Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women (33 page)

This adventure has been a nightmare from start to finish. I’ve seen things I once thought couldn’t —
shouldn’t
exist in our world, in any world. My concept of reality has been shattered and reassembled in a jagged, funhouse version of itself. I have fought monsters, figurative and literal. I witnessed what could have been the beginning of the end of the world.

None of it will haunt me more than the fact that throughout his own murder, through to his dying breath, Kysztykc never stopped smiling.

THIRTY-THREE

Astrid pulled her vanishing act after that – poof and gone. She’s been incommunicado since — not that any of us have made an effort to reach out to her. Too much has transpired, too many dark secrets have been laid bare, too much trust has been betrayed. No one is all that eager to welcome Astrid back into the fold.

In fact, that’s why I’ve been summoned to Protectorate HQ, why I’m sitting with the team in the conference room: to help decide what to do with Dr. Enigma.

“Why me?” I say. “I’m not one of you.”

“You might not be part of the Protectorate,” Nina says, “but you are definitely one of us, kiddo.”

“Which is why we need you to cast the tiebreaking vote,” Mindforce says. He and Nina want to keep Astrid on the team; Mindforce is inclined to give Astrid a second chance because that’s the kind of person he is, and Nina wants to support her friend. I get that, but I don’t know if I could ever forgive that kind of betrayal. Concorde, naturally, is taking a hard-line stance and wants Astrid gone. Catherine thinks the Protectorate shouldn’t have to worry about loyalty and trust issues within the group. The Entity, I’m told, has been silent on the issue. He may be reliable enough on to show up when he’s needed in a fight, but Mindforce says he’s not big on the whole bureaucracy thing.

So it all comes down to me.

As a young lady with strong opinions, and no reservations about stating those opinions, I do what one would expect when faced with making such an important decision: I waffle.

“I hate to be nitpicky, but how can you throw Astrid off the team when she isn’t actually
on
the team? She’s only a consultant.”

“Who has full security clearance to HQ, and knows our civilian identities,” Concorde says.

“And you’re talking about cutting her loose? You’re not worried she’ll become the world’s worst disgruntled ex-employee or something?”

“One of the many, many issues we’ve been debating,” Mindforce says. “Trust me, Carrie, we’ve spent the entire day picking this apart, and no one is budging from their initial vote.”

Which brings it back to me.

I understand why Astrid kept her parentage a secret. I can even understand why she did what she did, considering what was at stake for her, but she can’t justify anything else. She came through in the end, sure, but things could have gone catastrophically wrong. She put her friends, the entire world in danger, for selfish reasons. That’s not how a super-hero acts.

Before I can cast my vote, someone knocks on the conference room door. Can’t imagine who it is, unless the Entity decided to dabble in internal politics...

The door cracks open. Astrid pokes her head in. “Um. Hi.”

No one speaks, not to invite her in, not to send her away, not to ask her what the hell she thinks she’s doing here. One order of stunned silence for table, waitress.

She lets herself in, closes the door. She stands at the foot of the table, head bowed, shoulders down, hands folded. Everything about her is contrite. The posture is neither familiar nor comfortable.

“I screwed up. I know that’s the understatement of the century,” she says, “and I know I have no right to ask this, but...I want to be part of the team.”

“You
what
? You have
got
to be bloody kidding me,” Concorde says, rising from his seat. “You squandered whatever goodwill you had with us, so you can turn around right now and —”

“Excuse me,” I say. “I haven’t voted yet.”

“Voted?” Astrid says.

“Whether to remove you from the team,” Nina says. “I’m sorry, babe.”

“Carrie, what do you think you’re doing?” Concorde demands.

“Hearing all sides so I can make an informed decision,” I say. Concorde snorts, then sits. I turn to face Astrid, and I wait, very patiently, for her to make eye contact. It takes her a while. I’m prepared to feel nothing for her, but the pain I see in her is so raw and real.

All right, Dr. Enigma, you have one shot to make your case.

“Whatever happened to, ‘I’m not a super-hero’?” I ask.

“I’m not,” Astrid says, “but I want to learn. I need to.”

“What changed your mind?”

No
, Astrid thinks,
that’s not my head pounding; someone really is at the door
.

She rises from her couch too quickly. She plants her feet, throws her hands out for balance, wills herself to remain standing despite the violent head rush.

Yes. Still vertical. Good
.

The doorknob briefly proves too complex a thing for her to manipulate.

Missy smiles at her from the hallway. “Hi! It’s me. Missy. It’s almost lunchtime, why are you in your pajamas? Are those
Star Trek
pajamas? I didn’t know you were a Trekkie. I like them, they’re cute. I’m coming in,” she says, blowing past Astrid before she can close the door — which, in her current condition, would have provided a crippled tortoise ample time to cross the threshold. “Wow, your place stinks like booze. That is booze stink, right? I mean, I’ve smelled wine and I’ve smelled beer and I smelled sake once when my uncle brought some with him last time he had dinner at my house and I thought it smelled like rubbing alcohol and I was like, wow, how can anyone drink that stuff, but he liked it, so whatever. How’re you?”

“Very hung-over,” Astrid says.

“That sucks.”

“Yes. It does.”

“You shouldn’t drink that much.”

“I disagree.”

“Why? Did it make all your problems go away?”

Astrid cycles through several possible retorts before settling on, “Shut up.”

“Oooh. Burn.”

“Missy, what do you want?” Missy follows Astrid back to the couch. Missy sits. Astrid flops.

“I wanted to see how you were doing. Besides hung-over, I mean. I tried calling you but you were doing the whole
I’m not going to pick up my phone
thing again. How can people check on you if you don’t answer your phone?”

