Page 88 of Lovesick Titan

Dom acknowledged her with a grunt.

The elevator pinged as it reached them, and they all stepped in. Danny stood as a buffer between Dom and Lynn, not that he felt one was needed.

“Mal’s lucky to have a friend like you,” he said.

Dom grunted again, and they passed a few seconds in silence before she said, “Not apologizin’ for punchin’ you.”

Danny smirked. “I deserved it.”

“Yep. Not givin’ the paintings back neither.”

“You helped save my family. I think we can agree to forget about that.”

Another brief silence passed, then Dom’s voice came across softer, hesitant. “Sorry I torched your face.”

Danny glanced at her, but her vibrant red eyes remained trained on the elevator door. “Thanks.”

Shifting the box in her arms, Dom side-eyed Danny with an appraising once over. “Good thing you get pretty again real fast. Most of us ain’t so lucky,” she said, which even without gesturing to the side of her face, brought Danny’s eyes to the scars he sometimes forgot about.

He opened his mouth to say something, but Lynn’s voice carried over first.

“Scars aren’t inherently unattractive. They can be…distinguishing.”

Dom tilted her head to look at Lynn, and there was a hint of that grin. “Glad ya think so, Doc.”

With a sudden flush of color, Lynn went rigid as if she hadn’t meant to say it likethat.

Danny fought a wider smile as they reached the bottom floor with another ding of the elevator, and Dom headed out first into the section of the garage they’d commandeered. He had to gape as he stepped into the open space. Most of the group was down here now, and it amazed him how much they had accomplished since last night. He didn’t even want to ask where Andre had gotten his hands on several dozen large mirrors—currently frosted over and harmless—or the metal pieces for the frames with hinges to collapse the structure later. They’d need a van to transport this thing when it was finished, and even then they’d barely be able to fit more than a driver.

Andre and Priestly mulled over a set of blueprints and a three-dimensional model of how the mini fun house was supposed to look once complete, but Danny’s eyes were drawn to the other people scattered around the room.

Oz Percy was talking with Joey. Danny had learned that Oz was making constant runs out of the precinct, since he was nearly impossible for Ludgate to track. John, Andre, Lynn, and Captain Shan were all able to move in and out of the basement like normal, since it was expected for them to be at the precinct, but the others stayed in hiding. Stella had called in vacation days at work, John called off Joey from school, and the rest were, well, criminals.

While Oz and Joey talked, they were setting up additional tablets with USBs containing the Miasma program to bring to Mal’s neighborhood shops. The shop keeps wouldn’t be told Zeus was involved, just that the tablets were gifts from Prometheus to keep Hades out.

But wherewasMal? He wasn’t immediately visible. Danny spotted Stella talking with Lucy, helping with some of the manual labor at Andre and Priestly’s direction—Stella by hand, Lucy with use of her vines winding around mirrors and frame pieces as needed and lifting them with barely any effort.

“If Malcolm asks me not to then I won’t,” Stella was saying, “but would it be such a terrible thing for people to learn what really happened here? It would definitely change the city’s perspective on the Titans if they found out you helped Zeus take down arealvillain.”

Danny smiled at the connotation of the Titans not being ‘real’ villains.

“Mickey’s not going to admit he’s willing to change his stripes easily,” Lucy said, “even if, to the rest of us, it’s obvious he already has.”

They couldn’t see Danny around the semi-erected structure, so he slowed his pace as he neared them to continue eavesdropping but backed up when Dom blew past him to help Captain Shan lift the next larger mirror piece to be slotted into place.

“Of course some OCPD support would help me sell the story to the papers,” Stella raised her voice as Dom and the captain drew closer, and she and Lucy held the frame pieces in place so they could drop the mirror in.

“You’re about as subtle as your father when he wants something,” Shan said with a huff, wiping his brow and nodding at Dom in gratitude for her help. “But if we pull this off… Ya know, I joked to Cho before, but saving the city from a menace like Ludgate, I might be able to pull some strings, get any current charges dropped against you folks. Fresh start might be a nice change of pace, eh, Drake? Just don’t think that pays things forward for any future crimes.”

Dom smirked. “You wanna make things easier on us for a while,Captain, I ain’t complainin’.”

“Hey, Danny, what are you sneaking around for?” Stella stood in front of him suddenly, making him realize how much he’d migrated out of hiding while watching everyone.

“You’re amazing,” he said. “All of you. I almost can’t believe this.”

“Banding together for a singular cause has a remarkable effect on people,” she smiled.

Now that Danny was out in the open, he scanned the garage more carefully. His dad was in the corner on his cell phone, probably dealing with damage control Danny couldn’t even begin to guess at. But there was still no sign of Danny’s quarry.

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