When they crossed the next street and turned onto another block, she stopped, startled, because the building they approached made her feel a stabbing moment of familiarity, like she’d been here before, even though she never had. That needle in the back of her mind was singing. He was here, right now, in that building. It was the right shape, had the skeletal fire escape, and seemed to nestle among the buildings around it.
She grabbed Teddy and pulled him into a nearby alley. “That’s it, that’s the one.”
“Okay,” Teddy said, with a world’s worth of confidence. Like he was absolutely sure he knew what he was doing. Maybe that was the trick of it, you had to act like you knew what you were doing. “Let’s go over it again. I get in, stay invisible, and take pictures of the drugs or weapons, right?”
Anna said, “And a picture of Scarzen, if you can. It’s best if you can get them all in the same shot.” They had decided that Anna would stay outside, rather than have Teddy unlock a door to let her inside. If Teddy were discovered, he could turn invisible and phase out of the building before anyone caught him. Anna would be stuck. As much as she hated staying out of the real work, she had to defer to logic. She’d stay hidden and wait for Teddy to get back.
Teddy tested the camera on his phone, taking a couple of shots of the brick wall. “I’m set.”
“Make sure the flash is off,” she reminded him.
“Got it. And the ringer.” He put the phone in a pocket and cracked his fingers. “Awesome.”
This could work. This could actually work. “I really want to go with you.”
“We talked about this…”
“It’s just I feel useless.”
Surprising how much expression she could read in just his mouth and jaw, under the mask. He was determined, confident, and his lips pressed in a sympathetic line. “You need to stay out here and call for help if something goes wrong.” Trying to make her feel better by giving her a job, even a silly job that a real superhero shouldn’t need. He gave her arm a brief touch that was probably meant to be comforting.
All she could think was: Even on Team Defense, she was the useless one. Great.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Teddy said breezily and offered a grin.
He left her standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed, trying to look unassuming and not horribly out of place as she leaned against a brick wall. The night was pleasantly cool, but Anna still shivered. Behind her, something rattled, made a screech—a cat, trotting the other way, vanishing into shadows. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to be startled. She waited, trying to figure out how she could go into a situation like this without being totally useless. If she could track not just one person, but everyone within a certain area, she could warn people. If she could do that, she’d be great at surveillance, at knowing when the bad guys were around, when the cops were—but the only person in that building she could sense right now was Teddy. He’d made his way inside and was moving upward on a staircase. She knew Scarzen was there, somewhere. But not what floor he was on, or in what room. Her power could only make the generalization.
Maybe if she had a gun—but that defeated the purpose of being a superhero. Superheroes weren’t supposed to need guns. She didn’t know the first thing about getting hold of a gun, much less using one. No guns, then.
What had her father done when he was with the Olympiad? He couldn’t run faster than the eye could see to get out of trouble like the Bullet, he didn’t have the sheer raw firepower of her grandparents, Captain Olympus and Spark. Oh, yeah, he didn’t just read minds, he could control them. He pried information from them, intimidated them with his reputation, and incapacitated them by forcing them to sleep.
He insisted that he’d never used that particular aspect of his power on his daughters. Mostly, Anna believed him.
Mom and Dad were at home, in bed. Bethy was in the living room—she’d probably snuck out to watch TV. Anna would have to dodge her when she got home. Her power had never felt so inadequate. It was a parlor trick, that was all.
Her sixth sense followed Teddy’s progress as he reached the third floor, where he stopped for a long time. Minutes dragged.
She wanted nothing more than to run over there and find out what was happening. She’d call, but they’d turned their phones to silent as a precaution. At least they figured that much out. They weren’t entirely stupid, or so she kept telling herself.
More minutes passed, and Teddy hadn’t moved. He might have had a good escape plan—turn invisible and phase out was pretty darned good—but even the best escape plan could go wrong. What they hadn’t worked out was a signal for when she should call for help if something really did go wrong. How would she ever know? It would be terrible if on their first outing as a superhero team they had to call for help. Wouldn’t Teia love that? Oh, but if this worked, Teia wouldn’t be able to say a thing.
She started pacing until her knees felt wobbly, then she crouched and hugged herself. And waited.
If things went really wrong, she’d probably hear gunshots. So she started listening for the sound of gunshots from the squat building.
After what seemed like half the night, Teddy started moving again. The light of his presence moved back down the stairs. Quickly. She went to the corner across the street from the building to wait for him.
A dark figure phasing through the door, he emerged from solid metal. It was always disconcerting seeing him do that. You blinked a few times and looked again, sure that there’d been a gap in the wall that you didn’t see, or that the door that was there had opened without you noticing. But no, he ran through solid matter without stopping. He arrived at her corner, and they ducked into a doorway, out of sight.
“Well?” she asked.
“Got it, let’s go,” Teddy said, bodiless. He pressed his hand to her back, urging her on.
The buses had stopped running, but they’d planned for that and she’d brought along cash. They shoved their masks into their bags and had to walk eight blocks to find any cabs. Even then, it took three tries to flag one down, this late and with them dressed like cut-rate ninjas.
The driver studied them in his rearview mirror. “Don’t you kids have school tomorrow? It’s a little late.”
“Just go to Seventy-second and Pine,” Teddy muttered.
On the drive, he showed her the pictures he’d shot. They were good. They’d nail the guy.
They stopped a few blocks from Teddy’s house. That would have been stupid, going straight home. After dropping him off, Anna had the cab take her to a hotel a couple of blocks from West Plaza. She had to hope that was good enough to throw people off. Her calculations were good and she’d collected enough of her allowance to pay the driver. Twenty minutes later, she was at West Plaza taking the secret elevator up.
Finally, she could breathe. She hadn’t realized she’d spent all night feeling like she was strangling until she got home, and the air seemed clearer.
But they’d done it. They’d really, really done it. They’d show everyone. And Dad wasn’t even waiting up for her. Victory.
Nothing in any of the superhero biographies or memoirs talked about how you were supposed to get any sleep, fighting crime at night and pretending that everything was normal during the day. This was even worse than the nights they all went out to practice. She hadn’t burned herself out on adrenaline those nights. She hadn’t spent those nights with her heart beating in her throat.