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Kid Mercury started slow. Entry-level stuff. Willing to work hard and learn, sir. Willing to work his way up. Purse snatchers and missing dogs, treed kittens and all that Sunday funny papers shit. We settled on silver and dark blue for the costume. Full body, mask and all. As aerodynamic as Francine’s Fabric Depot and my wheezing dumpster-find Singer could manage. The first time he stopped a mugging, we went out for margaritas and sang karaoke in Koreatown till dawn. Tommy could do a surprisingly good boy-band croon. The first time he stopped a murder, we just walked out to the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and stood there, looking at the stars and not saying anything—because what could you say? The traffic dopplered by behind us. We stared down into the water. Three months later, I was going to die down there. In that filthy river. In the dark, in the light.
Dr. Augustus noticed Tom’s good mood. Our tardiness. My distraction. He started following us. He was very good at it. I never saw. Tom never saw. When you’re looking for muggers, you don’t see the professor of music keeping watch two blocks behind. Dr. A had spent a long time overseas, learning to follow suspicious persons unseen through urban mazes. He never came at anything straight on.
“Come to dinner with me tonight, Paige,” the professor said one day after the final. We both knew I’d aced it, despite everything. Back then, I could still be proud of a victory as small as an aced final. He slipped his good arm around my waist.
“I’m not sure that’s completely appropriate, Dr. Augustus,” I said, and laughed a little, opening the door for him to pretend it was a joke.
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sp; “Nonsense, my dear. My interest is utterly professional, I promise. And please, call me Alastair.”
He picked me up at eight. Tom worried. We always worried about each other. For people as tightly wound as us, worry is love.
“It’s weird. Don’t you think it’s weird? It’s pretty weird,” Kid Mercury fretted, the hood of his costume hanging down the back of his neck, his hair artfully mussed, the way I liked it.
“Have you ever met a pianist who isn’t weird? Let alone a one-handed pianist who wears bow ties and has muttonchops. He probably just wants to get some free work-study hours out of me. Besides, you’re hardly Captain Normal these days.”
Kid Mercury gave me one of his perfect patented sidelong grins. “I am Captain Normal, thank you very much! Captain Normal of the Average Army, recipient of the Totally Regular Guy Medal of Honor.”
I kissed him and pulled on my only really nice piece of clothing, a green velvet coat with real fox fur around the collar. My dad found it tossed on some glitterati trash bin. It only had a little stain on the fur and a few missing buttons. He’d fixed it up for Christmas for me. I stepped, in velvet and fur, out the door of Tom’s apartment and into Dr. Augustus’s car.
He bought me dinner first; I’ll give him that. A golden French river of butter and garlic and game birds and champagne. We talked about his music. About my ambitions. About Tom. Quite a bit about Tom, really, but it’s hard to see ominous patterns through champagne specs. After the crème brûlée, Alastair Augustus, PhD, opened the door of his long black sedan for me. I collapsed in a heap on the seat.
When he slid in beside me, he locked the doors.
I felt those locks click in my sternum, in the pit of my stomach. Every girl knows what that sound means. There’s only a few choices left, once that vicious little church bell rings out. I still hear that sound over and over inside me, click, click, click.
“Where are we going?” I asked, fishing down into my gut for sobriety and coming up empty.
“Where else, Miss Embry? I’m taking you home. What sort of man do you think I am?”
No one would be home. It wasn’t Frosty Frogs time yet. Mom would be at the hospital and Dad would be down at the depot, signing out his truck. I shrank against the seat. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be clever. So I was. We stopped at a red light. I gulped air. In air is courage. I pulled my pocketknife out of my purse and jammed it in Dr. A’s leg, then scrabbled at the lock, yanked it up, and stumbled out onto 6th Ave. But brave and clever isn’t necessarily fast. I couldn’t streak out over the city and run to New Jersey in forty-five seconds flat. Alastair Augustus whipped out his good hand and grabbed my hair in his fist. My hair and the fox-fur collar of Dad’s Christmas coat. I hit my head on the roof of the car as he hauled me back in and leaned over to shut the door again.
“That’s not how good girls behave, Paige,” he said calmly, as though he’d caught me chewing gum in class. “And I know you are a good girl, so I expect you to act like one. Good girls want to please, Paige. Good girls do as they’re told. And girls who are very good get sweets. Now, are you going to be a good girl for me?”
I kept my mouth shut, because what the fuck do you say to that? My head throbbed.
Dr. Augustus went on. His eyes looked so flat in the streetlights. “I’ll tell you what else a good girl does. A good girl takes her gentleman friend into her house without any fuss. A good girl plays the hostess to a T. She brings out the very best for her guest. She goes to her nasty little hiding place and fetches whatever it is she gave to her moronic boyfriend to make him special. And she brings it out on a silver tray, Paige, because a good girl only gives up her treats to men who deserve it, real men, not skinny, sniveling weaklings who sit around on their computers all day. Do you understand, Paige? Are you a good girl?”
“No,” I whispered. “I’m not.” I didn’t cry. Don’t let anyone tell you I cried.
“Pity,” sighed Alastair. “The world has run out of good girls. Whores like you are all that’s left. But the nice thing about whores?” He leaned in. His breath smelled like the soft pale green after-dinner mints from the restaurant. “Whores give it up to everyone.”
He came around to my side of the car and hauled me out by my hair, winding it around his knuckles. I felt the mouth of a gun against my back. Dr. Augustus shoved me through my own front door.
“Get me what I want, Paige. If you can’t be a good girl, be a good dog. Fetch Daddy his slippers. Go on.”
A voice came out of the shadows. “Did you two have a nice time? I hope you tipped the waitress.”
Tom Thatcher, my Tom, Kid Mercury, leaned against the door of my bedroom, a hint of silver fabric showing under a soft black hoodie. I yelped in relief, an ugly, doglike sound. Tom glared at Dr. Augustus with diamond eyes. “They rely on tips, you know. They take care of you; you take care of them.” A pool of quicksilver formed under his feet, angry and ready.
Alastair pulled his gun out of my spine so fast, I hardly had time to shout before he fired—twice. Once directly between Tom’s eyes. Once left, wildly wide. Kid Mercury vanished before the first bullet even got near his forehead—and took the second in his shoulder. He collapsed onto the floor.
“Idiot. You have no training,” the professor said as he stepped over Tom into my room. “You always dodge to the left. Rookie mistake. Predictable patterns only serve your enemy. Now, Paige, show me your hiding place or it’s two in the head this time.”
I didn’t show him. I didn’t. You can say I wasn’t fast enough. You can say I wasn’t brave enough. But I didn’t give in. I pressed my hand hard against Tom’s wound to stanch the bleeding. I didn’t even look at Augustus.
