Dreams of the Golden Age

TWELVE

DIRECTOR Benitez must have called Mom about her falling asleep in class—she certainly threatened to—but Anna couldn’t figure out why Celia didn’t confront her about it. Instead, Mom had shown up at her door with that weird, probing conversation. Not that Anna was complaining. But it was becoming clear that everyone around here was acting wonky, and Anna was afraid it was her fault. She was the one throwing the family off, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

She splashed cold water on her face to try to keep it from looking so worn and trod very quietly for the rest of the evening, hoping no one would notice her. Dinner was tense. Not even Bethy talked but kept looking at everyone as if waiting for them all to explode. Anna wasn’t going to be the one to light that fuse.

And Dad just kept watching her. She repeated her favorite insipid pop song to herself over and over again, filling her mind with it, so he couldn’t possibly see what was really there. His wry smile when he finally looked away was downright insulting, like he knew her tricks and saw right through them. He was just waiting for her to crack, and she wouldn’t. She refused.

She and Teddy didn’t have an outing planned that night, and Anna had the luxury of a long, splendid sleep.

The morning brought the news that the case against Scarzen had been dismissed and the guy walked. The defense lawyer argued that the evidence was obtained illegally. The DA argued that the anonymous tip gave probable cause that allowed the police to search the premises. Defense came back to say that because no one knew how the original tip was obtained, it could not be admissible, and therefore the subsequent police search was illegal. And the judge threw it out.

“The judge is crooked, want to bet?” Teddy said at school. “Scarzen must have paid him off.”

Anna thought he might be onto something. Everyone knew he was guilty, so how had he been let go on a technicality? Anna looked it up. There’d been other cases where evidence obtained by anonymous tips, or even provided covertly by superhuman vigilantes, had decided cases, so why throw such evidence out now? Crooked judge. Made perfect sense, because if the justice system were infallible, the city wouldn’t need superheroes.

They made a plan to spy on the judge that night. They figured there must be some evidence of a payoff, which meant bank statements or deposit stubs. Probably made as anonymously as possible. Maybe they only had to point out that the deposit was there and let the authorities take over. Teddy could go insubstantial, reach into any safes the guy had, and pull out any records. Paper was light enough he ought to be able to make it go insubstantial, like he did with his clothing.

“We can’t send it to the cops,” Teddy decided. “It’s not like they’ll thank us for helping after the last time.”

Anna asked, “Well, then, assuming we get the evidence, who do we give it to?”

“How about the Commerce Eye?” Teddy said. And why not?

She researched the judge, Roland, found his house—a very nice brownstone in the Upper Hill neighborhood. They would stand out, walking around in all black, so they’d have to keep to backstreets to get there. She studied his pictures, his schedule, whatever she could glean from websites and news stories. Fortunately, with the news about the case being dismissed there was quite a lot out there. He didn’t have much in his history suggesting he’d been bought by the drug lord. He was considered fair, if a bit of a hard-liner. Maybe they were wrong about him, and Scarzen really had been let go for a good reason. Maybe they were just looking for trouble. But that wasn’t what her instincts said. And one thing all the superhero memoirs said—and even her mother when she was talking about a business deal—was that you should listen to your instincts. If something didn’t feel right, it meant something was probably wrong.

Unless you were a paranoid schizophrenic like Plasma. But never mind.

If they didn’t find anything at Judge Roland’s house, then no harm, no foul. But if they did, they were justified.

They were getting better at this. Anna hesitated to call them “good” just yet. But they didn’t have to spend as much time on logistics, and they no longer fumbled putting on their masks.

They made excuses about studying at the library for a group project and took the bus. With her power, Anna had a bead on the judge, who was due to be out of the house for a legal society dinner, along with his wife. He was a social guy and went out most nights, they didn’t have any live-in staff and their kids were grown and out of the house, so the place would be empty. It would also likely have an alarm—so they wouldn’t go in through the door. Teddy would climb the fire escape behind the building and phase through the back wall.

Anna played a more active role this time, as lookout rather than just navigator. They had exactly until the Rolands returned home from their dinner, and Anna would have to say when that was. Teddy would set his phone to vibrate, and she’d call him to give a warning.

