Mr. Sage nodded his head.

"But how did you guys even-"

"Become superheroes in the first place?"

I sighed. "I really wish you would quit doing that. It's rather disconcerting. Some of us like to finish our KarmaGirl.

own sentences."

"Sorry. It's a bad habit of mine. Finola died of cancer when Fiona was in high school. That was a dark time for us." A shadow pa.s.sed over Chief Newman's face. "Fiona knew what I did in my spare time.

With her mother gone, she demanded I take her along. Said she wanted to look after me. I said no at first, but Fiona can be quite stubborn, a trait she gets from her mother."

Fiona? Stubborn? I never would have guessed.

"One night, I gave in. Fiona had been making my costumes for years and had already designed one for herself. She even had a superhero name already picked out-Fiera. To my surprise, we worked well together. It was nice to have someone to watch my back after all those years alone. At first, it was just Fiera and me. We would go out and catch criminals or fight other minor ubervillains like the Hunter or the Prankster or Johnny Angel. One night, we ran into Striker. He was after the same thieves we were.

Of course, being a billionaire, Striker was much better equipped to be a superhero than we were. He had a leather costume, twin swords, and lots of fancy computer equipment. We were in store-bought masks and the homemade costumes Fiona had sewn."

"Striker helped us apprehend the thieves. Over the next few months, we ran into him again and again.

We seemed to be on the same wavelength, so we joined forces. Striker brought Tornado on board, and I found Hermit a few months later. The five of us just gelled. The rest is history."

The scenes flashed through my mind. Mr. Sage and Fiera stalking criminals on the streets, running into Striker, Tornado and Hermit joining the group, the five of them forming one of the greatest superhero teams in the world. A few months ago, I would have taken this knowledge and splashed it all over the front page of The Expose. Now, I felt as though I'd been trusted with a precious secret. I almost felt like one of the gang. Or at least a sidekick. Almost. I certainly had the sidekick habit of needing to be rescued every few minutes down pat.

But the Fearless Five's backstory, no matter how intriguing, still didn't help me figure out how to deal with Fiona. Or help me find a cure for these killer headaches. I rubbed my temples.

"Has Fiona always been so . . . combustible?"

"Oh yes. You should have seen her as a child whenever she didn't get her way. We went through a lot of furniture, tables, lamps, chairs." Chief Newman grinned. "It was a good thing we lived next door to the fire department. Although the firefighters thought Fiona was quite the little arsonist."

I smiled at the chief 's joke, but my thoughts turned to a more serious matter. "Can I ask you something?"

The chief looked at me. His blue eyes glowed. "You want to know why Henry and I were still your friends after Travis died."

I nodded. "I don't understand it. The two of you should have hated me, should still hate me for what I did. But you never showed the slightest bit of anger towards me. Not once."

"That's because it wasn't your fault, Carmen."

"Of course it was," I snapped.

"Suicide is a person's choice. You might have exposed Travis, but he was the one who decided to end his life. He made that decision himself. If anyone is to blame, it's me."

"What? Why?"

"I should have sensed Travis's pain, his intentions." Raw pain filled the chief 's eyes. Lines of grief etched his face.

The sight only fueled my own guilt. Despite the chief 's kind words, I was to blame for Travis's suicide.

KarmaGirl.

n.o.body else.

Chief Newman let out a long breath. "Unfortunately, Fiona hasn't accepted Travis's decision yet. She still misses him terribly. We all do, and we all loved him, but Fiona more so than any of us."

"So how should I handle her?" I asked. "I don't want to fight with her anymore."

"You could try explaining the reasons you started exposing superheroes. Fiona might be hot-tempered, but she's not unreasonable."

It was worth a shot. What was the worst Fiona could do to me? Fry me like a slab of bacon? Melt my eyeb.a.l.l.s out of my head? My veins throbbed and pulsed in my skull. Melted eyeb.a.l.l.s didn't sound so bad. They would be much more preferable than the ten-trombone parade marching through my mind.

I popped another aspirin into my mouth. On the bright side, if Fiona reduced me to a pile of ash, I wouldn't have any more headaches.

I didn't get a chance to corner Fiona until that afternoon. The superhero strode through the halls of Sublime, her impossibly high heels pounding on the marble floors. How on earth did she walk in those things?

