“Pants to the floor, whip out their cocks, and settle this bullshit once and for all.” Tessa’s smile was sharp. “Assuming anyone has a tape measure small enough?”
“Seriously, Poltergeist?” Caleb turned away from me to shoot the brunette a glare.
“Don’t worry; I’m sure some woman out there still mistakenly believes that size doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t know, Tessa… unless Skeletor sleeps with a billy club in his pants, you might need an actual ruler,” mused Silt, who had manifested in the door to the girls’ hall like some sort of avenging angel of humiliation. “Because something was sure squashed up against my ass the other night.”
“Maybe it was his thumb?” mused London sweetly. Next to her, Santiago coughed and went beet red for some reason.
“Nah. Trust me… I know exactly where his hands were.”
Fucking hell. Caleb and I traded glances, and then made for opposite doors as quickly and as quietly as possible. The Jitterbug may have won our first showdown, but I’m pretty sure we both lost the second.
•—•—•
The other event of note occurred the following weekend, a day before classes were to resume. Most of the first-years had slept in, tired and hungover from a night at The Liquid Hero. For only the second time ever, Jeremiah had invited me to join them, but I’d chosen not to attend. I wanted a clear head for Sunday’s showdown.
I also wanted a reliable witness. Thankfully, Vibe was waiting in the common room as promised. The little Empath had come back to the dorms on Monday, and had stopped by my room every day since for some Crow-granted emotional deafness. During one of those visits, I’d broached the issue of my possibly non-existent counselor, and she’d agreed to come with me to my next session with Alexa.
She held my hand the entire way across the campus. As empty as the grounds were, I wasn’t sure it was strictly necessary for her to maintain contact, but I wasn’t going to complain. Since Shane’s death, I’d been disconnected and weirdly distant. It felt like her cold hand was the only thing keeping me from floating away entirely.
I was also terrified and trying not to show it. If Alexa wasn’t there… if Alexa didn’t really exist… it would mean I’d already truly lost it, that none of this training had done a damn thing to fix me, and that I’d be out on my ass within minutes of Bard finding out. I’d have little choice but to check myself into an asylum and pray that they were equipped to keep me from hurting anyone.
The waiting room outside the office was the same as I remembered it from my sessions and the trip with Silt. I turned the knob on the office door, nudged it open with one toe, and risked a peek inside.
Alexa’s black eyes moved from me to Vibe.
“Do you see her too?”
Vibe nodded, frowning. “That’s not Dr. Gibbings.”
“Very true,” agreed Alexa pleasantly, long fingers steepled on the desk in front of her.
“Who are you then?” asked the Empath.
“I think that should be between my patient and me, Ms. Watai,” the other woman answered smoothly, “although I am pleased to see you taking an interest in your classmates. Perhaps those Control lessons are paying off after all. Now, would you excuse us? Damian has already missed one session, and for the sake of his continued enrollment here, I’d prefer he not miss a second one.”
I nodded when Kayleigh looked at me for confirmation. “It’s fine. I really appreciate your coming all the way over, but now that I know she’s real, Alexa is right. We have a whole fucking lot to talk about.”
She gave a half-nod, let go of my hand, and then leaned in. “Be careful. She’s not exactly like you, but I can’t read her at all.”
That was more than a little interesting. I waited for the door to close behind the departing Empath, and then I folded my arms across the chest, leaned against the nearby wall, and shot Alexa a look. “Who are you?”
She nodded to the couch. “Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m doing fine over here.” I waved at Stephanie Gibbings’ diplomas. “Are you even a real shrink?”
“According to Stanford University, yes.” Her smile was razor sharp.
“But you’re not Dr. Gibbings…. right?” I’d never heard of a Shifter that had different human forms, let alone one that was also a psychiatrist, but there was a first time for everything.
“As I told Ms. Watai, I am not.”
“Funny how you didn’t make that clear in a single one of our sessions over the past five fucking months.”
“Did I ever claim to be Dr. Gibbings?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it? I gave you my name.”
“Your first name.”
“The only name I am at liberty to share with you, Damian. And, I might add, a name that quite clearly does not figure in any of the very many diplomas you keep waving at.”
“So all I have is your word that you’re even a professional. Why the hell should I trust you?”
“I would point to the sessions we’ve already had, and the good I believe those sessions have accomplished, but the truth is even simpler; I am the only person qualified to give you what you want.”
I frowned again. “What I want?”
“In our very first session, you told me you wanted someone that could determine if you were going insane… and who could stop you if you did.” Black eyes flickered with some emotion I couldn’t decipher. “Having met Stephanie Gibbings, do you believe she would be able to do either of those two things?”
She had a point. I was pretty sure the grandmotherly Dr. Gibbings would have a heart attack the first time I even swore in her presence.
“And you could? Stop me, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And I should just… believe you?”
For the first time since I’d met her, the monochromatic psychiatrist rose from her chair, exposing long legs mostly hidden by an equally long skirt. She drummed her fingers on the desk’s surface and then met my eyes.
“There are three people on this campus that even know I am here. Four, now that you’ve brought young Vibe into the fold.”
