The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

  Sark stared at the wisps of smoke visible in the light I shone above the area. He slowly walked over to the heap of fabric and picked it up. There was a small hole where the light had touched—I could see the patrol car headlights through it—but most of the jacket was intact.

  I dissipated my light and walked over. “That’s probably enough of a connection to the jewelry store to charge her, right?”

  His face tightened, and he lowered the jacket to his side. “Let me worry about charges and legal process.” He went to the trunk and opened it, stowed the jacket in an evidence bag, and wrote something on the red parts with a Sharpie. Then he dropped the bag in the trunk and closed it, ushering me back away from the car again.

  “Tell me you’re not dirty, Sark.”

  I couldn’t help it. The words came out before I knew I was going to say them. His jaw dropped again, and he let go of my arm.

  “What did you just say?”

  “You told me Emeraud was clean, after gunshots were reported out there. But then I learned that no one went inside, and you weren’t even on the call.”

  “I—” He gave his head a quick shake. “What are you talking about? What gunshots?”

  “A week and a half ago. At the barbecue, you told me about a call to Emeraud, where someone had reported gunshots.” I knew what I was revealing by saying this, but I suspected it didn’t matter at this point. And when he didn’t gasp and call me out, I knew I was right.

  “Smith and the rookie did a drive-by but got called to another incident before they could go in. I wrapped what I was doing first and headed over to follow up, and I went inside then. So I wasn’t lying to you, or covering anything up with the police. Simon probably didn’t read the complete report. The follow-up would have had its own forms.”

  Yep, he knew everything. But the question was how. Olive? My lack of identity-concealing eyeglasses when I was Harmony? Or the connections I’d just made for him?

  It didn’t matter for anything but my need to know All the Things, so I pushed it away.

  “But you know Olive, don’t you? You looked really upset earlier.” I was exaggerating, but he couldn’t know that.

  He sighed and dropped his head. “Yeah, we’ve been friends. Kept in touch when she moved around, reconnected when she moved home. She’s told me some stuff that I kinda bought into, but now . . .” He shook his head. “Whatever she’s into, I can’t support it. Obviously,” he added belatedly with a glance at his badge.

  “What she’s into is CASE.” When he jerked back, I amended, “Or CASE-adjacent. I don’t know if she’s a full member—I don’t know how she can be when she has that sound power, and uses it. But CASE is reportedly here, and targeting Eclipse, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone with a destructive agenda was a filthy hypocrite.”

  His eyes crinkled slightly at the extra spice in my tone on those last words. I explained about Evan and his task force, without naming names because I didn’t know how secret his job was. Sark didn’t ask, especially when I said he’d left town again, but he knew the Airbnb we’d used so he could get more information if he wanted it.

  As we talked, an itch crawled up my spine, an urge to be done here, to stop standing still. “I need to go,” I finally said when he started repeating his questions. “I need to find Angie and Conn.”

  “Angie’s at the tearoom. Or she was last I knew.”

  I cupped my hands at my chin, closing my eyes in relief. “She hasn’t been answering her phone.”

  “They were really busy tonight. A lot of buzz around town after the jewelry store. Simon’s high gossip right now, too. People saw him with your scientist friend. That might be getting more talk among the grapeviners than the explosion.” He tilted his head at me, eyes scanning up and down. “You recovered fast from that, now that I think about it. Expected you to be out of commission for a while.”

  “So did I.” I didn’t explain. I had to keep some mystique. “Anything else, or can I go?”

  “You can go. But I may need to be in touch.”

  “Oh. I have phone issues right now. Use this number if you need it.” I gave him the burner number, wondering at what point it turned into “my phone” instead of “the burner.”

  They waited until I was in my car and leaving the parking lot before they followed me out, turning right when I turned left.

  How many people knew my identity now? Angie, Conn, Simon, Julie, Sark. Emilio and his partner, the EMTs, and an untold number at the hospital. Sark would probably tell Smith. The dispatcher would either figure it out or get it out of Sark, now that I’d broken protocol. And Olive had probably told her partners in or outside of CASE.

  I clenched my shaking hands around the wheel and drove very deliberately on the familiar route to the tearoom. It was over. My existence as Eclipse didn’t have to end, but the way I did it sure did. There was no hope of containing my identity now, and my life was going to be vastly different. I had no idea how to proceed.

  “You finish this situation,” I coached myself aloud. “Find Angie and make sure she’s okay. Gather information. Make sure Conn is alive. And tackle the Kyle and Wig problem. Protect your town. That’s always been the goal, and that never changes.”

  Maybe not. But I was afraid my ability to achieve that goal was nearing its end.

  Chapter 14

  When I got to the tearoom, I parked in the back, on the edge of the grass next to the Dumpster, because the lot was completely full. I put my Harmony dress back on and peeled off the catsuit under it. Maybe it was too late to keep Eclipse in the dark, but I wasn’t making an announcement or leaving blatant clues out there for the whole town to see. I put my hair in a ponytail and added some lipstick, because my face looked pale.