Fiona entered the wine cellar, and I followed the hollow echo of her footsteps. I hurried over to the secret door and jabbed the keypad. After several long seconds, the elevator arrived. I dashed in and punched the appropriate b.u.t.tons. It descended. The elevator slowed, and the doors opened. I dashed down the hall, wanting to catch up to Fiona before she got to the library. I didn't want to try to explain myself and my actions in front of everyone. I rounded a corner. Up ahead, Fiona opened a door and went inside. I skidded to a halt in front of Tornado's room.

Uh-oh.

I stood outside. How was I supposed to handle this? I didn't want to disturb Fiona in what was a moment of private, personal grief. I chewed my lip. And yet . . . I had to go into the room. I wanted to explain to Fiona why I'd done the things I'd done. I needed to. We would never be friends, but I wanted her to understand, wanted her forgiveness.

Do it . . .

Do it . . .

Do it . . .

The inner voice whispered in my head, the voice I never doubted.

I reached for the door handle.

When I eased open the heavy door, I found myself in the middle of a suite remarkably similar to mine upstairs. Bedroom, living room, bathroom. Glossy magazines about meteorology leaned on a coffee table next to a half-eaten piece of moldy toast. The bedsheets had been thrown to one side as if someone had just gotten up. A man's clothes lay scattered on the floor, and a thick layer of dust covered everything. The room smelled like old mothb.a.l.l.s. I knew nothing had been touched in six months. This was exactly the way Travis Teague had left his room the day he committed suicide. Guilt sparked to life in my stomach. For a moment, I couldn't breathe.

Fiona sat on a low, long sofa in the middle of the living room. She clutched a silver picture frame in her hands. Tears slid down her pink cheeks and evaporated off her flushed face.

"Um, Fiona? Can I talk to you a minute?"

"Get out," Fiona snarled. "I don't want you in here."

I felt physically sick from the hurt and anger in her voice. I took a step back. I should go.

No . . .

KarmaGirl.

Not yet . . .

Must explain . . .

My inner voice whispered, and I squared my shoulders. I walked over to the couch, sat down on the far end, and squinted at the picture in Fiona's hands. Travis Teague beamed at her from beneath the gla.s.s.

"He seems like he was a nice man."

Fiona stroked the picture with her fingertips. "He was a nice man, the best man there was, until you came along and ruined everything."

I took a deep breath. "I don't mean to intrude on your grief, but I want to explain to you why I did what I did. I'm not asking for your forgiveness. That's too much to ask. But maybe if I tell you the reasons why, you might be able to at least understand."

"Never. I'll never understand you and your twisted obsession with us. You ruined our lives. And for what? To sell a few more thousand copies of that rag of a newspaper you work for?"

Fiona's eyes burned into me. My temperature shot up about five degrees. Sweat trickled down my neck.

"Not exactly," I replied.

Fiona's hands gripped the picture frame so hard I thought it would crack. A diamond ring glowed like a white-hot star on her left hand. A diamond ring . . . An idea popped into my mind.

"You know, I was engaged at one time," I said in a cautious voice.

"Good for you. What was he, blind? Or just deaf and dumb?"

I bit my tongue. Although I wanted to snap back at Fiona, I would say my piece and go. The rest was up to her.

"No, he wasn't blind or deaf or dumb. His name was Matt. He was a very nice man. Loving, kind, considerate. He always remembered my birthday and never left the toilet seat up. We dated for a long time. The day he proposed to me was one of the happiest days of my life. I thought we would be together forever. Build a house with a white-picket fence, have a couple of kids, get a dog. But things didn't quite turn out that way."

Fiona said nothing, but I could feel the other woman struggling to contain her curiosity. That was the thing about stories. You always wanted to know how they turned out, even if they ended badly. They hooked you like a fish, and you couldn't wriggle away until you'd heard the whole thing.

"So what happened?" Fiona asked. "Where is this Matt character?"

"He's back in Beginnings, my hometown, doing what he used to do."

More silence.

"So why didn't you marry him?"

