9~
The alley was quiet in the back of Groovitations, which didn't suit Gary and Ethan while they loitered around the steel rear entrance to the defunct dance club on guard duty.
Both had been recent converts, Gary first, through his dealings with an even earlier brainwashed Beatrice Cummings, and Ethan, through Gary. Now both were loyal to the cult, but they were bored out of their minds at the moment.
Something could be heard rusting around the trash-strewn alleyway, and both agreed to sharpen their wits by listening and deducing what was making the sounds.
"Rats," guessed Ethan.
"Raccoons," supposed Gary.
"How do you know it's a raccoon?" asked Ethan.
Gary countered. "Well, how do you know it's a rat?"
"Rats are urban. Raccoons are...suburban. Everybody knows that."
"Raccoons can be urban, too," Gary said. "They can get into trash cans."
"Yeah, in the suburbs," Ethan told him. "You've lived in Crystal Cove all your life. Have you ever seen raccoon road-kill anywhere but the suburbs?"
"Not really," Gary admitted.
"See?" Ethan said. "It's just rats."
The rustling sound on the other side of the alley started up again. The duo followed the noise, turning their collective backs on one side of the long passage.
From behind an abandoned dumpster, two rats moved halfway out of its shelter, sniffed the air cautiously, then ran further up the alley, still keeping to their side of it.
Ethan looked at Gary with clear vindication. "What did I tell you? Rats. Two of 'em. One, tw-"
A hard stream of ice-cold water struck Ethan and Gary's exposed necks above the collar, taking their breath away from the sheer temperature alone.
The surprise and the chill made their bodies jerk and stiffen as though they were electrocuted, and the shock of such extreme and sudden stimulation overwhelmed their brains, causing them to faint dead away.
Marcie Fleach approached the bodies from a few yards down the alleyway, a large, silver satchel slung around her sloping shoulders and brandishing what looked like a child's Doom Douser 5000, a plastic, large-capacity, pressurized water rifle. And in the semi-illumination of the alley, one could see from the peeking sunlight shining through its tank that it was fully loaded.
She looked down at her handiwork with both satisfaction and contempt.
"Three, four," she added to Ethan's rat count before opening the steel door and stepping in.
A frosty air crept where Gary and Ethan had lain as ice suddenly climbed up the closed door, filling the space between it and the reinforced threshold, sealing it shut.
Once again, Marcie heard voices from up ahead and slowed her walking.
She made it to the main lounge's entrance and was thankful that no one posted guards there.
Marcie's attention shifted back to the crowd of teens that stood on the dance floor, blocking, from Marcie's point-of-view, what they surrounded.
She needed a vantage point to spy from. The balcony.
Marcie held her satchel and rifle close to minimize noise and crept cautiously towards the foot of the stairwell. Then, when she was satisfied that no one had heard her, she snuck quickly up the stairs.
Reaching the entrance archway, she crouched low and swept the area with both eye and water rifle. No one was there.
Relieved, Marcie put down the rifle, slipped off the shoulder bag, and laid flat on the dusty floor, crawling while carrying and dragging her gear past cobweb-covered tables and chairs until she reached the curved base of the railing that spanned the width of the balcony.
Peering over the top rail, Marcie had a commanding view of everything below, particularly the proceedings on the dance floor. What she saw disheartened her.
By Marcie's estimation, the throng of kids, fifteen strong, the entire cult membership widely encircled the stage dominated by Ringleader.
Before him stood a lounge table with a steaming bucket of hot water and the four remaining Blake Sisters, two holding Daisy with one folded arm pinned to her back, and the third holding her by the other outstretched forearm securely.
"Guys, you don't have to do this," Daisy pleaded for what seemed like the hundredth time to her, and still to no avail.
"You're gonna feel so much better after you wear the bracelet, Daze," Dawn told her, a manically peaceful look in her eyes.
