Chapter 24
"So. I think it's time to do this."
"Mal?"
I was lying on a massive, luxurious bed, and Malevola was beside me, slightly hovering over me, drawing her clawed fingers lightly across my chest. Her impressive, gravity-defying chest hovered near my face as she laughed warmly at something, tail wrapped around my thigh and slowly moving higher toward my hip, her entire body radiating heat.
The tail found what it was looking for, tightening slowly — slightly painful — while she leaned closer, breathing warm alcohol-scented air against my face.
I caught her hand, threading our fingers together, the other arm curling around her waist and pulling her closer.
A waterfall of black hair came down over my face. She braced one hand against my shoulder and sat astride me, smiling with promises I didn't doubt for a second, and then the most extraordinary woman in the world raised her palm to my cheek, stroking it gently — until she drew her hand back and delivered a full-force parental slap across my face, snapping my head left with an audible crack, and I was awake.
The smell of burning. A body soaked in cold sweat, cooling rapidly against pavement that had gone cold with the evening. And pain from my own personal tragedy, radiating upward in waves and doing the efficient work of returning me to consciousness.
"OW. What the—"
"Hm? Back with us?" Above me, instead of a spectacular demoness, loomed Colm's stocky shape. Grinning into his enormous mustache, he attempted another cheek-pat, which I blocked while pushing myself upright. "Looks okay—"
"Agreed. He appears functional." Coupé held her dagger one millimeter from my thigh, then exhaled with the disappointment of a child whose toy was taken away, and made the weapon disappear in a puff of black smoke. "Unfortunate. Could've measured his pain tolerance. And checked what color—"
"Red. It's red. The same as everyone's." I crawled backward from both of them on my hands, looking around. In addition to the people I'd helped evacuate, there were now police, paramedics, firefighters, a pair of SDS representatives, and a crowd of lawyers who appeared to be collecting testimonials from civilians. "God. Everything hurts."
Gripping my own anatomy gingerly, acknowledging the phantom echo still working its way through my body, I accepted Colm's arm and got upright, trying not to shake my aching head too much.
"What's with you? Did you get excited? Because I have to tell you, that's an unusual response to a knee to the region, with a pile of collapsed civilians and a grown man looming over you—"
"I don't mind." Running a hand along her body, Coupé pressed two fingers just below her own abdomen with academic interest. "It all sort of burns. The smell alone — blood, sweat, smoke — divine."
"Could just be a urinary tract thing," Colm said thoughtfully, scratching his chin, clearly processing a genuine memory. "Last time we did it in a bar bathroom and I hadn't washed my hands after—"
"Please. Just — for a moment — stop talking." I was still slightly hunched, waiting for the last of the pain to settle, one hand braced on Colm's shoulder. "Invidiva kicked me in the groin. Again."
"Again? You have interesting preferences." Not waiting for my response, Colm turned to his terrifying girlfriend. "Thought she was after our new dispatcher—"
"She has unusual taste. She drinks diet beer and once I watched her try to eat a donut without biting it — just sort of… sucking on it." Coupé delivered this with an absolute straight face and zero emotional output.
"Hm." Colm appeared to consider this. "Well, they say the mouth feeds the mouth—"
"That's not — the expression is completely different—" I gave a short version of my first encounter with Invidiva to prevent these two from launching a fresh wave of rumors. "—and that time she also hit me in the same place."
"Rough break," Colm said, patting my back paternally. "Shame you're not a secret pervert—"
"Why?"
"New bets. Whoever guesses your specific preferences wins four hundred and forty dollars." Coupé floated approximately ten centimeters off the ground — she, like me, had no intention of sitting on the bench we were standing near. "Want to confess? If it's not too horrible, we'll even help you make it happen. As a reward."
"I don't have any preferences to confess!"
"When I was waking you up, you tried to grab my hand." Under his girlfriend's ironic look, Colm scratched his neck and decided to commit to the full truth. "Actually, you grabbed it and said — and I'm quoting — Mal… yes, keep going, Mal."
