Trick of the Light

by Megan Derr

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Trick of the Light

  Anti-Heroes will continue in Turncoat

  About the Author

  TRICK

  Of the

  LIGHT

  ANTI-HEROES | Book One

  MEGAN DERR

  Karl leads a quiet life—quieter than he wants, especially since getting into a fight with one of the most powerful men in the city—but it could be worse. In a city where super heroes and villains can level a city block in a moment, it's a good day when nothing is destroyed, especially for the man who sells super hero insurance.

  After yet another date stands him up, Karl heads home for another night spent reading with only his cats for company. But a strange sound at the bus stop leads him to a shocking discovery: Trick of the Light, a notorious villain in possession of an impossible power, and currently the intense focus of a manhunt by the Grand Order of Defenders.

  But Karl has never had much respect for the Order and its arrogant, cavalier super heroes. Whatever the risks, he'd much rather spend the night helping a villain, especially since once Trick is well enough to move Karl will probably never see him again…

  Book Details

  Trick of the Light

  Anti-Heroes 1

  By Megan Derr

  Published by Megan Derr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Samantha M. Derr

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  First Edition January 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Megan Derr

  Printed in the United States of America

  TRICK

  Of the

  LIGHT

  Karl stared glumly at his lucky watch, a 1945 Universal Tri-Compax. Not so lucky tonight, though it wasn't really the watch's fault. He'd just hoped it might actually change his luck for once.

  But this wasn't even close to the first time he'd been stood up. He was developing a knack for spotting his would-be dates, knew that look of nope in the split second before their faces smoothed out and they pretended to still be looking around before they left after a few more seconds.

  He might live in a city, but it largely functioned like a small town in some ways, and his would-be dates always bailed when they realized TickTock24 was the man who'd pissed off Tanner DeVine several months ago when they'd gotten into a bidding war over a watch—a 1956 Rolex Submariner 6538 Karl was still bitter about having lost, especially to an ass like Tanner DeVine. Tanner, of course, had been furious that anyone had dared challenge him in the first place, and so months later, Karl was still being avoided and stood up.

  Even his business had taken a slight hit, though the hit to his private life was vastly more painful and humiliating. He probably would have been out of business entirely except most of his customers were long established. They were strong recs to new clients, and the other guys couldn't offer better policies. But without the reputation that came with having existed as long as the city itself, he'd have been sunk there too.

  The blow to his personal life was hard enough. On the rare chance his dates didn't recognize him… Well, he was plain, sold insurance, geeked over watches, had two cats, and liked country music. International Man of Mystery, he was not. Nobody looking for excitement wanted to date the boring guy who sold insurance for the damage caused by the local heroes and villains (more the heroes, but good luck getting the newspapers to print that). In a city where excitement was everything, being boring was almost a bigger crime than being one of the villains. And the only thing worse than boring was to be known as the guy who'd made an enemy of DeVine.

  Shrugging into his trench coat, Karl left enough money on the table to cover his calamari, wine, and a generous tip for the server.

  So much for seafood, an ocean view, and Firecracker300M. Stupid handle, anyway. Karl retrieved his umbrella from the stand by the doors, then pushed outside to the patio and stared glumly at the cold, drizzling rain.

  Hopefully there weren't too many claims waiting for him, though he anticipated at least a few. Winter was quickly moving in, and if Sunrise and the rest of the Grand Order of Defenders put anyone out of their homes again, it wasn't the villains they would need to be worried about. Karl would never comprehend why the city fawned over The Magnificent Sunrise. Speaking of stupid names.

  He'd taken a taxi to the restaurant, eager and hopeful and feeling worthy of the indulgence, but he had zero desire to hurry home. What was waiting for him? Emails from stressed clients, a depressingly empty inbox on his dating site profile, and two cats mortally offended their dinner was late.

  Heaving a sigh, Karl opened his umbrella and left the restaurant, grimacing as he plunged into the cold rain. The crappy parking lot was already half-flooded and ruining his expensive wool slacks (his new pair because he really had been hopeful for this date). That should have been his first warning it was gonna end in a whole lot of nothing.

  Misery pressed down on him, ignoring all his efforts to think about anything else. So he wasn't model-hot, and he didn't have a photoshop-worthy sixpack. His hair was dishwater, fine. But he wasn't hideous, and his job might not be glamorous, but it was solid. He made good money, but he didn't do it by hurting or taking advantage of people. His business was the oldest in the city for super hero insurance. He sold excellent policies, took care of every valid claim no matter what. His great-great-great-grandfather had started the business, and Karl maintained the reputation the rest of his family had so carefully built. When the Moronic Sunrise knocked down houses, Karl made certain they got repaired or replaced. Didn't that count for something, even if he had pissed off DeVine?

  He looked at his watch, a long ago gift from his father back when Karl had just started getting into collecting watches. So what if his night had been crappy. It was still his lucky watch. It also told him it was getting close to eight, which meant he had a good twenty minutes before the next bus. Crossing the street at the corner, he walked down the block to the bus stop.

