Where There's Fire (Panopolis Book 2) (3 page)

Panopolis is a city with a history of dark creation: Nuclear experiments during World War II led to the creation of the Spartan, who became America’s ultimate wartime hero. He died during the invasion of Okinawa in 1945, but the image of the real-life Super Hero had already been burned into the brains of your average American. They wanted more. They wanted someone to believe in, someone bigger and better, a new Hero for every Villain that sprang up from the ashes of war.

So, Panopolis made them, one way or another. Most superpowers were the result of accidents, but turning an accident into an advantage was all about promotion, and Panopolis’s city council had a great PR department. Other cities might have a resident Hero, but none of them had made a name for themselves the way Panopolis’s Heroes did.

And the best way to make a name for yourself? Fight off a Villain. There were plenty of those too: the rejects, the mistakes, the people who were never supposed to survive whatever had happened to them. Some of them were equally powerful, and way more motivated by revenge than glory.

My boyfriend was a villain with a capital V, who went by the name of the Mad Bombardier. Raul was unique in Panopolis’s expansive pantheon of Villains in that he had no actual superpower. He was just really, really good with explosives and had a sense of drama. The black clothes he wore for his robberies were body armor, the face mask was a smart precaution, and the red numbers that scrolled across his forehead? Pi, continuously calculated. The only person I knew for sure that Raul had ever killed was another Villain by the name of Pinball, who’d almost killed me last year. Raul had taken that rather personally. Apart from that, he was a snuggly puppy.

A puppy that lived in a custom warehouse with reinforced walls that even Raul’s explosive experiments couldn’t blast through. Our actual apartment was underground, which was a pretty reasonable precaution, all things considered. I missed the sunshine, but I preferred keeping all of my limbs.

I headed downstairs into our apartment, flipped the lights, and turned on the television as I went to put the pills away in our medicine cabinet. My head felt okay, only a little achy, which meant that I’d gotten things under control in time.

There was food waiting for me on the stove in a covered pan. It smelled like chicken piccata, one of my favorites. I dished it out onto a plate and carried it over to the sofa, where Jean Parks droned on about the latest Hollywood scandal. It was no more than white noise until I heard—

“Gerald and Melissa Dinges have agreed to the tell-all interview that we’ve been waiting for, folks. That’s right, yours truly sat down with the Dingeses to ask them about their only son, Edward, and what might have driven him to mastermind the most massive and damaging Villain exodus from Abbott’s Penitentiary that Panopolis has ever seen. Tune in tomorrow night to learn the shocking truth about Edward Dinges’s fall from grace!”

Me, a mastermind? That was a new one. I rolled my eyes at the television. In the space of one fateful evening I’d gone from a nobody bank manager who was maybe, possibly dating Freight Train, to the virago who had broken a Hero’s heart by illegally harboring a Villainous boyfriend on the side, and then apparently engineering my own escape from Abbott’s Penitentiary. None of which was true, but being lied about on television was nothing new to me. What was new was that my parents had agreed at last to do an interview. They’d resisted for months, insisting that they had nothing to say, and my heart had warmed a bit every time my dad had glowered at some insistent reporter, or my mom had chided the trolls on her Facebook page.

A shot of my mom went up on the screen, her hands fluttering in her lap. Her mouth was twisted in a little grimace that I recognized all too well from when I’d done something that had disappointed her.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and it was so honest that I wanted to cover my face. “I don’t understand how this could have happened with our Edward. He was such a good child. He made good grades, he didn’t get into trouble, he was . . . so normal. I don’t . . .”

The picture changed back to Jean, and I finally let myself look away from the screen. I tried not to think too much about my parents these days. We’d never been particularly close once I was big enough to take care of myself. Neither of them were the nurturing type, and moving to Panopolis had seemed like a great idea as I got older. It was somewhere exciting and new, somewhere not Kansas, where everyone knew my name and no one cared. But seeing my mother’s confusion now, her genuine distress, it . . . Well, I hoped she was getting a lot of money for this interview, that was all. Plenty of other people were making bank off of me, it was only fair that my parents did too.

Speaking of banks . . . I picked up the blueprint laid out on the coffee table. It contained the specs for First National, the bank I used to manage, and it was basically useless. I already knew the layout of the bank, and I probably wasn’t going to be doing anything to it that I needed blueprints for, but Raul had offered them as a sort of security blanket and I’d said yes, because this . . . this was going to be an actual, real job. It was my public outing as a Villain.

Most of my experimentation with my power had been within the careful confines of investigation with Raul, or the not-at-all careful instances of fighting Heroes and Villains off like what had happened today. It had been tempting for a while to let Raul do the heavy lifting in our relationship, since I’d been prostrated by migraines every time I tried to use my ability. We’d even thought about leaving Panopolis and heading back overseas where Raul had connections in France, but my face was too well-known. Besides, neither of us really wanted to leave this place: it might be kind of shitty, but it was still the place we’d both chosen to make our home in.

Which was why I needed to get over my uncertainties and actually do something. I needed to be forced out of my comfort zone; I needed to earn my keep. And I had to get over the fear I felt whenever I used my power, and become accustomed to controlling it.

My fear—that of doing irreparable damage to someone—was a continual stumbling block, but we’d mostly worked past it, because Raul had the patience of a saint and there was no way I was going through life without being able to touch the man I loved. There was still plenty of work to do before my control was where I needed it to be, though. Lettie was probably right to turn down my help right now.

“If you grip that any harder, you’ll tear it,” Raul said from behind me. I started a little.

“I won’t tear it.” I relaxed my hands anyway as I glanced back at him. He bypassed dinner to flop down next to me on the couch, freshly showered and still slightly damp, his dark hair curling over his forehead and the nape of his neck. Raul was meticulous about leaving the chemicals he experimented with where they belonged, in the warehouse. He’d changed out of his hazmat suit into a comfy pair of sweatpants and the bright-blue Freight Train T-shirt I’d given him as a joke. His smile was warm and confident, and my heartbeat sped up accordingly. I was such a goner.

