Heroine Addiction

Heroine Addiction

by Jennifer Matarese

Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Matarese

Cover:  Katie Wertz

ISBN:  978-1-257-80650-8

License Notes

             
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person.  If you're reading this and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To my parents, who never told me I wasn't allowed to read something.

1.

“Vera, there's a supervillain in booth five.”

Dixie's sweet soft drawl barely rises over the everyday chatter from the dining room, the soothingly familiar clash and jingle of normal kitchen noises. But years of practice make it effortless for me to catch her words and prevent me from dropping the coffee pot in my hand in startled response.

The lunch rush poured through the front doors of Tea and Strumpets thirty minutes ago, a discordant blur which flowed into every leather-upholstered booth and whisper-soft suede couch in my snug little cafe. Every day between eleven and two the cafe explodes with life, every booth full and every waitress on her toes. As the owner, I keep myself busy making sure my customers are content, arranging plates for the cook or ringing people up at the front register. Our menu bulges with steaming hot drinks made on request, delicious pastries and cakes we regularly order from private bakers, bagels and breakfast sandwiches for the morning customers and soup and paninis for anyone popping in for lunch. Every so often I arrange game nights or musical acts who grace us with slow jazz or cheery folk music. We know full well by now how to set a good mood.

I barely sit down from the time the front door opens to the moment I lock it at the end of the night, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

That said, the problem with our usual flurry of activity is that I wouldn't notice a master criminal striding into the place and sitting directly on my lap, much less sneaking himself away in the booth all the way in the back and perusing the menu with silent patience.

“Who?” I blurt out, far too loud, putting the coffeepot down on the nearest countertop before I do something stupid like spill the entire thing all over my vintage red slingback pumps.

It's a stupid question. We both know it. Dixie casts me a condescending look before moving closer, lowering her voice even more as though the entire place were peopled with professional eavesdroppers. “Look, don't freak out, but I think it's Morris.”

“You think?”

“It's
Morris
,” she says, thoroughly exasperated. Not that I blame her. Morris never wears the same face twice, so it makes recognizing him difficult even with his rather selective wardrobe. And while other supervillains pop up every once in a while to raise a ruckus, most don't settle in for tea and empanadas first. They are, however, the only new faces we ever see in the cafe. It's a small town, so someone you don't recognize in Tea and Strumpets is more than likely to kidnap first and whip up some ransom demands later.

I'm already shaking my head as I lower my gaze, gathering everything I need for booth twelve's order of three cappuccinos and juicy slices of fresh blueberry pie. My fingers just might be trembling. “I can't deal with Morris right now,” I say.

“Well, you're going to have to.” Dixie crosses her willowy arms, settling into a well-practiced sulk she really doesn't have the free time to indulge in. Dixie Kaufman grew up elegant and graceful, a failed dancer due more to repeated ankle injuries than lack of talent. But while well-toned muscles still weave in the usual patterns beneath her fair freckled skin, her cheeks carried baby fat that should have burned off a decade ago. She can still manage a decent childish pout with the best of them with those chipmunk cheeks, even nearing thirty the way she is. “I'm not serving the guy again. Not after the last time. I don't care how well he tips, he tries to put his hand on my ass again and I'll put my elbow into his damn nose.”

I wish I could just tell her to buck up and take the guy's order, but I've just never been that sort of boss. When I opened Tea and Strumpets five years ago, the only genuine coffeehouse in the entire county, I made a promise to the staff that I would not let my old life intrude on my new life in any way, shape or form. I succeeded for a little while, at least until Morris strode in the front door one day, slapped his leather gloves onto his table and demanded a pot of Earl Grey or else he'd blow the place sky high with his death ray. I contemplated kicking him out, but even after all these years of knowing him far better than I'd like to admit, I couldn't entirely be sure if that death ray business was an actual threat.

I stood down and made his damn tea. He's just lucky I'm too classy to have freshened the pot up with a minty mouthful of spit.

The new deal with Dixie and the rest of the staff is that my old life can intrude on the cafe as much as it likes. I'll just have to be the one to serve it.

