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Back in the convention center, I headed for my next panel. I’d been texting Eric on and off all day. Except for the one command to show up at the FC Comics booth to fill in, I’d heard nothing from him. As I came around a corner and onto the main concourse, there he was.
“Eric,” I called. He turned. Didn’t smile, but beckoned me closer. He was with a woman around my age, although possibly a bit older. The same one he’d been talking to last night at the Fantastic Comics rooftop party.
“I don’t know if you’ve met Leslie Evans. She’s written and drawn for CP Comics for the last couple of years. Can you take her with you to the ‘Women in Comics’ panel?”
“Sure,” I nodded at her. She’d brought the only successful modern female character, a manga takeoff, to CP Comics.
“When do we meet for the evening reception?” I asked him. He looked blank. “The CP Comics party at the Walker Mansion?”
Eric didn’t answer my question. Typical Eric. “I’ll see you later, at the FC booth or the hotel.” He took off.
Leslie said, “I only arrived last night. I’m not oriented yet. I hope it’s not an imposition to tag along with you.”
I was still staring after Eric, wondering what he was hiding from me this time. “What? Oh, no problem,” I said. I consulted my handy phone app, then pointed down the concourse. “It’s this way.”
As we walked, I asked her, “Do you enjoy working for CP Comics? I heard you’d written movies previously.”
She laughed. “Everybody’s heard that. It’s my big claim to fame, but it was only the one movie.”
“So what turned you onto comics?”
“Manga. I spent a year in Japan during college, and everybody there reads manga, so I did, too, to learn the written language.” She explained how she’d looked around for a shot at comics once she’d realized her movie scripting career wasn’t going where she liked. “Or going anywhere at all, actually. It’s a tough business and I didn’t have the stamina for it.”
My stomach clenched. Would I be walking into a bear trap if I went out to L.A. to work with Jason? “A lot of people in comics that I’ve met have ambitions to work in movies. Now that so many comics get turned into movies, it seems more possible than ever before.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps, but those are all superhero movies, aren’t they? The only manga movies are anime, not live action.”
“Wasn’t there one a long time ago, called Tank Girl?”
“Yes, and that’s it for live action manga. In the U.S., anything from manga that gets turned into a movie is animated or kid-oriented. We’ll never get American movies of the manga that’s popular with adult readers.”
We reached the seminar room and identified ourselves to the moderator. She checked the roster. “I have Chloe on my list, but not Leslie. Would you like to sit in on the panel, anyway?”
“Yes, I would. I have an announcement to make at the end,” she said.
We took the last vacant seats, which were separated by a couple of women I recognized as long-time comic book employees. The older one had been a hand letterer. The younger had started her career in comics with digital coloring.
My prior panels today had been extremes, but this one was straight down the middle. Half the questions and comments were silly, and half were serious. I got asked many details about planning and drawing Swoonie. I was careful not to talk about her imminent assassination. I was too down about her fate to want to explain or attempt to justify it to fans.
A woman stood up and asked, “How does the panel feel about the inequity of females to males in the comics?” That quickly turned into a heavy discussion about young women in refrigerators, and dead heroines, and more. As the topic kept going, I said less and less. How could I not tell them that Swoonie would soon be dead? It was wrong to withhold the information to the very people who might be willing to launch a campaign to save her.
Leslie grabbed the mic and said, “It should make you happy to hear that tentative plans to cancel Swoonie have been dumped. I’ve signed a contract with FC Comics to continue her adventures after Chloe Cole leaves the strip.”
My jaw dropped, but I quickly snapped my mouth closed. I heard the excited questions and saw the raised hands, but from a distance. Leslie’s answers sounded as if they were spoken a mile away. At one point she seemed to send an apologetic look in my direction. I was on my own island, and it wasn’t a happy place.
I’m not good at hiding my emotions, but at least I tried to hide my surprise from the fans gathered in the seats in front of me. It was an effort to retain some pride, to not look like an utter fool. How the hell could Eric have done this to me? What was the point of that big editorial meeting and all the arguing we did last week? Had Eric known then that Leslie might be available? Had he been negotiating with her for a long time? Was his plan all along to kick me off the title and give it to her? After all, one woman drawing comics for FC Comics was enough, wasn’t it? Sarcasm appropriate here.
