Hench Read online

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  For Jairus,

  whose hands I’ll recognize in heaven

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  WHEN THE TEMP AGENCY CALLED, I WAS STRUGGLING TO MAKE the math work. In one window, I was logged in to my checking account; in the other, I was whittling down my grocery delivery shopping cart into something that would fit into the sliver of overdraft I had available. I kept dragging different configurations of noodles and vegetables in and out of the cart, grimly trying to ward off scurvy until one of several outstanding invoices was paid.

  I had my phone right next to me with the ringer on as loud as it would go, so when the call came in it scared the crap out of me. I fumbled to answer, leaving greasy fingerprints on the cracked glass of my phone’s screen.

  “Anna Tromedlov,” I croaked.

  “Am I speaking with . . . the Palindrome?”

  “Fucking hell,” I hissed before I could stop myself.

  “Um.”

  I coughed. “Sorry, yes. This is she.”

  “Do you prefer your civilian name?” There was palpable distaste in the voice on the other end of the call. Some of the recruiters took their work too seriously.

  “If you don’t mind.” I tried to sound breezy, but my voice was still hoarse and anxious.

  “I’ll make a note of that,” the Temp Agency recruiter lied.

  I closed my eyes for a long moment, regretting once again filling in the “aliases” section of my hench profile. Two years later, the rookie mistake haunted me in the form of every recruiter addressing me by a nerd’s idea of what a villain’s name might be. At least the punishment for hubris was on brand.

  “Miz Trauma’ed-love, this is a courtesy call to inform you that there is a screening session at the Luthor Street branch of the Temp Agency that includes opportunities that match your skill set. Are you able to attend?”

  “When is the screening?” I hunted on my desk for my phone for a moment, to check my schedule, before realizing it was in my hand. I opened a new tab with my calendar.

  “Eleven A.M., Miz Trauma’ed-love.”

  “Today?” That call time was less than an hour away.

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Not at all, that sounds great.” It didn’t. “I’ll definitely be there.”

  I wouldn’t have time to shower. I decided showing up covered in dry shampoo and desperation was better than missing a chance to pick up a contract. It had been a few weeks since I last worked; the villain I was semi-regularly henching for had their largest aquatic base raided, and almost all of the henches working off-site had our contracts canceled to cover the cost of the rebuild. It was nothing unusual, but I had gone just long enough between jobs that I was getting a little uncomfortable. You can only eat so much instant ramen.

  “We look forward to seeing you in person, Miz Trauma’ed-love,” the recruiter lied again, before hanging up.

  In the tiny tile rectangle of my bathroom, I discovered last night’s winged eyeliner was in decent shape and could be repaired. With a lot of mouthwash, fresh lipstick, and a severe-but-vampy bun, I looked almost presentable. I squeezed myself into my tightest suit (tweed) and called my cab.

  Oscar was a new driver. There weren’t a ton of cabbies who would work with us, so it was hard for any villain who couldn’t hire a personal driver to get a ride in the city. It turns out when some asshole in tights picks up the rideshare you’re in and flips it over like a confused tortoise, that’s a one-star review. A few cabbies, though, decided that being able to double their rates was worth the threat of getting their car ripped in half by some costumed dirtbag. I’d had to break up with my last driver when he got a little fond of me and told me I was “too nice for this life.” When they start getting attached, it’s time to move on. Next thing you know they’re developing a savior complex and turning you in “for your own good.” I was already grocery shopping in the middle of the night after the same cashier saw me buying a single bag of Doritos one time too many and started giving me life advice. I’d been emotionally preparing myself to give up my favorite pizza joint if the delivery guy kept being friendly.

  Oscar, though, I liked a lot so far. He’d barely spoken a handful of words since I started calling on him. I could count on his curt nod and a quiet ride wherever I was going; I also got to admire the shocking thickness of his eyebrows in the rearview mirror.

  Halfway to the Temp Agency, my phone started to vibrate aggressively. It was June.

  Feeling lucky?

  I hope so because I feel like shit

  You on your way?

  Could you hurry I’m fucking freezing

  Are you getting coffee

  I didn’t write back, but instructed Oscar to take a detour through a drive-thru and ordered a pair of too-expensive lattes.

  I spotted June a block away from the Temp Agency, tucked around a corner to keep out of the line of sight from anyone in the building; I asked Oscar to drop me off there. Her body was curled against the intense February chill, her face turned toward the brick wall in front of her. Her smart navy blue trench coat was too light for the weather, and the tips of her fingers were shaking from the cold as she held a cigarillo.

  June had been henching longer than I had; she’d dipped a toe in the dastardly end of the freelance world for the first time almost three years ago, and had been invaluable when I followed suit. She was the first person to admit to me that she worked as a hench, and surprised me by generously helping me through my Temp Agency application. I was a shaking mess before my first intake interview, expecting a roomful of hardened and battle-scarred evildoers. There was a remarkable lack of black lycra and metal masks when I finally walked through the doors, though, just desperate temps, who looked as likely to have decent typing speeds as demolitions experience. She made fun of me relentlessly for being so scared, and we quickly became inseparable.

