After the Golden Age Page 10

  TWELVE

  CELIA was back at work the next day. She started in on the first thing in her in-box that didn’t involve the Sito case.

  The receptionist buzzed her at noon. “Celia, you have a visitor.”

  She wasn’t expecting anyone. Maybe it was Mark, still showering her with concern. But he always called first. She braced herself for a surprise.

  Arthur Mentis waited in the lobby.

  “Hi,” she said bluntly, before mentally shaking herself into a more polite frame. But she couldn’t think of a polite way to ask, What are you doing here?

  “I thought you might like some lunch,” he said. “I was in the neighborhood.”

  He might very well have been. “You always seem to know exactly when I’m ready to break for lunch.”

  “Logic,” he said. “It’s noon. You aren’t implying something nefarious, are you?”

  “It’s your babysitting shift, isn’t it?”

  He chuckled. “Yes, actually. But what better way to keep an eye on you?”

  If it had been anyone else, her mother or Robbie or even Analise, she’d have grumbled and ranted about how they couldn’t leave her alone, and didn’t they trust her, and couldn’t they show a little respect. But with Arthur, she had to laugh.

  They went to the Italian place in the building’s ground floor.

  They sat, exchanged pleasantries. Her parents were fine. He’d convinced them not to call right away after the latest kidnapping, for which she expressed her gratitude.

  “Do you want to talk about it? You seemed rather upset yesterday.”

  At least he waited until the breadsticks were out before asking. “Are you asking as a psychologist or as a friend?”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  Psychologist implied she needed counseling, that something was wrong with her. While that very well may have been true, she’d been doing pretty well lately—she thought—and preferred to maintain the illusion. “Friend, I suppose. It wasn’t the kidnapping that upset me. It was finding out about the surveillance. That you guys have been keeping tabs on me, in secret.”

  “Typhoon told you?”

  “I confronted her. She showed up too quickly. I just want to be left alone, to take care of myself—but I can’t do that, evidently. Not when it seems like half the town’s crooks are after me. I guess I need superhuman bodyguards. I hate that I can’t get away from that part of my past. I’ll never get away. I’m not making choices about my life, it’s all just … trapping me. No matter what I do. I’ve worked so hard—”

  “What else?”

  What else indeed? What wasn’t there? “Sito’s defense called me to testify. I think they want to use me to discredit the prosecution. Bronson’s trying to get me out of it, but it doesn’t look good. It’s all going to come out.” She wanted to pretend it didn’t bother her so much, but thinking about it made her either want to break a chair or burst into tears. She tried to clamp down on the feelings. But around Arthur, why bother? So she seethed, quietly.

  “Would you like me to do something about it?”

  “Like what—change the defense attorney’s mind for him? Mess with the judge?” She said this last in a whisper.

  He didn’t react. He never reacted. She might have asked him to pass the sugar, as concerned as he seemed. He’d do it, too, she realized. If she asked.

  “Could you?” she said. “I mean, I know you could. But would you? It’s not right, you know.”

  He shrugged. “There’s right and then there’s right. You don’t deserve to get raked over the coals for this.”

  As he said, there was right and then there was right.

  “No, I guess not. But if I don’t want you guys around at all, I can’t come running to you for help when I want it. It’ll be okay. I’ll get through it.”

  He smiled thinly. “I knew you’d say that. And what if the record does come out? You were a rebellious kid who made a mistake. Most of the people in that courtroom have made mistakes. Any witness the defense calls, Bronson can cross-examine. No matter what they make you say, Bronson can clean it up. I’ll coach him. I made the temporary insanity diagnosis not to keep you out of jail, but because it was true. In rebelling against your parents, you identified with their enemy, and it was totally irrational. You weren’t in your right mind. Here’s the ultimate proof: After that incident, what did you do? Did you get in trouble again? Did you spiral down into a life of crime and mayhem? Did you return to Sito’s clutches? No. You disappeared for four years, and it was the best possible thing you could have done. You came back from college a different person. You were more confident, you could take care of yourself, and you no longer depended on your parents for your identity. You simply aren’t the same person.”

  “You can see all that because you’re telepathic.”

  He huffed. “Anyone with eyes can see you’re a decent human being.”

  “Even Dad?”

  “If he ever actually looked at you, he’d see it. But he’s a man who’s very good at seeing what he wants to see.”

  Mentis always knew the right thing to say. Didn’t make her any happier about the situation.

  “I don’t want my personal history made a spectacle.”

  “No. But we all make sacrifices for the cause of justice. This might be yours.”

  * * *

  Second place. She’d won second place in the 200-meter freestyle. That was in the medals. She’d never done that well, and had never been so proud. It was the pinnacle of her freshman year in high school. Maybe even her whole life. She could actually do something right.

  There was a ceremony, and she stood on the podium. The medal hung weighty and solid around her neck. It wasn’t really silver, but some kind of alloy plated silver. It didn’t matter. She held it in her hand. It meant something. It had to mean something. Mom cheered for her from the stands. Dad wasn’t there because he had to work. Mom had apologized for him, and Celia said she understood.

