Page 21 of Villainous Intent

The former Alliance member Halcyon had managed it because he’d been gifted with the ability to influence those around him. Subtly bend them to his will. He would make everyone who figured out what he was forget. And if he couldn’t make them forget, well, a lot of people had gone missing during his active years.

God, I didn’t want to think about that bastard. I realized my hand had gone to my cuff instinctively. “Okay, well, we know one way they could hide themselves.”

Havoc nodded, but said nothing, tracking me as I paced. “The Aegis has asked me to double check Alliance members.” He paused, like he was trying to figure out how to break bad news.

“But?” I asked, when Havoc’s pause stretched on.

“But given that the Hammer was stolen from the League archives, they believe it was done by a League member. The Aegis wants you to work with the Syndicate.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “The Syndicate? They want me to work with the League?”

“I can’t exactly go to League events anymore and mingle,” he said dryly.

“And they think I can? How the hell am I supposed to examine League members without raising suspicions? I’m your Keeper. The moment I start poking around, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“They don’t want you poking around.” Havoc still hadn’t turned from the window. “They want you to look.”

I stopped pacing.

There was looking, and then there was looking.

I didn’t like looking. Every hour of every day, through every clash and every bout, every time I had to stand shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of supers, I kept it locked down. Keeping it off cost me nothing. It was as automatic as breathing.

Turning it on was the expensive part. The last time I’d done it in a real crowd I’d spent the following day in a blacked-out room with a wet cloth over my face and a bowl beside the bed, and all I’d learned for my trouble was that a lot of Supers in one building generated a pressure I couldn’t turn down once I’d let it in.

“How do they expect me to look, exactly?” I asked. “There are over three hundred names on the League register. Half of them wouldn’t let me within twenty feet of them, and the other half would only let me close so they could see if I flinched.”

“I don’t know yet. The messenger gave me the theft, the Trueborn, and your name. That’s it.” He finally turned from the glass. “They’re presenting the rest on the call. To both of us. At the same time.”

“Why would they⁠—”

“I imagine it’s because they know if they told me what they wanted you to actually do first, I’d have thrown the messenger off the roof and they’d have had to send another one.”

“It’s probably nothing dramatic,” I said. “Observation work. They’ll want me near enough to sweep a room, they’ll build in some cover story, I’ll file a report. That’s most of my job already.”

“They wouldn’t have sent a messenger ahead of a conference call for something simple,” he said.

No. They wouldn’t have.

I looked down at my hands. My thumb had found the cuff again without asking permission, worrying at the seam where the metal met my skin, and I made myself stop.

“You could still do it,” I said. “You’d just have to shake a lot of hands.”

“Three hundred of them. While every one of them wonders why the Alliance’s top Hero suddenly wants to touch them.” His mouth flattened. “They already ran the numbers, Annie. That’s why the messenger came with your name on his tongue instead of mine.”

“It would work, though.”

“It would work eventually. On one League member at a time, at arm’s length, if he let me close enough and held still while I did it.” He looked at his own hand for a second, then let it drop. “It used to be a room. Now it’s a handshake.”

There it was.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“I broke it. You had something whole and now you’ve got a party trick, and that’s on me.”

“You were ten years old.”