Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(49)

They reached the quiet, run-down street, their steps eating up the pavement. Ivy declared, “We’ll lie low until then. I’ve got some stuff to do at my lab, anyway.”

“Good.” Selina paused. “That trance you put people into,” she said to Ivy. “Why not use it on us?”

Harley lowered her phone at last. Ivy held Selina’s stare. “One, your helmet makes that impossible. But two…” Ivy shrugged. “It’s against my code. Well, part of it.”

“Which is what?” Selina couldn’t help the question.

Ivy ran a gloved finger over one of the orchids across her torso. “Don’t screw over your allies.” Her green eyes lifted, bright and intent.

Selina nodded. Warning received. And time to go.

She’d have to take a long, winding way home to avoid cameras picking her up. “I’ll give you the details on our next hit in a few days.”

The two women halted their walking, frowning.

Ivy asked, “What’s your name?”

She wasn’t sure she even had one anymore.

Names meant coming from somewhere, someone. And those things had either been erased for her, or were things she was glad to leave behind.

“Catwoman is fine,” Selina said blandly, even as the question settled deep in her.

Harley clicked her tongue. “Secrets, secrets are no fun….”

Selina waved a hand in cool dismissal. “Three days. Be ready.”

She glanced behind in time to see Harley loop her arm through Ivy’s. “Your place or mine, sweetstuff?”

Ivy’s face flushed, but she said, “Mine.” Definitely more than friends, then. Even if it seemed they did not define whatever lay between them.

As Selina melted into the shadows, something tightened in her chest.

She’d never known what it was like—to have someone she could be like that with.

It didn’t really matter now, not with all that glorious chaos she had planned for Gotham City, all the upending of its corrupt ways that she would do, but still…she wondered what it would be like.





They’d gotten away. Outmaneuvered him, then sped off into the night.

Luke was so mad he couldn’t sleep that night. Or the next.

Which he supposed was better than his usual nightmare. But it didn’t help that the video footage kept playing on the news. The shot of the three of them strutting in, the shot of Catwoman leaping out the window, flipping him off.

The image of all those frightened people in the ballroom who he’d failed to protect.

Deep in sublevel seven, Luke growled as sparks flew from the second hole he was repairing in his suit’s wings. Ivy’s shots had been precise.

And he’d lined himself up like a goddamn clay pigeon for them.

The vines had withered and died before he could bring them back to the lab for analysis. But from the way they’d moved, how Ivy had commanded them…Jesus. Maybe the rumors were right: she wasn’t fully human. Bruce had never been able to confirm it, not in the one brief encounter he’d had with Ivy, but it had been listed as a possibility in the Batcave’s file on her.

Luke didn’t want to consider what powerful forces might covet those abilities. Hone them into something worse than what Ivy had already become.

The buzzer sounded, blaring over the hum of the welder, and Luke turned off the machine, propping his welding mask on his sweaty head. “What’s up?” he asked the speakers built into the walls and ceiling of the empty room.

“A Miss Vanderhees is here to see you.”

Luke cringed.

His administrative assistant clarified, “In your eleventh-floor office. I informed her you were busy, but she said she’d wait.”

Luke let out a low groan. What the hell did she want?

“Tell her…” If he said he was too busy, she’d probably come back. Or start looking for him at home, which might lead her to hunt for him at odd hours, which might lead her to start wondering where he went all the time.

Luke sighed. “Tell her I’ll be up in fifteen. Thanks.” He was covered in enough sweat and grime that it merited a shower. He had one in the bathroom down here, along with a change of clothes—a good suit, in case his dad called him into a meeting.

“Will do, Mr. Fox.”

Luke made it upstairs in twelve minutes, his charcoal-gray suit a bit tight across the shoulders. He’d packed on more muscle these last few months; he’d have to take it to his tailor.

He was straightening the cuffs of his pale purple shirt when he strode into his corner office and found Holly waiting in one of the chairs before his immaculate desk.

He’d made sure bland company memos and party invitations were the only documents stacked on the side of his desk, the surface adorned with photos of his mom and dad, Mark and Elise, and a shot of him after his first boxing victory at fifteen. Everything else, anything important, was locked down in sublevel seven.

“Holly,” he said by way of greeting, edging around his desk. “Good to see you.”

It was training and instinct to note the details of her appearance—the appearance of anyone who came his way: her salmon-colored blazer, set over a matching dress and navy pumps. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Except for the hint of a smile. That gave him pause.