Lowball

Once More, for Old Times’ Sake

by Carrie Vaughn

Ana Cortez was playing hooky from work. She called in sick-first time ever, not counting the couple of times she’d ended up hospitalized because of work. On the phone with her boss, she sounded as pathetic and self-sacrificing as she could, saying that she couldn’t possibly come in and risk infecting anybody else with whatever twenty-four-hour stomach bug was ravaging her system. She wasn’t sure Lohengrin believed her, but she’d earned enough status over the last few years, he didn’t question her. She deserved to play hooky.

What would she do with her day off? What any self-respecting New Yorker-transplanted, but still-would do: she went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Not that she particularly liked baseball, but Kate would be on the field today, and Ana wasn’t going to miss it for the world.

Except for the local favorites and the one or two who made the news in some scandal or other, Ana didn’t know who any of the players were, didn’t follow baseball at all, but she got caught up in the excitement anyway, cheering and shouting from her seat in the front row off third base.

The player who won the Home Run Derby, Yankee hitter Robinson Canó, was a local favorite, and the crowd stayed ramped up for the next event. The special charity exhibition was billed as a Pitching Derby-the major league’s top pitchers took to the field, facing home plate and a radar gun, and pitched their fastest. 100 miles per hour. 101. 99. 102. The crowd lost it when Aroldis Chapman pitched 105-it had broken some kind of record, apparently. But the show wasn’t over, and when the last pitcher in the lineup walked onto the field, an anticipatory hush fell.

The athletic young woman wore the tight-fitting white pants of a baseball uniform and a baby-doll T-shirt, navy blue, with “Curveball” printed on the back. No number, no team affiliation, which was Kate all over these days. Curveball, the famous ace who could blow up buildings with her pitches, who’d quit the first season of American Hero to be a real-life hero, who’d then quit the Committee, because she didn’t need anybody.

The crowd never got completely quiet as they murmured wondering observations and pointed at the newcomer. Ana leaned forward, trying to get a better look at her friend, who seemed small and alone as she crossed the diamond and reached the mound, tugging on her cap. She didn’t face home plate like the others, but turned outward, to the one-ton pile of concrete blocks that had been trucked to the outfield.

Kate looked nervous, stepping on one foot, then another, digging the toes of her shoes into the dirt, pressing the baseball into her glove. Her ponytail twitched when she moved. Some traditionalists hadn’t wanted her here-were appalled at the very idea of a woman on the pitcher’s mound at venerable Yankee Stadium. But this was raising money for charity so they couldn’t very well argue. Ana wondered how much harassment Kate had put up with behind the scenes. If she had, she’d channel her anger into her arm.

Ana’s stomach clenched in shared anxiety, and she gripped the railing in front of her until her fingers hurt. Why did this feel like a battle, that Ana should be out on the field with her, backing her up? Like they’d fought together so many times before. Here, all Ana could do was watch. This wasn’t a battle, this was supposed to be for fun. Gah. She touched the St. Barbara medallion she wore around her neck, tucked under her shirt. The action usually calmed her.

Finally, the ace pitcher settled, raised the ball and her glove to her chest, wound up, left leg drawn up, and let fly, her whole body stretching into the throw.

Sparks flared along her arm, and the ball vanished from her hand, followed by a crack of thunder, the whump of an explosion-and the pile of concrete was gone, just gone. Debris rained down over the field in a cloud of dust and gravel. The sound was like hail falling. The crowd sitting along the backfield screamed and ducked. Kate turned away, raising her arm to shelter her face.

Something weird had happened. Ana had seen Kate throw a thousand times, everything from a grain of rice to a bowling ball. She’d blown up cars and killed people with her projectiles. But she’d never erased a target like this.

Then the speed of the pitch flashed on the big board: 772 mph.

The announcer went crazy, his voice cracking as he screamed, “… that sound … the sonic boom of a baseball! Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like it! Unbelievable!”

Kate had also put a sedan-sized crater in the outfield, but no one seemed to mind. The crowd’s collective roar matched the noise of a tidal wave, and the major league players rushed out on the field to swarm Curveball. A pair of them lifted her to their shoulders, so she sailed above them. Her face held an expression of stark wonder. The screen at the backfield focused on her, her vast smile and bright eyes.

Ana clapped and screamed along with the rest of the crowd.

It took two hours for the stadium to clear out. Ana lingered, making her way toward home plate, where Kate was entertaining fans leaning over the boards to talk to her. Signing baseballs, posing for pictures. Ana arrived in time to catch one exchange with a girl, maybe twelve, a redhead in braids and a baseball cap of her own.

“I play softball,” she said, handing Kate a ball to sign.

“You pitch?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, but not like you.”

“Chapman doesn’t pitch like me. I bet you’re good enough.”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t win the season.”

“Keep practicing. That’s what it takes. Work hard. Okay?”

The girl left smiling.

Kate saw Ana hanging back as the last of her admirers left. Squealing, she pulled herself over the barrier and caught her up in a rib-squishing hug. Ana hugged back, laughing. They separated to get a better look at each other. Kate was still grinning, as well she should be, but Ana noticed the shadows under her eyes.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” Kate said.

“Are you kidding? I wasn’t going to miss it. You ready for the party?”

Kate sighed. “I need a couple more hours. They want a press conference and a photo op for the charity. We raised seventy-five grand.” Her gaze brightened.

“That’s so great. How about this-come over as soon as you can, and I’ll have a chance to pick up a few more things and get the place cleaned up.”

“You promised me a gallon of margaritas. Is that still on?”

“Oh, you know it. A gallon of margaritas, a pile of DVDs-and all the gossip on that new boy of yours.”

Kate blushed, but her smile glowed. “You got it.”

Ana had brought home the tequila, limes, salt, and a bag of ice already. Now, she went for approximately a metric ton of burritos from the excellent taquería around the corner from her apartment. They had to eat if they were going to keep up their strength for more margaritas.

The Lower East Side walk-up used to be her and Kate’s apartment, back when Kate was still on the Committee, until she quit and went back to school in Oregon. That had been a couple of years ago now, and they didn’t get to see each other very often these days.

Her apartment was on East Fifth Street, a few blocks off Jokertown, in a neighborhood that wasn’t great but wasn’t awful. Ana liked the place. It wasn’t pretentious, and she could maintain some level of normality. Like go to the taquería without anyone giving her a hard time or snapping pictures. With her straight dark hair and stoutish frame, she wasn’t as photogenic as Kate, but she’d had her own share of publicity as the Latin American Coordinator for the UN Committee on Extraordinary Interventions. She didn’t much feel like a public figure most of the time. So she stayed in her unassuming neighborhood. The street food was better.

At her building’s front door, she paused to find her key one-handed, when a voice hissed at her from the stairwell to the lower-level apartment.

“Ana! Ana, down here!” She looked over the railing.

The joker wore dark sunglasses and had his top two arms shoved into an oversized jacket. His middle two arms held it tight around his torso in some futile attempt at a disguise. He made his best effort to huddle in the shadows, away from the view of street level, but the guy was over seven feet tall and bulky: the world-famous drummer for the band Joker Plague.

“DB? What are you doing here?” she said.

He made a waving motion, hushing her. “Quiet! Get down here, will you?”

She swung around the railing, and Drummer Boy pulled her into the shelter of the stairwell, making her drop the bag of food. “Michael!”

“Shhh! Sorry. Here.” With a fifth arm emerging from the bottom of the jacket, he picked up the bag and shoved it at her. The contents were probably mushed. Maybe they could have burrito casserole. “Ana, I need to talk to you, can I come in?”

“Couldn’t you call?”

“In person. Come on, at least can we get off the street?”

She hadn’t seen him in almost a year. Normally, she’d be happy to see him, and they tried to get together the rare times they happened to be in the same zip code at the same time. He’d gotten her tickets to a Joker Plague show awhile back, and she’d love to do something like that again. But she really wished he’d called. What she didn’t want was him still hanging around when Kate arrived.

She spent too long thinking, and DB continued cajoling. “I’m passing through town, and I really need to talk to you but I’m trying to keep a low profile-”

She raised an eyebrow and gave him a skeptical look. With six arms and tympanic membranes covering his torso, Michael Vogali, aka Drummer Boy, could never keep a low profile. Ever.

“Michael, what do you want, really?” she said.

“Can I crash at your place? Just for a couple of days. Please?”

Three hundred sixty-five days in a year, and he picked this one to show up asking for a favor. He was a friend, she didn’t want to say no, but this couldn’t be happening. This … this was not going to end well.

