More frighteningly, though, he may not just be lying somewhere injured, unable to contact the rest of us. Morris, I don't doubt, is thinking the exact same thing I am. Supervillains have all sorts of clever tricks up their sleeves. There are villains who can steal your powers with a single touch, who can clone you with a wave of their hands, who can overcome even the strongest heroes to control their very minds.
A few terrified and overreacting humans doesn't look so bad when compared to some power-hungry psychopath with his very own Everett Noble to control.
I don't blame Morris one bit for being worried about Dad's sudden absence. Personal feelings aside, Morris knows damn well what someone with a grudge, a sudden lack of authority, and a large mind-control device could do.
If Morris can't get in touch with Graham or Mom to warn them, then I suppose someone else they can actually tolerate who knows the big family secret will have to do it. I'm not on close enough terms with anyone else they can tolerate who knows about Dad and Morris so, for lack of other options, that leaves yours truly.
Taking a cleansing breath to still my quaking nerves, I flip open the phone and dial a number I can remember off the top of my head, even without having contacted the agency in years now. I calm myself as the phone rings, waiting for it to connect and attempting not to have a minor panic attack.
A pleasant voice finally greets me at the other end of the phone, and I say the words I wasn't ever planning on repeating for the rest of my days.
“Yes,” I say when the operator asks me my business, “I'd like to reopen my superhero registration.”
2.
An hour later, I begin to doubt my decision to investigate my father's disappearance.
“No, of course I don't have the coupon for a free month of rescuer's insurance from the last newsletter,” I sigh in exasperation, sifting through the chaotic mountain of forms and contracts I'd long ago stuffed into an accordion file in the back of my bedroom closet. Spreading it out on the dining room table had not been the best idea, I realize, now that I can see it in all of its unorganized glory. “I haven't received the official newsletter in – what? Oh, no, thank you, I don't need my subscription renewed –”
The cheerful representative on the other end of the phone continues along with the precise script crammed with suggestive selling points she undoubtedly has no choice but to repeat to me, the only fact currently restraining my growing frustration. I do work in customer service, after all. I know how these things work. Besides, I do have to give her some credit for hurrying along with this whole mess as quickly as she can possibly manage. All she had to hear was the name Vera Noble before she began tripping over her words to reactivate my dormant registration with the Superhero Licensing Bureau.
Being a superhero is not nearly the magical fairy tale of adoring public worship the average person imagines it entails. Between the licensing and the numerous tax forms and the complicated insurance plans meant to protect heroes and heroines alike from being sued by angry victims, superhero work is ninety-five percent paperwork and five percent actually saving people, an unappealing ratio usually not revealed until your first semester at Lord and Cape. The mind-numbing deskwork alone is usually enough to drive most superpowered individuals to simply register their powers with their doctors for health reasons and then head off to some pedestrian human college to study something less dangerous instead. Like, say, landmine tester or sword swallower.
Only the best and brightest push and struggle their way into earning that spandex costume.
Well, them, and anybody for whom superheroism is the obligatory family business
, I think wryly.
I plop down on one of the dining room chairs and huff out an aggravated lungful of air that barely disturbs my neatly styled bangs. I'll freely admit I copied Bettie Page's hairstyle, the precise cut made all the easier to maintain thanks to my naturally wavy brown-black locks. Graham once declared that when done up in my vintage finest I look like a pin-up girl come to life, descending down from the dented nose cone of some WWII bomber and sauntering through the world with my head held high. It was the nicest compliment he ever paid me, before he went back to being a sexist manwhore and ignoring everything I did.
“Yes, I – well, I was hoping this would only be temporary – no, I don't have an updated version of my costume I'd like to register –“
I indulge in another five minutes of answering the representative's questions – have I saved anyone in the past five years, would I like to take a course on new rappelling techniques, do I need the contact number for an affordable local costume designer – before the ringing of my doorbell interrupts her spiel. I clench my fist in celebration of my good fortune, mouthing a silent, “
Yes!
”, in triumph, and say sweetly, “Oh, I'm sorry, miss, but it sounds like there's someone at my front door. Are we done for today? If not, I'm sure my mother would be happy to fill in the rest of my information.”
