She growls. Really growls. Clarissa’s superpower at SPAM was the ability to mimic animal noises. Her range is impressive, and today’s sound is either a pissed-off Doberman or Rottweiler. They’re very similar, and over the phone it’s hard to make the distinction. And fortunately, there’s not a lot of call for animal noises in crime fighting, even minor crime fighting, so when I jumped ship and went to the Ziro Foundation, she was more than happy to go with me.
“Morgan,” she says. “The slides are fine.”
“They can’t only be fine. They have to be impeccable. Ezekiel is counting on us.”
In four days, we’re presenting the Ziro Foundation’s research. The findings will change the world. It’s going to be a massive paradigm shift, and I’ve been at the centre of it for the last two years. It has to be perfect.
“The slides aren’t ready,” I say.
“They are,” she says. “It’s all ready. You’re ready. It’ll be great.”
The annoying thing about best friends is they know what you need to hear. That I’m enough. That I’m ready. It’s taken a lot of therapy to realize being unsuper in a super family has left me with a pathological fear of letting others down. And since I can’t walk on water or hit a target from a mile away in a strong headwind, I’ve had to dedicate myself to more earthly pursuits. It’s been a lot of work, and it’s culminating in something amazing.
“Did I tell you April’s going to be there?” Clarissa asks.
My skin crawls at the name, and I have to adjust my grip on the steering wheel where my palms tingle. April was my boss when I worked at SPAM. She was a tyrant with a minuscule tolerance for bullshit, though she can’t really be blamed for that when she’s wrangling subpar superheroes around the world. I haven’t heard from her since the day I turned in my resignation, though. The fact she’s resurfacing now only makes me uneasy.
“Why would April be coming to the presentation?” I ask.
“Moral support?” Clarissa asks hopefully.
April is not one for pep talks. She’s much more of the “pull yourself together and get back out there” type. In another life, she’d make a killer high school football coach. In this life, she helps catch other kinds of killers. And her two-year silence is all the confirmation I need to know she wasn’t sorry to see me go. The superhero life was never for me. I thought SPAM was a reasonable compromise, but I never got promoted beyond filing and phone answering, and after Mother died, there didn’t seem to be much point in trying to prove myself that way.
“So it really went badly?” Clarissa asks.
“The presentation? My job? My life? You’ll have to be more specific.”
She laughs. The sound is like a parrot mocking me, but I know it’s unintentional.
“The date, silly.”
We’re not talking about the date. For once, I was the one let down, because no one can blame me for not wanting to go on a second date with a man who claims we’ve already been on sixty first dates. There are weirdo stalkers, and then there’s whatever Jasper was.
If you need henching, I’m your man.
I shake my head. That didn’t happen. He’s a friend of Alyssa’s with a weird sense of humour. I never have to see him again.
But before I can make up some half truth that won’t lead to more questions, Clarissa says, “I have to go. IT is calling. Get some sleep and stop looking at the slides.” Then the call ends, and I’m left to my own thoughts about Jasper and his wild theories as I drive down the darkening road toward home.
When I pull into the curved driveway at Ziro Hall—yes, it’s cheesy, Ezekiel’s grandfather named it—the lights are all on. The BMW iX is parked in the garage, but as I walk into the foyer, Ezekiel’s still in his coat.
“Are you just getting in too?” I ask. “Have you eaten?” Since my stomach is no longer turning itself inside out, I’m ravenous.
He shakes his head. There’s a tightness to his jaw that says he’s not popping out to the store for snacks.
“I’m on my way back to work, actually. Make yourself something. I’ll eat at the lab.”
Ezekiel is a creature of habit—and also my stepfather, so I’ve had years to learn his patterns—and going out after dark is not one of them. For a while after my mother died, he hardly went out at all, even in daylight. It was only when we started working on the Ziro Machine that his routine finally returned to normal, and both our schedules have mapped a loop between the lab and the house without much deviation for the last two years.
“Everything all right?”
He rolls his eyes. Even on a late-night errand, he’s immaculately dressed. Pressed shirt, silk tie, charcoal suit that sets off his salt-and-pepper hair. Clarissa told me a few months ago he’d be on top of several Most Eligible Bachelor lists in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for the fact he’s still not over Mother. Then Clarissa realized what a shitty thing that was to say and changed the subject.
Either way, he’s good-looking, and it’s easy to see how he swept Mother off her feet, even when she swore she was married to her job—or jobs, really. Together, they were theultimate power couple. Ezekiel Ziro and Farah Field. They wined and dined. They didn’t go places; they made appearances. But the couple I knew—Ezekiel and the Legendary Flame—were even more powerful. They were going to save the world. Ezekiel, through patronage and scientific discovery. My mother, by taking down the criminals human agencies wouldn’t mess with. They were unstoppable, until they came face-to-face with Indigo.
“There was an attempted data breach at the lab,” Ezekiel says.
I clench my keys. I may not have super speed, but I’m ready to leap into action.
