The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

“I know. I had to turn off my phone, and . . . well, it’s a long story. You guys okay?”

  “Yeah. Geez, Harmony, wait until you hear what Julie found.”

  So much for not saying my name. “Are you guys at the newspaper office?”

  “Yeah, but no one else is here. Julie wants to talk to you.”

  My friend snatched the phone from him before I could ask if he’d seen Conn. “Okay, I definitely owe you dinner,” she said. “Remember those boring samples you sent me, all the stuff I said was benign and didn’t combine to anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “You totally made up for it with this. Were there other things you couldn’t get samples of at the place where you got the first ones?”

  “Yeah. I only had time to get about half.”

  “Well, that’s why it made no sense at the time. My analysis is ongoing, but we took residue samples from the scene. I found an area that hadn’t burned, and took some from where it did. The stuff on the wall, you know?”

  “Right.” The stuff that had blown us up.

  “Most of the compounds you sent me are present in the activator.”

  “Activator?”

  “The stuff on the wall,” she said impatiently, and I could imagine her waving her arms around. “But get this. We can’t get it to ignite.”

  “Because it was already burned?”

  “No. I mean, maybe, for the charred samples. But we looked all over the store, and there were patches of the stuff in other areas, places that weren’t touched.”

  “I assume you set a match to it.”

  She scoffed. “Don’t be dense. Of course the wallpaper burns. But it just curls up like normal. The residue doesn’t change. It doesn’t flash or explode like it apparently did when Eclipse and The Brute were blown up.”

  A weird sensation was crawling over my skin as things came together. “Why? What was different?” But I knew.

  “I have a theory.”

  So did I. And it pretty much put to rest any possibility that Conn had been the main target. But I let Julie say it. She was the expert, after all.

  “The material was created to go off only when contacted by Eclipse’s light. Someone is trying to kill you.”

  Chapter 11

  Trying to kill you. Kill. Trying. You.

  I sat frozen, my hand wrapped tightly around the phone. Julie’s voice echoed somewhere around my ear, but I barely heard her. My mind raced, but not trying to catch up to the ridiculous idea that someone wanted me dead. Yes, that was bad. But there was worse. Conn had become more than collateral. This wasn’t just Olive trying to mess with me, damage my reputation, and turn the town against me. If they wanted me dead, and knew that Conn had been at the two sites where they tried to make it happen, he was definitely a target now. He wasn’t safe, wherever he was.

  “I have to find Conn.” I stood, and Evan loomed up in front of me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving. Can I take your car?” I tried to sidestep him, but he didn’t budge.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Furious, I shoved hard at his chest. Pain dug into my shoulder, but not as hard as before. Even my right hand didn’t hurt as much as it had when I finished making my salad. Who knew kielbasa was so powerful?

  “You’re not my keeper. I appreciate whatever it is you’re trying to do here, but he’s missing. I’m not leaving him out there to be a target.”

  “Who? Conn? How do you know he’s missing?”

  “Angie said he’s not in the hospital. They can’t find him.”

  “Just because they don’t know where he is doesn’t mean he’s missing.” He cupped his hands around my shoulders, gently as if he was trying not to hurt me, and tried to guide me to the couch. “He can’t reach you right now, right? So try to reach him. Do what you can from here before making yourself more vulnerable again.”

  This time, when I stepped, my knee almost buckled. So fine, I wasn’t up to taking on the bad guys, or probably even to running around town on a search. That didn’t mean I was happy Evan was right.

  “I don’t know his number. You won’t let me turn on my phone.”

  “I know it.” He slid his own phone from his back pocket and tapped the screen. A moment later, he read out the number and I added it to the burner.

  First, I texted Conn so he’d know the number was mine. But waiting for a return text would drive me crazy, so I immediately dialed his number. It rang once and went to voicemail.

  I lowered the phone and stared at it open-mouthed. Had he ignored my call?

  No. I was being stupid. Maybe he had, but only because he was driving or with someone or otherwise not in a position to answer. Maybe he didn’t see the text first and didn’t answer unknown numbers. Or maybe CASE had him and had smashed the phone. I dialed again. Same result, so it wasn’t smashed. He’d done it again.

  Where are you? I texted him. Angie said u dsapprd from hsptl. I hated abbreviating, but this phone had an old-fashioned keypad that required multiple presses of a button to get to the right letter. Very annoying.

  While I waited, I caved to Evan’s steady stare and settled on the couch, stretching out to ease the pressure on my knee. Evan went to the kitchen to clear the table and start doing dishes.

  “So what did your friend say?” he asked from the sink. “The one who made all the blood drain from your face.”

  Huh. I hadn’t felt that happening.

  “She said someone’s trying to kill Eclipse.” I told him about the compound Julie tested. He just kept asking questions and I needed a distraction from my silent phone, so I backed up and told him everything. The warehouse, the pit in the woods, even the car accident where Conn had tried to save the woman. Then he had me go over the details of the jewelry store explosion, even though he knew most of it already from talking to the police.

