Powerless Read online

  “Who are you?” I demand.

  “Your ID,” the first one repeats. There’s no emotion behind his voice. No threat. No rage. Just the assurance that I am not getting out of here until I give them what they want.

  I’ve had enough. I took enough crap from the villains tonight. I’m not taking it from these guys too. Where do they get off?

  I go nose to nose with Suit 1. “Do you have a badge?”

  He reaches into his jacket, produces a small leather wallet, and flashes a shiny gold badge and ID at me. I can only make out the initials NTF before he stuffs it back in his chest pocket.

  “What did that say?” I ask. “I couldn’t even—”

  “If you don’t produce your ID,” Suit 2 says, “we will take you into custody until your identity can be confirmed.”

  “Are you kidding?” I’m not the one who doesn’t belong here.

  “Counterfeit IDs were used to access the facility,” Suit 1 says. “All personnel IDs must be tested for authenticity.”

  When I don’t immediately reach for my badge, he steps toward me and clamps a big, beefy hand around my forearm.

  “Don’t touch me!” I yank at my arm, but he won’t let go.

  Fine.

  Annoyed all over again, I fork over my ID and watch as Suit 2 swipes it through a small, handheld machine. It beeps, long and high-pitched, and I tense despite myself. I have a reason for being here. I’m not doing anything wrong. But these guys don’t look like they care one way or the other. For a moment I have visions of being swept into a nondescript vehicle and taken away to parts unknown.

  If that happens though, I’m not going without a fight. I am sick and tired of being pushed around.

  “Thank you, Ms. Swift.” Suit 2 hands my ID back to me. “Have a safe night.”

  And then they’re turning away, walking away, as if they didn’t just threaten to physically detain me without cause. As if they didn’t just grab me. I guess I should be grateful they’re letting me go, but all I am is pissed.

  Determined to get out of here before things get even more screwed up, I make a beeline for the door, plowing straight into my best friend who is walking in as I’m rushing out. Rebel wraps me in a vanilla-and-leather-scented hug.

  “Oh, Kenna! Thank God you’re okay!” She squeezes me tight enough to cut off my oxygen supply.

  And for a second—just a second—I cling to her.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her, pulling away. “What are you doing here?” I keep my voice to a whisper, though I’m not sure why. Maybe because I still have the heebie-jeebies after my run-in with the suits.

  Rebel has no such heebie-jeebies—and no such reason to keep her voice lower than a shout. “I was worried about you! My dad got the alarm that there was a break-in. Then I started thinking about how you like to work late in your mom’s lab and I tried to text you, but you never answered. I drove by your house and your car wasn’t there. I freaked out.”

  She stops to catch a breath and I take advantage of the pause to get out a few words of my own.

  “I wasn’t hurt,” I tell her. “The villains who broke in were looking for something—I don’t know what—but they didn’t do much damage, at least nothing the Cleaners can’t fix.”

  Rebel looks relieved. “So nobody was hurt?”

  “Nope. Just some broken glass and scorched walls. Your dad and Riley are on it,” I say. “Oh, and by the way, did you know your brother has taken to wearing a cape?”

  Rebel rolls her eyes. “He swears it’s just a coat. But I’m so glad you’re all right!”

  She throws her arms around me again, and again I put up with it, despite her studded leather belt digging into my stomach. After all, that’s kind of par for the course in a Rebel hug.

  My best friend is about as different from her dad and brother as she can get and still be a member of the Malone family. In fact, while there’s never a doubt in anyone’s mind that Mr. Malone and Riley are heroes—they pretty much wear it on their sleeves…or their capes—at first glance, most people in our world would assume Rebel is a villain. She’s the sweetest person I know (to everyone except her dad, at least), but it’s easy to see how someone could make that mistake.

