The door of my gym locker swung shut to reveal a perky, blonde, freckled grin.
"Hiya, Taylor," Lisa said.
I raised an eyebrow in response. By now, I knew better than to ask how she had found me.
We stood inside Arcadia High's girls' locker room, which nestled snugly up against the gym. Freshly-scrubbed linoleum and thick coats of forest-green paint combined to create exactly the kind of vaguely gross atmosphere you would expect out of any self-respecting locker room. A faint reek of dried sweat put the finishing touches on the image.
I placed my now-unnecessary, school supply standard-issue lock into an outside pouch on my backpack, stuffed my gym bag into the main pouch, and zipped it all shut.
Lisa pouted. "Aww, c'mon, you mean you're not even going to ask this time? My showmanship isn't what it used to be."
A few of my other classmates still lingered about the room, toweling off after an extremely brief shower or hurriedly scribbling out some unfinished homework which was no doubt due next period, but none gave Lisa so much as a second glance. When you went to a school as big as Arcadia, you expected to see kids you didn't recognize popping up just about everywhere. I would have been willing to bet that many of my own classmates might not recognize me if I crossed paths with them in the hallway.
I swung my backpack up onto my shoulders. "I guess I must be getting jaded," I said. "It's inevitable, right?"
Lisa shook a finger at me. "No, no, that's not going to work for me at all. I'll have to find some other impressionable youth to dazzle with my remarkable wit and sleuthing talents."
"I will say that I wouldn't have expected you to show up during gym class. I'm guessing that one wasn't your favorite."
Lisa snorted. "Hey, now you're horning in on my turf, Miss Detective," she said. "But then, doesn't everybody hate P.E.? Although, if I'd put more work into it, my harrowing escapes might be a little bit less harrowing. Maybe I should follow your example, Marathon Girl."
The harsh electronic chime of the bell rang out, and we floated out into a hallway along with fifteen hundred other teenagers.
"Marathon Girl," I mused. "I bet there's a cape using that name. It has a nice ring to it."
Lisa waved a hand in derision. "Oh, people eat up any name that has 'Girl' in it," she said. "They're way more popular than 'Woman', for some reason, even if you're way too old to be trying to sound like a teenager."
"Do you think Glory Girl will keep her name?" I asked as we mounted the nearest staircase en route to the top floor, where my chemistry class awaited.
"Oh, she seems the type, all right. She'll still be trying to squeeze into that costume when she's 45. Plus, what could she call herself while keeping the theme and alliteration - Wonder Woman?" Lisa shook her head. "Way too corny." We rounded the second-floor landing in the midst of a yawning, giggling, cellphone-checking stream. Lisa looked up the staircase at the fourth-floor landing above us.
"We're short on time, so I'll get to the point. Be a doll and come by the office after school, would you? We've got a prospective client whom I think you're really going to want to meet."
"Are we sure that they're not part of some international espionage ring this time?" I did my best to deliver the line with an entirely straight face.
Lisa smirked. "Okay, I deserved that, I'll admit. No, this one's totally on the level. I made sure to do some extra vetting this time. Fool me once, and all that. This one's squarely in the good deeds department. I'm done with the Indiana Jones crap for a while, as thrilling as re-sorting and re-filing all of my papers for the last two weeks has been."
"Sorry, I couldn't resist," I said. "If you think they're worth our time, that's all I need to hear. I'll be there. Should I come straight from school?"
Lisa nodded. "You betcha," she said. "I stashed your outfit in the back exit of the office, in case anyone's already there once you come by. Just head in through the usual route from my place and you'll be golden."
We surmounted the last of the stairs and merged into the cross-stream of students moving between classes. The current flowed noticeably thinner and quicker now, with only a minute or two left before the next bell rang to announce that you had better already be in your seat.
"Will you be hanging out here for a while? I can recommend a couple of library computers with some emphatically non-educational games installed, but you'll have to talk your way into the computer lab," I said.
"Eh, games don't do much for me," Lisa said. "I always end up having to suppress a lot of garbage nagging about glitches and lazy programmers. Maybe I'll go sample the delicacies at the cafeteria," she said with a chuckle. "I've got to make sure that they're treating you alright here, after all."
