Young Sentinels (Wearing the Cape) Read online

“Certainly at one point she was completely dead, but the dead piece of wood was still an enchanted bit of her body. People get turned into things all the time in Oz and the lands around it — I once spent a few hours as a knickknack in the Nome King’s hall. I assume we are talking about Galatea? Shelly? Does she want to be human again?”

  “I doubt she’s even given it much thought.” As in zero. “I’m sure she hasn’t realized why you’re here — she wasn’t into the Oz stories like I was...” I swallowed, took a breath to get the quaver out of my voice. The shaking in my hands had turned into alarming tremors in my gut. “She’s so proud of what she can do now, but — ”

  Ozma kept quiet, waiting for me to finish.

  “But she’s not safe. Not if she scares the wrong people. They could take her away and... I can’t — I can’t...”

  “You can’t protect her.”

  “I’d do anything for her.”

  Now she smiled wide, a shared smile, like we knew the same secret. “Nothing truly bad, I’m sure,” she contradicted. “But then, I am not the best judge of how much badness is in a person.” She bit her lip thoughtfully — the first inelegant mannerism I’d seen out of her. It made her look a lot younger.

  “Before my father’s reign, all rulers of Oz had been witches or wizards, not simply dependent on them. I decided after taking the Emerald Throne that the stability of the monarchy required me to become at least as good a witch as my grandmother was, so I studied with Glinda for years and years and collected a great many magical treasures.” She waved at the boxes around us, smile fading, and sat straighter if that was possible.

  “When Mombi and Ruggiddo bound Glinda and the Wizard, I knew I couldn’t win against them on my own. I scattered the royal treasures, the Magic Belt, the Box, all the rest, throughout the mortal world before they trapped me and erased me again and sent me into exile. The Magic Belt found me and woke my memories, and now I search for the rest of my treasures and build my magical strength. There may be something I can do for Shelly. But.”

  Her eyes glistened, bright with sadness deep enough to drown in. “I miss my beautiful emerald city, but I weep for my brave Gillikans, my fine Quadlings, my happy Munchkins and Winkies suffering under the tyranny of those two, and every weapon I have or can make is bent to their freedom. I will drop a house on Mombi and feed Ruggiddo scrambled eggs for breakfast and sit on the Emerald Throne again.”

  Nix looked sad and Nox determined as they both nodded their agreement.

  “I — ” I had nothing. What could I possibly say to that? I looked down at my fists, opened them. “Then, a trade? Certainly you will need more than magic. Please.”

  Her eyes widened. I’d managed to surprise her again. “An alliance?”

  I nodded convulsively. “I know about war. My father fought to end the war in China.”

  Her smile wandered back, this time with a touch of whimsy. “And you will fight for people you don’t even believe in?” I realized what I’d said, and flushed a hot, hot red. She’d been so convincing. Was insanity contagious? She laughed at my expression, and crazy or not even that sounded graceful, nearly musical.

  “But I accept, even if you won’t believe it until you see it. I know a word keeper when I see one.” She cocked her head. “So the mighty Army of Oz is two now. Brian will be happy. And one of my treasures ... I have not yet retrieved it, and it may not do what you want of it for Shelly, but will you accept my promise in coin?”

  “Yes, but...” Giddy with triumph, I forced myself to stop and take a breath. She can do it, she can — “I can’t, not unconditionally.”

  Her gaze didn’t waver. “What are your conditions?”

  “I won’t...” I won’t help you steal Kansas, not even for Shelly. How could I say that without telling her I knew plans she might not even have yet.... “I won’t do anything truly bad.”

  She nodded in perfect understanding.

  “And only you can be the judge of your badness. Done. I accept your word and your judgment.” Her lips quirked. “I feel that I should dub you Lady Knight or something. And I shall, but until that day, I am yours to command, apparently.” She laughed again, delighted at getting her turn to shock me. “Blackstone informed me that you would be our fearless leader. I don’t think the others know.”

  Okey dokey... I stood up, felt like melting. I was so done. “Two questions?”

  “Of course.”

  “How old are you, really?”