  Back home after the meet, Celia found her father in his office and showed him the silver medal. He gave her a tight-lipped smile and ruffled her hair. “Good job. Maybe next time you’ll win.” He turned back to his work without another word.

  She had expected something … more. A cheer, a hug. She wanted him to be as happy as she was. But she wasn’t the champion, and anything less wasn’t enough.

  Next time. Why bother?

  She stayed up past midnight that night watching TV in the living room, lying flat on the sofa. She flipped channels. Two hundred of them on the satellite TV, minus the ones her parents had blocked. She wore her silver medal over her pajamas.

  Then, Suzanne’s voice carried from down the hallway, growing closer. “You let them get the better of you. You underestimated them.”

  Celia used the remote to quickly shut off the TV and huddled flat on the sofa, hiding in the shadow behind the arm. She hadn’t expected her parents to make an appearance in this part of the house tonight. They were working. Not the day job working, but working working, as she thought of it, when they donned their costumes and saved the city.

  “They surprised me more like—”

  “They shot at you and you just stood there, man,” said Robbie Denton, aka the Bullet. Captain Olympus was getting dressed down by both of them. Huh.

  “Warren, you can’t take chances like that. I know the mission is important, but you can’t … waste yourself on two-bit robberies.”

  Warren said, “Robbie was backing me up. At least, you were supposed to be.”

  “Hey, the plan had me watching the back exit.”

  “And it’s not like I can get hurt—”

  Suzanne said, “That’s not the point! There are other ways of getting hurt than getting shot. This … this stranger knows all of our secrets now.”

  If the Olympiad was arguing, it meant something had gone wrong. The trio passed by the living room, reaching the open kitchen.

  “What are we going to do about him?” Suzanne sai
d, her voice softer now.

  Celia wondered who they were talking about.

  “I think we should invite him onto the team,” Warren said.

  “No, we don’t know anything about him—”

  “Not to mention he’s inexperienced,” Robbie added. “He’s just a kid. Heck, does he even shave yet?”

  Warren said, “Having him on the team would give him a stake in keeping our secret.”

  “But how can we trust him?”

  “He helped us, Suzanne. He didn’t have to, he could have let those gunmen surround me. Instead, he just knocked them all out without lifting a finger.”

  “That kind of power frightens me,” she said.

  What had happened? Someone with powers had discovered their secret identities, obviously, but how? Celia remained perfectly still, listening.

  Then the voice of a stranger said, “This is when you try to convince me to use my powers for good, rather than for cheating at poker. Although it’s lucky I was cheating at poker, or I never would have been in a position to help you.” He had a crisp British accent, calm in tone, maybe even a little amused.

  After a moment’s pause, her father grumbled, “I was doing fine by myself.”

  “Fifteen against one says otherwise,” the stranger said.

  “We told you to stay in the command room,” Robbie said, threateningly.

  The stranger replied, offhandedly, “I can tell what you’re saying about me from a hundred feet away, I might as well be here so I can defend myself.”

  Celia lay there, clutching her swimming medal, her heart racing. She desperately wanted to jump up, run out to the kitchen, and demand to know what had happened, who the stranger was, and was Dad okay—

  “You know you have an eavesdropper?” the stranger said. “Next room over.”

  Celia held her breath—she hadn’t made a sound. Who was this guy? Did he have amplified hearing and sense her heartbeat? Could he smell her?

  After a pause, her parents both said, with an air of frustration, “Celia.”

  Her mother’s soft footsteps approached the area where the kitchen opened into the living room. “Celia? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  She hesitated. Maybe she could pretend she wasn’t here, that the stranger was wrong. But all Suzanne had to do was enter the room and look at the sofa. Celia answered, “I wanted to watch TV.”

  “Why don’t you come on out?”

  Celia stared at the darkened ceiling. “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, come out anyway. I don’t want you sneaking off with only half the story.”

  Sighing heavily, Celia lurched off the sofa and prepared to trudge to her mother. She tucked the medal under her nightshirt. As soon as she appeared, Suzanne put her arm around Celia’s shoulder and guided her to the kitchen.

  Her father stood near the table, arms crossed, glaring at the world in general. Robbie leaned against the wall nearby, looking equally sullen. They’d focused their attention on a man she’d never seen before. He stood at the end of the hallway, his hands tucked in the pockets of his brown trench coat, open to show a dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He had pale hair, ruffled back from a long face. His gaze was piercing. He studied her calmly.

  “This is our daughter Celia. Celia, this is Arthur Mentis.”

  “Hello,” he said.

  She didn’t say anything. Just glared. He quirked a smile, like he understood her mistrust.

  He looked at Suzanne. “She knows? Your secret identities, everything?”

  Suzanne said, “We didn’t see a point in keeping it secret. She’d find out eventually.”

  “She was supposed to join us one day,” Warren said, his voice flat.

  Supposed to. No one expected that to happen now.

  “Then you don’t have any particular … talents, I take it?” he said to her. That he spoke directly to her, and not through one of her parents, surprised her. He looked a lot younger than them, but he wasn’t intimidated by them, which made her warm to him.