"In that case, do yourself a favor and get out of here early," I said. "At least one of us can, that way." I motioned to the dull wooden door at which we had just arrived. Mr. Bleekley always liked to close the door a minute before the bell rang again, in a sort of passive-aggressive commentary on punctuality. Lisa probably could have derived a lot more psychological meaning from it, but I just found it rude. "I'd better get inside before the bell rings. This teacher is a real fanatic about being late."
"Far be it from me to land my partner in the principal's office," Lisa said with a magnanimous gesture. "I'll see you after school, Taylor. Stay in school, kids, and all that." She swaggered off down the hallway with a jaunty wave.
I watched her go with only the slightest twinge of jealousy at her freedom to go where she liked and do what she wanted without regard for the constraints of everyday society. Simply walking out of school and setting myself up in a quiet cafe or sunny park would have been delightful, but after going to all this trouble to stay in school in the first place, it would have been a waste to drop out now, with my school life now halfway tolerable.
I braced myself for forty-five minutes of pure, unadulterated chemistry, and slipped through the door just before the bell.
For the rest of the day, the tingle of anticipation brought on by the promise of a new case made focusing on my work a nigh-impossible proposition. Though I made my best effort, my mind kept slipping back to theorize about what Lisa might have found this time, or who we might be up against. Though I had no desire to face down Lung or Hookwolf again anytime soon, the fact that I'd gone head-to-head with them and not only survived, but escaped entirely intact, gave me a good deal of perhaps-unwarranted new confidence.
Come the ringing of the last bell, I was off like a rocket. I could only restrain myself from running the mile or so between Arcadia and the office by sternly reminding myself that a gangly teen sprinting through the afternoon pedestrian traffic would attract more attention than was entirely healthy for a gangly teen who also happened to have a cape for an alter ego.
I bounded up the steps, then down into the basement, opened the locked back exit door with a twist of my office key, and stepped inside, closing the door after me. True to Lisa's word, my costume waited there, neatly folded on a small bench. A quick look at my watch told me that I still had time, and a quick sweep of the office with a few of my bugs told me that Lisa remained alone in the office so far. One hurried change later, I stepped into the main room of our office.
Shamus, fully clad in mask, hat, and trench-coat, looked up from her desk and beamed. "Just the girl I wanted to see!" she said. "You're here just in time. Our client should be coming through that door any moment, I'd say."
The insectoid tripwire which I had thrown up, as always, around the office confirmed that a moment later, as the outer door swung open and a figure made their way across the waiting room. The bugs I had nestled unobtrusively on our visitor's legs gave an impression of short, unsure steps. Having not so long ago been on the other side of the door myself, I could empathize.
"I think they're here," I said.
Shamus flashed me a thumbs-up. "My human perimeter alarm!" she said. "If I could just find a way to clone you, we'd put those security companies out of business. Now time to put our best feet forward, and all that!" She sprang up out of her seat, and bounded over to the door with a whirl of her coat. Just as our visitor reached for the doorknob, Shamus swung the door open. I couldn't tell from my position behind m desk, but I felt certain a cheek-to-cheek smile stretched across her face.
"Hiya!" she said to our visitor, whom the open door revealed to be a middle-aged woman with close-cropped black hair and sad eyes. I noted, not without amusement, that Shamus had used my detection to bolster her own prescience in the eyes of our prospective client. Not that I begrudged her the right, of course. The stronger her reputation, the more effective we would be out on cases. I judiciously settled myself at my desk in an effort to present a more professional, and less unnerving, appearance.
Shamus stepped back from the open door and gestured inside. "Please, come in," she said. "Thanks for dropping by."
Our guest nodded, and stepped inside. While I could hardly consider myself an expert on body language, hers suggested someone deeply uncomfortable in the presence of capes. Although I had been one myself for only a few months, I found it harder and harder to maintain memories of my non-powered perspective in the face of so many confrontational run-ins with other capes.
Shamus stuck out a hand, an easy grin on her face. "I'm Shamus, but you probably guessed that already from the outfit," she said. "You'll have to pardon my little affectations." She turned to me with an elaborate gesture. "This here is my partner, Flutter. She's new in town, but she's already making a name for herself in law-abiding circles, and quite a different one among the ranks of the less civic-minded in town."
