Read Online Wearing The Cape: Villains Inc. by Marion G. Harmon - Free Book Online Page A

                                                                                                  
     
    He grimaced, but we shook. He wore fingerless gloves, and he looked at his hand after letting go.
     
    “I don’t know any Dr. Cornelius,” he said. “Sounds like a hero name.”
     
    “Shit. Let’s go, Hope,” Shelly said beside me. I shook my head, putting on a smile. She was right, but we were here and I wasn’t going to be rude.
     
    “A friend of mine told me it was yours,” I said. “Or will be in a few years.”
     
    “That would be the impatient one there? Red hair, green eyes, mouthy?”
     
    Shelly squeaked and slapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide.
     
    “How—” I gripped the table, felt it creak. “She’s a virtual-reality projection in my head , not really here! How can you see her?”
     
    “She’s with you, and you’re here,” he said, his voice too strong and deep for his thin body.   “So she’s here, metaphysically. That’s physical enough for me. Would you like an orange?”
     
    He pulled one, slightly squashed, out of his coat pocket and started peeling.
     
    I shook my head weakly. Orb just smiled and slid a snack bowl under his hands.
     
    “Orb says you need something,” he said, focusing on the fruit.
     
    I looked at Shelly, then plunged in.
     
    “According to a book of contingent prophesy, in two or three years, maybe sooner, you’re going to make a name for yourself as an occult investigator called Dr. Cornelius. You’ll specialize in hunting supernatural breakthroughs, their projections and creations.”
     
    “Will I?”
     
    “Yes. And in an interview you’ll speculate about the murder of one of my friends. In the article you’ll say he was likely killed by a projection, a summons, but that after so much time you can’t prove it.”
     
    “Must be a high-profile killing for me to talk about it. Does the victim have a name?” The orange was half-naked.
     
    I swallowed, nodded.
     
    “Blackstone.”
     
    Orb twitched, and Cornelius stopped peeling. My drink arrived.
     
    “That’s a very interesting book,” he said after the server left.
     
    “It’s more of a time-traveler’s database,” I said. Shelly nodded solemnly.
     
    “You’re trying to change history? That’s taking on a lot.”
     
    “It’s not history yet.” I took a sip of my cooler and explained all about temporal superimposition and the privileged present. He nodded when I finished, back to peeling the orange.
     
    “So it’s like in Dickens’ Christmas Carol : the shadows of things that might be.”
     
    “Yes. But Blackstone’s d— That’s a pretty solid shadow.”
     
    “That’s tough. Wish I could help you.”
     
    “But you’re— I mean, you can see Shelly. Obviously you’ve had your breakthrough.”
     
    He dropped the last peel in the bowl and split the orange.
     
    “Got it the day of the Event. Been trying to give it back ever since.”
     
    I could only stare. “ Why? ”
     
    He sighed, tired, and looked at Orb.
     
    “Ten years ago I was a snot-nosed grad student studying metaphysics and getting high in pursuit of chemically-assisted enlightenment. The Event gave it to me. The world around us? As real as your friend here. It’s a hologram, an image created by the intersection of thirty-six emanations. Like light. You combine red, yellow, and blue light and you get white light. This world—”
     
    He slapped the table, making me jump. “Hermetic magicians call it Assiah , and it’s like the orange peels here. Just the skin of reality. Inside that is Yetzirah , the astral plane, the dream plane, the place our minds are. Inside that is Briah , the iconic real, home to all the faces of divinity we know and crammed with every afterlife and mythic place we can imagine. Inside that is Atziluth , the hyperion realm, the home of the Source, the Prime