A House of Cards  •  Act 2

After exhausting every available Snapchat filter (and the djinni’s patience for this bizarre pastime), Krissy propelled Vahaadi through the mall toward a garish neon sign. He squinted into the dark room beyond it, his eyes struggling to adjust to the low lighting interspersed with the flashing of arcades. When he made sense of what he was seeing, he stiffened.

“It’s a whole room of machines,” he complained.

“Oh, Vahaadi. It’s FINE. They aren’t going to bite.”

Krissy took him by the arm and led him on. His head swiveled this way and that to take in all the noisy games, each flashing and singing and rippling with lit-up displays. He looked with particular dislike at the Zoltar Fortune Telling machine, with its turbaned mannequin slowly gesticulating within.

“What is that?” he asked in disgust, pointing at Zoltar.

“Oh. That’s just a puppet. It’s supposed to tell you your fortune or whatever, but it’s just for show. If it makes you feel any better, that one creeps me out, too. But, don’t worry! That’s by far going to be the creepiest one we’ll s—NOPE, look, air hockey!” she interrupted herself, jerking Vahaadi around toward the air hockey table to prevent him from seeing the Whack-A-Alien. If he didn’t like machines, she doubted very much that he’d want to see a plastic corpse with robot aliens popping out of its solar plexus.

Vahaadi looked over the air hockey table and glanced at her in question.

“Please explain the appeal.”

“Oh, you’ll see! This one is fun because it’s more like a sport than an arcade. Here, you stand on this side…and I stand over here! Now, hang on, let me turn it on…”

She stooped, tucked a few quarters into the machine, and the table breathed to life. A single puck clattered into the slot on Krissy’s side. She flipped it up onto the table and reached for her paddle. Vahaadi groped for his, still looking confused.

“All right, ready?”

“No.”

“You’ll get it. Aaaaaand…BAM!” She lashed her paddle at the puck, launching it with blinding speed into the pocket on Vahaadi’s side.

“OK, so, since I just got the puck into your slot, I get a point! Now you try, but I’m going to try to block you.”

Vahaadi’s brow furrowed, but he tilted his head as if he were beginning to understand. He retrieved the puck, lined up the paddle, and struck. Krissy lurched to block, and with a plastic crash, the puck spiraled back. Instinctively, Vahaadi swiped again, and landed the puck cleanly in Krissy’s pocket with a resounding CLACK!

“Yes! You did it!” Krissy cheered.

Vahaadi seemed to come alive. He grinned and readjusted his stance, looking for all the world like a cat wiggling in anticipation of a pounce. His yellow eyes only helped the image along.

What followed was the most exciting and breathless game of air hockey that Krissy had ever played. Vahaadi had cat-like reflexes to match his cat-like manner, and he took to the game with a gleeful ferocity. By the match point, Krissy’s fingers ached from her grip on the paddle. She didn’t mind—she was nearly hysterical with delight.

“Awright!” Krissy crowed in congratulations, speeding around the table in pursuit of a triumphant high-five. But as she raised her hand, Vahaadi flinched and caught her wrist.

“Don’t,” he growled. His mirth vanished.

Krissy blinked. “I wasn’t going to hit you, I was trying to give you a high-five!”

He scanned her face. She could see the coldness returning to his eyes that she’d tried so hard to warm out of him. She left her wrist in his grip, but raised her other hand.

“Look, we’ll do it in slow motion,” she said. “Here, put your hand up like this…just hold it there…here it comes…”

With a deep, “slo-mo” sound in her throat, Krissy closed the distance between their hands until they were a mere inch apart, before very gently smooshing her palm against his. “Boop!”

He stared at their hands.

“See? Fun, right? Now we just do it faster and—”

He curled his fingers so that they laced through hers. He met her eyes again, one brow furrowed as if unsure what he was supposed to be doing. Krissy stifled a giggle.

“Or, you know, we can do that instead.” She wiggled her fingers through his at him. “Dee-da-lee-dee-da-lee! Oh! This could be a secret handshake!”

“Is that what this is?” Vahaadi asked uncertainly, still holding one of her hands loosely by the wrist, and the other wound through his fingers.

Krissy chortled but didn’t pull away. “Well, we should probably workshop it a little more. It’s kind of just weird at this stage—”

“Krissy! Is that you?”

She looked up and met the eyes of a blond boy loping toward her from the other side of the air hockey table. She recognized him immediately as the fellow comic geek she’d met at the schoolyard throw-down the previous Friday. But what was his name?

“Oh! Hey, uh…”

She slid her hands away from Vahaadi and scanned hastily through her bank of mnemonic devices. She never forgot a superhero, but she couldn’t hold onto a real name without inventing some little trick like her therapist had taught her. Ooh, what had it been?