My relative dearth of professional business experience left me at a bit of a loss on the best way to greet a new client, particularly while seated at a desk, and after such an introduction. I settled on a polite wave. "Hello," I said. "Welcome to our office."
The woman swallowed her unease, straightening out her posture a bit, and nodded. "Thank you," she said. "I appreciate you two taking the time to meet me." The corners of her mouth twitched upward in a sad smile. "Especially someone like me. I'm sure your usual clients are a bit more high-end."
Shamus wagged a finger. "You might be surprised!" she said. "We pride ourselves on maintaining a diverse clientele." She gestured to a metal folding chair which faced the right angle formed by our two desks, so as to enable our guests to see both of us at once without necessitating the placement of our desks side-by-side, which would have been a bit awkward for when just the two of us occupied the office.
The woman nodded, and gingerly took a seat. She rested her handbag on the floor next to her chair, and clasped her fingers together on her knees.
"I should explain why I'm here, right?" she said.
Shamus nodded. "I'm afraid even I'm not quite that good a detective," she said with a chuckle. "Please, bring us up to speed. We'll talk the details after."
The woman shifted in her seat, then spoke. "My name is Rebecca Heaylen," she said. "I work for a local homeless outreach group. We're primarily based out of Downtown, but we work all over Brockton. Two weeks ago, one of my contacts, a man named Jason, went missing." She looked down and sighed. "Sad to say, but that's not unprecedented, so in and of itself it's not why I'm here. I went to the police and strong-armed them into opening an investigation, but they didn't turn anything up. I even went around to all of his friends - at least, the ones that I knew-and got everything I could out of them, with no luck. I hate to say it, but at that point, all I could do was hope that that at best, he had decided to hop on a bus somewhere without telling me. It does happen, you know."
"But that's not why you're here," Shamus said. "Something else happened, didn't it?"
She nodded. "You're right, it did. Two days ago, while I was walking through Downtown on my way home, I saw him. I didn't recognize him at first, though, because he looked like almost a completely different person. Clean, new clothes, a fashionable haircut, even brand-new shoes. It was like he'd gone on one of those makeover reality TV shows, you know?"
This didn't yet seem like a bad thing to me, but Rebecca had more to say.
"So, of course, you were wondering from whence this sudden windfall came, and why he hadn't mentioned it," Shamus prompted.
"Yes, of course," Rebecca said. As she recalled the memory, her look grew serious, and her eyebrows drew together. "But when I went up to him, he didn't even want to talk to me. Sorry, no, that's not the best way to put it. He acted like he didn't recognize me at all, at first. I could have sworn that I was a complete stranger to him. Then I asked him about the clothes, where the money had come from, but he stonewalled me completely. At that point, he acted like he recognized me, and tried to fob me off with some cock-and-bull story about a sudden inheritance." She shook her head and frowned again. "Still, even then, I got this feeling that he didn't recognize me. In fact, I could nearly have sworn it. That's the part about this that bothers me the most, even more so than wherever he might have gotten the money from. I've worked with this man for years, but there was no recognition in his eyes whatsoever, not even a glimmer. How can you explain that?"
I certainly didn't have an answer for her, but I also found myself not entirely convinced by the idea that anybody could read other people so effectively as to accurately divine their internal emotions. Even if the eyes were the window to the soul, that didn't mean that we would recognize what we see when we look through the window. Did Shamus share my skepticism?
Shamus leaned forward and steepled her fingers on her desk. She claimed to have put hours into practicing that pose in order to appear as intellectually dominant as possible. I still wasn't sure if she was messing with me on that one. Her ability to sell jokes with an unfailingly straight face left me at a disadvantage.
"But still, why come to us?" she said. "I admit, if true, that all sounds a bit odd, but I'm not a hundred percent clear on how we enter into the picture here."
"To be honest, you weren't my first choice," the woman said.
Well, at least she was honest.
"I went to New Wave first, actually," Rebecca said. "I thought I might have better luck with them than the Protectorate, since they don't have the same level of bureaucratic inertia." She scowled. "I've worked with local government long enough to know that when it comes to the homeless, officials love stringing up red tape for the sake of sheltering 'productive' citizens' feelings a lot more than they love actually helping vulnerable people."
