I didn’t think this was a good idea in the slightest. Standing there in front of her house, this quiet suburbia with their white fences and shoveled driveways, the families in their warm homes and the drifting snow curling around chimney smoke, felt too good of a place for the likes of me to be. I was afraid. Terrified of myself. My powers were acting up. Couldn’t even fly for longer than a couple of minutes without falling through the sky. My eyes kept flickering and my body just felt wrong. So wrong. I was getting skittish and nervous, sweaty and fidgety. Tonight was supposed to be different. I was meant to gather all the information I could from Ava and finally get somewhere.

  Instead I’d destroyed a building and everything I’d done in the past several hours. A waste. A fucking waste just like the rest of this year. Gods, maybe it was a good thing that Rebecca was hunting for mom and Bianca. Gods know I would’ve gotten myself into a hole of bullshit so deep I’d find my way back to New Olympus a year from now. What’s weird is that I almost wanted that more than standing on the walkway leading toward the house. My heart was a hammering mess. My guts turning and twisting, aching like all hell. Em held my hand, a little like we used to when we’d run across the road dodging traffic, except this time, I almost felt like getting hit by a bus would be better than being at a home where every single light was on inside apart from the room upstairs.

  I’d only ever once been to Selina’s home, and that was way back in high school.

  Way before I got her killed.

  “Are you ready?” she asked me quietly, squeezing my hand.

  “No,” I said. “But I can’t keep being Olympia without doing this.” I couldn’t keep messing up over and over again, scrambling to do everything at once, just to end up doing nothing at all. What I needed was closure.

  If the Gates family hated me, then…fine, I’ll take that as an answer and leave. I wasn’t coming here looking for their sympathy or their approval. I wasn’t expecting them to let me inside. They didn’t know one of their daughter’s friends was Olympia, or their daughter’s soccer captain was a superhero, too, but that was gonna change. I’d ran from this for too long, and since dad was busy being dead, this was a skeleton I could deal with directly. Not later and not in ten years, but now. Her ghost had clung to me for years. This need to fix everything all at once kept eating away at me, and before I knew it, I was walking up the stairs, standing on the welcome mat, and knocking.

  Emelia stood beside me. She glanced my way. I didn’t look at her. I was focused on the footsteps.

  When the door opened, I froze in place, lost in the gust of warm, buttery air that enveloped us. There was Christmas music playing in the house, coming hand-in-hand with hot cocoa and something in the oven. My heart lurched when the woman who answered the door stared at us, her eyes widening and lips parting. Mrs. Gates hadn’t aged a day since the funeral. She was still a short, happy woman, always with crows feet around her eyes from smiling so much and a clinging scent of flowers from her garden seeping off her soft brown skin. But right now, she looked like she’d just seen a ghost. I opened my mouth to speak, to say something, but my tongue went on strike.

  Em broke the silence first: “Hi, Mrs. Gates. It’s been a while.”

  She wiped her flour-caked hands on her apron, a smile parting her lips. “God above,” she whispered. “Unless I’m losing my mind, it’s actually you.” She pulled Em into a tight hug, one that made her grunt. “Oh, my, if I ever thought Christmas couldn’t get any crazier, here comes a movie star.” She puts Em at arm’s length, pursing her lips in an attempt to not smile anymore, but that was a losing battle. “You look smaller. Must be that Hollywood diet they put you actors on. Luckily for you, I still remember exactly how you like your cookies, nice and sugary.”

  “You sound like my mom,” Em said, laughing a little. “I’m eating fine, I promise.”

  “Nadia?” a man’s voice said, a moment before Mr. Gates came from the living room, still in his work shirt and slacks, colorful socks and loose tie. He nearly burst into laughter when he saw Emelia. “Christmas came early!”

  “Exactly what I said,” Mrs. Gates told him. “Can you believe how tall she’s gotten?”

  Mr. Gates offered her a handshake and a grin. Salt and pepper beard, and he’d cut what little hair he’d last had when I saw him. “I swear, kids these days need to start respecting their elders and stop growing for once.”

  “A couple more years and I’ll be taller than you,” Em said, smiling.

  “Tell me,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you still with that Capes’ boy, Grant? Because—”

  “Oh, stop it,” Mrs. Gates said, poking his ribs. “A teenager doesn’t talk about their love life with oldies.”

  “I’m just saying that I’ve got a brother who’s kid just got into Olympus U. Great athlete, smart as a—”

  “Grant and I are…complicated,” Em said, her voice hitching. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “Uh, hey,” I said. Finally, like the two of them remembered someone else was here, they turned. I cleared my throat before I continued. “It’s, uh, really great to see you guys. Don’t look a day over thirty.” I laughed a little.