"It looked stimulating." Coupé wet her full lips, drifted closer to Colm, and ran her fingers into his hair. "Let's try that sometime—"
"I was just dreaming—"
"Interesting reaction to a kick in the crotch, though." Colm was already melting slightly under his girlfriend's attention, which was somehow simultaneously more and less alarming. He spotted the approaching bus and hopped down from the bench, walking toward it. "So who's Mal?"
"Doesn't matter."
"I think I know," Coupé said, catching Colm's eye and pressing one finger to her lips. "It's simpler than it looks."
"Can we just go to the office." I was first through the bus doors and was immediately hit with a powerful sense of déjà vu — I'd once done a sewer-clearing job with Golem, and even that had smelled more welcoming than this vehicle. "Hell."
"Don't stress." Colm sat in the greasy, stained seat with the easy comfort of someone who had made peace with the world as it was, in both its clean and unclean forms. "What?"
"Is he always like this?" I turned hopefully to Coupé, who met me with her default expression — the one that would have suited a piece of furniture better than a person.
"Sometimes." She tilted her head slightly. "There's an explanation."
"Tactical trousers!"
"…What?" Colm was already showing me a thumbs up and beginning to undo his belt. "I'm taking your word for it, please don't—"
I covered my eyes, but caught enough to confirm: there was another pair of identical pants underneath the first, which the cheerful leprechaun stripped off in the middle of the bus and handed to absolutely no one in particular.
"Right. So you just wear an extra pair of trousers."
"Obviously." He pulled the outer pair back on, offended. "I don't want bus herpes or whatever. You know what gets passed around on these seats—"
"Is that a real thing?" While this couple maintained their earnest discussion, I spat a stream of water at the window nearest me, cleaning it just enough to look outside.
---
The SDS office was a mess. It was late evening; the respectable-looking dispatchers and office workers were starting to drift toward home. Team Z was doing the opposite.
Cheering and shouting — audible from the ground floor — had assembled most of the remaining team around Invidiva, congratulating the visibly embarrassed girl. They were taking photos with her, in front of the temporary holding cell currently occupied by someone I'd captured earlier. I'd completely forgotten the man's name, though I remembered his energy weapons and how quickly they'd shorted out when I soaked him.
"Based on context, our invisible bitch actually caught someone. By herself." I had no energy for celebration. One look at posing Invidiva was enough to wake the phantom pain. "All right. I'm going to sign off and call it. See everyone tomorrow."
Not checking whether the bizarre couple behind me had heard, I moved around the chaos toward the timekeeping office, wanting to get my hours signed and make it home — when a hand landed on my shoulder.
"Hold on a minute, Waterboy." Robert's voice, warm with notes of guilt, was accompanied by a small content bark from his dog, held in the crook of the dispatcher's arm. "I wanted to apologize—"
"For what? None of this is on you." He'd given me no reason to be annoyed at him — quite the opposite. The man kept demonstrating exactly the kind of character that produced an uncomfortable fondness in me, which was definitely going to fuel more jokes. I turned with the best smile I could produce. Beside him, as always, Chaise stood at the edge of things. "I agreed to help. And it worked out, didn't it? No one's getting cut?"
"I'd fire every last one of them straight to hell," Chase muttered, and began aggressively scratching the dog's belly now that he'd reclaimed it from Robert. "Especially the small one—"
"Chase." The two dispatchers exchanged a look that carried an entire conversation. Robert won. Chase stepped back slightly. "About this whole situation—"
"Come on — forget it. You're not responsible, and honestly—" I gestured toward the celebrating Team Z, currently making faces and rude gestures at the man in the holding cell, middle fingers being the minimum entry requirement. "We managed. And Invidiva — I'll deal with that myself. I'm grown."