Regardless of what I thought about the truth behind what had happened to her client, the deadly seriousness of her voice suggested real concern over this man's fate. I revised my opinion of the circumstances a bit in favor of something abnormal actually having happened.
"Anyways, I met with Brandish, and she suggested that you and Flutter might be better suited to this type of work than her team. She told me you two were smart, tough, and reliable, in those exact words."
I felt myself blush behind my mask, and couldn't quite sort out whether it came from pride or embarrassment. Shamus turned to me with a wink.
"Well, I'm flattered," she said, "Even then, if you don't mind me asking, why New Wave instead of going straight to a plain old non-cape private eye? I'm not averse to working a non-powered case, and God help me if I ever become one of those sneering elitists, but a cape private eye tends to attract cape attention and cape problems. I could even recommend you one or two guys who ought to be able to run someone down while keeping a much lower profile."
Rebecca scooted up to the edge of her chair. Her eyes sparked with conviction. "I'm absolutely certain that Jason didn't recognize me," she said. "I don't know if he's caught up in some kind of cape gang war, or what it could possibly be, but our whole interaction made my hair stand on end. What he's gotten himself into is cape business, I just know it. I'm sorry I can't offer any proof, but you've got to take my word for it."
"Fair enough," Shamus said. She looked at me. "So, partner, what do you think? Do we have room in the schedule for this one?"
Her comment about the schedule was a polite fiction for the sake of appearances, of course, since we had had absolutely nothing else since our run-in with Ms. Readman and her book two weeks ago. My stomach churned a bit at the thought that Shamus had left the decision to me. I didn't want to get her involved in a case that turned out to be a disaster, or even a waste of our time.
But with that said, I felt there could be only one possible decision on this one. After all, Brandish had thought enough of this case, and of us, to send Rebecca here.
I nodded. "I think we do," I said, attempting to pitch my voice to sound as non-threatening as possible.
Shamus clapped her hands and turned back to Rebecca. "There you have it! We're on the case. Or will be, shortly. No need to worry about the fees right now-I promise we won't break the bank. Now, I assume you have a photo of the missing party?"
The woman produced and unfurled a twice-folded photo which looked to have been run off an office printer. "I hope this will do," she said. She handed the photo to Shamus, who then angled it in my direction. A middle-aged man with an unkempt, graying beard and shabby clothes smiled back out at me from the page. Virtually nothing else about him stood out. Locating this particular needle in Brockton's middle-aged male haystack would be quite the challenge, it seemed.
"That should do the trick," Shamus said. "Consider us officially on the case, then. We can't promise exactly what we might turn up once we start looking, but rest assured that this will be our number-one priority."
Rebecca sagged back into her chair with relief. "That's wonderful to hear," she said. "I feel as though a tremendous weight is off my shoulders." A sad, quiet smile spread on her face. "You'd think after all my years of doing this I'd be more cynical, but somehow, with each year that goes by, I find that the ones I lose sting me even more. Jason is a good man, and he deserves better than whatever he's been caught up in. I hope you'll be able to find him."
"We'll do our best," I said, not wanting to give the impression of being some sort of near-mute freak. With powers like mine, I couldn't afford to spread that kind of reputation around. No matter how useful Shamus thought it might be, I wasn't eager to cultivate the image of a ruthless triggerwoman.
"Right we will, Flutter," Shamus said. She winked at Rebecca. "And, let me tell you, our best is pretty damn good indeed. Your case is in good hands."
Rebecca smiled, then squirmed in her chair ever-so-slightly. "About your fees," she said. "I'm sure you two must not come cheap, and I know hearing that someone's job is working with non-profits doesn't inspire confidence in fiscal solvency, but I do have a fair bit of money saved up. I'm sure I can afford your fee for at least a few days-"
Shamus cut her off with a magnanimous wave of the hand.
"We're a bit of a special outfit," she said. "We run more of a sliding fee scale, if you will. Especially for our friends over at New Wave."
We probably didn't quite rate the label "friends", but I supposed Shamus thought that it couldn't do any harm to circulate the idea that we were rather well-connected.