"Yeah," Dorothy added. "We fought it, at first, when Joanne came to the university and gave out those free bracelets. But after Ringleader straightened it out for us, we understood the cause he was fighting for. Free love for everybody."
"The irony, of course," Delilah said. "Is that love isn't free. It costs, and the ones who can afford it the most, the rich, like Mom and Dad, have to give to the ones who need it the most. And after you join us, we're going to pay our parents' vault a little visit."
Daisy struggled against the combined strength of her sisters' holds but couldn't break free.
Ringleader approached Daisy with an eager grin. He slipped a bracelet around her wrist and then tied a nylon cord around it, as well.
"No use resisting, darlin'," he crowed. "Joanne's just called me and told me that your four-eyed friend is wearing a bracelet again and playin' in traffic on the PCH. So, there's no rescue."
He walked over to one side of the steaming bucket, trailing the cord across it.
"Bring her forward," he commanded. The sisters dragged Daisy closer to the bucket.
"No-no, guys! We can't steal from Mom and Dad! Think of the love! Think of the good times! Think of the trust funds!" Daisy begged as Ringleader pulled the cord tight, painfully drawing her wrist over the bucket and the rising steam.
Her exposed arm was covered with droplets from the scalding mist, but instead of yelping in pain from the heat, she felt herself relaxing in the makeshift steam bath as drops of sweat beaded slowly from her perspiring arm.
Daisy tried to pull away from the bucket but soon found that she could barely move the arm to do so. Heavy fatigue began to roll through her so swiftly that it frightened her, but as panicked as her mind was, her gradually lax body couldn't listen to its commands.
Ringleader experimentally gave the cord some slack, and her arm dipped closer to the hot water. She was just about ready.
"Move her back," he commanded her sisters.
They did as they were told, still holding her, this time to prop her up, as Ringleader approached and put on his sparkling rose-colored shades for the coup de grace.
He held up her head by her chin and intoned, "Check out my glasses."
What little will remained in Daisy made her turn her head away slightly. Ringleader just smiled at her defiance as his thralls cheered for him. One last twitch of fight in them before the end. It was always the same and ended the same.
Two plump, red, frigid water balloons sailed high across the vaulted ceiling of the dance club and exploded on both Ringleader and Daisy, drenching one and freeing the other from the chemical grip of the Snoozex sedative.
The splash on Daisy also caused collateral effects on her sisters from being so close. Icy droplets of water caused chilling tingles to clutch them, and they released her as Daisy fell to her knees, damp and shivering.
Ringleader snatched the glasses from his eyes to see who had attacked him. From the direction of the balloons, when they hit, he guessed that it came from the direction of the bar.
Or the balcony above it...
He looked up to see an angry Marcie looking down from her dark height, loaded for bear.
"You're like toilet paper on my sandals, girl! You're always trailing me!" Ringleader called out in annoyance, masquerading as cordiality.
"Your partner felt that way, too," she called back.
Ringleader frowned. This pest was tearing through his and Joanne's secrets too quickly. She was proving to be a genuine threat.
"So, you know, huh? And you gave Joanne the slip, apparently. Well, that's cool. It's not like you or your friend, here, are gonna leave anytime soon."
"I know," Marcie said noncommittally. "And neither will you since I froze the back door to this place."
That gave Ringleader pause. He couldn't see how she could freeze a door solid, and she might have been lying just to rattle him, but he also considered what it might mean to him if it were true. That door was the only way in or out, and for security, he preferred it that way since all other exits and windows were either chained or boarded up.
"While you're thinking about what I said," Marcie continued. "you should know that I've told the sheriff and his men where your hideout is. They should be on their way."
'I hope,' she thought.
It didn't look to Ringleader like she could do much damage from her position if all she had were ice-cold water balloons, but her mention of the law coming quickly changed things.
"Hey, maybe we can make a deal," he said smoothly, his charm and diplomacy about as false as his cult. "You're obviously smart. What do you want?"
