She laughed. A cold laugh, as if her world had gone insane. What else was she supposed to do? Craziness such as this didn't happen to people. Why was it happening to her?
The lights flipped on. She looked around desperately for the shut off valve for the gas line. It had seemed so simple when the inspector had shown her how when she'd bought the house.
Now, however, she couldn't think straight.
Just as quickly as the lights flipped on, they turned off, and she shouted her frustration. This wasn't working. Even if she could find her flashlight, could she manage to flip it on before whoever was doing these things made the damned thing attack her also?
Just what she needed —Death by Flashlight— splashed across every newspaper headline. Of course, she wouldn't be here to see it. Well, she damn well wasn't going to stand in her basement while there was a risk the house would burn down around her. Taking the stairs two at a time, she rushed out the backdoor, not even stopping to see if anything was aflame.
Barefoot, she ran across her yard, wishing for the first time that she lived closer to her neighbors. God, she needed help. Someone had to call the police. Out of breath, she rounded the corner and banged on her neighbor's door. She'd never met them.
Working in the city all day, commuting home, and having constant appearances to attend, did not make her particularly interested in house parties or neighborhood gatherings. She'd always sent her regrets and a bottle of wine.
Dancing from one foot to the other, she rang the doorbell a few times when her banging didn't work. These people—if she remembered correctly from all the times she'd seen them pulling in and out of their driveway—were elderly. They should be home, god damnit.
Finally, the door swung open. Both in bathrobes, her geriatric neighbors stared at her, their mouths wide in wonder. She couldn't blame them. She was, after all, naked except for her apron and standing on their doorstep at ten o'clock at night. She'd probably gape at herself too.
"Please, can you help me? I need to call the police."
The man reacted first, pulling her into the house. "What's wrong? Has someone attacked you?"
His wife spoke over the end of his sentence. "We saw you on television being attacked by appliances."
"They're attacking me at home now. Please, call the police." And then, when the police showed up, she'd phone Grayson. This had to stop. He had to figure out who was doing this to her.
"Come, dearie, sit down." The woman pulled Alice gently into the front hallway, wrapping her in her soft cotton bathrobe before showing her where to sit. Her husband called the authorities.
A sudden thought occurred to Alice. She glanced into the room off the hall, noting the electrical devices here, inside this house. Someone who could make machines do bad things was stalking her. Gnawing on her lip, she stood.
"I'm going to wait outside. I don't want anything to happen to you."
She apologized again and went back out into the night, this time clad in a robe.
Her entire body shook. Bad enough this was happening to her, she wouldn't be responsible for bringing it on anyone else.
A loud pop behind her made her whirl around. "Oh no."
The engine of a white Mercedes, parked in the driveway, turned over. All the lights flipped on and the car roared angrily like someone had revved up the gas with the transmission still in park.
She gulped as she searched for someplace to hide. Where could she go out here where the car couldn't get to her? Spotting a tree on the other side of the lawn, she ran hard for the oak.
With her legs taking her as fast as she could pump them, she hoped beyond hope that she had enough strength to make it up to the lowest branches.
As she heard the car take off behind her, she scrambled up the trunk and grabbed the edge of the one branch she could reach. She struggled to haul herself up, using only her upper body strength.
For one brief moment, she thought she wasn't going to make it. She closed her eyes and poured every ounce of energy she had into giving one final tug. Her upper body came over the top of the branch and she hung there, lifting her feet as high as she could. Clinging to the tree for dear life, she said a silent prayer of thanks as she heard the faintest sound of approaching police sirens. Shaking, she wondered how the police were going to handle out of control machines. One
lone tear slipped from her eye and then another, until a stream of them poured down her face.
She hadn't cried this much in years.
The driverless car came to a stop just inches from the base of the tree.
If her mother had been there with her, she would have said Alice was getting everything she deserved for living such a sinful life.
Maybe her mother was right.
Chapter Three
Ace pounded the punching bag with all his strength. Any moment now he expected to bust the bag wide open. Usually, he could hold back, but not tonight. Not after the incident with Ms.
Alice Styles. He'd been such a dumbass thinking she would be anything like her television persona.
He, of all people, should know people were usually far different than they portrayed themselves, and even assholes hid behind a façade of decency. Since he couldn't travel back in time and tell himself not to go over to that studio, the best he could do, since he had to babysit the teenager, was to beat on the red and blue bag that hung from the ceiling in the basement.
Lael pounded down the stairs, sounding like a herd of elephants on speed. "Hey, dude, you've got to see what's on television."
Ace looked at the clock on the wall. Eleven-thirty. "Why aren't you in bed?" Lael moved into Ace's line of vision. "Couldn't sleep."
"If you can't get your butt out of bed in the morning, I'm going to dump cold water on you."
"Fine." Lael leaned against the wall with a pout on his face, illustrating that while his body might be getting bigger he was still a kid in the ways that counted. Even if they wanted to, adults couldn't pout. "Why do you hit on that thing like that?"
