Time and again, p.18
Time & Again, page 18
"You know, I didn't ask," Angel replied.
"Well," Friday said, "however you came to be in possession of this information, I think you're right. I'm pretty sure letting you in here won't get us in any trouble. Welcome to the team, A-Girl. You can stay with me while you're in town. That is ... provided you don't mind sharing a room with a bunch of plants."
"I like plants," Angel said.
"Come meet the rest of the team," Yumi invited her.
Angel smiled back and nodded her agreement.
When Yumi and Friday returned with the newcomer, Lisa was re-rolling all the paper tracings.
Kara, meanwhile, lay on her side with her head inside a medium-sized magnetic gauge, in the final phase of attaching a replacement for its blown LCD screen. A hammer and a ratchet sounded in turn, occasionally punctuated by soft curses at the machine's design, as well as its recent damage.
"You won't believe who just showed up," Friday called out to the others.
"Yeah?" Lisa jogged over and froze in the doorway. She bit her bottom lip as she slowly backed up--and into the machine Kara was working on.
"Hey," Kara said, scooting out from inside the cabinet, "what's up?"
Lisa could only point.
Kara stood up and took Lisa by her shoulders, turning her around so they were facing each other. "Is everything okay?"
Lisa still couldn't answer. She just looked up at Kara, eyes wide, and tried her best neither to scream nor fall down.
"Shit." Kara let go of Lisa and slid the concussion taser from where she'd had it clipped to her belt. If those damned intruders had come back, she wasn't about to let them get shots off again. Kara dashed past Lisa, through the vestibule toward the sitting room, her weapon in front of her but not yet ready to fire until she got a better read on the situation.
"Hey!" Friday said, as she spotted Kara. "No need for that. It's just Angel."
"Angel?" Kara asked.
"Hi." Angel stepped forward and smiled. "I'm Angel. A-Girl."
"Famous recording artist, movie star, and influencer, A-Girl?" Yumi asked. "Seattle-based superhero, daughter of Athena?"
Kara shrugged.
"Hey, sweetie, you okay?" Yumi asked Lisa, who had tiptoed back into the vestibule and was halfway hiding behind Kara.
Lisa, her eyes still wide, just shook her head. She pointed sneakily at Angel and continued to barely manage to remain upright.
"Oh, that's right. Angel?" Yumi took Angel by her arm and led her past Kara toward where Lisa was standing. "I want you to meet my girlfriend, Lisa. She's a big fan. "
"Uh-huh," Lisa managed to say.
"Hi, Yumi's girlfriend, Lisa!" Angel lunged forward to hug Lisa with almost as much aplomb as she'd hugged Friday. "It's really nice to meet you."
"Uh-huh," Lisa said again.
"I think she's a little starstruck," Friday said to Kara.
"Starstruck?" Kara asked, as she clipped the concussion taser back onto her belt.
"A-Girl is really famous," Yumi informed her. "Lisa's, like, her biggest fan."
"Uh-huh." Lisa seemed on the verge of collapse.
"What are you famous for again?" Kara asked Angel, crossing her arms over her chest. She knew there were probably oodles of twenty-year-old blondes who were plenty famous in their own circles who she'd never heard of, but she was curious as to what exactly this one was capable of. And if they were going to be working together, then she figured it was best to know.
"Hero stuff mostly." Angel shrugged. "And I've done some movies and music and stuff. But really I'm just popular online."
"She's being modest," Friday said. "Yeah, she's popular because she's blonde and pretty, sure. But she also does a lot of good and saves a lot of people. She's completely impervious. Like bulletproof, which could come in real handy here if our rooftop visitors decide to show up again. Plus, she can fly, she has super strength, and super speed--"
"Super strength?" Kara interrupted.
"Yeah," Angel said.
"Come with me." Kara headed back into the war room. "I have a few pieces of heavy machinery that will be a whole lot easier to fix if we can move them."
"Oh, yeah," Angel said. "Sure. I can do that."
"And I don't know if you overheard," Yumi said, taking hold of Lisa's hand again as they moved to follow Kara and Angel. "But she already knows everything we're doing. She even already saw pictures of the array. So we can talk to her about stuff and we're not in any trouble."
