Margaret takes a couple of personal days and goes on a little road trip.
“Stay safe, Mags,” Patrick says.
“I drive like an actuarial clerk who works in traffic statistics,” Margaret tells him, and he gives a judicious nod. “I’m not having a mid-life crisis, Pat.”
“Stay safe, Mags,” Kennedy says, separately.
“Why don’t you go process some feelings,” Margaret tells her.
Kennedy half-lowers her eyelids, over her tea that smells like damp hay. “That’s what adults do,” she retorts pleasantly, and Margaret laughs a bit.
She fetches up on somebody’s doorstep, a couple stops to do research later, ringing the doorbell and standing well enough back to not only look unthreatening, but to look like she’s looking unthreatening on purpose.
“Hi!” she says.
The Academy was the same. Always will be, probably. She made her excuses, got a visitor’s pass, visited the records archive. It’s all computers these days, of course — except for all the mandatory bureaucratic hardcopy. Computers can lie to you much more flexibly than paper; there was no trace at all of what she was after in those, but vanishing somebody so seamlessly that none of the paper-paperwork accidentally still refers to what’s been removed is difficult. She found enough, and strolled back out feeling like she had hold of the end of something, gripped between her teeth.
She stands on the sidewalk, baring them now in a smile that feels mean and powerful.
“Hi?” the occupant says, unenthused. Her hair’s pulled back into a messy keep-it-out-the-way bun, she’s swathed in an enormously large-on-her Academy sweatshirt, and she looks entirely unhappy to have her afternoon interrupted. Or maybe that’s all for Margaret.
“I’m a friend of Nance’s,” Margaret says, hands in her pockets, shoulders relaxed. “Heard from someone that she’s back from assignment, thought I’d look her up, see if she wants to get lunch sometime. Is she in?”
The roommate gives her a long, hard stare. “Lemme just check,” she says, in an I’m going to close this door and call the cops voice.
“Sure,” Margaret says affably, like she doesn’t know that. “Tell her it’s Mags, yeah?”
She gets to a count of twenty or so before the door’s yanked back open, a familiar figure, unfamiliarly vulnerable, tersely saying over her shoulder, “No, you don’t need to call Hatwatch, put the phone down—” and Margaret mentally puts a big smug checkmark next to call the cops. The internal reporting line for suspected villain sightings has worn more acronyms than Margaret has decent bras, but everybody, now and always, knows it’s the Black Hat line — Hatwatch.
“Hi, Nance,” Margaret says, smirking.
“You,” Azoth/Nocebo/Nance says. “You’re a whole heap of trouble, you know that?”
“A whole heap, or in a whole heap?”
“Yeah,” Nance says, scowling.
Margaret rolls her shoulders unconcernedly. “Want to get lunch?” she says.
“If I leave with you right now, my roommate will call Hatwatch about you,” Nance says. “I don’t think you need them asking questions about what you think you’re doing, Mainbrace.”
“Heard your undercover operation helped cut off the supply of TCSM weaponry,” Margaret says. “Seems like the least congratulations I can offer is a salad,” and Nance looks at her, withering.
“You’re not going to fuck off unless I let you in first, are you,” she says.
“Nope!” Margaret says.
“Can’t you just—” and The Woman Margaret Is Extremely Mad At sighs wearily and scrubs her knuckles under the point of her chin. “Haven’t we been over this? Didn’t we basically agree that we can’t be around each other?”
“Maybe I want to hear it from whoever the fuck you are,” Margaret says.
“You dug up this address,” Nance says. “You couldn’t manage the phone number?”
“Maybe We can’t see each other wouldn’t hit the same if we’re not in each others’ faces,” Margaret taunts, and sees just a momentary flicker of answering expression before Nance clamps down on it; a flavoured-water hint on the palate, of Smart mouth, dumb move, brat— which ignites in her gut like a revelation.
“For the record,” Nance says, “if I ever allowed you to take me to lunch, your cheap ass is not getting away with a salad.”
“I do still owe you a burrito,” Margaret says, triumph thick and sweet on the back of her tongue, and Nance inhales slowly through her nose, eyes narrowed.
“Let’s not keep tally of who owes what,” she says, glances over her shoulder, around the street, and seems to come to a sharp decision. “You can come in,” she adds firmly, “and we’ll — well, I guess we’ll have to talk in my room, because I don’t think we want my roommate in the middle of this, but watch yourself — and I’ll give you half an hour, an hour tops. And then you fuck off.”
“Sure,” Margaret says, and saunters up to the doorway. “But I think you keep the tally,” she adds, low, as she passes; “itching under your skin.”
Nance’s fingers go bloodless tight on the doorknob, and Margaret smiles and smiles as Nance closes the front door.
