When I get home, dad isn’t in front of the TV, but mom has burned her bare feet into the carpet standing there. She hugs me so tightly I think I’ll pass out, but she’s warm, stinging with heat that makes me involuntarily push her off me. Then I see her face, and my stomach tightens more, watching as she hurts deep down, but if there’s one thing I really don’t like, it’s being looked at that way, because by the time my eyes start stinging, I’m cursing myself out. But mom is warm to the core, powers or not, and I guess that’s why she hugs me again, this time a lot gentler, too.

She would usually give me a talk about the words that slip out of my mouth as I quietly cry against her chest, but tonight is different. Worse. The house is dark and the only thing warding off the shadows is the tv and the breaking news banner running across the screen—the helicopter shots and the reporters standing in front of the store. Alice, turns out, was right, because even after I shower, even after we pack away what’s left of my clothes in sealed bags and keep them away, I find that the police have told everyone that it was, in fact, just a gas leak. A spark or something that caused all the damage, but fuck me, sitting there on the couch, my hair still dripping wet and my hands rubbing together so tightly I could probably make a spark of my own, I couldn’t get past the sounds. The smells. The flashing memories that would keep me glued to the couch even after mom turns off the tv and lays my head down on her lap. I’m too old for this, that’s what I keep thinking, as she runs her fingers through my hair.

But I don’t move away from her, and I don’t really think that I can.

It’s deeply soothing, taking me back to the several times when it would just be us on this couch, watching as dad would carve his way through the sky on television, fighting whatever Calamity had manifested this week.

Jade hasn’t come down from her room yet, and dad still hasn’t come back from the Protectorate yet either.

So we stay there on the couch, my head on her thighs as we sit in silence. This neighborhood is quiet, and nothing like downtown. Anything louder than a dog’s bark or the rumble of an engine as the few news reporters living around here get the call to head over to the office echoes through the night. I stare at myself in the tv’s reflection, watching as mom finally falls asleep, her hand still on my shoulder as her body relaxes. A retired hero and a former firewoman, I learnt a while ago, can sleep through anything. You get to my age, and tragedy becomes a checklist, just one after the other. The difference was that I wasn’t a licensed superhero. I wasn’t a professional. I tried to sleep, but I kept seeing the same things over and over, and at the end of each memory was the same image.

The pink-haired tanned girl with the devilish grin, standing there in the smoke and flames.

Every time I thought about her, my heart would speed up, banging against my chest and making blood rush past my ears in droning waves. I forced a pillow against the side of my head, trying my damndest to sleep.

But the nightmares win this round, and it’s three in the morning when I eventually give up.

I toss a blanket over mom as I stand, glancing upstairs and seeing the dim light still glowing from Jade’s tablet from all the way down here. Can’t sleep either, I think, but she’s never been able to, anyway. For once, it finally seems like we’re actually related. I go to the kitchen and grab a soda from the fridge and the energy drink I got on my way home for her. I head upstairs, choosing to walk, because I barely have it in me to fly. My feet pad against the carpet, and I lean against the doorframe when I get to the bedroom. Jade is still on her tablet, now hunched over it on her desk, her laptop open beside her, and her earphones playing rock music so loud that even I can hear it. She doesn’t even glance at me as she plucks them out of her ears and gestures for me to get over there.

I place down the energy drink and lean on her shoulder, looking at her screen. It’s…some kind of meme?

She looks at me almost expectantly.

I look at her, wondering if those glasses are making her see something funny that I can’t for once.

Jade closes the tab, then her laptop, engulfing us both in dimly lit darkness. She takes the drink, sips it, cups it in her hands, and then stays silent for a moment. I do the same, sitting down on her bed and not even touching my soda, but holding it so firmly in my hands that it’s a wonder I don’t crush the thing and spill it.

Lord knows it’ll be easier than just sitting here doing fucking nothing.

“The coincidences are…unfortunate,” Jade finally says.

“Meaning?” I ask, looking at her through the short, damp coils of my hair.

