Star Harbor Nights

Dani awoke hours later. It was still light out side, but Raven, her silent guardian, was nowhere to be seen... and neither was the raven which sometimes took her place. Dani went over to the window and looked all around the street, but there was no black bird visible anywhere.

It gave her an odd, vulnerable feeling to wake up alone in a strange place, even a place she knew to belong to the "good guys", so she headed out of the bedroom, down through the ground floor to the basement, across to the other townhouse, and up into the kitchen of Perfect's home.

Every door she reached, she half-expected to find locked. It was a silly fear. If Perfect Jones had wanted to do something to her, she'd had her chance while Dani had slept, and even a locked door could hold out against Dani's magic ring, the building did have windows.

The thought made her wonder at random if the ring could make a magic key to open locked doors. She figured it probably could, and resolved to try it later.

Perfect wasn't on the ground floor of what Dani thought of as the main townhouse, so went upstairs and followed the sound of voices, male and female. she expected to find Perfect and Ray, but instead it was Perfect and... another heavily-muscled man with a hairless exposed chest, though this one wasn't bald and had a face that, while very masculine, was almost as pretty as it was handsome.

"Oh, hey, Dani!" Perfect said as she came in. "This is..."

"Donnie!" Dani said, throwing her arms around him. Seeing Perfect's confused look, she said "We've sort of... met, around the club scene." Then she looked up at the man's face and realized he was at least mildly puzzled himself. He looked at her without any sign of recognition, so she added, "At the Wasteland." When that got no response, she added, "The handicapped stall in the bathroom?"

"Oh!" he said, and gave a short laugh. "I thought the top of your head looked a little familiar."

Perfect gaped at Dani. "You two...? I mean, you... to him..."

"I did tell you I was using the ring for partying up till now," Dani said, feeling defensive. "If you really want a detailed accounting of everybody I blew in the bathrooms of which night clubs, I can try to give you a list."

"I just... no, God, I just want this team to work, you know?" Perfect said. "I slept with Ray once, but we agreed to keep things professional. I already asked Adonis to join, but if you're both going to be on the team, I'd like for you both to promise to do the same."

"Well, it was never anything serious," Dani said. "And anyway, my party girl days are behind me. I just thought it was nice to see a familiar face, is all."

"Adonis?" Perfect asked.

"Well, yeah, I've got zero interest in getting with a chick who blows guys in bathrooms," he said. "So I'm cool."

"Hey!" Dani said, punching him uselessly in his rock-hard stomach.

"What?" he asked innocently.

"Don't you treat me like I'm some kind of slut," she said. "There were two people in that bathroom, you know."

"Yeah, and one of them had a mouthful of dick," Adonis said.

"Adonis!" Perfect snapped.

"What?"

"This would be the sort of thing I was talking about when I was talking about unprofessional behavior," Perfect said.

"No, it isn't. You were talking about if we started fucking, and I'm saying, it's not going to happen because I don't know where she's been," Adonis said. "Or even more, because I've got a pretty good idea where she has."

"Ugh, this was such a mistake," Perfect said.

"Tell me about it," Dani said. "I think I'm gonna stick with girls from now on. I don't need this."

"Adonis... Donnie," Perfect began, "I asked for you to join this team because you managed to impress me a little at the IT club, but you're on the verge of blowing it. If you can't work with Dani, then one of you is going to have to go, and as of right now, she's more crucial than you are. I wanted you to act as a check on Ray's ego, but if you're just going to act like him..."

"Hey, don't you compare me to him!" Adonis said, angrily. The change in expression and pitch of his voice caught both women off-guard, because it was rather abrupt... it was as if his face skipped several frames of animation and went straight from his neutral expression to severely ired without any transition. "He'd be all over her, and you know it. He loves slutty girls, the dirtier the better... so don't lump me in with him just because I have standards."

"Standards? You went off with me the first time I asked," Dani said.

"How many times do you usually have to ask?" Adonis retorted. "Anyway, for somebody who keeps a list of all the guys who blows, I don't remember you being any good at it."

"Thirty minutes on my knees and you didn't even come... if beautiful gi... grown woman with her lips wrapped around you is bobbing up and down for half an hour and you can't get off, the problem isn't with her!" Dani said.

"It's... called... stamina!" Adonis countered.

"Enough!" Perfect screamed, with about the same volume and shrillness behind it as there is in a police whistle. She repeated in a more normal tone, "Enough. That is the end of the... blowjob... related discussion for this evening, and any other. The topic is shelved, tabled, and permanently canceled. Got it?"

"Got it," the others both said at once.

"Alright," Perfect said. "So, here's the deal... as I was telling Adonis, Dani, I have managed to find out a few things about our church fires. There were five of them, of course... two definitely supernatural, two definitely mundane, and one that so far we have to assume was supernatural because, while there's no evidence of mundane explosives, we don't have any witness to the supernatural activity. Ray's working that end. Anyway, I did a little poking around online, and found some information the police have been keeping quiet that we can use for our next lead."

"You were able to hack the police database?" Dani asked, impressed.

