“Well, I really shouldn’t. I’m on a no-sugar diet...” Bella’s voice trailed off as she stared at the luscious cheesecake.
No-sugar diet? No wonder the poor thing was so uptight. No sugar, no fun, in my book.
“Well, you’re going to have a piece tonight,” I said, cutting her a slice. “I think we’ve all earned it. I certainly have.”
Bella took the cheesecake from me and poured herself a glass of milk. I thought she’d just pick at the yummy cake, but Bella downed it and came back for seconds. She was a quick eater, just like me. Maybe we’d get along better than I thought.
“I still can’t quite believe you’re a member of the Fearless Five. And that I’m sitting here with you in the supersecret Fearless Five headquarters.” Bella took another big bite of her cheesecake. “It’s all a bit surreal.”
“Tell me about it. I can’t believe you come from a family of generational superheroes. I also can’t believe your brother is actually Johnny Angel, and that I’ve been dating him.” I eyed Bella. “Do you moonlight as somebody too?”
“Of course not. Johnny Angel is the only one in our family.” She sounded offended, as though being a superhero was some vile occupation.
“Do you have an exoskeleton like Johnny does? Or some other sort of power?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know if you’d call it a power, exactly. It’s a little strange.”
“Oh really? Strange how? Strange like you can manipulate the weather with your bare hands? Strange like you can create unbreakable force fields around yourself? Strange like you can create earthquakes just by thinking about them?”
I stared at the fashion designer. Perhaps if Bella had some hidden superpower, she could suit up and go out into the field with me. I could use all the help I could get when I went after Siren and Intelligal. My eyes flicked over her body. She was about Carmen’s size, although quite a bit curvier. Surely, I could find her some sort of costume to wear—
Bella laughed. “Not that strange. I’m just lucky.”
So much for that thought. “Lucky? That’s not really a power, is it?”
Bella shrugged. “Not really. Not like your power.”
“So how does it even work?”
“I just think about things, and stuff...happens. Especially when I’m stressed out.”
I thought back. “Is that why the coffee table cracked when I was at your house?”
Bella nodded. “That’s one of the problems with it. You can have good luck...”
“Or bad luck,” I finished. “Show me. Show me how it works. Or doesn’t work.”
“I can’t control it all the time, but I’ll try.”
Bella stared at me. I looked back at her. Her eyes didn’t glow. Her hair didn’t snap and crackle. Sparks didn’t fly from her fingertips. She didn’t seem to be doing anything at all other than eyeing me. Some power.
But I kept that thought to myself and raised my fork to take another bite of cheesecake. To my surprise, my hand wobbled, and the cheesecake fell onto the table. What a waste. It was a good thing I still had plenty left. I stabbed another bite. Again, the cheesecake slid off my fork and splattered onto the table. I frowned at the chocolate stains. I wasn’t that clumsy, especially when it came to food.
I eyed Bella with suspicion. “Did you make me do that?”
She smiled and cut another piece of cheesecake off with her fork. “What do you think?”
Bella raised the fork to her lips. She was just getting ready to pop it into her mouth when the dessert slipped off the silver tines and joined the rest of mine on the table.
She stared at the chocolatey mess and let out a long sigh. “Unfortunately, it always seems to boomerang around back to me—in a bad way.”
Maybe there was something to this luck thing. Too bad Bella didn’t know how to control her power. Or at least make Siren and Intelligal have a string of bad, debilitating luck.
We sat there in silence. After I finished off the cheesecake, I made myself a dozen cucumber-and-tomato sandwiches, which I ate with three bags of chips, five liters of soda, a box of oatmeal-raisin cookies, another box of crackers, a pound of grapes, and a wheel of Gouda cheese.
Bella fixed her amber eyes on me. “So what are your intentions regarding my brother?”
I almost choked on my sandwich. “Excuse me?”
