Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

Scowling, Mark retreated back to his corner.

Arthur said to Appleton, “Would you like this to be a formal interrogation, Chief?”

Appleton looked at Celia. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head. She’d prefer this to be formal, with no ambiguity. It didn’t bother her—Arthur was the only person here on her side. He pulled up a chair directly in front of her. Their knees were almost touching.

“Relax,” he said. “Just answer the chief’s questions. Let your thoughts flow. You know the routine.”

Appleton asked simple, straightforward questions, and she answered them rote. How did you know about the robbery attempt at the history museum? She guessed. It seemed like about time for another robbery, and she guessed. What do you know about the Strad Brothers? Nothing. Do you recognize any of these people? He showed her mug shots: the four men arrested at the museum. Two of them she thought she recognized from the symphony gala. Sure enough, he showed her security shots from the Stradivarius robberies. They matched. Beyond that, she didn’t know anything. Appleton kept asking, kept looking at Mentis for confirmation, and the telepath only nodded. She’s telling the truth.

Arthur held her gaze. She only saw his calm blue eyes. It wasn’t that she couldn’t look away—she was sure she could, if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. His focus, his steadiness urged her to keep looking. Meanwhile, her thoughts ran behind her eyes like a film. Mentis could watch, through her eyes. She felt hollow, invisible. The girl with the see-through skull. It felt strange, but she wasn’t afraid. If it had been anyone else but Mentis doing it, though, she would have launched into a screaming fit.

She’d seen that happen when Mentis searched other people like this.

Appleton finally paused. Without breaking eye contact with her, Mentis asked, “Anything else?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Appleton shrug. “What the hell—you ever sleep with the Destructor?”

You can’t kill him, she told herself. Can’t even hurl insults at him. He was waiting for an excuse to lock her up. She thought she saw a smile twitch on Mentis’s lips, quickly repressed.

“No. I. Did. Not.” She broke free of Mentis and looked at Mark, who dropped his gaze.

— We’re finished now. Rest easy. —Mentis looked away, and a weight lifted. She could breathe again. Briefly, she brushed his hand where it rest on his knee. He gave her hand a quick squeeze in return before turning to the police chief.

“Satisfied?” he said.

“Yeah,” Appleton said, obviously disappointed.

“Chief Appleton?” Celia leaned forward in her seat. “You have leaders from both the Strad Brothers and the Baxter Gang in custody now, right? Is there any connection between them?”

“That’s what your father keeps asking. He’s convinced Sito’s masterminding this from prison. We’re looking into ways he could possibly be doing that. Maybe that’ll keep the Olympiad off our backs—no offense, Doctor.”

Mentis waved him away.

But what if the connection wasn’t the Destructor?

Appleton kicked them out, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t a danger to society. She was hoping Mark would talk to her. She kept waiting for him to apologize. But he walked out of the room without a glance at her.

It was nightfall when she and Mentis stood on the street outside the police station. He looked thoughtfully back at the closed door.

“Your detective is having a very hard time admitting to himself that he was wrong.”

“I don’t need telepathy to know that.”

“No, indeed. Are you all right?”

She checked herself, wondering how much of her tiredness was genuine physical fatigue or overwhelming annoyance. Or traumatic stress.

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have to stay at West Plaza anymore, if the robbery’s already happened.”

“Your mother would probably appreciate you staying for dinner.”

He was right, she was sure, but she wanted to run away all the same. “Do my parents think I had anything to do with this because I guessed right?”

“I honestly don’t know. I haven’t spoken with them since the robbery.”

“But they might think it, a little bit.”

“Celia, it’s amazing how little people control what they think sometimes. I can assure you, though, that your parents love you. Without reservation. They always have.”

She chuckled. “Makes me pretty pathetic, doesn’t it? Twenty-five years old and still pissed off because I think my parents don’t love me.”

“Celia, go home. Get some rest. I’ll let your parents know you’re all right. Mostly.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, after he’d turned his back and walked away. She had to have faith that even if he hadn’t heard her, he’d felt the sentiment.

THIS project rang too many alarm bells in her mind. Far from reaching a conclusion, the clues had branched. She had too many questions, now.

The next morning, attaché and growing collection of notes in hand, she headed back to West Plaza. She was going to do the unthinkable: ask her parents for a crack at the Olympiad mainframe. Maybe their database could make sense of the list of lab equipment, cross reference it with their information about the Destructor. In the afternoon, she planned to knock on Janet Travers’s front door. Maybe an eighty-year-old retired lab tech had the inside scoop.

One nice thing about getting fired: she wore jeans and a blouse softened by too much washing. And sneakers. She was the height of comfortable, ratty chic.

She only had two blocks to go between her apartment building to the bus stop and walked that stretch nearly every day without thinking of it because it was a quiet neighborhood, narrow, older streets lined with family grocers and small restaurants.

No reason the sidewalk should open under her feet.

The grating simply dropped. Yelping, she fell with it, she thought into the storm sewer, to concrete and breaking bones. But she landed on something soft, a cushion that protected her—an industrial-size, wheeled laundry hamper, like a hotel would use, filled with foam cushions.

A lid slammed closed over her and the light from above disappeared. A motor started, then movement. Lying on her back, she pushed up on the lid of whatever box she’d been closed in. It rattled but didn’t open. She kept pounding on it anyway, and screaming, because what else could she do?

She hadn’t been so afraid in a long time. She hadn’t been the victim of such an effective kidnapping in a long time.

Movement stopped. She gasped, startled, and then held her breath.

The lid opened.

She sat up, flung herself over the edge of the hamper, and skidded onto the concrete floor, unable to keep her feet.

She’d been brought to a room, pitch-black. She couldn’t see the walls, and only knew it was a room by the way her gasps echoed off walls that were too close. The whole journey, from falling through the sidewalk to ending up here had taken less than a minute. Her superhuman guardians—still in place, after all her complaints—would hardly have time to recognize she’d disappeared, much less be able to find her.

A light, white and muted, came to life. A propane lantern sat on a card table. A man, dressed all in black, his face in shadow, also sat on the table.

“Celia West,” he said in a flat voice. “You really should vary your route. I thought the daughter of Captain Olympus and Spark would know better.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing hysterically. She waited for the rant to follow—when the villain announced his ominous plan to hold her hostage, to manipulate the Olympiad, to threaten her.