Annie said she was going to try to keep up her “bad girl” image, even as a Cape, but personally I didn’t believe it would last. Capes all wind up as media darlings at one point and as scapegoats at another -- once the press got a hold of Turnabout and realized how sweet she really was, everyone in the city would love her as much as those of us in Simon Tower already did.
Tom’s mother was absolutely manic about her little boy running about all night, but Annie eventually managed to quell the inevitable storm, feeding her a story about a car accident (explaining her bandaged arm) and needing Tom as a blood-type match. A little nudge from Morrie got her to believe it.
Tom kept calling me up, asking me if I wanted a sidekick, and finally I made a deal with him -- if he’d stop bugging me I’d put in a good word for him when he turned thirteen. It at least calmed him down for a little while.
Animan recovered nicely, and was a lot more enthused about seeing his place torn apart than I was by mine (whoever had been looking for my notebook had really ripped the place to shreds and had even, for no apparent reason, stolen my spare Copycat uniform). When Animan heard that half his totems had been destroyed, he bubbled up like Santa Claus getting a huge order for tin soldiers. “Hell, bro,” he said as he helped me move my stuff into Simon Tower a few days after he’d healed up, “half the fun of having this power was researching the animals and crafting a character to go with ‘em. Now I get to do it all over again. Fix some glitches, you know?”
“Like the glitch your bat-guy has?” Ted chuckled.
“What glitch?” Animan asked. “There’s nothing wrong with Flapper.”
“Whatever.” Ted snickered, slitting open a cardboard box. Rather than trying to restore my apartment to livable conditions, I’d just decided to move into the apartments in the Tower, which had suffered some water damage, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed in a couple of weeks. If anyone would still have been prejudiced against me or bothered by the notebook thing, seeing me fighting with Lionheart seemed to have cured them of that.
“Hey Josh,” Ted asked, “are you still going to see your friend Sheila now that you quit working at the magazine?”
The job had just been far too time-consuming to keep up with, especially if I was going to be in the new LightCorps. “Are you kidding?” I laughed. “If I stopped hanging around with her she’d track me down and neuter me like a cat. Why?”
“Well... I mean... I was just thinking, you know, maybe I could hang out with you guys sometime.”
I rolled my eyes as I saw where this was going. Animan could barely control his amusement. “Here we go again.”
“What?” Ted said. “She’s not seeing anybody, is she?”
I thought about Sheila’s longstanding on-again/off-again infatuation with Spectrum and wondered if her sudden, violent introduction into the underside of Siegel City might have cured her of that. “Not exactly...” I said, then I just shrugged. “Good luck, man.”
Sheila wasn’t the only one whose love life was as confusing as hell these days. Annie and I had become closer than ever after Lionheart’s powers connected us all, and there were definite sparks whenever we saw one another, but after everything she had been through I wasn’t about to make a move until I knew she was ready. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing even super-powers can’t help a man with, it’s understanding women. Unless she started wearing a sign sometime soon, I didn’t have the first clue how to tell if she’d be open to anything.
I expressed how I felt about that in a long, positively Olympic-level sigh as we stood on the roof, watching the sun burn the sky. Annie gently touched my arm with her good one.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just thinking,” I said.
“Well don’t think too hard, Josh,” Hotshot said. “I won’t be around to put a stop to that for a while.”
“I’ll do okay, old timer.”
He put his free arm around me and we embraced like two brothers as the elder went off to boot camp. Once we let go, he turned his attention to Annie.
He planted a kiss on her cheek. “You’ll keep him out of trouble, right?”
She nodded. “Count on it.”
The communicator clipped to his belt crackled and he tapped a button on it. “Hotshot here.”
“Where are you rookie?” asked a female voice with a distinctly Bostonian accent: “Wheah ah yew?”
“Saying good-bye to some folks.”
“Well shake a leg, huh? We’re waiting over here!”
Hotshot smiled. “Lightning,” he said to Annie and me. “That woman is going to still call me ‘rookie’ when I’m ninety years old in a rocking chair.”
“Lightning?” I said. “Where did she come from?”
“She wanted in on the rescue mission,” he said. “She’s got some unfinished business of her own.” He stepped to the edge of the building, then turned back for one last look at us. Even through his mask, I’m pretty sure I saw his throat quiver as though he was forcing himself to swallow a baseball.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and I’m certain the reason he turned away so fast was so we wouldn’t see his eyes watering up. Then he stepped off into the sky and drifted away.
Annie and I took a seat on a bench and watched as he floated off. I felt myself sighing again.
“What?” she asked, her voice a mixture of teasing singsong and genuine concern.
“Tired,” I said. “I’m moving a little slower these days. Feeling a little heavier.”
“Oh relax. As long as you’re around these hopped-up metabolisms you’ll be slim and svelte again in no time.”
“Are you sure about that? The Soul Ray may have made me like this for good.”
“So what if it did?” She patted my stomach. “I think it’s kind of cute. And it suits you... makes you look jolly.”