Breathe. That’s right. Breathe. Leslie chirped on about how happy she was to be taking over Swoonie. If I’d been sitting next to her, I would have kicked her.
The excited questions kept coming. Somebody finally asked me how I felt to be leaving Swoonie and FC as well. News to me, but I played it cool. I even smiled.
“I can’t reveal my next project yet, but it’s exciting and a new challenge for me. I’m leaving Swoonie in good hands.”
I refused to say any more. I tossed the detailed questions back to Leslie. “She’s the one you should ask about upcoming storylines,” I said, shaking my head and putting on a great show of being collegial, when I wanted to gut her with a fish knife.
No, that’s what I should do to Eric. How many times had Eric done something behind my back? Something significant? Why had I expected him to tell me his plans instead of surprising me yet again with a betrayal?
He never confided in me unless it suited him. He often did not answer my direct questions. Now he’d fired me from a comic book title and had the gall to assign me to escort my replacement to her public announcement of their deal. Of course. Why should he be here during the sticky moment when I learned what he’d done?
Possibly the worst of it was that Leslie acted as if she had no idea I’d been ambushed by Eric. She clung to me after the panel as if we were now best friends for life. She wanted me to help her find her next panel. “Please show me the ropes,” she said, smiling like someone who knows she is charming. “I’ve never been to a huge comicon like this before,” she said.
Neither had I, but I wasn’t likely to admit it to her. Not now. Was she for real? Or was she the kind of manipulative bitch who pretended to be a friend? A frenemy? I’d had one before, a roommate who was a pathological liar. I was deeply glad Linea had emigrated to Chile. We needed to keep a continent apart. I wished I could be that far from chirpy Leslie Evans right now.
Roland showed up at the door as the after-panel finally dragged to an end and all the questions from the fans clustered around me and Leslie had been answered or, in my case, evaded.
“Twitter erupted,” he said. “I had to come see for myself.” His sympathetic eyes told me a kinder impulse was behind his arrival. He introduced himself to Leslie, promised to call for a special staff member who would escort her to her next event, and deftly separated me from her cloying company.
As soon as we turned the corner outside the seminar room, I fell on his neck. “Oh, god. Thank you. I love you so much. You’re the best.”
“Let’s go in here,” he said, putting an arm around me and leading me to a closed door. He used a code to unlock it. An audio video closet, blessedly empty of people. He shut the door. “What happened? You were fine an hour ago.”
“That was before Eric told me to bring Leslie to this panel. Before he totally betrayed me.” I recovered my anger enough to notice that my hands were clenched into fists. “Why does he do this? Why won’t he tell me the truth, ever?” I started pacing.
Roland was tactful enough not to state the obvious, that Eric was a jerk.
“I’ve always known he’s out for himself first,” I said, letting my fingernails bite into my palms. “It always has to be done his way. But this is too much.” I swiped angrily at my eyes. No damn way I would cry over Eric-the-bastard Wood.
“He never told you he was replacing you on Swoonie?”
I shrieked, “He told me he was canceling the title and killing her. Killing her.” I described the editorial meeting. “I was supposed to draw her death. I fought and fought. Steve simply rolled over. He’s such a suck-up. Or has he been in on this all along?”
“It’s possible that Wood changed plans when Leslie became available,” Roland pointed out.
“He had all these business reasons why Swoonie had to die. Numbers only he had access to, numbers I couldn’t fight. He said Swoonie was an abject sales failure.”
“CP Comics’ Power Lady barely sells any comics, but she’s a licensing dynamo,” he said.
I nodded. “Exactly. Little girls want to dress up as heroines, not just princesses. I was planning to try again, to tell Eric about Damien Nast’s comic book store and how he wants more products to sell to girls.”
I threw myself onto a metal folding chair. “It’s so important to do something for the girl audience. I was going to beg for Swoonie to at least continue as a licensed product.”
“Now she will,” he pointed out.
I lifted my head. “I’ve taken a lot of crap from Eric, but I’m not taking this. Leslie can start work on the last issue I was supposed to draw. I’m done.”
“Don’t you have a contract to fulfill?”
I shook my head. “When I started drawing Swoonie I had no standing in mainstream comics. I didn’t deserve a contract. Even I knew that.”
He frowned.
I held one hand up to my aching forehead, weary even of my anger all of a sudden. “It doesn’t matter. I should have known it would end this way. More fool me.”