“Is Bard one of them?”
“He is the one who asked me to come. I owed him—and his wife—a favor, and he called it in on your behalf.”
“How did you know Bard?”
“A long time ago, and for a very brief time, I was a Cape.”
Maybe if I’d had a normal childhood, one spent playing outside with other children or going to school or doing anything beyond watching hero vids—first to distract myself and later to distract the new kids at Mama Rawlins’—that admission wouldn’t have meant anything. But for me, everything clicked.
“Holy shit! You’re Midnight!”
After almost five months, the slight flutter of one eyelid was the closest I’d seen Alexa come to showing her surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“I saw the fight with Professor Inferno.” The vid had focused primarily on Rocket, the chiseled Flyboy who’d first broken the speed of sound, but in the background had been the other members of his team; Blue Shock, Talon, and—most distant of all—the tall, slim figure known only as Midnight. “It was Midnight’s only broadcast appearance, and she was masked, but you move like she did… and have the same color scheme, for that matter.”
Alexa shook her head. “Jonathan said you were barely passing History. I’ll let him know that Amos may simply not be challenging you enough.”
“So you are her? Midnight, I mean?”
“I was.”
Midnight had been a Shadecaster, although the exact extent of her powers had been as mysterious as the woman herself. That was before the advent of sponsorship money and marketing opportunities… when secret identities were still a thing. If Alexa was Midnight, I was pretty sure she was more than capable of stopping me, as promised.
Alexa leaned over the desk, her voice intent. “That information cannot leave this room
, Damian. Even one more person knowing my identity puts the lives of those I know and love at risk.”
“But you’re not a Cape anymore.”
“There are other ways for a Power to serve the Free States than by being a Cape.”
That threw me for a bit of a loop. As far as I know, the only alternative was to join the government’s mundane workforce, but that didn’t sound like what she was talking about. And it certainly wouldn’t have required secrecy.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “But if my knowing puts you in danger, why did you even let me guess?”
She shrugged. “Therapy relies on trust between patient and doctor. I can either try to repair that trust or vacate the position Jonathan asked me to fill.”
“What happens if you do leave?”
“I don’t know. He’ll find someone else, I suppose.”
“Another psychiatrist who’s also a Power, and ready and capable of putting down a Cat Three Crow?”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.” Her lips twitched in that almost-smile. “But Bard will do what he must. He always does.” She nodded to the couch I had yet to sit in. “The decision is yours. Is my Cape identity sufficient coin to repurchase your trust, or should I tell Jonathan to begin his search?”
“I meant what I said about needing someone to stop me.” I pushed off the wall, took two long steps to the couch, and dropped down into it. After almost a week, my back barely even hurt. “It might as well be you.”
“May that day never come.” Alexa returned to her own chair, and regarded me for a long moment. “When you met Dr. Gibbings and realized I was not her, you were worried that I was a hallucination.”
“Yeah. Can you blame me? Between that and Unicorn’s death…” I swallowed. “Shitty fucking week.”
“If you’d like, we can talk about that today.” Those black eyes sharpened as she read something in my expression. “Unless there’s something else on your mind?”
I very carefully didn’t look at Mom’s ghost perched on one corner of the desk, while Shane stomped in an angry circle around the room.
I also didn’t look at the three unnamed ghosts that had joined me on Wednesday, the child-sized ghost that I’d found in my dorm room closet on Friday, or the spectral woman who had been sitting on my dresser when I woke up that very morning.
“No,” I said instead, “there’s nothing else to talk about.”
CHAPTER 43
There’s a saying you hear sometimes, mostly from old people like Amos or Bard: time heals all wounds. I’m pretty sure it comes from before the Break, when Healers weren’t a thing, and when doctors spent less time trying to save lives than they did sleeping around, faking their own deaths, and blaming one-armed men for murder.
Sometimes I wonder if Dr. Nowhere really broke the world. From what I know, it was pretty broken even before his dream.
But even in a world of Capes and Black Hats, there’s something to be said for time. After a few weeks of classes, the dark clouds that had followed the first-years since Shane’s death began to fade. In some cases, they blew away entirely. Even Vibe regained her smile, though at first it was a small and fragile thing, easily banished by a stray thought or memory.
Maybe it was the comforting familiarity of the Academy’s rigid schedule. Maybe it was because that same schedule left us too tired to do much beyond eat, sleep, and—for the particularly brave—drink at The Liquid Hero. Or maybe those pre-Break philosophers had gotten something right, and time itself was a sort of Power. Either way, it took far less than a month for the class to recover from Unicorn’s death, for gossip and competition and drunken one-night-stands to again be the order of the day.
Guess it won’t surprise any of you that, once again, I was the lone man out.
You’d think someone whose power was rooted in death—who’d seen as much of it as I had even at that age—would be the first to recover. Normally, you might even have been right.
But what the fuck did normal ever have to do with my life?