They arrived earlier than they expected and had to wait in the clean-swept alley behind the brownstones for the Rolands to leave. They seemed to take forever, and she and Teddy huddled in the shadow next to a Dumpster.

She explained for the millionth time the kind of thing he needed to look for: bank statements, hidden safes, weird-looking deposit slips, anything that didn’t look like it belonged. Take pictures of everything, put it all back the way he found it.

“How am I supposed to know what’s weird looking?” he argued in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” she argued back. “Haven’t you ever seen a bank statement or balance sheet? They just look a certain way.”

“Easy for you to say, your mom’s a financial genius. My parents are a librarian and a mechanic, I’ve never seen a bank statement in my life.”

She sighed. “You’re looking for numbers with a lot of zeros after them.”

“Okay, fine. Are they gone yet?”

They were lingering by the front door, and she couldn’t tell why, only that they weren’t moving. “No.”

They sat side by side on the concrete pavement. The ground was cold, and the air had a crystalline feel to it, like it was about to snow. She thought of Teia, but Lady Snow and the Trinity weren’t out tonight. They were at home, where they were catching up on sleep like sane people. She and Teia hadn’t talked in days. Anna kept waiting for her friend to call, but she never did, and Anna didn’t want to be the one to back down.

She wrapped her coat tighter around her and hugged her knees. Teddy started tapping his foot. The alley was quiet, which should have been a relief. No one was going to find them back here. But she’d be happier once they had what they came for and moved on.

When she shivered, Teddy looked at her a moment, then said, “Here,” and stretched his arm over her shoulders.

Her first thought was to shrug him away, but his arm settled against her, and it was warm. She just had to scoot an inch or two to be sitting right against him, so she did. His arm tightened around her, just a little. Her heart pounded, she was blushing, and then she felt a lot warmer. She couldn’t really look at him. He didn’t move, as if he worried that even twitching a muscle would make her flinch away. But she’d stopped shivering, so she huddled with him and didn’t say a word.

After five or so minutes, Teddy whispered, “Um, Anna, can I ask you something?”

She forgot to chastise him for using her real name. “Yeah?”

“I know it’s early to be thinking about, a few months out yet, but I was wondering, if you wanted to go to prom this spring, would you maybe want to go with me?”

For some reason, in that moment, she thought about Eliot and immediately felt guilty for it. “Um…” she stammered and tried to come up with a response, because she hadn’t thought much about prom—except when she’d met Eliot in the gym, and she didn’t really want to think about that right now. It was still months away, like Teddy said. And she honestly hadn’t thought about Teddy. Not until he put his arm around her, anyway, and now they were sitting here and she was having trouble focusing—

Judge Roland and his wife were gone, out of the house.

“Hey, they’re gone, it’s time!”

She shoved him to his feet. He looked stricken, staying rooted for a moment like he really was going to wait for an answer, but she gave him a push, and he nodded, vanishing before he’d gone two steps toward the brownstone.

She was alone in the alley, but she heard his footsteps slapping ahead into silence.

She waited, again. The air felt much colder without Teddy’s arm around her. She had to think about that, what it meant, and what her answer was going to be. They were trying to fight crime, she didn’t want to think about fancy gowns and awkward school dances.

She imagined how disappointed he’d look if she told him no, and she didn’t want that either. God, why’d he have to bring that up tonight? Couldn’t he have waited until daylight when both of them were dressed like normal people? No, he had to wait until he was dressed as Ghost, because then he had all the courage.

Tracking his progress, she followed him up the fire escape to the third floor, where Judge Roland had his home office. Teddy phased through the wall, which meant he didn’t trigger the burglar alarm, which was wired to the doors and windows. Anna held her phone closer, in case he needed her.

She’d about decided he didn’t need her help at all when her phone vibrated, and she clicked it on. “Rose, hey Rose.”

“Yeah,” she pressed the button and answered.

“There’s a safe in here, I reached in and managed to phase a bunch of papers out, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“Anything that looks like a bank deposit slip, anything that shows a lot of round numbers in a column. Lots of zeros,” she reminded him.

“It all has lots of zeros,” he said, plaintive.

She sighed. “Then just take pictures of it all. You remembered to put on your gloves, right?”

“Of course I did.”

She checked in with Judge Roland—still out and not anywhere near the town house. They were safe, with time to spare. Teddy was rushing down the fire escape, still invisible, and she mentally tracked his progress.