  “But you don’t think someone is trying to kill you.” He dried his hands and came into the living room. “Why?”

  I checked the phone for the fifth time since I sent my text. Still nothing.

  “Why do you think I don’t think someone’s trying to kill me?”

  He settled heavily onto an overstuffed chair that faced me on the couch. “I can tell by the way you talk about it. So?”

  “Well, it’s mainly the fact that I’m not dead. And that distraction seems to play a bigger part in what they’re doing. I mean, the situation with the Inalbis—that was someone trying to damage my reputation, right?”

  “But they’d have to know what would happen. They could have hoped the Inalbis would kill you.”

  I shook my head. “Olive knew them. She knew that wasn’t going to happen. I just don’t know what sound has to do with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ticking off on my fingers, I laid out the instances. “Hearing what sounded like a rape in progress, I gave an old man a heart attack. At the crash from the highway accident I heard a baby’s frantic cries, but there was no baby at the scene.” I frowned at that one. Besides the fact that no babies had been mentioned in the reports, how could Olive or anyone else have known I was there?

  I went on with the ones I was more sure about. “Screams in the woods drew us to the pit with the spikes. A sonic boom downtown led me into an explosion. None of the sounds made sense. No sources were determined. I think something else is going on, and all of that was meant to keep me focused or out of the picture so they—whoever they are—can do something else they don’t want me to interfere with. Conn thinks it’s a super-villain, but that doesn’t fit with CASE at all. And I’ve never heard of anyone with powers over sound like that.”

  He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. I waited, expecting him to tell me that he did know someone. But he went
in a different direction.

  “There’s another result you’re not factoring in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every instance led you to increase your power.”

  “No,” I automatically denied, but it was a knee-jerk reaction, probably a holdover from when I thought I had a small ability that could allow me to do small things to help my small town. I hadn’t yet accepted that I was now inside the kind of epic superhero story I had studied for the last five years.

  But he was right. Hurting Fran Inalbi had disturbed me and made me question my actions. Not being able to help people in real trouble at the car accident caused me to seek help from Conn so I could increase my abilities. Being shot at in the warehouse had actually increased my abilities. As had falling into the pit. The only one that hadn’t was the explosion . . .

  Except that wasn’t really true, either. I’d drawn in a great deal of light before we went in there, and I hadn’t released it. Ever. It was deep inside me, where I’d pushed it to keep from feeling agitated by so much contained energy. A hot spot I’d been ignoring since I woke up. I’d never held light inside me this long. We were way too far from its source now to release it without wasting it, and the fear I’d deflected didn’t want me to do that, anyway. If someone wanted me dead, if they could track me through the phone calls I’d made or had somehow been watching me closely enough to know where I was, I didn’t want to be helpless or without ammunition.

  The problem was that now that hours had passed, the ball of light seemed smaller. As if an extremely slow draw had caused it to shrink. I hadn’t gotten much rest. Definitely not enough to build my strength. But instead of increasing, my pain had decreased over the past few hours, both in my injuries and with the full-body muscle strain. My thoughts were clearer, and I had no desire to close my eyes and drift away.

  My light was healing me.

  Glee squeezed up into my throat, threatening to squeal out and attack Evan’s ears. I shoved it down deep, beside the light itself, to give free rein later. Healing was like the holy grail of superhero powers, and I had it. The only thing better would be the ability to heal others.

  The flip side was that it could also be doing unseen harm. I squashed that idea quick, right along with my guilt over stealing the light. Keeping it meant the sources were permanently damaged. Maybe a simple light bulb replacement in each lamp was all that would be necessary, but it taxed resources and left the darkened area dangerous until they were fixed.

  Evan was watching me again, as if assessing my thought progression, waiting for me to come to a conclusion. Why? Did it matter to him if my abilities were increasing? I couldn’t think of a valid reason for him to care. If his purpose was tracking CASE, but he was here trying to protect me, that made me . . .

  Bait.

  So of course he cared if I was getting stronger. The more powerful the superhero, the bigger the target for CASE, and the easier I made Evan’s job.

  I didn’t recant my denial. “How did you get this gig?” I asked him. “Are you a superhero?”

  “No.” He leaned back and rubbed his hands along his thighs, his gaze jumping to the fireplace hearth next to him, then to a print of sunlight in the woods on the wall over the sideboard. “My— I worked with my father originally. He brought me into the task force.”

  “So you were, what, FBI before that?”

  He nodded. I’d have left it there, but his fist clenched and his eyes met mine, pain sharp and deep in them.

  “Was your father a superhero?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head and swallowed. I waited. Finally, he said, “My sister. She was with HQ in DC.”

  Was with HQ. The only CASE-targeted superhero group that hadn’t been destroyed. All the original members were still working together down there. Except one. Summer VanNostrand had died horribly at the Lincoln Memorial.

