on this trip where the stakes were
much, much higher.

My heart rate kicked up when we got to the
shop. Inside Sweet Blondies there was a single row of florescent
lights on. The low light glowed on the clean, shiny counter and ice
cream freezers that ran along one side of the place, showed the
scatter of tables and chairs in the center, and didn’t quite reach
the booths along the other side. The place looked empty.

“Where’s Dylan?” Maddy whispered, looking
around with frantic jerks of her head.

“He’s right behind me.” Joss flicked a
glance over her shoulder, as if she wanted to confirm what Maddy’s
question had already told her. She reached around me, knocking into
my invisible arm. She grabbed Maddy’s gloved hand and put it
against my jacket.

Maddy jumped and jerked her hand back. “Oh
that’s just freaky.”

“Okay, so we’re all in the know,” I said.
“Let me go in ahead of you, move in toward the back, see if I see
anything.”

“Just be careful,” Joss whispered as she
pulled the unlocked door open.

I thought about touching her as I moved
past, kissing her or something. But on the inside I was shaking and
if any of that was on the outside, I didn’t want her to feel it. My
heart was pounding hard now, my breath coming faster. It was hard
to try to calm down when I needed to keep at least some of it up to
keep the invisibility going.

I moved quickly to the better lit side of
the shop to check behind the counter. No one crouching in the space
behind it. It was built so there was plenty of room there for
servers to move around each other and the path was clear. Going
this way seemed a better idea than weaving through the tables,
maybe accidentally bumping a chair and giving myself away. I ducked
under the pass-through at the near end and paced to the far end as
fast as I could while looking over the Plexiglas tops of the
freezers and scanning the booths for anyone hiding. I wondered if
Bella was sitting there, if we could be looking at each other and
not even know it.

Something made me turn. Joss and Maddy were
already slipping through the door. Joss’s eyes were fixed on a
point above the door and didn’t leave it until she had the door
closed behind her. She must have held the bells still when I went
through the door too. I’d completely forgotten about them. So much
for stealth.

Joss took Maddy by the hand and pulled her
toward the counter, taking the same route I had. My choice now was
to slip through the swinging door behind the counter at the far
end, or to duck under another pass-through and check out the
restrooms.

I chose the door, opening it just enough to
squeeze my body through, keeping my back to the wall. I was in the
kitchen. There was enough light coming in from the service road to
make out the dark shapes of the fryers and grill next to me, the
sinks and huge refrigerator on the other side of the room, and the
big steel island in the center. There were three doors. One was on
the back wall and led out to the service road for deliveries. On
the wall to my right were two more doors. One big steel one with a
pull-down handle that looked like the deep freeze. The other was
just a door.

A hand wrapped around my arm. I was still
holding the door open and Joss and Maddy had come up behind me.
Joss pulled herself up to whisper, “We checked out the bathrooms.
No one there.”

“You should have waited for me to do
that.”

She shrugged. I gave her a look she couldn’t
see.

“So three possibilities,” I said. “They left
and took Matt somewhere else, they locked themselves in the deep
freeze, or they’re behind that door.”

“Door number three it is.” Joss crossed the
room and pushed the door open, but there was nothing there. “That’s
w—”

An unshielded light glowed from the ceiling.
There was stuff in the room, but it was all piled haphazardly and
completely impossibly on the ceiling. On the other side of the
light we could see three people squatting upside down, hanging like
bats.

All that was only an instant, then Joss’s
whisper was cut off when everything fell from the ceiling at once.
One of the people came down with a neat, somersaulting twist of his
body that landed him almost gracefully on his feet. The other two
people landed on their feet with less finesse, going to one knee
before getting up again. Around them the floor was littered with
all kinds of boxes, papers, everything you’d expect to be in the
combination office/storeroom of a small restaurant, only broken and
trashed. Everything except a desk.

Joss was still craning her neck. I looked
up. A desk hung in the air over the door along with a big executive
chair, one of the chairs from the dining area, a broken desk lamp,
a fax machine, and a bunch of other stuff.

“Ms. Chambers?” Maddy said from behind
me.

I didn’t recognize the two guys, but I
thought the woman looked familiar. Now I could see it. What the
hell?

“We’re not at school, dear. I guess it’s
okay for you to call me Vivian.”

“What’s our school nurse doing at a crime
scene? How are you mixed up with Marco?” Joss asked. The things
above us shifted when she looked at Vivian. A desk drawer swung
open and papers flew out, drifted down as Joss righted the desk and
shoved it closed. She lowered the items to the floor on the left
side of the room rather than spend her energy continuing to hold
them in the air.

“Impressive,” Vivian said. “So, this is a
crime scene?”

“Kidnapping’s a crime!” Maddy snapped,
pushing past both of us into the room. “Where’s my brother?”

“That one. You know he tried to push my boys
into letting him go? Nice power. Of course I’ve made them pretty
much immune to that kind of thing. That’s what I do, get into your
head and put up walls.”

“The static,” Joss said.