The kid had the gawky, stretched-on-a-rack look that was the hallmark of freshly-minted teen boys, made all the more unfortunate by his baby face and ears that stuck straight out. Ears! That was it; ears, sound, music…

“Anthem!” Krissy snapped her fingers. “That’s right. That’s a cool name!”

“Thanks,” he laughed and colored slightly. “I got it for my birthday.”

Vahaadi chuckled. “That’s pretty good.”

Krissy was so delighted to hear the djinni laugh at a joke that she wasn’t even jealous that it was Anthem’s. She swept back from Vahaadi and gestured grandly at him in introduction. “Anthem, this is V—Grant!” she said, smothering his name under an abrupt pseudonym. She tried not to smile at her own genius. “Which is also a cool name!”

Vahaadi slowly turned an incredulous expression on her.

“I also got it for my birthday,” said “Grant” in a mixture of bewilderment and a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Anthem didn’t seem to know what to make of their exchange, but continued politely. “Grant, huh? Cool, nice to mee—uh…” Anthem broke off. He’d held out his hand to shake, but Vahaadi just looked at him.

Always the helpful one, Krissy took each of them by the arm, balled up both of their hands into fists, and bumped them against the other. She might as well have shoved the pair of them under mistletoe for how awkwardly they reacted.

“Um, yeah. Cool,” Anthem said, while he and Vahaadi both discreetly hid their hands in their pockets and eyed each other—Anthem looking perplexed, Vahaadi looking calculating. Anthem tore his eyes away from the exotic stranger and looked at Krissy instead. “Krissy, I still have your notebook.”

Krissy tugged at her ponytail. “My notebook? Oh! Oh yeah! From when I…heh. Right.” She squirmed. “Sorry about getting your soccer ball bloody.”

“Oh, it’s OK, it washed off pretty easily. Wait, did you get suspended for that?” His voice cracked.

“Huh? No, I just got detention with Mrs. Chandler. I got to spend an hour looking at that gross embalmed dog heart she keeps above her desk.”

“Yeesh.”

“I’m pretty sure she keeps it as a threat, you know? She tells the school board it’s to show off ventricles and whatever but it’s actually her way of saying, ‘turn your homework in on time or I’ll pickle you!’”

Anthem laughed harder than the joke warranted, and while Krissy beamed, a knowing smile crept up a little higher on one side of Vahaadi’s face. He looked like he might interject, but just then, a voice called from the next bank of arcades:

“Anthem! Anthem-buddy? It’s your turn, Doofus!”

A college-aged guy hung off the bar of a game with a platform, illuminated by a blazing neon marquee that read “Dance ’til You Die.” Anthem looked briefly panicked.

“Uh, hang on, Thomas!” he called back. “Have someone else go first!”

Thomas and his friends booed. “Aw, what! Get over here!”

“Anthem, Anthem, Anthem!” the friends began to rally.

Krissy laughed. “Wow, your adoring audience awaits! You must be pretty good! Can we watch?”

“Y-yeah, sure!” he said.

He scuttled over to the dance game, and Krissy towed Vahaadi along behind.

“Grant?” Vahaadi hissed at her once Anthem was ahead of them by a safe distance. “After all the foofaraw you made about my real name—”

“I know! But we’re incognito, remember?” Krissy whispered back. “Just go with it!”

Vahaadi scoffed, but his response was drowned out beneath the cheers of Anthem’s friends as the teen approached.

“The man! The myth! THE LEGEND!”

Thomas leaned over the bar and grinned at Krissy in recognition. “Oh-ho-ho, if it isn’t Anthem’s little vigilante queen with the light-up shoes!” He winked at her. “Krissy Cliffords, yeah?”

“My reputation precedes me. How’d you know?”

“Anthem’s been Facebook-stalking you all weekend—”

Anthem flailed and spoke over him in a rush.

“I told him about the fight on Friday!” He elbowed Thomas, who guffawed. At this distance, Krissy could see that they were brothers. “And I wasn’t stalking, I mean, OK, I was, but I was just trying to figure out how to tell you I had your notebook and I—whoa, step­—” he spoke in a flurry and nearly lost his footing as he backed up onto the dance platform. “And, anyway, so—”

Vahaadi smirked openly as he watched Anthem fumble all over himself.

“Less talking, more dancing!” said one of Anthem’s friends.

“Geez, OK!” Anthem said. He glanced around. “Wait, am I dancing alone, or what? Anybody else wanna play?” he asked while his friends chanted and banged on the machine.

