I didn’t trust myself to stay the night with the Gates family, and all I could really do was leave a note on the kitchen counter saying thanks for everything, but I really had to go. I know, I know—it was shitty. Very shitty. And I needed to start making a better habit of talking things through with people, but my head was a mess of so many thoughts and jumbled emotions that I didn’t trust myself not to freak out again and blow up their house. I felt like a bomb. One that could go off in a heartbeat without any warning. I needed to clear my head. To distract myself somehow from the overflowing voice in my mind that kept screaming: You need to fix everything before it’s too late, Rylee.

  The clock just kept ticking and the days kept slipping away, and Bianca was still out there, so far away I couldn’t even begin searching for her. But that was a constant nagging thought. One that wouldn’t go away no matter who I spoke to, not until she came back. So I let the thought seep into the crevices of my brain and fill my veins with ice until I was numb to it. I told myself to shoulder it, swallow it, and trust that Becky was actually going to do her job, but I guess that also meant I eventually had to start doing mine. Unfortunately, the city needed its superheroes more than it needed a teenager who couldn’t figure her shit out. The family getting robbed and the woman having her house broken into don’t really care what my personal life is devolving into when there’s a gun looking them dead in the eyes. So there I stood in a dingy motel bathroom, wearing my new costume, staring at her.

  Becky hadn’t been home when I went back to grab the briefcase. She’d left a note on the fridge directing me to a file on the kitchen counter. A breakdown of everything they’d been doing so far. Surveillance. Questioning. How close she was getting and the biggest culprits: a woman called Lady Kami, Lucas, the Triumvirate, and other names I’d read and read and didn’t even know. A sticky note had been stuck on the back of the file. Rylee’s copy, it read. I’d almost smiled, then stopped myself and put the file in my bedroom. In and out, that was what I had to do.

  And that’s what I did, because now I barely even recognized the girl standing in the mirror.

  I had washed my face in the sink and brushed my teeth, tried to unknot my hair and look clean. But that wasn’t the problem. I hadn’t worn a costume in ages, especially not one like this. The upper half was a bright red with golden accents, a lightning bolt stopping halfway down my torso and sleeves that ended with fingerless white gloves. Blue tights and red boots that went up to my knees. The weirdest part about the new suit was the belt around my waist, kind of like a sash, I guess, big enough to hang a little but not too loose that it flapped around. Stylish with compartments for…stuff. Didn’t know what. I’m not used to carrying around lock pics and flashlights considering my fingers and eyes do most of those jobs. Guess I’ll just keep it on, just in case. And that was now me.

  And it just felt so weird.

  Like I was playing dress up.

  Imposter syndrome, I thought to myself, shouldering my backpack. Let’s see if you’ve still got it.

  Oh, right, and I had a mask now—one that fit perfectly around my eyes and nothing more. I hated to break it to Becky that most of the city’s underbelly knew who I was, anyway, but the sentiment counted, and the mask fit me well enough to keep its place inside one of my belt pouches. For now, though, people needed Olympia more.

  Rylee needed to take a back seat for a while, catch her breath, think things through—just not be here.

  She’d fucked up enough getting into her own head. I needed to keep it simple. Straightforward.

  For my own sake, before I fully devolved into a depressed mess, and come on, nobody needs that around. That kind of superhero never gets anything done, anyway. Human emotions, am I right? Annoying little things.

  I sighed quietly through my nose as I left the bathroom and stepped into the night. Not quite ready.

  But I will be. I had to be. Bianca would want me to be.

  So I will be.

  Lower Olympus was a little worse than I remembered, because it wasn’t every day that I’d find a hive of spiders mummifying the residents of a grungy hotel right beside an active shootout between two gangs. I mean, come on. I didn’t even need a police scanner to find the chaos. The gangsters were easy enough—stole their guns in half the time it took a bullet to rip out from a barrel, and had them bound and gagged outside the closest precinct in under a minute. I had a gut feeling I should dig a little deeper into why these guys hated each other so much, and why half of the guys were wearing nothing but pure white clothes, but that wasn’t my problem right now. Thugs, check.

  Now it was time to deal with the man-eating spiders, since Damage Control’s premium package seemingly didn’t come with pest control, either. I wasn’t going to make a spectacle out of it—no reason. I came in through the front door and used my body heat to weaken the webs. Most of the bodies I found emulsified in foul-smelling, sticky thread were already rotting halfway through. I sucked air through my teeth most of the time going from corpse to corpse, listening for heartbeats or the faintest movements of breathing. When I found them, I freed them, got them outside, and asked them to give me a quick sec so I could check back on the others. I’d gone through about half the hive, through most of the rooms and the floors, when the first spider appeared, and Gods, it was gross. Almost horrifying. A human-Kaiju mix, with eight arms sprouting from their back, spindly and long and bent and awkward. Their mouth was a wide slit and its eyes, all human, flickered and turned in their own direction, covering their head. I almost barfed in my mouth when I saw their underbelly; eggs were buried in their skin in the hundreds.