  When I walked inside, several people glanced up from the crowded tables and called my name. It startled me enough to lock me in place for a second before I managed a smile and a wave to everyone in general.

  I made my way to the register at the end of the counter. Trillium was ringing up Carmichael.

  “Hey, Harm, where you been? Did you hear about the jewelry store?”

  “I did. Did they catch anyone yet?”

  He shook his head and handed a twenty to Trill. “Nah, and no leads, either, that I’ve heard about. Supposedly nothing was taken. Weird, huh?”

  I nodded. It was weird, even if the reason for the break-in wasn’t theft. Why not steal some things to cover up their real purpose?

  “Is Angie here?” I asked Trillium.

  “In the back.” She leaned around the cash register and asked, “Who’s that woman Simon’s running around town with?”

  I wanted to claim ignorance again, but that wouldn’t fly later. “A friend of mine from college. She’s helping him with some research.”

  Trill looked like she wanted to ask more, but someone called to me from a nearby table. I turned and saw Bentley and Ralph nursing coffee at a table with a couple of other old-timers. I waved, but Bentley motioned me over.

  “What’s up?” I kept my hands down, because the palms were still pink, evidence of my—and Eclipse’s—wounds. It would be a stretch for anyone to see them and decide I was Eclipse, but if they were already wondering? Big clue.

  “Heard that explosion put both Eclipse and The Brute into the hospital,” one of the other guys said. Ralph grunted, his eyes down on his cup. I wondered if he knew Conn was The Brute. He hadn’t been trying to hide his identity as strongly as I’d hidden mine, and Ralph had helped us in the woods.

  “Yeah, I heard that, too. Anyone know if they’re okay?” I asked, my gaze sweeping the table. All of them shook their heads, except Ralph.

  “Hope they’re all right.” The second guy whose name I didn’t know drained his cup. “We might not need Superman to save the city on the regular, but it’s nice k
nowing they’re out there helping.”

  I warmed a little and hoped my face wasn’t getting red. “Yeah, it is.” I stood awkwardly for half a second and then said, “Hey, Ralph, you know where Conn is? I need to talk to him about something.”

  The guys snickered like ten-year-olds. They’d no doubt seen us on our “date” on Memorial Day.

  Ralph shrugged. “No jobs today.”

  I waited, but he didn’t offer any more. “Okay. Well, thanks. Talk to you guys later.”

  They went back to their gossip session and I headed to find Angie. The kitchen took up most of “the back,” with the rest a warren of storage crammed into an area that needed to be double the size, plus a tiny office. I went to the office first, winding my way past giant boxes of straws and napkins. The murmur of voices and clinking dishes penetrated the quiet room, muffled by the floor-to-ceiling supplies and accompanied by hisses and shouts from the kitchen. The sounds were comfortingly familiar and reminded me of when we were kids and her mom ran the place, but instead of pot roast and apple pie, I inhaled the deep chocolate scent of Tuesday’s dessert special.

  The office was empty, the desk light shining on order sheets spread out on the desk’s surface. I frowned and stepped back out. “Angie?”

  “Over here.”

  Her voice came from the left, on the other side of probably two rows of stuff. I had to walk back toward the entrance, turn left, squeeze past racks of dry goods, and turn right. Angie stood next to another stack of boxes, a white cloth streaked with red dangling from one hand. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and her face was drawn and tired-looking.

  “Are you okay?” I reached for her, but she shook her head and looked behind the boxes, flapping the cloth.

  “It’s not me.”

  “Who—”

  I rounded the corner and stopped short. “Conn.”

  He raised his head, a laborious move that shocked me as much as everything else I cataloged in the seconds I stared at him. He sat on a row of overturned crates, hunched over with his elbows braced on his knees. His jeans were torn, and blood, dirt, and oil—I could smell it—were smeared across his T-shirt. He clutched one forearm, where more blood was seeping through a kitchen towel. He’d pulled his hair back into a stubby tail, the shaved side minimized but still adding to his vulnerability. A cut by his hairline, above his right eye, had been tended a little, obviously by Angie with the cloth she clutched. A bowl of pink-tinged water sat on the floor, surrounded by drips.

  “What happened?” I knelt in front of him, my hand covering his. It was cold. I reached for his other arm, seeking reassurance I knew I wouldn’t get. His skin there was chilled, too, but it was more than that. He was different. Something vital was gone. I swallowed, hard. “Conn.”

  His eyes were tormented when they met mine, his expression desolate, but his tone held urgency. “The fire in the jewelry store. That was meant for you.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, it targeted you. It will—”

  “I know, Conn.” I lifted my hand to his face, gentle. “I’ve got that handled. But you were targeted, too. Is that what happened here?” I squeezed his hand and watched a drop of blood fall to the floor beneath his forearm. “You aren’t healing.”

  “Not anymore. I did. I was mostly healed when I left the hospital.” He nudged my thigh with his knee. “You healed, too?”