Marcie shook her head with a bitter smile. She heard his poisonous words before. "Sorry, Ringworm. I've had my fill of illusions for the day. All I want is the girl." She gestured toward Daisy.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Daisy standing up and stripping the bracelet from her arm as though it were some deadly animal she wanted some distance between.
"And if I refuse?" Ringleader asked, recognizing the challenge in the situation.
"Then the sheriff gets his prize."
Ringleader gave his cultists a casual glance while he posed thoughtfully, more for Marcie's benefit than for anything else. It was apparent, however, that the numbers were on his side. He shrugged and innocently put his hands behind his back, keeping their sparking out of view.
"Get her!" he commanded the crowd.
Finding her second wind, Daisy gave the water bucket a forceful kick towards the crowd, splashing scalding hot water on the closest ones.
The distraction allowing Daisy to sprint past them and run, pell-mell, towards the balcony.
"Up here!" Marcie yelled, her heart in her stomach for the crazy play she attempting.
Daisy climbed at reckless speed and was surprised to see an armed Marcie standing at the head of the stairs.
"Get behind me!" Marcie yelled.
Daisy ran past, and they could hear the crowd below stampeding across the dance floor on their way to dragging these bothersome birds down from their perch.
Marcie reached into her wool jacket pocket and pulled out a small handful of Insta-ice capsules. Hearing a knot of kids tearing up the stairwell, she dashed the tablets against the steps, releasing the refrigerants into the stale air.
Ice began to form and swell, creating an icicle-spiked barricade that filled the width and half the height of the stairwell, and thin, spreading sheets of ice from its base further along the stairs, causing the closest cultists to slip and crash upon it.
"Hopefully, that should hold them until the sheriff comes," Marcie breathed with some relief.
"Are you all right?" she asked, turning to her friend as she checked both the pressure and fill gauge on her rifle. Both were satisfactory, as was the numbing temperature that she felt through the plastic water tank of the toy.
"Yeah, I think so," Daisy answered while she ran to the railing. "That's what you meant about cold water in your message. It snaps you out of it."
Cultists, determined to serve their master faithfully, began clawing and scrabbling up the slick stairs, ignoring the pain to get their numb hands on Marcie and tear her down.
The closest to the barricade, surprisingly, were Dawn and Dorothy. They gritted their teeth as they grabbed onto the icicle spikes to use as handholds. Others soon caught up.
Marcie raised her rifle, looking down the sight as it pointed at the two sisters' sensitive throats. Several squeezes on the trigger brought a torturous rain of ice water across the cultists' necks and chests.
With cries of shock and discomfort, the girls' muscles seized up from the sudden chill, releasing their already pained holds on the spikes, causing them to stumble down into their advancing comrades in dazed, useless heaps.
Approaching cultists carried their fallen sisters-in-arms from the stairwell, except for Delilah, who pushed past them for the glory of Ringleader and revenge.
However, despite her rage, it was just as difficult to reach the barricade as it was for her downed siblings, giving Marcie the time she needed to line up another debilitating shot, bringing her down finally.
Clearing the remaining Blake from the staircase, the grim crowd was forced to think of a new strategy to defeat her.
From the balcony, the two girls suddenly heard the sounds of advancement stop.
Marcie wanted to breathe easier, but she knew that it was just a lull in the action. She then started to hear the mob milling about below. They still wanted to tear them down from their bunker, but now they were cautious. They were losing too many, too fast.
"Marcie, they've got a ladder!" Daisy called from her vantage point behind the railing.
Marcie wanted to see what they were up to from where Daisy was crouched but couldn't risk leaving her station unmanned.
'So, they're going for a pincer maneuver to overwhelm us,' she thought. This was going to be one hell of a skirmish.
"Look in my bag! I've got some water balloons in there," Marcie called out. "You'll have to be my eyes and ears and hold them off from where you are."
"Hold them off?" Daisy asked in a panic. She couldn't believe this little Rambette wanted her to engage them with her.
"Yes! I can't see them all from where I am. They're trying to overrun us from your side. Pick your shots and throw them!"
