“I think I’ve got it,” she said, brea
thless.
* * *
If they were going to keep doing this, this taking the bus thing had to stop. Sam was the one with the car—the others didn’t have this problem. Anna was going to have to talk her parents into letting her learn how to drive. And they’d ask “Why?” and she’d have to come up with an excuse. Maybe she could say she was volunteering somewhere.
And her father would know she was lying. After tonight, she might not be able to stand in the same room with him ever again.
She’d worry about that later.
The bus driver raised an eyebrow at them when they got off at their chosen stop—a few blocks from their target but still in a crappy part of town. Two kids, dressed in black, in Hell’s Alley. No, nothing suspicious here. Anna’s heart was racing, and her face flushed. She tried to ignore it. Had to concentrate on the task at hand. She put her hand on the mug shot photo of Scarzen, folded up and stuffed in her pocket. Turned that image and the information over and over again in her mind.
The bus’s diesel engine growled as it pulled away, and off they went. She led Teddy around a corner. Once off the main street, she retrieved her mask from her bag; Teddy had his shoved in a pocket. They suited up.
That made Anna’s heart race even faster, but with something other than trepidation this time. Suddenly, they looked like they were on a mission.
Not many streetlights worked in this part of town. No people around, either, and the few storefronts that weren’t boarded up were locked with grates and dark. How could a place be scarier when it was utterly deserted?
“This is so cool,” Teddy whispered. The invisible boy—Ghost, she reminded herself—walked decisively. In fact, he wore a thin smile under his mask, like he was enjoying this. Even after getting beat up last time, he was happy to be out again.
He actually looked like a superhuman vigilante—chin up, alert, confident. She wasn’t sure what she looked like. The scruffy sidekick? She should be so lucky. Anna was a little freaked out, truth be told. But they’d be fine. They’d watch each other’s backs. She had her cell phone with her.
When they crossed the next street and turned onto another block, she stopped, startled, because the building they approached made her feel a stabbing moment of familiarity, like she’d been here before, even though she never had. That needle in the back of her mind was singing. He was here, right now, in that building. It was the right shape, had the skeletal fire escape, and seemed to nestle among the buildings around it.
She grabbed Teddy and pulled him into a nearby alley. “That’s it, that’s the one.”
“Okay,” Teddy said, with a world’s worth of confidence. Like he was absolutely sure he knew what he was doing. Maybe that was the trick of it, you had to act like you knew what you were doing. “Let’s go over it again. I get in, stay invisible, and take pictures of the drugs or weapons, right?”
Anna said, “And a picture of Scarzen, if you can. It’s best if you can get them all in the same shot.” They had decided that Anna would stay outside, rather than have Teddy unlock a door to let her inside. If Teddy were discovered, he could turn invisible and phase out of the building before anyone caught him. Anna would be stuck. As much as she hated staying out of the real work, she had to defer to logic. She’d stay hidden and wait for Teddy to get back.
Teddy tested the camera on his phone, taking a couple of shots of the brick wall. “I’m set.”
“Make sure the flash is off,” she reminded him.
“Got it. And the ringer.” He put the phone in a pocket and cracked his fingers. “Awesome.”
This could work. This could actually work. “I really want to go with you.”
“We talked about this…”
“It’s just I feel useless.”
Surprising how much expression she could read in just his mouth and jaw, under the mask. He was determined, confident, and his lips pressed in a sympathetic line. “You need to stay out here and call for help if something goes wrong.” Trying to make her feel better by giving her a job, even a silly job that a real superhero shouldn’t need. He gave her arm a brief touch that was probably meant to be comforting.
All she could think was: Even on Team Defense, she was the useless one. Great.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Teddy said breezily and offered a grin.
He left her standing on the sidewalk, arms crossed, trying to look unassuming and not horribly out of place as she leaned against a brick wall. The night was pleasantly cool, but Anna still shivered. Behind her, something rattled, made a screech—a cat, trotting the other way, vanishing into shadows. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to be startled. She waited, trying to figure out how she could go into a situation like this without being totally useless. If she could track not just one person, but everyone within a certain area, she could warn people. If she could do that, she’d be great at surveillance, at knowing when the bad guys were around, when the cops were—but the only person in that building she could sense right now was Teddy. He’d made his way inside and was moving upward on a staircase. She knew Scarzen was there, somewhere. But not what floor he was on, or in what room. Her power could only make the generalization.
Maybe if she had a gun—but that defeated the purpose of being a superhero. Superheroes weren’t supposed to need guns. She didn’t know the first thing about getting hold of a gun, much less using one. No guns, then.
What had her father done when he was with the Olympiad? He couldn’t run faster than the eye could see to get out of trouble like the Bullet, he didn’t have the sheer raw firepower of her grandparents, Captain Olympus and Spark. Oh, yeah, he didn’t just read minds, he could control them. He pried information from them, intimidated them with his reputation, and incapacitated them by forcing them to sleep.
He insisted that he’d never used that particular aspect of his power on his daughters. Mostly, Anna believed him.
Mom and Dad were at home, in bed. Bethy was in the living room—she’d probably snuck out to watch TV. Anna would have to dodge her when she got home. Her power had never felt so inadequate. It was a parlor trick, that was all.