Tattletale smiled. “No you fucking won’t. You get somewhere safe. Just don’t panic. Be ready for it to happen.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m going to bring you along,” she said.

She saw his eyes widen.

“But—”

“Tell me now if you’re not ready.”

“I failed my test. I got scared and I was too slow.”

“You lost to the Heartbroken. Samuel wanted to see what you were made of, I didn’t say no. Maybe that’s not fair, maybe his idea of a good test is screwed up because the asshole that spawned him was flinging him into situations against capes and cops before he could even read. Most of the rest of them are like that. They were cannon fodder, they were punching bags, they were slaves to make and bring food… nothing about that was healthy or good for anything except making them very, very dangerous.”

“I like some of them,” Chicken Little said, pronouncing ‘some of them’ with a mumble that turned it into ‘sumblum’.

“And some of them like you. Which makes them more dangerous, if anything.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Why look after me? You don’t seem to like anyone, you’re busy, but you make the time for me. You—in this truck?” He pointed down at the truck parked near the end. A slightly different make than the longer trucks with storage containers in the backs. Most of the storage containers were set up as armories and quarters. A moving base, so they could relocate whenever March drew near. After, it would be a way to set up her mercenaries in any location.

“You have lipstick on your mask,” she pointed out.

He checked the coast was clear, turning his back to the trucks, pulled off the mask, and turned it around so he could look at the front. Hard, round, circular, with two back dots for eyes, a red crest at the upper center, and a small beak. Covered in red kiss prints of various degrees of fadedness.

The redness in his face crept to his ears.

“We’re showing up with numbers,” she said. “You’ll be one member of a crowd, and so long as we have the Heartbroken bolstering our numbers, we’ll be looking pretty strong.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Also, I don’t know how to clean this. I don’t want to smudge my sleeve with lipstick.”

She drew a tissue from her inner jacket pocket and handed it over.

“Thank you. Please answer my question.”

“Why you?”

“Yeah.”

“I could say you remind me of Taylor.”

“Imp says I’m nothing like Taylor was. Foil and Parian said something similar.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing like. You’re careful.”

Aiden looked up at her, one gloved hand still rubbing the tissue in circles on the mask. “Didn’t she… never ever act careful? Whenever they tell me stories it’s always Taylor got hurt or Taylor threw herself into a crazy situation.”

“You caught me,” she said. She smiled. “No. Not that kind of careful.”