  I nodded. “All the light I took before the explosion. I held it for so long my body used it. I don’t think they expected us to be so far from the blast when it went off. Or in front of the empty window we flew out of.” It was the only reason I hadn’t been burned, judging by the actions of the flames in our tests. “Olive came gunning for me tonight but it was barely a tussle. She’s in custody.” I twisted to look at Angie. “What happened here?”

  “Didn’t happen here.” Her voice rasped slightly. She was clearly exhausted. “I’ll let you two talk. We’re busy out front.”

  “Thank you, Angie.” Conn leaned to speak around me. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t—”

  She flashed him a weak smile and made her way around the rows of supplies until we heard the door open and close. I stayed where I was, though I wanted to pull away, hurt by the understanding that he’d come to Angie instead of me when he was in need. Maybe my feelings for him weren’t reciprocated, but if not, that had been a fast change since the hospital this morning. God, had that only been this morning?

  Conn sighed. “Tell me what’s happened on your end, then I’ll tell you about mine.”

  A first-aid kit sat on a crate next to him, so I opened it and finished tending to the gash on his forehead while I brought him up to speed on what Simon, Julie, and I had learned, and then about Olive trying to trap me at the library. After I’d applied a couple of butterfly bandages to his head, I coaxed him into releasing the pressure on his forearm. The gash there was several inches long and ragged, but not too deep, and it had stopped bleeding. I cleaned it, applied some antibacterial ointment with pain reliever in it, taped gauze pads over it, and then wrapped the whole thing in a roll of gauze.

  “When you left the hospital, where were you going to go?” I kept my eyes on the packet of ibuprofen I was trying to open with slippery fingers. Conn took it from me, ripped it open with his teeth, and downed the pills dry.

  Then he flat-out ignored the question. “Olive isn’t working alone.” He shifted to lean against the wall behind him, which put a lot more space between us. I focused on cleaning up the debris around us so he wouldn’t see how that small action wounded me, before sitting beside him, deliberately not closing the gap he’d made.

  “I know. Evan thinks it’s The Chaser, but there’s also something going on with the guys who own Emeraud. They apparently want Pottieger’s Field.”

  He closed his eyes and pressed his thumb and fingers above his temples. “The Chaser? He’s sure?”

  “Pretty sure. But he had to leave. There was a problem in Salt Lake.”

  He dropped his hand and stared at me. “Not Tulie.”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  Conn cursed and folded forward again, forehead to fists, rocking. I rubbed his back. He couldn’t blame himself this time, but if Tulie had been in San Diego with Conn, he was probably a friend, too. “I think Tulie’s okay. Unhurt, anyway. But . . . others died. I’m sorry.” The last came out a whisper.

  He jerked to his feet, one boot knocking against the bowl and sloshing water onto the floor. “I have to go.”

  I rose too. “No.”

  He spun on me, hands still in fists. “You don’t get it.”

  “Then explain.” It didn’t matter what he was going to say. I wasn’t letting him leave. I needed him. Pilton needed him. And he needed to be here, to use what was happening in my small town to get past what had happened in the big cities.

  He stared unseeing at a frosted window embedded in the cinder block that made up the rear wall. “I followed some leads and wound up in a building next to that field—you said it’s called Pottieger’s?”

  “Yeah, it was donated in trust to the city, but the trust is about to expire, so the rec department wants it for soccer fields and a developer is blocking it. The company that owns Emeraud also owns the developer, I think. Simon explained things pretty fast.” I tried to remember what building was next to the field. The rest of the farm had mostly been turned into housing developments. “Are you talking about that old barn?”

  He shrugged. “Someone’s using it for something, but before I could investigate what, I was engaged.”

  In battle, obviously. “Did you see by who?”

  He shook his head. “They stayed in the shadows. They didn’t need to get close, because they’re telekinetic. The first thing they did was hit me with a syringe. Whatever was in it took away my powers.”
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  I gasped, my hand coming up to cover my mouth. The compound Julie had found. I didn’t know why it was on the wall with mine, but it explained why there was only one patch of his. They’d determined, somehow, that it had to be injected. Maybe there had been a test as part of the jewelry store event, but I hadn’t noticed because the part about me was so big. “Oh, Conn.” I swallowed down rising nausea, knowing how he had to be feeling. I’d been afraid my powers were gone, but it had been a short-term fear, unfounded. He had to be in so much pain.

  He paced a little, opening and closing the hand on his injured arm. “The asshole didn’t bother doing anything while it worked. I never felt anything like it before. All my strength drained away. The energy that feeds my powers was just . . . gone. I don’t know how he could tell, but he waited until the effect was complete, then started whipping loose boards and other shit at me from a distance.”

  “How do you know it was a man?” It couldn’t have been Olive, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t working with other women. If we were going to find who did this, we couldn’t make assumptions.

  But Conn gritted his teeth and said, “He had a message for me. I was down, dazed from this.” He pointed to the gash on his head. “I thought he was going to kill me. But he said something like ‘Run away like the little bitch you always are,’ and the voice was male.”

  It was clear the words had hit home. I shot to my feet. “That’s bullshit. Why are you giving any power to someone like that?”