CHAPTER THIRTY

 
 

"Hello?"

  She'd been asking the same single-word question for the last halfhour. There was never an answer; hers was the only voice in the whole place. The question rang around the Lair's main cavern and its less natural ancillary rooms. The echo changed to flat muffled tones as she went up the main stairwell that ended in Geoff Conroy's hillside mansion. In the house itself her voice seemed to hang in the air. The furniture had sheets over it, and it creeped Blackbird out like nothing else.

  But the sheets were good, right? The sheets meant he was coming back, because if he'd fled in some kind of panic then he wouldn't have made the arrangements, right? When she'd woken in the infirmary the night before, the Lair was empty, but that wasn't unusual. Satisfied that her head injury was nothing more than a purple bump, she'd headed back to Tony's apartment. She'd catch up with the Cowl and find out what happened with the Flyball Ninja's component later. Now she needed to talk to him about their little visit from the Seven Wonders.

  But she didn't remember all the sheets in the house, although it had been a couple of days since she'd gone upstairs. The sheets meant that maybe he wasn't coming back for a while.

  This wasn't quite what she had planned.

  Blackbird completed the fourth circuit of the house. The doors and windows that she had tested were locked, but the alarm wasn't on. She wasn't even sure there was an alarm. Maybe he had security staff coming to keep watch or patrol or whatever. She'd never seen any before, but that didn't mean he didn't have them. Maybe he had staff that came in and put sheets on everything when the house wasn't being used in a while. Who the fuck knew about the lifestyles of the rich and famous and their army of housekeepers?

  Returning to the study which housed the top end of the Lair's stairwell hidden in a grandfather clock, she found herself staring at the ghostly outlines of the furniture, all draped in white. The house was still, and quiet, and she didn't think about anything in particular. After a few minutes the hair on the back of her neck began to crawl and she spun around, as if the Cowl had made one of his famous silent entrances and was waiting behind her, hands on hips, mouth set into the tough-guy grin.

  But Blackbird was alone. She turned and headed back downstairs.

  This wasn't quite what she had planned. Not at all.

  Then again, what had the plan been, exactly? Remove the Cowl's powers, transferring them to a stooge carefully selected – someone with a reason to act and someone who could be controlled. With the Cowl de-powered and the stooge powered-up, the balance in the city could be shifted and a new supervillain would take over.

  Of course it sure as hell wasn't going to be her. Firstly, if she suddenly replaced the Cowl as a gin-you-ine supervillain, then perhaps the Seven Wonders would change their policy and take her out. They had the power to, it was obvious. But it was almost as if they'd come to some arrangement with the Cowl – don't kill anyone too important, and you can run around the city at night scaring the little people all you like.

  Secondly, the device hidden in Tony's closet wasn't something she wanted to use on herself. Sure, it worked, but she wasn't sure how it worked, and what it would do to you long-term was a total mystery. She might have been better off sticking her head in a microwave for all she knew.

  Tony… well, Tony was the stooge, the mark, the target, the someone who could be controlled. If his brain turned to jello in a year then what did she care?

  It sounded simple enough. But she hadn't thought through every angle. She hadn't expected the Cowl to pick up sticks and get the hell outta Dodge, although in retrospect that was probably one of the most likely outcomes.

  But did it matter? He was out of the way, that was the primary goal. It hadn't even taken that much – just the loss of power and a hint that there was a new guy in town who wasn't going to take any shit like the Seven Wonders seemed happy to do.

  Blackbird was back in the Lair. She sat at the main console and saw that all systems were on security shutdown, the computer locked. That was annoying. Here she was, having apparently inherited, well, everything, and she couldn't even turn the main lights on.

  Fear. She'd gone and done it with the Cowl's own favorite weapon – they'd scared him shitless and sent him running. There was something to be enjoyed about that. Poetic justice or irony or whatever the hell it was. And even if he'd fled San Ventura to maybe build himself a supervillain army from all the contacts he had around the world, by the time said force returned to the city she'd be ready for him. So would Tony. The stooge.

  Blackbird made a mental note to check on Conroy's financials, to see if he could be tracked on his travels. He had plenty of money and plenty of friends, but chances were he'd need to use an ATM or credit card once in a while.

  Blackbird had seen enough. Wondering if they could move in to the house above without anyone noticing, Doctor Jean "Jeannie" Ravenholt headed back to Tony's apartment.