Because I'm stuck home at night instead of releasing pent up aggression in a dance club with anonymous faces disappearing under the strobe lights. Not that he could tell his little brother that. No.
"Because my body works in such a way that I have to release a certain amount of adrenaline every day or I get jittery. I can't focus. Eventually, I stop being able to function with even a minimal amount of civility."
Lael cracked up. "Just then you sounded like Draco. 'A minimum amount of civility.' Why don't you just say you act like a fucked up animal?"
"Watch your language." He pressed his lips together firmly to keep from laughing. "I went to the same schools as Draco. I have the same ability to use vocabulary, just so you know."
Lael didn't laugh so Ace stopped banging on the bag. "Something on your mind?"
"Is that going to be me? Am I going to have to find outlets for my aggression?”
“Here's the deal." Ace wiped his face with the towel he kept on a table near the wall. "Our gifts, they manifest themselves differently in everyone. No two Guardians are exactly the same.
Draco doesn't have to do this. There is every chance you won't have to."
"Draco says he's stronger than you."
Ace snickered. "Draco's full of shit." He could kick Draco from here to the moon if the need arose. He just chose not to...
"Oh...now let me tell you what's happening to that bitch on television."
Bitch on television? "Do you mean Ms. Styles?"
"Yes, the nasty—"
Ace interrupted. He had to get Lael's language under control before Draco came back or he'd think Ace had somehow coerced the kid into the depths of depravity. "We don't talk about women that way."
Sometimes we think about them that way...
"Well, she's on television again. She's stuck up in a tree this time, surrounded by about ten police cars that have gone nuts. The cars keep gunning their engines. No one knows what to do.
Any electrical equipment
that gets near her goes nuts."
Turning his attention to the television on the wall, Ace told it to turn on. Sure enough, along with the words Breaking New s blinking on the bottom of the screen, live footage appeared of Alice Styles clinging to a tree branch surrounded by a number of police cars and one white Mercedes, all gunning their engines. Also, he noted, what looked like a riding lawnmower moving in closer, and a chainsaw pulled itself across the grass toward the tree.
"Serves her right for being so rude to you."
Ace pulled his gaze from the television to regard his brother. Lael had been abandoned by their father and abused by his crazy mother to the point he preferred running away to live on the streets at the age of sixteen. Only when Draco had been paid to find him did either Ace or Draco know the kid even existed.
All of those factors had left scars on Lael's psyche that Ace and Draco were working really hard to undo. These things took time, and periodically, Ace reminded himself he had to assume Lael's perception of things might not necessarily be the same as his own.
Plus, he was a sixteen-year-old kid who thought he knew everything like all sixteen-year-old
kids did.
"It doesn't serve her right. No one deserves to be targeted like this, not even for the inexcusable crime of being rude to me."
"But—"
Ace kept talking. "Truth is, we don't have to like the people we help. Most of the time, we don't. It's our job to serve them if they hire us and sometimes it's our duty to help them even if they don't."
"Draco might disagree."
Ace shrugged. "The jury is out in terms of what Draco thinks on that subject. He's a lot more emotional than he lets on."
The phone ringing on the wall grabbed Ace's attention.
Lael laughed as he moved to sit on the steps. "Holy punching bag, bro! It's The secret Guardian phone is ringing."
Ace rolled his eyes. "Go to bed and enough with the cartoon references.”
“I want to stay up to see who it is."
Picking up the phone, Ace shot Lael what he hoped was a stern look for his verbal defiance.
He wasn't exactly sure what else he could do.
"This is Ace."
"Ace, this is Michelle."
He recognized the voice of his Handler, the person whose job it was to manage his
assignments at Powers, Inc. Much more than an assistant, the Handlers made sure the Guardians were taken care of and not overworked. They watched out for their health and well-being. Of course, he'd managed to screw up that relationship earlier in the year by having sex with her.
Now, he couldn't go to the office without it being incredibly uncomfortable. Unbeknownst to him, she'd gotten wedding bells in her eyes before they'd ever been intimate. She hated him now.
"It's a little late for an assignment, isn't it?" he asked.
Ace had a feeling he knew exactly who the client was and she was currently stuck in a tree shrieking at a chain saw that was making gashes in her sanctuary.
"I thought you might want this one, given the publicity."
The annoyance in Michelle's voice drilled into Ace's skull like someone shoving a nail into him. He needed patience to deal with her. Somehow, he'd find a way to smooth things over.
Sometime. Not tonight.
"Also," she continued. "I've negotiated the overtime."
He cleared his throat as he tried to sound chipper. "Okay, but I'm going to need you to turn on your monitor and keep an eye on Lael for me."
Their home was a secret location. Only Draco, Wendy, Ace, and Lael knew where. Their hired housekeeper came in once a week, but even she didn't know for whom she worked. No pictures of any of them adorned the walls.
In order to combat the need to have help with Lael, they'd installed a system where certain key people from the office could watch the house without giving away the home's location.
"You don't want me to accompany you to the scene?"