I laughed. “Right. It’s just a little sobering, I guess. Lionheart comes out of the Soul Ray perfect and I come out as... well... little ol’ me.”
“Oh come on. Perfect gets real boring real quick.” She threaded her arm through mine and rested her chin on my shoulder, staring up into my eyes. “So you didn’t come out perfect,” she said. “I still think you came out pretty damn good.”
She gave me a dry, tender kiss on the cheek, placed her head on my shoulder and we sat there, watching Hotshot become nothing more than a mote on the horizon. I felt the weight of her, smelled her hair, I was warmed and electrified by her. If I could have made that moment last forever, I would have.
It wasn’t everything I wanted from her, but it was a start.
BONUS CONTENT
Lonely Miracle
Shortly after I finished the first draft of this novel, I happened on the idea of crafting a new short story every year as a sort of “Christmas Card” to my friends and family. I was still very much in the mindset of Siegel City when I wrote it, and it should be no surprise that my first attempt at a Yuletide tale took me back there. From a historical standpoint, this story takes place the Christmas immediately before the events of the novel you just finished reading.
Thanksgiving dinner again consisted of a cold turkey sandwich and a glass of milk at the diner down the street, the same as it had for three years now. She used to be quite a cook -- probably still was, she supposed -- but Nancy Drake never had an excuse to cook for anyone anymore. She didn’t let herself think about that. She just sat there, idly playing with her sole piece of jewelry -- a sparsely-decorated charm bracelet -- and finished off her milk.
A waitress was coming between the red-upholstered booths carrying a tray laden with coffee and a club sandwich for the only other customer, an old man who looked like Nancy, at least in that he was spending Thanksgiving in a diner because he had no one to be with. The fluorescent light had a cold flicker, making the waitress appear as though she was walking through a lightning storm.
Right as the waitress walked past Nancy's stool, her feet slipped away and she pitched forward. Her tray fumbled from her hand
s and the coffee fell out into the air. The sandwich, in four segments, tumbled off the plate and a spray of potato chips followed, spinning in space.
Where everything hung.
The coffee appeared frozen in place, the sandwich hovering as though gravity had suddenly changed its mind about claiming it. It wasn’t just the food, either. The waitress was motionless and frigid, the fluorescent light stopped flickering and the other customer was idly looking out the window at cars in the street that were not going anywhere. Even over the grill, jumping grease bubbles stayed in the air instead of falling back down to the steel surface. Nancy got off her stool and physically shoved the waitress aright, plucking her tray from the air and re-balancing it in the woman’s hands. She took the sandwich segments and the potato chips and replaced them on the tray as well. The coffee was a little trickier, it had already begun to spill, but by dragging the cup at angles through the air she managed to scoop up most of the liquid. A few drops may still find their way to the linoleum, but no more. Nancy sat down and repositioned herself the way she had been sitting when everything stopped. Then, with a blink, everything began again. The waitress staggered for an instant, but kept her balance.
“What... I thought I tripped...” She looked back and forth between Nancy and the old man. “Didn’t you see that?”
“Nice car,” the old man said, paying no attention. Nancy just shook her head and lay a five-spot and three singles on the countertop. She got up to leave.
“Um... Happy Thanksgiving, ma’am,” the waitress said, still trying to figure out why the floor wasn’t covered in coffee and sandwich.
“Same to you,” Nancy said, stepping outside. A shadow passed over her and she looked up to see a man in red, white and blue with a flowing cape flying across the sun. The Liberator, Boston’s resident superhero. The Capes couldn’t take holidays off, after all. Nancy knew she never had.
She only made one stop on her way back to her apartment, at the greeting-card store where Christmas ornaments and decorations had been on display since September. She made this stop once a year, and if it ever occurred to her to cease the tradition, she dismissed the thought. The line of figurines was expanding, each a happy pair of children with round, cherub faces, arms locked or hands held, each holding a little sign that read “Our 1st Christmas Together,” or whatever year was appropriate. Nancy had always been impressed at how thorough this particular shop was, the figurines went all the way up to year 25. She didn’t think it cynical of them to not go any farther. If you were lucky enough to make it to 25, you didn’t need figurines. She shuffled through the figures and picked out the little ice-skating pair that designated year number 13.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” asked the girl at the counter as Nancy went to pay. For a moment, Nancy’s blood chilled. Oh sure, she’d worn a mask up until ten years ago, but it was just a small one, and her long mane of blond had stayed essentially the same since her early twenties. At 35, she occasionally thought about cutting it, but Edward always liked it this way. Ten years... this girl must have been about nine the last time Nancy was in uniform, but she was always half-afraid of some anonymous person coming up to her on the street and saying, “You’re her, aren’t you? You’re Lightning.”
“Know me? Oh, I don’t think so...”
“No, it is you. I’m sure of it.” The girl bent down under the counter and produced a small, pink paperback volume with a blue bookmark hanging about at page 250 or so. The title was Matilda’s Waltz, and the picture on the back undeniably familiar.