She winced. “You don’t have anyone else you can stay with? Don’t you own an apartment on Central Park or something excessive like that?”

“Never did get around to it,” he said. “Our recording studio’s in LA.”

“You can’t stay at my place, it’s tiny.”

“It’s just for a couple of days-”

Exasperated, she blurted, “You can’t because Kate’s staying with me tonight.”

He brightened. “She is? I haven’t seen her in ages. Is she … I mean, is she okay and everything?”

She hadn’t meant to say anything about Kate. “Are you sure you can’t stay someplace else?”

“This isn’t just about someplace to stay, we really do need to talk. And Kate … oh fuck, I didn’t want to be the one to tell Kate, I was hoping you could do it after I’d talked to you-”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please, can we go inside?” He gave her a hangdog look that should have been ridiculous on a seven-foot-tall joker behemoth, but he managed to make himself endearing.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. But Kate and I are still having our margarita night.”

“Hey, that sounds like fun-”

“Michael!”

He raised his hands in a defensive pose and backed up a step. “No problem.”

“Hold this.” She handed him the burritos and found the key for the door. “Why didn’t you just call me instead of camping out like a homeless person?”

“Because you’d be more likely to say yes if I just showed up on your doorstep?”

She growled and hit him on the side, generating a hollow echo through his torso.

“My walls are thin-you’re going to have to cut down on the drumming.”

“Sure, of course,” he said, smacking a hollow beat as punctuation.

Oh yeah, was this going to end badly.

Kate and DB had quit the Committee at the same time, over the politicization of the group in the Middle East. Ana hadn’t been there, but she’d gotten an earful when Kate called to tell her about it. She’d cried a bunch during that phone call-Ana might be the only person in the world who knew how torn up Kate had been over the whole thing. Ana had been stuck halfway around the world, on another mission for the Committee, and couldn’t do a thing about it. DB had just been angry-he hadn’t called Ana to vent. A bunch of the tabloids insisted that DB and Kate had run off together in some torrid romance, but that wasn’t at all true. It was all getting to be old history, now. They’d moved on. Ana hoped they didn’t revive the soap opera here tonight.

Kate’s call from the downstairs intercom came an hour later, and Ana buzzed her in.

“I never thought they’d let me leave,” Kate said, pushing into the apartment and dropping her bag by the door. “One more picture, they kept saying. Not like they didn’t already have twenty million.”

Ana stepped aside, closed the door behind her, and waited. Didn’t take long.

DB stood from the sofa and sheepishly waved a couple of arms, while a third skittered a nervous beat that sounded like balloons popping. He’d taken off the oversized jacket and stood in all his shirtless, tattooed glory. “Hey, Kate.”

Kate turned to Ana. “What’s he doing here?”

DB stepped forward. “It’s just for the night, I promise, I’m trying to keep a low profile-”

“I’m a pushover,” Ana said, shrugging.

Kate glared, and Ana wasn’t sure whom the glare was directed toward. “I hope you have those margaritas ready.”

“Two pitchers, ready to go.”

They headed into the kitchen, or rather the corner of the apartment that served as the kitchen. DB followed them, sidling along, as delicately as his body allowed. “So, hey, Kate. How you doing?” DB had been nursing a crush on Kate for years now. He wasn’t any more subtle about it than he had been back on the set of the first season of American Hero. He’d gotten a little more polite, at least.

“I pitched past the sound barrier at Yankee Stadium today, how are you?”

“Um … hey, that’s great. I think. I just happened to be in town, and, well, we really need to talk-”

Kate said, “Michael, Ana and I planned a night to chill out, with too much alcohol and a lot of TV and not thinking about anything. That’s not going to change just because you’re here, okay? I can’t be mad about Ana letting you stay here. But can you just … leave us alone?”

DB sat back on the sofa, his arms folded together contritely.

Feeding everyone margaritas kept them quiet for a little while. Half an hour, maybe. The first DVD of the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy was good for another hour or so, especially watching the episode where Meredith and Derek spent the whole time fighting over Derek’s ethically questionable experiments using a new version of the trump virus on a collection of hideous joker patients. It was pretty awful.

DB chortled through the whole thing. “I wouldn’t mind it so much if they actually used joker actors rather than nat actors with fucking rubber tentacles.”

Ana agreed with him, but they had to have the rubber tentacles so they could take them off and declare them cured for five minutes before they melted in a hideous ooze of sudden-onset Black Queen.

But the episode finally ended, and in the quiet while Ana changed out DVDs, DB had to ruin it. “Okay, I know you’re having your party and all, and I know I’m interrupting-”

Kate, nested on pillows on the floor in front of the TV, took a long drink of margarita and ignored him. Ana almost felt sorry for the guy. He was nice, usually; he’d take a bullet for his friends, and with their history that wasn’t just a saying. But he was way too used to being the center of attention, and definitely wasn’t used to being ignored by a couple of women.

“-but I really need to talk to you. This is serious. Seriously.” The sofa creaked as he leaned forward, and half his hands drummed nervously.

Ana shushed him, got the DVD in and hit play, hoping that would shut him up. But Kate rolled over and glared. “Michael, what are you doing here? Isn’t Joker Plague supposed to be on tour in … in Thailand or someplace?”

He brightened. “You’ve been keeping up with us-”

She glowered. “Crazy guess.”

“The tour was last month. We’re supposed to be recording the new album, but … I gotta tell you, it’s not going well. I knew we were in trouble when all our songs started being about how tough it is being a band on tour. So I’m telling the guys, maybe we should take some time off, get back to our roots. Hang in Jokertown for a while-”

Kate turned back to the TV.

“-but never mind that. I was doing this signing in LA a week or so ago, and a fan brought me this … this thing. I think you really need to know that this is out there.” He was serious-worried, even, reaching for something in the pocket of his oversized coat, draped over the back of the sofa.

The intercom buzzer at the front door went off.

Ana needed a minute to scramble up from the bed of cushions. Her first margarita was already making her wobbly. She really needed a vacation.…

“You expecting anyone?” Kate asked.

“No,” Ana said, and hit the intercom button. “Hello?”

“Ana. It’s John. John Fortune.”

This had to be a joke. Someone had put him up to this. This was too … If it had happened to someone else, it would be funny.

“What?” Kate said. Both she and DB were staring at her. So yeah, they’d heard it.

She didn’t want to argue. “I’ll be right down,” she said, and left before Kate and DB could say anything.

He was waiting at the front door, hands shoved in the pockets of a ratty army jacket. She couldn’t say he looked particularly good at the moment. He was a slim, handsome man, with dark skin, pale hair, and a serious expression. The white lines of an asterisk-shaped scar painted his forehead. At the moment his hair was too long and uncombed, and he looked shadowed, gaunt, like he hadn’t gotten enough food, sleep, or both.

“Hi,” he said, his smile thin, halfhearted.

“John. Hi. What’s the matter?”

“I need a favor.” Oh, no, this was not happening.… He said, “Can I stay with you? Just a couple of nights.”

Any other night … “This really isn’t the best time. Can’t you stay with your mom?”

He winced and rubbed his head. “I would, except she’s trying to talk me into coming back to work for her on American Hero. And that … I can’t do that. I’m avoiding her.”

“No,” she said. “You sure can’t.”

“I know I should have called ahead … but it’s just a couple of nights, I promise.”

Whatever else she was, Ana was not the kind of person who left a friend standing on the street. She held open the door. “Come on in. Um, I should probably warn you…”

Ana half expected Kate to be hiding in the bathroom, the only spot in the studio with a closable door and any modicum of privacy. But she was standing in the middle of the room, side by side with DB, waiting. Ana led John inside and softly closed the door.

John slouched, and his smile was strained. “Hi, Kate.”

“Hi,” she said, her tone flat. That was it.

“Well,” DB drawled. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Can it, Michael,” Ana said. She drew herself up, hands on hips. She’d stared down diplomats from a dozen countries and addressed the UN Security Council. Surely she could lay down the law here. “You’re all my friends and I’m not going to leave anybody stranded. But I would appreciate you all acting like grown-ups. You think you can do that?” Nobody said anything, so she assumed that was yes. “I’ll heat up some food, we can have dinner. Like normal people.” While she pulled food out of the fridge, she listened.

“How you doing?” John said.

“I’m okay,” Kate answered. “You?”

He might have shrugged.

Ana hadn’t been there when they broke up, but she knew it had been bad-Kate walking out while John was still in the hospital, recovering from having a joker parasite with delusions of grandeur ripped out of his forehead. John had gone from being a latent, to drawing a Black Queen, to having his father die to save his life, to having an ace power in the form of a scarab-beetle ace living inside him-to nathood. And then his girlfriend broke up with him.