I stood. “Okay. I’m done crying on your shoulder.”
“Sure?” Roland asked. He reached out a hand and wiped a tear that had somehow spilled down my cheek.
I sniffed. He was too good. In a second I’d be bawling on his chest. Eric was not worth my tears.
Roland must have sensed my moment of weakness, for he put his arms around me in a comforting gesture. I relaxed against his familiar body.
He tightened the embrace. “Chloe,” he murmured, tilting up my chin with one hand. He kissed me.
Something jerked inside. He was so familiar, so safe. When the kiss grew more passionate, I sighed into his mouth and let him do what he wanted. He put both hands on my butt and pulled me tight to him, so I felt how hard he was. My body wanted the comfort offered. I softened. I moaned. Sex was such a healer.
Sex with Roland?
“No,” I said, and pulled away from him. “I can’t do this.”
“We were always good together,” he said. “Let me make you feel better.” His words were soft. His sweet concern for me opened something yearning deep within me.
Roland tried to embrace me again, but I backed away, wiping my face to erase his touch. I put words between us as fast as I could. “No. We’re over, remember? You’re a wonderful guy, much better than I deserve. You’re my friend. I need a friend.”
“Chloe.” Roland’s eyes showed how stricken he was that I’d rejected him again. I put my hand over my mouth, pressing against my lips. I ached for the pain his expression revealed. I had to hold myself back from kissing him again out of sheer sympathy. Or allowing more because I felt guilty at arousing him and I myself would welcome bodily consolation.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought you into a private problem.”
Roland’s expression tightened.
“I love you,” he said. “Does he?”
I wrapped my arms around my midsection. The expression on my face was probably as sad as his. “I can’t go back to what we were over a year ago.”
I ran out of the AV closet and pushed my way through the crowds until I was a football field’s length away. I ignored Roland’s repeated calls and texts. Finally, I had the composure to text Sarah, who was roaming the comicon today.
Desp talk U. Where?
Within a minute, she beeped back.
2nd fl green rm
I found an escalator and rode it to the top floor, past the glassed mezzanine where they were doing television interviews. Still plenty of people here, but then I saw the green room, which was available only to people with special badges. It was crowded. I couldn’t talk to her here. As I paused, barely holding my tears in, Sarah swooped past me from behind and pulled me around the corner to a ladies room. It had a small anteroom with a couch and some chairs.
“What happened?” she asked urgently.
I collapsed and told her the bad part about Eric, and then the even worse part, about Roland.
“I let him kiss me, and I kissed him back.”
“Roland hit on you when you were crying over Eric? That’s low, even for him.”
“I feel so messed up. I didn’t mean to kiss Roland back.” I raised my head. “What do you mean, ‘even for him’?”
“You’ve been living with another man for a year and Roland comes on strong like that? You’re kidding yourself about saintly Roland, girlfriend. He’s a man, he wants to steal you back from Eric, and he seized on your weakest moment to do it. He doesn’t fight any fairer than your corporate hatchet man lover does.”
After she said that, and a lot more, reminding me of our ex-roommate, Linea, and some queasy moments involving Roland, I straightened my spine. She was right. I hadn’t committed a crime by kissing Roland or even by wanting more.
“I’m not a dog bone for these men to fight over,” I said. “Maybe I should back away from all this superheroine stuff Roland keeps dragging me into.”
“Which he could have faked. Has Mistress Miraculous done a single miraculous thing yet?”
“No.”
“Maybe that’s because Roland made her up, to give him an excuse to be together with you this weekend.”
“Why didn’t I realize that before?”
“’Cause you’re a nice girl, unlike me, the one who sees bad agendas behind every smiling face,” she said.
“I can’t believe he’s so hung up on me that he would cause these attacks.”
“He has the means, the opportunity, and possibly a twisted motive, too.” Sarah added, “Before you get the idea that you’re Helen of Troy, or something, think about this. Roland could be trying to score off Eric first and win you back second. He’s a man. Competitive. Territorial. Roland thinks Eric stole you from him.”
“But that’s not true. I broke up with Roland before I even met Eric.”
“Roland used to stalk you, remember? He’s not the angel you keep thinking he is. Don’t you remember how he and Linea screwed you over?”
“That was all her fault.”
