To Prevent Clear Paths Read online

  “You’re kidding, right?” Florence demanded.

  Felicity shifted her gaze over to her. “Oh, you mean Kendra.”

  “Yes, I mean Kendra!” Florence snapped. Then she quickly glanced around, and lowered her voice. “You know what she did. You know what she said. How can you be so calm about this?”

  “Oh,” Felicity said. “Well, we talked to the police.”

  “And they did nothing,” Florence hissed.

  “Uh huh,” Felicity said. “They said she’s probably just brainwashed and will come back on her own.”

  “Do you really think someone could brainwash Kendra and keep her that way for days?” Florence demanded.

  Felicity blinked. “Well, Dark Light was brainwashed for weeks before we saved her.”

  “That was Dark Light,” Florence whispered, glancing around to make sure nobody was listening. Nobody was. She leaned forward. “This is Kendra. She has the strongest will of anybody I’ve ever met. There is no way she would stay brainwashed for that long.”

  “Okay,” Felicity said. “So what do we do about Dark Kendra?”

  Florence swallowed.

  Dark Kendra. It was the obvious thing to call their teammate — brainwashed magical girls were traditionally called “Dark” before their name — but saying that felt like admitting that she was now their enemy.

  Don’t be so sensitive, Florence berated herself. If you freak out about the idea now, what are you going to do when she comes back to attack both of you? Don’t be stupid.

  Florence knew how it felt to be betrayed. And this time, she wouldn’t freeze. This time, she wouldn’t leave her friends in the lurch. Or friend — because she now only had Felicity. Kendra was their enemy.

  She felt sick.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Florence said at last. “We still don’t know if she was brainwashed, or if this was really her choice.”

  It was hard to believe that Kendra could be brainwashed for this long, but if she were, life would be much simpler. They’d save her, and everything would go back to normal.

  Felicity looked puzzled. “But you just said —”

  “I can have multiple opinions!” Florence snapped. “I’m as confused as you are!”

  “I think I’m more confused, because you’re confusing me,” Felicity said.

  Florence looked down at her tray. She traced her fingers through the mashed potatoes. She picked at the tines of her plastic fork. She speared a noodle with it, then put the noodle back down again. “It didn’t seem like she was brainwashed, but then why would she change like that?”

  “Because she’s brainwashed,” Felicity said, as if it were obvious.

  Florence bit her lip. Her mind flew to the final sight they’d seen of Kendra — when her best friend had been crying.

  Brainwashed magical girls never looked like they were making heart-rending decisions. They looked supremely confident, certain that their new allegiances were not worth questioning. And yes, okay, it was extremely common for their focus items to change shape temporarily, but then so did their magical girl costumes. Kendra hadn’t been transformed.

  And even setting aside the fact that there was no way anyone could keep Kendra brainwashed for three days, who would have brainwashed her in the first place? They had beaten Queen Hemlock months ago. Sure, they still got attacked by stray leftover minions every now and then, but it seemed ludicrous that any of them might have access to brainwashing magic. If they had, they would have used it long before now.

  And then there was the final issue . . .

  “Either way,” Florence said, “it’s bizarre that she hasn’t yet attacked us. I mean, after defection, usually the first thing —”

  A pair of hands seized her arm.

  “Gasp!” Felicity cried, saying the word rather than gasping. She was staring over Florence’s shoulder with riveted attention. “Is Daniel looking at me?!”

  Florence turned around and saw that, sure enough, the object of Felicity’s stalker-crush was staring right in their direction.

  “I hate your attention span,” Florence muttered.

  Felicity’s fingernails dug into her arm. “Eeeeek! What if he comes over? What if he asks me on a date? What if — what if — what if —?”

  “What if you get your nails out of my arm?” Florence asked, trying to pry the painted claws out of her bicep.

  “He’s going to come over!!” Felicity squealed at full volume. “Daniel’s going to come over here! He’s going to tell me that he’s passionately in love with me!”

