Tempest

Tempest - By Kelly Meding

One



West Hollywood

Greens are such a pain in the ass.”

I hadn’t intended my comment to come out loud enough for anyone to overhear, especially my boss and partner for the night, Teresa West, but she heard it anyway and gave me a quelling glare from her side of the pile of rubble we were crouching behind. I didn’t take the words back, though. My personal ass was in quite a bit of its own pain after a telekinetic blast from the aforementioned Green knocked me onto it about two minutes ago. “Green” was our chosen word for young, untrained Metas who thought it was cool to use their newly discovered powers to break the law.

Such as the telekinetic Green attempting to rob West Hollywood’s only branch of the Second National Bank of California. Most average bank robbers go in during the day, when a teller can hand over the cash. Our bank robber thought she was clever by going in at three in the morning to tear out a few walls.

Fortunately for us, she wasn’t clever enough to test her newfound powers before the robbery, or she’d have known they didn’t actually work on steel. She’d spent so much time fighting to open the vault, the LAPD had shown up—then they decided to call us in to deal with the mess. As the leader of our band of mismatched former Rangers, Teresa accepted the job and then promptly assigned herself. Her Meta ability lets her shoot awesome purple balls of energy, capable of annihilating walls, out of her fingers, as well as create the occasional force field. She volunteered me because I can control the wind. Ethan “Tempest” Swift at your service. Among other handy things, I can stop the wind from moving, blast it out, spiral it like a drill, and use it to fly.

The bank robber—whom we hadn’t actually seen yet, but whose screams of frustration had a decidedly female pitch—was not happy when we appeared on the scene. My pained ass and the pile of rubble serving as our shield against her tantrum (rubble that used to be part of the building across the street from the bank) were proof.

“She’s terrified,” Teresa said.

“That tends to happen when you rob a bank and the cops show up,” I replied with a heaping dose of sarcasm.

Teresa has a thing about helping Metas. All Metas, but especially the Greens. I love her to pieces, but most days I just don’t get her ability to see the best in people—especially after all the shit we’ve been through at the hands of regular, non-Meta kinds of people.

I peeked over the top of our debris pile. The entire front of the bank was missing, giving us a clear view of a counter and several shattered teller windows. The vault was somewhere in the back. North La Cienega Boulevard was mostly clear, with a cop car parked at each end of the block to keep gawkers away. Crowd control was about the only thing cops were useful for in Meta-related situations, anyway.

My back twinged and I shifted my weight onto my left knee. “Look, I have an idea to get her out and keep her from smashing anything else with her temper,” I said.

“Do tell.”

“Ever heard of the Tasmanian Devil?”

“The animal?”

“Old cartoon character.”

Her eyebrows furrowed and she opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. Understanding smoothed out the lines on her forehead. She held out her right hand, palm up. A hazy purple orb formed there, the kind of fuzzy powerball she used to knock people around without causing serious damage. “Just tell me when,” she said.

With the boss’s vote of confidence, I stood up. Yes, it made me a big freaking target, but oh well. I had a better view of the bank and the actual volume of air inside. I moved the air with ease, grabbing it hard and spinning it in a tight, formed cyclone that sent paper, glass, and other small debris inside the bank zinging away. The cyclone danced toward the back of the bank, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the change in pressure that signaled I’d caught something.

Adrenaline pulsed into my blood, as much from the thrill of using my powers as from being made a target, standing in the open like that. Any idiot with a gun and a strong belief in Governor Martin Winstead’s anti-Meta propaganda could get frisky and try to take us out. Hell, some of the cops had looked ready to take a pop at us the instant we showed up at the scene, like we were there to assist the bank robber instead of stop her.

A little extra wind fluttered around me, but the majority of it had created a person-sized tornado inside the bank—and a sharp snap against my control told me that the Green was fighting back. Awareness prickled the skin on the back of my neck. I zeroed in on the opposing force and shoved right back, tightening the cyclone, whipping the air around faster, harder.