I still don't know why he keeps coming back. Driving two hours out of the city and intimidating my staff on a regular basis can't possibly be as amusing as he makes it out to be. And while Benny's cooking is delicious, it's not
that
good.

The jaunty music issuing from the speaker system switches from Dave Edmunds to the Reverend Horton Heat, the same rockabilly playlist I always play. I never really got a chance to completely indulge in my love of rockabilly until I moved to town and opened Tea and Strumpets. My mother's strict rules about public appearances only allowed for so much leeway and meant my only vintage moments were the occasional theme nights at our family's favorite dance club. Now that I'm all by myself in this big bad world, I've become a gold medalist at dodging around laughing teenagers spilling out of overcrowded booths and small children playing in the aisles, a mean feat considering I'm typically wearing something like a skintight red-checked halter dress and patent-leather high heels when I do it. It's a look that sits far better on my full rounded figure than Park Avenue chic ever did, and I don't even have to starve away my curves to fit into them.

I deliver booth twelve their order, commend their choice of the blueberry pie with a plastered-on smile, and take a steadying breath before turning towards the back of the cafe. Morris isn't hard to miss even while wearing someone else's face. It's frankly a bit of a miracle that nobody else has recognized his signature eyesore of a suit and called the cops just yet. Not that Morris is wanted by the police anymore, of course, but most people don't really know that. His capture, rehabilitation, and release back into society had been quick, quiet, and painless. The wedding of Apocalypto and Lady Mab grabbed more headlines at the time, if I recall correctly.

Morris waits patiently in the back booth, his hands folded on the table on top of his gloves, his smile a rascally twist of his thin lips. He's taken his hat off, an immaculate black felt bowler I don't think I've ever seen him without, and arranged it on the opposite side of the table like he's setting a place for some tidy hat-eating guest he's expecting. His suit, as always, is flawlessly tailored and a rich shade of maroon you normally see on quirky people attending award shows. I always picture his closet containing twenty or thirty suits exactly like it, pressed to perfection with loving anal-retentive care.

The usual accoutrements that adorn every other booth – the sugar bowl, the salt and pepper shakers, the handmade menu covered in plastic – sit innocent and untouched not far from his right elbow. I suppose I should just be grateful he hasn't gotten bored enough to turn the ketchup bottle into a miniature nuclear device while he waited. He's done it before, and those things are a bitch to dispose of when you don't have a radioactive hamper on hand.  

As soon as he spots me approaching, Morris's smirk stretches wide. His bony fingers, spread out on the table, drum in anticipation like trilled piano keys. “Why, you look lovely today, my dear. Gained a bit of weight, have you?”

His compliment – and it is a compliment coming from Morris, regardless of what it might sound like coming from anyone else – tastes like cold lemon juice splashed into my mouth. The face I pull in response is neither attractive nor charitable, made only worse when Morris delivers a practiced performance of elevator eyes to the determined cling of my dress. The man is impossible. “Not an ounce, Morris,” I somehow manage to say with a certain amount of sweetness.

“Could have fooled me.”

“Stop being a slime and order something.”

“Or you'll what? Force me to vacate the premises?”

“I could.”

He simply flashes me a glimpse of startlingly white teeth, his lips pale like skinned fish bellies.

Sighing, I take a step closer to the table to let another customer walk past on her way to the bathroom. Morris, ever the optimist, takes it as a more welcoming sign than it is. “Vera, if you want to join me, you are more than welcome –”

“I'll pass,” I say.

“Actually, it wasn't a request,” he adds, and puts a handgun on the table.

It's reflex to reach out, grab onto his bowler, and plop it down over the gun before anybody sees. He greets my resulting scowl with an even broader smirk than usual. Morris enjoys a good taunt, particularly when it's aimed at me. Anything that makes me uncomfortably aware of the world I left behind fills Morris with a sense of childish glee he can barely contain. At least he hadn't started in with that exasperating wheezy giggle of his.

