Saving a Superhero

19: Leaving+Rain

The desk manager was nowhere to be found, even when I jumped the counter and barged into the backroom, disregarding the obvious Employees Only sign on the door.

There was a jittery kind of adrenaline pumping through my blood and seeping into my bones. The kind that told me what I already knew and made me want to run from it.

The gorgeous desk manager, his curly hair, that perfect crescent moon smile that seemed all too familiar.

It was obvious, of course. Even if I hadn't recognized the similarities it would have been. Who else would give Grace that letter but the Scholar himself. The egotistic, sadistic criminal with plans to take over the world before he was old enough to vote.

You're probably scoffing, because taking over the world is ridiculously cliche and an impossible dream, but not for Hudson. He took all your impossible dreams and far flung hopes, put them in a cup, shook them up, and pulled out a hundred possibilities.

When I had been on the edge of applying for culinary school, scared that I was going to ruin my life and be left with nothing a small apartment and nothing else, he pulled out a thousand ideas that made everything right.

When I was ready to run away and leave Bradson forever, just to stop the madness of my secret life, he took me by the hand and asked me to stay.

And I stayed.

With a thousand plans, he was bound to get one to work, which made nothing impossible for him, even ruling the world. Though I doubted he would be doing it alone.

He was the cornerstone of a beautiful, intricate arch that bridged hundreds of governments. When he made his move, everything would fall. Monarchies, regimes, everything would end in anarchy.

That is, had he not been stopped by an equally powerful group of teenagers before he could even get the ball rolling.

I didn't doubt that he already had moles in every major government operation in the world, but with him incarcerated, the delicate arch would crumble beyond repair.

"No sign of him anywhere," I reported when I had been released from a conference room meeting when I'd been lectured about the importance of reading signs and not directly disobeying them, which made me wonder if I could indirectly disobey them without punishment.

"None of the other staff members have ever heard of the guy," Harper said, confirming my worst suspicions.

"He wasn't even wearing the right uniform," Grace mumbled. "I trusted a guy in green when everyone else is wearing purple." Her sunshine yellow overalls seemed to wash her out, though they had made her look so alive less than an hour before.

"We all trusted him," Kennedy consoled her. "There's no way we could have known who he was. We've only ever seen pictures."

There was a lump of guilt wedged deep in my throat that threatened to choke me every time I tried to swallow a drowning breath. I had seen him a hundred times over. I should have known who he was. I shouldn't have trusted him.

"What do we do now? We don't know how to track him down, we don't know what he's doing, we don't even know what we're doing!" Rory's voice rose higher and higher with every word she spoke until she was squeaking like a soprano mouse.

"Can you read the note again?" Kennedy was perched on the arm of the loveseat Grace had sprawled out on during our search for the missing super villain.

There was a heavy sigh that said, No, I won't, but then Grace recited the entirety of the short letter from memory. "Glad you have made your peace, but I haven't made mine. Within thirty days I'll make my move, and you'll make yours. We'll settled this nonsense once and for all. Your old friend."

"Poetic," Harper complimented the letter. "Poetic and creepy and too much." She got up from sitting on the coffee table, where she had made her home after an unfruitful search of the motel. One dark hand wrapped around the handle of her suitcase and the other tugged her knitted jacket tighter around her.

Just as when we had arrived in the city, pregnant clouds hung low over the skyline, threatening to scrap the tops of the tallest buildings. The sun had been swallowed by the beasts in the clouds and threatened to never emerge again.

"It's too much," Harper mumbled again her eyes large and pleading in a way that seemed much to unHarperish. Then, with a single hand raised in farewell, she turned her back on us and walked into the storm.

"What the actual heck." There was no question in my voice. Suddenly this was all too much? Suddenly this was something we could just walk out on? After everything that had happened two years ago? After everything that happened the past few days? "That's not happening."

And I forgot my guilt and the fear that was growing like a crescendo in the pit of my stomach and focused on the anger coursing through me. I stood and left the building after Harper, ignoring the cold wind and pellets of rain attacking me from all sides. My bare arms were covered in tiny goosebumps and the air bit at the exposed skin of my ankles.

"Harper!" I yelled. Screw the weird looks I was getting. Screw the people giving me them.
She was already disappearing down the sidewalk, pulling her suitcase behind her. The foot traffic parted around her before swallowing her like a whale swallowing its prey in the middle of the ocean, because you can't tell me that whales aren't waiting to swallow me whole in the high seas.

"Harper!" I tried again. Maybe she hadn't heard me the first time. She obviously didn't choose to ignore my crazy shout.

This time she turned around.

"Would you just shut up, Juliet?"

Her words force me to stumble back a few steps. Despite the heated arguments she'd gotten into with Kennedy, she rarely displayed any anger. This was one of the rare times.

"Shut up, that's what you want me to do?"

"No, I want you to keep me from hopping on a bus by yelling my name into the air a hundred times," she deadpanned. "Of course I want you to shut up."

I puffed a strand of hair out of my eyes, which gave me the distinct impression of being an angry horse snorting in rage. "Listen, Harper, running away isn't going to-"

"To what? Stop him?" She stomped all over my reasonability and logic, danced all over it like it was dirt under her shoes. "It stopped him before. Two years of silence then the day we're all in the same room together for the first time in forever, he shows up. Not even just a letter, the Scholar himself was there."

"Can we please not call him the Scholar?"

"Oh, that's right, he's Hudson to you, right?" There was a cruel bark of laughter that cut deep. "Give him my best."

And there she was again, walking away. This time I didn't follow her, but turned on my heel and headed back to the hotel. I was wet from head to toe and violent shivers racked my body like earthquakes across my skin.

Stupid Baltimore and its stupid rain.

Remember: The Scholar will make his move within 30 days.

-m burton