Ever stuck your hand out the window of a speeding car just to feel the wind rushing around your fingers? Imagine that all over your body, slamming against your face, numbing your skin. The telekinetic pushback felt like that.

Easiest way to end this would be to send my cyclone into the nearest wall and use the shrapnel cloud to knock the bank robber silly. Two major problems with the easy way: one, I’d get my ass reamed (and not in the fun way) by Teresa if I intentionally injured the Green when avoiding it was still possible; and two, causing unnecessary property damage was near the top of our To Don’t list.

So no knocking out a wall to knock out the latest Meta-powered felon of America. Not tonight.

I pulled more air into the bank and into the volume of the cyclone. The buildings around the bank creaked under the pressure changes. If I didn’t end this soon, a wall somewhere was coming down in the next sixty seconds.

“Tempest?”

I ignored Teresa’s impatient use of my code name and shoved everything I had into getting that cyclone moving. The teller counter crumpled (not my fault) and pieces got sucked into the cyclone (by accident). Trying to expel them would take too much of my concentration, so I tempted Teresa’s wrath and broke through the telekinetic’s resistance with my cyclone—at the exact same moment, a piece of desk, aimed right at my head, zoomed out of the bank.

The desk exploded in a shower of shrapnel and purple sparks.

Note to self: Thank Teresa.

The pressure inside my air cyclone had changed now that the Green was stuck inside it, probably getting the snot smacked out of her by all the crap she’d made me suck up like the world’s strongest vacuum cleaner. I drew the cyclone out of the bank, which ripped up the tiled floor and sent pieces sailing into the street. The thick swirl of gray and brown whipped the air, and my intense hold on it sent a tremor down my spine.

“Anytime,” I said, nearly shouting to be heard over the roar of my own powers.

“Now!” Teresa said.

I dropped the wind completely and fell to my knees, my entire body shivering from the stress of holding the cyclone for so long. The debris collapsed to the ground just outside the bank, and the black-clad figure trapped inside teetered on her feet for a split second—then a purple orb knocked her backward, into the wall of the building next door, shattering it with amazing ease. The Green stayed down.

The rest of the Second National Bank of California collapsed with a long, thunderous groan.

As the dust settled, I looked up at Teresa and grimaced. “Oops?”

“Big f*cking oops,” she replied. She shook her head, her expression as sad as it was frustrated. “The mayor’s going to have a field day with this.”

Of that I had no doubt. The mayor of Los Angeles, Christina Ainsworth, tolerated our presence in her city the way a homeowner tolerates a nearby hornet’s nest—by ignoring us until we made too much noise, and then attacking without mercy. And with her favorite presidential candidate, Governor Winstead, in town stumping for votes on his anti-Meta platform and due to give a public press conference tomorrow afternoon, we were screwed.

Sometimes trying to help people came back to bite you.

And not in the fun way.

• • •

“Get your asses in here, it’s starting!”

Renee Duvall’s unsubtle order didn’t just echo down the upstairs hallway from the lounge. It bounced out of every speaker in Hill House, on both floors, like the voice of God, if God sounded like a woman coming down off a helium inhale, which Renee tended to do when she got excited about something. And considering her life these last two months, getting her excited over anything took a lot of effort.

Too bad this particular “thing” was the wrong kind of excitement.

Having rolled out of bed less than an hour ago, I was already outside the lounge when her shout came through. My early-morning adventure with Teresa hadn’t ended until nearly 5:00 a.m., after our teenage bank robber was collected and we’d endured another long lecture about property damage from the detective on the scene. Teresa had tried arguing with the cops not to lock up the Green (“How do you plan on ensuring a telekinetic doesn’t break right back out of your holding cell?”), but they told us to get the hell out of there before we got billed for the damage.

Some things never change.