  Tonight, she’s dressed in a short leather skirt with ripped-up, melting tights in black and white, a black tank that proclaims “Love is the movement,” and worn combat boots that have definitely seen better days. Her razor-cut, bleached-almost-white hair is short and spiky, and she’s wearing more jewelry than I even own: four earrings in her left ear, three in her right, a bunch of mismatched bracelets on both wrists, and a ring on every finger. Even her bright blue eyes—so like her dad’s and brother’s—look punk with heavy, black eyeliner and fake lashes.

  “Were you freaking out?” she asks when she finally pulls away.

  “You know me,” I say with a meaningful shrug. Rebel is the only person besides my mom who knows about my secret immunity and that I can’t be harmed by superpowers. Who can a girl trust, if not her best friend, right? “I handled it. I even put one out with a fire extinguisher.”

  Rebel bursts out laughing. “You put Nitro out with a fire extinguisher? I wish I could have seen that!”

  “I did. It was—” Her words suddenly register. “Hey, I never said it was Nitro.”

  Guilt flashes across Rebel’s face, but it’s gone so fast I almost think I imagined it. Almost.

  “Of course you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.” No way would I make that mistake. Not when I’m pretending that I can’t remember who broke in. “All I said is that they were villains.”

  “Huh. Well, I guess I just assumed. What other villain actually needs to be extinguished?”

  I huff out a little laugh and shake my head. “Good point.”

  After all, if I hadn’t been so stunned by the situation, I would have known it was Nitro just from his abilities. Why wouldn’t Rebel? Especially when life at her house is a daily course in villain identification. I swear if Mrs. Malone would allow it, Mr. Malone would display photos of the twenty most-wanted villains in their house like a museum displays Picasso paintings. All in an attempt to memorize their faces so he can eradicate them from the planet.

  “So, are you going home?” Rebel asks after an awkward silence.

  I nod. “My mom doesn’t want me here during the cleanup.”

  “She’s right. No one wants to be here for that.” Rebel slings an arm around my shoulders. “Too much time with the zeroes…oops, I mean heroes”—she gives me an overly dramatic eye roll—“could cause cavities.”

  I ignore the dig. She knows it bugs me when she calls them that.

  “But seriously,” she says, “you shouldn’t be alone tonight. Come home with me.”

  Normally I would protest, out of pride if for no other reason. But the truth is that I really don’t want to go home. While I’m not exactly freaking out, I think I’ve earned a night at my BFF’s house.

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  Rebel gives me another oxygen-depriving hug before walking me to my car. Then I follow her home.

  The Malones live about ten minutes from the lab in a house that looks like a giant wedding cake. Big and white, with huge plantation shutters and trees lining a driveway that stretches a half a mile from the street to the front porch. It looks more like a vast southern estate than part of a wealthy Boulder neighborhood.

  I park in my regular spot in the designated guest parking area—yes, her parents are more than a little anal—then follow Rebel into her house. There’s a light on in the foyer but the rest of the house is dark, which means her mother is still in bed. I can’t help feeling relieved. I like Rebel’s family, but they’re all a little high strung. My half-goth, half-hipster best friend is actually the low-maintenance one in the Malone household.

  Rebel and I became friends in kind
ergarten. On the first day of class, the teacher asked everyone to demonstrate their powers—teleporting, cloud making, even changing the color of people’s hair, which Rebel totally wishes she could do. When they got to me, I had to admit that I didn’t have a power. It wasn’t unheard of for an ordinary to attend the school for superheroes, but it was unusual. Enough so that no one wanted to sit with me at lunch.

  When she saw me sitting alone at a table, Rebel made a big production of picking up her lunch, skipping across the cafeteria, and sitting next to me. She said, “You’re special. We should be friends.”

  We’ve been inseparable ever since.

  Once we’re in her room, Rebel loans me a pair of pajamas and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open long enough to change into them. Funny, half an hour ago I was pumped so high on adrenaline that I felt like I’d never come down, and now I’m crashing so hard all I want is to pull the covers over my head and hide for a week.

