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“Things must be bad,” Edilio said, half joking. Then, “You look good, Dekka.”
“Oh, so sad to see you’ve taken up lying. You used to be so honest.”
Edilio laughed. “Seriously. Good to see you, Big D.” He reached for and took her hand, and neither of them broke contact for many miles.
“You may not feel that way once you know why I’ve dragged you here.” She gave him a rundown of the situation, gratified that Edilio didn’t interrupt or protest. He just sat quietly absorbing facts, nodding, occasionally asking for some small clarification.
The four years they’d been in different worlds now seemed no more substantial than a quickly forgotten dream. Edilio had never been deported, never worked as a desk clerk; that was someone else. He was not Edilio of the Quinta Real, he was Edilio of Perdido Beach. Edilio of the FAYZ. He felt it as a physical weight settling on his shoulders, a weight made of responsibility, fear, regret, and determination. An elastic band of tension wrapped around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs, making his heart labor for each leaden beat. Even his vision changed, becoming predatory, eyes searching for threats, ready to trip the alarm that would dump the oh-so-familiar shot of adrenaline into his arteries.
Edilio of the FAYZ.
“So,” he said, forcing an upbeat tone. “You want me to help organize a group of superpowered vigilantes. Is that pretty much it?”
“Pretty much. It’s not the kind of job where I can just call a temp service or advertise on Craigslist, you know?”
“And this group of superpowered vigilantes includes a supersmart but ruthless girl who can outrun a bullet, an equally smart guy who isn’t entirely real and can project excruciating pain, a big guy who can turn into a sort of polar bear, a trans girl who can change her appearance at will, and a girl who can travel back and forth into some n-dimensional space.”
“Don’t forget Simone. She’s blue, she can fly, and her father is the very supervillain we’re after.”
Edilio smiled. “You know, I was just getting used to the fact that I would never return to the States. And now you’re asking me to be Agent Coulson.”
“Huh?”
“Agent Coulson.” Edilio shook his head in mock disapproval. “You know, Dekka, if you’re going to be living in a comic book . . . Coulson was the character who sort of organized the Avengers. He was killed in a movie and came back to life for a TV series.”
“If you say so,” Dekka agreed dubiously. “You and Malik will get along. He’s our comics guy.”
Edilio fell silent, thinking, as they crossed the bridge into Manhattan. Then he said, “We need a place, we need money, and I need to know what allies and resources we have.”
“The mayor of New York has our back,” Dekka said. “Simone has fifty grand—don’t even ask. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs and I are practically on a first-name basis. And we have a brownstone.”
“It’s a start,” Edilio allowed. “The other thing we need is weapons.”
“Weapons? We are weapons.”
Edilio shrugged. “You couldn’t take down the bug man, because your powers are great, but not for fighting a cloud of insects. You needed poison. Or a flamethrower.”
He became aware that Dekka was smiling at him, and Dekka smiling was a rare occurrence.
“What were you doing when we came barging into your life?” she asked.
“I was working the front desk of a hotel. I speak English, and a lot of the tourists are American.”
“And here you are, already plotting and planning.” More seriously she added, “Sorry, man. Really.”
Edilio leaned close as if about to divulge a great secret. “You know, Dekka, I really wasn’t all that crazy about being a desk clerk.”
“There’s a pretty good chance you get yourself killed doing this.”
“Enh,” he said with a shrug. “Lots of people have wanted me dead. Drake. Caine. Gaia herself. I’m not so easy to kill.”
And silently to himself added, Don’t tempt fate, Edilio.
CHAPTER 22
Normal Is No Longer with Us
THE LOCATION EDILIO obtained from the mayor was the Park Avenue Armory. The armory had long since ceased to be an actual depository for weapons and was now a collection of elaborately decorated reception rooms, spaces for art exhibitions, and a fantastically big “drill hall,” an enclosed space that looked like it could be used for the reception after a royal wedding. From the outside, it was a massive redbrick structure fronting on Park Avenue, conveniently just a block from the nearest Starbucks on Sixty-Sixth Street.