Before Daisy could sputter another word of dissent, the top of the ladder struck the railing with a sound that chilled her as thoroughly as Marcie's water balloon had.
She peered as far over the railing as she dared and saw the vanguard, the biggest of the cultists, starting to climb up.
Daisy felt the fear that gripped her on the dance floor as they started to ascend and had to tear her attention away from them, quickly, as she reached over for the silver thermal bag.
Her hand started to lose feeling as she fumbled around the ice packs and grabbed a fat water balloon. She went to the railing and gasped as the ladder man came uncomfortably close to her.
She aimed for the leader's head, prayed her aim was true and dashed it downward. The balloon exploded in the squad leader's upturned face, and it was his turn to gasp as he stiffened and coughed up water, lost his balance, and fell back from the ladder to crash into the other cultists who were either behind him or below, holding the ladder steady.
The rush of short-term victory and the thrill of the danger captivated Daisy, almost robbing her of a second victory as another ladder man approached. She pulled the bag closer to her position, plucked another balloon, carefully lined her shot, and blasted another teen from the ladder.
Soon, she found her pace and accepted her position as a grenadier with grim relish. As remaining cultists cautiously began climbing the ladder, with the hope of Daisy running out of water-based munitions, she chanced to look further out onto the dance floor where Ringleader was safely barking orders.
Only this time, he said nothing, and she could see him simply pointing at her from a distance.
She thought he was going to order more kids into another foolish charge when a sudden, ragged bolt of lightning lanced through the air and collided with the edge of the railing, momentarily blinding her.
Daisy fell back, thankful that the bolt deflected up and above her and Marcie's position.
"What was that?" Marcie yelled to her comrade. "Was that lightning?"
Daisy, recovering from the near-hit, answered, "Yeah! Are we seriously going up against a guy that can shoot lightning? From his hands?"
"He did that at the mall. I suspect he's using a pair of homemade Tesla coil meshes in his gloves with a portable power supply on his wrists. Mind you, I think he would be better served using something more solid-state, like a projector that fires chemically produced direct-current electricity."
Another lash of electricity bounced across the railing as Daisy remembered the ladder squad.
She crouched back to the bag and groused, "Great! I'm gonna get fried in some dirty, old nightclub, and Miss Einstein is geeking out over it." She quickly took out another climber before ducking another lightning strike.
Meanwhile, from the bottom of the stairwell, a plan was coming to form. The strongest of the remaining teens had lain down over the foot of the stairs. That cultist then became the foundation of the next cultist who climbed over him and laid on the steps above him, her feet on his shoulders.
The next did the same, as did the other, and then another. Each person supported, not by traction, as it was thwarted by the ice, but by simple gravity and the sheer weight of one person against the other.
Since the stairwell was curved, Marcie could only see what sloped up towards her from the bend ahead, and what she saw confused her. A cultist was lying on the frozen steps a short distance from the barricade and did nothing else.
What she didn't know was that the last two teens of the church had been backing up as far as the dance floor. There, they stopped and took their marks, like sprinters at a track meet, waiting.
Daisy dodged another bolt from Ringleader and finally understood his tactic. He was providing cover fire for the ladder squad, not simply trying to zap her on the spot, though that could certainly go to his advantage if he did.
She thought about pushing the ladder away but then stopped herself. With people clambering up it, the ladder was now heavier, and she would have to stand to get the leverage she would need to move it, making her a sitting duck for Ringleader.
So far, by Daisy's count, there were originally seven kids trying to overrun her position. Now there were only three left on her side of things, all on the ladder but not ascending. The rest were on the floor below, unconscious from icy system shock.
'What were they waiting for?' she thought.
Marcie found herself thinking the same as she checked the status of her weapon. Less than half full, she thought grimly.
"Daisy, I'm running low," she reported. "Balloon me."
"Now!" Ringleader roared as the two runners blasted off from their starting place, determined to beat the lightning stroke their master unleashed to the balcony.