But Ana had heard both sides of that story, and John had screwed up as well. He’d never trusted Kate. He kept assuming she would run off with someone else, someone with power-someone like DB. And he threw that in her face. She’d told him she loved him, and he never really believed her, so she walked. Now, Kate had her first real boyfriend in years. Ana wondered how John felt about that, if he even knew. He had to know-Kate was a celebrity, the pictures had been in the magazines.

They’d all met in the first season of American Hero-Ana, Kate, and DB as contestants, John working as a PA for his mother Peregrine, producer of the show and arguably the most famous wild carder of all time. Those days seemed dream-like, surreal. Part of some fun-house carnival ride that ultimately meant nothing. So much had happened since then, but that was where it all started. The show was still going strong, riding high in the ratings; Ana didn’t pay attention.

DB paced, pounding a double beat on his torso.

“You in town for anything special?” John said to Kate, as if they were alone in the room.

“Yeah, charity pitching derby at the All-Star Game.”

“Oh yeah? Cool.”

“You?”

“I’ve been traveling, I guess. Here and there.”

This was the most gratingly awkward conversation of all time. Ana wondered if she could fix it by feeding them more margaritas. She went to the kitchen to get started on that.

“I figured you’d be staying with your mom,” Kate said.

John rolled his eyes. “I’d have to spend all night hearing about how I should go back to work for her on American Hero.”

“Oh, no,” Kate said, with genuine outrage.

The drumming and pacing stopped. “Hey, maybe you can get the Winged Wench to explain this. Unless you know where it came from.”

He held out a DVD case, which he’d retrieved from his coat pocket. Poor quality, low production values, with a photocopied cover shoved behind cheap clear plastic. The title: AMERICAN HERO UNCUT, VOL. I.

John gave a long-suffering look at the ceiling. “My mother had nothing to do with that. I had nothing to do with that.”

Kate yanked the DVD case out of DB’s hand and stared at it. “What the hell is this?”

Ana drifted over to Kate’s side, to study the case over her shoulder. The image on the front featured DB, all his arms wrapped around the svelte figure of Jade Blossom, another of the first season American Hero contestants. Naked Jade Blossom, Ana noted. Her state of undress was obvious even through the shadowed, unfocused quality of the picture. Uncut, indeed-unauthorized footage from the reality show’s seemingly infinite number of cameras.

Somehow, Ana couldn’t be entirely surprised that such a thing existed. What did surprise her was not stumbling on the footage online somewhere. Now that she knew it existed, she probably wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

Kate gaped for a moment, then covered her mouth with her hands and spit laughter. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. But it is.” She might have been having some kind of fit, doubled over, holding her gut. “Karma’s a bitch!”

“Look at the back,” DB said, making a turning motion with one of his hands. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

When Kate turned the case over to look at the back, Ana almost turned away. The back showed three more pictures: two more of DB, captured in the moment with two entirely different contestants of the show. And one of Kate, her back to the camera, towel sliding off her shoulders as she stepped into the shower. The picture was a tease, of course. How much did the video actually show?

Ana couldn’t tell if the red in Kate’s cheeks was from alcohol or embarrassment. When Kate set her jaw and hefted the DVD case as if to throw it, all three of them reached for her, making halting noises. Glancing at them, Kate sighed, and merely tossed the DVD back to DB, without her ace power charging it. DB fumbled it out of a couple of hands before managing to catch it.

Kate said, “At least I can say there aren’t any sex tapes of me. Unlike some people.”

“You had your chance,” DB muttered.

Kate glared. The TV played through the pause; two characters were making out in a hospital supply closet.

“Volume I,” Ana said. “So how many of those are there?”

“Who the fuck knows?” DB said. “The guy wanted me to sign it for him.”

“Whoever’s doing these has to have access to the show’s raw footage.” She looked at John, inquiring.

He said, “Could be anyone with access to the editing process. Mom and Josh have a pack of lawyers working on it-you can imagine what it’s doing to the American Hero brand. But there’s not much they can do about it once the videos hit the web.”

Ana went to the kitchen and stuck a plate of burritos in the microwave. Food. Food would make everything better. And more margaritas. If she could just get everyone commiserating over the shared trauma rather than making accusations, maybe she could salvage the party.

“I do not need this right now,” Kate said, and started pacing. “Oh my God, I should tell Tyler … but if he doesn’t know about it already maybe I shouldn’t tell him.…”

“Who’s Tyler?” DB said.

John smirked. “Haven’t you heard? It’s been all over Aces!. Kate’s new boyfriend-she’s dating nats now.”

“John, don’t be an asshole,” Ana said. She’d had no intention of bringing this up while the love triangle from hell was in her five-hundred-square-foot apartment. She’d kill John for poking Kate like this.

Kate plowed on. “I told you then, I didn’t break up with you because you lost your powers. I broke up with you because I couldn’t keep … propping up your self-esteem. You kept making the whole thing about you.”

“Wait a minute, boyfriend? What boyfriend? Who is this guy?” DB said.

Kate didn’t answer, and Ana sure wasn’t going to say anything.

DB continued. “No, really-we can settle this. Tyler, huh? I don’t care if he’s a nat or the king of Persia, I want to meet him. You know, just to make sure he’s a nice guy.”

“I can pick my own boyfriends, thank you very much,” Kate said.

“Apparently not,” DB said, pointing three arms at John.

Kate growled and cocked back her arm. Despite watching for it-hoping to minimize damage to the apartment-Ana hadn’t seen whatever projectile she picked up; but then, Kate always kept a few marbles in her pocket, for whenever she lost her temper.

“Kate!” Ana yelled. “Cool it! No throwing in the house! Nobody uses any powers in the house! Got it?”

The ace pitcher froze, a static charge dancing around her hand. For their parts, John and DB had both ducked, because she kept turning back and forth between them, unable to decide who to target first.

Then her hand dropped. “You know what’s real rich? That neither one of you can figure out why I won’t go out with you.” She stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door.

The microwave dinged, and Ana said, with false brightness, “Anyone want burritos?”

DB and John circled each other, but finally settled down, DB on the sofa and John on a chair in the kitchen. Ana shoved plates of food at them both, and miracle of miracles they ate. She decided against giving them any more margaritas, but took an extra-long drag on one herself before heading to the bathroom to knock on the door.

“You okay?” she said to Kate, angling herself away from the rest of the apartment, hoping the boys weren’t listening even though she knew they were.

The door wasn’t locked; Kate was sitting at the edge of the bathtub. Ana slipped in and closed the door. Leaned against it, just in case DB or John decided it was a good idea to try to sneak in.

Kate didn’t look particularly angry or upset. She did look thoughtful, her brow furrowed and face scrunched up. Finally, she sighed. “It’s better knowing it’s out there than not knowing, right? I’m not really surprised, I guess. It’s just … annoying.”

Ana quirked a smile. “That’s the worst thing you can come up with? Not murderous rage?”

“I’m too tired for murderous rage,” Kate said.

“I’ll kick them out. Say the word and they’re gone,” Ana said.

Kate sighed. “You can’t kick them out. They’re still friends. Let’s go get some food.”

They hugged, and Ana liked to think some of the tension went out of Kate’s shoulders.

When they emerged from the bathroom, John was there, holding a glass full of margarita, which he offered to Kate. Giving him a thin smile, she took it.

DB was sitting contritely-as contritely as he could, anyway, slumping, his hands still in his lap-on the sofa. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you-I just thought you should know that these are out there.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re right. Better to find out from a friend than in some random interview.”

“Do I even need to ask if there’s any footage of me on those tapes?” Ana asked.

DB winced. “They got everybody with that shower cam.”

She thought for a minute. “Would it be wrong of me to be insulted if I didn’t show up on an American Hero bootleg sex tape?”

“I think you need another drink,” John said. He’d produced a second glass from somewhere, and she was happy to take it.

They couldn’t argue when they were eating. Ana was starting to be pleased with herself and her diplomatic skills. But, inevitably, conversation started again and circled back around. Wasn’t anything Ana could do to stop it.

“So much for the hero part of the show,” DB grumbled around a bite of burrito. “Not like it’s been about anything but politics and sex scandals since the first season. Nobody’s trying to save the world.”

“I’m trying,” Ana said softly. The margaritas were a warm flush through her system, making her talk more than she usually did. “Maybe it doesn’t look like much from the outside, when I spend most of my time in an office, but I’m trying.”

Kate frowned. “Seventy-five K for children’s cancer research has to count for something.”

