Eden McCain grimaced as a woman sprayed something horrible in her face.
“Stop that.” she said irritably. “Go jump in a lake.” The woman’s face took on a glazed look, and she immediately set the perfume bottle down. It fell off the desk and into a trashcan.
The woman immediately turned and headed out the door. The other three women with her also turned, having heard the command.
Luckily, the women had only begun spraying the rancid smelling musk. One still stood near her targets, spraying them.
Her mission was clear. Get Clark Kent and Lois Lane to give up anything they knew about Superman.
Eden stopped in her tracks as her target came into view.
The pictures in his dossier really hadn’t done him justice. He was more attractive than she would have imagined.
Unconsciously she loosened her top button as she approached them.
“Mr. Kent, Ms. Lane,” she said. “My name is Jenny. Jenny Stillson.”
The woman named Miranda turned to her and made as though to spray her. “Why don’t you go away and never come back?” Eden said.
The woman flinched, trembled, then turned stiffly and walked away.
Lois sighed in relief and said, “Miss Stillson. What can we do for you?”
“I’d like you to tell me about Superman.” Eden said.
******************
Lex scowled. Miranda had chartered a plane to Timbuktu, leaving him to deal with the fallout of the three models who somehow, idiotically managed to almost drown in the middle of Metropolis Harbor.
Her formula had gone with her, and unless his agents managed to catch up with her, the whole plan was going to be a failure.
It was almost as though Linderman was intentionally trying to ruin his life.
Lex scowled. The old man wasn’t immortal, no matter what he seemed to believe, and his precogs couldn’t predict everything,
Perhaps it was time to send him a message.
************
“And there was a time when I wanted to have sex with Superman,” Lois said, leaning forward. If Clark hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was drunk.
His face felt warm, and Clark wondered if this was what it felt like to blush.
“You don’t now?” Eden asked.
“Well, I’ve had a look at our friend Clark here, and he looks pretty good with his shirt off.”
Clark shot to his feet. “I just remembered…I…we’ve got an appointment. It was really nice meeting you, Miss Stillwell.”
He wasn’t sure what was wrong with Lois, but he had to get her away from this woman before she said things they were both going to regret.
He grabbed Lois, and pulled her to her feet. For some reason, instead of protesting like he’d thought she would, she simply sighed and allowed herself to slump into him.
The other woman stared at them both with narrowed eyes. She said “I really think you should stay here with me.”
Clark shook his head. “We’ve got to go.”
Before the other woman could reply, he was out the door.
**********
Eden stared at his retreating back. He’d ignored her direct order. That hadn’t happened since she’d met the Haitian. And unlike her experience with the Haitian, there was no sense that her abilities were being suppressed. There was only a blankness there, as though he wasn’t human.
She saw a young man passing by and she grabbed his sleeve.
“Tell me where Clark Kent lives.” She said.
The young man stammered and blushed, but quickly gave her the information she needed.
If she’d been in her right mind, she’d have remembered that the address was in his dossier.
She might also have noticed the bottles of unused perfume lying on the tables, especially when they disappeared.
Several people felt as though they were bumping into something, but all they heard was a cheery whistle.
Invisible men left no trails.
***************
Eden stared through the window by the front door in horror.
The Lane woman was inside, doing some sort of dance. If it was supposed to be erotic, Eden didn’t see it. It seemed clumsy and somewhat pathetic to her.
What made her feel horrified was the glazed expression in Clark’s eye. He kept trying to help her put her clothes back on.
The urge to just tell Lois to die swept through Eden, and she opened her mouth to speak.
Clark Kent caught her eye in the window, and he did something.
The glass of his window shattered, and when Eden dared to stand up again, the two reporters were both gone.
She stamped her foot in frustration.
She’d have Clark Kent if it was the last thing she did.
***************
Lois woke, groaning. She was in an unfamiliar bed, and she’d been having the strangest dream about Clark doing the dance of the seven veils.
It took her a moment before she realized that it had been HER doing the dance, and she was still wearing two of them.
She blinked.
Clark Kent was sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed, staring pensively at her.
“What are you doing here, Clark?” Lois hesitated. “What am I doing here?”
“We were approached by a woman who asked us to tell her everything we knew about Superman.”
A flood of memory filled Lois’s mind. “And I…”
“Told her things I didn’t want to know.” Clark said.
“About you…”
“I’m not sure what happened.” Clark said. “Perry says that three or four people around the office went nuts, but most everyone else was unaffected.”
“Nuts...” Lois asked. “People went postal?”
Clark shook his head and grimaced. “Let’s just say that several utility closets, the copier room and the bottom of a few desks were pretty embarrassing places to stumble in on for several hours.”
“Hours…Clark…?”
“Nothing happened.” Clark’s voice was flat. “Everyone who was affected remembers getting sprayed with Miranda Bain’s new perfume.”
“You were sprayed, Clark. Why weren’t you…?”
Clark looked away for a moment. “I had a little head cold. I don’t think I actually was exposed.”
“Your mucus was our salvation, I guess.” Lois said. “I guess we’d better get to work on finding her.”
She started to get out of bed when it dawned on her. The seven veils really weren’t very concealing.
“So I did the…”
Clark nodded, and Lois closed her eyes.
“Do you at least have anything on that woman?”
“As far as Jimmy can tell, the name she gave us was an alias.” Clark sighed. “I don’t even think they were working together.”
“That other woman scares me,” Lois admitted. “She could have told me anything, and I would have done it.”
Clark nodded.
“Why didn’t she affect you?”
“Maybe the mucus affected my hearing as well as my sense of smell. Whatever the reason, she showed up at my apartment last night, in the middle of your dance. I knew we had to get out of town.”
“Where are we?” Lois asked, pulling the blanket around her and getting out of bed for the first time.
“I had a friend with a charter plane,” Clark said. “He helped me smuggle you out of the city.”
Lois very carefully stepped over to the large picture window across the room.
She grabbed a curtain and threw it open, then gasped.
The familiar view of the Las Vegas strip lay out below them.
“We’re in Vegas?” Lois asked, stunned.
Clark nodded. “We had to get out of town for a few days, and what with the whole Petrelli investigation, about his dealings with a crime boss in Vegas, I figured you’d prefer a working vacation.”
****************
Eden woke up, her head pounding.
She felt movement on the bed beside her, and she blinked.
It took a moment to remember what had happened the night before, and when she did, she was horrified.
She’d completely lost sight of the mission. Did Clark Kent have an ability similar to her own? Was that why she’d been so unnaturally attracted to him.
The young man beside her woke up, then grinned at her.
Timmy…Jimmy…whoever he was had been quite cute the night before. Today he was an embarrassment.
“You don’t remember a thing about last night,” she said. He nodded.
“Tell me about Superman.”
