Star Harbor Nights

The Owlery in Nebula City was one of the major hangouts for college students of an intellectual or artistic bent, as well as for high school students who wished to feel more mature, worldly, and cool than they actually were. Those who had never set foot inside it spread wild tales of illegal substance use and illicit encounters which supposedly took place among the many overstuffed bookshelves which filled most of the lower three stories of the old brick building, but the truth was both more and less exciting.

The fact that the Owlery was run by the Wisdom sisters, two of Nebula City's publically known superheroes, tended to limit any extralegal activities on its premises. Of course, that same fact generated its own sort of excitement. Those who showed up hoping to catch a glimpse of capes or tights, or even witness a super battle, were as disappointed as those who expected thick clouds of pot smoke to come billowing out of the door when they opened it... but the mere thought that it might happen, as well as the chance that any one of the coffee shop/used bookstore's other patrons might be a hero in disguise kept people coming back.

Others, though, kept coming back for the range of quality baked goods and espresso drinks which were as good as or better than those served at any of the major chains, and appreciably cheaper. The twins ran the Owlery out of love, and while they weren't losing money, they were unconcerned about personal profit. Professor Chalmerson was one of the latter group.

She held the endowed chair of Asian Studies at the University of Nebula City, despite being nearly full-blooded Irishwoman. Asian culture had long fascinated her, and her vocation was always reflected by many small touches around her outfit. On this day, the solidly but pleasantly built woman wore a tan broom skirt with a matching jacket brocaded with a dragon on one side and a firebird on the other, over a simple cream colored silk blouse. Her long auburn hair was done up in a simple bun, secured by three hair picks, two plain black ones set at angles and an ornate one carved to resemble a tiger in the center. She had a wide green jade bracelet on one wrist and an orange one on the other, the first engraved to resemble the dragon on her vest and the other with the image of the bird.

"Hey, Professor!" Claire Clevenger greeted her from behind the counter as she came in. She was a seventeen-year-old girl with stunning, naturally platinum blonde hair and a bust that made the spine of onlookers ache in sympathy. She was also one of Professor Chalmerson's second year students at UNC. "Raspberry mocha latte today?"

"Raspberry mocha latte," the professor confirmed, nodding. "Though I hardly expected to see you back there, Clever Claire. I thought the twins usually hid you back among the stacks, like... get a bit of a promotion, did we?"

"Oh, yeah," Claire said. "See, Caridad called in sick, though she's actually just hung over, so I thought, Athena's got so much stuff on her mind right now, there's no need to distract her with the concerns of day-to-day staffing when I could just fill in."

"I didn't realize you were a trained barista."

"I've watched her do it often enough," Claire said. "And I took the espresso machine apart and put it back together three times to make sure I understood how it worked."

"Three times? Now, don't you think that's a little excessive?"

"No," the girl said. "The first two times I had a bunch of little fiddly bits left over."

"I see... well, I'm glad to have ran into you here... I was meaning to come find you anyway," she said. She regarded Claire over the rims of her tortoise shell glasses as she said, "I'd like you to stop by my office sometime today... you seem to have, ah, inadvertently filled out your last test paper with answers to an English Literature exam."

"Oh, that? That wasn't an an accident," Claire said, talking loudly over the various noises as she bustled about expertly preparing the professor's drink. "And I filled out my English Lit one that morning with the answers to your test. I like giving colleagues a chance to socialize... and Professor Aday has looked so lonely since his wife passed away. She was only thirty nine, you know, which is eight years younger than he is. That doesn't seem like much now, but she was a student in his freshman seminar when they started dating, though they waited until she graduated to go public and two more years to get married. But I accidentally found some letters from when she was his student and I'm pretty sure they were doing it."

"Ah, yes... well," the professor said, smiling bemusedly. "You're a very clever girl, but all the cleverness in the world won't do you a bit of good if you can't do the tasks you're set to. Tell me now, though... how on earth did you fill out an English test in the morning with answers to a test that I hadn't even given until the afternoon?"

"Oh, yeah, you might want to change your intranet password?" Claire said. "There's a small chance somebody might have inadvertently guessed it. That'll be three sixty-five."

"Just remember we've got Dr. Song coming as a guest speaker next week to talk about our joint work among the Ainu ruins," the professor said, handing Claire the money and taking her drink off the counter. "I know you've been lookin' forward to that, so do try and not get yourself expelled before then, alright?"

"Oh, if you knew what I knew about the Dean of Students, you wouldn't worry about me," Claire said as the professor departed. After a moment's hesitation, she vaulted over the counter and ran to shout out the door after her, "And don't eat more than a salad for lunch because you're seeing your ex tonight and you always get self-conscious and think you're puffy around him, which doesn't suit you at all because otherwise you're a very self-confident and capable person..."

"Claire!" Athena's voice rang out from the balcony above the cafe area, clear and calm and commanding as befitted the goddess after which she'd been named. Claire winced, though she had been expecting it from the very moment she'd started fiddling with the espresso machine. "What did I tell you about doing that?"

"About divining people's innermost thoughts from trivial indicators, touching the espresso machine, or shouting in public?" Claire said.