  “Sixteen. But I have been sixteen for a very long time.”

  “And what did you promise Brian?”

  Her clear diamond eyes were dark. “A small and a great thing. Only justice for his murdered family.”

  Chapter Twenty: Megaton

  Although superheroes are popularly portrayed in the media as crime-fighters and even vigilantes, they are more often engaged in rescue work. For example, the charters used by Crisis Aid and Intervention teams (CAIs) list their mission as 1.) Civilian rescue, 2.) Disaster prevention/mitigation, and, 3.) Superhuman containment and safety. Note that none of these three missions covers non-superhuman law enforcement.

  Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans.

  Not that we don’t mind nailing bad guys when we catch them in the act.

  Hope Corrigan, aka Astra.

  * * *

  Shouldn’t there have been some kind of, I don’t know, welcome ceremony? Maybe the Dance Dance Revolution face-off was it. Reese came in last, and was a good sport about it. Shelly won on points, but Brian was the surprise winner on style — he dropped at least fifty pounds of muscle to get streamlined and took the mat to display locks and pops that could have gone into a hip-hop music video.

  The boy had serious skills.

  I left the common room to Shelly, Jamal, and Reese. Astra — Hope — and Ozma had cut out fairly early and Brian had disappeared not long after his win. Shelly was a blast when she wasn’t pushing, and Jamal was cool (since he lived and trained somewhere else I hadn’t had much chance to get to know him, but just by hanging he seemed to calm Shelly down). Reese was a player, but not nasty about it. I knew guys like him on the team. Had known, past tense. Not my team anymore.

  Maybe that’s why I was done: these guys weren’t my crowd yet and it sucked remembering impromptu road-parties crammed into connected hotel rooms or weekend jams in a teammate’s basement. Or not. I stared at my cellphone for maybe the hundredth time today. I’d thought, maybe, after my big debut today, after half of the Green Man Attack coverage seemed to be about the new kids, after I’d helped save the freaking day...

  The door chimed.

  “Come in.”

  Shelly bounced in. The kid had missed out on fighting the Green Man in person today, but being able to order me around had kept her from being too disappointed. Her artificial eyes lit up at the sight of my cellphone and I winced. She was still flying high on her mom being back — convinced, despite everything I’d told her about my parents, that one phone call, a face-to-face, and all would be well.

  “So, are you going to?”

  Screw it. I owe Astra the dare anyway. My thumb hit “1.”

  Four rings and it picked up. “Mal?” Sydney’s breathless voice. She was old enough to read the caller ID.

  “Hey, Squirt. How you doing?”

  “Great!” I could practically hear her wide gap-toothed grin. “Where are you? When are you coming home? Why are Mom and Dad — ” I heard a faint “Hey!” as someone took the phone away from her.

  “Hello?” It was Mom.

  “Hey Mom, it’s Mal.” Dumb opening, and now I had too many words to start again. She didn’t start at all for way too many breaths.

  “Mal — I’m sorry, your father — I can’t talk to you.” Click.

  That was it. Shelly’s eyes got big — obviously she’d dialed up her hearing — but I kept the phone to my ear in case the dead silence was a transient reception break. If I didn’t hit “End,” it wasn’t over.

  “Did she just — ”
>
  “Yup.” I closed the phone. Shelly’s face cycled through expressions and settled on pissed. Not that I cared. “Out. Now.”

  “But — ”

  “Now!” She went. I put my phone down and found my helmet. Jamming it on, I got out, down the hall to the emergency shaft up to the launch bay, and lit off hard as soon as the bay doors cracked wide enough to let me through without scraping any leather off.

  Clear of the Dome, I banked left and poured on the speed. Sound-baffling helmet or not, all I heard was the roar as I lit out over Lake Michigan and away.

  Grendel

  “Brian?” Nix’s soft call woke me up faster than an alarm clock. I pulled my pillow over my head. “Brian?” Getting a growl back that time, she giggled. Nix doesn’t take me seriously.

  Tossing the pillow aside, I glared at the shadows. “I know there aren’t any loose vents in here, and the locks are personalized. How did you get in?”

