Anna knew how to go out and fight crime without drawing attention because of her grandparents. Or she thought she did. The others wore the masks as much because they looked cool as to hide their identity. They didn’t understand how important hiding their identity really was. Things had pretty much fallen apart for the Olympiad when their identities had been revealed.
Teddy’s observation about them having all the firepower had clarified an issue for Anna: It was easy for Teia and the others to be brazen and forward with their powers, to look for publicity and appear in pictures on the front page of the paper all high and mighty and badass. Their powers were offensive. They could actually do crap. All she and Teddy could do was duck and stay out of the way. How were they supposed to look badass in a picture that way? They couldn’t. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to help people, stop bad guys, protect the city. The best heroes didn’t need publicity. Publicity was a by-product, not the point. Finally, she figured out how to prove that.
At dinner that night, her parents were distracted. Even Grandma noticed and bustled around the kitchen and chatted more than usual. Anna had planned all kinds of excuses about staying up late studying and not to worry if they saw her bedroom light on, she had to write an essay for tomorrow, and so on. But nobody even asked her how her day went. She stayed quiet and tried not to act too weird. Bethy kept looking at her, like she knew Anna was hiding something, and Anna almost yelled at her for it. But she kept her mouth shut, hunkered in on herself, and studied the lasagna on her plate.
Even if Bethy had powers, Anna wouldn’t have taken her little sister along. She didn’t think Bethy was getting powers. She wouldn’t be able to shut up about it if she were.
Late, after everyone else had gone to bed, Anna put on black pants and boots, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, and found a stocking cap and mask to hide her hair and face. Didn’t look like much when she stood in front of the mirror to check herself out. She looked like a bank robber. Strands of red hair kept slipping out from under the hat. Like that wasn’t a tip-off. Oh, well, it would have to do.
She pulled off the hat and mask and shoved them in her backpack with the rest of her gear.
She and Teddy didn’t plan to meet at City Park. That was the old meeting place, and it had become too obvious. Too tainted. Teia and the others were at home, so Anna wouldn’t run into them. But it was as if the park was their place; Anna and Teddy had to find a new spot now. Fine. They could do this on their own. As an alternative, they went to Pee Wee’s, the popular all-night coffee shop near the university campus. They wouldn’t stand out there—they’d look just like any other pair of kids studying.
The glass-fronted café had dim lighting and stainless-steel fixtures, hip and retro, a menu written on a chalkboard and baristas with interesting facial piercings. The music was something new and aggressively independent, and Anna didn’t want to look like a freak for asking who the band was. She pretended she already knew, like she’d heard it before.
The place was cool, too cool for her, and she tried to act like she belonged as she walked in, shoulders back and expression blasé. The bus ride had taken longer than she expected, and Teddy was already there when she arrived. Also dressed all in black, he sat hunched over a coffee while his foot tapped a rapid beat, and he looked sidelong at the rest of the room. She slid into the booth across from him, furtive, wishing she could disappear, like Teddy.
Right. Not only did they not look like they belonged here, when they sat together they looked like a couple of hapless emo Goth types getting ready to mug children.
This wasn’t going to work.
“This isn’t going to work,” Teddy said.
“We can still call it off.”
He didn’t say anything, which she guessed meant he didn’t want to call it off. She ordered coffee and brought it back to the table so they could both sit there looking sullen and conspiratorial. Nothing suspicious about that at all. Maybe people would think they were in a band.
She drew a packet of computer-printed pages from her backpack. Her voice was hushed. “We can’t win in a straight-up fight, not like the others can, so I figure we have to go at this backward. We can’t be fighters, but we can be spies, right?” Teddy didn’t seem happy. Well, it wasn’t her fault they’d been born with stupid defensive powers and couldn’t blast lasers like Sam. She pressed on. “We can find out things that no one else can. Then we can call in the cavalry. Anonymous tip to the cops. The goal is to stop bad guys, that’s how we do it.”
Teddy snorted. “So we just wander the city looking for … for what, random secrets to jump out at us?”
“No.” She spread out the pages she’d gathered. News articles for the most part, some police blotter reports. She’d zeroed in on one set of stories in particular. Jonathan Scarzen was head of a nascent drug cartel putting down roots in Commerce City, but the DA didn’t have enough proof to bring charges, and the police couldn’t make an arrest. As far as public records went, Scarzen was an upstanding businessman working in imports. But the drugs were coming in somehow. The police were looking for a witness or for evidence linking Scarzen’s import business with the new influx of heroin.
“We can do it,” Anna insisted. “We can get the evidence.”
Teddy nodded thoughtfully. “I sneak into the warehouse or whatever, search the place, bring a camera to record, and bingo. Is that what you’re thinking?”
This was why she liked Teddy, he always knew what she was talking about. “Exactly.”
“But we don’t know where his warehouse is. The cops don’t know, that’s the whole point,” Teddy said.
“I can find it,” she said. “I’ve been looking for it, and I think I know where to find it.”
“Anna—” Teddy’s tone was more than a little skeptical. “You don’t actually know this guy, do you? Don’t you have to know someone to be able to find them?”
“I’ve been practicing. Just because you guys can’t see it when I do—”
“I’ve never doubted your powers, Anna.”
Yeah, but she did. She had to prove she could know someone just by reading enough websites about him. If she was going to be anything more than a walking GPS locator for her family and friends, she had to stretch. She had to be able to do more.
Scarzen was thirty-two years old, of Cuban and Italian ancestry. He’d been arrested four times, spent a few years in prison for auto theft in his early twenties, and since then had managed to evade authorities while building influence among the criminal element in Commerce City. According to his mug shots, he had a snake tattoo on his neck, and descriptions said he had more tattoos on his arms. Not just gang signs but also personal imagery. She needed to know as many details about him as she could. Any listed addresses were probably not accurate, but he had a few places where he had been seen. Police usually knew where to find him. The trouble with Scarzen was the cops didn’t have any solid evidence to use against him in court, thereby justifying an arrest. He seemed like an ideal candidate for their first mission. Assuming she could find him, and the evidence.
Like some kind of fortune teller, she pressed her hands to the articles, the printed mug shots, the police commentary, and focused. She thought about where he might be, imagined the spots on the map where he’d been seen before, and concentrated on that needle in her mind, waiting for it to press against her awareness. People she’d known her whole life were easy to find. But what about someone she knew only by reputation?
Teddy waited patiently, quietly.
She didn’t think she had her eyes closed, but she no longer saw the coffee shop. Instead, she saw a brick building with a fire escape climbing up the side like an exoskeleton. The building was low compared to others in the neighborhood, and older. Some of the windows were boarded up. In Hell’s Alley, of course. Not the best part of town. She was pretty sure she knew where it was. To the needlelike instinct in the back of her mind, it glowed.