"So, we'll find the guy, and then we can talk payment," Shamus went on. "It won't break the bank, so don't worry. And anyways, if we can't find this guy within a week, I'll eat my hat. And it's a nice hat, too."
Rebecca seemed at a loss for words. I could empathize. Shamus could have been doing high-powered investigative work for major multinational corporations from a Park Avenue penthouse, but instead, she crawled around the streets of Brockton Bay with me, taking cases that she knew full well had little to no remunerative value. Not for the first time, I felt a surge of gratitude to have her as a friend. As my only friend, still, if I were being honest. I still couldn't entirely fathom why she'd decided to help me out of the nightmare of my life at Winslow and then help me make my way in the world of capes, but I owed her more than I could say.
Rebecca finally gathered herself together to the point of coherent speech. "I don't know what to say besides 'thank you'," she said, her expression soft. She met eyes with first Shamus, then me. "Even if the news turns out bad, I can take it. I just need to know."
"And know you will, just as soon as we do," Shamus said. She slid open a desk drawer and produced a palm-sized rectangle of off-white cardboard which appeared to be a business card. Since when did we have business cards?
Shamus handed the card to Rebecca. "You can reach me at this number if anything comes up," she said. "Don't hesitate to call with any new information. Even the seemingly smallest fact can hold a really incredible amount of weight if you examine it from the right perspective."
Rebecca tucked the card into her purse. "You'll hear from me as soon as I learn anything new," she said. "Thank you again, ladies. This means more than you can know, truly."
With a last exchange of pleasantries, Rebecca made her goodbyes and departed. Just in case, I tagged her with a gnat and monitored her trip down the block until she stepped outside the range of my power. Was that a bit paranoid? Maybe, but after the ambush Ms. Readman staged in our office, I felt justified in effecting a little extra vetting around our clients.
Lisa held the picture out before her and furrowed her brows in deep concentration, which meant that her power was currently tugging at every last thread of potential information to see which could be spun out into leads. I said nothing, to avoid polluting the flow of input. After a minute, she sighed, tossed the picture aside, and slouched back in her seat.
"Well, the good news is that she isn't lying," Lisa said. "She's not as skilled a dissembler as Mr. Rare Book was. Even with him, I could tell he was holding something back, but this lady put all her cards on the table. If she's nuts, she's sincerely nuts."
"Or maybe she's such a good liar that even you can't tell?"
Lisa balled up a loose piece of paper from her desk and lobbed it at me with a slow overhand toss. The paper smacked against my right lens and dropped to the ground. It did manage to make me blink.
"Nobody's that good, you dick," she said. She laughed. "I get us hung upside-down one time and now I can't do anything right, huh?"
I smiled behind my mask. One of the nice things about having Lisa for a friend was her ability to parse facial expressions even when unable to see them directly.
"I suppose I can overlook it," I said. "So, what's our game plan for this one? Finding this guy sounds like it won't be easy."
Lisa waved her hands. "Yeah, it'll be a pain, I admit," she said. "Honestly, I'm still not sure that there's really anything to this at all, even if she believes that there is. I mean, where's the evidence, right? She might just be too close to this one to keep perspective."
I quirked an eyebrow. "Do you really think so? It sounded fairly fishy to me."
Lisa pooh-poohed my concern. "Who knows? I can promise you that I'll keep an open mind, at least. If we find this guy and he's secretly been made Fuhrer of the Empire or something, I'm prepared to admit that there may be something to this case."
"I'm glad to hear it," I said. While Lisa might have her reservations, and for good reason, I personally felt confident of the necessity of our involvement.
Lisa stretched, yawned, and swung her legs up onto her desk. "You're the conscience of this operation, hon, so I've got no choice but to defer to you on this stuff. Plus, I'll admit that whatever is going on here does have me a bit intrigued, even if it turns out to be something completely cape-free. Now, was that chemistry class as boring as I imagined?"
I tugged off my mask, and tossed in on the desk before me. I could rely on my bugs to give me advance warning of any visitors, which would give me plenty of time to put it back on. Even if Lisa could interpret my facial expressions through it with reasonable accuracy, just sitting around and having an extended conversation while wearing one still felt weird.