“Wow, seriously?” she blurts out, and laughter bubbles up in my chest. Mom works part-time at the SLB Center in the city, teaching refresher courses for heroes and heroines who've temporarily given up the workplace for maternity leaves, radioactive viral infections, supervillain attacks, alien possessions, and the like. She doesn't mingle with the rest of the employees, though, at least as far as I know. She certainly didn't before I left the city, and I doubt she's somehow become more gregarious since then. Offering some chirping phone jockey an excuse to spend a few moments in glowing worship of Ivy freaking Noble is bound to get my paperwork pushed through and my registration reopened within fifteen minutes. Hell's bells, even offering her the opportunity to approach my mom and ask might soften the inevitable rebuff and get the paperwork sneaked through anyway.
An appalling number of people tend to handwave Mom's more cruel moments. It's rather embarrassing how much I've come to depend on her bad behavior, quite frankly.
“Sure, I'm positive she won't mind,” I say, forcing my words to fluff with concentrated cheerfulness. “After all, it is her daughter we're talking about, right?”
“Oh, of course,” she says, a little breathlessly.
Maybe it's a bit mean not to warn her that Mom might snatch my registration files from her trembling hands and snarl at her to scurry away, if she even bothers to wonder why I would be reopening my registration in the first place, but the length of the phone call may have finally caught up to me.
The doorbell rings again, insistent.
“Coming!” I call out, and rush my goodbyes to the operator, requesting a text message when my registration officially reactivates and hanging up before she can start in on another canned sales pitch asking me if I'd like to sign up to receive the SLB newsletter in text form on my phone. It saves me from having to inform her that I'd rather have the Plague fly directly to my apartment once a month and infect me with whichever disease he's been infecting the criminals and ne'er-do-wells he captures with than have a jolly newsletter update with lousy but cheery clip-art emailed to me once a month. You'd think the SLB would have better things to spend its budget on than newsletters. Sensitivity training certainly comes to mind, if Mom's any indication.
I hit the button to hang up and rise to my feet, smoothing the wrinkled front of my dress before hurrying down the stairs to the front door. “I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm –“
I fling the door open and freeze as soon as I see who's there.
Hazel waits with fraying patience on the “Drinks Well With Others” welcome mat she gave me last Christmas as a gag gift, appearing about as dismayed to be here as I am to see her.
“Hey, Vera,” she says, looking anywhere but at me.
The world crumbles a little at the edges, slowing to a dead halt around me. “Hazel. Uh, hi.”
She reaches up to scratch at the bleached-blond pixie-short scruff of her hair, the antsy motion causing the hem of her gray tank top to ride up over the waistline of her jeans, revealing a strip of toned and tanned belly.
I will not look, I will not look
, I command my brain, reminding myself that Hazel is my
ex
-girlfriend, damn it, and she entered into that illustrious status for good reason.
“Do you mind if I, uh –“ She gestures into the depths of my apartment, taking an unconscious step forward. She jerks back when she realizes what she's doing. “I forgot one of my sketchbooks here.”
“You did?”
“I think so. It's not at my grandma's place and it's got a sketch for one of my clients I did a few months ago, so.” She shrugs then, abandoning the sentence and letting me fill in the rest. I kicked her out, of course, made her vacate the premises in far too much of a hurry. Perhaps if I hadn't overreacted she wouldn't still have to come over occasionally, recovering the forgotten possessions she left in her wake.
It's really something I could fix with a couple of raspberry martinis, an empty cardboard box, and a little nerve. I just never seem to be able to find the time for it, or at least that's what I tell myself.
I finally notice her staring at me, her head in a curious tilt. She wasn't smiling before but she threatens to now, taking in my pristine hair and tailored dress, my vintage silk stockings with the seams up the back. It always amuses her that I take it to these lengths, the commitment I work towards when it comes to the quality of my retro wardrobe. Hey, anyone can throw thousands of dollars at Marc Jacobs or Oscar de la Renta. It takes real effort to hold onto a particular era in fashion and not let go no matter what, even if it means searching the internet for the few reliable plus-sized designers or learning how to sew my own damn clothes. At least the personal style I prescribe to still has something vaguely resembling class.