  “I’m so sorry.” I got up and crouched at his feet, taking his hand. “You were there when she died?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I was in DC. But I wasn’t with her.” He nudged me away and stood, pacing to the charging station and fiddling with the USB connections.

  I let my knees drop to the floor and cursed my impulse to comfort him from a crouch. I was healing, not healed. “You don’t work with your dad anymore?”

  He shook his head. “He was killed. In Chicago.”

  “Oh.” Now it all made sense. His job on the task force was intensely personal, and he was also intensely alone. That made the mission everything. “I’m so sorry, Evan.”

  He shook his head and said nothing. I groaned, rising to my feet and told myself not to assume anything.

  “So you think they want to increase my power? Why?”

  “To make your ending bigger and flashier. They’ll call you out, talk about how you’ve been hiding among them, an insidious danger. You said there were already rumors.”

  “Yeah, Olive was talking smack at a picnic and spreading gossip at the diner, trying to make Eclipse look at fault for stuff. But why try to tear her down and build her up at the same time?”

  “Make people look at her. Pay more attention to what she’s doing and think about why she’s doing it. Then when she fails, it will be spectacularly. One without the other isn’t enough for them. No fizzle. Only a massive flame-out.”

  You could definitely use the word to describe what had happened in San Diego and Chicago. Those successful, high-profile organizations had failed on a big stage, and both public perception and their own demoralization ended the alliances.

  DC had been different. In San Diego and Chicago, it had been one big incident. In DC, escalating failures had led to a losing battle with an empath, but instead of falling apart, they had pulled together and defeated him. It was the CASE members who scattered, the ones who weren’t captured. So maybe they’d changed their tactics after that.

  “They need a win,” Evan said, as if following my thoughts again. “They lost some people in DC and didn’t come out looking as righteous as they had elsewhere. We’ve arrested half a dozen mid-level operators before they could act on plans. And Eclipse is a more tempting target than someone with power and support.”

  They’d regret thinking that. Eclipse had more support than they thought—more than I’d even thought—and she had more power, too. They’d also regret helping me find it.

  “Tell me about The Chaser.” I sank back down on the couch instead of pacing like I wanted to. I didn’t have any reason not to trust Evan so far, but I was wary of revealing my recovery. “What’s his deal? Where did he get his name?”

  “Don’t know about the name.” Evan moved to the front windows, standing to the side, and looked out on the grounds. “Our profiler thinks he lost a family member—parent, sibling, maybe someone he was in love with—and that super abilities had something to do with it. If we knew more, we could probably figure out his real identity, but he’s very cagey about personal details. He’s all about the mission.”

  “You know it’s a guy?” I thought about Olive again. Was she smart and strategic enough to be The Chaser?

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Did he orchestrate San Diego or Chicago?”

  “No, not directly.” He moved to the back door and peered past the edge of the curtain over that window. “He’s been responsible for a lot of smaller incidents.”

  “Like what?” There were daily stories about superheroes, whether success or failure. Most reports didn’t mention anything to do with CASE.

  “Accidents or suicides by people rumored or proven to have abilities. Most weren’t trying to be superheroes. Some used their power to commit crimes. Our task force believes most of these were neither accident nor intentional death. Not by the deceased, anyway.”

  “So you think CASE has a multi-pronged approach to their mission?”<
br />
  “Seems that way. I just do my job. There are people above me who concentrate on the bigger picture.”

  I was okay with leaving the bigger picture alone. My focus had always been on Pilton and the people who lived here. But I couldn’t say it didn’t bother me that I’d drawn this threat to my town.

  Evan’s phone buzzed, and he went out the back door as he answered it. My phone stayed annoyingly silent. I believed Conn had left the hospital on his own. He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d sit and wait for trouble. But if he was looking into CASE or trying to track down whoever had set the traps, he was putting himself in the line of fire.

  If anyone had seen Simon and Julie at the jewelry store and figured out what they were doing, they might become targets, too. Angie was trolling for gossip. Everyone was doing something. Except me.

  There was another trail to follow. Kyle and Wig. The ingredients in the warehouse were part of the compound that exploded when my light touched it. I had a hard time believing either of them was smart enough to create it, which meant they worked for the person who was. Or someone else, someone who’d also hired a chemist. I’d have to ask Evan if CASE was known to have a chemist on board. If I could track down the two goons, though, I could find out a lot more.

  I strode to the back door and swept aside the curtain, looking for Evan. He stood out in the middle of the back lawn, which was much smaller than the front yard, edged in more gardens, and surrounded by woods. His phone was still at his ear, and he turned, the scowl on his face telling me he didn’t like what he was hearing. I wanted to open the door and hear it, too, or at least his side of it, but I couldn’t invade his privacy.

  His computer was still on, a light on top of the closed lid slowly flashing the standby mode. He had a lot of records in there, or access to a database full of information that might lead me to Kyle, Wig, The Chaser, the chemist . . . I was a librarian. I knew how to look for information. He’d never even know.