“What are your intentions regarding Johnny? Do you care about him? Or is he just a fling to you? Some random guy you can have great sex with?”
I wiped the mayonnaise off my mouth, stalling for time. I’d fallen in love with Johnny Bulluci, but I wasn’t sure quite how I felt about it. Much less what I should say to his sister about him.
“I ask because Johnny really likes you. I even think he’s starting to fall in love with you,” Bella said in a soft voice.
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t speak.
“Do you care about him, Fiona? Because if you don’t, you should walk away from him when this is over. I know Johnny appears as if he’s cheerful and carefree and that nothing can hurt him, literally, but you could. He told us about your fiancé. How he was murdered. How much you loved him. How you still wear his engagement ring. If you’re not over your fiancé yet, you need to tell Johnny now, before he gets any more involved with you.” Bella’s eyes bored into mine. “I won’t let my brother get hurt, especially not by a superhero. Do you understand me?”
For once, I chose my words carefully. “I care about your brother a great deal. I’m not leading him on. That would never be my intention. As for Travis, I’ll always love him. I’ll always miss him. But he wouldn’t want me to live my life in the past. He wasn’t that sort of man. As for me and Johnny, I’m just trying to take it one day at a time. Things are a little...complicated between us right now, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Some of the bright, angry glow drained out of Bella’s golden eyes. My words seemed to satisfy her. At least she hadn’t cracked the table this time. I’d hate to lose the rest of my food.
“I noticed,” Bella said. “Things are always complicated when it comes to my family.”
The odd tone in her voice struck me. “What do you mean?”
Bella sighed again. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got nothing but time until we find the ubervillains.”
Bella stared at the refrigerator, but the vacant look in her eyes told me that she wasn’t really seeing it. “I don’t know much about your childhood being the daughter of a superhero, but I grew up in a home where it was all Angel, all the time. If we weren’t talking about Angel or motorcycles or ubervillains, my mother and brother and I were patching up my father and grandfather when they’d come home late at night. Can you imagine being a kid and going through that?”
I flashed back to my high school years, when I’d go out and prowl the streets with my father, fighting crime. They were some of my fondest memories. “Oh, I can imagine.”
“When I was a kid, I thought it was so fascinating that my family were the ones behind Johnny Angel. I used to ride on the motorcycle with my father and dream of the day when I’d get to be Johnny Angel.” Bella’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Of course, I didn’t realize then that Angel was more of a man’s name. And a man’s tradition.”
“And when you grew up?” I asked, sensing this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
“I realized how silly it was. Dressing up in a costume, riding around town on a motorcycle, raising hell with other bikers. And I remembered the strain on my mother. How she’d sit up late at night worrying whether my father was going to come home or not. It’s the same thing I did with my father before he died. And it’s the same thing I do now with Johnny every night when he’s gone.” Bella rubbed her head. “I don’t want to have anything to do with superheroes and ubervillains and weekly battles anymore. I’m so tired of it all. Johnny Angel, the worrying, the constant fear. Johnny was too, until our father died.”
I squeezed her hand. “It’s not disrespec
tful, and it’s not wrong of you to want to have a superfree life. Some people can’t handle the lifestyle. Like you, I grew up around it. But to me, my powers have always been a part of who I am. I couldn’t imagine not being a superhero, not trying to help people, but I can understand how you feel.”
I took a deep breath. “When Travis was alive, he’d go out on missions by himself. I’d do the same thing you did—sit up and worry. I wore out more carpets pacing back and forth than you can imagine.”
Bella smiled. “You do seem like a bit of a pacer.”
“You have no idea.”
“What are you going to do if Johnny wants to quit being Angel? Or if he doesn’t?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Let’s worry about rescuing him first and dealing with Siren and Intelligal. Then, we’ll talk about the complicated, relationship stuff.”
*
An hour and another cheesecake later, Bella and I went back to the library to check on Lulu and Bobby. The elderly Bulluci sat in front of one of the computer monitors, flipping through various television channels. He looked extremely bored, until he stumbled across a soccer game. That perked him up a bit.
