Gnawing on a handful of nuts, I flipped through the pages of my stolen manila envelope, looking for possible targets. I was holed up in my secret lair, having spent the morning purchasing some suitable furnishings to make it slightly less drab. Pages were spread all across the black velvet couch that was now sitting along the back wall of the basement. It had been nice of Principal Sicarius to lay everything out so nicely for me, but I couldn’t help wishing he hadn’t given me quite so many options to choose from.

Technically I was supposed to be at Bea’s shop already, but I wasn’t looking forward to facing her without a mask and superpowers to hide behind. She might not have threatened to kill me yet, but her glare was more cutting than the sharpest of knives.

Besides, Bea had yet to pay me a cent for the work I had been doing for her, and I didn’t exactly have the capital available to work for free. After the purchases I had made to improve my lair, I had calculated that I had just enough money left for four slices of pie, but little else of real use.

“That’s it!” I muttered to myself. The perfect opening move to announce my presence to a newly terrified city and solve my money problems. Another bank robbery.

I flipped through the envelope again, searching for the list of well-known banks. They were thoughtfully laid out in both a list and a map, making it easy to see the location of each in relation to my secret lair. Perfect.

~~~

“Bea! I was wondering...” I barged into the shop, still vibrating with excitement over my bank robbery idea, but pulled up short at the sight of an unfamiliar girl sitting just inside the door, a suitcase resting on the floor beside her.

“Can I help you?” I asked, staring at her uncertainly. What was this girl doing here? I was supposed to be the resident newbie. The girl scrambled to her feet and gave me a tired smile.

“No, that’s quite alright,” she said. “I’m just waiting here for Bea to finish whatever it was she had to do. She rushed outside right after I got here and told me to wait, so that’s all I’m doing.”

“But what are you doing here?” I asked. The question just kind of popped out of my mouth, even though I knew it was not the sort of thing you were supposed to ask strangers. She was a stranger sitting just inside the door of the shop that I sometimes helped manage, so I did feel a little bit justified in this regard. Bea probably wouldn’t thank me for poking into her business in this way, but I really didn’t care in that moment. My curiosity was too great to allow the question to fester.

“I’m here to see Bea,” the girl said, apparently unfazed by my rather nosy question. “She is my sister, after all.”

My jaw dropped open, then snapped shut again just as quickly, as I reminded myself not to show my true emotions. I couldn’t help it though. Bea had never mentioned a family aside from the one that she had here, which consisted of Peg, Malik, Abe, Knife, and Billy. While I had known theoretically that she must at least have parents, I had just assumed they wouldn’t be coming to the city anytime soon, if ever.

“You’re Bea’s sister?” I repeated stupidly.

The girl grinned, apparently used to such a reaction. “People keep asking me that today,” she said. “I know I don’t look much like her, but I still didn’t think it would be quite such a big deal that I’m her sister. She must not talk about me a lot while she’s here.”

“No, no she doesn’t,” I said, shaking my head, and staring at her, trying to see any sort of resemblance between her and the person I had come to know and sort of like over the last few days.

The girl shrugged. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Bea’s always been a private person. I’m Sera,” she announced, holding out her hand. I shook it, and was pleased to find that my hand didn’t complain too much. My scrapes were healing well, mainly because of Bea’s remarkably well-stocked medicine cabinet.

“I’m Delphi,” I said, giving her a friendly smile. “I work here.”

“Cool!” Sera said. “You must see my sister a lot then. I can’t wait to hear all the stories you have about her. It’s been such a long time since I got to see her regularly.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I was quite certain that Sera did not want to hear the stories that I had about her sister, considering that all the best stories I knew involved her sister engaging in highly illegal activities or meeting with a supervillain. Besides which, I had only known her for a few days myself.

Regardless of these small details, I smiled at Sera and made some noncommittal noises.

Luckily, Bea walked in from the back of the shop at that moment, saving me from having to make up any stories about her. She stopped short when she saw the two of us by the door.

“Oh, I see you two have met,” she said, not sounding particularly pleased.

