Superheroes Anonymous (3 page)

I rose somewhat unsteadily to shake his hand. “Gail,” I said. “It's nice to meet you.”

“What do you do for Mirror Reality, Gail?”

“What doesn't she do for Mirror Reality is the proper question.” Guy came forward, smiling. He'd rolled his sleeves down. “She keeps this place running, Eddie.”

Guy Bookman was on a nickname-­basis with one of the most powerful men in the world? I'd apparently missed that memo. I probably should have paid more attention to him while we'd been in the same office. It was too late for that now.

“Hold on.” Eddie paused, still studying my face. “You look familiar. Are you—­you're her, aren't you?”

I sighed. Should have seen that coming.

“What is it the media calls you?” Eddie went on. “Hostage Girl? Hostage Girl Gail Godwin.”

Now I barely swallowed my surprised look. Not only had he recognized me, but he'd remembered my real name when most of the world had forgotten it.

And he wasn't done. “Can I be honest with you? That has to be the most uncreative nickname the press has published in ages. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

“How are you doing today?” Eddie said. “No bank holdups? Hostage situations? Time bombs ticking down?”

“Not yet, thank god.” When the answer seemed to dim Eddie's smile a little bit, I hastened to add, apologetically, “But it's early.”

“I like that attitude.” Eddie smiled again and patted my shoulder. If he weren't a hot lawyer, the move would have seemed grandfatherly. “I see the big man's getting impatient, so Guy here had better shuffle me along to this all-­important meeting. Very nice to have met you, Girl.”

“Same to you, Mr. Davenport.”

“Eddie, please.” One last roguish smile (well, roguish for a man who sat behind a desk all day), and he was off, Guy and Asiv in tow, to meet Angus. Even as I sat back down, I noticed that he didn't stop again. He nodded at some, smiled at others, but the only one he'd stopped to talk to was me. And minor celebrity that I was or not . . . well, that was a bit odd.

O
NCE FIVE O'CLOCK
hit, and Eddie Davenport was still in the meeting, the office did not become a desert. Instead, my coworkers all sat at their desks, adjusting their faux-­reading glasses as they squinted at their screens and tried to look as if they actually knew what work was. I, on the other hand, actually got stuff done.

Eddie left a little before six. The instant the elevator dinged closed behind him, there was an immediate rustling as ­people went for their coats and purses and tromped out together, no doubt headed to The Nine to drink and send Guy off to his greener pastures. I waved. Finally: the office to myself. I cranked up the music, pulled my hair out of its French twist, and hunkered down for some serious editing.

Outside the floor-­to-­ceiling windows—­seen through Guy and Asiv's office—­the sun dripped out of the sky in a glory of color. I switched on my desk light. The stars came out. I nuked a cup of microwaveable noodles and slurped them up while I double-­checked numbers in a report. Angus had a meeting with the board coming up, and he wanted everything looked over at least twice before he made any presentations. Being anal hadn't always won him fans, but it had never lost him business.

I was still checking those figures when the tapping began.

After the third or fourth time I was kidnapped from the office—­and the first time my kidnapper had actually done some damage—­Angus installed a set of high-­powered alarms. “Great,” I'd said at the time. “Now I'll
know
I'm a sitting duck. Thanks, Angus.”

He'd merely smiled and pointed out that forewarned is forearmed.

When the tapping started now, I froze and glanced at the alarm console Angus had purposely put above my desk. Steady green—­no threat. Yet.

The tapping persisted. Slowly, I opened my desk drawer and withdrew the letter opener I'd borrowed from Adrianna. Thankful that I'd never bothered to return it, I held it in a death grip and turned.

Somebody was outside the windows.

Angus's offices are on the seventh floor of the Shrewfield Building in the Loop. The only ­people who hover outside the windows are the heroes who can fly and the window-­washers who come by every other month. A memo always went out so that we'd know they were coming and wouldn't startle us, so I knew it wasn't the latter. Besides, they never cleaned at ten o'clock at night.

So the only possibilities of somebody outside the windows were superheroes or supervillains. Given my luck, it was usually the latter.

This time, it wasn't. My hand, fisted around the letter opener, dropped to my side. I held up one finger to hold off my visitor, and disengaged the alarm. It could have been an impostor, mind-­controlling me to believe it was Blaze hovering outside the window, but I doubted it. For one, mind-­control villains have always had a difficult time with me. One of the more notable, Sykik, had offhandedly claimed that there just wasn't much there to control.