"Don't make me zap you," Athena said.

"Minnie's got the electro-eyes all week," Claire said. "Because you borrowed her lucky underwear for a date without telling her and got wax on..."

The remark about the eyes might not have made much sense to anybody who didn't understand how the Twins' powers worked. Athena and Minerva had inherited the powers of their famous (or infamous) superhero mother, Grace and their father, Might... but they'd only inherited one set of each between them. They could trade individual powers back and forth whenever they were in contact with each other, which lead to frequent confusion among their allies, enemies, and the general public about exactly which of them had what abilities.

Claire, on the other hand, always seemed to know exactly where each ability lay at all times, no matter how they shuffled them.

"Fine, just don't break anything," Athena said. "But why isn't Caridad here?"

"She's got the flue," Claire said, holding up her hand in the age-old gesture of pantomimed chugging. "You seemed busy with hero stuff, so I didn't want to bother you."

"Well... I was busy," Athena allowed. "But you should have told me, anyway. This store belongs to me and Minnie, and minding it is a responsibility we need to honor. Anyway, I was just coming down to tell Caridad I'm expecting someone. A Mr. Drosselmeier's going to be coming by sometime this morning to talk about... something relating to a case."

"He's the geriatric owner of something called the Dummy Corporation, which you're checking out for some mutants out in California," Claire said. "They're trying to reconcile why a company that makes CPR training dummies would be ordering military grade neural inhibiters. Do you think this guy could be an archvillain?"

"No, I think he's a nice old man who agreed to take time out of his schedule to come talk to me," Athena said. "When he gets here, show him up to my office... and be polite."

Two hours later, Athena sat in the small, cozy office on the top floor of the Owlery, building an elaborate six-sided tower out of unsharpened pencils stood up on their erasers, with horizontal pencils laid atop them and another level of vertical pencils stacked on them. She told herself it was an exercise in coordination and balance, but the truth was she was just bored. It would have been easier if Minerva hadn't taken the flight power, but since Minnie had drawn "clean up duty" from in the wake of Rhyme's little jail break, she really had the better use for it. 

Athena had just reached the fourth level of the tower... and was really wishing she'd held onto flight... when a thunderous knock on the door caused the whole thing to come crashing down.

"Yes?" Athena said, quite calmly.

"That Drosselmeier person is here to see you," Claire said. "Although, I don't think he's a person at all."

"Oh?" Athena said, closing her eyes and mentally counting to ten. "What is he, then?"

"Dead, I think," Claire said. "Or rather, undead. He's definitely not breathing. It's too bad Minnie's got the sensory package today... otherwise, you could tell if he's got a heart beat. You shouldn't have let her have both the physical senses and the universal wisdom power, even if she is going to be dealing with your other sister."

"Half-sister," Athena corrected. "How do you know she's got the sensory power?"

"Because I'm so gosh-darned clever," Claire said. "And when I was re-shelving books this morning before she went out on patrol, I saw her subconsciously mouthing along to the song on my MP3 player. That's when I realized you must have traded her the hypersenses for super endurance, because you have a date with Phillip tonight and he's a total sex machine."

"I... what?"

"That's what you called him in your text message to Minnie," Claire said. "Well, it was actually 'sx mchn' but I don't think you meant he was six munchkins. Though, six munchkins might be just as tiring, if not more. Would you like me to stake him?"

"Who, Phillip?" Athena asked, dizzy from trying to follow Claire's stream-of-consciousness logic. "And what are you doing reading my text messages?"

"No, Drosselmeier... and I might have slightly illegally inserted a program in the phone network that copies your messages to my phone in case you try to message me and send it to the wrong person. Hey, when you say someone's really into pleasing you, do you mean buying flowers and junk, or doin' it?"

"You are the worst sidekick ever," Athena said.

"I'm a sidekick now?"

"No! No, that was a slip of the tongue," Athena said. "You're an assistant, and on the verge of being unemployed. Why didn't you bring Mr. Drosselmeier up like I asked?"

"I thought you should know he was sketchy looking and I didn't want to say that in front of him because you told me to be polite," Claire said. "If he is a vampire, do you think he'd react if I threw a garlic bagel at him?"

"I think he'd react anyway."

"Or maybe I can find some garlic salt. That would cover it if he's a zombie or a vampire," Claire said.

"Claire! No throwing anything at our guests."

"Oh... you want me to bring him up now?"

"No, if you left him cooling his heels I suppose I should go down to him," Athena said. "That way it'll at least seem like you went to get me, instead of making him wait to be summoned."

"You worry too much about what other people think of you," Claire said, falling in step behind her as she headed for the stairs. "Like you told your diary the other day..."

"You. Stay. Right. There," Athena said, fixing Claire in place with a glare that no amount of laser beams would have added any menace to. "If you make even a peep... if you so much as displace a molecule of air before I'm done speaking with Mr. Drosselmeier... you are so fired."

"You can't fire me, I'm your ward," Claire reminded her.

"Then you're emancipated," Athena said. "Good luck finding another job, and a place to live, and you'd have to explain to your probation officer..."