  I filled their body with electricity, enough to power half the city, I was sure, and popped them like a zit. I made sure my mouth was closed and so were my eyes, and moved in a sudden jerk to get their gory remains off my body. I shuddered at the stink of it still in my hair, but I had three more bodies in my arms by the time I got back to the others waiting outside, shivering and shaking, looking like zombies with their hollow cheeks, sunken temples, and yellowed eyes and teeth. I gave them all a jolt of electricity to keep them awake for a little bit longer and to liven their spirits a little, being Christmas and all, then took them, one by one, however long it took, to the nearest hospital. The asshole at the receptionist, flipping through his magazine, told me to fill out a few forms and maybe they could hope to get them some rooms if they’ve got the right insurance—everything is just so expensive right now and everyone’s so busy, and besides, they look healthy enough. We’ll give them some penicillin and move it.

  If it wasn’t for the doctor that dropped her coffee mug at the sight of how many people were suddenly in the waiting area, most of them delirious, others so out of it they were mumbling and muttering, chewing on their own lips so hard they started bleeding, I would have told the guy very thoroughly that he’d be wishing he had some of his own insurance if I got my hands on him. When everyone was shuttled to the ICU, I turned to head out again.

  “Hey,” a voice said. I paused and turned, the sliding automatic doors open. It was the doctor from before, her glasses askew and her white coat rolled up to the elbows. “Thanks. We’ll try to make sure they all make it.”

  I shrugged. “Great.”

  “Another thing,” she said. I sighed very quietly and turned around again. “Are you alright?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, some of us thought you were dead,” she said. Several nurses were in the corridor just out of sight, but I could hear them gossiping amongst themselves as they hurried into different rooms. One of them even peaked around the corner, locking eyes with me for a split second, nodding, and darting away again. “Thought I’d ask.”

  “Well,” I said, spreading my arms, “I’m not. Just needed to figure a few things out.”

  “And those kids,” she continued, and this time, I really did pay attention. “The ones you brought here?”

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  I didn’t bring them here, did I? Gods, this must be the same hospital. Lucky strike, I guess.

  And the little one with the cat ears must’ve spilled the beans on how they got here.

  “How’re they doing?” I asked her.

  She smiled. “Just fine. They’re down at a rehabilitation center near the old baseball field on Fifth. They come in once in a while for checkups and they’re a lot healthier now. All they ever talk about is you, you know.”

  I had my back to her. I really had to go, but I couldn’t help but smile over my shoulder. “Thanks for keeping ‘em in one piece.” I hovered. “Sorry if I start filling your hospital with random people once in a while.”

  “Helping people isn’t a burden,” she said, grinning. “Hell, it’s why I wear the stethoscope.”

  And I guess it’s the reason I should keep wearing the costume.

  The rest of the night went by in a blur. A car crash involving a sixteen-wheeler and ten upturned cars had the firemen stressing their nerves until I made sure cars were opened and people were in ambulances. By the time the truck went up in flames, I’d pulled a new trick out of my sleeve and eviscerated the flames by cupping my hands together and clapping hard enough to snuff them with a gust of wind that accidentally left a few bystanders tripping over themselves. Then came a jewelry store robbery—easy as pie. The guy at the counter had an accident when the robber pulled his gun on him. I caught the first bullet and talked the robber down, because there were too many people in the store to kill him outright, and it turned out he was a desperate and stupid boyfriend trying to get his girl a ring for their engagement. If I was richer, I would’ve bought him one. Since I’m not, he’ll be in jail for a while.

  But hey, at least I told him that, next time, he should just ask her out the normal way. If she says no because she hates the cheap ring he gets, then maybe she’s not worth risking his life with a possible murder charge for, too.

  Purse snatcher: knocked him out and dumped him in a cell. Guy trying to beat his wife: harder to handle, not really knowing what to do, I kinda just had to stand there and let him hurl insults and plates at me until he broke down into a blubbering mess on the cigarette stained carpet. The woman had grabbed her kids and suitcases a long time before that and taken her chance, money in her bra and future ahead of her. Then came the other apartment. Now that was a mess. Girlfriend was in the process of cutting up her boyfriend. Found her in the bathroom covered in blood and wearing her wedding dress, so out of her mind that she tried to stab me. I let her. The knife shattered and she cut her hand, and by the time I called the police, I’d made a new friend in the precinct.

  “Fuck me,” Officer Gonzales said. Tired-looking guy. A hanging gut and sweaty brow. Kept bumping into him throughout the night, and coming to the end of his shift, a bathtub full of gore and blood was the cherry on it.

  “I know,” I muttered, arms folded, hovering slightly off the floor. Blood on the walls, the floor—clinging to the shower curtain and clogging the drain. It reeked in here so bad that it was hard not to tear up and start puking.

  He turned toward me, hand on my shoulder. “You should probably get some rest. We’ll handle this.”

  “No can do,” I said. “I can hear about a dozen other crimes happening right now. Stuff to do.”