  It was a dark, sad-looking thing: the plastic roof was cracked, so water splashed down on most of the bench, leaving one small dry patch. The only light came from the streetlamp at the corner, dull orange light that didn't do anything except emphasize how little light there was.

  Karl sat down heavily on the bench—froze when he heard something. A moan-whimper kind of sound. He looked around but couldn't see anyone. Rolling his eyes at himself, he pulled out his phone and opened the book app, picked a book at random, and began to read.

  Someone coughed, but it was cut off, hastily and poorly muffled. It was immediately followed by a soft, please let me die in peace, moan.

  "Okay, am I losing my mind?" Karl stowed his phone, stood up, and looked around. Nothing.

  Movement caught the corner of his eye but when he turned toward it, there was still just a whole lot of nothing. He turned away—and promptly caught movement at the edge of his vision again. Right against the bent, broken cage wrapped around the base of a sad-looking sapling.

  Karl rubbed his eyes. Clearly he needed to lay off the wine—or go to bed. Something. If his eyes were playing tricks…

  Oh, god. His heart gave a lurch, then started pounding at approximately 200 MPH. Eyes. Playing tricks. He'd read that description in the newspaper a thousand times, heard the recountings on TV. Playing tricks. Sound but nothing there. Trick of the Light. A relatively new, small-time villain who
nevertheless managed to always leave Sunrise and the others frothing with rage. It was bad form to root for villains, but every time Trick of the Light got the better of the G.O.D. Karl whooped and cackled in his apartment. Every single article about Trick of the Light was carefully stowed in his special safe. Trick of the Light was smart, clever, and always managed to cause the G.O.D. maximum frustration while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. And his power was cool; no one else on the books had ever been capable of invisibility, that was completely new. No one had even known making a person invisible was possible until Trick of the Light.

  Gulping around the lump in his throat, Karl left the bench area and ventured toward the sapling, rain drumming down… And now he was looking, he could see it wasn't quite falling right around the sapling. Like something was in the way, though in the dark it was really easy not to notice unless you knew to look.

  He knelt on the wet pavement, carefully reached out—and nearly shrieked when he touched something even though all he saw was thin air.

  The delighted-terror turned into cold fear, though, when he saw his fingers had come away bloody. Trick of the Light was hurt. "Psst," Karl hissed. "Are you okay? Conscious?"

  No reply.

  Reaching out again, Karl worked out what proved to be an arm, followed it up and up until reaching Trick of the Light's neck. Despite whatever he was wearing, something soft and pliant, Karl was able to find a pulse. It wasn't great, but it wasn't ten seconds from dying either, thank you boring weekends and community college first aid classes.

  What in the heck was he supposed to do? How did you help somebody who was fracking invisible?

  The distant sound of the bus jarred his thoughts.

  Okay, first thing was first. Out of the rain. How, how, how? He could do this. Huffing, Karl closed his umbrella and dropped it to the pavement. Shrugging out of his coat, he slowly and awkwardly got one arm through Trick of the Light's. That done, he was able to get it around him and through his other arm.

  It was really, really weird putting a coat on an invisible dude, but whatever, he'd put up with weirder (like seeing Alligator Man naked, ugh, erase, erase). "Are you okay? I've got to get you standing." Still no reply. Invisible and unconscious, awesome. This was almost as much fun as the time Sunset had come flying through his office window. Followed immediately by a frothing Sunrise.

  Okay, he couldn't take a walking trench coat on the bus. Yanking off his scarf, Karl wrapped it around his best approximation of Trick of the Light's head. Nothing he could do about the lack of legs, but hopefully the bus driver wouldn't notice. It was dark and wet, and bus drivers excelled at not caring 90% of the time. Hopefully this driver wouldn't fall under the 10%.

  Dragging Trick of the Light with him back to the bus stop, Karl fumbled out his wallet and pulled out his pass and a couple of ones.

  The bus chugged up to the stop and the doors cranked open. Drawing a deep breath, using his umbrella as best he could to further block view of Trick of the Light, Karl lugged him up the steps and shoved him into the first seat he could reach that would block the fact that his legs were missing. Hastening back up to the front, he showed his pass, deposited the ones, and thanked his lucky watch that the bus driver had barely looked at them the entire time.

  Returning to Trick of the Light, Karl dropped down beside him and let out a long sigh.

  His watch must have been making up for the lousy date because the only other passengers to get on the bus the whole time were a couple of women who were more than happy to stay far away from them. Karl ignored them, knowing that was what they'd prefer, anyway.

  When his stop finally came up, he dragged Trick of the Light to his feet—how was the man still out cold? At least he wasn't dead, not to judge by the breathing Karl could feel, the pulse that thrummed when last he'd checked—and dragged him out the back door, then slowly down the half-block to his apartment building.

  The hall was brightly lit but mercifully empty. Thomas, the security guard, must have slunk off from his office behind the glass partition to go flirt with his boyfriend in the coffee shop. Thank god.

  Bustling Trick of the Light into the elevator when it finally arrived, Karl set him on the floor, then swiped his card and punched the code for his condo.

  Then he collapsed because dragging around an unconscious, invisible, wanted criminal was fracking exhausting, and he was an insurance salesman, not an athlete. His idea of going to the gym was gawking at the people inside in awe as he walked by it to get to the coffee shop.