Seeing as I'd never met a test I couldn't ace, I think he was probably just trying to cover up the fact that I was one of the 20 percent with a mental shield that was naturally hard to break. Didn't mean it couldn't be done, the supervillain expert I'd talked to had claimed. But it would take a lot of energy and forethought to make me believe in things that weren't there.

And besides, it was obviously Blaze hovering outside of the window. Most flying superheroes and -­villains pointed their toes when they hovered, as if they were going to be more aerodynamic while standing still. Blaze never did. He stood on the air like he stood on solid ground. Every part of him was still, from the hands crossed over his chest to his black (rather scuffed) boots.

He was outside Asiv's office, about three feet away from the building itself. I pushed the window open as much as the safety bar would allow me. “What are you doing here?”

His green eyes, seen through the slits of his black mask, cut from my face, down to the letter opener left forgotten in my hand, and back. Even through the mask, I could see the raised eyebrow of amusement.

“Well, you know,” I said, dropping the weapon on Asiv's desk. “Every little bit helps.”

A tiny tilt of the head in acknowledgment, an isolated movement.

“So I guess you don't know what you're doing here?”

Now I could tell he was smiling behind the mask. I'd always been able to tell.

Apparently, he wasn't going to talk. And he wasn't going to reveal why he was hovering outside though I figured I knew that much. I'd come to suspect that Blaze was usually nearby wherever I was. That never bothered me. It was something akin to having a security blanket, albeit dressed in green and with the ability to take a bullet to the face.

But he had never made his presence known before now.

I decided to try again. “Am I in danger?”

An emphatic shake of the head, no.

Something occurred to me. “Oh, right,” I said mostly to myself. “Thank you for getting me away from Razor X. Again. You have no idea how much it means to me, you taking time out of your day all the time just to save my scrawny ass.”

Now, an incline of the head, and an amused look in those green eyes. Spring green, I should say. Not hazel, but a true, bright, outstanding green, just like Jeremy's.

“And thank War Hammer for me, too? If you see him?”

The amusement vanished. War Hammer and Blaze weren't friends? I'd always assumed they were, being the headlining superheroes of Chicago. Had I unknowingly been the central figure in a temporary truce between enemies? Given how much I hated my coworkers, I'd never foist the need to work with a distasteful partner on somebody else.

Seeing my mortification, Blaze quickly shook his head and tried to look as contrite as is possible behind a face mask.

As absurd as it was, holding an entire conversation with Blaze wasn't silly, like trying to converse with a mime would be. Blaze's eyes were by far the most expressive eyes I'd ever seen. And even more than that, he seemed to be able to interpret my reactions far better than anybody in my life ever had, even my boyfriend of two years (well, ex-­boyfriend now).

Which was why I found myself saying, “Do you want . . .” What, Gail? I asked myself. To come in and have some tea? Nope—­couldn't drink through the mask, and there was obviously no way he was unmasking in front of me. Who knew if he even liked tea? Or if I had any left in my cubicle? So I said, “To go for a walk with me?”

Surprise flared in those green eyes. Well, more like shock. And then one tight nod.

So I went on a walk with Blaze, my savior. The man sure to deliver the antidote if I'd been poisoned, who'd personally pulled me out of more fiery buildings than I cared to count and, on one notable occasion, a live volcano. He waited for me to take the elevator down after closing the window. And we walked, silently. Mercifully, the streets were bare, save for us, so nobody gawked at Hostage Girl and her own appointed superhero.

Neither of us said a word. Blaze because he wasn't going to talk and reveal his identity to me. Me because I had no idea what you say to the man who had done all of the aforementioned. We strolled along with the polite distance of acquaintances between us as though he hadn't carried me in his arms like a classic damsel in distress every time he rescued me. Etiquette is such an odd thing.

Around us, the night was misty and foggy in the way only true autumnal nights can be. The bridge glowed green in the mist, evenly spaced light poles creating brief pools of yellow. I kept my hands in the pockets of my jacket to avoid the chill. Blaze didn't seem to feel the cold at all even though his green shirt was thin, defining his muscles nicely. It made me wonder if superheroes had gyms, or if he'd woken up on the day he'd become a superhero to find a set of washboard abs and pecs to die for.

Finally, when we reached the top of the bridge and had paused by mutual agreement to stare into the murky river below, I broke the silence. “You're not Jeremy.”

Again, surprise. And a bare shrug.

“So you are Jeremy?”

Another shrug.

“What you are,” I said to myself, “is no help whatsoever.”

This time there was no shrug. But there was a definite smile behind that mask.