Thankfully, Renee had woken me up with enough time for a long, hot shower and some ibuprofen for my sore backside before today’s group assembly in the lounge. I wasn’t the first to arrive. Teresa (looking as tired as I still felt) and Gage McAllister (ditto, because he probably stayed awake the entire time she and I were gone) were already there, tucked together on one end of the first sofa. The lounge was shaped like an L, with the main entrance at the short end, and the television set up at the corner and the three sofas arranged in a semicircle around it. Down the long end of the L was a pool table, a bunch of slowly filling bookshelves, and a chess table.

Renee came around the corner from that side of the lounge, dressed in the same kind of loose gray sweats she’d worn for the entire last month, since she came home from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her straw-gold hair was cut in what she called a pageboy, short and sleek. Over the collar of her sweatshirt, a pinky-purple burn scar peeked out, one of many on her dusky blue skin.

Yes, Renee is blue.

She was also so badly burned two months ago—by burns that I hadn’t been able to save her from—that she nearly died from an infection and her Flex powers went kind of wonky. Renee, Marco, and I had been battling a pyrokinetic on a public street, three against one, and we still got our collective asses handed to us.

“Hey, Windy, grab a seat before they’re gone,” Renee said when she saw me.

I dragged up some humor, put on a dramatic eyebrow raise, and pointed at the mostly empty sofas. “I dunno, Renee, there might not be room.”

“Smart-ass.” She smiled, a rare feat lately, and I relaxed. She didn’t blame me for her injuries (had in fact told me to “quit f*cking blaming yourself, you redheaded idiot” on one memorable occasion last week), but her forgiveness didn’t assuage my own guilt. I let the pyro stun me, Renee stepped up, and I couldn’t protect her.

Guilt kept me company at night.

Renee chose the corner of the sofa closest to the television and arranged herself carefully. Once she settled, I sat on the next cushion over, giving her room without being obvious. By that time, the rest of the group began showing up for the live televised event we’d assembled to witness: presidential nominee Governor Martin Winstead’s 2:00 press conference.

We rarely made political crap a group event—those things were generally handled by Teresa, Rita McNally (the ATF agent with special dispensation to be our liaison to the rest of the f*cked-up federal government), or Simon Hewitt (first ex-Bane officially pardoned for all crimes committed during the Meta War that ended fifteen years ago). There were two reasons today’s press conference had us grouped in the lounge like it was frat-house movie night. One, Winstead was the current governor of Texas and the frontrunner for president in the fall election. Two, the traitor was holding the press conference in front of the gate of our old Ranger Corps Headquarters in Century City.

Yes, I said traitor. Because up until fifteen years ago, Martin Winstead was steadily employed by the ATF and the Rangers Corps as in-house physician. The ass-monkey even treated my mother before she died. After the War ended and all Metas lost their powers (myself included), Winstead jumped ship and joined the anti-Meta cause. He was coming to the end of his third term as governor, and he wanted the big seat. He was running his campaign on a platform of fear—fear of Metas, of superpowers, and of the devastation a second Meta War could cause to a barely stable economy.

Okay, so our Ranger predecessors destroyed New York City and Chicago, plus large swaths of L.A. in their attempts to stop the hordes of bad guy Metas intent on murder, theft, and personal property damage—we call them Banes. The War erupted after decades of hostilities between Rangers and Banes, and the following five years of serious fighting left dozens of Metas dead on both sides. But we weren’t those Rangers, and in the eight months since our powers returned, the Banes sitting pretty in prison didn’t seem collectively eager to start shit. The people starting shit were the young Metas popping up here and there across the country, teenagers and early twentysomethings who hadn’t been old enough pre-War to know they had powers, and who didn’t know what to do with them now.

They were the current troublemakers. Not us.

Not that Winstead made any kind of delineation between the groups. He wanted us all rounded up, tagged, and caged.

God bless America.

I must have snorted out loud at that one, because Dahlia Perkins, who’d plopped down on the other side of me a few seconds ago, gave me an elbow to the ribs. Dahlia right now, anyway, all blond hair and blue eyes. Sometimes she goes away and Noah Scott takes over. Thanks to a lot of complicated crap that happened a few months ago, Dahlia and Noah basically share a body. One can take over form and control, as long as the other allows it, but they can’t separate.