"I'll be quiet!"

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," Athena said as she descended the spiral stairs that ran from the hall outside the office and living space she shared with her sister down just inside the railings where the two floors of books overlooked the cafe to the ground level itself. "My office is just such an unholy mess right now, I thought it would be better for me to come down to you."

"This is quite alright," the man who could only be Drosselmeier said. He was an old man, with big bushy white eyebrows just under the brim of his bowler hat. He was dressed all in black and carried a cane, and stood so stiff upright that Athena was reminded briefly of Charlie Chaplin.

"Please, come and sit," Athena said, motioning him towards a low, round table with two comfortable chairs. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, thank you," Drosselmeier said, in thickly accented English. "I do not drink coffee."

A small motion caught Athena's eyes and she turned to see Claire, leaning over the second story railing and waving her arms to get her attention. When she saw Athena was watching her, she mouthed Drosselmeier's last words in an exaggerated fashion, putting a significant pause between "drink" and "coffee." Athena glared at her, but Claire remained unabashed. Realizing he was about to sit down in a spot where he couldn't help but notice Claire's antics if he looked arond, Athena grabbed Drosselmeier by the arm rather more roughly than she intended to and quickly steered him towards a different table.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just remembered, that table's got a bit wobbly. Most of our furniture was second hand to begin with... it lends character, but some of it's getting on in the years."

"I sympathize with them," the old man said with a small laugh.

"Mr. Drosselmeier," Athena said, as he settled into his chair. He was facing out towards the large picture window. Athena, across from him, faced the back of the cafe, where she could keep an eye out for her assistant, who had disappeared. Maybe she'd decided to take Athena's threat seriously. "I'm sorry to drag you into an investigation, but this chemical... Lysenkol... is mixed up with some very serious stuff. Your company's limited involvement in manufacturing medical supplies gave you--or rather, your company--the credentials necessary to obtain it from the Russians, but as far as I can tell there was no legitimate need for it."

"Yes, yes, very troubling," Drosselmeier said. "The man who placed the order had been with the company for some fourteen years. He had earned my trust and been given complete autonomy. A mistake, perhaps, but in my old age maybe I am a little too trusting of people. He placed the order shortly before his planned retirement. He was able to hide the expense through, what is the phrase? Creative accounting. His successor would have uncovered the deceit eventually anyway, but as the culprit has completely disappeared that is of little moment. I do not know what he expected to do with the chemical when it arrived. It would have been impossible to keep its presence from the men at the receiving dock."

"We're operating under the theory that he never meant for it to arrive at your plant," Athena said. "It seems his only purpose was to get a large quantity of the drug into the country."

"This seems a very complicated conspiracy," Drosselmeier said. "For a man to have worked faithfully and dutifully for fourteen years, in order to arrange for a carefully controlled substance to be stolen hundreds of miles away."

"Well, I have to say, the name of your company gave us some cause for suspicion," Athena said. "The Dummy Corporation? A name like that, it almost sounded like it had to be a joke... or a poorly concealed front company for something sinister. I was surprised to find out you had been in business under that name for more than thirty years."

"Yes, the name was a bit of a... foolish affectation, I admit," Drosselmeier said. "But then, I am a very... whimsical... person."

Above him, Claire leaned out over the railing again, this time holding a large wooden stake and black rubber-headed mallet. Athena, wide-eyed, mouthed the word "no" over her guest's head. Disappointment filled Claire's face, but only for a moment. Then she dropped out of sight.

"And then there's the fact that Rhyme had some kind of walking and talking dummy in her cell to distract the asylum personnel..."

"You think this is related?"

"We're checking it out," Athena said.

"I can assure you this dummy is not one of mine," Drosselmeier said. He chuckled. "Ours cannot even breathe on their own, or they would be no good for our purposes."

Claire reappeared, holding a large, old, and rather rusty looking chain saw that Athena was sure hadn't come from anywhere in the book store.

"I... thank you for coming, Mr. Drosselmeier," Athena said, rising to her feet to usher the old man out of harm's way. "I think I've learned a few things that could prove useful. Perhaps we could continue this sometime later today? I'd like a chance to see..."

"Our records on the matter?" Drosselmeier said. "I would welcome the chance to help our city's famous protectors any time. I think, perhaps, after business hours would be best... for reasons of privacy. Just phone my secretary before you come."

"Thank you," Athena said, putting an arm around her guest to turn him once again away from the balcony, where Claire was jumping up and down and waving her arms like a woman on fire. "I feel indelicate asking to see confidential papers, because of course, I don't have any legal standing to insist... but it would be most helpful, if it's not too intrusive."

"I look forward to enjoying your company again," Drosselmeier said. "Please, though, if it would help you feel less like an intrusion, perhaps you could bring your lovely sister as well? I could tell prospective clients I had the honor of entertaining Athena and Minerva Wisdom in my office... that is no small thing."

"I'd love to, but she's following up other leads in the case."

"Ah. Some other time, then."

"Count on it," Athena said with a smile that was all charm as she saw the old man to the door. The smile disappeared the instant the door was closed.

"Claire!"