Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(36)

Selina knew that. Had anticipated that. Selina squeezed one last wad of cash into the bag before zipping it shut. She slid another bag toward Ivy in silent offer—it was hers to fill. “I’ll make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

Ivy began filling her own duffel and asked tightly, “Which is?”

Selina slung the bag over her shoulder, letting her balance adjust to its weight. “I’ll get the Joker out of Arkham.”

A greenish pallor overtook Ivy’s face, and Selina doubted it had anything to do with the fact that she was partially plant-based herself. “That’s impossible.”

“Some would have said making a fool of Batwing was impossible.”

Ivy shoved cash into her duffel. “The Joker needs to stay behind bars.” Selina could have sworn Ivy’s hands trembled slightly. “His kind of anarchy isn’t the kind that…” She shook her head, red hair flowing. “It’s not the kind I like. Or want.”

“He doesn’t care about the trees?”

Ivy cut her a glare. “He’s a bad man.”

“People believe the same of us.”

Another fierce shake of the head. “I want to help the planet. He…” She went back to shoving cash into her duffel. “There are no lines for him. He’s soulless.”

“Well, you’d better get off your high horse, because if you want a cut of the millions we stand to make”—Selina jostled her cash-heavy duffel for emphasis—“I’ll only do it with Harley as our third.”

Ivy stared her down for a moment. “Where did you even come from?”

A neighborhood two miles north. But Selina just shrugged and said, “Some might ask the same of you. You graduated from college at nineteen—just last year. A prodigy at botany, toxins, and biochemical engineering.”

No pride in Ivy’s face at the words. No shame, either. Just wariness.

So Selina asked, “Why’d you decide not to go to grad school?”

Ivy finished with her bag, zipped it up, and strode out. “Some things happened that made it impossible for me to go.”

The icy, distant tone offered no space for questions.

Selina stepped out of the vault, listening for any signs of alarms, of the police. Nothing. She asked carefully, “How’d you get into science, anyway?”

Another hesitant pause. But then Ivy said, emerging from the vault, “My mom was a scientist. Dad, too. Before they both got offered mega jobs and fat paychecks by a drug company. Turns out their love of science was as shallow as the rest of them.”

Wealthy, emotionally distant parents—how had they even produced someone as passionate as Ivy?

Together, Selina and Ivy stalked up the stairs, the bag of cash weighing heavily on Selina’s back. “What sort of science did they study before they changed careers?”

“Plant regeneration. They met in the lab. Called me a lab baby thanks to it.” A slight smile. “It was only a matter of time until the drug companies came sniffing. They sold their work to the highest bidder and never once looked back. At the science stuff or at me.”

Selina could think of quite a few countries that might be interested in that sort of science, too. “I’m sorry.” Brutal—no matter the training that had been instilled into her, it didn’t lessen how hard it must have been, and still was, for Ivy.

Ivy shrugged, as if it could somehow erase the weight of her past. “My aunt basically raised me after they sold out. She encouraged me to take all the science classes that I wanted. But it got boring, even in college.” A short pause, as if debating what to say. How much to say. Selina kept still and quiet, giving her space to decide. Ivy pulled out a flower—a yellow bloom this time—and studied it. “So my last semester in college, I signed up to work with a scientist on a more…radical experiment regarding the human connection to plants.”

Selina had a horrible feeling she knew where this was headed.

Ivy pocketed the flower. “Turned out, I was the test subject.” Her green eyes turned hard as stone. “To explore the possibility between human-plant hybrids.”

“What happened?” Selina’s question was a push of breath.

Ivy’s smile turned a bit cruel. “I happened. And the lead scientists learned exactly what someone like me could do once they applied their sciences to my body. Their first and last successful experiment.” Ivy studied the vines on her hands. “I realized soon afterward that as awful as it was, maybe it had happened for a reason. Maybe it had happened so I might use these…powers”—she stumbled over the word—“to help our planet. Try to right it from its current collision course.”

Selina didn’t shy from the mirror she now saw before her. Two clever young women, taken and molded into something else. Something worse.

But she wouldn’t tell Ivy that. Not yet. Instead, Selina said, “So the life of crime beckoned.”

“Life beckoned,” countered Ivy, following Selina toward the back door she’d used to slip inside. “I was nineteen and had never gone to a party, had never kissed a girl I liked, had never done anything. And they had taken it all away from me.”

Understandable. Completely understandable. Selina asked wryly, “And now you do all that?”

She heard, more than saw, Ivy smile. “Definitely the girl-kissing part.”