“It does,” John said, maybe too eagerly. “At least I think it does.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile.

DB said, “You guys hear what happened to Joe Twitch?”

Joe Twitch, another first season veteran. Being on the show hadn’t helped him out at all, and he hadn’t saved anything in the end. After falling in with a very bad crowd, the ace had been gunned down in some messed-up police shoot-out.

“Yeah,” Ana said, and the others nodded in grim agreement.

Kate shook her head. “Let’s hear it for first season alumni. God, we’re a mess.”

They weren’t, not really. Ana had her work, Kate had her charity fund-raising. After leaving the Committee, John had done volunteer work overseas, and DB donated a chunk of his concert earnings to the International Red Cross and other refugee aid organizations. He didn’t even publicize it. They were all trying, though it felt like spitting into the wind sometimes.

“You know who probably knows something about those videos?” DB said. “Bugsy. He’s working for Aces! now, he knows everything. Right?” Bugsy, Jonathan Hive, another first season alumnus who now wrote for a tabloid. So maybe they weren’t all on the side of angels.

“Not a bad idea,” John said. “So who wants to actually call him?”

“We had a little talk awhile back,” Kate said, not looking particularly pleased. “He wouldn’t tell us even if he knew. But he’s got his own problems going on, we don’t need to bug him. Um. Sorry. No pun intended.”

John smirked. “I’m sure you did talk to him, after that story he did on you and your new boyfriend.”

“John!” Ana and Kate both declared, cutting off that track before it went further.

More eating. Ana wished for continued silence. The episode on the TV had wound down, and she wondered if she should turn the DVD back on, for a distraction. DB said to his plate, carefully, “I don’t suppose you have that copy of the magazine with the story Bugsy did-”

Kate raised her fork to throw it.

“You really want to know where those bootleg DVDs are coming from?” Ana burst, interrupting. “Why not ask the guys selling them.”

“And I suppose you know who that is?” DB said.

“Sure-there’s one of those stalls on the Bowery, just a couple blocks from here. You know those creeps who sell bootlegs CDs and everything. I’m sure he’s got some of these. Ask him where they’re coming from.”

DB shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

Ana suddenly wished she hadn’t said anything, but everyone else embraced the plan. Plates and glasses went into the kitchen sink, leftovers went into the fridge, and DB shrugged on his overcoat.

“Aren’t you hot in that?” Kate asked wonderingly.

“I’m incognito,” he said, and Kate squeaked out a stifled, tipsy laugh.

In a very brief moment they were all on the stairs heading down and outside.

Ana shouldn’t have had that second margarita. Or was that third? Not that it mattered. This was a bad idea, drunk or sober. John caught her arm when she stumbled on the stairs, asked if she was okay. She was sure she was fine, really. Right?

After leaving Fifth, they walked a couple of blocks onto the Bowery. The street was busy-not late enough to have cleared out yet. The sky was dark, but headlights and streetlights and storefronts glared brightly. Some people marched, clearly on missions, to or from work or home or miscellaneous errands. Clumps of people moved together, laughing at each other, out for a night of fun. Like Ana and the others should have been, if they knew what was good for them. The Guatemalan woman who ran the mobile taquería that Ana liked leaned out the window of her truck and shouted in Spanish, and Ana answered, bueno, everything was just fine.

This close to Jokertown, no one looked twice at someone who had an extra limb or three or was covered with a layer of fur or scales. But people were looking at DB.

“That coat isn’t doing anything to disguise you,” Kate observed.

DB scowled.

Really, people were staring at all of them. And when people were staring at you in Jokertown, you knew you were in trouble.

She almost walked right past the row of storefronts and streetside booths, selling everything from knockoff handbags to cheap souvenirs. It was almost a carnival along this stretch. A guy playing guitar and singing on the corner of Bond had his hat out. Another block or two along the Bowery and you’d be in Jokertown’s red light district. But this was where she’d seen the guy with the DVDs. Stopping to take stock, she glanced up the row, then pointed. “There it is.”

The guy had wooden racks set up on folding tables, filled with CD and DVD cases that weren’t fooling anyone. The covers showed the right images for all the latest hit movies, but they were obviously fourth-generation photocopies. The plastic was cheap, warped, already coming apart. The DVDs inside wouldn’t be any more slick or reliable. Buyer beware.

The guy didn’t do much business that Ana had ever seen. Downloading had replaced much of the pirate CD and DVD market, she imagined. But guys like this selling crap like this would probably never go away. Not everyone had a fancy computer.

The four of them lined up in front of the stall. The stall owner, or proprietor, or clerk, or whatever, blinked back at them with round, dark eyes. A joker, he had a bony fan of flesh sprouting from his shoulder blades, through a modified slit cut into his T-shirt. Leathery and wrinkled, they didn’t look functional as wings, but who could tell.

“Hey, hey. Ana, right? Wha-what can I do for you? Que pasa?” His accent might have been Puerto Rican. His smile was strained.

She opened her mouth to say something, then completely forgot what it was she’d been about to say. Some accusation. Swearing, probably. This man was a criminal, she stood for truth and justice, she ought to do something about it. Shouldn’t she?

“Where are they?” DB said, looming. The guy cringed, stammered, and DB grabbed the collar of his jacket and hauled him up. “I know you’re selling them, where are they?”

“Michael, calm the hell down,” Kate muttered, hanging off one of DB’s arms.

Ana spotted a Joker Plague CD that might have been used or might have been a bootleg; she decided not to tell the drummer about it. Stepping in front of DB, subtly edging him away from the stall, Ana reminded herself that she was an international agent for good and found her voice again. “He’s asking about special stuff that isn’t in the racks, that you sell under the table. Right?”

The guy shrugged. A line of sweat dripped from his hairline. “Yeah, I got a lot of stuff. I mean, there’s, you know, the triple X stuff-”

She shook her head. “No. Well, sort of. Outtakes from American Hero, bootleg behind-the-scenes stuff. I guess some of it’s rated X.…” She winced.

His eyes widened, and Ana swore if he said something about her being too nice a girl for that sort of thing … “You sure you want to look at that stuff?” he asked instead. “All’a you. I mean you seem like nice kids, and I haven’t watched any of it myself-I’d never do that, you know-but I hear it gets kind of rough.”

DB grumbled, “Don’t tell me about it-I was there for most of it, Bat Boy.”

The joker cringed.

Ana made soothing gestures toward them both. “We want to find out where the videos are coming from-who’s distributing them, who’s making them. Who might have access to the footage, you know?”

“I don’t know any of that-I just get the boxes of ’em from the wholesaler. I don’t even look, you know?”

“You have to look-you already said you had some. Can we see what you’ve got?” Maybe some of the other DVD cases would have identifying information on them, unlike DB’s copy.

The joker wore a skeptical frown, but he crouched to pull a cardboard box from under the table and started pawing through it. “I’m telling you, most of what I got’s just porn, not from the show. You interested in any of that? I got a bunch of stuff here, ace on ace, ace on joker-”

“Just the American Hero stuff,” Ana said. John was looking on, interested. DB and Kate were fidgeting, their patience stretching thin. DB pattered a riff on his torso that made people up and down the block look over. Why any of them had thought they could do this without drawing attention …

The stall owner pulled DVD cases out of the box and laid them out on his table. They were just as awful as Ana could have imagined, with all seasons of American Hero represented, most of the covers featuring particularly photogenic female contestants in various states of undress. And those were probably the least prurient covers of the bunch, because as promised he was selling a bunch of outright porn as well as other reality-based sensationalism.

“What’s that?” DB said, grabbing a pair of cases out of the guy’s hand. They all leaned in to get a better look.

Large, yellow capital letters, in a bullet-ridden font spelled JOKER FIGHT CLUB VOL. III. The image behind the words was murky, showing poorly lit figures moving in a blur. Two men-jokers, large ones, with abnormal muscles and bison-like bulk, one with horns growing from his shoulders, one with claws on his arms, beat on each other. The one who faced the camera had blood covering half his misshapen face. This didn’t look staged. It didn’t look like special effects.

“Where’d you get this?” Ana said.

“I don’t know, they just turn up.” He looked scared now, his hands shaking as he tried to grab the cases out of their hands.

She raised a brow at him, skeptical.

DB picked three or four more of the Joker Fight Club videos out of the batch. “How can you even sell this crap?” he said, disgusted.

“I gotta pay rent, just like everybody else. Those guys in the fights-they’re paying rent, too, wanna bet? You’re a joker, you know how it is.”

“And what?” Ana said. “These just magically show up in a cardboard box so you can pay your rent? Where do you get them? Who sells them to you?”

