No vacations, huh? Or do you have to fill out a request in triplicate? He grinned, turning onto his side so it looked like he was doing the sidestroke—without stroking—as they floated along over the sleeping town. I bet you have to get permission to marry each other.
Oh, puh-lease. Don't even talk about that. How come you haven't married Lanie or Felicity? Jane pulled away from him, going a little faster, while her heart skipped a few beats. Why had she asked? She was not interested. He was an interfering, over-protective, opinionated smart-alec.
Barf city. Kurt caught up with her easily. It'd be like marrying my sister. No, really, what are the rules? Do you get matched up, computer dating gone out of control? Breed for talents?
Nobody has managed that yet. Hardly any of us get married. If anybody does, they manage to find someone who they can either hide their Gifts and duties from, or someone who accepts them and doesn't get freaked out. Or the Gifts are so minor, it doesn't matter. It isn't like Spider-man hiding his battle wounds from Aunt Mae.
What? Nobody has bred with another superhero to find out if they even can? Kurt pulled up to a full stop and hung there, his mouth dropping open.
Amused that it obviously meant so much to him, Jane circled back around and pulled up facing him. The roof of her building was only a street away.
None of us have had children with ordinary Humans. Which is weird, because you said this Longfellow guy does have children and grandchildren. Did he marry another Lost Boy, or an ordinary Human?
As far as I know, Charlotte Longfellow is an ordinary Human, although she was one fierce librarian in her day. That's how they met. He was trying to steal some books from her library and she tackled him. Kurt shook his head, his attempt at a smile failing and turning to a thoughtful frown. Okay, that's depressing. Felicity is pretty serious about this guy in security. I know she's starting to freak about the whole idea, can she or can't she? But if others can't, not knowing might be better. Know what I mean?
You really care about Felicity, don't you? Jane liked that about him.
Like I said. Sister.
I haven't really thought about it before. She gestured toward the roof of her building and he nodded and they resumed their flight. What if we can't interbreed with the people here? What are the chances we're not even human? What if we really are from another planet?
If we're from another planet, how come we didn't get here all at once? How come we keep finding abandoned kids around Neighborlee? How come we can't find any spaceships? Kurt threw back at her in rapid-fire succession, yet with a grin that defused most of Jane's irritation. She decided to laugh, but that didn't wipe away the feeling that something about him bothered her, despite the growing list of things she liked.
They laughed together, muffling the sound behind their hands as they drifted down through the roof into her apartment.
"You know what'd be really ironic?" he said, as he reached through the side of her cookie jar and took out two. He tossed one to her.
"Everything seems kind of ironic lately. What in particular are you talking about?"
"Wouldn't it be funny if we found out it's intentional, that we were sent to Earth to breed and improve the Human race, and so we're kind of programmed so we can't have kids with our own kind?"
"Would that be so bad? At least with one ordinary Human parent, the kids have some stability. What kind of parents would any of us make, flying off at a moment's notice to rescue some idiots who can't even think for themselves? Don't our own kids, especially superhero kids, deserve better?" Jane sank down on the futon. "Yeah, like any of us would be able to relax enough to even find out if we can breed or not. Can you just see me, flying around with a pregnant tummy out to here?" She slouched down on the couch and gestured a round dome over her stomach.
"Yeah," Kurt whispered. "I could."
He got an unreadable look in his eyes—or maybe the problem was that she didn't want to understand that look—and she felt something tremble deep inside her flat stomach.
Too soon! You just met the guy. You hated him until a day ago. What is your problem?
"I really would like to find out how fast I can fly," Jane hurried to say. Panic did wonders for her creativity, she realized in that moment. She grinned at Kurt and bit deep into her cookie. "I know just who can help us, too."
* * * *
Kurt was duly impressed when Katie zapped up the stairs to Jane's apartment in one step. Katie let out a yelp that nearly shattered Jane's wave cookie jar—the stronger reason for her nom de guerre of Sonic—when she saw the stranger step out of Jane's bathroom.
