Page 391 of The Black Trilogy

Hero or villain? Batgirl, maybe? Oh, I forgot, this was Bradley’s doing.

Catwoman. I got Catwoman.

I muttered curses as I squeezed myself into the skintight suit. This was going to be horribly sweaty and it freaking squeaked. I was glad we were late now. The less time I had to wear this abomination, the better. I walked back into Black’s bedroom to find him standing in front of the mirror.

“I’m not sure about the cape,” he said. “I feel like an idiot wearing it.”

“You feel like an idiot? At least you don’t look as if you got lost on the way to a fetish club.”

He turned around and let out a low whistle. “We’re not going to a fetish club. There’s no way I’m sharing you with another man.”

Thank goodness for that. No other man would cut it now. “Woman?”

He raised an eyebrow and laughed. “If you don’t get in the car right now, we’re not going, because as much as I like you in that outfit, I’d like you out of it more.”

I didn’t bother to silence my groan. “We did come all the way back from the Caribbean to go.”

And we only needed to put in a quick appearance, right? Then we could write our own comic strip, one where Catwoman came out on top.

It was my turn to drive, and I stuck religiously to the speed limit. I didn’t want to explain to the highway patrol why two recently deceased comic book characters were driving too fast in a Corvette Stingray. Trying to save mankind probably wouldn’t be an acceptable excuse.

When we arrived, everyone had just sat down for dinner. Team Blackwood occupied three tables, and I spotted our two empty seats. Time to surprise everybody.

On second thoughts… I motioned to Black to hold back. Why? Because I’d heard someone mention my name, and I was inherently nosy.

Wonder Woman, also known as Dan, knocked back a glass of champagne. “I hope she comes back like the old Emmy. She’s been a shadow of her former self. It’s not natural.”

“I like the new Emmy,” Iron Man said. “We have a meeting next week at the White House, and if she’s reverted to old Emmy, then Black can take her. Old Emmy and the White House was not a good mix.”

Oh, Nate. He’d said that many times before.

“Why?” Luke asked.

“Let’s see, there was the time she decided to test out how well guarded the president was and managed to walk into his private apartment and inform him, just as he sat down to breakfast with the first lady, that his security was sub-par. Although perhaps my particular favourite was when, in a meeting involving the president, the vice president, the Joint Chiefs, and six senators, she asked the state senator for Oklahoma whether he’d been smoking crack. The president snorted coffee out of his nose.”

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “The president saw the funny side. He told me afterwards he’d been wanting to ask that for ages.”

“Emmy!”

Dan leapt up and hugged me, swiftly followed by Mack, Carmen as Harley Quinn, and Tia.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I muttered into her hair. “That make-up must have taken ages.”

She gave me a twirl, blue from head to foot as Mystique.

“Half the day, but it was worth it.”

And who was that next to her? Ryan? Yes, I recognised the eyes through his Spider-Man mask. He’d better be behaving himself.

Nick gave me a little wave from the other side of the table. “Nice outfit.”

“At least I managed to get my underwear on the inside.”

“Hey, everybody loves Superman.”

Despite the sweating and a slight inability to breathe because my costume was so tight, I had a great evening. All my best friends in one place, some old, some new. We’d survived the trials and tribulations of the past eight-and-a-bit months, and the future looked…okay, it looked kind of blurry right now, but that was the champagne’s fault. Tomorrow, things would look rosy.

“Ooh!” Bradley started clapping, and his Cruella de Vil wig slipped. Apparently, Nate had talked him out of bringing a real Dalmatian. “It’s auction time!”

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