“What do you think you're doing?” I whisper harshly, glancing around in paranoia. Nobody appears to be listening to us, the gossipy legal assistants from the office next door not even bothering to give us a second glance. Of course, just because they don't know their lives are in danger doesn't make me feel any better.

“Oh, do sit down already,” Morris says, almost pulling a petulant pout at my reaction. “I don't plan on using it, and I'm a bit offended you'd believe I would even stoop to using a child's toy like that in here. At the very least, I'd never get my churros, would I?”

I make another face at that, wondering how he can even think about freshly-baked pastries and the possibility of his obtaining any that haven't been spit on after this. But I still find myself sitting down. Playing along with Morris's questionable social skills usually works out better for everyone in the long run. I'm certainly not afraid of Morris doing anything untoward with the handgun peeking out from under his hat, but I've got a cafe full of customers who took in and quickly dismissed the casually bland mask Morris slipped on before coming here today, thankfully too preoccupied with their own petty problems to register the suit. Morris's plastic surgery machine – a compact visual generator which shifts your skin so you can pass as someone else –  still comes in handy for keeping the peace in public settings, if the riot that resulted when someone supposedly spotted a Morris lookalike in Harrods a year ago is any indication.

Noting the look on my face, Morris almost visibly sags with disappointment, looking for a brief moment like a wrinkled empty suit dangling limply from a wire hanger. “Oh, for heaven's sake, Vera,” he mutters, “when I referred to the damnable thing as a child's toy, I was serious. It's a water pistol I picked up on the cheap at a dollar store. And besides, I'm surprised you don't think I have higher standards by now. You've certainly known me long –”

“All right,” I snap. I'm not going to fall for his wounded expression or the needy pull in his voice. Better men and women than me have crumbled like wet cookies under the weight of Morris's almost magical charm on far too many occasions to count. There's a reason he's taken over three countries and two different planets without lifting a finger or leaving behind a single casualty.

“Why don't we skip all of the fun and you can tell me what you want to talk to me about?” I ask, pulling my crossed legs as close to myself under the table as I can manage. “And for the record, my breasts, my legs, or any of my other body parts are not up for discussion.”

Morris allows his smirk to soften, to shape itself into something a bit weaker and more sympathetic, but it only lasts a moment. The public face of the Quiz Master is a wild-eyed maniac in an expertly welded iron helmet cackling maniacally atop a steaming pile of rubble, but that damning image usually circulates among people who've never actually met the man. Morris isn't nearly that blatant. He's a three-card Monte dealer tricking you into giving him five bucks, except those three cards are a handful of deft strategic words and that wrinkled five-dollar bill is your car or your PIN number or a tiny container of plutonium.

There's a reason the planet of Ferlo fell in under an hour without a single life lost. Morris can be awfully persuasive when he wants to be.

He arranges his bowler more securely over the gun, clears his throat with a soft grunt, and gifts me with a steady gaze that jolts some of the irritation out of me.

“Your father,” Morris declares, “didn't come home last night.”

For a moment, I'm not sure I heard Morris correctly. “My father ...”

“... is missing. At least I think he is. Unless he's left me, of course.”

Taking a deep breath, I rest my elbows on the table and stare in an unsettled daze at the sugar bowl. It unsurprisingly has nothing to contribute to the conversation. And why would it? I imagine even an inanimate piece of crockery could be a bit shocked to overhear the most closely guarded bit of gossip in the superhero world.

My name is Vera Noble. Perhaps you've heard of my father, Everett Noble, and when I say 'perhaps,' I am, of course, using massive amounts of sarcasm. My father has saved countless numbers of people over the years, using his superhuman mental abilities to rescue the injured, heal the sick, defeat the bad guys, and be home in time for dinner. You've probably seen him … well, pretty much everywhere. He's been on Wheaties boxes, shilled fruits and vegetables to kids as a health-conscious cartoon version of himself on TV commercials, and protected us all from four giant asteroids, numerous floods, dozens of crazed costumed lunatics, and seven alien invasions, all while sporting tights and a cape.