“Boo!” his voice burst, right next to her.

Unflinching, she glared at the place he was standing. “I can sense where you are, you know.”

He flashed visible and looked crestfallen. “One of these days I’m going sneak up on you.”

“Right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here before somebody spots us.”

They took off their jackets and masks, shoved them into their packs, transforming them back into normal teenagers who probably shouldn’t have been out this late but who probably wouldn’t get called on it. Five blocks away, they found a bus, and from there went to the Internet café they’d used before. Open twenty-four hours—Anna had checked. She gratefully ordered a coffee and gripped it tight to warm up her hands.

They found a booth in back of the café and made sure not to talk too loud. She scrolled through the pictures on Teddy’s phone, e-mailed them to herself, and used one of the Internet kiosks to print out the most likely looking documents of the bunch. The images were mostly not too blurry.

From a distance, the pages that Teddy arranged on the table looked like homework. Anna took a glance around the café, which was doing a pretty brisk business for ten o’clock at night. The patrons were diverse, from the punk-looking guys at the counter to the scattered nondescript blue-collar types getting off one shift or another. A pair of uniformed cops occupied a booth at the far end of the shop, and Anna’s heartbeat sped up. But they weren’t paying any attention to her, and she quickly turned away.

Did this ever get less stressful? Her grandmother never struck her as someone who’d spent a significant amount of her life stressed out—so how did you be a superhero without freaking out every time you saw a cop? Yet another thing to work on.

Teddy unhappily shook his head at the spread of pages. “I have no idea if this is going to do us any good. Wow, does that much money even exist?” He pointed at the number on what must have been a retirement account statement.

Anna turned the sheet around and looked at it. The amount wasn’t that big—well, not West Corp big. Anna had a rough idea what her mother’s company was worth, and this was a drop in that bucket. But she didn’t say that. She bit her lip and didn’t say a word about how much her family was worth. Teddy was at Elmwood on a scholarship.

Compared to the average, Judge Roland made a good living, a good annual salary as a judge for the city court. She’d looked up how much he ought to be making so she’d be able to compare, and the first few bank statements and the retirement account Teddy had commented on—for a city pension fund—lined up with that. Nothing looked unusual.

Until she got to a second set of statements. Foreign bank transfers and accompanying records. Roland might have had a good explanation for having this; she didn’t know enough to be able to tell. But did one guy, even a high-ranking city judge, really ever make three six-figure money transfers in the space of two weeks? All after the date of Scarzen’s arrest?

“I think this is it.” She showed Teddy, who studied the page with a blank look. She couldn’t tell if he understood. “Trust me, this is it.”

“How do you even know this stuff?” Teddy said.

“I don’t know. Osmosis or something.” Every school day, her whole life, she’d go to her mother’s office and give her report. Used to be, she’d spend more than a scant few seconds there, trying to detach from the situation as quickly as she could. Used to be, her mother would have her work spread everywhere, printouts with arcane lists of numbers, highlighted with colors or marked with bold, and Anna would ask, “What’s that?” And Celia never said, “It’s nothing, never mind.” Celia always told her, showing her what the pages were and what they did. She never learned what a balance sheet was, she always just knew. Her and Bethy both, but Bethy was the one who’d probably follow in Celia’s footsteps and take over the business.

Anna never thought she’d actually need to know what a financial statement was. But suddenly she did, and she knew these looked squirrelly. Mom would know what the oddness meant. The judge had never been investigated—he’d never needed to be. He was smart enough to pay his taxes and not flaunt the windfall that exceeded his income. But a large amount of money was tucked away, waiting for retirement in another country.

She put the suspicious pages on top of the stack, shoved the whole thing into an envelope, and left the coffee shop for the Eye’s offices. Before handing it off to Teddy, Anna included a note in the package signed in large, anonymous block letters: “Espionage.”

Teddy looked at it. “That’s it? That’s our team name? They’ll think it’s one person, not a team.”

“Better to throw them off our track, right?” she said, grinning.

He said, “I kind of like it.”

