Super•Villainous

XXXIV

The Archive room had never felt so small. The piece of the ceiling trapping us in the basement had never so unmovable.

Remain calm.

That became my mantra as I pretended I hadn't just Sherlock Holmes'd my way into discovering Shade's identity.

My best friend's missing brother just had to be the most dangerous supervillain alive. "What rotten luck," is what I would say, except that actually made a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things. My rotten luck — my own dear brother's curse — very well could have been playing the long game, bringing her into my life half a decade earlier in a round about way of ensuring the wheels of fate led me to her villainous sibling.

Fantastic.

And because I learned nothing from my previous disregard for critical thinking where my suspiciously fast healing had been concerned, I chose to cling to the sliver of hope that I was wrong. Recent events made me hyper-paranoid, hadn't they?

Besides, I preferred not to publicly cast suspicion on a man who, if innocent, already suffered the most traumatic experience of his life as the captive of the very supervillain I would accuse him of secretly being. It wasn't the type of accusation to be flung around lightly. My relationship with Leigh would never recover from a false accusation of that caliber, and that was one of the few things in the world I refused to risk.

If I planned to go to the Guild with my theories, they needed to be airtight, proven without a shadow of a doubt, so I had some investigating to do.

Despite myself, I fought off the urge to go bang my head against the nearest wall. I was already quite preoccupied nosing around the Guild for information on what happened to my grandfather, and this issue seemed far more time-sensitive.

Atticus's smooth voice broke through my bubble of stewing thoughts. "If you tell me what you're doing, I can help. It's not like I have anything better to do."

As the time in the basement grew from mere minutes into our second hour, he gave up on hope of quick release and settled for sitting on the floor, propped up against a wall, one arm dangling lazily over a bent knee. He flipped my knife open and closed just for something to busy his hands, not noticing how the repeated action put me on edge. I could have snatched it back, but that required bridging the distance between us, and I really didn't feel like getting that close to him at the moment. Alternatively, I considered pressing the panic button Ren gave me upon my release from the hospital, only staying my hand because I knew to do so wouldn't help my current situation in the least. It wouldn't make them stop Tectonic or move the rubble any faster.

In spite of my reservations, I decided that forcing Atticus to do some grunt work in exchange for getting him to stop playing with sharp stabbing tools was far from the worse deal imaginable, so I gave him a brief run down of how things were meant to be organized and to let me know if he came across information on a Super that went by the name Shadow.

My grandfather.

"Why are you interested in a Super thirty years passed his prime?"

Against my greater will, I looked up. "You know of him?"

Eyes low, roaming over the paper in his hands, he smiled ruefully to himself and said, "As much as the next person."

"Just let me know if you find something," I said, grudging to speak to my potential nemesis — and I didn't think it was dramatic to deem him such — more than absolutely necessary.

He wouldn't find anything. In my gut, I knew we were in the wrong place. After several days of search, I'd yet to find any information the least bit salacious. They probably kept the interesting stuff locked up in a titanium safe somewhere, far from prying eyes, which meant I now needed to find where. The private Elder floor of the Guildhall seemed like a decent place to start, but if I got caught sneaking up there it might get tricky when I visibly struggled to muster up a reasonable explanation as to why I belonged where I so clearly did not.