"We got to do some experiments today, so it wasn't the worst thing in the world," I said. "That said, still definitely not my favorite subject. What did you do for the rest of the afternoon?"
"Oh, nothing too exciting. Mostly I just roamed around the school and chatted people up. It was pretty much as boring as you'd expect. I can't imagine having to spend every day inside that dank, gray prison." She shuddered. "Maybe college would be better, but I doubt it."
"You don't have plans to go?" I said.
"What, college? Nah. It seems like kind of a waste of time, you know?" She tapped her forehead. "What's the point in higher education when you've already got higher powers squatting inside your head?"
"It's my understanding that a lot of people go to college for something other than the education," I said with a wry smile.
"Well, I never!" Lisa said, fanning herself in mock shock. "Surely you're not suggesting that our peers would have anything but the most sober educational aspirations." She shook her head with mournful solemnity, then snorted, which quickly devolved into a full-fledged laugh. "I could do the party scene, true, but don't you think it'd feel way too trivial after all this?" She waved her hands around the office. "I mean, how am I supposed to go do anything as mundane as knocking back beers at a frat party after crossing swords with superpowered gangs? There's just no way. I think my head might explode from sheer boredom if I tried, honestly. Imagine having to listen to navel-gazing twenty-year-old wannabe philosophers spout about the 'psychological impact' of capes on society when their biggest experience with one comes from watching old Youtube clips. I might try to wring their necks on the spot."
"I can see your point, but I think I might still go, if I can afford it," I said. "I'd like to have the experience for at least a little while, even if it's not all that it's cracked up to be."
"Hey, I respect it," Lisa said. "And don't worry about paying for it. We can always land a couple of big fish and really wring the money out of them. Uh, in a Robin Hood way, though." She held up her left hand with her pointer and middle finger crossed. "I'll swear on it. Although, there's plenty of morally dubious people with too much money hanging around Brockton who deserve a little fleecing, anyways."
I raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I'll just get a second job," I said. "Being a barista always sounded like good life experience to me."
"Aww, don't be like that. There's nothing wrong with squeezing some of these old assholes for a little extra. Think of it as income redistribution, right? Totally above-board."
"Naturally," I said.
Lisa chuckled. "Tough crowd. Oh, did I mention that I'm pretty sure I have a job writing for the Arcadia High paper now? I popped into their room to kill some time, and the chief editor was there." She smirked. "I'm pretty sure that the chief editor is also the only editor, but I guess it sounds more impressive if you frame it like that."
"Arcadia High has a paper?" I asked, mildly surprised at having not yet heard of it in the couple of months since I had started. The school exuded such a well-heeled and well-supported vibe that, upon reflection, I couldn't be surprised at all. Arcadia was just the kind of school you'd expect to have all the affectations of a college in miniature.
"See, this is why they need me," Lisa said. "I'll get you a copy so you can see my big front-page exposé in the next issue. I'm gonna blow the doors right off that school with some serious hard-hitting journalism, just you watch me."
"I'm looking forward to it. I guess that'll be your first and last issue, though, right? They'll definitely want to find out who wrote anything that explosive in a high school paper."
Lisa sniggered. "Oh, I'm going to insist that my work be published as an anonymous contributor. I've already got all the read needed on Mr. Editor. A couple bats of the eyelashes and I could get him to publish an article personally smearing the principal. Hell, maybe even the district superintendent."
I almost felt sorry for the guy. An average high schooler set against Lisa would be no contest at all.
The conversation turned to my school life in general. Lisa and I exchanged jokes and laughs as I filled her in on the absurdly petty yet all-encompassing adolescent drama of high school. Amidst the easy comfort of talking about nothing much in particular with a good friend, I very nearly lost track of the time. A quick glance at my watch showed that it was much later than I had thought.
I stood up to go. "Sorry to have to run, but my dad wanted me to come home early tonight to help him do some housework. I think he's finally over the excitement of me having something to do after school besides coming straight home every day."
Lisa waved a hand. "Go on, get. I'll do some investigating tomorrow while you're chained to your desk, and then we can meet up to discuss the brilliance of my undoubtedly amazing insights. Seeya tomorrow, Taylor."
I smiled. "See you then," I said, and left.