"Oh, that's good to know. I was going to let her walk in alone and see for herself and then not tell her anything. Everything she finds out on her own isn't on me. But it'll be nice not to have to mind what I'm saying." Kara paused, turning to look back at Angel. "How, exactly, do know about all this already? Is that part of your power set?"
"Oh, no," Angel said. "My aunt just told me."
"Your aunt?" Kara asked.
"Lady Vengeance," Yumi answered.
"Yeah." Angel nodded, as she gave Kara a thumbs-up.
"Well, okay then. It's that one." Kara pointed to the Isotopeter. "There on the end. If you could just pull it out into open space, that would make it a lot easier to get into the guts of it and get the drum out that needs replacing."
"No problem." Angel casually dropped her backpack as she walked between the rows of machines to the one Kara had indicated.
"Carefully," Friday said, as Angel reached out to take hold of the machine. "It's busted already, but it's priceless, and it's borrowed, and the plan is to be able to put it back together."
"Right. Got it." Angel took gentle hold of the machine, placing her fingertips on either side of the cabinet and pulling it slowly across the floor until it stood squarely in the middle of the walkway between the row of machines and the wall. "Like this?"
"Just like that," Kara replied. "Thank you. And welcome."
"Sure," Angel said. "Happy to help."
"Yeah, you're going to be good. Always nice to have somebody with super strength and super speed on the team. Also nice that you came pre-informed, so we don't have to--" Kara's voice trailed off at the sound of an unfamiliar beeping sound.
"What the--?" Yumi asked.
"Oh, shit." Kara dug her phone out of her pocket. "That's Cassidy's ring. You swear to me she's trustworthy?" she asked Friday, gesturing vaguely toward Angel.
"For sure," Friday said. "Yeah, she's cool."
"Okay, good." Kara poked the screen to answer and set it to speaker. "Hey, Cass. What's up?"
"I take it we're safe to talk?" Cassidy asked.
"Oh yeah," Kara said. "We're all here, Jaccob's not, and the employer is still out cold. We've got a new person here, but she got filled in already by someone who didn't have to sign an NDA, and since you didn't sign one either, I think we're all good."
"Cool," Cassidy said. "So my next question is: 'are you sitting down?' Because you are not going to believe what I'm about to tell you."
"Is this about the pictures from the security footage?" Kara asked.
"Yes and no," Cassidy replied.
"Yes and no?" Friday asked.
"I don't think any of you will be surprised that the bartender at Macky's said the men in the pictures could have been the men with the bad fifty," Cassidy replied.
"Not even a little bit," Kara said.
"Yeah," Cassidy said. "That's not the thing you need to be sitting down for. The big news is something Lumien found."
"Oh?" Kara asked.
"It seems there's a piano player working a Texas showroom who all sources say is supposed to be dead."
"Come again?" Friday piped up.
"As best Lumien or I can tell, this guy died in 1931. Lumien's done everything in his seemingly considerable power to out him as an impostor--trying to find any trace of who he was before he popped up on a marquee in Lapis, Texas--but there's nothing. This man showed up a couple of weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, and was apparently the star of the show the next day. And Lumien can't find any record of him before then."
"Except that he's supposed to be dead?" Lisa asked.
"Yeah, so, we've seen his face," Cassidy told them, "and he looks like the guy who died in 1931. And I don't mean I think that, I mean Lumien ran some software he has that says so. Look. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe he's just an impersonator. But Lumien did everything he could to trace this guy and prove he was an impersonator, and all clues lead to his not having existed until this show. Except for the ones that say he was born in 1894 and murdered in 1931. Lumien says there's no making sense of it, which to me says this warrants further investigating. If I was a time traveler looking to fuck with a music executive, snatching up a long-dead musician just before he was scheduled to be murdered is exactly the kind of thing I would do."
"Uh-huh," Kara said, "me too. That's definitely a lead worth chasing."
"I thought you'd think that."
"Thanks, Cassidy," Kara said. "Tell Lumien to pop everything he has into our cloud workspace, and I'll take a look."