  Then stopped, because they raised their brows, almost confused.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Gates said, “I don’t think I quite remember…”

  Mrs. Grant snapped her fingers. “You were Veronica’s girl.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Ronie’s daughter.”

  “Well,” Mr. Gates said, looking from Em to his wife and finally myself. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  “How’s your mother these days?” his wife asked. “Still working in pharmaceuticals?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Something like that.”

  They don’t remember me.

  What…what am I doing here?

  Em put her hand on my shoulder and shook me gently. “Rylee and I were in the neighbourhood, and we figured we should pass by and say hello. We haven’t seen you in ages. And what’s a better time than Christmas?”

  “Looks like you girls are in luck,” Mrs. Gates said, shepherding Emelia inside. I followed, because I didn’t know what else to do. “I was just about finished making a cake for the first responders. Carl got into a bit of an oopsie at work the other day and they were on the scene like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Damage Control might hurt the wallet every month but without them, I’ve got no idea what would’ve happened. They deserve a slice and you two can have a bit of a taster in the meantime, just to make sure old Nadia still has it in her, too.”

  “Oh, I’m not, um, that great at cooking,” I said. “Or doing much with my hands, especially cooking.”

  She reached for my hand. I pretended to rub them for heat. “Anything you can do is more than helpful.”

  “I can help you finish up,” Em said. “Rylee can sit this one out, she’s pretty exhausted from work.”

  “Really?” Mr. Gates said, settling into a reclined armchair, a still smoking pipe beside him. “What kind of work do you do? I hear that a lot of you young folk are starting to get into all kinds of internet shenanigans.”

  Em mouthed, I’ve got it here, meaning I had to handle being in the same vicinity as the man who I’d only ever seen cry once in my life.Being here in this house felt surreal, odd. Like I was trampling all over her grave. Even worse was sitting on the couch, right on the edge, fiddling with my fingers because I couldn’t find anything else I should do with them. I was nervous. Very, very nervous. Being in here meant I had to focus on keeping myself in check, because the last thing I wanted was to collapse their house in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record for the city. Focus on your breathing, focus on your breathing, focus on your fucking breathing, Rylee.

  “Not exactly,” I said, as Em and Mrs. Gates started chatting in the kitchen. “I’m like a first responder.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I hope you don’t mind me asking how that particularly works at your age.”

  I had to spit it out eventually. Should I just do it all of a sudden? Do I build up to it?

  “Well, people have a problem, and I sometimes go and solve that problem.”

  He didn’t say anything, just nodded curiously as he smoked his pipe. “And how’s the pay?”

  “It’s kinda like charity work?” I said. “I mean, helping people should be for free, I think.”

  “If that were the case, I most certainly would be a goner,” he said. “The firm got attacked during the Kaiju mess. Old foundation got cracked. I was in late one night when a gang of spider-people attacked.” He shook his head. “Terrifying bastards, tell you what. Put me in a coffin of spiderwebs. The thing looks like silk, but it is nothing like it at all.” I nodded, not really liking where this was going. “Luckily, when you get the premium package with Damage Control, you get some kind of app on your phone that tracks your location and such. I guess they somehow knew where I was when my phone broke and went dead. Lo and behold, Adam came to the rescue.”

  “Every penny is worth it,” Mrs. Gates called from the kitchen. “Who would have thought a superhero would save him?” She came over with a mug of hot cocoa for me. I cupped it and thanked her. “Just like Zeus, too.”

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  I sipped the cocoa and nodded. “Yeah, real chip off the old block, that guy.”

  “Unlike Olympia,” Mr. Gates said. “That kid is nothing but useless.”

  “It’s Christmas, Carl,” his wife said. “We shouldn’t get into that. It’s the holidays, get into the spirit.”

  “Oh, I’m cheery, alright, and I wouldn’t be if I had to hope and pray she was the one who would save me.”

  I chewed my tongue and held the mug. “I guess she’s just trying her best, you know.”

  He puffed out a plume of smoke. “I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she got cold feet.”

  “From what?” I asked.

  “From the competition,” he said, leaning forward. “Adam is doing what she did, and better.”

  “He’s doing it only because the government is making him do it,” I said, taking a sip.

  “Which is great for this city,” he said. “Give the boy a month or so and everything will be back to how it used to be. Lower crime rates and even less Kaiju gangs wandering around. Putting him out there was the best—”

  “I was there when the plane crashed.”