She points into the apartment again. “Can I?”
“Oh. Right, of course.” I give my head a slight shake to knock the bugs out of it. “It should be under the bed, I suppose.”
She walks past me without a word, not pausing as she heads upstairs to the bedroom that we had, up until four months ago, shared for a year and a half. I hadn't come to this town with the intention of dating anyone, whichever gender they might be. I tucked my bisexuality into the junk drawer in my kitchen, slipped into a saucy dress and a pair of burlesque sandals, and devoted myself to turning Tea and Strumpets into the answer to a prayer this sleepy little burg hadn't even known it desired.
Then Hazel Whiting moved to town to take care of her ailing grandmother, sweeping into the abandoned video store with her tattoo gun in hand and eying me with open fascination. I kicked everything into high gear, unable to stop myself from swinging my hips and sauntering past on a regular basis. It hadn't taken long to lure her out and test the waters, so to speak. The waters, it turned out, were warm and welcoming and wild.
And then they turned rough, toyed with me and tossed me around, and I decided I'd endured enough.
Which leads us to today, and my ex-girlfriend in my bedroom, and the constant reminder trilling in my mind that I am absolutely not supposed to be here right now.
I bite my bottom lip, stained with fire-engine red lipstick, and ponder calling in after Hazel to ask her if she can hurry up a bit. But hearing her rummage underneath my bed warns me it's not worth wasting the breath. She'll leave in her own time, and I'll just have to make the best of things and prepare to get out of here myself. A moment later, my hands wrist-deep in the pile of paperwork as I perform the exercise in futility of organizing my damn superhero-related documents, my phone vibrates its way across the dining room table, alerting me to a new text message.
Your registration is now complete. Welcome back to public service, Miss Noble!
I make a sour face. If they want to believe I'm reentering the family business on anything other than an extremely short-term basis, then so be it. I'll put my SLB account back into hibernation mode after I find my dad, and that'll be the end of it.
“Oh, my God, have you banged your head off something?”
I whirl towards Hazel's disbelieving voice, my stomach sinking at the stunned expression on her face. She points an accusatory finger at the SLB forms scattered in a haphazard mess on my table, her stormy gaze sparking with anger. She knows what she's seeing, of course. She straightened up the apartment far more often than I ever did while she lived here, her anal-retentive neatness somehow trumping even Morris. It only took her a week to find the inexpensive accordion file tucked away behind my shoe tree, bulging with five-year-old medical records and insurance claims. At the time, I'd never been particularly forthcoming when it came to my family or my past, much to her intense dislike. The argument nearly took down the building.
“Hazel, look –“
“You have, right? You tripped on those stupid heels of yours and slammed your head off the toilet and now you're off to do something stupid, aren't you?”
I sigh, crossing my arms. “It's not like that.”
“Oh, really?” She stalks toward the table, aiming to snatch up a fistful of paperwork and question why I've removed it from its hiding place. I stop her before she can reach it, my grip on her elbow loose, laid back and easy to shake off.
“We broke up,” I point out, my voice low and steady and dead-sea calm. “We broke up and you moved back in with your grandmother.”
Her cheeks flush with color under a cinnamon splash of freckles, her skin bright with heated blood running high under the surface. “Yeah, well, I still get to worry about you,” she murmurs.
I startle, my hand slipping from her elbow, and she's gone before I'm sure I heard what I thought I did. The apartment door rattles as it slams shut in her wake, a few sheets of paper on the dining room table lifting on the draft it generates before settling back down again.
I think, out of the blue, that my bangs may have deflated in the past five minutes.
It takes me a moment to come back to the now, to my missing father and his aimless boyfriend. When my focus returns, I jolt into action without thought, gather my cell phone, slip on my shoes and double-check every appliance to make sure they're shut off. I go through the usual mental checklist – the oven is off, the tap for the kitchen sink isn't dripping, the curling irons have been unplugged. It used to be longer, back when I wore tights and a cape and had more about which to be paranoid.
When I'm sure I'm ready, my eyes shut.
An instant later I dissolve into nothing and disappear.