Super•Villainous

XLII

Shade was a Mimic. He had to be.

That was the thought I couldn't allow myself to think in front of Ren due to the countless implications that statement would inspire. Did he already know? Did the Guild? Mimics were exceptionally rare, maybe less than five in the whole world, and that was a generous estimate, but I'd never heard of any quite like Shade.

When we were secluded together for weeks, he had no one else to siphon his ice power from, and mimics needed a target frequently, or else they were virtually normal.

I parceled my way through his other abilities in a tidy list.

Telekinesis: did he have the means to routinely come into contact with the Constable on a frequent enough basis for him to be the source?

Shadows: my grandfather apparently was a Darkener, but he'd been dead since before Shade had ever been born, and Darkeners tended towards quiet villainy, slipping in and out of locked vaults - that sort of thing. Did Shade have... friends? It sounded ridiculous to put it that way, but the only thing I could think of was that he had a Darkener on the sidelines lending him their own abilities whenever he needed them. An evil henchman, perhaps?

Obviously, the healing had to be my own. He even told me himself, "You can't kill me."

You can't kill me.

I, specifically, could not kill him, since if I was nearby, he could always use me to heal himself back from the brink of death.

At least now I knew - or suspected - why he wanted me around. Why he could not afford to lose track of me in a forest.

On the bright side, that meant he could be killed, so long as I couldn't be found.

The mimic theory still didn't completely explain his other powers, but it was a start.

Despite the danger I posed to anyone nearby, I needed out of the Guild, needed it like a breath of fresh air, so an hour later I let myself into my parent's apartment and slumped into bed, wishing I'd never have to leave. The panic I'd felt from being the focus of the Constable's ire slowly ebbed out of my body. The next thing I knew, morning crept over the horizon, and a plan had begun the first stages of formation within my weary brain.

*+*+*+*+*

I called Ezra. Not the next day, or even the day after that, because I had those days off and preferred to consolidate miserable activities to days that I'd already be suffering from work. If my dads questioned my sudden renewed presence under their roof over the weekend, they didn't voice them, and I offered no explanations.

When I did phone Ezra on my way back to the Archive Monday morning, I let him know I'd be busy on the eighteenth, the day he wanted to attend his exclusive (and pretentious) VIP Guild event together. No, I couldn't cancel those plans. Yes, they were quite important. No, I wouldn't reconsider. And, yes, his boss scared the living daylights out of me.

Okay, maybe I refrained from mentioning that last bit, but it was true. The next time I would willingly find myself in a room with the Constable would be when they finally caught Shade and not a day sooner.

I kept busy in the weeks until the event, locked away in my sparse Guildhall room, tinkering away at this thing or that, generally keeping myself out of trouble. After finding out all I did concerning Ren's mind reading abilities, I avoided him, too, like the plague, though doubts, in turn, increasingly plagued me in the quieter moments. How much had I unwittingly told him of my goals for being at the Guild? During my initial interrogation by him in my hospital room, I hadn't known anything about my grandfather, and my suspicions about who Shade might be had yet to form, so I was in the clear there. What about since then?