Maybe not ever. We aren’t sure on that one yet. Simon has tried to use his Meta ability, a form of telepathy, to separate them, and failed every time. His theory is that Dahlia’s physical body died at the same moment Noah absorbed her, and without a body for her consciousness to go into, they’re stuck living in the same space. So far they’d coped, but this was a first for all of us. We had no idea what the long-term side effects of the pairing might be.

I gave Dahlia a gentle elbow back, then wiggled my eyebrows. She grinned, and her friendly interference threw me off the twisted track my mind was meandering down.

Truth was, I missed Dahlia. We’d been pretty good friends before her little body-merge with Noah, and now . . . it was hard. Hard to talk to her like I used to, and hard to pretend that Noah wasn’t in there listening, even when I couldn’t see him. I didn’t fully trust Noah, or his brother Aaron—also known as Ace and King, in their former lives. They were both hybrid Changelings, created in a lab, with the ability to absorb the bodies and identities of others. The Changelings took everything from the host person—their physical form, their memories, even bits of their personality—when they were absorbed, creating a perfect illusion that had fooled us over and over. The Changeling had to expel the old host before assuming another, which effectively killed that person. Empty skins were shed, while some part of their consciousness remained with the Changeling.

The whole thing was creepy as hell, and two months ago, Ace and King had taken control of Noah and Aaron Scott—supposedly with Noah’s permission, and supposedly the last identities they’d ever steal. But before that, King, the Changeling possessing Aaron, had been a murderer. He’d taken multiple hosts and left their empty shells behind.

Aaron Scott, on the other hand, had just been a selfish drug addict, so supercombo Aaron/King got a pass on the murders. Or something.

The duality of it all made my head pound. It was Teresa’s call, anyway. She’s the boss.

Speaking of Aaron, he’d arrived with the rest of the usual suspects in tow, and they were settling in. Gage grabbed the remote and unmuted the large television that dominated the corner of the room. I’d been ignoring the images on-screen but now I found myself unable to stop staring.

The gates of the Ranger’s HQ stood tall and proud behind the podium and the Winstead for Peace! posters strung up around it. Past the gate was the shape of the Base, and to the left, out of sight, would be the Housing Unit. On the right, also out of sight, the bulldozed remains of what had once been Medical. The HQ had been abandoned since January and was still technically owned by ATF. Why they hadn’t just razed it all was beyond me.

The last time I’d been back there, I was caught in an earth-bomb and tossed through a plate-glass window.

Fun times.

I zoned out the talking heads in the network studio, whose commentary was filling time until Winstead got his ass up to the podium. I’d seen other interviews and clips on television, and seen his picture in the paper more times than I could count. But there was something about today, seeing him back at HQ now that the Meta powers had returned, that was different. Like a criminal you just can’t believe would return to the scene of a grisly murder.

Dahlia snapped her fingers in front of my face, and I jumped. Had she been talking?

“What?” I asked.

She gave me a funny frown. “You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because you were stirring the breeze a little,” she said, this time in a whisper.

Crap. I hadn’t realized I’d been doing that. Didn’t do it often, just when I let myself get upset and my mind wandered. It had been happening more in the last month or so than usual, but still. Not a big deal.

“Sorry,” I said, then grinned. “Really, I’m fine.”

She didn’t believe me. I saw it in her eyes. Dahlia knew me too well, but then it didn’t matter because Renee said, “Finally,” and Winstead was on the television screen.

My skin crawled at the sight of him, all sleeked down and suited up in something pin-striped and expensive. He looked like anyone’s grandfather might (if that grandfather had a few grand to waste on a single suit, which most didn’t nowadays), with his gray hair and wire spectacles. I might hate him, but his appeal to the public wasn’t lost on me. He radiated calm and assurance—the kind of person you wanted in charge during a crisis. And this country had been in a state of crisis for more than twenty years.