  Florence yanked her arm back, waited for the slightest loosening of fingernails, and then shoved Felicity with both arms. The girl’s chair overbalanced, and she crashed to the floor.

  “Hee hee hee, Daniel . . .” Felicity giggled, clutching her hands to her chest. She didn’t seem to notice that she was now upside-down and had her brown ponytail spread across the floor.

  Well, if Felicity could ignore that fact, so could she.

  “Really, though, this situation is baffling,” Florence said, digging a noodle out of her tray. She stared at it in concentration. “I can’t think of any other reason but brainwashing, and yet . . .”

  Oh! A thought struck her. Blackmail!

  That would explain everything! The crying, the obvious regret, the fact that she hadn’t been transformed, the fact that she hadn’t yet attacked — everything!

  Except for the halo growing spikes, anyway.

  And the fact that it still begged the question of who could have blackmailed her.

  And the fact that she could erase short-term memories, so it was unlikely she’d consider secrets leaking out to be a credible threat.

  And one other, tiny thing . . .

  Three years ago, shortly before they’d become magical girls, Florence clearly remembered watching TV with Kendra. A popular magical girl series had come on, called Princess Prickly Pear. (“The only magical girl with more spikes on her costume than her arch-nemesis!”) That particular episode had revolved around her being blackmailed by some villain. Florence didn’t remember the details, but she remembered that it had been a two-parter, and Kendra had blown up after the cliffhanger ending.

  “Seriously?!” Kendra had shouted at the TV. “Seriously?! How can you be so stupid? Go to the police!”

  Maybe Kendra would give in to blackmail. But it seemed a lot more likely that she’d pummel any villain who tried it and then go straight to the police to confess whatever she’d done so that no villain could use it against her again.

  Besides, what kind of blackmail would Kendra consider a threat in the first place? Some crime she’d committed? Hardly likely. Social embarrassment? Kendra’s interest in what strangers thought about her was humiliatingly low. Danger to her friends or family? That seemed the sort of thing that Kendra would respond to with answering violence without a second thought.

  The thing about Kendra was, she was annoyingly straightforward. She always did what she thought was right, and sometimes what she thought was right was just outright wrong.

  But you could trust Kendra to not give up for any reason, even if you really wanted her to.

  So blackmail, Florence thought with a sigh, chewing on the tasteless noodle, is almost certainly out.

  “Unless she has an evil boyfriend?” Florence blurted out, her head shooting up.

  Yes! That would explain everything! Kendra’s twisted sense of right and wrong might have gone totally haywire if she’d fallen in love with some villain! Florence’s certainly had when she’d fallen in love with Lute Deathwave.

  Florence cringed to remember it. She’d been an idiot and actually helped him commit two crimes. She’d also stood by helplessly while he’d attacked her teammates, who had come to stop him.

  She didn’t know if he had had true feelings for her, or if he’d been using her for the whole year they’d been dating before she’d learned that he was the son of their arch-nemesis. She liked to think that it had all been fake. He was in prison
now, and it made it easier to try to forget him. She didn’t know if she’d ever forgive him.

  No matter how many sermons her father gave in church about the importance of forgiveness. He’d never been betrayed that way, after all.

  Florence swallowed her tasteless food. She chewed me out about it when I fell for Dark Deathwave’s son. She told me that I’d been a gullible idiot for believing his story about his family desperately needing those crystals to save his mom. She said that anyone who tells you to commit crimes should never be trusted, no matter what their reasons might be.

  Kendra saw things in black and white. Laws were good, and so were magical girls. Born mages were bad, and so were criminals. In Kendra’s eyes, it would be hard to get much blacker than being a member of the Deathwave villain family.

  Florence had tried to plead that he had always been nice to her, always been a perfect boyfriend, and okay, maybe he’d attacked them, but his reasoning had made so much sense —

  To which Kendra had sarcastically responded, “You’re the one who’s religious, Florence. That Garden of Eden story you believe in — do you really think the serpent didn’t make sense?”