Sarah shook her head. “Roland and Linea were involved, hot and heavy. She simply moved on before she’d taken him from you completely. I happen to think his efforts to get you back are tied to his ego bash from Linea, who left him flat as you recall.”
“So should I stop doing the superheroine stuff and get on with my life?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. You should.”
I stood and walked the length of the little room. “I’m not the kind of person who leaves a job half-done. What if Roland is innocent and there is a Mistress Miraculous out to cause harm to thousands at the con?”
She shrugged. “I’m a sworn peace officer, but I’m off duty today. If I see something, I’ll still do my job. That’s the attitude you should take.”
Sarah always made sense.
*
Sarah and I strolled the comicon from one end to the other, enjoying ourselves and living in the now for hours. Being with her kept my thoughts at bay, but as soon as she left for her evening shift, I was back to thinking obsessively about everything that had happened today.
Eric must have sealed the deal with Leslie today. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have flaunted her at the movie company party last night? She’d said she was known in movie circles. In comics, any connection to Hollywood was a big deal.
Did I believe I could be going to Hollywood in two months to work on movies, just like that? With no effort on my part? Was that possible? To work with a hot guy like Jason? Where did “hot guy” come from? Forget that. I had no time to dwell on this strange new turn my life was about to take. One door closed, another opened. When I had to tell my mother I’d been supplanted at FC Comics, having a new job already lined up would help. Jason had offered me a lifeline. Now I would take it.
Despite my already long day, I had the idea that I should check out the dealers’ room again, maybe chat with Damien Nast. Why had he been talking to Ray Herriman?
Our beefy, tattooed comic book store owner was the grandson of the man who had brought a major superhero character to CP Comics. The grandfather had been paid a few dollars for all rights, and then a few dollars more now and then. The company that bought the character got rich.
It was the old story. Damien’s grandfather had even sued, unsuccessfully, to get his rights back and more. After his death, after the thirty-five years the copyright law mandated, the family had asked for the rights back. The matter was still in the courts, but the outcome, given a battle between a middle-class family with modest financial resources against a rich corporation that kept high-powered law firms on retainer, was likely to be in the corporation’s favor. If Damien thought that the family lawsuit would end in a loss, would he be angry enough to cause mischief at this comicon?
Damien Nast had a very good reason to want to disrupt any comicon that helped give the big name comic book companies an even higher profile. Despite his claim that shutting the dealers’ room had injured him financially, he could be here deliberately to disrupt.
Which led me back to Ray Herriman. He claimed he was worried about his aunt. Jean Westover did not come across as someone holding a grudge, secret or otherwise. What about Ray? Did Ray resent the millions of dollars that CP Comics had made—money he had no chance to inherit because Jean owned nothing? Or was I missing some other comics connection? I couldn’t find anything about Ray on the net other than the usual, his Facebook account, his Twitter handle, and a few other social media items. Unlike Damien, Ray had almost no online presence. Or perhaps he did it under another name.
I put in a call to Ardis, who’d only been able to take yesterday off from work, but by now should be winding down.
“Spill everything about Damien Nast,” I demanded.
She giggled. “Everything?”
“Okay, not that,” I said. “I guess you got to know each other very quickly.”
“Yes, we did. He’s a cool guy. Those tattoos are all over his body.”
“Ignoring.” Ardis was a fast worker. Or Damien was. “Did you get any sense that he has strong unhappy feelings about the comic book business? His grandfather was cheated out of the fortune that made CP Comics huge.”
“He says he doesn’t care.”
“Did he bring up the topic, or did you?”
“I don’t remember. We were talking about how we’d gotten interested in attending comicons, I think. He seemed cool about his family connection.”
“Talking about how your grandfathers both got a raw deal should have given you something in common.”
“We have plenty in common already,” she said, giggling again.
We agreed to meet for a burger in an hour. Tomorrow all three of us would spend the whole day wandering the comicon. I had no panels on Saturday, so we could stand in line for hours to get into popular panel events, or for autographing. Ardis liked to get autographs, for some reason I had never understood.
Ardis was a high end graphics designer who had all the work she could handle. People begged her to do their books and magazines. We’d met in art school, which I had attended with a huge chip on my shoulder because my mother was so against art as a career. Ardis by contrast had been chill. We’d become friends. She’d been my roommate briefly when I lived in Chicago, but for various reasons that hadn’t worked out.
