Feeling like busting up a Starbucks

[jakita_wagner]

After the crashes, glass breaking, grunts and groans and posturing, the chatter of the coffee grinder seems to echo in Jakita's ears as she waits.

"One double shot 12 ounce americano and a 20 ounce half-caf white chocolate mocha with extra chocolate for... " The barista squints at the name. "Justina?" She restrains the eye roll and grabs the two drinks off the bar and heads to their seats. There's a table tucked back into the corner, and Jakita's pleased to see that Whitney's placed their chairs so that they both face the door, and away from windows.

Whitney's drink gets placed in front of her.

"The guy behind the bar had a heavy hand with that chocolate, so I'd stir that a bit."

Comments

[jakita_wagner]

Jakita takes a quick look at her phone, checking for any replies from Elijah. Nothing yet, so the phone gets set down on the table between them.

"Anytime, kiddo. And I mean that - people like you are what keep me employed."

That, and the potential to wreck havoc and make things interesting, but why mention that?

"Why don't you tell me what you know about your power?"

[planetaryguide]

Whitney flips her hair, shrugs her shoulders and, for a second, resembles a normal teenage girl. But when she speaks again, there's a strange, haunted tinge to her voice.

"I guess I've always had the powers," she says, sipping her mocha. "I had imaginary friends when I was a kid. Except, they weren't really imaginary. They were old ghosts We lived in L.A. back then, and most of the ghosts were Mexican. I speak Spanish pretty well."

The new Valentina Cazador song is on the speakers, and Whitney cringes a bit.

"God, I hate this song," she says. "I mean, is there a point where you're autotuned so much you're not even singing? If her voice were any more mechanized she'd sound like Stephen Hawking."

Whitney rolls her eyes.

"Anyway," everyone just thought I was, like, imaginative or something, and no one thought much of it. Then my grandma died. Cancer. She went quietly at at home, in her own bed, surrounded by her whole family. Nice, right? I mean, most people get way worse. But I was, like, 6, and cried my eyes out. My mom tried to comfort me, I was so distraught, I slipped out of her arms and threw myself at grandma's body, hugging her corpse."

She takes another sip of her mocha, and gets sort of a faraway look in her eye.

"Then, grandma hugged me back, and all my relatives went into shock. Grandma leaned up from her bed and whispered in my ear, 'Let. Me. Die.' I screamed, and she died again. My family kind of wrote it off as a fluke, but soon there where dead cats in every alley, and a sky full of dead birds. About then, my parents had to acknowledge that something was up, although they didn't understand it. Then the vampires came for me. That got bad. People died."

She's quiet for a moment, lost in thought.

"That's when the guy in the white suit showed up. The guy from Planetary. He killed the vampires, and then showed me how to do it myself. Then, he arranged for my mom and me to move up here. Dad had bolted, at that point. It was all too much for him. Coward. Anyway, Planetary set my mom up with a nice job, and in return, I killed vampires. They're drawn here, for some reason. I don't pretend to understand it,and really, I hate them because I can't just turn them off like I do ghosts or zombies. They take a little more effort. But that's what I do: I push things back and forth across the threshold of life and death. I resurrect the dead, I talk to ghosts, all kinds of neat things. Strangely? Still single. I guess as powers go, it's not really JLA material."

[jakita_wagner]

"I don't know, Whitney. You were doing pretty well back there, aside from the property damage."

She sips from her coffee, smiling across at the girl.

"Elijah is a good man. I'm glad he was able to help you and your mother."

[planetaryguide]

"Ah, man," says Whitney. "I haven't even thought about mom. She's probably freaking about what happened at the school."

She doesn't, however, suggest calling her. She's smarter than that. She rolls her eyes and flips her bangs, takes another sip of her mocha, seemingly lost in thought for a moment.

"Planetary was a big help," she says, after a long pause. "Although sometimes I wasn't sure of he just dumped me here to deal with the vampires situation, or if I was a lab rat, or what. Tell the truth, we never heard from them again once we were settled."

She stops and thinks about it.

"But I guess he was watching, or else you wouldn't have been here when the bad guys showed up. Who were they, anyway?"

Another sip of mocha.

"I'm sorry about your friend. You think he's OK?"

[jakita_wagner]

That had been in the message sent to Elijah, about Adam's kidnapping. Jakita figures that while he could probably handle himself, this was something that would need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.

"The old man, he has his reasons for everything, and he doesn't always share them with anyone else. As for what was going on..."

She runs her finger along the edge of her coffee cup, taking the moment to gather her thoughts.

"Our timing was unexpectedly fantastic for you, and I wish I could take credit for it. There's some pretty nasty shit going down, and we were there to pick you up. I wasn't expecting anyone else to have the same idea."

[planetaryguide]

"No such thing as luck," she says breezily. "There's only synchronicity. That's one of the first things you figure out when you spend your time talking to the dead. Also, I don't think all of the bad guys are on the same page, because I found this shoved into my pocket."

She holds up a piece of paper. Written in what appears to be a man's handwriting are the words, "Valentina Cazador" and what appears to be a latitude and longitude. "19.4326° N, 99.1332° W."

"Maybe I can tell her how much I hate that song to her face."