She sets her energy drink down on her desk. “Timing, place, location…just unfortunate. Unplanned.”

“Don’t really need an analysis right now, sis,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes.

She fidgets, but continues anyway. “Any other day and there wouldn’t have been so many—”

“God, for a Mentalist you really don’t know when to stop talking,” I say. Jade shuts her mouth, and I sigh, look away, and comb my fingers through my hair. “Sorry, I’m just…I don’t even really know what happened, J.”

“Anxiety, guilt, stress,” she says. “It’s normal after something like that to feel this way.”

“I need my sister right now, the girl who’s afraid of the dark, and not my sister, the licensed superhero.”

“Unfortunately, I think otherwise.”

“If I wanted to get a psychoanalysis, I’d get myself a psychology undergrad.”

“What I mean is that I know you.” Jade tilts her head and adjusts her glasses. “You’re thinking of leaving and doing something brash. You thought that the same second you stood outside the house for thirty minutes.”

I snort and sip my soda. “Stalker much?”

“I don’t have to use my powers to know exactly how my sister reacts.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Can’t blame me,” I mutter, flopping onto her messy, clothes-covered bed. “I got people killed today.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Superhero Handbook chapter something-something-something,” I say, then shut my eyes. “Don’t feel guilty because you fucked up—feel guilt ‘cause you’re sitting around feeling sorry for yourself instead of helping.”

“I…guess that’s an abbreviation of chapter thirty-two, yes,” she says. “But Kacey—”

“And if I go out, you’re gonna give me crap about it, aren’t you?”

“You did not get those people killed,” she says flatly, like a full stop. It makes me sit upright, looking at her black hair and the messy ponytail it’s been in since we were ten. “Letting your emotions get the better of you right now is the reason you were passed up on the Alderman test and Patriot License. You need to think like a hero.”

Thanks for hitting me square in the chest, sis, use a blunt knife next time.

“Yeah, and what’s that?” I ask. “Go to school, listen to logic?”

She spins around on her chair and opens her laptop again, and for a second I think she’s going to show me another meme she probably thought would cheer me up. I watch from the bed as she types away on the computer, not anything fancy, because she’s banned from accessing databases after a debacle with the FBI last year. Category Five anything doesn’t come around often, but they’re powers we grow into, that develop as we get older. She’s technically not one right now, but by the time we’re hitting twenty, she’ll damn near be one of the smartest people to ever walk on the face of this planet. But you never heard me say this, because that head of hers can’t afford to get any bigger. Glasses are expensive, and new frames that can fit her aren’t easy to come by these days, you know.

But when she finishes, I’m there beside her, watching as she pulls up a camera feed from outside the store. My stomach drops as she watches it all unfold frame by frame. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is slightly open, and I’m forced to wait (something I’m not very used to doing, and barely ever at human speeds) as she breaks it down to the point where it’s all a fuzzy blur of pixels. Then she hits pause just after the explosion happens. After the doors blow apart and the boys outside get burned and thrown across the street. I grimace, swallowing bile at the sight of the sudden blast of heat that makes the camera go hazy, and then there she is: the tall pink-haired chick.

She walks out of the doorway, packet of gum in hand, her sunglasses still on her head, and the beads around her neck swaying as she tosses the wrapper over her shoulder. I almost expect her to look at the camera.

Instead, she blows a bubble, slides her hands into her pockets, and walks off into an alleyway.

Jade hums a little, types some more, but as the feeds flicker, none of them catch what happens to the girl as she walks off into the dark. She’s there, and then she isn’t, as if she never existed in the first place. Just like that.

“Guessing no name?” she asks me, chewing the corner of her lip. “Nothing but a height I’d guess is around five foot eleven, maybe a little less. Age…maybe seventeen, doesn’t have the build of someone fully there yet, but I could be wrong, too. Someone not from around here, either. King’s Village? Or someplace near riverside banks?”

“She’s a Baysider,” I say. “She really hated being called that. It’s what sparked her off in the first place.”