  It almost felt like the world had stopped. Mrs. Gates froze. She’d been kneading dough, but now her hands hovered above the lumpy mass and Emelia watched me from the kitchen, her lips pursed and eyes full of concern.

  Mr. Gates, however, sat there with one leg crossed over the other, pipe in hand and smoke around him.

  “I…didn’t think there were any survivors,” Mrs. Gates said. She smiled at me. “You’re very lucky.”

  “Three hundred people,” Mr. Gates said quietly. “One of the worst aviation disasters ever, and—”

  “Carl,” his wife said dryly. He stopped speaking, but kept staring at me. “The poor girl must be—”

  “It was too heavy,” I said, putting the mug down on the table. “It was going down too fast, and the wind—” I stopped, looked at Mrs. Gates, and was there to catch her in the same moment she fainted. Electricity crackled around me as I lifted her in my arms and laid her down on the couch. I stood over her, then got spun around by the shoulder to face Mr. Gates. I looked up at him. I listened to his heart, smelt his anger and the chemicals churning away inside his brain. He wants to hit me. His fists were tight and so were his forearms. But he pushed me aside and knelt beside his wife, patting her forehead and angling her head until her eyelids fluttered open. “I tried my best.”

  Mr. Gates turned his head, his hand holding his wife’s. “How dare you step into my fucking home.”

  “I wanted to apologize,” I said quietly. “You can hate me, you deserve that. Selina and I both got to the plane at the same time.” He stood, towering over me. I didn’t move. Christmas music played, the cookies in the oven were beginning to darken and burn. “It was a mess. Some kind of engine failure or the plane got hit by debris but I don’t know. News headlines were just conspiracies and it didn’t matter at that time. It was coming down—”

  He grabbed my t-shirt and pulled me closer. “My daughter,” he said through his teeth, “is dead.”

  “I tried to save her,” I said. I felt odd. Numb. Not here. Not staring at him and his reddening eyes.

  “Her casket was empty,” he said loudly. “We buried a picture of my little girl.”

  “Selina—”

  “You don’t deserve to say her name,” he snarled.

  “Tempest,” I said, “didn’t want to give up.” He was breathing hard and fast, his hand shaking the longer he clenched my collar. “We tried to stop it from going down. But I couldn’t lift it. I just wasn’t strong enough.” I swallowed, my mouth dry and bitter. “I tried and I tried, but we couldn’t. The storm was too harsh to get them all out in time, but she kept trying, even when I told her it was hopeless, because I was the one who gave up first.” Emelia crept closer but didn’t cross the foyer. I looked into Mr. Gates’ eyes, trying to keep my voice level. “I left her there.”

  He shoved me back. I didn’t stumble and didn’t move backward. He stumbled back, glaring. He put his finger to my chest and barked, “You’re no hero. What you are is a coward! A goddamn coward, and nothing like—”

  “Carl,” his wife said. He turned to look at her. She struggled to sit upright. “Stop yelling at her.”

  “She left our little girl there to die, Nadia!” he shouted. “She deserves prison. Deserves the death—”

  “Stop it,” she whispered, shaky as she took her legs off the couch. Mrs. Gates looked at me, her brow soft as she reached her hand out to take her husband’s forearm so she could stand up again. She stared at me, and I stared at her, neither of us saying a word. Slowly, she walked forward. Mr. Gates grabbed her hand, stopping her. She glanced over her shoulder at him, wordlessly telling him to slip his fingers through hers and let her get closer, and she did, slowly, until we were face to face. I raised my chin because she deserved to see me in full at the very least. My ears felt hot. My head was a hive of noisy thoughts. Say it. Say it so I can leave and not have to be in your life again.

  “I want you to tell me something and I want you to tell me the truth,” she said.

  “Anything,” I said quietly.

  She opened her mouth to speak, stopped, then cleared her throat. “Did she cry?”

  “Mrs. Gates—”

  “Did my daughter cry?” she asked me.

  I shook my head, then nodded slowly. “Yes, she did. At the very end.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t nod or speak or blink. “When did she stop trying?”

  “The last time I heard her heartbeat was just before it hit the mountains.”

  “That didn’t answer any fucking—”

  She stopped her husband with a glance, then looked at me again. “Did she, or did she not, give up?”

  “Selina had a saying,” Em said, standing behind me. “Whenever we were playing sports or saving lives or doing anything, she’d always say that she’d keep trying as long as her heart kept beating, and then she’d stop.”

