My father didn't like not being present in person, that I could tell, but he gave his reluctant agreement, prompting me to switch him over to speaker phone. "Can you hear me alright?"
"You're fine," he dismissed my question. "What's this about a plan?"
Ren stepped closer to better be heard. "Not a plan, as of yet. Think of this more like strong advice given by people who make situations like these their expertise." He met Tempest's eyes as he said the last part. "Your cooperation will lead to the most ideal situation for all parties involved, one where ideally we capture the villain Nightshade, and Lily here never need worry over her safety ever again."
"What would you 'ideally' want me to cooperate with?" I asked, suspicious by default.
Ren made a show of flipping through his clipboard, a move almost definitely for theatrical purposes rather than out of necessity. "Ah. Here we are. After long deliberation, the Constable and the other Guild Elders believe it wise for us to keep your return and subsequent good health private. And yes," he held up a hand to silence my incoming protests, "we do know that won't suddenly trick Nightshade into believing you're still stuck in the forest, not after all he did to get you back to us. As tempting as it was to confirm your demise and put you into witness protection, your very public disappearance has earned you a certain... celebrity status that would make you re-entering society under a new identity uniquely difficult."
Unable to hold back any longer, I burst out, "You wanted to kill me off?"
Tempest let out a light laugh. "Nothing so drastic. It would only have lasted until we put a stop to Shade, then you could resume your old life in peace."
I blew out a noticeably doubtful breath. "Good luck with that. Leigh and I have gotten closer to incapacitating Shade than your people ever have, and all it did was make him mad. I stabbed him twice, threw him off a cliff, and tried to strangle him in his sleep," I cringed at the last embarrassing memory, "nothing worked. Leigh even hit him over the head with a glass bottle. If anything, he seemed more powerful than ever afterwards."
More unhinged, I didn't want to say.
"Who's this Leigh?" Ren interjected, strategically avoiding my entire point with tactical precision.
"It's her friend," Tempest replied automatically. Either he somehow caught her name while rescuing her off the school building, or there was a file on me somewhere doing a rotation among the Supers. Personally, I hoped the former was true.
"Let's say we did conceal her safe return, what good does that do?" my dad asked, his voice bursting through my train of thought.
"I'm glad you asked." Ren leaned closer to better be heard through the line. "By not pushing her out into the open again and keeping her return quiet, the first benefit is that Shade would have no idea where she is hiding at any given time."
I couldn't help my skepticism. "Wouldn't the more reasonable alternative be to announce I'm okay, but keep me hidden regardless?"
After saying that, however, I mentally gave myself a good wake-up slap. Why was I offering suggestions? I really didn't want to spend the foreseeable future locked away in a Guild endorsed panic room until they MAYBE got the chance to apprehend Shade. What if it never happened?
"That would be another decent alternative," Ren agreed. "However, we're curious how Nightshade will react, not knowing anything about your status. We've been asking ourselves, if he attains no new information about you, what would he do, and how would that affect his plans?"
The room was quiet while I processed that information, Tempest and Ren both carefully analyzing my face for a hint at my thoughts. Then my dad spoke.
"This plan still involves taking her away, doesn't it?"
Tempest and Ren shared a loaded look. "Well, yes," Ren began. "But it's also in the best interest of her safety—"
"No," came my dad's immediate, firm response. Unbudging.
"Again, sir, this is your daughter's decision," Ren tried once more, but I delighted at my father's resistance and jumped at the chance to agree with him.
"No," I echoed cheerfully. "It wouldn't work anyway. "Shade knows I'm alive. He brought me to the hospital himself, after all. Plus, Alexia can't keep a secret to save her life. The only reason she hasn't said anything yet is because she's out of school and she hasn't been able to go anywhere. That won't last two months, let alone until Shade slips up enough to get caught."
"Hmm... yes, I suppose that is true." For whatever reason, Ren didn't seem terribly put out by the news, pulling a phone from his slacks and firing off a quick text as he spoke. He pocketed the device. "Onto Plan B, then."
Sounding wary, my dad prodded, "What does that entail?"
"In simple terms? Since neither of you want her to be safely hidden out of the way, she's essentially choosing to be live bait. We can do our best to minimize the danger, but eliminating it will be impossible so long as she's in the public eye. We'll hold a press conference and announce her safe return..." he checked an incoming text on his phone, "tomorrow. Beyond that, she can return home with one of these." From inside his coat, he retrieved a plastic square attached to a long string. A button, I realized, growing curious as to where this was going. For him to bring that thing with him to the meeting in the first place, he evidently knew there was a high chance we'd reject the previous proposal. "This is, in layman's terms, a panic button. Should Lily find herself in danger or abruptly transported somewhere for a second time, she need only press the button five times in quick succession and it will send a signal to headquarters indicating her location and distress. Ideally, we could keep her around the Guild during the day, perhaps under the guise of an intern, just to have the extra security and Super eyes on her for a few hours." He turned his whole body to face me, a knowing glint in his black eyes. "I'll have you know, universities love seeing Guild internships on applications."
I perked up, sniffing opportunity in the air. "Is it paid?"
His thin lips pulled again into that almost smile. "It is. Plus we offer limited college scholarships."
"I'm in," I replied immediately, mind set.
"No!"
I startled at the sound of my father's second rejection, far louder than the first.
"What's wrong with this plan?" I questioned aloud.
"Live bait, Lily? Really?" he volleyed.
"Better than dead bait," I reasoned with a shrug he couldn't see.
"Be serious. It's too dangerous."
"What did you expect? If I'm not locked up somewhere hidden then I'm essentially always going to be a supervillain magnet. It goes hand in hand with being able to walk around freely."
Likely seeing, but not liking, my sound logic, he changed tactics. "I don't like you being away from home so often."