I didn't say anything else—­and neither did he—­while we were on that bridge. After a while had passed, I turned and began to head back to the office. I had more work to do before I could go home that night. Blaze kept pace with me even though his legs seemed to be twice as long as mine. Jeremy never bothered to slow his loping stride down, so I was sometimes forced to jog to keep up. Blaze matched my stride perfectly.

When we reached my building, Blaze nodded at me, and then the door behind me. Our odd little walk was over. He would wait for me to get safely inside. I mustered a smile for him and headed inside, peeking over my shoulder. It was so rare that I got to see him when the world wasn't in peril. He stood, arms crossed, a shadow thrown over his face from the streetlamp behind him. I turned away to go inside.

In the elevator, my phone buzzed. The display screen showed Jeremy's name and picture. It was only a text:
Leaving on a jet plane. See ya when I see ya.

I texted back:
Have fun in Miami
, and magnanimously did not call him any names.

The office was just as I'd left it, save for the rose on my desk. A single white rose with a green ribbon tied around its stem. I stared. That was Blaze's trademark, but when on earth had he had time . . . ? Confused, I whirled, but the windows were all locked. The alarm beeped a steady green. I carefully picked up the rose and fingered the ribbon. Only then did I see the note, written in black ink on plain (if heavy) cardstock.

I'm sorry. Good-­bye.

Blaze's signature drawing—­just a little cartoon flame—­was doodled beneath the words.

“The hell?” I asked, turning the rose over. It took me a full minute of staring to realize what it meant: the walk hadn't been because he'd wanted to see me outside of the confines of danger. He'd been saying good-­bye.

So where was Blaze going?

And though every feminist in history would throw her hands up in disgust, my next thought was, who would save me now?

 

Chapter Three

A
LOT CHANGED
after Blaze left.

I guess when he left town—­publicly showing up to save supermodel Victoria Burroughs from the evil clutches of Lieutenant Lunatic in Miami two days later—­the villains just lost interest. Supervillains ignored me to chase the more classically pretty damsels in distress. Months passed without a single kidnapping. For the first time since Sykik had seen me on the train tracks, I could walk into a bank without expecting a holdup.

It was like there was some sort of secret code. But since my landlord was so relieved that he could stop replacing random walls in my apartment after supervillain attacks, I decided not to think about it.

That is, until the pictures started showing up on the Domino.

“You know, she's really pretty,” Portia said. She was perched on the edge of my desk with her tablet, clicking through a slide show on the Domino's front page. “Doesn't that bother you?”

I grabbed a stack of annual reports and stapled them together. “Why would it?”

Portia leaned forward and tapped one lacquered nail against her mouth. “Just saying. It would bother me. Of course, all of
my
ex-­boyfriends are photographers, so it makes sense that they'd date models. But Jeremy's just in sales—­”

“Accounting.”

“—­and it's not like you meet a lot of models working in sales.” She paused to think about it. “Unless you work here.”

I closed my eyes and wished for some sort of excuse, any excuse, something shiny—­anything to get her to wander off. “You need a new hobby.”

“Nah.” Portia popped her gum. “Check this one.”

I made the mistake of looking when she swiveled the tablet around. The picture wasn't anything special: it was outside some kind of juice bar in Miami, and there was no mistaking my ex-­boyfriend. He wore a stupid little trilby hat and a white button up shirt over his khakis, his arm around the tiny waist of Victoria Burroughs.

And if things weren't bad enough, he was grinning like a kid in a candy store.

“Huh,” was all I could say.

“You're telling me that
really
doesn't bother you?”

“Do you want me to swear on the Bible or something?” I reached around her for my little bin of paper clips. “I'm trying to work here.”

“You know it's weird that you don't care, right?” Portia hopped off the desk. The move nudged her top up another inch.

June had attacked Chicago, bringing with it an unrelenting, wet heat. My coworkers had answered by dropping layers. I'd conceded to the heat with a skirt, something that I could finally wear since I probably wouldn't have to run for my life. My shirt, which had looked cute on the rack, had already wilted, and my hair had fallen out of its classy updo into a mass of frizzled curls. Curls that, with my lack of height and petite form, would always keep me away from adjectives like “sexy” and “sultry,” and steer me towards “cute” and “doll-­like.”

Though that usually wasn't a problem, as I was so busy working for Angus that I didn't really have time to date anyway. Which was precisely why Portia had come over to my desk, unfortunately.

“If you say it doesn't bother you,” she said, “then it doesn't bother you. Either way, it's time you had a date. It's been what, a year since Jeremy?”