Marco growled, an unmistakable sound. He’d come into the lounge in his panther form—the form he’d spent most of his nonworking time in ever since his abduction by another hybrid Changeling two months ago. Far as I knew, he hadn’t talked to anyone about the experience. As a kid, he’d spent the majority of his time in animal form, and seeing him retreat like that again now . . . it worried me. But you can’t make a panther talk to you, and he has mighty long teeth.

Winstead’s stump speech went like most of his others. “Blah, blah, blah . . . our struggling country . . . blah, blah, blah . . . same fear in the heart of every citizen . . . blah, blah, blah . . . abuse of these incredible powers . . . blah, blah, blah . . . destroyed our cities . . . blah, blah, blah . . .” So forth and so on, for about ten minutes.

Finally, he said something new. “Many of you may be wondering why I chose this particular location today.” He smiled at the press like they all shared some big, juicy secret. “Behind me, you can see the retired Ranger Corps Headquarters. Or rather, you can see what’s left of it. For more than a century, the Rangers stood for hope and peace. Two things our country could believe in. Two things we needed. But the same organization that our country once looked up to is now a symbol of devastation and loss.”

Teresa made a rude noise. Renee gave the television the finger.

I longed to be at that press conference, so I could use a gust of wind to knock his ass right off the podium and into the press gaggle hanging onto his every word.

“As governor of California,” Winstead continued, “I’ve carried the burden of this symbol, a stain on what was once a great and thriving city.”

Stain. Nice.

Ass-face.

“I’m here today to show you that I’m a candidate who can get things done, and that I will continue to do so when I am elected president.”

The back of my neck prickled, and I sat up straighter.

Winstead produced a sheet of paper from the podium. “I have with me today a signed document from the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, giving this parcel of land back to the city of Los Angeles.” He glanced off-camera and beckoned to someone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Christina Ainsworth.”

No one in the lounge said a word as Los Angeles’s mayor walked up to join Governor Winstead. She wore a smart suit and an irritating smirk that said she knew exactly what was about to happen.

And deep in the pit of my stomach, so did I. Bleaching out the stain.

“Mayor Ainsworth,” Winstead said, “it’s my privilege to present this deed to you and the City of Los Angeles.”

“Thank you very much, Governor,” Ainsworth replied, her smirk turning into a delighted smile.

“Son of a bitch,” Teresa said, breaking the silence in the lounge.

The gaggle of reporters went nuts. Winstead raised his hands in a shushing gesture, then pointed. “Go ahead, Shannon,” he said.

The network camera shifted around to zero in on a woman with a network microphone. “Shannon Milton, Channel Four,” she said. “Mayor Ainsworth, now that you hold ownership of the old Ranger Corps Headquarters, what do you plan to do with it?”

The question on everyone’s mind.

I curled my fingers into the fabric of my jeans.

The camera pulled in close on Ainsworth. “Twenty-five years ago, Los Angeles was synonymous with the entertainment industry,” she said. “Since then our city has survived immeasurable unnatural damage from Meta-powered humans, and we continue our struggle to rebuild what they tried to destroy. While we’ve succeeded in maintaining a healthy music presence, film is all but nonexistent now. My goal is to change that, to bring the film industry back to Hollywood where it belongs. And rather than dust off old studios gone to rot, we’ll be providing land for new studios.”

She pointed at the buildings over her shoulder. “Once upon a time, a major studio thrived on this lot, and another studio will thrive here again.”

“Un-f*cking-believable,” Renee said. Instead of angry, though, she seemed sad.

A different reporter got his turn to ask a question: “Mayor Ainsworth, how do you anticipate the Rangers will respond to this announcement?”

“The Ranger Corps has not officially existed for more than fifteen years,” Ainsworth said. “They no longer function in any capacity. The group of Metahumans currently operating in Los Angeles parted ways with the federal government six months ago and, as such, has no official government standing. We need to move forward, not just here in Los Angeles, but as a country. We can’t do that while living under the shadows of the past, and the buildings behind me are just that. They are the past.”

The past—more polite than “stain.”

“But how do you expect them to respond to this, Mayor? It’s got to feel like an incredible slap in the face.”

