Certified Superhero (Misfits #2)

7: i'm not a workaholic

Stones turned out to be more friendly in the dark with a mask. I kept a few contacts in the district, but they only knew me in the full superhero ensemble. Most of them were store clerks who agreed to help out kids caught in bad situations if I needed to drop someone off in a safe house for the night. Truly nice men and women when I knocked on their window in a shiny jumpsuit and told them I couldn't offer them anything other than the satisfaction of helping their community. Reason stood that they would be that nice to a girl in street clothes with the same offer.

Not so much.

Leandra owned a game store that was already doing good for the community before I asked for her help. I had read about her in a profile in the Nova City Times. She did a lot of work with the youth and ran a lot of fundraisers. And her shop was one of the busiest places in the district. She knew everything about everyone who set foot in the store.

A bell rang above the door when I pushed inside. Leandra was at the front desk and looked up from her comic book to give me a glance over. She was getting on in her years although she didn't look like it. The only sign of her age was the slow salt and peppering of her hair. Her reading glasses were at the end of her nose and her dark black eyes peered at me like she knew exactly who I was.

Before I could abort the mission, Diana pushed me inside in front of her. "Why did you drag us here?" She glanced around the small main entry of the store thoroughly unimpressed. "Aren't we supposed to be looking for clues?"

"What are you looking for clues for?" Leandra asked from her seat. Her comic was face down on the table, clearly abandoned.

"School project," I said without a bit of consideration.

There was that look again. She glanced at the two of us up and down. We weren't exactly teenage causal. Both Diana and I had relatively sparse wardrobes. Mostly professional wear for the office and pajamas for any other event. We had ditched the PJ pants for the most casual business wear we could find. A sweater and dressy jeans combo for me and a blouse and pants for Diana. It didn't scream we just got back from six hours of high school.

I glanced at my watch. Crap. If we were supposed to be students, we would have been in the middle of class right now.

I take back everything I said, I am a terrible liar.

"It's for Plaza Prep," Diana smoothly covered. Leandra's look turned into a stink eye. "We just want to look at more local business outside of our district."

The smile Leandra gave us was not the friendly one that I saw in the newspaper or the one she gave me when I was a new superhero asking for help. This was protective but not of the two of us. She looked at whatever few patrons were wandering the aisles of her store. "Don't be causing too much trouble."

"No, ma'am, we won't," I said and dragged Diana into the far corner of the store between a Dungeons and Dragons display and an aisle of intricate puzzles.

"I'd like to repeat my question of why you decided to spend our only day off here, but I have a feeling you're about to explain everything to me."

"Like always, you are right." She preened at the compliment. "Leandra is one of my contacts as a vigilante," I whispered. There might not have been a lot of people in the store, but it would only take one person to blow my cover and turn me into the next disaster DC duo. "Mel at the office said some weird things were happening around Stones, so I thought she would be able to help us out a bit more. But now we look like rich kid outsiders who only think about the shop as a charity case."

"C'mon, you can totally work that angle. You're a self proclaimed master of deception. I have heard plenty of your stories from Paramount Lake. Even when nobody liked you, you could get them to do whatever you wanted."

I pretended to study one of the puzzles. It was an aerial shot of Nova City, each building was a tiny piece the size of my fingernail. "I may have embellished those stories a little. And my therapist said that I needed to work on my lying. It's becoming a little compulsive. Like this morning when I said that work was canceled because of a plumbing problem? That was a lie."

She whacked me on the shoulder. "Am I ditching work right now?"

"No. The building is still closed, just not for plumbing."

"Anna why is-"

"Not important," I glanced back at Leandra. A young kid who looked more like they should be in school than Diana or me was chatting about a board game they were holding. For the first time since we entered the shop, Leandra wasn't keeping a close eye on us. "We're going to get a little info and then you're going to help me break into the police station."

She yelped a little when I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the arcade situated in a corner that was easily visible from Leandra's station. The arcade was more like three ancient games that usually didn't work. The high scores couldn't have changed in the past decade. But I wasn't interested in the machines, just the corkboard where community projects were posted.

The last time I had been in the shop to escort some young dealer in training to a safe place to spend the night, the board was mostly covered in notices from local clubs and after school programs the district scraped together funding for.

Today it looked completely different.

Plastered across the top and bottom of the board were missing children posters. 

Let's look at the clues: Mr. Relentless, a possible break in at the Conspiracy, and missing children posters. What do you think is happening in Nova City? And how are Anna and Diana going to stop it?

m nicole