The Eye’s main office was open twenty-four hours, reporters and staff working late, but after concentrating herself into a headache, Anna was able to tell Teddy where the people were and which parts of the building he had to avoid. The editor in chief was gone for the night. Her office was empty. Teddy entered through a back wall and left the package there, then retreated along darkened hallways to the back alley where Anna was waiting for him.

“I think we’re getting better at this,” Teddy said brightly as they walked back to the bus routes they’d take home.

“That’ll depend on what happens tomorrow,” she said, unconvinced. Hopeful, but not sure that the Eye would believe the evidence they’d handed over.

“So. Um. You have a chance to think about what I asked?”

On the contrary, she had purposefully ignored the question. She pursed her lips and considered. “Can you maybe ask me again when we aren’t running around all sleep deprived and wearing ski masks? When we’re not being Ghost and Compass Rose, I mean.”

“Yeah sure, okay, I can do that,” he said. But he had that crestfallen expression she’d been trying to avoid.

They split up and headed for home after monosyllabic farewells.

Anna woke up early to check the Eye website, Rooftop Watch, and other superhero groupie sites. She figured what was most likely: The Eye wouldn’t publish anything about Judge Roland’s corruption without doing some checking. So there wouldn’t be anything. But that wasn’t what happened.

“Who Is Espionage?”

That was the headline and lead story, accompanied by a photo of the note she’d written. It was a shock to see her note as front-page news. But a kinda cool shock. The scoop about the judge was there in a side article, along with various comments about the judge not responding to repeated phone calls and the word “alleged” in front of everything. The Eye also printed a bunch of additional information, stuff she and Teddy hadn’t delivered—so the paper had been keeping its own file on Roland for years and already had a stack of allegations. They published the new scoop because it gave them the concrete proof they needed to go public.

But the story the Eye was most interested in was Commerce City’s newest and most mysterious hero. The article was filled with speculation and quotes from police and professional superhero watchers, academics and psychologists. The article drew the line between this and the original evidence collected against Scarzen and suggested that maybe it was a personal vendetta. One of the commentators got close to the mark, speculating that Espionage’s power must have been geared toward “clandestine activities”—a phrase Teddy would probably latch on to. Invisibility, teleportation, and mind control were all suggested.

Nobody suggested that Espionage could be more than one person. Anna couldn’t have come up with a better disguise than that in a million years.

But there was no sign that anything was going to happen to Judge Roland. Roland reported a theft from his house to the police, but the police investigated and couldn’t find any sign of a break-in, no busted locks, not so much as a fingerprint, and Roland wouldn’t give an inventory of exactly what had been taken. He claimed only that items in his safe had clearly been tampered with. Roland’s lawyer threatened a libel suit, but the Eye countered with the evidence it had in hand, and the police promised to launch an investigation, and the story faded to sidebars and afterthoughts.

No instant gratification was forthcoming. But the Eye managed to find something to say about Espionage every day for a week. So they were famous, sort of. And once again, the attempt to do good hadn’t worked out like it was supposed to. Maybe she just ought to learn kung fu and start punching people out directly. Somehow, that didn’t appeal.

“We have to go patrolling again. Tonight,” Teddy insisted, during lunch. “Keep up the momentum.”

They were sitting in one corner, and Anna kept glancing at Teia, Lew, Sam, and a couple of other people who were sitting in another corner, laughing about something or other while eating sandwiches and pizza. Probably not superpowered stuff, because of the civilians there. And she was thinking of their nonpowered classmates as civilians. She was going insane.

“I don’t know. I’m really tired,” she said, picking at her food.

“You want to let them keep having all the fun?” His gaze darted to the corner where the sometime Trinity was having an ordinary high-school lunch.

“Teddy, that’s not the point, how many times do I have to say it.”

“We can do more, Anna, I know we can. But we have to get out there.”

He hadn’t asked her about prom again. He’d completely forgotten about it, or he really didn’t have the guts to look her in the eye and tell her he liked her. She thought about asking him about it—reminding him. But a perverse part of her didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She didn’t want to seem that needy. It all felt so ridiculous.

“If that’s how you feel, why don’t you just go do it on your own?” she said.