  “She’s the reason I haven’t given up,” I said. “I’m half the superhero she was. I’m half of who she was as a person. I was so jealous of her. Her life was so perfect. You both loved her. You let her be a superhero because you trusted her. She was smart and she was popular and she was happy. So fucking happy. And I wanted to be like her.”

  “So that’s what you did?” he said, his voice like gravel. “You left her to die out of jealousy?”

  “Carl—”

  “Because your family was a mess, you thought to make our lives hell, too?”

  “I…” I sighed, because how was I meant to tell him that I’d been there when it hit, right there to use my body to try to cover her from the impact. She’d had the storm in a violent frenzy, so bad it had been impossible to get through. I got there to cover her. I got there in time to see the look on her face, a look that burned itself right into my mind. It was weird, like she wasn’t even there in that moment when her skull was inches away from the stone. Like a part of her was already dead and she was going off instinct alone. Save the people, damn myself. But then the plane came down on top of me, and I had smashed right into her, because I hadn’t been half as strong as I was back then than I am right now. Maybe if I’d been more Olympia and less Rylee, I would’ve been able to do it.

  Maybe if I knew Lucas was stopping my powers from developing earlier, I would have saved her.

  But I could speculate all I wanted, because it wouldn’t bring her back. Waking up in that wreckage was a nightmare.

  Being covered in Selina and gasoline, shrapnel and gore, was worse.

  I guess at that point, I’d made an unconscious decision to give up being human. To lock it all away and be more. Be like dad. Be like the race of people who hated me most. The deaths wouldn’t hurt because they were just humans, right? There were billions of them and they died by the dozens most times, but it wouldn’t happen if I was anything like my old man. Dad would have saved them. Zeus would have gotten the aircraft corrected and the photos and the interviews and the applaud, because he was just so strong and powerful and si fucking perfect

  But I guess I owed the world an apology, because all they had now was me.

  “I’d like you to get out of my house,” Mrs. Gates said. “Thank you for coming here tonight.”

  “You don’t deserve to be his daughter,” her husband said quietly. “You’re half of what he was.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck. “I wish I wasn’t anything like him either.”

  “Selina taught her how to fly,” Emelia said. They looked at her. “Not Zeus, but her.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “She was taught to fight by learning how to not get hurt by the same person the entire world loved. Her mother kicked her out of her home for keeping Selina’s spirit alive and wanting to be a superhero. I’ve watched her bleed and sweat and cry for this city, just for nobody to stop and wonder what was going through her mind. She sleeps barely an hour. Eats when the world slows enough to let her. She’s a slave to her dad’s shadow and everything else the world keeps expecting of her.” Em stepped closer. “Rylee didn’t want to hurt you tonight. She wanted to tell you the truth. Whether you hate her or not, she was gonna keep trying to be better. Just give her that chance.”

  “A chance?” he asked me. “It’s been years, and she’s still not any better.”

  “Where are you staying now?” Nadia asked. “Do you have a home?”

  “Nadia, it doesn’t—”

  “Would you let the girl speak?” she said dryly.

  “I did,” I said quietly. “Not anymore.”

  “Where’s your mother?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, voice catching.

  Mrs. Gates blinked, the tears in her eyes slowly dissipating. “You’ll eat with us and sleep in the guest room,” she said, and then continued before either myself or her husband could say anything. “Only because what kind of person would let you back into the cold without anything to go back to? I raised my daughter to be kind. I can’t turn you around and keep preaching the same thing. My heart aches and I’ll need time to understand what you’ve come here to say, but if I’m to hold a grudge for the rest of my life, then Selina would never forgive me.”

  “I…I can’t stay here,” I said, struggling to keep my voice smooth. “I need to—”

  “Child,” she said, holding my hands. “If there’s one thing you need, it’s rest.”

  “But—”

  “Selina wasn’t an angel either,” she said. “We fought and we argued, we spat and we cried, but God, every day I miss that girl so, so much. She made her mistakes. She collapsed in my arms, terrified of what she was capable of doing.” She stepped closer. My heart only gets quicker inside my chest. “But our doors were always open, and our arms were always waiting. She was our daughter and nothing less, no matter what happened, and you’ve got the world against you, wanting you gone, or wanting you away, but tonight, you’re not Olympia. You’re our guest.”

  “This is ludicrous, Nadia,” her husband muttered. “Selina—”

  “Is not here, Carl,” she said, her voice hitching when he looked at her. “But you look into my eyes and tell me that our little girl would have told Rylee to get out of our home and kill herself slowly trying to save this city.”

  He said nothing, but his jaw remained tight and his brow low as he looked at me.

  Mrs. Gates squeezed my hands. “Now come,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind burnt cookies.”