"So you're the Handyman, huh?" Katie calmed immediately, as soon as Jane made the hurried introductions. She settled down with her usual cup of chamomile tea, triple strength, that Jane always had ready for her regular visits.
"My friends call me Kurt," he said with a shrug. He leaned back against the kitchen counter with his elbows propped up behind him.
Jane found she was relieved by that pose. It made Katie's usual sport of bun watching and judging nearly impossible. She didn't want to think why she considered Kurt's hindquarters her domain right that moment. And she probably wouldn't let herself think about her mixed-up, conflicting and ever-changing feelings and the reasons behind them for quite a while.
"Friend of my friend," Kurt added with a grin directed at Jane.
"Uh, if you're rewriting that old saying, then a friend of my friend is my enemy?" She traded grins with him. "So, to what do I owe the honor of meeting the infamous Handyman?" Katie drawled.
"Infamous? How much have you been griping to her about me?"
"Not nearly as much as you deserve," Jane retorted. Definitely, she didn't like it that Kurt and Katie were so comfortable together, so fast. "We need your help."
"Hey, I'm not a marriage counselor." Kate burst out laughing a second before Jane felt her face burn and her heart try to drop out of her chest. "Sorry. Bad joke. There must be some bad rumor going around. Suddenly I am getting hit on by the worst of the jerks. You thought Abercrombie was bad? They expect me to be flattered. Haven't they figured out yet why we haven't been chasing them down all this time? So, what's the problem?"
She laughed louder when Jane explained the timing question and Kurt explained his confusion why they needed Katie's help specifically.
"I can handle a stop watch as well as anyone," he said.
"Katie doesn't need a stop watch at all." Jane summoned a king-size bar of dark chocolate from inside the top cupboard. "She can tell you down to the hundredth of a second and the centimeter how fast and how far you flew, or ran, or swam or dug. Besides—" She tore the wrapper off and paused to study the bar full of nuts and raisins, and wondered if she should have chosen the chocolate-covered espresso bean bar instead. "We've raced, but not seriously. You got me wondering if I can keep up with Sonic. Or maybe beat her."
"Nobody can fly faster than I can run," Katie said, jabbing herself in the breastbone with both thumbs. She winced, earning grins from Jane and Kurt.
"Nobody who's tried, at least."
"So, where are we going to race?" Kurt hurried to say, forestalling the rebuttal visibly ready to spill off Katie's lips.
"I figure, after the debacle with Evan, nobody is going near the quarries for a while." Jane held out her hands. "Need a lift?"
"I'll beat you there," Katie retorted, and left a momentary blur behind as she flew out the door, down the stairs and out into the darkness before the sound of displaced air crackled through the room.
"I like her." Kurt slid into phase and arched up through the ceiling.
Jane grinned and let him take the lead. She knew better than to waste energy before a race, and battling with words and wit was definitely a waste of energy.
Chapter Thirteen
During the third race, around several piles of fragments and through a tunnel dug under a stand of trees, the tingle of energy in her fingertips changed frequency, as if another note had entered the chord of resonance
from her, Kurt and Katie all using their Gifts. Ever since her discussion with Kurt, she had thought hard about the differences in the buzz in her fingertips and the back of her neck, the stirring of frequencies and differences in temperature that signaled the use of power. She was able to tune out most of the energy she, Katie and Kurt expended in their racing. This new buzz had a chill, rather than the pleasant tickle of the three of them going at full strength and not paying any attention because they were having fun.
Despite all her second thoughts and rethinking what she thought she knew, this did not feel like the wavering hum of an adolescent just coming into his or her Gift.
"I didn't hear anything," Kurt said, when she reported the sensation, after they had returned to her apartment.
"Maybe we were too loud?" Katie suggested. "I mean, we were going pretty fast. All that wind in our ears, y'know?"