  I reach instinctively for my journal. Even exhaustion can’t keep me from my nightly ritual of scribbling at least a line or two about my day, about my results.

  But my backpack isn’t where I usually drop it in Rebel’s room. It’s not here at all.

  “Crap,” I say as I fall back into the bed. “I forgot to grab my bag.”

  This is all Riley’s fault. If he hadn’t started droning on about security systems and surveillance equipment—while wearing a freaking cape—I wouldn’t have been in such a rush to get out of the lab.

  “Get some sleep,” Rebel tells me, crawling in the other side of her king-size bed and pulling out her tablet. “You can go back for it tomorrow.”

  I don’t even argue. Instead, I close my eyes and fall into a restless, dream-filled sleep.

  I’m not sure how long I’m out before the sound of an incoming text wakes me up. I’m starting to grope for my phone when I hear Rebel tapping out an answer. Seconds later, she throws back the covers and climbs stealthily out of bed, so stealthily that I simply watch her instead of saying something, like I normally would.

  She walks to the French doors that lead out onto her veranda and pushes one open. Then, after flicking on the exterior light, she steps outside and softly closes the door behind her. I wait a minute, two, for her to come back in, but when she doesn’t, I climb out of bed too. Through the glass, I can see her silhouette walking toward a small copse of trees at the back of her yard.

  A tall guy steps out of the shadows and Rebel runs into his arms. They kiss for long, drawn-out seconds, and I can’t do much more than stand there in openmouthed shock. Rebel has a boyfriend! Rebel has a boyfriend that she hasn’t told me anything about. It doesn’t make any sense.

  We tell each other everything. We always have. Every crush, every first date, every kiss. Rebel can list every guy I’ve ever liked, all the way back to kindergarten. And I can do the same for her. She knows about my immunity shots. We trust each other with our deepest secrets. Or at least I thought we did.

  But now as I stand here watching her kiss this guy like they’re the only two people on the planet, I can’t help wondering why I don’t know about him. It’s not like Rebel to keep secrets, so if she’s been hiding this guy, there must be a reason.

  Unease crawls through my belly as they finally split apart. The guy wraps his arm around her shoulders and starts walking her back toward the house. My apprehension grows. There’s something about the way he moves that is familiar. Something about the way he holds himself and his rolling, long-legged stride.

  Is he someone from school? But that doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Rebel tell me about him if that’s the case?

  Maybe he’s an older guy and her parents wouldn’t approve. But still, she could have told me. I’d never judge. Or if I did, I’d support her anyway. That’s how our friendship works.

  As they get closer, I crouch behind the purple love seat near the doors and peer over the back of it. It takes a couple minutes for them to reach the pool of light from the veranda, but when they do, shock ricochets through me. Because this isn’t some boy from school. This isn’t some guy she met at a concert or a club.

  No, the guy Rebel is currently leaning in to for one last kiss, the guy whose arms are wrapped around her waist, whose body is pressed flush against her own, is a villain.

  And not just any villain. Dante, the guy with the fauxhawk who broke into my mother’s lab and who wanted to kidnap me. Me. His girlfriend’s best friend.

  As I stare at them, I’m overwhelmed by a deafening noise—the sound of my mind exploding.

  Chapter 5

  As Rebel waves and watches Dante head back across the yard, I have about fifteen seconds to decide if I’m going to sneak back to bed to pretend to be asleep or if I’m going to confront her about the fact that she’s dating a villain—one who, now that I think about it, knew an awful lot about me.

  As did Draven.

  You’re Kenna Swift? I thought Draven had been shocked because he’d heard of my mother. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe Rebel had mentioned me to Dante. Maybe that’s why they knew my name—

  Rebel turns back toward her room. I have to make a decision. I glance at my side of the bed. It’s so inviting. So easy.

  After the night I’ve had, it’s the clear win. I need time to process all that’s happened before confronting Rebel. I mean, what would I even say at this point?