He cringed away, but Ana didn’t have any illusions that she was the one intimidating him. DB was looming, fury in his gaze.

The guy’s vestigial wings flopped weakly against his back. “These ones, the fight club ones, they come from a couple of hombres in a white van. They drop ’em off every week or so. They just dropped these off this evening.”

“Here?” Kate said. “They were here?” The ace turned to Ana. “You think maybe it’s the same people doing the American Hero DVDs?”

Ana shrugged. “Worth finding out. Where’d they go?” She glared at the joker, who pointed down the street.

“East. Turned on Houston.” Straight into Jokertown. Ana could think of a dozen scenarios where some lowlife gangsters in Jokertown had decided to go into video production and managed to snag the American Hero outtakes. Not to mention the other stuff. God, if there was a porn studio in Jokertown she didn’t want to know about it. Who was she kidding, there probably was. Never mind.

“How long ago?”

“Hour, maybe?”

DB started shoving DVDs into his coat pockets with two hands. A third threw a couple of tens down on the table. “I’m buying the whole fucking mess,” DB said. “Hand ’em over to my lawyers and let them have a crack.”

“Wait, what-” The stall owner pawed at the money. “Who do you think you are?”

DB snarled at him in answer and stalked off. Ana, Kate, and John followed.

Ana thought the guy was lucky DB’d given him anything at all and not called the cops. The joker at the stall must have realized that because he didn’t argue further. Not that anyone would argue with DB when he got into a mood like this.

Except for John, who should have known better. “So what, we’re going to search Jokertown for a white delivery van? How does that make sense?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Exactly what you said, hand it over to the lawyers and let them sort it out.”

“Because that’s worked so well for you so far.”

Ana walked with Kate, leaving the boys arguing in front of them. “Some party, huh?” she said, by way of apology.

Wonder of wonders, Kate smiled. “I’m hanging out with my friends. That was the point, right?”

“I wasn’t sure wandering Jokertown at midnight was what you had in mind.”

“We always joked about doing it when I was living down here but never got around to it. So, why not?”

“I think you wouldn’t be saying this if we weren’t quite as drunk as we are.”

Kate giggled.

DB stalked ahead like a predator on the hunt; Ana hung back, looking down side streets and alleys. At one point DB stopped somebody-a round, rubbery walrus of a joker selling newspapers out of a cart. The guy looked half amused, half worried when DB demanded to know if he’d seen a van. Amazingly, the guy pointed a direction, turning them down another street off Houston and deeper into Jokertown. Probably just to get rid of the angry seven-foot-tall man in front of him.

Ana had paused to look down another side street when she saw it: a white van if not the white van. She could just make it out in the light from a streetlamp bleeding into the alley. The back doors were open, and two jokers were hauling a third into the back. The third guy, a huge, lumbering man with muscles layered on muscles, covered with ropy, elephantine skin, seemed to be sick. He wasn’t standing on his own, and his head lolled to his shoulder. His friends were probably taking him to the hospital. She wondered if they needed help.

“Hey,” Ana said. “Everything okay?”

The first two jokers-one of them slick-skinned with fishy eyes, the other with a second set of arms that were actually tentacles, or vegetative tendrils, or something green and sinewy-looked at her with round, shocky eyes. Instead of answering, they rushed, shoving their charge into the van and slamming the doors.

That was when she noticed the elephantine joker’s hands were tied behind his back.

“Hey!” she yelled, while thinking that this was all about to go very wrong in a minute. “Hey, stop!”

DB and the others hand turned back to look at her. She shouted, “Somebody call the police!” She patted her pockets-she usually had her phone in her pocket, where was it?

Tires squealed, filling the alley with smoke and the stink of burning rubber, and the van roared backward, out of the alley, toward Ana. All she could do was stare.

Then she fell, yanked out of the way by three powerful arms, and she crashed against DB’s bulk as he pulled her in to the brick wall of the adjacent building.

“Ana, Jesus, you okay?” he asked, propping her up while she regained her feet.

Meanwhile, the van screeched into the street and made an awkward turn before racing down Suffolk. A couple of other cars slammed on brakes and wrenched out of the way. Nobody crashed, but car horns blared.

“The van, those guys in the van, they grabbed someone, it’s a kidnapping!”

Kate threw something. She must have had a whole handful of something, because half a dozen projectiles zipped past Anna, crashing into the retreating van with the pings of bullets. Something popped. The van kept moving, rocking on a blown tire.

DB ran after the van. Ana called for him to stop, but he didn’t listen.

“Who are those guys?” John asked, joining her along with Kate.

Ana said, “I don’t know, they just bundled some guy into the back of the van.”

“Well, looks like a party,” Kate said, and ran to follow DB.

John had his phone in hand, and Ana sighed with relief. “You call the cops?”

“On the way,” he said. “Not sure what else I can do.”

“You can help me keep Kate and DB from getting themselves killed.”

She thought he might argue, but he snorted and took off running after the others.

Somehow, the van was still going, throwing off sparks from its naked rim; smoke poured out the exhaust. A couple of taxis swerved, tires screeching, but DB and Kate ignored the chaos. Kate cocked her arm back, threw another marble, but the projectile fell short and blew a crater in the street. DB’s chest swelled, six hands beating a tangled rhythm along his torso, building, speeding, until he arched his back and let out a wave of sound, a sonic sledgehammer. Ana ducked and covered her ears.

The shock wave caught the van, which lifted off its back wheels, tipped, and tumbled to its side. There were screams, more screeching tires and confused taxis. People running, and Ana wondered how bad this was going to get, and what she could do about mitigating the collateral damage. Her instinct was to get to ground and build a wall-raise enough earth to cordon off the street, isolate the van, keep the kidnappers from escaping. And perpetrate a couple million dollars of damage to the city’s infrastructure in the process. She could already hear the press conference after that. So, no. She felt suddenly useless.

She ran toward the van along with John, Kate, and DB. Sirens sounded in the distance. The driver’s door was open, the fish-eyed joker driver hauling himself out with impossibly muscular arms. His whole body slithered, powerful and agile, springing to the side-now top-of the van. His huge mouth bared to show needle teeth. Bulging, lidless eyes rolled over his shoulder to look at his pursuers, then he jumped to the far side of the van and out of sight. Kate reached to the ground for a piece of debris and threw. Ana didn’t see it land, but heard an explosion. A puff of smoke rose up from the next block. Kate and DB kept running. Ana and John stopped at the van.

“The other guy’s unconscious,” John said, looking in through the shattered windshield.

The back doors, crumpled and warped, had swung open. Ana looked inside to find two jokers, the elephantine guy and one other, equally muscular and tough-looking, hands and feet and tentacles tied up, mouths gagged. They’d flopped to the side of the van-now the bottom-unconscious. She hoped they were only unconscious.

The blaring sirens rounded the corner-two patrol cars fishtailing onto Suffolk. “Freeze! Everybody freeze!” one of the cops yelled through a loudspeaker.

The guy in the passenger seat of the van, the joker with vines for an extra set of arms, had woken up. Bleeding from a gash in his head, he managed to crawl to the back of the van and wrestle Ana for the door. Shoving, he knocked her back. He was holding a gun.

“John!” Ana called, dodging to the front of the van to take cover. “Cops are here! Where are Kate and DB?”

John pointed down the street, around the next corner. They’d gone after the driver. Great.

The order came again. “You two! Freeze!”

A shot fired from the back of the van. Cursing came over the loudspeaker behind them, the gunman fired again, and the orders to freeze turned into orders to put the gun down. Ana figured the police had better things to do than go after her and her friends.

“Go!” Ana yelled at John, and they took off, turning onto the next street.

The desk job hadn’t been kind to her stamina. Not that she’d ever been in great shape, but she used to do better than this. Two blocks of running and she was heaving. John was ahead of her and pulling away.

Ahead, he hesitated. Rounding the corner in her turn, Ana stumbled up against him in time to see DB go down, screaming. He’d grabbed the fish-eyed joker-who was tall, it turned out. DB only had a few inches on him. The six arms should have given him an advantage, but the joker had done something, let loose some crackling bolt of energy, sparking like a Van de Graaff generator. DB went limp and fell, and the joker fled.

Ana’s heart skipped a few beats and she had to concentrate to get her legs moving again. She was afraid of what she’d find when she reached him. “Michael!” she called when she did get moving again, and dropped to the ground beside him. The big joker groaned. Alive, at least.

John yelled down the street, “Kate, stop!”

“I can catch him!”

“He’ll kill you!”

“What do you care?”