“You know what you need to do now,” Raul said. “Who you need to get to, how long you have, what your objective is. This is the perfect job for you to test your abilities on, all reliant on face-to-face contact and speed. You’re as prepared as you can be, and I’ll be right outside in case you need me.”

“You’ll be well down the street at a café, safely out of sight,” I corrected him. “And I’m sure I won’t need the help.” I really wanted that to be true, but I couldn’t repress the warm glow in my stomach, or the twist of guilt and irritation that followed it. Six months since my old life had ended, and I didn’t feel much closer to being truly independent now than I was when Raul had rescued me. He didn’t care, but I did. Adored but unequal was still unequal.

“Of course not,” Raul agreed. “But in case you do need something, I’ll be there. And you can take this as well.” He handed me a plain white Chap stick tube. “Open it.” I popped the cap. The tube was filled with a clear jellylike substance. “It’s completely inert before ignition; you could eat it and get nothing more than a stomachache. Set it on fire, though, and it burns fast and hot. Especially good on organics, but it will get through a lock if you use enough of it.”

“Wow.” This had been Raul’s special project for the past few weeks: finding an explosive that I would be comfortable using. Anything that could blow up if I dropped it or pushed the wrong button was out. Not all of us had grown up running bombs for our parents’ militia. I smiled back at him. “My own custom incendiary compound. This is amazing.” Though I still hoped I’d never have to use it, especially not on this job. I didn’t want to risk hurting any of my old coworkers.

“I thought you’d like it,” Raul said, and there was nothing but honest pleasure in his voice. No smugness, no annoyance at my pickiness. Just hundreds of hours’ worth of work in order to ease my mind. What had I done to deserve him?

“Thank you. Oh, and before I forget,” I added as he reached for me, “the spiderweb taser worked great in a pinch.”

Raul frowned and pulled his hand back. Uh-oh. That meant he was going to ask upsetting questions. That was the hardest thing about this damn power of mine, accepting that there were times when it wasn’t wise for Raul and I to be in contact. If I was upset, he’d get upset. If I was afraid, so was he—he couldn’t control his emotions when I was the one generating them. “You used the taser today?”

“Yeah, on Z Street, a few blocks away from Lettie’s place.”

“On whom?”

“Some random stalker with glowy eyes. It was nothing,” I assured him. “Next time I’ll take the scooter.” I didn’t like to drive Raul’s motorcycle, always worried it would be vandalized given our neighborhood, so he’d bought me an innocuous little scooter more my size that we stored a few blocks from home. I preferred not to drive it on Z Street, because the odds of it being defaced or stolen were high, but it didn’t make sense to walk anymore if the consequence was me getting attacked.

Raul stared at me, his eyes narrowing. “You have bruises on your neck.”

Naturally he’d notice those. “They’re not bad.”

“Edward . . .”

“They’re not bad! I managed it fine; I just relied too much on the zip ties. I’ll do better next time.”

“There shouldn’t be a next time.” Raul’s hands clenched into fists. “How many Villains do I have to scare off before they stop coming after you?”

“I think you answered your own question there, babe.” I shrugged with a sigh. “They’re Villains. It comes with the territory. And part of the reason I’m doing the bank job is to show them that I’m one of them. It’s a rite of passage for proper bad guys, isn’t it? My coming out.”

“They already think you’re a proper Villain.”

“They do now, but won’t for long if I don’t prove that I can handle myself. No one’s going to believe I’m a major player if I never . . . play.” It wasn’t as though I’d done anything to earn that reputation, anyway. That had mostly been Raul.

“You shouldn’t be forced to prove anything on anyone else’s timetable.”

“Maybe not, but I have to get started sometime. I’m not going to hide behind you while you keep the world at bay for me—that’s not fair to you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“It’s not fair to me either.” I shrugged and spread my hands. I knew Raul didn’t like to hear this part, but . . . “You’ve got to trust me to start taking care of myself.”

“I do trust you,” he insisted. “I know you’re prepared, I just don’t think there should be any rush. There must be some way of keeping Villains away from you, something better than blowing them up.”

“There’s leaving Panopolis, but that’s a last resort.” Steeling myself, I took his hand, relieved when he didn’t flinch. I felt calm and sure, but sometimes my subconscious wasn’t completely honest with the rest of me. I snuggled against him and set my head down on his shoulder. He turned into me and wrapped his free arm around my waist, pulling me close. The contact made me want to purr. “Or you could declare yourself their leader. Take on all challengers, beat them to a bloody pulp, and institute some law and order in this here town.”

Raul snorted. “It would take more brutality than I have time to accomplish, and you’re too innocent for me to put you through that anyway.”

“I’m not innocent,” I objected. Raul raised an eyebrow. “It’s relative, okay? By most people’s standards I’m not innocent at all. I’m a bad guy sleeping with a bigger bad guy, even if you aren’t the king. Which is fine by me; I like you as you are.” I grinned. “Even if you’re a hopeless Luddite.”

“I’m brilliant with technology,” Raul huffed. “It’s only the money stuff that’s a problem. How could anyone be expected to know all that about compounding interest rates?”

“It’s really not hard, but it is the sort of thing you need an actual bank account for, babe.” I still wasn’t quite over my discovery last month that Raul had kept every cent he ever stole under his mattress, envelopes stuffed with cash that he emptied whenever he needed funds. It was the least secure, most ridiculous way of storing your money that I’d ever seen. He hadn’t even kept an accounting book, just used the cash until he needed more, then gone and robbed someone or took a job for another Villain.