I glanced over at Tempest, who appeared just as confused as I felt. Catching my eye, he cleared his throat and gave a try at reasoning with him.
"Sir, with all due respect, the Guild is the safest place for her to be, safer than even your home," Tempest said earnestly. "We even have dorms for Supers who choose to live on site. I'm sure we could arrange for her to move into one of them, and she could go home to visit whenever she wanted. Even Shade wouldn't dream of teleporting in there. It would practically be suicide."
"Plus, I'll be leaving home to go to uni across the country in, like, two months," I added, though I wasn't sure I was sold on the idea of living in any kind of dorm room a second longer than I needed to for school. "Might as well get the practice," and the money, "in before I leave. I'm not gonna be home for much longer anyway."
"You're doing WHAT?" Dad exclaimed, and I winced.
"Um, I swear I mentioned this to you before." I paused to consider. Hadn't I told him my final decision on school? Maybe not.
"You did not, Lily," he replied, the words sounding as though they were scraping past his clenched teeth.
Oops. Time to turn this narrative around. Leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my hands tucked beneath my chin, I tried to sound reasonable. Angelic, even, in a 'You only have yourself to blame for this' tone. "This is what happens when you're a hands-off parent, Dad. You never ask about these things."
"Yes, but that is under the expectation that you'll tell me yourself when something important is happening!" he snapped.
I reared back, blinking hard. Rarely did he ever raise his voice at me, and definitely not in such a public setting. Although I definitely should have told him earlier, I did not care to be yelled at under any situation. Rather than leaving me chastened, I found myself digging my heels deeper into the sand and holding my ground more firmly than I would have otherwise, saying stupid things I neither wanted nor meant, anything to win.
"What part of anything I've ever done gave you the impression I like to freely share information?" I snapped in return, throwing the luxury of my relative freedom right back in his face. "I did my best to keep my first interaction with Shade a secret, and would have succeeded, I imagine, were it not for all those meddling reporters. I'm sure if there was even a remote possibility of keeping being kidnapped for several weeks to myself I would have. Yes, you give me a lot of space that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I never used said space to deliberately get myself into trouble, but every time I've ever told you about a little injury it gets so wildly blown out of proportion, like you expect me drop dead at any second. I am not Charlie and I am not Mom. I survived the same accident that killed them, so don't take your unprocessed trauma about what happened to them out on me!"
It was a low blow, so low I was practically taking a bat to his ankles. My entirely disproportionate response came on like a small leak in a dam that built up into a massive, catastrophic break, flooding out and wiping away everything in its path. I regretted bringing the accident with Charlie and Mom into the conversation immediately. Doing so spoke more to my own issues than it did about him. I said what I did because bringing it up was taboo in our household and in that moment my anger urged me to be cruel. I shouldn't have said it, but the thought came from somewhere very real, suppressed deep down.
I blew out a long breath that jostled my hair, deliberately avoiding having to witness Tempest and Ren's reaction to the domestic spat. "Sorry," I muttered, as I clenched and unclenched the thin hospital blanket in my fists.
"We'll talk about this when you get home," Dad replied, sounding unusually distant. "You've been through a lot recently."
Not really. Not enough to justify my harsh words. If anything, his even tempered response made me feel worse. I squeezed my eyes shut, as tight as I could force them.
"Why can't Tempest continue looking after her at our apartment?" my father inquired, a little stiff, but otherwise behaving like nothing had happened.
Tempest sat up straighter at being mentioned. "I—"
"People will soon notice Tempest here hasn't been patrolling the city as of late," Ren answered in his stead, ready to get back to the business at hand. "He has other duties that he's been neglecting for this one, and we can't afford to dedicate so much of his time to protecting one person."
"What about other Supers? Can't they take turns, or something?"
"The same issue crops up," Ren said simply. "The city is vast. They have other jobs to do. Some would make the argument that they're overworked already."
I could practically hear my dad thinking through the phone, until he concluded, "Then we'll move."
"Mr Burdett," Ren sighed, "We're going around in circles. As we've went over before, Nightshade can find her anywhere under her current name, and due to her present fame, there is no point changing it or hiding from him on the other side of the country. Her face will garner attention."
He looked at me when he said that, his meaning clear: Even if you move to a land far, far away for school, there's no escaping this problem.
"Then she can keep the panic button and stay home. She doesn't need to intern at the Guild," Dad persisted.
I considered if perhaps stubbornness could be a genetic trait, because my dad was actively proving himself just as obstinate as myself, perhaps more so. The more I thought on it, the more convinced I became of my earlier assertion that he was hiding something, and if perhaps a result of that secret demanded I not spend a large degree of time at the Guild. It was the only explanation that made sense of his irrational insistence to a perfectly decent proposal. I loved my dad. I trusted him with my life.
I just wish he'd start trusting me with my life, too.
I picked up the phone and held the speaker towards my mouth, so there could be no mistaking my words. "Look, Dad. There's no other good option. I already agreed to wearing the button-thing and interning during the daytime. I only called you because I knew you'd want to be a part of the conversation, but ultimately it's my decision, and my mind is made. If you keep making this harder for me, I might even take them up on their offer to move in."
It was an empty threat, but he didn't know that.
"Lily," he started, "we'll talk about this when you get home."
"No." I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to be confronted with my own cruelty towards him, nor his deceit towards me. I wanted a break, just for a day. "We won't. I'm checking out of the hospital and I'll be staying with Leigh tonight. Talk to you tomorrow."
I ended the call before he began to form a rebuttal, and sent his subsequent calls to voicemail.
"So." Mustering all the dignity I had left after that dignity destroying scene, I lifted my chin and faced Ren. "Where will the press conference be, and do I need to show up?"