"Okay, cool," Cassidy replied. "And if there are any developments, I'll keep you posted."
"All right. Talk to you later?"
"I'll call if there's anything."
"Cool. All right. Bye."
"Welp," Kara exhorted with a shrug, hanging up her phone and sliding it back into the pocket of her shorts. "Looks like we really do have to call Jaccob now."
"How come?" Yumi asked.
"Because as much as I will allow this guy in Texas could possibly be there as a result of time travel, he could just as easily be the kind of everyday impersonator known for playing hotel showrooms. Lumien did what he can do, and that's a good start, but before we jump the rest of the way to the conclusion Cassidy has already drawn, we should put his face through Starcom-level facial recognition software. And hologram detection. And I'm not talking about the off-the-shelf stuff. We're going to need to get the top tier, not for sale version, and the only legal place to get that is straight from the source."
"Wait, do you mean Jaccob Stevens?" Angel asked, brightening.
"Yes?" Kara quirked an eyebrow.
"Sorry, I'm kind of a fan." She looked a little like Lisa had upon seeing her a few minutes ago. "He's dreamy. For an old guy."
"You'll have to excuse her," Yumi said. "She's terminally heterosexual."
Lisa heaved a sigh--both relieved and a little disappointed.
"Can one of you send him a text?" Kara looked back at the Isotopeter and shook her head. "I'm sure I'm going to need his help getting this damned drum repaired, too. I'm gonna get started taking this side panel off so we can see what else is busted."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The headache should have been a bigger clue. It was the first thing Ruby was aware of when she awoke, and it was perhaps the most powerful headache she'd had in recent memory. Not long after that, she began to feel all the other aches, the tightness in her muscles, and the fact her mouth was maybe the driest it had ever been. But it was the heaviness in her limbs and eyelids that jogged her memory.
There had been a gunman. And she'd tried to stop him. As best she knew, she had stopped him. But she didn't really remember much.
This, though--this feeling--this she remembered. This was drain, and it was bad. The last time she'd felt this lousy at the hands of her own magic had been on the heels of her battle with the demon Azazel in hopes of rending Vivienne, and her building, from his clutches.
At least that time she'd remained conscious. Not so today, it appeared. She sat up slowly, on the wrong side of her bed, noticing as she did the number of flower arrangements displayed all around the room. Probably whoever had put her into bed had mentioned illness or injury to someone in the office. Bouquets had been known to appear at lightspeed on such occasions.
Ruby turned slowly, moving the covers aside as she slid her feet off the bed and onto the floor. Whoever had tucked her in had also changed her clothes, leaving her in only the slip she'd been wearing under her gray linen dress suit. She wondered if they'd taken it to the cleaners; if she'd passed out on the terrace, which she must have done, she could only hope her suit had survived its unexpected meeting with the flagstones.
The lights in her bedroom were off, and Ruby knew better than to try and use magic to turn them back on. When the drain hit this hard, she needed to go easy for at least a day or two. She reached over and switched on the lamp atop the near nightstand.
There were flowers there, too: a big bouquet of roses and peonies with a card that read "Feel better, Ginger, <3-V. P.S. If you don't like the arrangement, yell at me, not the florist." The smile that spawned made Ruby's head hurt worse, but she couldn't help herself. She'd have to find out how Vivienne got word and got flowers onto her nightstand so quickly.
There was another item on the nightstand, too. And this one didn't need a card. A familiar platinum bangle inlaid with diamonds sat in a hinged velvet box just beside the vase containing Vivienne's flowers. So Jaccob had been by; that was interesting. Not as interesting as, say, where her phone had wound up, but interesting nonetheless.
She lifted the bracelet from its box and looked at it closely. It was pristine, polished to a high shine, and its diamonds sparkled brilliantly in their settings. She hadn't remembered it well. Somehow her memory had dulled it with the satin of patina and turned the diamonds dim, small, and unimpressive. But that wasn't how she found it now. The bracelet was a thing of beauty, and a technological marvel, and the man who'd once cracked the hard shell of her heart had once again asked her to wear it for his peace of mind.