"I think we should go back and see what's there," Jane said. "Whoever we sensed at work the other night was protecting Penny. That makes it kind of personal for me. I don't want some off-balance, untrained kid running around zapping anybody who makes him mad. With our luck, this time the emerging Gift will be powerful, violent, and have a temper." She shook her head, fighting a sudden shiver that had nothing to do with the chill of mid-winter.
In fact, now that she thought about it, the night had been strangely warm. As if their flying shenanigans had generated too much heat and it lingered.
"Doesn't it strike you as a little strange that both run-ins with the emerging talent were at the quarry? Kids don't have any business hanging around out there," Kurt said.
"I did. And according to stories you've told me about you and Lanie and Felicity, you certainly did. When you feel like a freak, you go where you feel comfortable."
"Why did the quarry feel comfortable when you were a kid?" he shot back.
"I don't know. The place just did."
"But this is my home territory."
"Catch up if you feel like it." She jumped, arms stretched out toward the ceiling before she slid into phase. Jane gasped, feeling a slight shock of ceiling plaster and wood scrape at her before she was quite phased through.
That was a wake-up call, if she ever heard—or felt—one. The last thing she needed was to let her emotions get tangled with her duty. She had to remember that Kurt was more motivated to protect Neighborlee, and any emerging Gifted, than he was motivated to work with her. If he thought it necessary to distract her and lie to her and keep her from finding out the truth before he did, he would. No matter how friendly he had become, how comfortable it felt to work with him, he was working with her only as long as it benefited him and his duty to Neighborlee. Hadn't he just proved it, going all cave man and territorial the moment something strange happened?
Come out, come out, wherever you are, she called, and concentrated on sending her thoughts as deeply and intensely as she could.
Jane nearly tumbled out of the sky when she felt the tingling in her left hand fingertips, but not the right. Her left arm hung down while her right hand reached up toward the moonlight. That was a clear directional indicator if she was ever going to get one.
Hello! She sent her thoughts downward and reduced altitude. The buzzing tickle—the sense of chill—grew stronger in her left hand.
"You want to come out where the rest of us can see you?" Katie called in a stage whisper.
Jane looked down and saw Katie and Kurt standing on the lip of the deepest water-filled pit of the old quarry. Just as she could see anyone who was in phase while she was in phase, Jane could see a residue of talent in people after they used it. Katie had a blue-white corona that surrounded her for a few heartbeats after she had zap-run from one place to another. That same corona lingered around Kurt, fading just a little sooner than it did from Katie. That showed what power he had tapped into to get here.
Which meant Jane was able to outrun whatever energy field he used to mimic her power. He had been forced to mimic Katie to get here and catch up with her.
She wasn't sure she felt good about that discovery.
Don't go breaking brain cells trying to be reasonable, she added, her silent scold turning into a rueful chuckle. She landed and slid out of phase.
"Feel it?" she asked.
"I don't hear anything." Kurt spoke softly and didn't look at either of them. "That doesn't mean anything."
"Oh, thanks for that bit of good news," Katie joked. She stepped back from the rock lip. "You know, I used to love skinny-dipping when I was a kid, but that stuff makes me think of those really corny horror movies, where there were always ugly, lumpy, shadowy things hiding in the water. Know what I mean?"
"Creatures from other worlds, that found a crack in the dimensions and came looking for a snack," Jane murmured. She shivered, but it wasn't the fun shiver she always got from watching those movies. That dark water looked unbearably cold and unfathomably black. How come it wasn't covered with a skin of ice, like some of the other water-filled holes in the quarry?
"I think we all pushed ourselves a little too hard tonight," she said. "Let's get out of here."
Jane stayed looking down into the water when the other two started to walk away. She rubbed the fingers of her left hand against her thumb, feeling a phantom of the chill, itching vibrations. An echo of what had been there before.
"You still feel something?" Katie asked.
"I don't know." She gestured down, as if she could go through the rock.
"Maybe the kid we're looking for is a frogman."
"Amphibian?" Kurt took a step closer to the edge of the water again. "That would be new. Don't know how useful it would be."