“Anthem, Anthem, Anthem!” they chorused. One guy threw his arms out and lowered his voice like a wrestling commentator.

“WHO AMONG THESE PITITFUL MORTALS IS MATCH FOR AAANNNTTHHHEEEEEMMM?”

“Shut up, man,” Anthem laughed, swiping at the would-be emcee.

“One contender, coming right up!” Krissy said, propelling Vahaadi up to the machine. Vahaadi’s smirk disappeared at once.

“W-wait, I—”

“The arrows tell you which light to step on!” She gave him two thumbs-up. “You’ve got this!”

Vahaadi didn’t look sure that he got anything. Anthem looked almost as uncertain, but he summoned up a front for the sake of the onlookers. “Cool. You pick the song. Have you played before? I go easy on beginners.”

“Very gracious of you, I appreciate it.”

Anthem flipped through the songs. Quick snatches of each one blared as he passed them. “OK, which one do you like—”

“Wait, go back to that one!” Krissy said as a familiar logo flipped past. “They have a Thunder Venom song!”

“This one?” Anthem asked. “This one’s pretty hard…”

Vahaadi made a noncommittal noise, and Anthem stomped on the game platform to select the song. The intro began, and Anthem settled into an action stance. Vahaadi did likewise, glancing over at Anthem to make sure he was doing it right.

With the crash of a cymbal, the arrow prompts began flying onto the screen. Anthem lurched into action. Vahaadi looked flustered at first, but after a moment, he found the rhythm and stopped looking at the lights beneath him, focusing instead on the screen.

“WHOO! Go Grant!” Krissy said.

“There you go! Here, do it at the same time!” Anthem said breathlessly, showing Vahaadi how to step a combo. “Hold on to the bar if it helps!”

Vahaadi didn’t need the help of the bar, once he understood how to do a combo. He kept right up with Anthem, only missing a few steps here and there. The game screamed and heckled over the dubstep rock song. Thomas and the other guys resumed chanting. Krissy laughed with exhilaration, plugging her ears to prevent her eardrums from getting blown out by the cacophony.

“You’re doing great!” she said over the music.

“YOU’RE ON FIRE!” the machine agreed.

The song launched into the second verse, and Vahaadi and Anthem with it.

“It’s weird!” Krissy called conversationally over the din to Thomas. “The voice in this song—it’s different! It must be a cover or something!”

Thomas yelled back, “No, this is the regular guy! He’s been their front man since they won Noteworthy back in—”

But Krissy had stopped listening. Vahaadi had managed to hit a 300 combo streak and the onlookers were losing their minds.  With a final crescendo, the song crashed to its finale, and Anthem sagged, laughing, against the bar as the room erupted with cheers. He’d beaten Vahaadi by a narrow margin.

Vahaadi leaped down from the platform with a wolfish grin. “How did I do?” he asked. Krissy grabbed him by his arms and bodily shook him in her excitement.

“You did AWESOME!” she squealed. “I can’t believe it! And, wow, you didn’t even break a sweat!” Krissy said, swiping her hand down Vahaadi’s cheek. Anthem and Thomas exchanged looks.

Vahaadi just laughed. “It takes more than a little dance to wear me out, pet. Another round, perhaps?” he said to Anthem.

“Dude, the movie starts in ten,” said one of Anthem’s friends.

“Oh, right. Maybe next time?” Then, to Krissy, Anthem said, “I guess I’ll just give you your notebook in Mr. Vanderhoeven’s class. Will that work?”

“Sounds perfect!”

Anthem hesitated, as if he wanted to say something, but he just cleared his throat and plowed his way out of the arcade with his friends. Thomas pestered him all the way out.

“Dude, only 60,000 points on Thunder Venom? You usually do way better…”

Vahaadi watched the group of boys until they were well out of sight and earshot. Then he rounded on Krissy.

“You have an admirer, Mistress.”

“Wha—Anthem?” Krissy choked. She flapped her hand in dismissal. “Don’t get so excited, you weirdo, I don’t even know him.”

“Didn’t you see him blush every time we touched? He wonders if I’m a threat,” Vahaadi said exuberantly. Repulsed as he was at the prospect of being romantically involved with his awkward little mistress, it had been very entertaining to watch Anthem squirm. “So, what do you think? Do you think he’s handsome?”

“GROSS.”

“Is that a no?”

“That’s an, ‘I didn’t know he existed until FRIDAY.’ I’ve barely known him longer than you!”