Lulu sat nearby, type-type-typing away on her computer like usual. Sometimes, I wondered if she and Henry did anything but stare at their monitors when they went out on dates. The two of them were never far from an electronic device of some kind or another.
“Anything yet?” I asked.
Lulu shook her head. “I’m still trying to narrow down the list of places Siren and Intelligal might go to turn on their boom box. It has to be somewhere fairly high up so they can hook into a radio or television signal. I’ve been focusing on SNN and the other local television stations downtown, but I don’t know how the ubervillains would get past their security. Most of it is state-of-the-art.”
I snorted. “Get past security? Please. Intelligal can just use those cursed missiles of hers to blast their way in.”
Lulu shook her head. “I don’t think so. Remember in the fish-stick factory, Siren said the radio is very finely calibrated. That’s the reason they didn’t explode you right then and there. Siren didn’t want to risk the shockwave disrupting the VAMP machine.”
“So they’ll have to do it real quiet-like. Sneak in and set everything up before Siren goes live.”
“Bingo,” Lulu said.
“Well, let’s get cracking,” I said.
The four of us started naming the tallest buildings in Bigtime. Bobby not-so-humbly pointed out that Bulluci Industries was housed in one of the highest skyscrapers in the city.
“What about the observatory?” Bella asked. “Isn’t it officially the highest point in the city?”
I flashed back to the benefit and the scientific models I’d seen. More than a few of them remarked on the observatory’s height. “It sure is. Wouldn’t that be the logical spot for the ubervillains to turn the volume up on their radio? Wouldn’t they get the strongest, clearest signal from there?”
“They would. Let me check on something.” Lulu pounded away. After a couple of minutes, she stopped. “That’s funny.”
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“I hacked into the observatory’s database so I could see what programs were scheduled and how many people might be on the scene in case Siren and Intelligal tried to sneak in with the regular folks. Guess who’s doing a live morning show there for SNN in a couple of hours?”
“Who?” Bobby asked.
“Erica Songe,” Lulu replied. “And the weird thing is, she’s going when there are no school groups scheduled. No tours, no benefits, no press conferences, nothing.”
“Erica Songe? What would that little twit be doing at the observatory—”
An odd thought struck me. Erica Songe. I thought back to my run-ins with the news reporter. Her hissy fit at the shop a couple months ago. Her relentless flirtation with Johnny. Her pushiness at the observatory benefit. All the pieces slowly formed a picture. For a moment, I felt just like Carmen.
“You know, Erica Songe is a trashy little thing, just like Siren is.” I snapped my fingers together, remembering something else. “And she has a sister. Irene something. A total geek, just like you.”
Lulu stared at me. “You don’t think...”
I nodded. “I do think. And so do you.”
“Let me pull up some pictures of them off the Internet.” Lulu’s fingers smacked against her keyboard.
Bella looked back and forth between the two of us. “What are the two of you talking about?”
“We’re talking about Siren actually being Erica Songe, a news reporter for SNN,” I replied.
Bella, Bobby, and I hunched over Lulu’s shoulder as she pulled up photos of the two women. I studied the pictures. Same black hair. Same blue eyes. Same collagen-injected lips. Same supersized boobs. There was no mistake about it. Erica Songe was Siren.
“Hold on a minute, let’s see if I can get the sister too.” Lulu hit more buttons on her computer.
A photo of Irene popped up on the monitor. Lulu compared it to one of Intelligal. Same black glasses. Same sour expression. Same disdain for Siren and everyone else. I wanted to laugh. Carmen was right. Spandex costumes and bright masks really were very thin disguises. We all might as well go around with our real names tattooed on our foreheads.
“That’s her! She’s the one who killed my son!” Bobby pounded his fist into his hand and let out a long string of curses. His face turned red, then purple with rage and fury.