I smiled. I'd hooked the superhero. "I was going to. It was our wedding day. I was in my dress, and the wedding was less than thirty minutes away. But I was having second thoughts. I felt as though Matt was keeping something from me. Something big. He'd been acting strangely, coming home at odd hours and whatnot."

"What did you do?"

"I went to Matt's room to ask him what was bothering him. I found him rolling around on the bed with Karen, my best friend and maid of honor." The scene flashed through my mind. This time, though, it didn't stir as much anger and hurt as it used to. I could look back on it calmly, rationally, and not turn into a hulking, green monster.

Fiona sniffed. "Must have sucked to have been you."

"That wasn't the worst part."

KarmaGirl.

"There's something worse than catching your fiance and your best friend together on your wedding day?"

"There's always something worse. In my case, it was the discovery my beloved fiance was actually the Machinator, the superhero. During all the rolling around, their clothes had come undone and his costume peeked out from under his s.h.i.+rt."

Fiona arched a blond eyebrow. "You were engaged to the Machinator? The guy who can control machines with his mind?"

"Yep. And my best friend was Crusher. You can imagine my shock, not just at finding the two of them together, but also at the fact they were a superhero and ubervillain. They were going at it like bunny rabbits. And do you know what they blamed their transgression on? The reason they told me they had to sleep together? Radioactive waste. Can you believe that?"

Fiona gave me a look that was almost pitying. Almost.

"After that, I snapped," I continued. "I took pictures of the two of them in their costumes right there on the bed. They ran in the newspaper the next day. But exposing the two of them wasn't enough for me. It didn't take the hurt away. It didn't ease my pain. So I made a vow to myself, to the whole world.

n.o.body was going to be fooled like I was ever again. n.o.body. I went from town to town, newspaper to newspaper, exposing superheroes and ubervillains. Finally, I wound up in Bigtime. You know the rest."

Fiona stared at the picture in her hands. "Funny, isn't it?" I let out a bitter laugh."How one event can affect the lives of so many. But that's karma for you."

"Karma?"

"Destiny. Fate. Kismet. What goes around comes around.

Karma."

Fiona didn't reply.

I stood. My time with the superhero was up. I'd said what I needed to. "I wanted you to hear my side of the story, and now you have. You can hate me if you want to. Avoid me, berate me, whatever. I deserve all that and more. No matter what the others say, it's my fault that Travis is dead. If I could take it back, I would. But I can't. That's the really bad thing about karma. You don't get any second chances. At least, not in this lifetime."

KarmaGirl.

20.

After that, my relations.h.i.+p with Fiona changed. She no longer disparaged or mocked every single thing I did. Just every other thing. It was a truce. Of sorts.

Another day pa.s.sed. I stared at my papers and graphs and flowcharts. I was still no closer to uncovering Malefica's ident.i.ty. I s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper in front of me, wadded it up into a tight ball, and tossed it at the trashcan. It bounced off the top of the ma.s.sive pile and landed on the floor. I glared at it, wis.h.i.+ng I had Fiona's ability to make it burst into flames.

I'd spent the last three hours poring over a variety of doc.u.ments relating to the Terrible Triad and had gotten absolutely nowhere. I rolled my neck around to relieve some of the tension and looked at one of the clocks on the walls. Nine-thirty. Quitting time.

I pulled open the door to the library and ambled down the hall. A loud scuffle up ahead caught my attention.

Who could that be? The others were all taking a rare night off so they could catch up on their other lives.

Sam was plotting his next business takeover, Henry was at work writing about the latest, greatest computer advancements, Chief Newman was hot on the trail of a group of thieves who'd hit three banks in the last two days, and Fiona was busy coming up with new color combinations that would make a flamingo neon pink with envy. Or just give the poor creature a ma.s.sive headache.

I reached one of the training rooms. Inside, Striker jousted with invisible enemies. His swords zipped through the air, and he moved with the easy grace of a dancer. My eyes traced over him, especially since he was clothed in his black leather costume. My heart fluttered, and my hormones kicked into high gear.

Oh, the things that man did for a leather suit. It was practically criminal.

I hadn't seen much of Sam. We had both been avoiding each other ever since that night in the kitchen when we'd almost made love. It was for the best, but still . . . There was something about him that made me weak in the knees. And it didn't have anything to do with radioactive waste. At least, I didn't think it did.