He looked away. It may not be a gun or a knife, but it was still the most effective weapon he had.
Tattoos notwithstanding.
His jaw tensed as he approached the table, where the lobby’s only occupant sat on a stool entranced by what appeared to be a romance novel. The girl was perhaps a year or two younger than him, with ginger hair braided thickly over one shoulder.
“Excuse me,” Adrian said, sounding ridiculously polite even in his own head.
The girl, though, did not even look up. Just reached across the desk and slid a clipboard toward him—a form for checking out books.
He cleared his throat and, this time, tried to sound not like a concerned citizen, but like a Renegade. A superhero. “We’re here for the Detonator.”
The girl’s head shot upward. She blinked at Adrian, then took in the others, her gaze lingering longest on Nova, long pale eyelashes fluttering over grayish eyes. Her lips parted as she turned back to Adrian and squeaked, “I beg your pardon?”
“The Detonator,” Adrian said again. “We saw her come in here, not ten minutes ago. Where is she?”
The girl’s mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes darted once more to Nova, then back. “You … Aren’t you…” She looked at Nova again, dumbfounded. “Are they Renegades?”
It wasn’t really a question. Adrian wasn’t sure how she could tell without the uniforms—maybe she recognized some of them from the media. Maybe they simply had a look to them. He liked to think so.
What was odd, though, was the way she was staring at Nova, almost like she recognized her.
“We sure are,” said Nova, her voice run through with assertive pride. “Renegades. All of us. Bold, valiant, and … um…”
“Just,” whispered Ruby.
Nova nodded. “That’s the one. Now tell us where—”
“Are we in trouble?” the girl said, slamming shut her book and clutching it against her stomach, mostly covering the depiction of a shirtless swashbuckler on the cover. “We haven’t done anything, I swear. Is this because we’ve been stocking that cookbook again? Because we were told it was within our rights to—”
“The Detonator,” Adrian said, more forcefully now. “Stop stalling and tell us where she is.”
The girl hesitated. Looked once more at Nova, and this time Adrian frowned and followed the look. Nova turned to him and shrugged, apparently as baffled as he was.
“I … I don’t know who that is,” the girl stammered. Her face was red as a cherry now, and Adrian doubted it had much to do with her reading material. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“A woman, about this tall,” Adrian deadpanned, indicating her height. “Wears lots of armbands and can make explosives appear out of thin air. Sound familiar?”
The girl gave a weak, apologetic smile. “Not really?”
“How about the Librarian,” said Oscar, stepping closer to the desk. “Where’s he?”
“He’s in the … uh … the back,” the girl said, her attention darting over all four of them again. “Cataloging new … reference … materials.”
“Take us to him,” said Adrian. “Now.”
“Oh, you can’t go back there,” the girl said. “He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
Adrian’s teeth gritted. He could feel the ticking of time, like the steady drum of his own heart. Every second a chance for the Detonator to get away, for Gene Cronin to hide whatever had brought the villain here in the first place. “Disturb him anyway.”
The girl opened her mouth, poised to refuse, then looked at Nova again and hesitated.
She cleared her throat and nodded. “Right away.”
Slipping off the stool, she turned and walked—not around the table or toward one of the doors or even the staircase that stood a few feet away—but to the large mirror hung on the wall behind her. She pressed her fingers against the surface and the glass rippled outward as if she had just touched a vertical pond. Then, without fanfare, she stepped into the mirror and was gone.
They all stood there, staring at their own mystified reflections for a long moment.
Oscar, of course, was the first to break the silence. “That,” he said, pointing, “is a cool trick.” He walked around the desk and rapped his knuckles against the mirror, then pulled it away from the wall and looked behind it to ensure there wasn’t a secret passageway of sorts. “Neat.”