“You never told me you had a sister, Bea!” I smiled winningly at her, hoping that a little bit of cheerfulness on my part might convince her to spill the beans on what was really going on here. My nerves were jangling; they had been ever since I had first laid my eyes on Sera. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly strange or intimidating about her though, which only made my nerves bother me even more. It wasn’t that strange for Bea not to have mentioned having a sister, since she had only met me a few days ago, but I didn’t like the timing of this girl showing up the very day after I had recruited Bea as a minion.

“I didn’t think she would ever show up here.”

“Oh?”

There was a small cough, and we both jolted as we remembered that Sera was right there with us, listening to this conversation. She was a very nondescript girl, with her dark brown hair pulled back into a tight bun, dressed in jeans and a faded sweatshirt. Easy enough to overlook. Still, it bothered me that I had forgotten her so easily. She was an unknown element, a potential threat, and yet somehow it had entirely slipped my mind that she was still in the room. Something was definitely not right with this girl.

“Right, so I’ve talked with Peg and Billy, and they agree that you can stay here for a few weeks, as long as your visit doesn’t stretch out too long,” Bea told Sera, with a distinct lack of sisterly affection. She was shifting from one foot to the other, absentmindedly fingering a shelf of faded jeans. To my practiced eye, it looked as though she was fighting the urge to bolt from the room.

“Sounds great Sis!” Sera chirped, unfazed by Bea’s less-than-welcoming reaction. Bea winced at the word ‘sis’, something I noted with interest. She had welcomed me, a complete stranger, much more warmly than her sister. There had to be a story behind their animosity.

It’s none of your business, I chided myself. I had a bank robbery to plan, after all. Domestic squabbles were interesting to hear about, but would do nothing for my villainous schemes.

Sera picked up her suitcase, leaning backwards to counterbalance its weight. Her sweater brushed against my bandaged hands and a jolt run up my spine, like a discharge of static electricity.

“Won’t this be great?” Sera said to the world at large, before lugging her bag across the shop and up the far stairs. She knew her way around, I noted with interest, although the small snippets of conversation had made it seem like she and Bea did not see each other very often.

Bea stared after her sister for a long time after the girl had disappeared, her eyes fixed on the creaky wooden stairs. I coughed, softly, to break the silence. She looked at me.

“What was that all about?” I asked, crossing the room to perch on the tool behind the counter.

Bea blinked at me. “No idea.”

“She didn’t give you any sort of warning that she was coming?”

“None at all.” Bea turned her back to me and began refolding the shirts piled on a table against the far wall.

“But what about that meeting last night?” I asked as I twirled a pen between fingers that shook. My voice remained relaxed and only a little curious, for which I was grateful. “Will your sister do anything to mess up an arrangement with...that special person?”

Bea’s shoulders stiffened, her faded dress drawing tight across her back. “What makes you think we have an arrangement with that...that thing?”

The words hit me like a concrete wall, knocking the air from my lungs. It was lucky that Bea still had her back to me, or else she would have seen my mouth hanging open in an excellent impression of a dying fish. I had known that my recruited minions didn’t like me. That was the whole point. I had been trying to create an insane persona for Death’s Dancer, something that couldn’t be traced back to calm, innocent little Delphi Dunn, used clothing store assistant.

But to not even be considered a person, but rather a thing? An object to be reviled and feared, but not treated as a genuine human being? The words burrowed deep beneath the walls I had carefully created during my years at the Academy.

“I don’t know, she just seemed very persuasive,” I said at last, realizing that Bea had asked a question and was waiting for my answer. My voice sounded high-pitched to my ears, strained with the effort of not screaming that I was Death’s Dancer, a real human being.

“Hmph. ‘Persuasive’ is one word for it, all right,” Bea muttered. She stalked across the shop to slump against the counter beside me. I shifted to make room, wincing as the healing skin on my hands stretched and pulled.

Bea, upset as she was over my alternate identity, missed nothing. Snatching my hands in hers, she tutted over the dirty and ragged bandages wrapped around them. “I bet you haven’t cleaned those scrapes, or changed your bandages at all,” she scolded me. I mutely shook my head and she sighed expressively, dragging me through the beaded curtain that led into the back of the shop.