Sibby's eyes flickered. Color surged into her cheeks and her heart picked up. "Did it work?" she whispered.
Miranda swallowed the huge lump in her throat and resisted the urge to crush her. "It worked."
"Did you-"
"Clocked him with the clock, as requested."
Sibby smiled, reached her hand up to Miranda's cheek, then closed her eyes again. They didn't reopen until they were in the car with the historical society behind them. She sat up and looked around. "I'm in the front seat."
"Special occasion," Miranda explained. "Don't get used to it."
"Right." Sibby worked her neck back and forth. "That was a good plan. Trading outfits so they'd think you were me and not worry so much about restraints."
"They still went all out." Miranda pushed the cape back. "I broke the chain, but I can't get the bracelets off." Thinking for some reason of Kenzi at the prom saying, Are you ready to unshackle yourself from the insecurities of your youth? Are you ready to own your future?
"What happened to Plant Boy?"
"I called in an anonymous tip telling them where to find him and the bodies of the guards he shot. He should be on his way to jail."
"How did you know you were right? That he was trying to trick us?"
"I can tell when people are lying."
"How?"
"Different things. Little gestures. Mostly by listening to their heartbeats."
"Like if they speed up, they're lying?"
"Everyone is different. You need to know how they react when they're telling the truth to know how they react when they're lying. His heartbeat gets slower, more even when he lies, like he's trying to be extra careful."
Sibby looked at her more closely. "You can hear people's heartbeats?"
"I hear a lot of things."
Sibby took that in. "When Plant Boy was strangling me because he thought I was you? He called me Princess. And said some people thought you had superpowers like a teen Wonder Woman or something."
Miranda felt her chest get tight. "He did?"
"And he said there was a bounty on your head. Alive or dead. Although I'm sorry to say that I'm worth ten times as much as you are."
"It's not nice to brag."
"Is it true? That you're Wonder Woman?"
"Maybe the lack of oxygen went to your head but Wonder Woman is a comic-book character. Made up. I'm a real, normal person."
Sibby snorted. "You are definitely not normal. You're totally neurotic." A pause. "That wasn't an answer. Are you really a princess with superpowers?"
"Are you really a sacred prophet who knows everything that is going to happen?"
Their eyes met. Neither of them said anything.
Sibby stretched, sprawling out over the front seat, and Miranda turned up the radio and they drove on in silence, both of them smiling.
After a few miles Sibby said, "I'm starving. Could we stop for a burger?"
"Yeah, but we're on a schedule, so no kissing strange guys."
"I knew you were going to say that."
Chapter Thirteen
Miranda sat in the car watching the power boat disappear on the horizon, taking Sibby wherever she was going. You have no time to relax, she reminded herself. Deputy Reynolds might be headed for prison, but he can still talk, and you know he lied about how he found you, which means someone at Chatsworth knows something, and then there's the question of who put the bounty on your head and-
Her cell phone rang. She reached across the seat to grab her suit jacket and tried to jam her hand into the pocket to get the phone, but the handcuff bracelet kept getting caught. She turned the jacket over and dumped everything onto her lap.
She caught it on the last ring. "Hello."
"Miranda? It's Will."
Her heart stopped. "Hi." Suddenly feeling shy. "Did you, um, have fun at prom?"
"Parts of it. You?"
"Me too. Parts of it."
"I looked for you after the bomb threat, but I didn't see you."
"Yeah, it got kind of hectic."
There was a pause and they both started talking at once. He said, "You first," and she said, "No, you," and they both cracked up and he started, "Listen, I don't know if you were planning to come to Sean's place for the after-party. Everyone is here. It's fun and all. But-"
"But?"
"I was wondering if maybe you'd want to get breakfast instead. At the Waffle House? Just the two of us?"
Miranda forgot to breathe. She said, "That would be completely fantastic." And remembering she wasn't supposed to be too eager, added, "I mean, that would be okay, I guess."
Will laughed, his warm-butter-melting-on-break-fast-treats laugh, and said, "I think it would be completely fantastic, too."
She hung up and saw that her hands were shaking. She was having breakfast with a guy. Not just a guy. With Will. A guy who wore space pants. And thought she was hot.
And possibly crazy. Which, p.s., accessorizing with handcuffs is not exactly going to help.
She tried again to snap the bracelets with her hand but she couldn't. Either these weren't normal cuffs or knocking out ten people in one night-actually eight, since she'd done two of them twice-was the limit of her strength. Which was interesting, her strength having limits. She had a lot to learn about her powers. Later.
Right now, she had half an hour to find some other way to get the cuffs off. She started shoving things from her lap back into the pocket of her suit jacket so she could drive, then stopped when she saw an unfamiliar box.
It was the one Sibby had given her when they met-could it seriously be only eight hours ago? What had she said, something odd. Miranda remembered it now, Sibby handing her the name sign and the box and saying, "This must be yours." But with the emphasis different. "This must be yours."
Miranda opened the box. Inside, nestled in black velvet, was a handcuff key.
Are you ready to own your future?
It was worth a try.
Hell on Earth
Stephenie Meyer
Gabe stared across the dance floor and frowned. He wasn't sure why he'd asked Celeste to the prom, and it was another mystery why she'd said yes. Even more mysterious now, watching her grip Heath McKenzie around the neck so tightly that Heath was probably having trouble breathing. Their bodies flattened into an indivisible mass as they swayed against the beat, ignoring the rhythm of the song thudding through the room. Heath's hands roamed over Celeste's glistening white dress in an intimate way.
"Tough luck, Gabe."
Gabe looked away from the spectacle his date was making to his approaching friend.
"Hey, Bry. Having a nice night?"
"Better than you, man, better than you," Bryan answered, grinning. He lifted his cup of bilious green punch as if for a toast. Gabe touched his bottled water to Bryan's cup and sighed.
"I had no idea Celeste had a thing for Heath. What is he, her ex or something?"
Bryan took a gulp of the sinister-looking drink, made a face, and shook his head. "Not that I know of. I've never seen them even speak to each other before tonight."
Both of them stared at Celeste, who had apparently lost something she needed deep inside Heath's mouth.
"Huh," Gabe said.
"It's probably just the punch," Bryan said in an attempt to be encouraging. "I don't know how many people spiked it, but ouch. She might not even know that's not you out there."
Bryan took another swig and made another face.
"Why are you drinking that?" Gabe wondered aloud.
Bryan shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe the music will start to sound a little less pathetic after I force a glass of this down."