  “The mirror in your bathroom, silly.”

  I jerked up so fast my dreads whipped me in the face.

  “Mirror — she can’t... arrrghhhh!” Yeah, like Ozma would play peeping Tom. Nix might — the little doll had a thing for me I couldn’t understand — but the full-body flush the darkness hid was really flashback to the impromptu welcoming party.

  I’d been used to girls liking what they saw, before the day of the stadium attack and my breakthrough. Really liking; my thing for high-impact dance had given me seriously ripped muscles and female appreciation had given me a wink and a smile that said it all and then some. At Hillwood, being a toothy, clawed manimal hadn’t really had a downside; there were students a lot freakier and nobody stronger. I’d been too busy training to be as bad as I could be, and all the girls loved the hair.

  So why do you care if the blonde doesn’t like your teeth? Get a grip.

  “What does Her Highness want tonight?”

  Nix flew over to perch on my knee. “She’s located a treasure and wants us to fetch it.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Wishing Pill.”

  Okay... She had to have a serious need if she was going after that one; in the stories, the Wishing Pills had been handy and harmless — in her telling, not so much. More handy, less harmless. Lots less. What does it tell you that a pill guaranteed to grant you one immediate and present wish still hasn’t been used after one hundred years? And now she wanted the Army of Oz to collect it.

  Ours not to reason why... I flipped Nix laughing into the air with a twitch of my knee and rolled out of bed. Five minutes later I was all ninja’d up except for the hood. Ninja Beast; you’ve got to love it.

  Seeing me ready, Nix landed on my shoulder, opened her bag of Travel Dust, counted “Three, two, one!” and dumped it on us. The tornado grabbed us up, tossed us, spun us, generally had its fun, and dropped us into a dark back-alley where I nearly tossed my cookies. I hate Travel Dust. (Someday I’m going to ask Glinda how that convenient tornado really got Dorothy to Oz, but I think the fix was in.)

  So, where were we? Since it was still night, we couldn’t be halfway round the world. The alley smelled like an alley, old oil and piss, and was crowded by a couple of big trash bins and an ancient car that looked like the only way it would ever move again was on top of a truck. The bin beside us didn’t reek of spoiled food, so not a restaurant, but I smelled something that made me think of Mom’s kitchen before everything had happened. I carefully opened a pocket and the carry case inside, extracting the Seeing Specs. Slipping the gold-rimmed bifocals on, I whispered “Magic.”

  Not a glimmer. The building had no magic protections, always good to know — a couple of items we’d retrieved had already been found by Merlin-types. Those trips had been interesting.

  “It’s inside,” Nix whispered.

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded and darted upward, to come back down hugging the wall. A camera covered the steel alley door, and she dusted it with Thieves’ Powder. I sometimes teased the princess about the names she gave the stuff she made — no more imagination than Gleg — but she was a firm believer in Truth In Advertising. Nix did the same to the lock, and through the specs the camera and lock sparkled. She waited only long enough for me to pad up to the door and crack it open with a single hard snap before darting inside.

  I stayed outside and sweated. No, it wasn’t a warm night.

  The existence of superhumans gave security specialists fits, but technology adapted. Someone can teleport into any locked room? Use a sensor to detect sudden changes in air pressure. A thief can ghost through walls? Build in sensors that react to fast temperature drops. Invisible intruders? Pressure plates in the floor, and of course motion sensors still work for just about anybody. These days, a lot of those options are pretty low cost and standard for businesses with high-value inventory, but they’re all vulnerable to Nix’s direct attack on the security systems. Her soft call came minutes later and I went through the door.

  And just about gagged. A single breath started the sneezing fit, finally killed by holding my nose. My eyes watered.

  The place was a spice shop.

  Carved wooden shelves and cabinets full of tiny drawers lined the walls. Boxes, fancy labeled bags, tins, even little cloth sacks, filled every nook and cranny. The place also sold tea and oils. How the hell were we going to find a little silver pill in all this? Nix turned helplessly in the air. I breathed shallowly and tried to think.