The electrical bolt crashed against the protective railing, knocking Daisy back once more and allowing the first of the surviving climbers to reach the barrier and vault over it.
Daisy blinked back the acrid flash and just barely saw the cultist approach her. She felt for, and recovered, the satchel and the balloon she had dropped and, from her prone position, threw the projectile awkwardly at him.
It splashed high and off to the side, drenching his shoulders and neck with unforgivable cold. He seized up, eyes rolling in the darkness, and collapsed, just as the second reached the railing's edge and surmounted it.
The runners had reached the base of the stairwell, meanwhile, and literally ran on, scrabbled, clawed, kicked off, and leap-frogged from their tensing church mates towards Marcie's barricade in a mad rush.
Marcie reacted, taking a shot too quickly, as a jet of water flew between the runners. They were stopped short by the barricade, latching freezing hands onto the icicles and crouching in front of it, effectively turning it into cover from Marcie's shots.
Marcie was about to move closer and fire down upon them from near point-blank range when she heard Daisy struggling to get up after a cultist moved to her, followed by her partner.
She swung the rifle around and fired high, freezing the side of the distaff cultist's neck, stopping her in her tracks. Having been bought some time, Daisy reached into the open bag, snatched a balloon from it, and threw it in the last ladder man's face.
He choked and sputtered as he shivered, then fell, knocking over a nearby table. But that had also bought the runners the time they needed to put their plan into action.
They climbed over the melting icicles and draped their bodies over them. The concentrated cold of the barrier left them breathless, but they still stayed on the ice, shivering uncontrollably.
The cultists behind them, starting with the bottommost, began climbing up the human ramp, meeting with the two on the barricade and helping them make an anchor point for the next climber to hold on to.
Each successful cultist met with the others, forming a human chain that guaranteed to get them all across the barrier, in a line.
Marcie fell back, gathering her bag and Daisy, and heading towards the balcony's open rear.
"C'mon! I found a hallway earlier. This leads to the bathrooms on this floor!" yelled Marcie. "Grab a table! We'll use them as a barricade and make our stand here until the police come."
They each grabbed and dragged a nearby table to the mouth of the balcony's rear corridor, tipped them over, and rolled them on their sides until they touched.
"Stand back," Marcie told Daisy.
She threw an Insta-ice capsule against the tabletops, where they connected, welding them together in growing ice. Then, she threw one on either side of the tables to fill the spaces between the tables and the hall archway.
"Do you think this'll work?" Daisy asked anxiously while she looked out at the balcony's lounge.
"It'll have to," Marcie fretted. "Where the heck is Sheriff Stone?"
Sheriff Stone applauded along with his deputies and laughed like a boy on his birthday, as Joanne stood in the police department's holding cell, hopping on one foot and singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
"Oh, this is a hoot," he told them with watering eyes. "I've gotta know where she got those bracelets. I could give one to every member of the family, starting with Janet. I wonder how she'll like taking out the garbage for a while."
A deputy pensively approached Stone and whispered in his ear.
Stone stood up, looking sheepishly. "Crap! I forgot, we have to round up her partner! Okay, men! Move out!"
As Stone and his deputies ran out of the office, they left Joanne still hopping on one foot, singing away.
To Marcie and Daisy's horror, the remaining members of the Cult of Crime clambered over the runners' trembling bodies and finally overran the stair barricade, clawing for them.
Marcie stood and threw Insta-ice capsules in front of the running mob, chaotically.
Spiky ice islands sprang up in front of the maddened teens, surrounding and slowing them down, cutting them off for the few precious moments Marcie needed to reach in her jacket for more of her invention and fearing the result.
"That's the last of my Insta-ice," Marcie reported. "It's just the water rifle, and that's running dry, and however many balloons are left."
"So that's how you were able to make so much ice," Daisy said. "But, why didn't you just throw that stuff at them instead?"