Technically, part of her responsibility was to be with him when he went out on calls. Lately, however, her presence at the job sites had sucked the energy right out of him. Since he was going into this one at night anyway, the last person he wanted to deal with was Michelle.
"No, thanks. I need you to watch Lael."
Behind him, he heard Lael groan but made the decision to ignore him. He wasn't giving his younger brother a choice. Lael would have to deal with it. Sometimes in life you just put up with things you didn't want to handle.
"You don't even know what the job is yet."
"Is she currently on television for reasons other than cooking?"
Michelle was silent. "Leave it to you to know everything. Why do you need me at all?"
Ace knew he could rise to that bait and then fight with her. That would probably result in his firing her or her quitting. Either way it would be a situation he didn't want to deal with tonight.
Instead, he chose to bite down on the side of his mouth until he tasted blood. That seemed a simpler solution than engaging in an argument with his Handler.
"Can I have the address, please?"
She rattled off the address of a home not far away from his. So, like he and Draco, Alice Styles preferred to live outside of New York City. That surprised him. The cold woman who'd made fun of his socks hadn't struck him as a nature lover. Then again, maybe she was just highly antisocial. Either way, his impression had been only superficial, given she'd acted like such a...
He cut off his thoughts before he used the word he'd scolded Lael for calling the woman.
"The guy who called told me he'd already met you earlier in the day. Been doing some free
work under the table Draco doesn't know about?"
Ace narrowed his eyes. "Don't threaten me, Michelle. I can assure you that when it comes down to things, Draco will always take my side."
No one outside of his family knew Draco and Ace were brothers. They preferred it that way.
Michelle didn't need to know the reasons behind Draco's loyalty to him, but she needed to know it existed and she should be wary of it.
Hanging up the phone, he looked at Lael. "Don't say a word. You don't get a say in this."
"I could help you."
Ace nodded as he walked to the stairs. "I'm sure you could, but you're sixteen.
You need to go to school. You're not an employee of Powers, Inc.”
“Why do I need to go to school?"
Ace passed him on the stairs heading to the living room. "So you don't end up a total ignoramus."
Lael stood. "I know everything I need to know. I lived on the street. I learned about real life."
Ace stopped moving to regard his brother. Lael looked so much like him that sometimes, the resemblance was frightening. How Draco hadn't noticed when he'd first seen the picture of the kid, Ace would never know. Looking at him and thinking of the life Lael led before they'd gotten him made Ace feel ill. Most of the time he tried not to think about it.
"Look, right now I have to go but tomorrow, after school, we can talk about your time on your own. If you want to.” Lael never did but they kept giving him the option, just in case.
"No. I want to skip school tomorrow and come with you instead."
"If you've learned everything you could on the streets then see this as an opportunity to study new stuff you couldn't pick up there, like Shakespeare."
Lael's eyes flared with anger. "How is Shakespeare going to help me at Powers, Inc.?"
"Maybe you won't want to work at Powers. Maybe you will want to teach English."
Ace crossed to the front hall, this time making certain to put on his shoes. He was dressed more casually than earlier and he wasn't going to take the time to change his clothes. Considering that Alice was in her bathrobe, she should be thrilled to see him wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
Quickly, and without letting himself give too much thought to why he did it, he gave himself a glance in the mirror. He'd been working out moments earlier, but he still looked all right. His
blond hair, which even he had to admit was getting too long now that it had reached his rear end,
hung thick and straight down his back. The principal of the matter kept him from cutting it.
Everyone wanted him to; therefore, he wouldn't do it.
Smiling, he realized Lael wasn't the only one in the house who could act like a child.
"You don't have to make Michelle watch me. I hate it when she does. She talks over the monitor the whole time. I'm sixteen. I can spend time alone in the house without someone watching from a screen. I waited here for you to get home from work."
Ace shook his head. He hadn't asked to take on a parenting role at twenty-nine, but he'd been given the assignment so he was going to do a good job. "Not at night.
You're never left alone here by yourself while you're sleeping. You're my family. I care about what happens to you."
Lael suddenly looked very young. He stared at the floor. Hell, what had Ace said?
"Thank you."
Ace didn't understand and he needed to get going, but he wasn't leaving until they sorted this out. Alice Styles and her bad attitude could wait. "For ...?"
"For caring."
Shit. "Lael—"
Lael waved his hand and looked up. "Go. I'll be fine here with your nasty Handler staring at me on a view screen until you get back."
"She's not nice to you?" That might be grounds to fire her...
Lael shook his head. "She's fine to me; she trashes you on the phone to all her friends. I guess because you slept with her once and climbed out the window afterwards. Was it bad?"
Ace shook his head. "I'm not ever going to answer that. Gentlemen don't discuss the ladies they're with or even confirm if they've been with them."
At least not to their sixteen-year-old brothers. With that, Ace took off through the front door.
He had to save Alice Styles from the machines.
* * * * *
With a grin, which he quickly hid, he sat on the branch next to Alice. She squealed and he grabbed the collar of her pink cotton bathrobe to stop her from falling over.