Super•Villainous

XLI

The first thing I did when I made it back to my room was jerk open the desk drawer where I last hid Shade's cloak. An empty drawer did not greet me, as it should have, as I indeed expected to see. Instead, I found a folded slip of paper, and on it, the words "My need seemed greater than yours," written in a neat script.

Too neat.

Too neat for the hands I knew must have, and couldn't have, written it. His hands that I remembered viscerally were once overwhelmed by sharp tremors, now gone steady.

*~*~*~*~*

The next morning after a nice sleep, when I finally felt comfortable confronting the issues that arose from the prior night, I unpacked everything that happened.

I knew why I was sneaking around places I shouldn't have been, but why was Shade there? Honestly, I was a little peeved that he helped me out of a tough spot. He was probably somewhere feeling awfully giddy for his one good deed amidst a sea of bad ones, and I didn't want him to have that satisfaction.

And yet, I didn't turn him in, and didn't plan on detailing that whole misadventure to Tempest to get myself into future trouble with his superiors, so I wasn't exactly a beacon of moral superiority, either.

Regardless, the whole debacle began to feel like a massive risk without any reward to show for it. All I gained was the insignificant knowledge that the information I actually wanted was, in fact, elsewhere.

The top floor. The Elder's quarters, off limits to literally everyone. Even Tempest's key ring would be of no help gaining me access to that area, and, over the coming days, I concluded that it was almost always occupied by at least one of the seven Elder Supers. All Guild founders, all icons of their age, and not ones to be trifled with.

Which led me to my next problem: if I couldn't use keys, did that mean I needed to learn how to pick a lock?

Hmm... I wouldn't even get close enough to pick a lock if I didn't find a time when the floor was empty, but when?

It was while I was chewing through that problem as I put my body to the matter of my continued hopeless endeavor of organizing the Archive - or, as I was beginning to call it in my head, the Dungeon - that Ren found me.

"The Constable would like to see you," he said. Almost as fast as I thought it, he answered my most poignant unanswered question by adding, "You're not in trouble. Come along. We don't keep him waiting."

I narrowed my eyes over the stacks separating us and put all my psychic energy into the thought, If you read my mind just then, blink twice.

He did not, so I tried again, If you read my mind, don't blink at all.

He ruined my "Gotcha!" moment by blinking once, and although I'd been mostly joking, it left me more uneasy than ever.

"Are you going to continue staring creepily into my eyes like a serial killer or are you gonna hurry up and come along?" he asked, crossing his arms.

Hastily, I dropped the papers I'd been holding and traced the path I'd made through the mess back to the entryway. "What does he want?"

Suddenly paranoid, I put extra effort into not thinking about the many very valid reasons he could want to talk to me, just in case.

"I'll let him tell you," Ren replied, and refused any further attempts at prying more information from him as he guided me up four flights of stairs all the way into the very same area I'd only just been plotting about gaining entry to.

I tried not to seem too interested in the layout, focusing on inane details and repeating them over and over in my head until they didn't sound like real words anymore.