  He groaned as the elevator chimed, climbed to his feet, and dragged the soggy trench coat out of the elevator into his entryway. Most of the money he made, he didn't bother to keep, but he'd made certain he had a nice house and kept enough to fund his watch obsession.

  And he really did love his condo. Stripping down to his boxers, getting rid of the scarf and coat on Trick of the Light, he dragged Trick of the Light into the main area, across the soft, dark green carpet to the large leather couch that was the central feature of the living room.

  Kneeling beside the couch, he carefully ran his hands over Trick of the Light's body, feeling like a creeper but determined to figure out if he was injured—and if he was, Karl would figure out how to deal with that.

  But the only blood his hands came away with seemed like it was wet just because of the rain still clinging to him. If he had to guess—which he did, actually—it seemed like Trick of the Light had nothing more than some minor cuts and scrapes that had probably seemed worse while rain was pounding down on them.

  Standing, Karl bent and sought out Trick of the Light's head, carefully examining it for anything that might be a serious problem. There was a knot on one side of his head, but it didn't seem dangerous, just probably painful and headache-inducing. God, he hoped so. The last thing he needed was an invisible corpse on his couch.

  He shook his head at his thoughts as he grabbed the purple and green afghan draped over the back of the couch. He covered Trick of the Light and tucked it neatly around him, lingered there to stare at the vague shape of a body that was the most he'd ever seen of the notorious Trick of the Light.

  What did he look like? What had happened to him that he was stone cold unconscious, lying on the street in a rundown part of town? And Karl knew it wasn't good that he'd been unconscious so long… But then again, super heroes were their own brand of everything, and he'd heard before of them zonking out for days and then waking up like someone had put in new batteries.

  Nothing he could do but hope for the best. Fussing with the afghan for a moment, Karl then finally went to go turn on the lights and find some dry clothes.

  When he reached his room, though, he decided a hot shower was the best way to go. Thirty minutes later, dressed in black and green plaid pajama bottoms and with a fluffy blue towel draped around his shoulders, he padded into the kitchen to make some coffee and warm up some soup.

  He glanced toward the living room, saw the vague shape still filling his couch. Given the SOP of heroes and villains everywhere, he'd half-expected Trick of the Light to be gone.

  Going to the fridge, he pulled out the large tub of vegetable soup he'd bought at the corner bakery the previous night and poured some of it into a pan to warm up. While that simmered, he got a pot of coffee going as well.

  Then he went to go find his ereader, which wound up being under his bed, sandwiched between two balls of gray, fluffy discontent. "Rolex, Hamilton. I should have guessed this is where you were sulking. If you want dinner, you have to come out." He made a grab for them, but they glared harder and scurried back. Like he couldn't go around the other side and harass them that way. Cats.

  Giving up, because they'd come out when they'd decided he'd been punished with their absence long enough, he grabbed his ereader and headed back to the front rooms.

  Pulling the soup off the stove, he poured it into a bowl and carried it into the living room. Returning to the kitchen, he fixed his coffee (cream and sugar), grabbed a box of
oyster crackers for the soup, and snatched up the TV remote on his way to the enormous chair that had been his Christmas present to himself.

  He sipped at the coffee while he flipped through channels, finally settling on reruns of a cooking show he liked. Picking up his soup, casting a glance at the couch, where every now and then the blanket twitched and gave a sleepy moan or snuffle, he settled in.

  Except for the invisible super villain on his couch, the night was pretty typical. Once he'd eaten, he'd check for any pressing claims, get those moving, then grab dessert and read.

  Try as he might, his eyes kept returning to the couch. Trick of the Light was on his couch. Would Karl get a chance to talk to him? What did he sound like? The news channels were always careful not to let the villains be heard, unless it absolutely couldn't be avoided. The G.O.D. said it was best not to give them more attention than strictly necessary.

  When the soup was finally gone, he picked up his ereader and flipped through his reading options, read the first pages of a few books before settling on a sci-fi novella that seemed promising. Setting that aside, he grabbed his laptop from the ottoman and opened it to check his email.

  Oh, good. Only one serious matter. He'd expected a lot more with Sunrise, especially since he'd been duking it out with Trick of the Light. Typing a reply, he forwarded the rest on to his bank to see the check was cut first thing in the morning, then arranged for his delivery service to pick it up and deliver it straight to the customer's door.

  Gathering up all his dishes piled up on the side table by his chair, he rinsed everything and put it in the dishwasher, dumped his towel in the laundry room, and returned to his chair with a fresh cup of coffee, grabbing a spare afghan from the pile on one side of the TV. He had more of the blankets than he'd ever need, the result of a mother, grandmother, and their friends always following some compulsion to knit and crochet the things.

  He dumped the blanket in the chair, then went over to the couch to check on his patient. He felt warm, but no warmer than anyone would be. Karl hoped/assumed, anyway. Satisfied that Trick of the Light was okay, he curled up in his chair with ereader and coffee, the sound of the rain drumming against the side of the building a pleasant background noise.