“Because we’re a team.” Like it was obvious. His expression was clean, stark, not a lick of deception there. Her heart melted a bit. “Look, we head back to Hell’s Alley and I bring my paint gun like last time, since that actually worked out pretty well…” He rambled on for a little while with an even more ambitious version of the paintball-tagging scenario, while she thoughtfully chewed her sandwich. They made plans about where and when to meet, and whether they should think about putting together some better-looking outfits. Since they weren’t likely to get their pictures taken anywhere, Anna didn’t know why it mattered. But it did, so there.

If they were going to go on patrol, she thought, they needed more than a paint gun. They needed to be intimidating. They needed more power.

They finished eating and gathered up their things to leave for next period.

“So…” she said carefully, testing. “I wondered if it would be okay if I invited someone else along.”

“Who?”

“You remember the guy from the park that one time? The jumper?”

Teddy froze, like he needed a minute to process what she’d said. “Frogger? That guy? Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to him.”

“Yeah, so what if I have?”

“It’s just … we don’t know anything about him. Are you sure he’s a good guy?”

She knew exactly where Teddy was coming from on that one, but she breezed past it. “I think he can help us. We can really use someone powerful. Some muscle.” And boy, did Eliot have muscle. He still hadn’t e-mailed her, though.

“And you trust him?”

“I trust him enough,” she said, which was a terribly evasive answer.

“Well, I don’t. Sign up Toad Man? No way.”

“Jealous?”

He glared. “What? Why would I be jealous.”

“You know, you were supposed to ask me again if I want to go to prom with you. You know, when we’re not wearing masks in a back alley at midnight.” That sounded a lot kinkier than it really was. Her life probably looked a lot more exciting from the outside.

“Okay, um.” He winced, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah. So. Um. Do you … I mean, I guess you’ve had time to think about it and all. So, will you maybe go to prom with me?”

She thought about Eliot, and let that thought go. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Um. Okay. Cool.” He actually looked startled.

What were they supposed to do now? Hug? Shake hands? Make out? Um …

The chimes for next period rang, and they both made nervous, grateful chuckles.

“I’ll see you tonight, then,” he said, waving awkwardly and backing away.

“Yeah, see you.” Her waving was just as awkward.

She started to walk to her own next class, mostly because she felt Teia coming up behind her and wanted to get away. But Teia grabbed her arm.

“Anna, can I talk to you?” Teia said.

“I’m really busy right now.” She sighed, letting more frustration edge into her voice than she meant.

“This is important,” she said, sounding just as frustrated and increasing her pace to keep up with Anna’s retreat.

“We’re late for class.”

“Two seconds. Please.”

At that, Anna let Teia pull her into a corner. “I read the top news on the Eye this morning. Nice work.”

Anna supposed that if you actually knew her and Teddy, the identity of the most mysterious superhero ever was pretty obvious. What she couldn’t tell was if Teia was being sarcastic. A sneering observation of how little they were really able to do. She didn’t want to engage.

“You going to blow our cover?” she said, not able to sound entirely neutral.

“Nope. Code of honor. You haven’t blown ours, right?”

Was that what it was? Honor was what drove Teia to make headlines? No, they were all just making it up as they went along.

“But that’s not what I want to ask you about. When you guys have been out, have you noticed a lot of cops around? Maybe not a lot of cops. But maybe a patrol car driving by, or they just happen to show up right after you bag a bad guy. And I mean right after.”

Not that she and Teddy bagged all that many bad guys, but she didn’t have to say that. “I don’t know. Except now that you mention it…” She’d noticed the cops mostly to avoid them and felt grateful every time a patrol car passed by without stopping. Which happened almost every time she’d been out doing the vigilante thing, hadn’t it? She looked at Teia. “It’s a coincidence, it has to be. Commerce City has a lot of cops.”

“I’m telling you, every damn time we nail somebody, the cops are right there with handcuffs as soon as we call, like they were ready for it. It’s been the same for you, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t know…”

“I think the cops are on to us. I think they’re watching us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’d have to know…” They’d have to know when the Trinity and Espionage were out on patrol, and to know that, the cops would have to know who they all were.

“I know that look, you know something.”

“No, I don’t.” Yes, she did. Her mother knew everything and had recruited the cops to babysit them all. The only reason they hadn’t been arrested yet was because Celia West told them not to.

“Anna—”

“I have to get to class.”

“Anna! Don’t walk off on me like that—”

Anna was too angry—not at Teia, not at all—to do anything but walk away.