She questioned the raccoon girl while she was squirming and jerking around, trying to force her way out of her zip tie bonds. Her answers were all very predictable and rather insulting. Isabel figured it was the kid’s defense mechanism to insult her betters. Hence, the tape. If the kid wasn’t going to stop, then the duct tape would stop the kid.

As soon as the kid’s mouth was taped over, Isabel raised her phone and started to tap in the numbers to a contact when she paused.

Isabel had been in her share of fights and scraps. She’d tangled with Villains and Heroes both, and even if she’d only been at it for a couple of years, she felt as if she’d developed something of a sense for trouble.

That sense was going off now. A sound, maybe? A shadow that moved wrong?

She quieted down and moved toward the kitchen, her power on a hair trigger to summon her barriers. A shiver went down her spine, and she almost felt as if the shadows in the corners were lengthening.

“Oh no,” she muttered.

She’d fought emotional manipulators before—she knew the first signs. This was subtle, but it wasn’t so subtle she didn’t feel it.

The problem with some of those powers was that even knowing you were being manipulated wasn’t enough to stop them.

The girl!

Sure, she had a raccoon tail and ears, but those weren’t a power. Maybe she had more than a changed physiology. “Hey, kid, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked as she stomped back into the living room.

The brat looked up at her, drooling around her mouth from where she was chewing at her bonds. The tape stuck to her cheeks was already half peeled.

Then something crashed deeper in the house. Wood hitting wood, glass bursting apart.

Isabel stomped over to investigate. That feeling, the niggling doubt, was still there, but she could force past it. She stalked into a bedroom at the end of a corridor and hissed as something flew toward her face.

It bounced off a shield.

The issue with her shields—one issue, at least—was their lack of visibility. They weren’t black so much as they were lightless. Spots in the world where nothing, not even ambient light, could impact with any success. It meant she had no idea what she’d just blocked until she stepped aside and lowered the shield.

She stared at the pillow on the floor.

“And if you come in here, I’ll smack you with another!” came a familiar voice from within the room.

“Are you kidding me?” Isabel asked.

The familiar sound of a door sliding open came from the kitchen.

Had the girl she’d tied up escaped? She burst into the bedroom, then swore as a raccoon-tailed figure darted past her legs and back out into the corridor.