Astrid laughs, weakly, bitterly. “Moot point, kid. No one’s called to check on me.”

“No one?”

“No one but you.” She shrugs. “Whatever. I’ll be fine. There’s your answer: I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I need some time to myself is all. I need some space. I need to be left alone. And yes, that is a hint.”

“Uh-huh. Astrid?”

“Yes, Missy?”

“Cut the crap.”

“Excuse me?”

Missy takes a moment to gather her thoughts. “Cut. The. Crap. As in, cut the mysterious loner crap because no one’s buying it. You act like you don’t need anyone, but you do. And if you really wanted to be alone, you wouldn’t have joined a super-hero team, you’d make your magic door vanish, and you wouldn’t have let me in.

“I don’t know why you let people into your life and then try to push them away with your creepy sorceress routine, but it’s stupid and pointless, and maybe if you’d accepted the fact you have friends who care about you and want to help you, none of this stuff would have happened, and you wouldn’t be sitting here in your PJs hung-over because you drank too much instead of acting like a grown-up and accepting responsibility for what you did.”

“Missy.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re scary when you’re focused.”

“I know, right?”

Astrid plucks a half-empty tequila bottle off her coffee table. “I screwed up,” she says, considering the bottle. She replaces it without taking a sip. “I screwed up bad.”

“I know. But if you apologize to everyone, I bet they’d —”

“Not that. I mean, yes, I screwed up with my friends, but...do you remember what Kysztykc said before he died?”

The night is a series of vaguely connected events in Missy’s head, moments and images and emotions that have lost their context, a bad dream that refuses to be fully remembered. Kysztykc’s defeat and demise likewise defy recollection, yet his final words, incongruously, remain vivid.

“‘The king is dead, long live the queen,’” Missy says, “but I don’t get it.”

“It means I didn’t sabotage the ritual of inheritance,” Astrid says, her voice coarse, “I completed it.”

“...What?”

“Kysztykc’s power passes on to the demon that kills him. I thought by killing his avatar, it would create a paradox and screw up the ritual. Instead, by symbolically killing Kysztykc, I sealed my claim to his throne by right of blood.”

“Oh. Uh...was that the plan all along?”

Astrid shrugs. “That’s the problem with demons: you never know what they’re really up to. Completing the ritual might have been his real goal, or he could have been...” She shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to your friends. It matters to me.”

“Why? Why do you care? After all the pain I’ve caused you, why would you give a damn about me?”

Missy smiles. “I’m feeding my good wolf.”

Astrid’s explanation was fuzzy in spots, but it wasn’t her usual brand of evasiveness, and I saw in her a vulnerability I’ve never seen before. She was sincere. She was sorry.

That’s why I voted to let her stay on the team — after a probationary period, which is only sensible. Sincere or not, she has some amends to make, and trust to rebuild.

“Come on, Carrie, I’ll walk you to the transport,” Concorde says. Before we step onto the elevator to the subbasement, I glance over my shoulder to see Nina take Astrid into her arms. Nina throws me a nod.

“Wonkavator. It’s officially the Wonkavator,” I tell Concorde.

“The Wonkavator?”

“You know, from
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
.”

Concorde makes a disgusted noise. “Hated that movie.”

“You hated
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
? The thing’s a classic!” I say. Matt would be so proud of me, laying into someone for hating a great movie. “I don’t know you anymore. Soulless monster.”

“Wait, are we talking about the old one with Gene Wilder or the new one with Johnny Depp?”

“The old one. The
good
one.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, got them mixed up. Yeah, that is a great movie.” He chuckles. “Hm. Wonkavator.”

“What do you know? There
is
a human being in that suit,” I say, nudging him playfully. “Well, I already knew there was a human being in there.”

“Watch it.”

“You better watch it. Calling me in on big cases, showing me your face, making me the deciding vote on sensitive internal matters...might give a girl the impression she’s valued or something.”

Instead of shooting me down and putting in my place (you know: the norm), Concorde says, “You handled yourself well during this crisis.”

I should simply accept the compliment graciously, but instead I say, “The whole team did well, not just me, and they’d really appreciate hearing that. Especially Matt — who, I would like to remind you, figured out how to stop the spell, and in doing so, healed the bitter rivalry between the disciplines of science and magic.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” I wait for Concorde to throw the Squad a bone, but it quickly becomes clear that isn’t going to happen. I leave HQ feeling more than a little irked over the slight, so in that respect, things are back to normal.

I like normal. Normal is good. Normal is comfortable.

Speaking of good, comfortable normal, it’s time to go home for a nice family dinner.

     Except, apparently, this is not going to be a
family
dinner.

“Carrie, hi,” Mom says, rising from the couch. The guy sitting next to her also gets up. He’s dressed nicely, in a dress shirt, and he anxiously smoothes his khakis out as he stands. Mom is likewise acting twitchy.

“Hi,” I say. “And hi.”

“Carrie, this is Ben,” Mom says. “He’s a, uh, co-worker of mine, he’ll be joining us for dinner.”

“Hi, Carrie,” Ben says, switching his wine glass into his left hand so he can offer me his right. “Christina’s told me all about you. I feel like I know you already.”

“Uh. Yeah. Sorry, I can’t say the same,” I say, but I’m looking at Mom when I say it.

“Well, we’re going to take care of that tonight,” Mom says before dashing off into the kitchen. “You two get comfortable. I’ll let you know when the lasagna is ready.”

Nervous mother. Strange man, groomed to make an impression. Top-notch meal.

Oh, my God.

I’m having dinner with my mother’s new boyfriend.

I want to go back to fighting demons.

BONUS!