toadstool.
But at least the living furniture all faced the ancient TV screen currently playing some slasher flick.
How Ivy managed to create electricity and get cable out here was the least of her concerns.
“If there are children at the pageant,” said Selina, wincing as she rotated her still-aching leg before her, going through a few of her gymnastics warm-ups that she could do while sitting down, “we don’t risk it.”
Harley rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you going to take off your helmet?”
“No.”
The two women swapped glances. “You ugly or something?” Harley said, eyes full of challenge.
Selina had dealt with enough Harley Quinn types in the Dolomites. “No,” she simply repeated.
Harley snorted but turned back to the TV.
Ivy asked, perhaps deflecting, “Why do these idiots always run upstairs when the killer comes?”
Selina shot Ivy a grateful look that the woman couldn’t see.
Harley stretched out her tattooed, fishnet-covered legs on the flower-speckled grass. “Because they’re not good with explosives and don’t have an army of killer plants to bring with them everywhere they go?”
Ivy chuckled and flicked Harley’s white-painted cheek. “Smart-ass.”
Harley batted her away and went back to watching, though Ivy’s green eyes lingered on Harley for a moment longer. Tenderness filled them—and longing.
Ivy noticed Selina’s attention and gave her a tight smile. But Selina only inclined her head. Secret safe. If Harley didn’t want anything beyond what they already had, for whatever reasons of her own, then it wasn’t Selina’s place to say that it was obvious Ivy felt differently.
Ivy’s smile widened into a wicked grin. “It really is weird—to only call you Catwoman. If we guess at your name, will you tell us if we’re right?”
“Maybe.” They’d never think of Selina. She asked before Ivy could start guessing names, “How long did it take you to make all of this?” She gestured to the lab, the teeming forest around them. The little fireflies, late for the outside world, that bobbed between the trees and flowers.
“Two years.”
“You live here even in the winter?” With the holes and cracks in the glass, it’d be brutal.
Ivy shrugged, though she shifted on the moss couch. “I don’t have many other options. And I like it here. This is more my home than any other place.”
Selina understood that feeling too well. Not that she’d ever really had a place that was solely hers, that felt like home. No, Maggie had been her home—if home could be a person.
A familiar, old pain started to swarm her, so Selina asked, “No alter ego with a nice apartment and a cushy job?”
Harley cut Selina a warning glare, pigtails swinging. “Why so many questions, kitty?”
Ivy only said to Selina, “No. What you see is what you get.” She added a tad softer, “And I have no one…no one who would need to be protected. By keeping my identity secret.”
Harley’s red-and-black-painted nails dug into the mossy couch arm, but she continued watching the TV.
Selina noted the reaction. Reined in the words that sought to come out of her. I know—what it is to have that weight. To need this helmet. To keep them safe.
She had no doubt that Harley wouldn’t appreciate it. Would see it as a threat toward whoever she protected with the fake name, the makeup, the costumes. Her mom, definitely. But who else?
Ivy asked her, “What’s your favorite food?”
Selina blinked. “I—don’t have one.”
She didn’t. Food had been so scarce that she hadn’t been given the luxury of finding a favorite one. But at the raised brows they both gave her, she amended, “Pizza. I guess.”
She asked, just because she didn’t know what else to say, “What’s yours?”
“Raspberries.”
“She’s vegan,” Harley said in a mock-whisper. “Don’t ever let her cook for you.”
Ivy nudged her with an elbow. “You said you liked those seitan tacos.”
“With the fake cheese and fake sour cream and fake meat? Mmm. Delicious.”
Selina chuckled. “I’m with Harley on that one.”
Ivy flipped them both off. Harley blew her a kiss.
Strange—to sit here in this exotic wonderland, with these women, and just…hang out.
Do nothing but talk and relax.
It sounded pathetic, probably was pathetic, but she’d never had friends. The Leopards hadn’t counted. They weren’t affectionate, their loyalty having more to do with survival and protocol than anything from genuine feeling.
And at the League, things like friendship hadn’t existed. Loyalty did—to Nyssa and Talia and the Cause. Fervent, bone-deep loyalty to the two women determined to bring this world to rights, no matter the cost.
They had taught her well.
And yet…It was nice, Selina decided as Harley and Ivy