“So you’ve got a mind reader? Good to know,”
Vivian said, nodding.

Joss narrowed her eyes. She’d be mad at
herself for slipping up like that. “And this,” she said, waving her
hand at the guy who’d been the first to come down, “is the guy I
told you about, the one who picked up the money from Dad.” She was
looking at Maddy who gave her a confused glance. Maddy didn’t know
about the money and the comment had been for me. But I was still
invisible.

“Yeah, your dad’s really on the ball. Always
has his payment ready,
usually
real discreet. Does he pay
people off a lot?” the guy asked.

“This is Richie, and this is Poe,” she said,
indicating a shorter, heavy-set guy with squinty eyes. “We’re here
to facilitate Marco’s activities, which is about all you need to
know. It seems like you and your boyfriend keep showing up and
screwing with his plans, and since we knew you’d be coming, I sent
Marco off about his business so I could finally meet you.”

“We’ve already met, Nurse Chambers.”

Vivian smiled. “Well, so you could meet the
real me then. So maybe we could come to some kind
of…understanding.”

Joss took a small step back to the threshold
of the door. Taking my cue from her, I moved into the room and
tugged Maddy by the arm. She didn’t move so I took her arm and
pulled, trying to be insistent, but not to jerk her off-balance and
give myself away. But Maddy yanked her arm away. “No, I want to
know where Matt is right now.”

“Dylan. I thought you’d be here too. Good,
we can get this lesson over with.”

Nice one, Maddy,
I thought as I
phased back into view. No sense keeping it up when I’d already been
made.

Joss slid the desk between Maddy and Vivian.
“Maddy, go check the freezer.”

Maddy dashed for the door and I followed, as
all the stuff from the room started to fill in the space between us
and them. I pushed Joss out ahead of me and closed the door. There
were crashing sounds behind it as Joss pulled everything up against
the door, the same way she’d blocked the door at Kat’s house when
we’d escaped into the garage.

Maddy was yanking on the freezer. “It’s
stuck!”

Joss hurried over. “I can’t really see
through the window. I can’t figure out how to move whatever’s
jamming the d—”

We heard a crash from the office, and then
another. Then, faster than they should have been able to move any
of that stuff, Vivian and her friends were coming through the door
and Vivian closed it behind them. I wondered if one of them had
abilities like Joss’s. Maybe they’d just pushed all that stuff
aside.

I was still thinking about it when Poe
grabbed me. It was like being on a carnival ride, the unfamiliar
force as he swung me up and flung me into space. I hit the huge
prep table island hard, sliding across it in a blink. I think it’s
only because I cringed and tried to tuck into myself that I went
down off the other end and crashed onto the floor instead of
continuing through the wall.

Poe didn’t have telekinesis. He was like
Marco. Maybe he was so strong he just swiped all that stuff to the
side to clear the door.

It was weird that my brain was still working
on that problem as I curled onto my side on the floor. Maybe I was
getting to be more like Joss, always thinking. I could see her
through the legs of the table. She grabbed Maddy, putting the other
girl behind her as she started across the room toward me. Maybe she
was actually considering retreat?

I shook my head and tried to get a deep
breath. Things seemed to be moving slowly. I needed to get up off
the floor.

The world titled. Slid. It was one, big,
massive roll, like the way they describe an earthquake. The legs of
the table slammed into my gut, knocking the wind out of me again.
Or…I guess it was that I slammed into the table. There were
groaning noises, like the noises you hear in the movies, straining
metal right before something collapses. Things were clattering on
the opposite wall as everything loose in the room was flying in
that direction. Joss was holding onto one of the table supports
with one hand, her other hand holding Maddy’s. They both seemed to
be hanging perfectly sideways, parallel to the floor, with Maddy’s
feet not too far from the freezer door. Then Maddy dropped from
Joss’s grip and landed on it.

I saw Vivian and her two goons watching us,
smirking in satisfaction, standing upright, their feet planted
firmly on the wall.

My perspective shifted like a tear in my
head. That wall was now the floor.

Vivian threw a nod at Poe and he started
toward Maddy. Joss swung herself down and landed between them. She
didn’t waste any time throwing punches. It was like watching her
fight Marco at Salvation the other night, only this guy was better,
more practiced.

Maddy was kneeling on the freezer door,
looking in the windows with her hands cupped around her eyes. “I
can see him! He’s in there! Hang on, Matt, we’re gonna get you
out!”

The distraction cost Joss. Poe got one in
under her guard and into her gut that sent her flying backward into
Maddy. I had gone invisible again and had been climbing down the
table to get to her. Now I swung down on Poe, knocking him off
balance.

When we both got our feet again, I let him
have it. He struck out at where I should have been, but I dodged
out of his reach. I grinned as I continued to strike and duck out
of the way.
Joss was right. This is a lot better than getting
hit.
And as long as I was invisible I had to keep from getting
hit because if Joss couldn’t see me then she couldn’t deflect his
blows from me the way she had when I’d fought Marco.