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.”
Selina snickered. “Priorities.”
She quietly shut the metal door as they stepped into the alley behind the behemoth store, the street in the heart of the shopping district near-silent on either end.
Ivy lifted a brow at the shut door. “You going to leave a calling card, or should I?”
Selina flicked out the claws on her glove.
Screeching metal and two slashes of her nails down the back door was her only answer. Claw marks.
Ivy studied Selina’s handiwork. “Simple but efficient.”
Selina sheathed her claws. Motion down the alley triggered her helmet’s warning system, and she whirled—
Night-bright eyes, silent feet, an upright tail came into view around a sagging cardboard box. Ivy followed Selina’s line of vision and snorted. “Relative of yours?”
Selina smiled beneath her helmet and crouched as the small alley cat approached, her gray coat blending into the shadows. Selina extended a gloved hand, and the cat sniffed at it, whiskers twitching.
“You’re too thin, friend,” she told the cat, ignoring Ivy’s question, and scratched the cat under her little chin.
“I feel like I should be taking photos of this,” Ivy said.
The cat pulled her face away, and Selina ran a hand down her slender spine, the cat arching into the touch. “I thought you loved animals.”
“I do,” Ivy said. “But I didn’t expect you to.”
The cat, satisfied by the attention, scampered off into the alley. Selina rose, watching the cat disappear into the darkness. “I always wanted a pet. Never had one.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t answer that. Not when it required explaining so much. Too much. Secrecy was vital, another weapon. Even among allies. “I moved around a lot. Was never settled enough to get one.”
Not entirely a lie. But she’d had her hands full those years, and a pet, no matter how much Maggie had pleaded for a cat, was another mouth to feed. Vet bills could add up. It hadn’t been responsible to get a pet. Still wasn’t.
“We should go,” Selina said, scanning the dark skies above. “I disabled the alarms, but someone might spot us.”
Ivy pointed a thumb over her shoulder, down the alley. “I’m that way.”
Selina lied and pointed with her chin in the other direction. “I’m that way.”
Ivy nodded once. “How do I get in touch with you?”
“You’ve been stalking me for two nights. Seems like you have no problem finding me.”
Ivy laughed again. “Use this number to give me a heads-up on your next target.” She pulled a piece of paper from one of her bodysuit’s pockets. “It’s a burner phone, but I’ll have it for a few more days.”
Selina took the paper, gloves scratching. “Get Harley on board. Or don’t bother to show up.”
Ivy gave her a mocking salute and lifted her heavy