She had half a mind to put it on right now.
But she thought better of it. The bracelet's defining feature was the fragile hinge that would summon Stardust on the double were it to be damaged. And with the way she was feeling at the moment, she'd be as likely as not to break it just getting dressed.
Which she figured she really ought to do.
The small clock on her vanity, visible from where she sat, told Ruby it was ten 'til six, so she'd been out for a while. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was finding out what had happened while she was down. She needed to know that Lisa, Yumi, Kara, and Friday had come through all right.
She got to her feet slowly, knowing well enough from experience that standing up too fast would mean either a powerful bout of nausea or passing out again, and she had no interest in inviting either of those outcomes.
As quickly as she could without aggravating her headache, Ruby made her way into her bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and wiped the mascara smudges from underneath her eyes before tossing back a pair of pain killers.
She found her phone on its cradle in her closet and tucked it under the belt of the simple black dress she pulled on over the slip she couldn't be bothered to change out of. She stepped into the first pair of black shoes she saw--low-heeled slingbacks--and combed her fingers through her hair. The glamour she tried to throw to combat the dark circles under her eyes made her head throb at the temples, and what was worse, it didn't land.
She'd have to do without any magic at all, probably at least until tomorrow. So she stopped by her vanity to dab on a bit of concealer before heading upstairs.
Stepping out of her bedroom, Ruby saw the first evidence that maybe things in the rest of the building might be worse than she feared. The wall of her hallway just beside the elevator was a gaping, jagged hole, exposing the open shaft and cables of the penthouse guest elevator. The damage to the sheetrock was easily large enough for a person to step through. Whatever had happened here couldn't have been good.
If this was any indication of the condition of the rest of her building, there was every chance the proverbial headache was about to be just as powerful as the literal one. Ruby did her best not to let her imagination run away with her as she waited for the elevator. She'd check in on the condition of her top floor, and hopefully grab a bottle of water from the fridge in the sitting room if all was well. Depending on what she found there, she'd start calling and texting accordingly.
Best not to jump to any conclusions. She could wait the three minutes to see the top floor with her own eyes.
If the place was a crime scene, Ruby wasn't sure what she was going to do about that. It felt like only yesterday the repairs had been completed in the wake of the demon occupation, and she absolutely did not relish the idea of going through another major reconstruction project so soon afterward--or ever if she was being honest with herself. But the damage outside her bedroom was enough to tell her she ought to brace for the worst.
She'd woken up in her own room, at least; that was good. Had the Tower taken too much damage from the intruders, she'd likely have been taken someplace else. The fact she was safe and sound and tucked into bed just three floors down from the scene of the attack allowed for the possibility her building remained sound.
But there was also a giant hole in the hallway outside her bedroom, so the inverse was equally likely to be the case.
More important, even, than the building were the four young women who'd been on the terrace with her. Ruby knew they were all in the hero business; that's how they'd wound up on this job to begin with. But she also knew Kara's great power was in technology, and Yumi had been concerned with her ability to summon her sword with Ruby's magical shielding in effect. As best she knew, Lisa had no real powers at all beyond smarts and organizational skills--more of a "woman in the chair" sort of cape, but she kept them all on task. And she had no real idea how Friday's powers worked outside her relationship to the goddess Freya.
Something she knew for sure about all of them was that none had been armed with a pistol. Or wearing a bulletproof vest.
Relief was awash over Ruby when she stepped from the elevator on the fiftieth floor and heard all four of their voices coming from the next room. She rounded the corner and was surprised to see the group of them in the war room, sorting through papers on both sides of a little table Ruby didn't remember having been there earlier. A fifth young woman she didn't recognize was there, too, casually lifting a metallic contraption that must have been ten times her own weight.
Jaccob was also with them. He sat on a rolling stool with his back to the door, dressed in gray chinos and a button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows. Ruby wasn't exactly surprised to see him; he'd been around a lot during this project. But seeing him sitting there working--the muscles in his forearms flexing as he fiddled with whatever was in front of him--stirred something in her she had no interest in paying attention to.