“You’re Nancy Drake, right? I love your books, I’ve read them all.”
Nancy let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Oh wow. You’re so great... how do you come up with all those ideas? I mean... I’ve read Jackie Collins and like that, but the people in your books are so real. I mean you can feel their hearts breaking, you know? How do you do that?”
“Practice,” Nancy said. She managed to escape what threatened to be a long and tedious conversation by means of a quick autograph and a hastily-imagined social arrangement, which the clerk was more than willing to accept. Then she headed out of the store and went in the direction of her apartment building.
She should have known the girl was just a reader -- nobody remembered Lightning anymore. She preferred it that way. And while Nancy Drake was something of a well-known figure, she kept up her hermit’s life. It suited her. She found it comically ironic that the best-selling romance novelist in New England hadn’t so much as brushed hands with a man in over a decade... not since Edward.
As she walked past an old, abandoned bookshop, letting this thought through her mind, she started to feel the corners of her cheeks curl up. Then she started to giggle a little. Then she stopped walking and looked at the shop. It wasn’t natural for her to start laughing like that. Something was wrong. She brushed some of the dust away from the shop window and peered in at a dirty, dusty, empty room. Nancy took a quick glance at her hand to make sure it was clean then ran it across the doorjamb. Her fingers came away with a slight rusty orange residue.
“Soul Wraiths,” she said. It had been twelve years since she and the rest of her team had thought these emotion-consuming spirits exterminated from the Earth. If they were back... well... this was bigger than her problems. Something needed to be done.
She rushed back to her apartment and ran to the telephone, not even bothering to unwrap her figurine. She picked up the receiver and dialed one of the few personal numbers she still knew, although she rarely bothered to call it. There were a series of rings and finally a connection was made. A young male voice resonated in her ear. “Haaaaappy Thanksgiving, this is Jay.”
“Jay. It’s Nancy.”
“Nance? Oh, wow, it’s good to hear from you. What’s--”
“This isn’t a social call, Rookie. Soul Wraiths in Boston. Your people should check up on it.”
“Oh, are you kidding? We’ll be right out there. Say, do you--”
“I’m not getting involved anymore, Rookie, you know that. This is just a heads-up, for old times sake.”
“Well... if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Happy Thanksgiving.” She hung up the phone and, satisfied that her civic duty was fulfilled, went to the closet and began taking out her Christmas decorations.
Her decorations were pretty meager. The tree was an artificial one-foot sprig that she put away in its box each New Year’s Day, still fully decorated, waiting for the moment in eleven months when she would allow it to see the light again. She put it in the center of her dining room table and plugged it in. All the lights were good this year. Good, she wasn’t up for replacing them.
Then she took out the box with her collection of figurines. The first-year figure, a boy and girl on a holly-decked swing together, she put on her bookshelf facing the room -- after getting a small lion on her charm bracelet caught in the figure and untangling it. The only other charm on the bracelet, a tiny bolt of lightning, escaped. Year two, where the couple was building a snowman, also faced out, as did the dancing couple of year three.
Beginning with year four, the couples faced backwards. She lined up nine of the figures this way, then carefully unwrapped year thirteen and put it at the end of the line, also facing away.
That last figurine was lined up exactly with one of the few magazines she kept on her bookshelf, an old edition of Powerlines, the first news magazine devoted exclusively to Capes and Masks. Edward was on the cover. Oh, she was one of the few people on Earth who would call him that, but beneath the red and black uniform, the proud golden emblem, it was her Edward. He, like Nancy and Jay, had been a Cape too, perhaps the finest of them all. But for all that none of the other heroes on Earth had ever been able to do something so simple as avenge him.
“Another year, Edward,” she said, “ten of them now, and we still haven’t found him. I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”
It wasn’t her fault, everyon
e always said. They all knew the risks. Capes were like cops or firemen, sometimes they fell in the line of duty. And while death, for a superhero, sometimes turned out to be a temporary condition, in ten years there was no sign that Edward could possibly have survived.
She put away the magazine and turned back to her Christmas decorations, although she was already nearly finished.
She picked up a the next few weekly editions of Powerlines to see if there was any news about the battle with the Soul Wraiths. She didn’t bother with a television and she didn’t trust newspapers, but Powerlines was pretty reliable. It should be, their top reporter was really the superhero called Spectrum in disguise. Sooner or later, Nancy was certain, someone would figure out he just created a hologram beard when not in costume and his entire cover would be blown, it was such a lousy disguise. Until then, at least she knew his magazine could be counted on to get the story right.
When the story with the Wraiths broke the week before Christmas, it was Jay who nabbed the spotlight, and the cover. “Hotshot to Soul Wraiths: Get Out of Siegel!,” the cover blurb read. There was also a photo that showed him in midair, delivering a roundhouse blow to one of the glowing red creatures. That would go straight to the Rookie’s head, no doubt. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He’d tried his damndest to fill Edward’s shoes in the past ten years. He couldn’t, of course, but at least he tried.
Other People's Heroes (The Heroes of Siegel City) Page 32