Felt more like a punch in the junk.

“I cannot guess as to their reaction,” Ainsworth said. “However, they’re free to contact me through the proper channels to voice their concerns.”

Marco hissed.

Renee made a disgusted noise. “In other words,” she said, “drop your pants and bend over.”

I snorted.

On the television, Mayor Ainsworth shook Winstead’s hand, then went off-camera. Winstead gave some horseshit closing remarks I could barely listen to, I was so disgusted. When the broadcast switched back to the studio, Renee turned the volume down.

“It’s no wonder they didn’t want us there today,” Gage said. “She’s trying to erase us.”

During her high-pitched wake-up call earlier, Renee had told me that while I was sleeping, the Secret Service had called Hill House (the freaking Secret Service!) and politely asked that no one from our organization attend the speech. No kidding. Good thing, too, considering the bomb Winstead had just dropped on the city.

Teresa launched off the sofa and stalked over to the television, as though she could reach through it and yank Winstead into the lounge. Her fingertips sparked with purple energy, a testament to her temper. She shook her head, lavender-streaked hair flying around in thick waves. “He can tear down buildings and pretend we don’t exist,” she said in her no-nonsense leader voice, “but we’re not going away. We matter, damn it.”

“Who are you trying to convince, T?” Renee asked.

“No one. Just making sure you guys all remember that.”

“If Winstead is elected, we are in serious trouble,” I said.

“That’s still a big if, Ethan. A lot can happen between now and then.”

“Like a complete personality transplant?”

Teresa’s mouth twitched. “We’re not that lucky. Best thing any of us can do is what we’ve been doing, which is proving the Metas in Manhattan are no longer threats, and doing our damndest to keep the Greens in line.”

Okay, so I could agree with the last part of her declaration regarding Greens, but I stood by my inability to declare the Banes in Manhattan a collective nonthreat. Teresa possessed the amazing and beautiful ability to want to see the best in people, no matter their past, and she envisioned solidarity among Metas—especially now that we had another potential superpowered enemy lurking around the corner in the form of the Overseer and his Recombinants.

Recombinants, we had learned recently, were genetically engineered “humans,” like the hybrid Changelings, Aaron/King and Noah/Ace, and (to our collective shock) Dahlia and her ability to absorb fire and heat. They were created in test tubes and raised in labs. We’d come up against their powers—a pyro had burned Renee, and it was an earth manipulator who’d tossed me through a window—and we had no idea how many others existed. We also had no idea who Overseer and Friends were loyal to. Aaron, Noah, and Dahlia were on our side (for now), but the other Recombinants were wild cards.

Plus, you know, the general public hated Metas, too.

For me, the Banes were dangerous until proven otherwise. Yes, Simon Hewitt turned out okay, and he’d been a loyal ally since our repowerment in January. But there were still a dozen or so Banes that Simon hadn’t been able to contact directly, and ever since one of the Manhattan residents used their powers to short out the tracking mechanism on the collars they all wore, he hadn’t made any further progress.

A harsh buzz came over the intercom—front gate. Already closest to the nearest unit, Teresa hit the box on the wall. “Hill House.”

“It’s Detective Pascal. Do you have ten minutes, Trance?”

Tension filled the room like a stink bomb, fast and furious. Next to me, Dahlia tensed up, but no one else outside the people in this house (except Simon Hewitt, who was in New York) knew she shared a body with Noah. On the middle sofa, Aaron and Dr. Abram Kinsey sat up straighter. Dr. Kinsey had created and raised the Changelings Ace and King, and, as donor of the genetic material, was technically their father. He had no actual blood ties to Aaron or Noah Scott, the brothers who merged with the Changelings—did I mention it was a complicated story?—and he was the only one of the three not wanted by the police for murder. Whenever Detective Pascal—or anyone else not in the know—dropped by, Aaron was the only one who had to hide. He’d been perfectly behaved since coming to live here, but given the Changeling’s history, Aaron was kept on a very short metaphorical leash.