I don’t talk much about Mom’s ghost. After nine years, she sometimes just felt like part of the fucked-up scenery of my life; a faded, silent, specter that floated through each day without affecting it or being affected by it. When she first came back, I’d thought I was going nuts, but the revelation of my powers had ended up hitting me way harder than Mom’s ghostly presence. By then, I’d had years to get over her dying. I’d done my grieving, such as it was. I’d taken my bruises and shed my tears, and there was a part of me that her ghost no longer knew and couldn’t reach.
It was different with Shane. I’d barely begun to mourn my friend when his ghost showed up. How was I supposed to move on, to find my center as the still-absent Ms. Stein had called it, when Shane was always there, always angry, always prowling about the confines of my perspective like some kind of pale predator?
Gingers weren’t even supposed to have souls. How was I being haunted by one? More importantly, why was he mad at me and how the fuck was I supposed to get him to go away?
I’d tried talking to the dead Healer, but that was one of the few things his ghost and Mom’s had in common; neither made a sound or reacted to my voice. Each seemed content to remain isolated in their own private dramas.
Even Shane’s unwanted addition might have been something I adjusted to… the same way I’d adjusted to the Academy’s hellish schedule or the unspoken rules at Mama Rawlins’ house. Maybe Shane would’ve faded into the background like Mom, and I’d have found a way to move on through my life with two ghosts trailing behind me instead of just one.
But as you already know, it wasn’t just two ghosts.
Every day, another few specters appeared, like I had become one of those giant whirlpools Tempest had created in the Pacific, except pulling in spirits instead of boats. Three weeks in and there were dozens of them; sitting in my bed when I woke up, huddled in the communal showers, even spread through the common room. They were young and old, tall and small, some with features so faded that their faces were barely hints of a nose and eyes or the downturned corner of a mouth, others as sharply defined as the first-years that walked through them unknowingly.
Like Shane, like Mom, the ghosts didn’t make any noise—even the ones whose mouths were perpetually open, screaming or shouting—but I felt them, like a silent breeze on the back of my neck, or the sort of prickling you get across your skin when your mind conjures up visions of insects, creeping and crawling on your exposed flesh. I felt them when my eyes were closed, when I slept or tried to meditate, even on the rare occasions when I snuck away to the bathroom for a quick and unsatisfying date with my hand.
A month after Shane’s death and the other first-years were healing, just like that old adage had predicted they would.
But me? I was heading full-speed in the opposite fucking direction.
•—•—•
“Where’s Wormhole?”
Silt shrugged as she dropped down onto the bench. “No clue. I’m sure she’ll be along soon.”
“I hope she hurries. Our presentation is next week and we still have a ton of work to do.” Vibe turned to me. “What do you think, Damian? Should we get started now or wait for Evelyn?”
The clearing should have seemed empty without Shane and Wormhole, but the dozens of ghosts ringing us had me feeling claustrophobic instead. Four ghosts crowded onto the bench, and it had taken every shred of control I had left not to react when Silt sat directly on top of one of them.
“Damian?” Kayleigh prompted again.
“Sorry, Vibe,” I finally managed. “What was the question?”
“What’s up with you lately, Skeletor? You’ve been spacier than Prince after a hit of stim-weed.”
I looked at Silt, trying not to let my eyes slide to the ghostly head that was sprouting out of her left shoulder. This ghost was one of the less faded ones; with a beak of a nose that put mine and Winter’s to shame, and a few strands of hair clinging to an otherwise bald and spo
tted skull. His mouth was opening and closing, again and again, but I couldn’t tell if he was trying to speak or thought he was in mid-meal. Every time his mouth contracted, ghostly teeth cut down and through Silt’s bare flesh.
“She’s right,” agreed Vibe. “Are you feeling okay?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, just… you know. Tired. And sore.”
“Maybe you should stop sparring with Nadia, just for a bit?” said Kayleigh.
“I’ll second that. I don’t think this strategy of letting her beat you up is working out quite like you wanted.”
“I don’t have a strategy…”
“Really? You’re sparring twice as often as the rest of us, Boneboy. Seems like every time I see you, someone’s just scraped you off the floor with a spatula.”
“A what?”
“Fucking shit. Do they seriously not have spatulas over here?”
“Of course we do,” answered Vibe. “We’re not barbarians.”
“Oh. Good. Anyway, I don’t think pity’s the way to Orca’s heart,” said Silt. “Although you’re doing a good job of convincing the rest of the class that you’re borderline harmless.” Her voice trailed off. “If that was your plan, you might be more subtle than I gave you credit for.”
The truth was, I didn’t have a plan. I’d been spending as much time down in Nikolai’s pits as I could because they were the one place on campus with dampeners running anywhere close to full-bore. Which meant they were also the one place on campus I could be free of the steadily growing legion of ghosts that traveled in my wake.
The fact that I got my ass kicked every time I went down seemed like a small price to pay. Even Nadia’s ever-increasing disappointment barely registered, which was saying something.
“Anyway, Evie will be here soon enough. Girl hates to be late… not that she’d ever have to be, if she would just use her power. I vote we wait. A day like today is meant to be enjoyed, not wasted talking about school.” Silt sighed happily. “Shit. A day like today is almost enough to make me reconsider heading inland for summer break.”
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