Free Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. by Marion G. Harmon Page A

since I had almost gotten her killed.
     
    She read my face. “Hey. You didn’t drag me along—I volunteered, remember? Hell, I owed the Anarchist big-time. If that meant going into a daylight fight, my biggest problem with the way it turned out is I didn’t get a chance to shoot anybody. Not even a little.”
     
    That surprised a laugh out of me.
     
    “Better,” she said. “Want me to shoot a few newsies for you? Just a little?”
     
    “ Aagh .” I clutched my hair, sliding down in my chair. “Just a little. You’d think they’d leave me alone.”
     
    “In what bizarro alternate world would they do that? After the Burnout scandal with all those underage ‘sidekicks’ last year? And we’re talking about Atlas, the Great American Hero? You can’t just show your birth-certificate, so the tabloids can claim you’re jailbait, and you’ve got to admit that the ten-year age difference between the two of you made it look a bit squicky .”
     
    “Nine! Nine years! And I thought you were all for it.”
     
    “I was. When you’re in The Life you carpe the diem when you can. I didn’t know Atlas well, but Blackstone didn’t even blink at the thought of you two. Chakra wouldn’t have cared if one of you was a duck, but if Blackstone had thought it the least hinky he’d have warned you away from it.”
     
    “Then what did I do wrong?”
     
    “Disappearing with Atlas for three days? With his rep? You’d have done better to run off to Vegas. Getting married by Elvis would have been nothing.”
     
    “We were engaged, and nothing happened!”
     
    “Great title for your autobiography. Nobody’ll buy it.”
     
    I moaned.
     
    “This conversation is undoing my therapy.”
     
    “Really? You killed how many Bad Guys in LA, got tortured by a sadistic nut-job and waxed him too, and this is what you talk to Dr. Mendell about?”
     
    “I don’t talk to her about LA. Or Reno. Not since she certified me for duty.”
     
    “Coffee’s ready.”
     
    She got up and poured, then did something arcane with the cans and packets she’d brought. English cream. Cinnamon. Nutmeg. Other stuff. She never asked what I wanted, but I always wanted what she made.
     
    “So what were you doing Blackstone wouldn’t talk about?” I asked, blowing on mine. Habit: I could have drunk it boiling.
     
    For a moment she looked really, really dangerous, like an evil Snow White.
     
    “Let’s just say the ‘vampire’ population of New Orleans has declined. On that note, good news: I’m not contagious.”
     
    “You can’t make other vampires?”
     
    “Nope. Not without psycho- Vlad to empower me, anyway. And since he’s ashes floating in Lake Michigan…”
     
    Her smile stretched ear to ear, and I sighed, relieved. I’d occasionally worried that the Department of Superhuman Affairs would conspire with the Center for Disease Control to lock her up as the potential vector for a vampire-plague. After all that’s what her maker had planned. I sipped the coffee and settled back with a deeper, blissful sigh.
     
    “But the whole Atlas-scandal has been going on awhile,” Artemis said. “Why is Shelly worried now?”
     
    So I told her.
     
    ----
     
    “ Are you brain-dead ?”
     
    I’d only ever seen Artemis this mad once, the night I’d tracked her down in her hideout under her old family home. She’d shot me in the eye to make the point. It had stung
     
    “Blackstone is going to get pureed and you didn’t tell me ?”
     
    “I’m sorry!”
     
    I forced my hands down, wrapping them around my cup. A mistake; I squeezed too hard and it shattered, splashing coffee across the kitchen. Déjà-vu. I leaped up and grabbed a dish towel.
     
    “I told you, Shelly and I thought we could find his killer first!”
     
    “Of all the blonde— Look, you can’t just catch the guy who’s going to do it! You said the police think this guy’s a contract killer! You catch this guy, whoever would have paid for the hit is