I sighed.
Maybe if I rented a crane, I could pull my foot out of my mouth.
I caught up to her, prowling along the wall at head height while I tried to talk to her. "Felicia, wait."
She never slowed her pace or glanced aside at me. "Look. I found your toady for you. And you made it clear that you don't want me involved in your problems. So has MJ. So I'm leaving."
"Don't do this," I said. "Come on, would you hold up a minute?"
She didn't slow down or answer me, and I stopped as she stepped out of the far end of the alley.
"You were right," I said quietly. "You were right about the Rhino. And I was being a pigheaded idiot about it."
She stopped in her tracks. She turned her head enough that I could see the curve of her cheek.
"Only a real friend would have tried to point out a blind spot like that," I said. "And I didn't even try to listen to you. It was stupid and arrogant of me, to disrespect you like that. You deserve better from me, and I apologize."
The lines of her body shifted almost imperceptibly. Her shoulders sagged a little. Her neck bowed her head forward a couple of degrees.
"Yes," she said after a minute. "A pigheaded idiot."
I dropped to the ground and walked over to her, crossing my arms and leaning my shoulders against the wall. "I haven't ever said this," I said. "But I admire you, Felicia. When you went legit, you picked a hard road for yourself. You knew it would be hard, but you did it anyway. That took a lot of courage."
She turned to look at me. Her eyes were misty.
I put my hands on both her shoulders. "You're beautiful and strong, and you don't let anyone tell you how to live your life. You're a good friend, and you have a good heart. When the going gets rough, you always have my back, and I trust you there."
She blinked her eyes rapidly. Her voice came out quiet and a little shaky. "Then why don't you want me to help you with this?"
"Um," I said.
Felicia suddenly tilted her head to one side and her eyes widened in understanding, then narrowed in anger. Her hands came up and slapped mine from her shoulders. "You were trying to protect me! Like I'm some kind of china doll!"
"No," I said. "Wait."
"You pig."
she said, pushing her fingers stiffly at my chest. "You arrogant, reactionary, egotistical… My God, I ought to pop you in the mouth right now!"
"I'd really rather you—"
"I don't need your protection," she snapped. "I'm not a child. How dare you make that kind of decision for me! How dare you take that choice away from me!"
I rubbed at the back of my neck. "Listen. If I just hit myself in the mouth a few hundred times, would it make this rant go away any faster?"
"You're going to be hearing about this for years, Parker."
I sighed and lifted my hands in surrender. "All right, all right."
"So no more noble-defender crap. From here out, I've got your back. Right?"
I nodded. "Right."
Her cheeks grew a little rounder as she kept a smile off of her face. Then she nodded back and said, "Apology accepted."
"Sheesh," I said.
"So," she said. "Did it help? You figured out the silver bullet?"
"I think so," I said. "But it's right on the tip of my brain and I can't get it to come out."
She fought off another smile. "The tip of your brain?"
"You know what I mean," I said. "I've got all these facts, and once I put them together the right way it should be possible."
"Which facts?"
"Paranoid solitude during feeding," I said. "Feeding upon smaller victims for between-meal snacks. My fight with Morlun. The folklore accounts. The information you discovered. The way the Ancients shy away from crowds. The fact that Mortia was, apparently, interested in finding you, even after
I agreed to meet her."
The Black Cat frowned. "Mmm. Maybe we should get everything written down. Brainstorm. Two heads will be better than one, right?"
And suddenly it all fell into place, like the wheels on a slot machine coming up all cherries. Suddenly I saw what had been right there in front of me the whole time. I had picked out the false note, made a positive identification of the active variable.
I could beat them.
"That's it," I heard myself whisper. "I can beat them."
Felicia's eyes widened. "You've got it?"
"Eu-freaking-reka," I confirmed. I ran over the solution in my head a few times. It seemed sound. "But I can't do it alone."
She arched a brow and then smiled sweetly. "So what you're saying is that you need my help."
"Um. Yes," I said.
"How interesting."
She folded her arms, expression amused. "Say 'Please.' "
"Please," I said.
" 'Pretty please,' " she prompted.
"Pretty please. I need your help."
She sniffed. "It wasn't nice of you to provoke me into a fight so I'd walk away, you know."
"Then why'd you fall for it?"
She rolled her eyes. "I'll think about it. But I'll walk you home first. You'd just get lost on your own."
"Very generous," I said.
She gave me a pious smile. "What are friends for?"
Chapter 22
I led Felicia back to Aunt May's apartment, filling her in about the Rhino and Mortia's phone call on the way. We went in through the same bedroom window by which I'd left earlier. I shut it behind us, and we headed into the living room.
Mary Jane had turned out the lights, presumably to let the Rhino sleep. The only illumination came from several candles on the kitchen counter, where Mary Jane was sitting with a copy of the Scottish Play, a notebook, and a pencil.
She glanced up at Felicia and me as we appeared from the bedroom, and arched an eyebrow. "You know," she said, "a lot of wives would not react to this particular situation with patience and understanding."
I sighed.
MJ smiled, mostly with her eyes, and said, carefully polite, "Felicia."
Felicia nodded to her. "MJ."
"I thought you had left," my wife said.
Felicia shrugged. "I got bored. I decided not to let your husband hog all the excitement for himself."
Mary Jane considered her for a moment, and then nodded. Her voice warmed considerably. "It's good to see you again. Tea?"
"Please." Felicia smiled and then looked down, settling on a chair at the kitchen table.
"The Rhino?" I asked.
"Out like a light," she said. "He snored for about five minutes. Some plaster fell out of the ceiling. How did the interview go?"
I stripped off my mask, leaned against the kitchen counter, and smiled at her.
MJ took one look at my face, and there was a sudden fire in her eyes. "You figured it out," she said.
"I think so," I said. "It was right there in front of us, too."
MJ gave me a mock scowl and asked Felicia, "Isn't that annoying? The way he makes you ask him to explain things?"
"It's his great big brain," Felicia said, nodding. "He likes to remind everyone about it, to make up for all his other shortcomings."
"Look," I said. "The real problem with fighting the Ancients is their sheer durability. They can fight for days without slowing down, and it's all but impossible to fight them head-on. They don't get hurt and they're strong. So every little ding and bruise they inflict on you makes you tired faster, while they just shrug off whatever you do back to them. They grind you away."
Mary Jane shivered. "Go on."
"I was looking for a weakness, but I had already found it—partially, anyway. Morlun got hurt twice. The first time was when he had me down and was starting to do to me what Mortia did to the Rhino. Ezekiel jumped him and bloodied his nose for him, literally. It was the first time in maybe eighteen hours of fighting I saw him injured.
"The second time was at the reactor, when he started taking a bite of me and got a mouthful of uranium instead. See?"