Still looking for Damien, I fought the overwhelming assault on my senses from the sheer massive number of booths and people. In a hall this huge, there were multiple broad aisles. I didn’t remember the name of his business, or which aisle Damien’s table was on, but I had a sense of where it was inside the exhibit area. The largest amount of space was taken by the big movie companies, the major comic book companies, and the toy and gaming companies. They weren’t selling anything; they were here to show off their wares, to spark fan excitement. The movie companies had exhibits of the original costumes used in their superhero movies. Those and beloved props were all behind glass. Huge blow-ups of action scenes decorated the temporary walls of their exhibits, drawing people in to stare and providing visual entertainment as fans waited in long lines to be given free posters or get autographs from actors familiar from television and movies.
I passed many booths selling old comics, new comics, and graphic novels, but they were small and to the side of the exhibit hall. Some booths held copies of every superhero movie and television show. Others sold high-end first edition movie posters and lobby cards. I looked at the price of one Hollywood poster. It was six figures.
Smaller sellers hawked handmade jewelry in semi-precious stones. Numerous booths sold crystal pendants in various shapes, crystals that looked the same as mine. It would be weird if the Dimensional Diamond was only some cheap crystal picked up at a comicon—and mysteriously imbued with superpowers by my crazy father. Weird enough to be possible.
I passed a booth that sold crocheted stuffed animals, the animals all familiar from television and movies. Sometimes from comic books first, but by now, were the Ninja Turtles even thought of as comic book characters? Someone had even created one-of-a-kind quilts featuring well-known comic book characters.
I also saw many booths that specialized in one item only, like board games or toy model kits. Some were vintage. Others were new and strange. Zombie board games. Zombie model kits. Shape shifter role playing games. Shape shifter model kits. Submarines and time tunnels and every conceivable model. At the next table I could buy a moderately priced Jane Austen action figure, or a two-foot tall Godzilla sculpture for big bucks.
Finally, I stumbled on Damien’s table. I recognized the sword display on the metal rack set up behind him.
“Hey, Chloe. Good to see you,” he called. “That one’s $500,” he said to a man pointing at a very long sword. “Weapons are mail delivery only.”
“That sucks.” Disgruntled, the guy walked away.
Damien shook his head. “What, they think I’m allowed to sell them killing machines right here and now?”
“He probably wants to carve a path to the front of an autograph line,” I said. “Did you hear that two panels were disrupted by protestors?” I told him about the paramilitary guys and the girls in pink.
“Wow. That’s extreme,” he said. “This con has bad vibes. Ever since the lights out yesterday, customers have been tools. They don’t look and move on. That I expect. They make comments first. Not the typical way people behave at big shows like this.”
“I wouldn’t know. This is my first time.”
“Ardis said you’re a comicon virgin. Stand in line for an hour to watch a panel of two-bit television actors pontificate about their derivative show. That’ll pop your cherry.”
“No thanks. I’ve been on three panels so far and every one was a stinker.”
“Aw, too bad.” He extended one tattooed arm toward me. “Take this with you to the VIP CP Comics party tonight.”
“What is it?” I stared at the foil-wrapped sphere he’d placed on my palm. It looked oddly familiar.
“Cherry bomb. They’re illegal, but not harmful. My gift to Jeff Kane.”
“Your grandfather created a major CP Comics character, didn’t he? You should be at the party.”
His expression darkened. “Jeff knows I consider him a criminal. My family is currently suing his company.”
“Jeff Kane wasn’t even born when your grandfather got cheated.”
Damien gave me a tolerant look. “He upholds the comic book criminal tradition. Every day, he makes creators sign away all rights to new material as workers for hire. He could change the deal to shared ownership going forward, even if he can’t do anything for my family regarding what happened decades ago. He chooses not to.”
My mouth dropped open. Eric also could restructure how creators were compensated, but he didn't. What did that make him? Another criminal, according to Damien? “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Damien’s expression folded into a disgusted sneer. “The new bosses are the same as the old bosses. They don’t give a damn about squaring the deals for the next guy or the next. It’s a rotten business.”
I heaved a sigh. “I used to think that the internet would sweep the corporate comic companies away, but tablets and larger phones have given them new life.”
“Even if tablets hadn’t come along, the superhero movies and TV shows made them so rich they can publish all their print comics at a dead loss. The value of the comics now is that they generate story ideas and fans. Fans who buy tie-in products.”