“A lot can change in a few days,” Vahaadi said, his tone becoming thoughtful. Then he smirked at Krissy. “Besides, you don’t have to know a person to think they’re attra—”

“Ugh, can we please talk about something else?” Krissy had always been the girl that rolled her eyes and skipped the “sappy” scenes in her movies and comics. Why waste time watching people make goo-goo eyes when she could be looking at explosions instead?

“Ah, very well,” Vahaadi said. He looked around at the arcades. “What other games can I destroy you at?”

The pair spent the rest of the day at the mall before finally heading for home. Krissy was feeling light-headed and achy from a combination of laughter, flashing lights, and the considerable amount of mall food she’d consumed.

“I’d say this day was a complete success!” Krissy said, her words emerging as a puff of steam in the cold evening air. “You were a rock star! Man, when you hit that finale in that dance game? You were like bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-BAM! A million-bazillion points!” She skipped and spun in her enthusiasm, then rounded back on Vahaadi. “You know, I was getting worried that you were going to be some kind of fuddy-duddy.”

Vahaadi had hunched himself up a little to ward off the cold, and spoke more into his sash than anything. “Me, a fuddy-duddy?” he asked in mock scandal.

“The fuddiest of duddies.”

“I assure you, I know a thing or two about fun, or my name’s not—Grant,” he finished, his voice flattening comically as he wrinkled his nose at the moniker.

Krissy burst into apologetic laughter. “Aw, c’mon, it’s not that bad! You needed a proper alias to go with your civilian look!”

It certainly wasn’t that she didn’t like his real name, because she did. Loved it, even, though she’d been very careful not to mention that her mnemonic device for his name was “gaudy Vahaadi.” She planned to take that fact to her grave.

“Well, at least it’s not as bad as Mr. E. Yes…” Vahaadi said.

Krissy stopped suddenly and sniffed the air.

“Do you…smell smoke?” she asked, looking around and making a face at the acrid scent.

“For someone who wished for the power to throw fireballs from her hands, you complain about smoke far too often,” Vahaadi said wryly.

He pointed over Krissy’s head toward the west end of town. A column of smoke poured upward, curling toward the moon. It was lit from below with a telling glow of orange.

Krissy took off across the street at once with a wild look in her eyes. Vahaadi barked in surprise and dashed after her, lest she get far enough to drag him. Only his air-hockey-honed reflexes saved him from getting hit by a car.

“Spa—Krissy, what are we doing?” he called as he pursued her around a sharp corner.

“Somebody could need my help! Come on!”

She scuttled around the backside of a small plaza, made a quick check for a camera, then punched her fist into her palm. “Light it up!”

“I’m rather certain that explosives only make fires worse,” Vahaadi said as Krissy’s shape shimmered into Spark’s, and her long hair tumbled toward the pavement. Her pedestrian clothes melted away, replaced by red and black spandex.

“I have to at least check!” Spark said, flipping her bangs back from her masked eyes. She crouched and leaped straight up. Vahaadi whipped his rug from thin air and joined her in the sky, and the two charged in the direction of the column of deadly smoke.

The old house didn’t stand a chance. Its building code had likely expired before parachute pants went out of style. It stood on a dark, narrow street lined with mature trees and no streetlights—though they would have been unnecessary in the inferno that now bathed the neighborhood. Residents had poured out onto the sidewalks, many of them quite elderly, to look on in panic.

They gasped when the superhero and her djinni companion flurried onto the scene.

“Everybody, get back!” Spark commanded. Her high voice didn’t carry as much authority as she wished, but the onlookers backed away immediately. She turned her attention on the smoldering house.

Spark had never seen anything like it. She’d always loved flames, but the monstrosity before her was too ferocious to delight her the way sparklers and matches and campfires did. She could feel her skin reddening even at this distance.

Vahaadi, on the other hand, had seen a fire very much like this one before. He stared at the flame, feeling as if the air had been rammed out of him as the scent and the crackle and the heat and the glow sent his mind whirling back to a distant memory. Despite how he’d tried to smother it, the image was still burned into his eyes: the shadow of a little girl hung from a lariat, consuming…There had been screaming and cries of anguish, but almost all was lost under the roar of that fire—

A high, tense voice at his side jarred him from his memory, and his heart fluttered as he tried to orient himself.

“Vahaadi, can you hear that?!” Spark asked him anxiously. “I think there’s someone inside!”

“Hm, what? Oh,” he fumbled. He strained his ears. “I don’t—”

Then, very faintly over the hissing and groaning, there came a cry.

Spark squeaked and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh! There is someone in there!” She swung determined eyes on Vahaadi. “I’m going in!”

Without waiting for his reply, she shot toward the house. She leveraged an explosive at the door, blasting it off its hinges. It crumpled into splinters, and Spark stampeded over it into a wall of heat.