"If I threw that much Insta-ice at them, it could encase and suffocate them. It's not their fault that they're brainwashed."
Daisy hefted a fat, cold balloon in her hand. "Well, I applaud your restraint, but we're stuck up here."
"Hand me a couple of those," Marcie said, unscrewing the rifle's water intake cap.
Marcie took the offered balloons, took her pen from her jacket pocket, and carefully put a hole in the balloons, draining the water into the rifle's tank. When she was done, she pumped the pressure up and checked the gauges. Enough for two more minutes of firing.
She didn't have time to dwell on that because the teens, finally rested from their assault in the stairwell, jumped over the icy corral and ran towards Marcie and Daisy.
"Aim for their necks!" Marcie cried.
A frigid barrage of ice water rifle fire and balloons struck the attackers dead on. Freezing water splashed on tender necks, soaking through the tops of shirts and blouses and chilling falling cultists to the bone.
Then, all was deafeningly quiet.
Between the shocked souls cluttering the balcony and the ones littering the lounge below, no one was left to challenge them, save one.
Daisy carefully climbed over the icy tables, stepped around shivering cultists, and peered out over the ruined railing. Only subdued children were there.
"Hey, Marcie," Daisy said. "I don't see that Ringo guy down there."
Marcie gave an exhausted sigh. The battle was won, but this war wasn't, not while he was trapped and skulking in the shadows of the nightclub. But still, a win was a win. Now to finish the rescue.
She zipped up her thermal bag, pulled it on her shoulder, and then climbed over the ice and table wall.
"Okay, here's what you'll do," she told Daisy. "At the end of the hall, behind us, is a window. I saw a fire escape outside it. Take that down to the alley, and then wait for the police. Tell the sheriff that Ringleader is still in the building somewhere."
Daisy heard the instructions but was more concerned about what Marcie was going to do in the interim. It sounded like the scholar was staying behind to hunt the man down.
"What about you? What are you going to do?"
Marcie walked over and straddled the railing, stepping on the upper rungs of the ladder.
"I'm gonna give him a bad trip," she said to her. And then, she descended.
The sounds of metal striking something hard rang down the shadowy corridor of the rear exit.
They led a curious Marcie back to the junction of the corridor's T-section again, where the banging was the loudest.
Squinting down the hall towards its end, Marcie could just make out a figure squatting in front of the iced-up door, knocking off chunks of ice with what looked like a large, rusty wrench.
Marcie moved back towards the women's restrooms and thought hard. Since the sheriff was taking his sweet time getting to the hideout, it wasn't going to be long before Ringleader would bash his way to freedom unless he was distracted or defeated.
She glumly looked at what she had left in her arsenal. A bag of five balloons and a practically empty water rifle. Not that a full complement would stop him. It would just make him wetter and even angrier.
A thought sparked in her head. It felt desperate because it was, but it also felt promising. If this worked, it could stop him. Cold.
She tip-toed back to the dance floor. The kids were still sleeping off their system shocks as she strolled quickly past them. On the floor where Daisy had kicked it was what she came for. The empty bucket.
Grabbing it, she jogged quietly back towards the restroom.
Ringleader swung again at the stubborn ice, cracking away another good chunk. It would have almost been therapeutic if he wasn't so desperate to get the hell out of there.
The sounds of battle had died down to an unsettling silence a while ago, but he didn't care. His flock served their purpose of, at least, keeping that insufferable busy body occupied while she tried to rescue her friend. It bought him precious time to make an escape.
With the swag from the most recent heists and break-ins safely stowed in his van, along with a box of Joanne's tainted bracelets, he could move on to another town and start fresh there, with a new crop of kiddies all ready to be brainwashed. Maybe he'd go to Irvine.
"Chewing your way to freedom as only a rat can, huh, Ringworm?" Marcie called out from her end of the hall.
Ringleader turned, half out of curiosity and half out of a desire to flash-fry her with his gloves. He couldn't believe that she'd still be dogging his heels after all he threw at her.