  She’d hit a rough patch recently, much longer and deeper than my raid-related few weeks out of work. June had powers, and her skill set was extremely specific; that meant she was both expensive and niche, feast-or-famine. There had been too much of the latter, too little of the former. Her shoulders, even hunched against the cold, showed a lot of tension.

  I unfolded myself from the cab and strode toward her, clearing my throat so I wouldn’t startle her. She flicked her cigarillo into a small pile of filthy snow and I heard it sizzle. She reached for the coffee with grabby hands.

  Her eyes were a little bloodshot. “You look like crap,” she said. She took a sip of the latte, leaving lipstick marks on the plastic top of the to-go mug.

  “Probably,” I agreed, too cheerfully.

  “They give you any idea what to expect?”

  “No, just that something fit my profile. They tell you anything?”

  She shook her head. “Same as you.” She took another swallow and flinched. “Drinking this is like eating a vanilla pod’s ass.”

  “I told them to go light on the syrup, sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” June’s voice seemed especially weary. She had an advanced sense of smell and taste, which sometimes made her valuable as a hench, but usually just made her life miserable, especially in the city. There was a shine right under her nose; she’d spread mint chapstick there, a trick doctors and coroners used b
eneath surgical masks, to block out some of the odors around her.

  “No one tells you how much supersenses hurt,” she explained once. “It’s fucking agony. You know some lucky assholes can’t feel pain? Like, not as an ability. Their pain receptors don’t work, so you get these toddlers breaking toes and chewing off their own tongues before they learn to stop fucking with themselves. Turns out, if you can’t feel pain, you can’t smell anything either. Think about a bad smell, how you recoil from it, like it hurts. It’s like that, all the time.” We’d both been drunk as balls and I babbled about how sorry I was until she threw what was left of her drink at me. She was even worse at feelings than I was. She’d been wearing nose plugs to the bar that night, like a swimmer.

  She never said so, but I suspected the reason June moved to henching in the first place was that the work she tended to get evildoing was generally less unpleasant. She worked for the border patrol, once, to sniff out explosives in the airport (mostly she found coke and contraband cured meats). She was miserable there, surrounded by the smells of body and breath, of everyone coming off long flights, of dirty clothes, of airport food. There was also the aroma of panic and exhaustion. Mostly, though, she hated dealing with cops. Now she helped villains design packaging her sense of smell couldn’t penetrate, or sniffed their drinks at parties to make sure the liquid hadn’t been dosed. In between jobs, she smoked like a chimney, dampening her sense of smell and taste in tiny, merciful increments.

  “Let’s get inside,” I said, drinking my coffee and watching her shake.

  She shrugged. “Let’s get it over with.”

  I pushed the heavy doors open and we walked through them together, the heels of our boots clicking in time on the wet tile floor. The Temp Agency’s reception desk was in a long, bleak room. Smaller, windowless interview rooms branched off of it, reminding me of holding cells. One of the sickly fluorescent lights flickered. My eye twitched.

  There weren’t many of us there that morning, barely a dozen, in moody coats and unnecessary sunglasses and sharp-shouldered suits, chipped manicures and threaded eyebrows, all doing what we could to cast the illusion we were intimidating. No one was sitting. Two temp wranglers sat behind the desk: a man in an ill-fitting blue suit who was trying to make himself look less baby-faced by growing a thin blond beard, and a frighteningly neat woman with glossy black hair, pecking irritably at a tablet.

  June and I elbowed our way closer to the front of the pack, making a point of taking up space while trying not to look too keen. I smiled at a man in what appeared to be low-key hard-boiled detective cosplay when he glared at me.

  “How bad do you think it’s going to be,” I asked June quietly.

  “Abysmal.”

  “Half of us leaving without work?”

  She tossed her head, gesturing to the hench-hopefuls behind us. “At least. I say two-thirds walk out of here with nothing.”

  The man in the blue suit stood, and the muttering around me quieted. I stood a little straighter.

  “Where are our drivers?” he asked.

  Three people stepped forward: a broad-shouldered blond woman with a buzz cut and two young men who scowled at each other, both wearing leather jackets and white T-shirts. Their matching, perfect pompadours trembled as they eyed each other aggressively, like the wattles on a pair of roosters.

  “Wore the same dress to the prom, I see,” June said in my ear, and I nearly choked on the coffee in my mouth.

  The woman looked up from her tablet; her eyes were shark black. “We need a chauffeur with first-class getaway. Who has a stunt background?”

  The blond woman raised her hand. “I’m certified.” She dropped her arm back to her side. Her dress shirt was rolled up her forearms, and her biceps strained the material. It made my stomach flutter. “I have a lot of on-set work, mostly commercials.”

  “You got references?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s head out to the track.” The blue-suited man started to walk out of the room, gesturing for her to follow. He paused to glance back at the two men, who looked even more deflated than they had moments before. “Sorry, guys. Next time.”

  The two disappointed drivers turned to leave at the same time, and had to endure the awkwardness of stomping out together, both refusing to pause and let the other go first.