Damien had made a connection I hadn’t even seen. Viability in other media. That’s where the game was now. Licensing. Then why had Eric claimed low sales were the reason he was canceling Swoonie? He must have known she had licensing potential.
“You’re not behind all these mysterious happenings, are you?” I asked Damien.
He laughed. “Right. Like my lawyer would let me with litigation pending. I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“What about Ray Herriman?”
Damien scowled. “What about him?”
“I—uh—I happened to see you and him talking. I wondered how you knew him.”
“Not talking about him. That’s personal.”
“What about his feelings about CP Comics? Do you think Ray could be behind the lights out and all that?”
His laugh was a loud bark. “That little lamer? No way.”
*
Damien refused to be drawn into discussing anything more relating to Ray Herriman. I left the exhibition hall as fast as I could, but with lots of people having the same idea, what should have taken five minutes took twenty. As I slowly followed the flow of the crowd, I saw displays of more t-shirts with superheroes and games on them, a toy booth with interactive giant-size plastic blocks, and much more. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with wondering what could possibly go wrong next, my eyes would have glazed over from the huge amount of visual stimulation.
Ardis and I met up at my hotel’s overpriced coffee shop. I apologized for the venue. “It was the only place I was sure wouldn’t be too crowded to get a seat.”
She looked up from the plastic-coated menu. “At these prices, no wonder. How do they get away with them?” She shook her head.
“Location, location, et cetera.” I said. “I talked to Damien a bit ago. Interesting guy. You’re seeing him tonight, too?”
“We’re planning to toss cherry bombs over the wall of the Walker Mansion,” she said, deadpan.
My eyes opened wide in shock.
“Gotcha. Kidding,” she said, smirking.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Damien handed me a cherry bomb. He probably has a bag of them and plans to use them.”
“Nah. We joked about it last night, but he’s under strict orders from the lawyer. Damien was quite the hell-raiser in the past. Now there’s a lot of money at stake. He believes they’re close to reaching a huge financial settlement.”
“If so, he’d be doing all he can to cool anybody else who has wild ideas about starting trouble?”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe that’s why he was talking to Ray Herriman.” I recounted what I’d seen. “You’re okay not going to the CP Comics party?”
“Ha. As if they’d invite me.”
“You have as much right as Damien to be recognized as related to the creator. As much right to be ticked off, too.”
“My dad told me to forget about it. He said it would eat me alive if I let it. He saw what it did to his own father.”
“Can you blame him? He was a kid, and he got robbed. The rest of his life, the corporate rich guys connived to make sure he never got a fair share of the fortune his idea created.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “We used to go visit Grandpa and Grandma for Thanksgiving. It was awful. He never stopped talking about what had been done to him. Never.”
“Like, all the time?”
“Every sentence he uttered related to his first year in the comics business, to those first few meetings with the people who had betrayed him. It was as if time had stopped for him afterward. He never talked about meeting Grandma, or moving back to Indianapolis, or anything. Only about that one year in New York. Everything reminded him of it.”
“That’s sad. I never thought about how the injustice could eat at him on a daily basis.”
“Dad moved out on his own as soon as he could. I took Dad’s advice and never made the Bad Thing That Happened to Grandpa my cause in life.”
“Wow. And I thought I had a lot to get over in my background.” I shook my head.
“Not knowing your father is a biggie, too.”
“There are lots of kids with no father.” I shrugged aside the ache that had bothered me for years.
By now we’d consumed overpriced but quite decent burgers. Ardis said she and Damien were going to another special movie preview at the convention center, but a bigger room than last night’s movie. She was looking forward to loads of raucous fun.
“Be really alert.” I said. “A large venue like that is ripe for troublemaking on a massive scale. Roland and I are guessing the next disruption will be at the CP party, but we could be wrong.”
“You know what your problem is?” Ardis asked. “Mistress Miraculous hasn't caused enough mischief. You have too much time to think about what she’ll do next, and who she might be.”
“Thanks. Like I need more reasons to haul out the Dimensional Diamond.”
“It’s a fantastic tool. Damien says there are rumors of other jewels with great powers.”
I didn’t comment. Damien was right, but that story was for another day. I’d never told Ardis or Sarah all the details of my fantastic adventure as a temporary superheroine last year.
We parted company, she to meet Damien as arranged, and me to go change for the evening.