  “You’re gonna put the rest of us out of business,” he muttered, smiling under his moustache.

  I gently punched his shoulder. “Means you get to retire early, boss man.” I paused, frowned, and looked over my shoulder. There were other cops in the room, searching the apartment, bagging evidence of what had been used and tampered with and bloodied. Someone’s here. It was an odd feeling, more like a tug in my stomach. I left the bathroom, Gonzales on my tail as I stopped in the living room. Stuffy. Cramped. A filthy couch and a table that had cigarette burns in it. Busted TV. Hanging picture frames. The dude had tried to fight back, to leave, but the gun on the coffee table and the brains on the wall were the answer to what happened next. Then… I can see you.

  The other police had stopped moving as well. They stared at me, then looked at each other.

  I was in the kitchen a second later, a head of loose hair in my hand. A gasp, then a curse, and finally, the invisibility wore off, and a guy with a frock of brown hair and freckles appeared in front of me, entirely naked.

  “Dude,” I said, as he went red in the cheeks and cupped his genitals. “What the fuck?”

  I let go of his hair. He stumbled backward against the sink filled with broken plates. He breathed hard, his chest heaving as he looked at the police, then myself. I raised an eyebrow, waiting to see what he’d do next, because he could try to run, but come on, let’s be honest with ourselves, that wasn’t gonna happen. He could try to hide again, but at this point, I’d been leaning on my powers pretty heavily. Everything felt acute. Enhanced. Smells and sounds were so separate from one another I felt like the world was moving in stuttered leaps, slow and off-beat.

  Instead, he swallowed, pursed his lips, and said, “I can explain.”

  Gonzales appeared beside me, a hand on his belt. “A minute. Go.”

  Another officer neared, taser and handcuffs at the ready.

  “Well…” he said, then pointed over my shoulder. “Look!”

  He vanished.

  I caught him by his hair and threw him back against the sink. He crumpled and fell to the floor. Not dead, but groaning and holding his ribs, curled up in a shaking ball. Gonzales sighed through his nose and shook his head. An officer stood the kid up and latched a pair of cuffs on the kid and led him toward the front door. But not before he looked over his shoulder at me, his expression pinched and tense, lips sealed like he was terrified.

  I didn’t know if he was terrified of me or something else, but it left my skin crawling when he smiled.

  “You know him?” Gonzales asked me.

  “Nope,” I muttered. “Probably some creep trying to get a weird fix.”

  “Definitely not a kid of theirs,” another cop said, flipping through a notebook. “At least, not from what I can tell from what we’ve found here so far. It’s still too early to know for sure. We’ll just have to be careful.”

  “He can’t slip through things, so he’ll be easy to watch.”

  “How’d you know?” the cop asked me.

  “If he wanted to, he would’ve walked right through me and taken my guts with him.”

  Several of the officers looked at one another, then at the empty spaces around the room. I smiled and patted Gonzales on the shoulder, wishing him good luck as I left through the window. Huh. The sun was coming up above the harbor, painting the sky a deep shade of orange. It was still frigid outside, but the skies were clear, not a cloud in sight yet, and maybe he was right—I think some hot chocolate and a donut wouldn’t hurt before I kept going. I found a vendor not too far away from the block I was on. A guy who’d turned his hotdog cart into a mobile donut and coffee stand that already had a long, snaking line attached to it. I joined the back of the queue and checked my phone. No new messages. A missed call from Em asking me where the hell I was and why the hell I was on the news.

  I smiled and texted her, Tag along if you want. Getting donuts. Might need my teemage to pay for them.

  “Um, excuse me?” I looked up. The guy in front of me, hell, everyone, had stepped aside. “You wanna…”

  “Oh,” I said, because yeah, oh was the only word I could conjure up right now. “It’s fine, you guys first.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked me. “You could go and save more people if you skip the queue.”

  Good point.

  But…why? Since when were people this willing to be kind? I hadn’t been doing my job for the better half of several months, hell, if we’re being really honest, I hadn’t done it properly for the past several years, too. I had expected some kind of hatred, maybe some kind of resentment, but all I’d gotten today was understanding and ease.

  “Come on, kid,” a guy in a suit said, waving his briefcase forward. “Some of us don’t have all day.”

  So, slowly, I walked between the line of people until I was at the stand. The guy already had a box of three donuts ready and a cup of coffee waiting, which was more than fine. Only problem was that I didn’t have any cash.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, like he could read my mind. “World’s finest for the world’s finest for free.”

  I took them, awkwardly, and only read the name on the cart a second later: World’s Finest Coffee.

  “Thanks,” I told him, smiling. “I’ll, uh, spread the word.”

  “All you need to do is make sure the city’s safer,” he said. “Safer means more customers, more customers means that this little cart is one day gonna be the biggest breakfast food chain in the entire city, believe that.” He paused, then cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Hey, do you mind taking a quick picture? For marketing?”

  I smiled, because sure, why not?