"No, the police honestly don't keep that kind of thing online," Perfect said. "Not in a way that can be 'hacked' from the internet. But... the Star Harbor Astronomer does have a virtual network set up so that their reporters can work on stories from remote locations, and I found a document created by one of their crime reporter with a bunch of police tips and deep background information they can't officially use yet, including the name of a prime suspect, a habitual arsonist whose highly standardized M.O. matches exactly with the devices found at the scenes: one Mr. Vittorio Palozzo."

"A wise guy?" Dani guessed, hoping to impress Perfect a little bit after the... digression. She knew just enough to recognize the name as Italian, and to know that "wise guy" meant something like "gangster with connections", but she hoped she was coming off worldly and knowledgeable.

"Originally," Perfect said. "But the mafia hasn't had any real presence in Star Harbor for decades. The villains started edging them out, and the Harbor Master finally defeated the local bosses and took over the whole operation, before Dock Shadow shut him down."

"I thought he was an urban legend," Adonis said.

"You know, I'm kind of an urban legend," Dani said, importantly. "The 'blue ghost.' They tell stories about me, in the night clubs."

"Yeah, I bet they..."

"Discussion tabled!" Perfect reminded them. "Anyway... Palozzo apparently got cut loose from the Chicago syndicate in the late nineties and came east, bouncing up and down the coast before ending up here. From what I can tell, he's a firebug, plain and simple. The mob doesn't have an H.R. department I could call up, but I'd bet that's why they kicked him out. Someone with his skills would be good for insurance scams, or destroying evidence, but only as long as he could keep his impulses under control. He was charged in a series of entirely pointless--financially speaking--tenement fires in Chicago, the last of which claimed the lives of seven vagrants."

"Oh my God," Dani said. "Did they nail him for that?"

"His mob connections got him off, but he seems to have--pardon the expression--burned his last bridge with this act. He's been suspected of a lot of petty arsons over the years, but nothing big, until now."

"So, he was hired to do the other churches to throw us off?" Dani asked.

"Not specifically 'us', I don't think," Perfect said. "And it remains to be seen if he's really doing it, or if it's a total frame-up, but I think we can guess that he's the fall guy. Whoever did this had enough access to the churches they're targeting to get inside and set up a spell that wraps the entire inside of the church in fiery explosive runes. Though, in all honesty, I don't know if that would take hours or seconds... but it sure looks it must be involved... anyway, there was no sign of forced entry, so I'm assuming they've got access. A total amateur could torch the place with just gas cans and a lighter... or even bomb plans off the internet, as long as they knew how to sift through the 'napalm is orange juice and gasoline'-type crap that's floating around... so, why hire an out-of-work arsonist on whom the FBI has a file that's thicker than a phone book?

"So, basically, instead of chasing down weird magical letters, the cops can say, 'Hey, look, we've got a known arsonist linked to two of the churches,'" Dani said. "They convict him, and the whole thing goes away. Nobody looks too closely at the fires that don't fit, because they don't want to undermine their own case."

"Right," Perfect said, impressed. "Very good. That's exactly what I'm thinking."

Dani shrugged.

"It was the plot on Crime Scene Analysis: Paradise City last week," she said sheepishly.

"I watch TV, too," Adonis said lamely, glaring at Dani.

"The only thing is," Perfect said, "they can't locate Palozzo. The parole office has his address on file, but he isn't there, or at any of his known haunts."

"Think maybe he knows he's being set-up?" Dani guessed.

"Maybe he knows he's being set-up," Adonis said a moment later.

"Maybe," Perfect said. "Or maybe this is part of the plan. I don't see any reason to think the real arsonist's going to stop with these three churches. If Palozzo gets linked to them and then arrested... or is found dead... then the investigation only goes away until the next burning. So what if our mysterious someone simply took him off the street, so they can bring him out later when it's time for him to take the blame?"

"That could get complicated. It sounds like it would be a whole lot easier to make it stick if he shows up dead than alive," Dani said.

"Right," Perfect said. "But in the mean time, odds are better that he's alive than dead... because if it turns out he was already dead days or weeks before one of the fires, that would wreck everything. Fire used to cover up a multitude of sins, but forensic science has come a long way."

"Okay, that's all very interesting," Adonis said. "But if you're sure it's not this Palozzo guy, how does this help us?"

"Don't you see?" Perfect said. "We find Palozzo... alive, preferably... and we find who's behind this."

"So what do we do first?" Dani asked, feeling a tingle of excitement. This was crimefighting. This was exactly what she'd wanted. Well, maybe something a little less CSA:PC and a little heavier on the save-the-world theatrics... but one thing at a time.

"I hate to say it, but... we wait," Perfect said. There was disappointment in her own voice to match Dani's own. "Ray made a big deal out of doing the field work together, and honestly, I think our first time out as a team should be, well, as a team, so we wait for him to check back in."

"Doesn't he have a phone or something?" Dani asked.

'Yeah, but I can't get a hold of him," Perfect said. "In fact... you know, never mind."