"That's exactly what I'm a little afraid of," Robert said, still with a half-laugh, giving me a light shoulder-tap. The amusement faded slightly and he looked at me seriously for a moment before continuing. "I just hope this doesn't escalate into something. Invidiva acted badly. Underhandedly—"
"You got hit in the face too, old man," Chase inserted, which both Robert and I chose not to engage with.
"—and things in Team Z are actually improving. I just hope you won't go looking for payback." He didn't overstate it, but I wasn't dense enough to miss the point. He understood that in a direct confrontation, Invidiva didn't have a winning position against me. "It took work to get the arrangement we have, and if you two blow it up, they might make an example of one of you just to send a message—"
"Rob." The nickname slipped out before I caught it — the one we used for him in smaller circles. "It'll be fine. Worst case we have a row without powers, maybe dump water on each other. But anything bigger? The Phoenix Program matters to me. I already screwed things up badly once. I'm not throwing this away."
"Finally. Someone with sense." Chase put the half-asleep dog down on his personal cushion and nodded toward the doors that were opening — the ones leading to our supervisor's office. "Right. All of you — get your faces in order, no staring. Looks like the boss is going to say a few words."
"Says the king of staring," Robert said, ignoring the subsequent grumbling, and pushed me gently toward the rest of the team with no real way to retreat. "Come on. Don't sit this one out."
We arrived perfectly on time. The moment we appeared, Blond Blazer's gaze moved across the assembled faces and paused — briefly, almost imperceptibly — on Robert's. Maybe I imagined it, but the corner of her mouth tugged slightly upward before her expression settled back into something composed.
I noticed because I was standing nearly at attention, experiencing a combination of actual nervousness and something embarrassingly close to schoolboy excitement. It was better than it used to be. At least while she wasn't speaking directly to me, my hands stayed dry and the stutter was almost gone.
"Good. Glad I caught you all while you were still here." She clapped her hands once, pulling the attention of heroes and the dispatchers who hadn't made it home yet, and looked around at everyone — then smiled. Warmly, brightly, the way only she could. The way a mother might look at a difficult teenager who had, for the first time in memory, actually done something right and good. "I'm happy to tell you — you did it. Congratulations."
She gestured toward the SDS performance board. She stepped aside, and at that exact moment the numbers on the screen shuffled and rearranged. Not a single two-digit number remained. Every member of Team Z had crossed the hundred-point threshold, and some had overtaken the "real" heroes Chaise perpetually waved in our faces.
A beat of silence. Then the room erupted.
Shouts, congratulations, a lot of physical contact, and a generous volume of colorful commentary directed at our rival colleagues elsewhere in the building.
A pleasant warmth settled in my chest. Looking at the board, I felt something quieter than celebration — a clean, settled sense of satisfaction. While everyone else shouted and carried on, I stood slightly off to the side, behind a couple of dispatchers, and let myself smile fully for a moment when no one was looking.
As it turned out, I wasn't entirely alone.
A red tail wrapped around my waist and drew me sideways, and Malevola had my head tucked against her shoulder before I'd fully processed it — cheek pressed to her, the tail still looped around me at chest height.
She leaned down, spreading her lips wide to show her pointed canines, and whispered directly into my ear.
"So you can smile like that. Genuinely. Happily." The low murmur produced actual goosebumps. Behind us, the celebration continued — Blond Blazer was saying something, Robert and Chase had both joined the team, explaining something with important expressions — and for me the whole world had narrowed to two yellow eyes in their frame of darkened lids. "Good to know."
"M-Mal—" The moment I said it, the long playful tail went still, then began swishing harder from side to side.
"Malevola—" I tried again.
"No. I liked the first one better." While no one was watching, she pressed a kiss to my cheek — and took a handful of my backside, which I chose not to object to under any circumstances. "Come on. Back to the others."
She released me, and walked toward the rest of the team, moving at her own unhurried pace. Halfway there she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder — with a warm, private smile I had never seen on her before.
"And Herman." A pause. "Do that more often."
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