  Florence’s stomach churned. There was nothing like being called on your own hypocrisy to realize just how much you’d strayed from the things you claimed to believe in.

  So it was very clear where Kendra stood on the issue of evil boyfriends.

  Still . . . Florence thought, it has been two years since . . .

  “No!” Florence shouted, jumping up from her seat. She flung her arms out and glared at Felicity, as if her remaining teammate had been the one to suggest the idea. “My best friend is not a hypocrite!”

  “Daniel . . .” Felicity replied in a dazed voice, looking across the lunchroom with no comprehension shown on her face.

  Maybe SHE’S brainwashed, Florence thought sourly.

  Felicity burst up from her chair and seized Florence’s arm in wordless excitement.

  “Let. Go,” Florence snarled.

  “Daniel’s still looking at me!” Felicity squealed, way too loudly.

  Do you really think he isn’t aware of your stalkerish crush by now? Florence thought furiously.

  “TWO WEEKS?!” Olivia shouted, slamming down the phone in fury. She spun around to face her husband, who was reading the newspaper in the kitchen way too calmly. “The police won’t classify our daughter as a missing person for another two weeks!”

  “I told you,” he said, not looking up from the paper. “The usual window for a known magical girl is twenty days.”

  “That makes no sense!” she shouted.

  Richard glanced over at her. “It makes perfect sense. That’s the law because most missing magical girls return on their own before then.”

  “But Kendra’s not ‘most magical girls’!” Olivia cried, running her hands through her blonde hair. It was pulled up in several clips and hairpins. “She’s more responsible!”

  “Kendra’s a teenager,” Richard said flatly. “Who knows what she considers ‘responsible.’”

  Olivia fell silent. It would be different if their daughter had simply gone missing. She would have assumed that Kendra had been asked to save one of the millions of mascot worlds, or was off fighting evil somewhere else in their world without a phone. She would have worried, of course, but it was hard to worry too much when your daughter was a highly competent magical girl who had already defeated three arch-nemeses, even if she had remarked that she now wanted to find a fourth.

  Olivia had never battled evil. The majority of magical girls didn’t — only one-third even had powers to do so. She had been a singer, a mildly-successful flash-in-the-pan, dwarfed by other singing magical girls with more glitz or glamor or gimmicks within just a few months. Still, she had loved every minute of it, and she had kept her magical girl form for as long as possible before the magic had finally left.

  She’d cried on that day in college when her focus item, the ring she wore on her finger all the time, had finally crumbled.

  She missed the magic so much that she had gone into writing biographies of famous magical girls for her career. It wasn’t the same as still having magic, but at least it was honoring something she loved intensely.

  When Kendra had announced that she was going to be one, too, Olivia had been ecstatic. She’d helped Kendra design her costume, signed her up for all the classes she’d insisted she’d need, and bought her books and videos with how-to advice from all over the place. Kendra had absorbed it all like a sponge, using the same single-minded intensity she had had since the day she was born.

  Olivia had been a little disappointed, and very worried, when her twelve-year-old had announced that she wanted to be a fighting magical girl and battle evil. But she hadn’t stood in her way, and by now, Olivia trusted her fifteen-year-old to be very good at it.

  So why? Olivia thought, running her hands through her hair. Why? Why did this happen?

  Florence had described the whole scene to them. It had sounded completely impossible, and yet, Olivia had seen no reason why Florence would lie. She had assumed, at first, that Kendra had simply been brainwashed. And yet it had been three days now, with no word.

  “What if she really meant it?” Olivia fretted, speaking her greatest fear. She wrung her hands. “What if she really decided to become a . . . a . . . a . . .”

  “A villain,” Richard finished for her. “The word is ‘villain.’ And if she did, I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. There’s really nothing we can do about it right now.”

  “Richard!” Olivia exploded. “Our daughter’s just turned evil!”