A pause, and he yelled, “What do you mean, what do I care?”

“Find me something to throw, damn it!”

“Michael?” Ana asked, hand on his uppermost shoulder.

“Wha … happen…” An arm went to his forehead, and the other five flailed as if attempting to tread water.

“The guy zapped you. You okay?”

“Ung…” He rolled over and vomited.

Now that she had time to use her own phone, she fished it out of her jeans pocket. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No, no, I’m … shit, I feel like a truck hit me. Don’t call an ambulance. Where’s the fucker?” He slowly rolled over, propping himself on one hand, wiping his mouth with another. Ana tried to help him up when it looked like he was going to fall over, and grunted with the effort. Guy was big.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Something blew up down the next street. An explosion, followed by a pattering of debris. “The hell?” DB asked. Leaning on Ana, he managed to climb to his feet. He was trembling, and the tympanic membranes on his torso hummed with a sympathetic vibration.

“I don’t think you should go running after them.”

“Bullshit, I’ve been through worse than this.” He took off, limping.

Another explosion sounded. “Was that one of Kate’s?” DB asked.

“Yeah,” Ana said, sighing.

“Should I be worried about her or the other guy?”

Good question. “John’s looking out for her.”

“That loser can’t do jack shit.” He limped, winced, rotated a couple of sets of shoulders.

“Give him a break, Michael.”

“Why should I? He had it all. Kate-the most beautiful, most amazing girl in the world-she picked him and he threw it back in her face. He broke her heart.”

She’d done a pretty good job of breaking John’s, too, but DB wouldn’t listen to that. He might be okay with him and Kate not being together now. But he’d always regret the might-have-been that he’d lost.

That wasn’t why Ana winced and looked away, trying to turn the expression into a smile. “I suppose I can always go for runner-up.”

“What? Ana, hey, that’s not what I-”

“There they are.” Ana trotted ahead.

They found John and Kate standing on the next corner, peering around to an empty storefront on Orchard. Periodically, she hurled debris-broken glass, smashed soda cans-at the building. She’d just thrown a piece of brick, which landed with another blast, a shower of concrete. John handed her the next projectile. They argued.

“You really think I don’t care if you live or die?”

“John, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean? Is that what you think about me?”

“You always make these arguments about you, you know that?”

“What arguments? We haven’t said a word to each other in over a year!”

Ana interrupted. “Where’d the fish guy go?”

“Kate’s got him pinned down there,” John said. Sure enough, the fish-eyed man lurked in the shadows of the shop’s interior, hanging back from Kate’s wall of destruction. Occasionally, he waved his gun and random shots fired, pinging off the brick wall above them. They ducked back behind the corner, except for Kate, who hurled another missile. Another chunk exploded out of the storefront across from them, but the joker was still there, moving back into the building, gun in hand.

“I’m calling the cops, telling them we’re here,” Ana said, punching the number into her phone.

DB huffed. “As long as you do all the talking when they get here. You’re the diplomat.”

She wasn’t, really. More like a bureaucrat. Pencil pusher, desk jockey. Babysitter?

The joker tried to make a break for it again, creeping up to a broken doorway. Kate threw, and the guy stumbled back in a panic. “I should just go in there and take him down,” DB grumbled. “Drum him out of there.”

“And have him blast you again?” Ana said. “No. We wait for the cops.”

“If he doesn’t shoot us all first,” Kate said. “I can’t get to him as long as he keeps hiding. Maybe if I bring the whole building down on top of him…”

She’d already gotten a good start on that.

“Sure hope they have insurance,” DB said. He was grinning.

“Are you actually enjoying this?” Ana said.

“Beats a press conference,” he said, and she couldn’t argue.

Kate glared. “Are you guys going to help or just stand there staring?”

“I thought I was helping,” John said.

“That’s not what I meant-”

“Kate-”

The gunfire from the storefront had stopped. The street had gone quiet; a car horn from a few blocks away echoed, and a distant police siren sounded. No fish-like movement flickered in the shadows of the broken glass and brick wall.

“Did you get him?” Ana asked.

“No,” Kate said. “He’s gone.” She growled and threw the piece of glass at the nearby wall; it popped like a firecracker and left a mark like a bullet hole. They ducked as debris pattered around them.

Kate pointed at John. “You made me lose him.”

“I made you-”

The siren rang out behind them now, and a squad car came through the intersection, barreled toward them, and screeched to a stop a few feet away. Ana’s first impulse was to run. Which said a lot about the situation, didn’t it?

“What the hell are you people doing?” The first cop who stepped out of the car might have been a joker, or a nat with an unfortunate set of features-bulging eyes, scraggly hair.

His partner was definitely a joker. Her shape was enough off the human norm to draw attention, though she ended up being more fascinating than ugly. She was barrel-chested, rib cage hinting at huge lung capacity and vast stamina. Below that she was wasp-waisted, and her legs were powerfully muscled. She was shaped like a greyhound, built for running. No getting away from her.

And she was pissed off. “No. Oh, no, not you guys. Goddamn ace vigilantes. I hate ace vigilantes.”

Both John and DB responded, earnestly, “I’m not an ace.” Kate punched John in the shoulder, and he glared at her.

The four of them stood shoulder to shoulder, regarding the two officers. They looked like kids caught fighting on the playground: gazes on their shoes, scuffing at the concrete. Kate had her arms tightly crossed, maybe to keep her from wanting to throw something.

“Is it one of you who called in a kidnapping?” the nat cop said.

Ana stepped forward. “Yeah. John called it in, but I’m the one who saw it. In an alley off Suffolk. There were two of them, the guy they pulled into the back of the van was unconscious-”

“Can you describe the driver of the van?” she asked.

“Gray, pale, bald. Big black eyes. Fishy, almost.”

“And he’s got some kind of badass electric shock,” DB added. “Beat the shit out of me.”

The joker cop-Michaelson, the name badge on her uniform read-scowled. “That would be the Eel. We’ve been on his tail for a while.” She exchanged a look with her partner; neither seemed happy.

“So that really was a kidnapping?” Ana said. “I wasn’t just imagining it.”

“Don’t give yourself a medal just yet,” said the first cop-Bronkowski. “Which way did he go?”

Kate hitched a thumb over her shoulder, to the corner and the next street. “Saw him running that way. I almost had him until I got distracted.” Again, she glared at John, who glared back.

Michaelson spoke into the radio at her shoulder, and a garbled answer came back. It must have made sense, because she nodded. “Right. I’m going to need you all to come down the station-”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong!” DB grumbled.

“-just to make a statement. You think you can do that?”

Yes, they finally agreed. They could do that.

Michaelson’s radio crackled again, and she replied. “Right, on our way.” Turning back to them, she admonished, “Let us catch the bad guys, and you guys get yourselves to the precinct. Don’t make me come after you.”

With that, she and Bronkowski climbed back into the car. The spinning red and blue lights splashed across them as the car pulled away. Ana squinted and ducked away at their glare. Kate groaned. “So we’re going to spend the rest of the night at a police station? Some party.”

“All the best parties end that way,” DB said, chuckling.

Ana sighed. “At least we did some good. I think.” Some tiny amount of good. Assuming the kidnapping victims in the back of the van were okay.

“Kate,” John said, his tone earnest, and Ana wanted to smack him before he said another word. Couldn’t he just let it go? “I really do worry about you-”

“John-” Kate stopped herself, closed her eyes. Maybe counting to ten. “I know. But I’m fine. Really. Can we just go talk to the police now?” She started walking.

“I could really use another margarita,” DB said, following her.

“Yeah,” Ana said. That second pitcher still sat in the fridge. If only they could get to it before morning.

John stared after Kate. “It’s not like I’m trying to annoy her. It just comes out that way.”

“Maybe you should stop treating her like she’s different. Like she’s some sparkly fairy ice queen. You know?”

He pursed his lips, confused, which she took to mean that he didn’t. “I just-”

“John, let it go.” He only slouched a little before squaring his shoulders, settling his expression into something resembling calm as he walked off after the others. Ana needed her own moment to gather herself.

The sharp crack of a gunshot rang. Instantly, instinctively, Ana dropped to the concrete even as she looked for the source. The others had done likewise-they all had experience with getting shot at. Another shot fired-and DB roared, falling back, a spot of red bursting from the sleeve of his coat. Shit.

Ana saw the flash of shining gray skin in the streetlight at the opposite corner. The Eel, crouching in hiding, leveling his gun for another shot at the trio walking half a block ahead of Ana.

He’d targeted them because they were the dangerous ones; at least the ones who looked dangerous. People tended to glance right past Ana. Just as well.

