That evening, the team did their Halloween gift exchange in the courtyard gazebo, close enough to hear the last of the kids passing through the maze, the skeleton in that corner giving chase and wiping out for probably the fiftieth time that day (at some point, Zoey had started to root for the skeleton to catch them). They had previously agreed to do this Secret Santa–style, everyone drawing a name to buy a single gift. Will never showed up, which was not a surprise as he’d said not to expect him. He was nothing if not dependable: when Will said he wasn’t coming to your thing, you could bet he’d do whatever it took to not be there.
Echo had drawn Will’s name and said she’d gotten him a Hawaiian shirt covered in animated parrots that shrieked a song called “Pretty Paris Park Parrot Party” loud enough to be heard from several blocks away. Budd drew Echo and had gotten her a five-year subscription to a cigar-of-the-month club. Andre drew Budd and got him a unicycle. Zoey drew Andre and gave him a pink Cow Zoey T-shirt, size extra-small, signed by Zoey. There was no gift for Zoey, meaning Will had drawn her name and he had apparently boycotted the entire affair.
Zoey listened to the skeleton rise and fall for maybe the last time. “It’s annoying that Will didn’t show up for this.”
“Maybe that was his Halloween gift,” said Budd. “He knew how aggravatin’ you’d find it.”
“Come Monday,” said Zoey, “I want you guys to start assembling a list of everything. Everything we own, everything we do, out in the open and under the table. All of it. No more surprises. Then we’re going through it and I’m deciding what parts I still want a hand in. If you’ve got a problem with that, too bad.”
Budd said, “We’ll have it in your hand by eight A.M. tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to pull an all-nighter, just make it a priority—”
“What he means,” said Echo, “is that we already have that list. You asked for it a couple of months ago. After you got out of the hospital.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I’ll actually look at it this…”
Before Zoey could finish her sentence, she happened to glance over Echo’s shoulder. Behind her was the exterior of the ballroom and she just happened to catch someone slipping inside the small door there. That, Zoey knew well, should not have been possible.
“Uh, hold on. I have to go check something.”
Zoey limped over toward the door, mainly worried that some kid was going to activate Santa’s Workshop and accidentally build a doomsday weapon. Not only should that door have been locked, but it should have taken an extraordinary effort to unlock it if you weren’t a Suit.
Zoey reached the door, eventually, and poked her head inside the vast darkened room.
“Hello?”
Alonzo’s bodyguard, Deedee, did not act startled to have been discovered. She was standing in front of Santa’s Workshop, in the exact spot where Alonzo had stood a day earlier, which had been only hours before someone had gotten in and abducted Zoey’s cat. She glanced back at Zoey, then turned away again.
Zoey approached slowly. “Is … Alonzo here?”
“He went home.”
“Can I help you with something? You’re Deedee, right? I don’t think I ever got your last name.”
“My last name is Dunn.”
“Is Deedee like the letter D twice, like initials? Do they stand for something?”
“Dun-Dun.”
“Is there something I can … wait, your name is Dun-Dun Dunn?”
Deedee sighed. “My father,” she said, pausing to sneer at the word, “was a … whimsical man.”
“Well, I see why you learned how to fight. Is there something I can do for you? That door was supposed to be locked.”
“I’m sure it was.” Deedee glanced around the room. “What is it like? To be this wealthy?”
“Ah, well, I don’t think I know yet? If you’d asked me a year ago to guess what it’s like to be rich, I’d have talked about fancy cars and big houses and vacations. But now I’m realizing that’s like asking somebody in one of those Indian villages where they still don’t have clean water how they’d handle living in my old trailer. They’d be like, ‘I’d just sit around and enjoy my clean water all day.’ It’s kind of like that, you’re beyond these basic needs but then there’s this whole layer of new problems on top. Suddenly you’re in charge of helping shape the world. I guess I could ask you what’s it like to be strong, to know you can beat people up.”
“You think that’s what I do?”
“Aren’t you Alonzo’s bodyguard?”
“I protect my uncle from danger.” She shot a brief glance back at Zoey. “Of all kinds.”
“How did you get in here?”
“There are ways.”
“Have you done it before?”
Deedee didn’t answer.
Zoey asked, “You think I’m dangerous?”
“Yes. Because you don’t really know what it’s like to have a boot on your neck but you think you do. So you’re going to slip right into the status quo. Same as all the rest.”
“That thing with Alonzo going on camera and saying he was eating Tilley’s heart, the thing that got us to come visit. Your idea?”
Deedee shrugged, as if none of that mattered now.
Zoey said, “What is it you want?”
“For me and the people I love to be able to walk the streets without fear.”
“Isn’t that what Alonzo is doing? With his mayoral run?”
“The change I want doesn’t happen from the top down. It happens on the streets. If the people out there don’t change, nothing Alonzo does will matter.”
“Well, I don’t want to be part of the problem, Deedee. I really don’t.”
“You are passing a stabbed man in the street and promising not to stab him a second time. That’s not enough. The blade needs to be removed, the wound healed.”
“You came in here for a reason. You want a weapon? Or are you looking to go all the way with implants?”
“I want, for the first time in my life, to enter an elevator with a man and not stand there with the knowledge that he can overpower me anytime he feels like it. I want to be able to go jogging alone, at night. And when I enter a room, I want the people there to take me seriously, because they know they have to.”
“You think this machine can give you all that?”
“I’d like to at least find out. But where there’s power, there’s always somebody like you acting as the gatekeeper.”
“Deedee … if you want it, if you really want it, come back in a week. We’d need to set you up with the surgeon, there are pre-op appointments, medical history stuff, training so that you don’t accidentally rip your legs off. But I do want you to take some time to think about it. I’m telling you, getting a whole bunch of new power all at once, you can lose yourself. Forget why you even wanted it in the first place.”
“And yet, you’re keeping your money. And power.”
“Yes.”
“Then that, too, is my answer.”
“If that’s still your answer in a week, come back here.”
“See you then.” She turned to head for the door.
“Oh,” said Zoey, to her back. “I have an extra cat, do you need one?”
“No.”