  That didn’t mean she had to answer him, especially when her father’s tone had made the answer obvious. “So what do you do?” she said, frowning.

  “I spend my free time cheating at poker to pay for medical school. Not quite as glamorous as being the Olympiad. But there you are.”

  “He’s a telepath,” Suzanne said.

  Celia flushed, her cheeks burning. She suddenly felt naked—all her thoughts and frustrations, he could see them all. He could see that at this moment, she wasn’t particularly fond of her parents, and she certainly wasn’t interested in being nice to him. He must think she was awful.

  “Then he knows about you guys,” she said.

  “We’re working out what to do about that,” her mother said.

  “Is everything going to be okay?”

  “Everything’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Go on to bed, okay?”

  Mentis said, “It’s hardly fair, asking her not to worry when you’ve exposed her to your world. How could she not worry? She’s been worrying her whole life.”

  “It’s not really any of your business, now, is it?” Warren said, glaring.

  But that was it exactly, she’d been worried her whole life. Worried, scared, frustrated, embarrassed, disappointed.…

  “Go on,” Suzanne said, patting Celia’s shoulder. “We’ll see you in the morning, all right?”

  Celia approached the hallway obliquely, keeping as far away from the stranger as she could. He appeared to not pay any attention to her.

  She had moved past him when he said, “Congratulations on the silver medal.”

  Celia was startled into politeness. “Thanks.”

  Then, she ran down the hall to her room.

  THIRTEEN

  MARK and Arthur both told her what they’d learned from the poolside kidnappers. They weren’t part of the so-called Strad Brothers, the group that masterminded the heist at the symphony gala. They were, however, working for the Strad Brothers. Criminal subcontractors, which would have been laughable if Celia hadn’t seen that kind of organization in action. It hinted at a larger conspiracy. The details were murky. They’d only been instructed to take Celia West alive. A new conspiracy, with her at the center?

  The evening news didn’t mention her, thankfully. They had a bigger story. She and Mark lounged on her sofa, watching.

  The pretty anchorwoman read her cue seriously. “Our top story, a robbery has taken place at the Commerce City Botanical Gardens. The perpetrators are believed to be the same group of thieves that stole four priceless Stradivarius instruments from the symphony gala last week.”

  Celia turned the volume up.

  “The thieves’ target this time? Three prize-winning koi. Because of their breeding potential, these koi were estimated to be worth tens of thousands of dollars.”

  Mark huffed. “Fish? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Witnesses say the thieves took the fish from the Garden’s Japanese pond, an ornamental landscape that forms the central attraction of the Garden’s collection. Apparently, the fish were taken alive. Garden officials expressed some hope that they could be recovered in the same condition.”

  They should be so lucky. This gang obviously knew what it was doing and chose its targets carefully: unusual, high-ticket items that would be impossible to unload on the conventional marketplace.

  “They’re making a statement, not robbing for money,” she said.

  “That means there’s a pattern. It makes them easier to catch.”

  Both robberies coincided with her kidnapping attempts—just like her kidnapping off the bus coincided with a city-wide crime spree. She didn’t think she rated classification as a valuable cultural artifact. But in all three cases, she’d provided a distraction. Law enforcement and the supers had been looking at her, not at any robberies.

  Until the Strad Brothers were caught, this was likely to happen again.

  * * *

  Now that she knew what to look for, sh
e could spot her bodyguards. The next day, gazing upward, she caught a glimpse of Breezeway jumping from one building to the next, across the street from where she waited for the bus. He had a good view of her and all the streets around her. She almost waved hello.

  Back in college, Celia had taken perverse delight in walking across campus alone in the middle of the night. As a freshman she’d gotten tired of the women’s groups and security activists insisting that no girl should ever venture forth into the darkness without a can of mace and a uniformed cop escorting her. That reeked of regressive Victorian thinking. Celia made a point of walking alone, with enough of a badass attitude that no one ever approached her.

  One night, a breeze kicked up autumn leaves as she marched from the library to her dorm, half a mile away. It was a nice night for a walk. Her peasant skirt swished around her legs, her oversize cotton tunic was cozy. In another month the air would be too cold for comfort.

  Or in another hour it would be too cold. The breeze turned into a gust, a harbinger of a storm. It whipped her hair into her face, she had to hold her skirt down, and she started leaning into the wind to walk.

  Across the street, the trees weren’t blowing at all.

  Her feet slipped, and she yelped. Cushioned by a whirlwind pounding around her, she floated a few feet off the ground. Her backpack slipped off her shoulder. She flailed her arms; it felt almost like swimming. The pocket of wind held her like a hand. Thank God she was wearing tights; her skirt tossed around her hips.

  From above her, a man floated down, arms outstretched, riding the breeze like it was a surfboard. He wore the unmistakable sleek costume of a superhuman vigilante—or villain. A strip of silk ran along the insides of his arms, down his torso, rippling like sails. He wore a mask on the top part of his face. His frame was thin—barely postadolescent. He had overgrown brown hair and a shit-eating grin.

  Celia struggled, but she only flopped like a fish out of water.

  “You’re Celia West?” he said, calmly hovering before her.