"What's with you, anyway?" he asked in frustration. "Are you getting paid to cause me grief?"
"After what you did to me, no charge."
"Oh, c'mon, I just scrambled your mind a little bit, that's all. Happens to me more than once, I can tell you."
"I like my brain as it is. It's the one part of my body I appreciate not being washed. If she could, Joanne would agree," Marcie said coolly.
"Well, before I get to reprogram you with this wrench, how did you beat Joanne? She told me on the phone that she put a new bracelet on you and made you play in traffic."
Marcie gave an expression of mock surprise. "Oh, that? She lied. Or rather, I told her to lie. She would've brainwash me, too, but Joanne's my puppet, now, and I have to admit, I kind of like the power. I can see why you both did it."
"Where's my old lady?" Ringleader growled, both worried and annoyed.
"Oh, she's safe," Marcie told him with a placating wave. "She should be finished spilling the beans about everything you two did, to the sheriff, right about now. Now everybody's gonna know that you're a Fagin."
Ringleader bristled at that. "Hey, I love my old lady!"
It took Marcie a few seconds to process that.
"Fagin! From Oliver Twist? The leader of a gang of thieves?"
"Oh."
A shower of ice shards landed on Ringleader's back as a loud metallic boom shook the exit door, badly startling him.
Marcie sighed gratefully. It had to be Stone and the others. The plan to keep him talking to stall him worked.
"Aren't you going to answer that?" Marcie asked flippantly.
The criminal's mind was frantic, thinking of ways to get out of here, all either doomed to failure or suicidal in nature.
"Too bad you don't have a hostage," Marcie's voice echoed down the hall, although Ringleader couldn't see her anymore. "It could come in handy."
A good idea, he thought, as he dropped his wrench and tore down the hall after her.
He reached the intersection and then stopped. It was empty, and the girl could conceivably hide anywhere long enough that he couldn't find her before the law found him.
For a second, he debated with himself on the possibility of grabbing one of the incapacitated teens as a hostage but thought better of it. Conscious hostages were far better than comatose ones.
Then he heard it, a sneeze from the right, in the direction of the women's bathrooms. He smiled like a predator and flexed his energized gloves.
He padded down the hall that led to the restrooms and saw that one of the bathroom doors was open about a quarter of the way. She had to be in there, foolishly hiding in a stall, no doubt.
Coming up to the threshold, he peeked in and saw Marcie standing on the other side of the room, across from the doorway, one of her stockinged feet shoeless, and arms open at her sides in a defensive stance, ready for the attack that would surely come.
He stepped in eagerly, pushing the door completely open.
Immediately, he was struck on the head and drenched from top to bottom with cool water from the hidden bucket balanced on top of the door propped partially open by one of Marcie's shoes below.
Ignoring the pain on his scalp, Ringleader imagined deliciously horrid ways to pay her back in the little time he had.
Wiping the water from his eyes, he favored her a wan smile. "Cute." He raised a hand with a flourish of finality.
"Not hostage material, then?" she asked.
"Not after that little prank. I'll take my chances getting out of here, right after I make sure you don't."
Marcie's eyes followed Ringleader as he reared his arm back, as though he was about to throw a pitch. From the confined space of the bathroom, even if his Tesla coil glove missed the mark, the widening path of the bolt would still find her, even if she dodged at the last second.
His hand thrust out, pointing the fingers to where death would go. A blue flash crackled, and at that second, the man froze, his sudden scream transformed into a pained choke, as every muscle locked into agonizing spasms when his wet hands and body conducted every volt of power from the discharge.
His eyes rolled up, a tortured mask of shock and failure molded onto his face, as he fell back onto the hallway floor, twitching and stunned, and the bathroom door closed against him.
Marcie opened the door to grimly judge her handiwork, remembering vaguely how he left her mentally broken against a trash can in an alleyway.
"Tune in, turn on...drop dead," she said to him, as the exit door finally surrendered to the police-issue battering ram.