  Ozma’s royal treasures always looked weird enough before she got them and fully re-infused them with the magic of Oz, but they always found themselves in settings that echoed their stories — they couldn’t simply be buried or lost at sea or something. So, why here? A pill wasn’t a spice. The Three Wishing Pills had shown up in Baum’s second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. I was pretty sure that only one had been used then, the others lost, but obviously Ozma had sent an expedition to recover them. Pills came in boxes, bottles —

  “Nix. We’re looking for a spice tin. It’ll be tube-shaped with a screw top. It’s got a false bottom that screws off, too.”

  She looked around and almost wailed. There were hundreds of tins of all shapes and sizes, lots of them tubular, and we didn’t have all night. But Ozma scattered her royal treasures years ago — if the Wishing Pill had been hidden in something intended for sale, it wouldn’t still be here.

  “Look in the high shelves, the stuff meant for decoration.”

  Nix found it, an antique pepper tin and I should have remembered that). Stored high in the back of a shelf, it twisted open to reveal a burnished silver pill wrapped in silk in the hidden compartment. The pill had been etched in almost microscopic detail, and the Seeing Specs magnified the patterns into fancy lettering I couldn’t read.

  Found: one Wishing Pill. One unused Wishing Pill. Nix thought it was pretty. I wondered just how dangerous it was.

  We left a square-cut emerald by the cash register to pay for the lock.

  Astra

  Ever been so tired that thinking feels like trying to write your name in syrup? Not with syrup, in syrup; between the family crisis, the Green Man attack and cleanup, and talking with Ozma, I’d been smashed flat. And I still had no idea if I’d done the right thing. But guess what being a team leader means? More homework. I found the file waiting on my epad when I got back to my rooms, and curled up with it after brushing my teeth and climbing into my sleep shorts and tee.

  Blackstone was still hip deep in Green Man data from the first two attacks, but we got a lot more on the second attack from ready and watching drones (you can bet the DSA staked out all the airports as likely targets) and he’d sent me a preliminary report. Not for analysis — I wasn’t going to spot anything his twisty brain might miss — but because he firmly believed in making sure all potential decision-makers had as much information as he did. Which meant Lei Zi was probably reading in bed, too.

  “Hope?” Shelly queried through Dispatch.

  “Hmm?”

  “Mal’s gone on a ni
ght flight.”

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t think anyone’s set a curfew yet, so why am I concerned?” That had always been one of Mom’s favorite leading questions. You say you took your bike out riding? Why am I concerned? I so wasn’t ready to be Mom.

  “He called his folks first. Want to hear it?”

  I put the pad down, covered my eyes. I really couldn’t do this now.

  “No. Shell — What do I have to do to get you to listen to me on this? And hacking his phone? Forget the trouble you could get into — that’s just wrong!”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Shell?”

  “I was there when he called.”

  My heart sank. “Oh. Well, I wasn’t invited and I don’t want to hear it.” More silence, which was just great. I was right and I felt guilty. Focus on the important thing, Hope. You can talk it out later.

  “It didn’t go well?”

  “... His sister sounds nice, but his mom hung up on him.”

  My stomach joined my heart’s quest for a lower elevation and I leaned forward to rest my head on my knees, so tired I could cry. That stupid, stupid dare. Straightening, I let out a shaky breath. Okay, Hope, you’ve made a mess. Now, you deal.

  “If Dispatch worries, tell them I’m on it. Where is he going?” Skinning out of my bedclothes and pulling on my workout shorts and athletic tee, I wondered if Blackstone needed to know. No. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t be responsible for.

  * * *

  Tonight, Chicago’s famous skyline met the sky to disappear into a blanket of cloud that put a dropped ceiling on the world. The GPS in Mal’s helmet put him out over Lake Michigan and heading north along the eastern shore. I flew to intercept, following a red targeting icon painted on my contacts, vanishing dots below the glowing pointer indicating closing distance.

  There. Flying low over the lake, between clouds and water, Mal lit the night with his flaring rocket-tail as I curved in behind him and moved up to slide into his peripheral vision. I knew when he saw me; he started and corkscrewed out of control — nearly smacking into Lake Michigan before he straightened out.