She shouted a wordless warning, and one hand went to her St. Barbara medallion, which she clutched through her shirt. The other she spread flat on the pavement.

This wasn’t like digging into bare soil, tilling a garden or drilling a well, actions that came as easily to her as touching air. The city was full of dirt, rock, soil, but it had a crust over it, concrete and steel, and she had to get past that to get to her power. She almost had to trick herself-technically, asphalt was earth, containing bits and fragments, if she could work past the tar and additives. Concrete did have a trace of soil in it.

She pushed, found the layer between the streets and sidewalks and tunnels underneath, found the substrate through which the city had insinuated its limbs and tendrils. Then, she shoved.

The street trembled with the sound of an earthquake. Pavement cracked, crumbled. A section of sidewalk rose on a pillar of earth, pressing upward from under the city itself-trapping the kidnapper on its peak. Debris rained down the sides, bits of concrete broke off and fell. The pillar climbed a full story high. The joker was trapped in the open, unable to flee, unable to move. He’d flattened himself to the broken sidewalk, gripping the edges, staring down with fearful eyes.

She could feel the city’s infrastructure-pipes and conduits, straight concrete and steel running like veins through the earth-and avoid the obstacles, for the most part. Curl the earth around it, nudge it aside. As careful as she tried to be, a water main broke, and a geyser spewed from a crack in the street, spilling a river into the gutter.

Well, so much for minimizing damage. At least the joker was caught.

Except that he looked down to the crevice and the flood pouring out of it, gave a determined nod, and jumped.

It should have been a suicide move, except halfway down he changed, his body morphing. His clothing ripped and fell away as he elongated, his limbs shrinking, his head bulging. Now, he didn’t just seem like some slimy sea creature, he was one, and he disappeared into the flooded crack in the pavement and into the sewer pipes. Gone.

“Damn, didn’t see that coming,” DB said.

The others had doubled back and now huddled in a crouch behind her, holding onto ground that had turned unstable. DB clamped a hand over a bloody wound on an upper shoulder. Seemed okay, otherwise. Ana sighed with relief.

“What did he think he was doing?” John said.

“Thought he could get the jump on us,” Kate said. “Idiot.”

“Doesn’t matter, he still got away.” Ana sighed.

DB looked at her. “You okay?”

Using her ace had burned the last of the tequila out of her system. Now, she was just tired. She brushed grit off her hands and sat back against the nearby wall.

Over the sound of gushing water, the wail of police sirens returned. This was going to take a little more explanation than last time. Perfect end to the night, really.

The patrol car arrived, splashing through the river of water now pouring down the street. It stopped, and the whippet-shaped Officer Michaelson stepped out, followed by her partner, Bronkowski. She regarded them, arms crossed. “Can’t leave you clowns alone for a second, can I?” None of them had an answer to that, and she continued, “I’m going to need you all to come with me.”

Ana looked to her friends, but they were all staring back at her like they expected her to do something. She sighed. “Officer, please, Michael’s hurt-”

“Not that hurt…” he muttered.

“You want to argue with me, go right ahead, that’ll give me an excuse to put cuffs on the whole lot of you.”

“Bugsy would love that for Aces!” Kate muttered.

“At least someone would get something out of the night,” Ana replied.

They could make a break for it. A couple of cops against the Committee. Well, the scattered remnants of the original Committee, at least. And Team Hearts of American Hero. The more Ana thought about it, the lamer it sounded.

Two more squad cars pulled up, more cops spilling out-some with guns drawn. Who were the bad guys again?

A big-monstrously big-joker, with fur and horns to boot, trotted toward them. “Rikki, Bugeye, you guys got a problem here?”

Michaelson smirked at the aces. “I don’t know, do we?”

They didn’t.

Ana at least talked Michaelson and Bronkowski into taking them to the Jokertown Clinic first, to get DB’s arm looked at.

“Just another scar to add to the collection,” he said. He had a gauze bandage taped over the wound. The bullet had just grazed him, and a nurse had cleaned it out and stopped the bleeding. He probably wouldn’t even need stitches.

“You could have been killed,” Ana muttered. Now that the adrenaline-and margaritas-had worn off, the danger was only now becoming apparent. They should have called the cops, and waited.

But no, then the two kidnapped jokers would be gone. Instead, they were lying on gurneys in the Jokertown Clinic emergency room, and they were going to be okay.

Daylight had started to press through the room’s glass doors. The four of them sat in a row of worn plastic chairs in the emergency room waiting area, right where Michaelson told them to sit. The place smelled tired and antiseptic. Way too many sick and hurt people had moved through this room.

Michaelson and her partner had taken up position by the door. The muffled voice in her radio said something, and Michaelson relayed the information that the passenger in the van, the other joker, had been arrested. In the meantime, dawn had broken, and Ana really wanted to go home. When Kate smashed a hand against a wall, they all jumped.”Sorry,” she muttered, studying the crushed insect on her hand. “I thought it was Bugsy. It’s just a fly.”

Now Ana was convinced she heard a buzzing in her ear and looked around expecting to see one of the reporter’s green wasps reconnoitering.

After what seemed like half the night, the whippet-looking cop-Officer Michaelson-came over, along with a plainclothes detective. Young guy, but grim-looking, with a set to his jaw that might have been there awhile.

“I’m Detective Francis Xavier Black,” he said.

Ana stood, brushed off her clothes, offered her hand for him to shake. “Ana Cortez,” she said. “These are-”

“Um, yeah, I know who you all are,” he said, in a tone that indicated he was chagrined about the whole thing. “Rikki tells me you tore up half the Lower East Side playing vigilante.”

And what was she supposed to say to that? Should she call a lawyer? And wouldn’t Lohengrin love that.… The others looked at Ana, like they expected her to play diplomat. They expected her to throw herself on that grenade, and after she’d fed them all burritos and margaritas.

“Why do I have to do all the talking and herding cats and crap?” she said to them, pouting.

“Because you’re good at it?” Kate said.

Ana blinked at her. Really? Well. Okay then. She straightened and matched Black’s gaze squarely. She’d met the president for crying out loud, she could face him. “We called the police as soon as we realized something was wrong. You’ll have to tell me where the line between concerned citizen and vigilante is.”

“Or I could have a judge do it,” Detective Black said, shrugging.

“Give me a break,” Kate muttered, slumping back in her chair.

DB, easily the biggest guy in the room, drew himself up and thudded his chest. The sound reverberated through the floor. “We were only trying to help.”

Ana said, “I saw someone get hauled into the back of the van-it looked like a kidnapping. I wasn’t just going to sit by and watch. I wasn’t wrong, was I? That really was a kidnapping.”

“And what were you doing wandering around Jokertown at midnight?” he asked.

Like he couldn’t believe she would do something like that. “It’s a free country.”

Black sighed, and Ana got the feeling he’d been awake and working for a very long time. He said, “You weren’t imagining it. There’ve been a spate of kidnappings over the last few weeks. We haven’t had a lot of luck tracking down the victims or perpetrators. Catching Rance is a big break.” Rance must have been the other kidnapper, with the extra limbs.

“So we actually helped,” John said, brightening.

“Yeah, well, don’t think you need to keep helping.”

“Look,” Ana said. “I can help put the street back together. Free excavation services. Just let me know.”

Black nodded, and Ana expected she’d be getting a phone call from the city before too long. Then he turned to DB. “You picked up some DVDs from a stall on the Bowery, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need to take those into evidence, if you don’t mind.” He winced. Maybe afraid he was going to have to argue with DB, which would make anyone wince.

“Why?” DB said.

“Part of an ongoing investigation.”

“Having to do with the kidnapping? What the hell is going on, really?”

He hesitated, as if debating how much he could share. “It’s early yet, I’m afraid I can’t discuss details. But getting those disks would really help.” Ana nudged DB’s shoulder, and the joker pulled DVDs out of his copious coat pockets without further prodding. He’d managed to stash a dozen or so.

“Thank you, Mr. Vogali, I really appreciate this,” Black said. The detective sorted through them, looking at titles, and nodded in satisfaction. “You’ll be free to go just as soon as you give statements to Officer Michaelson. Thanks again, and please-try to stay out of trouble. We really don’t need any more paperwork.” Offering a weary smile, he turned away.

Michaelson appeared with a stack of clipboards and forms. “You need to fill out reports and contact info. Are you willing to testify if this goes to court?”

Testifying in court seemed like the easy part at this point. At least Michaelson had stopped threatening to arrest them.

