“Are you okay, Boss?” Teddy asked.

“I’m fine,” Emily said.

Teddy pouted when the Boss returned to staring at the ground.

Her sisters were still having fun. Athena had pinned one of Trinity to the ground and was laughing a proper Villain laugh as she tickled Trinity into submission. The raccoon girl’s other two bodies were giggling so hard she was having a hard time running to the rescue of her third, who was writhing on the grass.

Teddy refocused on the Boss. The Boss wasn’t feeling great, that much was obvious. So, with a bit of stretching, Teddy brought her arm up and started patting the Boss on the head. “There there,” she said.

“Uh,” Emily said. “What are you doing?”

Teddy continued to pat the Boss. “Making you feel better.”

The Boss sighed, but it was an amused sort of sigh, so that was good.

Then she looped an arm around Teddy and pulled her into her side. It was a weird hug, and Teddy still had one arm straight up because there was no room for it otherwise, but she figured that was okay. If the Boss was giving out hugs, then things couldn’t be that bad.

“Thanks, Teddy,” Emily said. “That’s nice of you.”

Teddy preened. “Yeah, that’s what I’m best at. Making sure the Boss is happy and stuff.”

Emily laughed, then started to rub circles over Teddy’s back. “Do you mind if I talk a bit?”

“Sure,” Teddy said. “What do you need to rant about?” Ranting was, of course, a time-honored tradition for all Villains; monologues were especially common.

“It’s not so much a rant,” Emily said. “Just . . . Cement’s message”—the Boss had told Teddy about Cement’s call—“is weighing on me a lot. I don’t trust him, of course. He’s a Villain, or near enough. As hypocritical as that might be to say.”

It wasn’t, Teddy thought. Villains didn’t trust other Villains most of the time; it was perfectly natural.

“I think the Cabal are a bigger problem than Cement, though, and he’s basically giving us information on them for free . . . if he’s telling the truth.”

“You think he’s lying?” Teddy asked. Lying to the Boss was a terrible, terrible thing to do. Only little sisters were allowed to do that, and even they risked disappointed looks when they did it.

“I think it would be in his best interest if we weren’t around to mess with his plans anymore,” the Boss said. “But . . . I don’t know. Call it an instinct? Something is telling me that he was being honest. Or at least mostly honest.”

“We could send in one of Trinity to see if it’s a trap. If it is, she can tell us, and no one important will be hurt,” Teddy said. She was quite proud of that idea. It was really clever.