“Eight months,” I said, glancing over my shoulder in time to see Portia's puzzled look. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, too quickly.

“What?” I said again.

“It's just, the reporter I talked to this morning mentioned it had been a year since your last kidnapping.”

“Were you hitting on a reporter this morning?” I squinted at her.

“No. Well, sort of. She called, and she sounded cute. So I talked to her—­it's not a crime, don't give me that look. She said it had been a year since you'd been kidnapped.”

“Somebody's not keeping track, then,” I said. “Razor X kidnapped me twice last October.”

“Uh-­huh.”

“But, really, we need to talk about you talking to reporters about me.”

“What about it?”

“Don't.”

Portia's lower lip jutted out. “Girl, that's so mean. You know I need all the exposure I can get! I'm not even a proper tag on the Domino yet. Maybe we could go out for drinks and get threatened by some villains or something. I'll let you borrow a cute outfit.”

“As delightful as that sounds, I think I'm good.” I swiveled around to face my desk. I heard her heels click on the tiles as she sulked off, and I smiled. Finally. Got rid of her.

Unfortunately, my peace didn't last long. Asiv came up, papers overflowing from the folders in his hands. “Girl! Girl—­I need help—­quick—­” He thrust the whole mess at me; papers spilled onto my desk, nearly knocking over my tea and destroying my careful system. “I've got a meeting in twenty minutes, and I can't figure out how to organize these. Please.”

A quick glance through the scattered paperwork had me giving him an unimpressed look. “These just need to be collated, Asiv. That's Adrianna's job.”

“She's out to lunch.”

“Still?” She'd left two hours before.

“Please, Girl? Can't you do this for me?”

I gave him a frown that I wished was intimidating. “You're really making me miss Guy, you know.” Say what you like about the Bookmans, but Guy had always been organized. And he'd never made me do his busywork.

“You think I don't miss Guy, too?” Asiv crossed his arms over his chest. “He was the one who knew how to do all of this.”

“I suggest you learn,” I said, and began to sort the paper into stacks. “When's the meeting?”

“Twenty minutes—­no, make that eighteen now. Thanks, Girl!”

I tracked him down in his office fifteen minutes later. “Your paperwork,” I said, and thrust the stack of files at him. A single glimpse of the monitor was all it took to get my blood pressure rising. “Please tell me you didn't pawn your work off on me so you could play video poker.”

He flicked his fingers. “Oh, come off it. Like you had anything better to do.”

“Asshole.” I turned on my heel and very carefully did not stomp out. Outside the office, though, I had to breathe through my nose a few times. I swallowed and grabbed my purse.

“For anybody who cares, I hate this place, so I'm getting coffee. And no,” I said as four heads popped up like deranged prairie dogs from the cubicles, “I'm not bringing any back. I am not your pack mule.”

With that said, I stomped off. And found myself ambushed the instant I set foot on the pavement outside.

“Girl—­Girl Godwin!” A young woman with unremarkable features and a slouchy beanie pulled over her hair hurried up to me. I took an involuntary step back in surprise, hand already wrapped around my mace. “I'm Naomi Gunn. I run Crap About Capes, the blog? I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Were you waiting around for me to come out?” I asked.

She raised both eyebrows. Because she was so much taller than me, it felt a little bit like she was looking down her nose at me. “Serendipity, actually. I happened to be walking by and spotted you.”

She had to be a writer to use the word “serendipity” though I wasn't sure I believed the rest of her story. I didn't have to ask how she'd recognized me. “Questions about what?” I asked instead. “About Blaze? I can't tell you who he is. Because I
don't know.
”

Naomi Gunn scoffed. “You really should drop the act. Everybody knows Jeremy Collins is Blaze. I mean, even the Domino is in on it, and you know those morons, they take forever to get the real news.”

I glared at her.

“Anyway, never mind that. I'm here to ask about your year of not getting taken hostage. Getting in on the ground floor.” Naomi pushed her cap back to scratch at her forehead, which the June sun had dampened. Her fingers twitched as she straightened her dark-­rimmed glasses. “What's that feel like? And how do you feel now that Blaze has decided to protect Miami instead?”

“The citizens of Miami should feel very fortunate.” I was willing at least to give him that much. “And for your information, it hasn't been a year since my last kidnapping. Razor X kidnapped me
twice
last October. So check your facts. And off the record, quit calling my coworkers for stories about me. Now, excuse me. You're between me and caffeine.”

“A scary place?” Naomi said.