"No, what?" Dani asked. "Tell us."

"Uh, I got a recording saying that the wireless customer I was trying to reach was outside of four-dimensional space," Perfect said.

"Uh... okay," Dani said.

"I don't know if that's someone's idea of a joke, or what. I'm kind of hoping it is, because... well, I don't like trying to picture non-standard spatial dimensions," Perfect said. "They make my head hurt. One time, when I was seven, I actually stared at an Escher print for ten hours trying to logically resolve it. Um... but, anyway, he's our mystical liaison, so... I guess I just have to trust that he knows what he's doing. If he hasn't checked in by, oh, we'll say eight o'clock, we'll go hit the street without him... he's got my cell number... and if he hasn't shown up by this time tomorrow, we'll go looking for him. We'll start with that 'Sands of Time' place," she said, then hastily added, "or maybe you and Raven can check it, since you've been there, and Adonis and I can keep following other leads. But, whatever... we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Speaking of Raven... is she still sleeping?"

"She's flown the coop," Dani said. "Raven has left the building."

"Weird," Perfect said. "Kind of worrying."

"How so?"

"In that we don't know where she came from or who she is," Perfect said. "I get that you trust her, Dani, but... assuming she comes back... we should probably try to keep an eye on her comings and goings."

"Maybe she just has a life, but doesn't have any way of telling us," Dani said.

"Mutes aren't totally incommunicative," Perfect said. "She should know some form of sign language, or writing, or something... but have you noticed that she doesn't even really gesture?"

"Well, you weren't with her that long," Dani said, even as she thought back and realized it was true. "I'm sure there's a good reason..."

"Hey, I'm not going to kick her or you out over this," Perfect said soothingly. "If you had to be normal to be on this team, we'd all be out. I just mean, when she comes back, maybe we should sit down and figure out a way to reach out to her... find out who she is, what she wants, that kind of thing."

"Okay," Dani said.

"Anyway, this gives us some down time, if you want to get yourself settled in," Perfect said. "That is, assuming you are content to stay here for the time being, Dani... I mean, as headquarters... home... whatever?"

There was an oddly hopeful note in her voice. Dani wondered briefly if Perfect was attracted to her, but then squashed that. She was supposed to be being professional.

"Yeah," Dani said. "I really don't have anywhere else. I was staying with my, uh, family, but my powers... well, we're kind of... estranged." She hoped that was the right word.

"And you don't have to ask me again... I'm so fucking psyched to finally have a chance to move out of my pop's basement," Adonis said. "I'll bring the rest of my stuff over tomorrow when I can borrow my buddy Larry's truck."

"I don't really have any 'stuff.' I kind of... lost it," Dani said glumly, thinking of her toys and books and her computer back in her bedroom. To her surprise, she also found herself missing the family photographs her mom had put on the computer desk. She'd hated getting dressed up for those pictures, especially since her mom had always made her get her hair cut for them, just when it had been starting to get a little long...

She choked back a very unexpected sob. It had only been a day. It wasn't like she could really never go back there.

"Well, I've got a closet full of extra toothbrushes and deodorant and toiletries and things," Perfect said. "But there's a drug store on the corner if you wanted to pick out your own, and we can go shopping for..."

"I really don't have any money," Dani said.

"That's okay, I have plenty."

"I couldn't..."

Perfect looked at Dani. Perfect knew, of course, that Dani had left out some parts of her story... but everything from her body language to the exhausted, defeated air she'd had when she first came to the townhouse told Perfect that it was personal pain, not malice or subterfuge, that kept her from coming completely clean.

"Whatever you're going through, Dani, it brought you here," Perfect said. "You're a part of my team, and I'm going to do whatever I need to, to take care of you."

"I... thanks," Dani said. "Thank you."

Perfect hugged Dani. She'd never been a big hugger, and it was a little awkward. Dani wondered briefly again about Perfect's intentions, but given her stiffness, Dani decided to keep the hug chaste.

"Alright, why don't you show Adonis where the rooms are," Perfect said. "And then we can go round to the store..."

"Okay," Dani said.

She and Adonis walked in silence back down through the passage. Dani was lost in thought, contemplating how she'd found herself cut off from her real family--temporarily, but found the beginnings of another one. With Perfect, and with Raven... assuming she came back. And wasn't secretly evil.

"Hey," Adonis said abruptly as they came up in the other town house. "I'm trying to impress Perfect, so let's keep this on the down low, but if you wanted another shot at me, I'm... you know, game."

"Another shot at you?" Dani asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Let's just keep it quiet, though, 'cause I really think I might have a chance with her, and I don't wanna fuck it up."

"Alright, then," Dani said. She slipped her right hand behind her back. "I'll give you another shot."

"Awesome. So, you wanna go back to your bedroom, or just find a bath..."

The sentence ended there, as a big blue fist collided with his face. His eyes went blank and he staggered backwards into the wall, slumping down onto the floor.

"Knock-out glove," Dani said, bemusedly, watching the blue old-fashioned boxing mitt vanish from around her hand. "I'll have to remember that one."