Marcie stood at the mouth of the alleyway where the sheriff's and deputies' cruisers, flanked by several ambulances, were parked to provide a cordon to catch Ringleader if he had managed to break through the frozen door.
A long line of blanket-clad teenagers filed out of the nightclub, like monks on parade, and she could smell the faint whiff of smelling salts on every one of them that passed her on their way to the EMTs.
That was hard, she thought. The deductions, the counters to the criminals' attacks and reprisals, and the rescue. All of it. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the brick wall of the adjourning building, resting and thinking.
For every instance of logic, common sense, and innate skill she possessed, she realized, there would come a time when they would not serve her, and dumb, incalculable luck might...if it did.
"Dangerous," she muttered to herself, not noticing Daisy walking towards her, flanked by her recovered sisters.
"What did you say, Marcie?" she asked.
Hearing Daisy's voice broke Marcie's sobering revelry. She looked at the assemblage of love and gratitude between the siblings and, she had to admit that it could not have happened if she didn't...meddle.
That was the life of a mystery-solver, she realized. That was the choice and the challenge. Dancing on that swaying tight-rope between "not getting involved" and "getting involved." Between playing it safe and getting a little dirty while doing the right thing.
Too much of one, and she lived a flaccid life under the status quo of small-town society. Too much of the other, and she would probably live an eventfully short life.
She was bolstered, then, when she saw it as a sense of balance, much like chemistry, the perfect mixture of pro-action and reaction, but this was a formula she would have to work out for herself, taking time to get it right if she was lucky.
But that was a debate for another time. Right now, Marcie was pleased with herself and grateful that things didn't turn out worse than they did.
"I was just thinking out loud," Marcie said with a weary smile.
"We wanted to thank you for getting us out of that stupid hippy's cult," Delilah spoke for the rest. "You were crazy brave back there, and we're not going to forget that."
"Don't mention it, guys," Marcie tried to dismiss while blushing.
'So, this is what it's like to have somebody genuinely like you,' she thought. It felt really, really good. "I'm just glad that you and the others are okay."
Marcie and the girls' attention then turned to the gloveless, defeated hippy in handcuffs, led by a diamond-shaped escort of four deputies towards Sheriff Stone's car.
They stopped by the girls when Stone approached Marcie, and being that close to her gave Ringleader the bitter impetus to speak his mind one more time before they took him away. He boldly glared at her.
"Okay, man, you got me. Like, I could have been a true pontiff of pillage, controlling larcenous legions from one town to the next, and I would have gotten away with it, too, if you hadn't have harshed my mellow, man."
"I'm not a man. I'm a girl," Marcie rebutted flatly. "Oh, I almost forgot."
She opened her shoulder bag, turned to one of the deputies, not daring to trust Stone to remember, and pulled out her last water balloon, which had become cool in her slender hand.
"Sir, when you get back to the station, would you put this in a freezer for a few minutes until it gets really cold and then throw it at the back of Joanne Barlow's neck? It will snap her out of her brainwashing."
Looking dubious, the deputy accepted the balloon, and then Marcie turned to Stone, still high from her success, and said, "Okay, Sheriff, take him away."
Stone bristled at his authority being usurped. "Now, don't get cocky there, Millie."
"Marcie," she sighed.
"You may have cracked this case wide open, freed over a dozen brainwashed citizens, and save hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise," Stone huffed. "But, I'm still the sheriff in this town, and don't you forget it."
"I couldn't if I tried," she quipped softly.
Stone turned to Ringleader, holding him by the shoulder and the handcuff chain, guiding him to the backseat of his car. "Alright, Hippy-Dippy Man, you're going to a place where the only roaches you'll see are crawling up the walls."
Daisy watched the sheriff's car drive away soon after and leaned over to Marcie, saying, "That guy is weird."
"Who? Ringleader?"
"No! The sheriff!"
That got a laugh from the two of them. One that was long in coming.