  I slip back into my side of the bed. I’m just easing the comforter over my head when the door whooshes open and the chilly night air forces me deeper under the covers. A moment later, Rebel slides back into the bed.

  My heart pounds like a jackhammer. My mind races back through everything that happened tonight. The break-in. The explosion. The interrogation by Mr. Malone. The guys in gray suits.

  It all plays out in rapid-fire succession.

  In a flash, it hits me.

  I bolt upright.

  “It was you!”

  Rebel stretches and does a really spot-on impression of someone waking up from a deep sleep. Her voice even has that groggy, haven’t-used-it-in-a-while tone. “What was me?”

  “Oh. My. God.” I throw off the blankets and jump out of bed. My mind reels as I pace around the room, half talking to myself. “I should have known. I should have seen it! When the gray suits said the villains had a security pass, it meant they were working with someone on the inside, someone who had access. Then you brought up Nitro when I hadn’t mentioned his name. But I trusted you. I. Trusted. You. Because no way would my best friend send villains into the lab I work in when she knew I would be there. No way would my best friend put me in that kind of danger, right? Except you did. It was you. It was you.”

  My head really does feel like it’s exploding.

  Rebel is at my side in an instant. She grabs my shoulders to stop my pacing. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  She’s a good liar, better even than I’ve given her credit for. But I’m not falling for it. I level an unamused glare at her. “Don’t pretend it’s not true. Don’t lie to me any more than you already have.” I point at the door she used just minutes ago to go meet her secret boyfriend. “You’re dating a villain.”

  “What? No, I’m—”

  “Don’t. Lie. You’re dating the crazy villain with a fauxhawk who wanted to kidnap me. Torture me! And you were going to let him! What’s wrong with you?”

  She opens her mouth, probably to tell me I’m crazy, to spout another lie. But then she just sighs. After a heavy silence, she shakes her head. “Dante would never have hurt you. I swear. He doesn’t have it in him.”

  I want to throw up. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. I know him. I love him, Kenna. I really love him. He’d never hurt anyone, certainly not you. He knows you’re my best friend.”

  Best friend? That’s a joke. “You sent them there tonight. You knew I would be there,
and you sent them anyway—without even giving me a heads-up. Why? Because you knew I couldn’t fight back!”

  “I didn’t!” she insists. “You said you were so tired last night that I thought you were going to go home early. That’s the only reason I told them it was okay.”

  I don’t know if I believe her, but I can’t dwell on that right now. Not when there are more important things to talk about. Like what motivated her to help supervillains break into the superhero lab, and the fact that her father would have her arrested—would have her tried for treason—if he knew what she’d done.

  Not to mention how my best friend, the person I trust most in the entire world, the one person who has always treated me as something more than ordinary, could betray me like this.

  Rebel’s the only person I’ve ever been able to be completely honest with, and I thought it was the same with her. It hurts to find out I was wrong. Not only has Rebel been keeping at least one major secret from me, she all but served me up on a platter to Dante and his friends.

  Maybe she believes they wouldn’t hurt me, but she wasn’t there when Dante suggested kidnapping me like it was a perfectly reasonable idea. She wasn’t there when Nitro was throwing fireballs at me. Yes, I have immunity, but only from superpowers. All three of those boys are bigger than I am, and if they’d decided to kidnap me—to hurt me—no fire extinguisher in the world would have been able to stop them.

  I rub a hand across my tired eyes and take a deep breath as I try to sort out my thoughts. “How long have you been with him?” I ask.

  “Six months.”

  I sputter. “Six months? How could you hide this for six months?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Not like what?” I spit. “Not like you’re dating a villain? Not like you’re snuggling up with our sworn enemies? Not like you’ve been lying to me for half a year?”

  “That’s the whole thing,” she says. “It’s not like that. They’re not our enemies.”

  “Are you joking? They nearly killed me tonight.” An exaggeration, but she doesn’t know that.