“Move,” I said in a quiet voice that had once made Captain Cracked do a double take. Before he, of course, had knocked me out. But it had still made him pause. Naomi Gunn of Crap About Capes was clearly no match for Captain Cracked. She stumbled as she dodged out of my way. I sailed by, sending her one last glare.

“Try not to get kidnapped for four more months, okay?” she said. “Because I still want to write this story.”

I closed my eyes. “You just had to say that, didn't you?”

Her entire face folded with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” I strode off.

In the Daily Grind, I ordered my usual and forced myself to relax. Naomi couldn't have jinxed me. I wasn't Hostage Girl anymore. I was safe. I was just a normal worker on a much-­needed caffeine break.

I paid for my coffee and waited by the little counter for the barista to deliver it. At least Naomi Gunn had temporarily shifted my annoyance away from my coworkers. Did I really need my job? The economy wasn't great at the moment, but with my experience, I could find a new job pretty easily. And it
had
been a year since the last major kidnapping. Maybe I didn't need to stick around and be treated as a stevedore in the name of great healthcare. Maybe I could be one of those ­people who saw the doctor for things like annual checkups and not Venus-­von-­Trapp-­turned-­me-­green-­again.

I swear, in that moment the universe laughed at me.

The front wall of the coffee shop creaked so loudly that everybody in line turned as one. I recognized the sound—­it was impossible to forget—­but it had been so long that my shouted, “Get down!” was too late.

Something hit the front window with enough force to send glass and wood splintering across the shop. The ground shook, throwing me into the counter, as a second blast hit the wall. Brick dust exploded. Debris hurtled through the air, joining the screams of the patrons. I turned to duck behind the counter and tripped over a guy in a suit. Both of us cursed as we crashed to the tiles.

Hot coffee rained down like an angry waterfall from the counter above me, dripping on the back of my neck. The villain couldn't have waited until I was out in the open, away from scalding liquids?

“What's going on?” the man in the suit asked. “Is it Captain Cracked?”

“Not unless he's escaped Detmer in the past two hours,” I said. I tried to pull myself out of the way of the dripping coffee, only to discover that my foot was wedged between the counter and a fallen chunk of concrete. “Crap! My foot's stuck. Can you help?”

But the man gaped at me. Around us, the tenor of the screams changed; I had to assume the maniacal laugh cutting through the air meant the villain had stepped inside. The man continued to gawp. “Y-­you're her, aren't you?”

I didn't bother to ask who he meant. “Please help me.”

Instead of helping free my foot, though, the man stood up. “She's right here!” he said to somebody I couldn't see. “There's no need to hurt anybody else. I've got Hostage Girl right here—­”

He broke off with a gurgle as he was briefly engulfed in a bright purple corona. His eyes went wide, and then he slumped to the floor, out cold.

“Huh,” I said. Karma usually took a lot longer than that.

A spindly man in plaid and a gruesome Halloween mask stepped around the counter. He sniffed down at the unconscious man. He cleared his throat. “Hostage Girl, I presume?”

“No, sorry, I think she went thataway,” I said, jerking a thumb behind me as my heart hammered twice as fast against the side of my sternum. I jerked at my ankle, hoping some miracle would free my foot and allow me to run.

He only smiled. How he could do that with the mask, I had no idea. “Cute.”

He raised his wrist and pressed a button on his cuff. For a split second, everything turned purple. I only had time for two thoughts as my reality shrank to nothingness: the first, there was no way the Daily Grind was going to let me keep my frequent customer discount card after this. And the second? The minute Blaze came to rescue me, I was going to send Naomi Gunn a
very
strongly worded e-­mail for jinxing me like this.

I
T TOOK THE
purple a long time to recede, and when it finally did, I was no longer on the floor of my favorite roast-­house but at an ‘L' stop several miles away.

June had become November, my ankle was free, and I'd somehow jumped back in time. Though it was a dull day, the sun well hidden and the wind cutting, I recognized it. Under my new coat, which wouldn't be new much longer, the hair on my arms stood on end. How had I come back? I hadn't thought about that day in months, so why was I revisiting it now?

Apparently, my questions weren't to be answered, for my legs kept moving up the steps. Chicago was brand-­new brand new to me, fascinating and dirty and still a little marvelous without the dull layer of drudgery it would soon gain. My breath puffed around my face as I reached the top step, and just like I remembered, the screaming began.

Across the wide network of tracks, a woman was screaming, long, horror-­movie screams. My friends in Indiana had warned me about moving to the city, but I'd laughed them off. Villain attacks weren't
that
common, I'd argued. The news just didn't like reporting positive things, bad news sold better.