  He looked up from his newspaper, looking rather annoyed. “No, she said she’d decided to become a villain. There might be a difference. There was with me.”

  Olivia fell silent. That was a subject they didn’t bring up often. She knew that Richard had been a low-level minion for a Deathwave villain during his teenage years. In his rough neighborhood, he had had very few opportunities, and that had been the best-paying work for him to save up for college. He still claimed that he had no regrets.

  Olivia felt very uncomfortable about that.

  “Like what?” she asked, not wanting to get on that subject. “Fights with her friends? Wanting to lose her powers? None of those require defection!”

  “True,” her husband said, giving her a sneaky, crooked grin. “But you have to admit, this has more flair.”

  Olivia stared at him incredulously, but he just went back to his newspaper, flipping a page.

  She turned and left the room in anger.

  Chapter 3: The Upstairs

  Verge squabbled with verge until Chronos couldn’t take it any longer. She turned to head back up the stairs.

  “Oh, no!” Kendra exclaimed, immediately disappearing from the squabble and appearing right in her way. “You’re not getting away from me!”

  Chronos sighed in exasperation. “Then why don’t we all go upstairs?”

  “Ooh!” the little girl who had introduced herself as Tiffany squealed before Kendra could respond. “I can go upstairs?!”

  “N—” Kendra began.

  The little girl burst past them, waving her wand wildly as she raced up the stairs. Bubbles shot from the wand and wobbled in the air behind her. “Yay! I haven’t seen the upstairs in years!”

  “Good job,” Kendra said sourly.

  “I don’t believe in keeping people trapped,” Chronos shrugged.

  “You may not,” Kendra said, folding her arms, “but I believe in prisons for people who deserve them.”

  “That’s not a very villainish thing to say,” Chronos said.

  Kendra glared at her.

  Chronos headed up the stairs after the excited little girl. The middle floor was filled with bubbles, spinning in circles and floating up to the high ceiling with the tall chandelier. Despite the clouds of semitransparent spheres, it was still easy to pick out the little girl. She was racing around, a blur of colors that more and
more bubbles were emanating from.

  Chronos was a little amused. Also, she wondered how many more powers the little girl was hiding. The ability to produce bubbles at a moment’s notice didn’t seem very dangerous, but for all she knew, the same power could produce explosions.

  “Can I sleep in a real bedroom now? Huh? Huh? Huh?” the little girl cried, spinning around. Bubbles whirled in a spiral.

  “Wouldn’t you . . . rather go home to your family?” Chronos asked awkwardly.

  The little girl stopped.

  All the bubbles in the room popped.

  “Noooooooooooooooooo!” the little girl howled, flinging herself to the floor. “Please don’t make me go back! I’ll do anything!”

  Chronos’s mouth opened, astonished. She’d had serious problems with her family, enough that she had left and never gone back once she’d reached the age of eighteen, but this kind of reaction from a child seemed ridiculous.

  “What’s wrong with your family?” she managed to ask.

  “My aunt and uncle hate me!” the little girl wailed, picking herself up off the floor. Huge tears welled up in her eyes. “Even my cousin doesn’t care one bit!”

  An orphan, Chronos realized. She must be an orphan. “You mean they’re the only family you’ve got?”

  The little girl hung her head, sniffling. “And they think I’m dead. I saw my funeral years ago. No one even cried at it.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Chronos burst out. “You must have had friends! Teammates?”

  That last word was a mistake.

  “My teammates didn’t want me, either!” the little girl wailed. “Their moms made them include me ’cause I didn’t have any friends!”

  Chronos shuddered. She knew how it felt to not have any friends. Her older sister had made sure of that.

  A derisive snort came from behind them. Chronos turned, and Kendra was heading up the stairs.

  She walked through the door and planted herself right next to the little girl. “Clearly you should have chosen a better team.”

  The little girl let out a loud howl and collapsed onto the floor in sobs again.