In the middle of filling out her statement, Ana’s phone rang, and she fumbled in her pocket for it. Caller ID said Lohengrin. Great. She couldn’t avoid this, only delay it, so she went ahead and answered. “Yeah?”

“Earth Witch,” he said, his accent making the name sound lilting and exotic. “You’re in the news this morning. What happened?”

Already? She groaned. “It’s a very long story. Can I tell you later?”

Then DB’s phone rang. Then John’s. Then Kate’s. The story must have hit the papers, the Internet, the morning talk shows, and everything in between, all at the same time. Ana caught sound bites of conversation.

From DB: “No, Marty, I’m fine. Everything’s fine … what do you mean, doing something stupid? I didn’t do anything stupid!”

From John: “Mom, I wasn’t trying to cause trouble … can we talk about this later?”

And Kate: “I’m fine, Tyler, really. No … yes … yes, it was kind of stupid, but I’m not going to apologize. See you tonight?”

Lohengrin was still talking, and Ana didn’t really care that she’d missed half of what he was saying. “… return to the office, right now.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? It’s really loud in here.”

“I’ve arranged a press conference in two hours. You need to state on the record that your actions last night were in no way associated with the UN, and the Committee is not operating on American soil. I need you here for a briefing. After the press conference, I’m sending you to Mexico while this clears up.”

Oh, for God’s sake. She really wanted to feel like she was doing good-but did there have to be quite so many hoops for her to jump through? She pressed her St. Barbara medallion through her shirt and concentrated on being polite.

“I’m at the Jokertown Clinic right now-”

“Are you hurt?” To his credit, he actually sounded concerned.

“No, I’m just tying up a few loose ends. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but it might take a while.”

“Two hours, Earth Witch.”

She hung up.

DB finished his conversation next, clicked off his phone, and regarded Ana. “How much trouble are you in?”

“Don’t ask,” Ana said, frowning. “You?”

“That was my manager,” DB said. “The record label’s threatening legal action if I don’t get back in the studio. I need to go to LA and sort it out.”

“I guess getting sued makes recording another album not sound so bad?” Ana asked.

“For now. But I’m thinking it may be time to go indy. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“Just keep an eye out for Bugsy, yeah?” They both looked over their shoulders at that one.

The others had finished their calls and caught the last bit of the conversation. “LA, huh?” John said. “I’m heading that way, too, looks like. I have a job interview.”

Kate’s eyes grew wide. “Not for American Hero-”

“No. Mom’s charitable foundation needs a new manager. I told her I’d only consider the job if I applied for it just like everyone else.”

“Great,” Kate said. “I think.”

“Hey Ana, can I put you down as a reference?”

“Sure, but a letter from Lohengrin might sound more impressive,” she said.

“I think I’d rather have one from a friend.”

They looked at Kate next, with expectation. She blushed. “That was Tyler. Just, you know. Checking in.”

Ana tensed, expecting a jab from one or the other of the guys, and Kate’s defensive reaction. But it didn’t happen.

“Cool,” DB said thoughtfully, and that was that.

John looked down the row of them, and wonder of wonders, he was smiling. It had been a while, Ana realized.

“You guys have an hour before we all go flying off?” he said. “I want to show you something.”

An hour after returning to Ana’s flat to wash up and retrieve some cash, they ended up standing in a row, staring at the newest waxworks diorama at the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum.

They’d caused a scene at the ticket booth on the way in-how could they not? The four of them together, for the first time since before the famous press conference when Drummer Boy quit the Committee. Tourists snapped pictures on cell phones, and Ana cringed because the photo would be all over the Internet in seconds, and she’d get a million phone calls, and yet another summons to the office of Lohengrin to explain herself. But that didn’t matter.

The joker at the ticket counter, a girl in her late teens with green scales and a sagging throat sac, wouldn’t let them pay, no matter how much they argued about it. They finally let her give them tickets, but Ana shoved forty bucks into the donation bucket in the front lobby out of spite. Then John led them to a display that was so new it still had signs announcing its grand reveal. They’d stared at it for five minute before saying a word, when Michael declared what they were all thinking.

“That’s fucked up,” he said flatly.

They, or rather waxworks versions of them, battled the Righteous Djinn in Egypt. Seven feet of Drummer Boy stood in the back, mouth open in a scream, all six arms flexed, some mythological creature captured in sculpture. Curveball braced, as if on a pitcher’s mound, her arm cocked back, ready to throw the stone she held. John Fortune held a commanding hand upraised; the smooth gem of Sekhmet was still imbedded in his forehead. And there was Earth Witch, her expression a calm contrast to the others, kneeling on the ground, lock of black hair falling over her face, pressing her hand down where a realistic-looking crack in the rock opened under her touch. The Djinn hovered above them all, laughing. His features were too plastic to make Ana think he was real. The wires suspending him from hidden rafters were visible. She could look at the image, detached, impassive, and not flash back to the scene as she remembered it, the sounds of screaming, blood soaking into sand, bullet ripping through her own gut. She didn’t remember it hurting so much as she remembered falling, and fading as the world turned upside down around her. She pressed a hand to her side, where the scar lay under her shirt.

They were all there: Rusty, Bubbles, Bugsy, everyone who’d made the trip to Egypt to try and save the world. An “In Memoriam” section featured Simoon, Hardhat, King Cobalt. It all felt like it had happened to someone else, in another life.

Two different artists had worked on the figures, and one had clearly been less talented. The Drummer Boy figure was uncanny, every flexed muscle accurate, the rictus of his scream exact in its lines and tension. On the other hand, Earth Witch might have been positioned to be partially hidden because her face was unnaturally smooth, the bend of her body slightly awkward. Ana imagined that not too many people would notice, distracted by special effects: LEDs in Curveball’s hand, John’s forehead, and the Djinn’s arms seemed to bring their powers to life. From hidden speakers, the sound of a desert sandstorm hissed. The smell of baking, sandy air came back to her, and Ana couldn’t tell if her memory generated the sensation, or if the museum really was piping in the chalky, throat-tickling smell.

Kate tilted her head, her brow furrowed. “Are my boobs really that big?” The figure’s chest bulged inside a too-tight white T-shirt.

“No,” John said.

Everyone looked at him. Kate crossed her arms, and if she’d had any ace power at all in her gaze, John would have been flayed.

Ana laughed. Then laughed some more, hand clamped over her mouth, gut spasming in her effort to stop. They were probably thinking she was crazy. She’d had a lot of surreal things happen to her, even by the standards of wild card Manhattan. But this had to win the prize. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath, hiccupping. “It’s just … it’s just … never mind.”

They didn’t have much time left and cruised quickly through the rest of the museum. The Great and Powerful Turtles’ shells suspended in procession, the depictions of history that had been old before any of them were born. There was a curtained-off “Adults Only” exhibit, one of the classic dioramas that had been here for decades. John stopped there. “That’s … yeah. That’s the one on my dad. I’ll pass.”

Put it like that, Ana decided she’d pass, too. They all did.

Outside, the bright afternoon sun gave her a headache. She had to be at the UN in half an hour, when what she really wanted was a glass of water and sleep. But she didn’t really want to leave the others. She wasn’t ready for the night to be over-even though it was the middle of the next day.

John said, “This is going to sound really weird-but I’m glad we could do this. You know-get together.”

“Drink some margaritas, fight a little crime,” Kate said.

DB added, “Like what, ‘Team Hearts catches muggers for old times’ sake’?” He scoffed, but Kate bowed her head and smiled.

At least nobody died this time, Ana thought, but didn’t say it. She didn’t want to ruin the mood. “Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

They exchanged phone numbers and called cabs. Having reached a compromise with his mother that didn’t involve American Hero, John agreed to return home for a visit before moving on. DB’s manager had arranged a flight back to LA. Everyone managed hugs. Even Kate and John, though theirs was fleeting. Still, if those two could be civil to each other, maybe world peace had a chance.

Before folding himself into his cab, DB leaned over Ana-his immense body filled her vision-rested a hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. His other hands pattered a beat. Straightening, he smiled. She was shocked, and embarrassed to notice she was blushing red hot. “Call me next time you’re in town?” she said.

“You bet.”

His cab drove off, and Kate stared at Ana. “What was that about?”

She couldn’t even make a guess.

Ana and Kate shared a cab. Kate would stay at the apartment-catching up on sleep, if she knew what was good for her-while Ana went to work to try to talk Lohengrin off the ceiling. Not likely she’d succeed, but she’d try. “I’m sorry the night didn’t really go the way I planned it.”

“Maybe not,” Kate said, and her smile was bright. “Still, it was a hell of a party.”

Ana couldn’t argue with that.