Bella put her arm around her grandfather’s shoulder, trying to comfort and calm him down before he had a heart attack. I turned to Lulu.
“It’s them. We agree that it is. Now, let’s figure out how we’re going to stop them,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“The first thing we have to do is figure out how to resist Siren’s voice, especially now that she’s going to be plugged into that TRAMP machine,” I said. “I can’t very well smash it to bits and throttle her if I’m under her spell.”
“It’s actually called a VAMP machine,” Lulu corrected.
I waved my hand. “TRAMP, VAMP, whatever. They both describe her.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Lulu said. “Henry and the chief were working on some earplugs to block Siren’s voice. They’re not perfected yet, but they might work well enough for us, since we’ll be in the van.”
“In the van? I don’t want to stay in the van,” Bobby protested. “I want to go inside and save my grandson with you.”
“You’ll need all the help you can get, Fiona,” Bella added. “Why don’t you let us come with you?”
“Because it’s too dangerous. I can’t take a chance on one of you getting hurt. I can handle Siren and Intelligal by myself.”
Probably.
“But you can’t handle Angel, Hermit, and Mr. Sage too,” Bella pointed out. “You’re going to need some backup.”
I paced back and forth. “I need Carmen and Sam, or rather Karma Girl and Striker. Where are they now, Lulu?”
“Carmen called me yesterday before all of this went down. They’d just flown into Rome on Sam’s private jet. There’s no way they can get back here in time.” Lulu looked at the Bullucis. “I think they’re right, Fiona. You’re going to have to take us with you, whether you like it or not.”
I stared at the three of them, eyes shining, faces tight with hope. They were all so ready, willing, and eager to wade into battle and probably get themselves electrocuted or worse. Sending them up against Siren and Intelligal would be like throwing tender steaks to wolves—or to me. The ubervillains would gobble them down without a second thought. I saved innocents. That was my calling, my duty. I didn’t put them in danger.
But I didn’t have a choice. Not if I had any hope of rescuing the others. Bella was right. I couldn’t fight Siren and Intelligal and save the others at the same time. Even Swifte would have been hard-pressed to do it, no matter how speedy he was.
So, I th
ought about my three new teammates and how to minimize the danger to them. There wouldn’t be any radioactive goo around, so they wouldn’t become horribly mutated by going with me. At least, I didn’t think they would. You could never tell what sort of effect something like that stupid VAMP machine might have on regular folks. Carmen was proof of that.
Besides, Bella had a power that might come in handy. If luck was really a power, instead of just some weird, wild mojo, and if she could get it to work in our favor.
No radioactive goo and a little luck. Maybe things wouldn’t go too badly. I snorted. Yeah, right.
“Fine, you can come with me, but you have to stay out of the way. Agreed?”
The three of them nodded their heads.
“I mean it,” I snapped. “I’m not bringing you along so you can do something stupid, like die a noble, bloody death in order to save the others and the city. That’s my job. You’ll do what I say, when I say it. Or else I’ll lock you in the van and take the ubervillains on by myself. Got it?”
They nodded again, a bit more reluctantly this time. Bobby, in particular, shot me a sour look.
I resumed my pacing. “Even with you guys tagging along, I’m still going to need some extra help. Siren I can handle no problem. It’s Intelligal’s chair and her stupid missiles that always have me ducking for cover. I need to get her out of that chair, or at least neutralize it, if we have any hope of freeing the others and destroying that VAMP thing.”
“You know who you should talk to if you want more firepower,” Lulu said.
“Who?”
“Why, Jasper, of course.”
Jasper was one of Lulu’s more notorious friends and Bigtime’s underground bomb expert. If you needed something that went boom in a big way, you went to Jasper. What he did wasn’t exactly legal, of course. The chief had thought about busting him many times, but since Jasper had helped Carmen rescue us last year, he’d given the demolitions expert a free walk. For now.