Jade nods once. “Makes sense. It’s a slur for people down there, anyway, after Riptide happened.”

Never think a man who can control water can’t be drowned. At least I know that for my history test.

“She also reeked of blood,” I say, and that makes her pause. “Like really fresh blood, and she went on this rant about having a really bad day before she fucked the place into a smoldering pit. Off her freaking rocker, too.”

Jade leans back in her chair and massages her temple, still chewing her lip harder. I’ve got to bump her shoulder to remind her not to chew until she reaches meat. “Not her first time, and not her first time tonight then.”

“She got other people killed before coming there.”

“Not too far away. Close enough to still smell of blood.” She hunches over her laptop. “Fifty block radius, and anything that happened in the past hour and a half apart from the Easy Mart explosion. If I can just find out—”

“It’s already being handled,” dad says, nearly making us both jump out of our skin. He’s standing in the hallway, still wearing his costume—red and gold and a cape that brushes along the floor as he walks into the room. I stand straighter, and Jade slowly shuts her laptop. He smiles at us and puts his hands on his hips. “But honestly, I’ve been standing in the corridor for the past five minutes, and it’s impressive hearing what you guys can get up to. A second longer and I’ll probably be hearing you two trying to figure out half the world’s nuclear launch codes.” He pauses, then mutters, “At least, for the countries that still have those old things, anyway. You two are bad news.”

“We weren’t doing anything, sir,” Jade says, so rigid she would snap if I touched her.

“She’s right,” I say. “‘Cause I was gonna be the one who was going to go out there.”

“And do what exactly?” he asks.

“Catch the bitch who killed all those people,” I say, a little exasperated. “What else?”

Dad takes a sip of Jade’s energy drink, then shakes his head. “Not happening. Bedtime for both of you.”

“But—”

“Kacey,” he says, and when dad levels his voice, I can always feel it in my bones. Maybe because I could hear almost anything and everything in the neighborhood, or maybe just because his voice was that deep, that commanding, that it wasn’t just my bones feeling it but my stomach too, tightening under his watchful eyes. Jade hasn’t moved since he walked in, and she hasn’t even turned her head to look at him, even when he pats her on the shoulder. “I know what you’re going through. Trust me, I had times when I doubted myself, and thought that I had gotten too many people killed to ever make up for it, but you’ll get your chance. Making a wrong decision is just that, a very wrong decision. The Protectorate will handle it. We’ve already organized a plan of action for tomorrow.”

I stare at him, this chasm in my chest only getting wider and wider. “But I can’t just go to school and—”

“Then you’ll stay home until you’re feeling up to the task of being outside again. We can get people to talk to you if you’d like, or…you can even come to work with me tomorrow if that’ll ease you up about all this. Get some time around the pros. See us making sure that this won’t ever happen again, not in your lifetime at least.” He rests his hand on my shoulder, gives me a smile that’s won the world over. “I hate that it happened, but I’d also hate to see anyone else getting hurt because you haven’t gotten proper training yet. Remember, your birthday is soon.”

My saliva bitters as I’m forced to swallow it. “Right, and I get another shot at being a superhero.” It’s a mutter, a slew of words that tumble out of my lips, because it’s all I can say under the burning glow of his blue eyes.

“Great,” he says, gently punching my chest and then kissing Jade’s forehead. “You two sleep well, and don’t think of doing anything I wouldn’t do. We’ve all got a very big day tomorrow, so let’s all get some rest.”

When he shuts the door, he waits outside the bedroom for a moment, standing there, his back to us and his large cape that flows down to the floor and muffles the sound of his thick boots. He knows very well that I can see him through the door, this vague outline of his massive, muscular frame, of his broad shoulders and broader back that’s lifted planes and split open impenetrable barriers set up by supervillains. And then he leaves, heading into his bedroom, where he’s already set mom down to sleep on the bed. As soon as he shuts his door, I type a message out on my backup phone and send it to Jade on the way out of her bedroom, making her laptop ping in the silence.

Get ready, the message says. We’re going pre-war old school vigilante-ying tonight.