"Yeah. Even the Sub-Mariner was getting ticked off about the pollution in the oceans, the last time I read comic books," Katie offered with a grin. "Who'd want to get posted to the coast? Sun, sand and surf. Tanning. Seafood."
"Antarctica. Fighting illegal whaling and oil spills," Jane said with a flat grin.
Usually, she would enjoy countering Katie's always-optimistic viewpoint. It was a game they had created during their few short years as roommates. Tonight though, with the moonlight shining on the dark water, she wanted to just get out of there and go to bed.
Yeah, sleep sounded wonderful. Dreams. Rest. Escape from the disappointment of this evening.
What had ever made her think Kurt could be a friend?
"Whoever he is, we're not going to recruit the kid tonight." She stepped away from the edge of the water. "I'm wiped. You have a delivery to make, I have a business to run, and you..." She flicked her gaze at Kurt, who walked a little too close to her as they followed the gravel trail away from the swimming hole. "I assume you're going to meet with Lanie and Felicity. Something tells me you haven't been reporting to them about me. Otherwise we would have had the big meeting Lanie was talking about before. I assume she mentioned my meeting Felicity because she suspected things, and was testing me?"
"Yeah. Pretty much. We've been recovering from the mess with Big Ugly, other stuff going on. Taking things slow." He shrugged, and still didn't look at her. That was a danger sign, in Jane's past experience. "What about the kid we've found?"
"How do you know we've found anybody?"
"Jane—"
"Look, could you two get a little louder, so the whole town hears?" Katie broke in, after turning her head back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.
"Everything we think we heard or felt tonight could just be an echo, you know?" Jane stopped and glared, trying to convince him with the sparks inside before it blew up into anger.
How she knew she was going to get blazing furious in a couple more minutes, she had no idea. A small, quiet corner of her mind sat back in amazement, just watching. This wasn't her usual reaction to things.
Then again, Jane silently rebutted herself, how did she know what her true reaction to anything really was? She had been indoctrinated in the principles and actions and reactions that Reginald and Demetrius felt were appropriate. Now that sh
e had finally reached her "enough" point and broken away, maybe she was only now learning about her real feelings and beliefs. It was frightening, but she thought it was exhilarating, too.
If she could only stay free long enough to figure it out for herself.
"If there really is a kid," she said, turning to Katie, "no one reports to the Old Poops. No more yanking kids away from the only home they know. Did you ever think they might not know best?"
"Jane!" Katie stared at her.
Looking at her wide-eyed friend, Jane relented. She felt some amusement at the sense of shock rippling through herself. As if she had split into several different people and couldn't quite believe what was coming out of her mouth. Or the feelings churning deep inside.
"Suits me," Kurt said, nodding slowly. "Although, if it were me, I might not mind getting taken away and having things explained to me. If we hadn't found each other, Lanie and Felicity and me, we might have gone crazy like the Parker kid. Of course, he had help, but..." He shook his head. "We've done way too much tonight. Need some time to think and decompress. Mind if I hitch a ride back to town with you? I'm used to flying, borrowing from Lanie. No offense, Katie, but running isn't my thing."
"None taken." She grinned at him and tipped two fingers off her left eyebrow in salute.
"No problem." Jane lifted her arms to the sky and slid into phase. She waited just long enough for Kurt to phase, and then put on speed, aiming toward her apartment. "See you there, Katie?"
"I don't think so," her friend called. "I have work to do. Thanks for reminding me."
What's her problem? Jane wondered. She looked back in time to see Katie vanish in a flash of blue-white light, heading in the opposite direction.
She's not going to report us, tattletale about the kid, is she? Kurt asked.
What kid? We haven't found anything yet.
* * * *
Jane slept badly. Or, she thought she did.
As far as she could tell, she went to bed around one in the morning and totally lost consciousness the moment her head hit the pillow. The next thing she knew, the sun was shining through her window and into her eyes, the radio was blasting downstairs in the spa and she smelled the raspberry white chocolate cappuccino she wanted to taste-test for the spa.
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