“I do have some time, yes,” Teresa replied. “I’ll buzz you in.”

The gate controls were downstairs in a little room that housed all our security computers, just off the conference room, aka War Room. Teresa headed out and Gage followed her. His five enhanced senses allowed him to act as a human lie detector, and he liked to be around whenever Pascal had questions. I had nothing better to do, so I went too, curious what the hell Pascal wanted this time.

Probably more questions about the disappearance of his partner, Liza Forney, who’d gone missing two months ago during the Noah/Aaron/Changeling debacle. We just didn’t know how to tell Pascal that she was dead, or that two of the people responsible were our freaking houseguests (that would be Noah and Aaron, for those playing along at home).

Sometimes it was hard to remember if we were the good guys or the bad guys, especially when we lied to the police.

Our trio headed into the War Room. Teresa checked the security monitor before buzzing the gate open, and Gage and I waited there while she went to fetch the detective. I leaned against the wall, arms crossed, too antsy to sit now that the press conference was over. On edge, waiting for the hammer to fall. Gage sat in one of the high-backed rolling chairs at the long conference table. His silver-flecked eyes kept focusing on me, then shifting away, like he had a question stuck in his throat.

I nearly told him to cut it the hell out, but was spared the necessity by footsteps in the hall. Detective Peter Pascal strode into the room the same way he did everything—with self-assurance and a high head tilt that let you know he was talking down to you. He wore a full suit and tie despite its being August in Southern California, and his stern gaze landed first on me, then on Gage as he moved to stand by the table. Teresa came in right behind him; she shifted around to stand near Gage. I kept holding up the wall.

“Detective,” Gage said gamely.

“Cipher,” Pascal replied. “Tempest.”

I nodded. His interactions with us had taken a pretty hostile turn recently, but I couldn’t really blame him for that. He knew we were hiding something; he just couldn’t prove it.

“What can we do for you, Detective?” Teresa asked.

“I hear you and Tempest had a little excitement this morning.”

“A little, yes, but I didn’t realize that was your case.” In other words, we don’t want to talk about it.

“It isn’t. Do you have anything new on the Jarvis case?” Ronald Jarvis was the first known victim of the Changelings, and served as shorthand for the unsolved case.

“No, we don’t. I’m sorry.”

True. We didn’t know anything now that we hadn’t known the last dozen times Pascal asked.

Apparently, that was just his warm-up, because he then asked, “I take it you watched Governor Winstead’s speech this afternoon?”

“It was riveting television, I admit.” Teresa clasped her hands in front of her, a demure pose that wasn’t fooling anyone. “Why?”

“It must have been quite a shock, hearing that the mayor plans on tearing down your old headquarters and erasing a hundred years of Ranger Corps history.”

Teresa smiled. “Certainly you aren’t implying we’d do something irrational, like stage some sort of sit-in to save our old home?”

“Among other things.”

His sharp tone tightened the edges of her smile. “As the mayor said, the Rangers have been gone for years. The old HQ isn’t our home anymore.” The tightness had stretched to her voice, applying a layer of warning.

“There’s a lot of history in that place.”

“Maybe the city will donate it to the Historical Society.” Despite her flip tone, the loss of so much Ranger history hurt Teresa. We’d brought a good amount of it with us when we moved to Hill House, and it was currently being stored on the unused third floor, but we hadn’t taken everything. And it was impossible to box up the memories. Or the ghosts.

“Maybe.” Pascal rolled his shoulders, his posture relaxing a fraction. “Neither of those things is actually why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“Then why are you here, Detective?” Gage asked.

“I found something at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station this morning that I thought you’d like to take charge of.”

• • •

It took a little coaxing to get the “something” out of the backseat of Pascal’s car. Something that turned out to be a pair of terrified teenagers.

“Considering everything that’s going on,” Pascal said, “jail didn’t seem like the safest place for them. Now, they’re all yours.”

And, like a mailman who’d delivered his packages to the proper location, Pascal got back in his car and drove away.