  “It’ll be a summer wedding,” I predicted. June choked on her coffee.

  The woman with short hair followed the blue suit out the back of the Temp Agency; I watched her carefully close the heavy doors so they wouldn’t make too much noise behind her. I imagined her being led to the supercar she’d be driving for the rest of the day. If she was any good at all, I expected the job would be permanent. Good drivers got snapped up, and were relatively rare. I found myself hoping I wouldn’t see her back, that she’d get a good assignment and have a long life span (though I realized with a small pang that would mean I wouldn’t get to look at her well-muscled arms again). I always found it sad when someone kept turning up at the Agency every few weeks, looking for more work. Like me.

  The remaining temp wrangler was spitting out assignments, rapid-fire. Most of them were skill specific: a call for a safecracker, another for a network security specialist. That last one made me scan the crowd for a face I knew.

  “Where the hell is Greg?” I said, a little louder than I’d meant to. “That’s a perfect job for him.”

  June opened her mouth to answer, but then the woman with the tablet said she needed someone with “exceptional sensory perception” and June’s attention swung away from me and toward the promise of work.

  They discussed details I couldn’t make out, and after a few minutes June signed the surface of the tablet with the tip of one finger. She walked back looking positively jolly.

  “Six weeks on-site, possibility of extension,” she told me, sweeping her box braids back over her shoulder and rubbing the back of her neck to get rid of some of the tension she’d been carrying.

  “On-site, though.”

  “Yeah, see, I’m not a coward like you.”

  “I’m sorry, I am still rather attached to my mortal well-being.”

  “Still, eh?”

  “Anna Trauma’ed-love?” I glared at June instead of responding and walked to the desk to get my assignment. It was too late to correct the way the temp wrangler had said my name, but it still annoyed the crap out of me. I forced a rictus smile. “We have a remote data entry assignment, if you’re interested.” The tone of her voice indicated she didn’t think I would be, but she was wrong. I was willing to stoop to all manner of soul-destroying work that didn’t require me to put on clothes.

  “Just what I’m looking for.”

  Mercifully, she didn’t bother making eye contact.

  “Sign here. You’ll be emailed login credentials. Sixty hours to start, with the possibility of indefinite extension.” There was something about the way she said it that indicated she felt she’d given out a sentence.

  “I like the sound of that!”

  She rolled her eyes.

  I cringed.

  I walked back to June, who grabbed my arm when I showed her my assignment; I could feel her nails through the fabric of my jacket. She would be working on-site for the same villain who’d hired me for remote work. “Let’s get breakfast,” she hissed. “I’m picking the place, though. I’m sick of your bougie white girl bronsch.”

  As we walked toward the doors, the temp wrangler announced that there were three other positions available the rest of them would compete for; I didn’t envy the poor assholes the gauntlet of micro-interviews.

  As soon as I touched the heavy metal door handle, it was wrenched out of my hand. I wobbled in my heels and Greg, the out-of-work network administrator in front of me, had to draw up short to keep from slamming into us in his hurry to get in the building.

  “If you’re here about the security gig,” June said cheerfully, “some rando a quarter talented as you nabbed it.” She took visible
pleasure in the crushing disappointment that blossomed on his face.

  He backed up and I let the door slam behind us.

  “Shit!” He raked his hand through dark, messy hair. “Shit.”

  “It was one of the first they called,” she said. I couldn’t tell if that was meant to comfort or turn the screws a little tighter. Probably the latter. June started walking down the sidewalk brightly and I followed; Greg skittered after us.

  He was quiet for a long, sour moment, sulking. Then, “I was on the phone with The Scarlet Hood,” he said. “He’s worse than my fucking mother.”

  “Oh?” I called over my shoulder. Greg jogged a couple of paces to catch up.

  “He called me yesterday because he forgot how to eject a CD from a drive. This morning? I shit you not, he’d forgotten to charge his laptop and couldn’t get it to turn on.”

  June laughed. Her finding work after a drought combined with Greg’s misery had put her in a great mood.

  I elbowed him and he yelped. “Come with us, we’re getting breakfast.”

  “Ugh. Sure.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his down coat and hunched his shoulders. “Like, I appreciate he keeps me on retainer. But it’s costing me better work now.”

  I nodded. “He should just hire you. Make you a hench.”

  Greg’s head jerked up. “Fuck that. He already calls me at three A.M. If I was his hench my life would officially be hell.”

  Greg’s phone rang the moment we reached the doors of the diner. He mouthed a curse and fumbled in his pocket, while June and I escaped the cold and let the yawning server lead us to a booth. The comforting vinyl seats were tacky and creaked as I sat down. I ordered Greg a tea and greedily accepted the coffee that was placed in front of me.

  “Tech support for supervillains.” June watched him, eyes narrowed, through the window as he paced outside in the cold. “Can you fucking imagine?”

  “It’s not like data entry is any more glamorous.” Through the glass, I heard Greg ask, “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?” He winced and pulled the phone away from his ear at the response.