“Yeah,” she said. “We have to keep going.” They didn’t have a choice. They’d already come this far.
Tom picked Bethy up from middle school first, then Anna, who didn’t have anything after school today. She could have lied about it and taken the bus home, like she usually did when soccer was on or she had a group project. But she didn’t want to push her luck. Dad might be able to tell she was lying. Or not. That was the trouble, he hardly ever let on what he knew or didn’t. He’d just let her keep digging whatever hole she started on until she hit bedrock. And he’d just stand there, his eyebrow raised, not saying anything.
The car waited because she was late, between picking up books from her cubby and talking to friends on the way out. Tom never gave her a hard time about lingering. Bethy was in the back of the car, math book open, doing her homework. Anna shoved the book over as she slid onto the seat. “Drive on, Jeeves,” she called to the front seat.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” Tom said, his smile amused. He was a silver-haired man who’d been working for her mother for eons. Anna couldn’t imagine that, working for the same person forever. Getting old doing the same job. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but it wasn’t that. She didn’t want to run West Corp, either. Her mother had taken over right where her father, the previous president of West Corp—and the famous Captain Olympus—left off. Like they were some kind of clones or something. Anna was afraid to ask if everyone expected her to do the same. She’d rather they give it all to Bethy.
Throwing her an annoyed pout, Bethy gathered up her books and papers as the car pulled away from the curb.
“You flunk your quiz?” Anna asked.
“No. A minus. Mom was right, how did she know?”
“You love math, it’s your favorite, you’ll never flunk a math quiz.”
“But I was worried.”
She could tell Bethy that everything would be perfect for the rest of her life and she’d still worry. “You’re weird, you know that?”
Bethy should have said, “No, you are,” after that, but she didn’t. Instead, she hugged her book bag to her chest and watched her sister, staring hard until Anna squirmed.
“What?” Anna said. The plea hung through a long pause.
“If you got powers, would you tell me?” Bethy asked.
She could answer with a straight face because she’d been dealing with the question her whole life. Her grandparents, her father—all superhuman, and sometimes superhumans passed on their powers.
The trick was not to respond any differently from all the other times. People were always watching her; she just had to act normal, always.
“Yes, I would.” Except she wouldn’t, because she hadn’t, because if Bethy knew, their father would be twice as likely to find out, so Bethy couldn’t know about any of it. Anna had to keep it all to herself.
“Really?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Because if I got powers, I’d tell you.”
“Do you have powers? Are you getting powers?”
“No. But I was just thinking about what I would do if I did.”
“Having powers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know.”
“Be nice to figure that out for myself.”
“Mom’s right. You worry too much.”
“Runs in the family,” Bethy said.
Because they had a lot to worry about, in the end.
THREE
THE large conference room at City Hall was filled with the worst sort of business sharks, lobbyists, developers, profiteers, and robber barons. Gathered here in the name of progressive urban development, of course. But they all had blood in their gazes and were licking their chops, figuratively.
And Celia was here among them. What did that say about her?
City government had been trying for twenty years to institute major urban redevelopment. The idea fell out of favor when a previous mayor who advocated revitalization turned supervillain on them, so Commerce City was long overdue for such a plan. Finally, though, the wheels were moving—in part thanks to Celia West’s advocacy.
The city had asked for comprehensive bids to be submitted to a planning committee. This committee would decide the tone and direction of Commerce City for the next generation. Of course, Celia had gotten West Corp involved. Along with every other construction and development company in the city wanting a piece of the pie.
A variety of consortiums and contractors had just delivered their spiels to the mayor, members of the city council, and the planning committee, which included police, fire, and safety officers. Police Captain Mark Paulson was among them. She’d asked him to join the committee specifically. Wasn’t normally his sort of thing—bureaucratic stuffiness took him off the street, where he could do real good, he was always saying. But they needed to take the long view. The work they did now would have repercussions for decades, including in the area of law enforcement. And she wanted at least one ally in the room.
The second-to-last presentation was wrapping up. Two men in suits—she thought of them as trained monkeys, doing their little dance—stood by the wall screen where they’d flashed their maps and drawn their lines and squares where their company would build freeways, outlet malls, and tract housing, if they had their way. The thing that gave them those confident smiles? The fact that everyone in their audience, whose approval they needed to move forward, was also a potential investor. Conflict of interest didn’t exist in these people’s world. They kept looking at Celia in particular like she was a bag of money waiting to burst open.
“Very impressive, gentlemen,” Mayor Edleston, who didn’t know any better, said as he nodded appreciatively. “Any questions? Any information the committee can add about what this would take in terms of permitting, legislation?” He looked to the side of the room where the people who actually got things done sat.
Celia said, “Maybe we should go ahead and move on to the final presentation.”
A silence fell, thick as snow and heavy as lead. She loved when that happened. Everyone stared at her, and her audience was suddenly entirely captive.
Today, she’d started out tired and sore, but she’d powered through it and brought out all the poise and resolve she could muster. She stood, running her hand along the edge of a file folder. She knew without looking that her dark gray dress suit didn’t have a wrinkle in it, and her short red hair and makeup were perfectly arranged. Good grooming was power. One of the little things that determined whether people would listen to you.
“We’ve seen a lot of big, ambitious plans. Lots of freeways, lots of suburbia. Looks great on paper, doesn’t it? But you can track this pattern in a dozen other cities: You build a freeway system that drains resources from the city center, you end up with an empty shell and all the problems that come with it. I want to see economic development as much as the next person, but not at the expense of the city itself. I propose that we can have an economic boom, a vibrant Commerce City, without the sprawl.”
First monkey said, “But the development our plan promotes will benefit the city—”
“The whole city, or your little cadre of investors?” she replied.
“You’re an investor—”
“That’s right. But you’re advocating an either-or situation, and I want both.”
The second monkey had returned to his seat with the other developers. He muttered to a colleague in a way that made it clear he was only pretending to whisper, “Bitch.”
Mayor Edleston shifted uncomfortably, rubbing a hand across his chin. The suits from the other development firms cleared their throats and stared at their hands. First monkey grumbled at the tabletop.