Superheroes in Prose Volume Seven: I, Galaxy Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Epilogue

  Back Image

  Will Return

  Superheroes in Prose

  Volume Seven:

  I, Galaxy

  by Sevan Paris

  Story Consultants

  Michael Booth

  and

  Cindy Paris

  Copyright © 2013 Sevan Paris

  All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition

  Special thanks to Elizabeth Johnson for her honest, and sometimes brutal, critique of of the Superheroes in Prose covers.

  “With no power comes no responsibility. Except that’s not true.” — Kick-Ass

  PROLOGUE

  Ms. Mystick lands in front of me, heels splish-splashing in the melted snow. The disc of light she rode on spins away into the night and disappears on the far side of the Michael Booth Bridge. She greets me with a slight nod. “Ember. Thank you for meeting me.”

  I yank away my hood. “I said I would, so I am. But if we’re gonna keep these pow-wows, you could at least keep them on time.”

  “It could not be avoided.” Mystick’s hands go to her hips, parting her black cloak and thrusting those barely covered double D’s into the night. Man, she is such a tart.

  “Couldn’t be avoided? Like ‘forcing me to fight a Magick dragon’ couldn’t be avoided? Or ‘I couldn’t find the keys to my spinning disc of light’ couldn’t be avoided?”

  “Ember, this is—”

  “This is shitty is what this is!” I limp towards her. My eyes flame up, like they usually do when things get intense. They cast a red and orange glow onto the snow-slushed bridge. “I’m like one big walking bruise after what happened, and you know that. You had to know that. Yet you called—demanded—me to meet you! And then you’re late! And you—”

  “Still that tempered tongue for a moment, and I’ll address your concerns.”

  “Think we’re way past ‘concerns.’ ”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  I wave at her. “Just, go on. For Christ’s sake, just tell me what’s up, so I can—”

  “We’ve found Macabre. And we know what he’s planning.”

  Silence.

  “I …” I try to clear the lump out of my throat. The very mention of the name makes me think about Eldritch: The one person that believed in me after I became his Ward. The man Macabre killed, right along with who knows how many other Sayers over the past few months. “I assume you have a way to stop him? To kill him this time?”

  “Yes to both. But first, we’re hiding all of the Wards where he can’t reach them. We can’t risk our Magicks going to him.”

  “Oh you can bounce that idea right now. If you think I’m going into hiding after what he did to Eldritch …”

  She raises a hand. “Nobody is asking you to hide. But I know that what I’m about to ask you to do—what we need you to do—will be despised even more.”

  “Is it a way to kill that thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try me.”

  Mystick outlines the plan. A few minutes later, it feels like I’ve just been punched in the gut. “There has to be another way.”

  “We can’t take that chance.”

  “Maybe we can—”

  “We can’t take that chance. Make the phone call.”

  I shake my head. “Why are you just now coming up with this? Macabre’s been around for a long time. This is something … you could have done this before now.”

  “Recent events have changed the situation. It was impossible until now. And our window of opportunity is extremely limited.”

  Mystick is a Sayer, which means she can’t be lying. And she’s smart enough to know that—after all of the denial and guilt—I’m going to arrive at the same conclusion: This could be the only way to defeat Macabre. To avenge Eldritch. And to save who knows how many people. But, the cost …“This is horrible,” I whisper. “This is … vile.”

  “Agreed,” she says quietly. “Make the phone call.”

  After a few moments of listening to my pulse pound in my ears, I reach into the pocket of my hoodie and make the worst phone call of my entire life. It rings. For a few seconds, I have a while to think—to hope—that there won’t be an answer. That there will never be an answer and I won’t have to—

  “Hello?”

  A copper taste sets into my mouth.

  “Hello?” the voice on the other line says again.

  I lick my lips. “Hey, Gabe, it’s me …”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hey, Gabe, it’s me …”

  “Hey,” I say to Ember on the other line. “How—is everything okay? You sound …”

  “No, everything isn’t okay. Can we meet? Somewhere private?”

  “Uh, yeah. How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Time is of the essence. It needs to be tonight. Like, now-ish.”

  “I … okay. I’m at a friend’s place at 807 McCallie. You wanna meet me here?”

  “This friend a Superfriend?”

  “No, but the person I’m staying with is. She might be able to help.”

  “…. Okay, I have to take care of a few things. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

  “Are you going to Old Prose first? Because I never had the chance to buy one of those Magickal pencil things.”

  I hear the slightest bit of a grin in Ember’s voice. “I’ll see what I can do. See you in a few, hero.”

  With a click, she’s gone.

  Gabe, why didn’t you ask her about the coitus?

  I sigh, unsure whether or not M’s recent connection to humanity is necessarily a good thing.

  Pink floats near the TV in her bedroom, no longer looking like the tweenager that I’ve known for so long. She’s traded the appearance for a woman in her early twenties, and the Britney Spears shirt for sweats. “Is it talking to you again?”

  I shove my phone in my pocket. “How can you tell?”

  “You do this weird twitchy thing with your eye.”

  I shake my head. Reagan said pretty much the same thing.

  Gabe, I still can’t believe that you told this dreaded apparition everything about us. In Casa’s apartment no less.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Casa may have left over an hour ago, but don’t let that fool you for a second. He appears to have the entire city under surveillance, in one way or another. Do you really think that he hasn’t done the same to his domicile as well?

  “Well,” Pink floats back and forth, “it’s sort of an easy tell.” Her eyes search my face. “Wait, you were talking to it again, weren’t you?”

  I give a little nod.

  “What’s it saying?”

  Again with being called ‘it?’

  “He thinks Casa knowing about him is a bad idea. But Casa already has enough info to bone me over. And he’s smart enough to figure out the stuff he doesn’t know.”

  She nods her misty head. “Probably.” Her nod slowly turns into a head shake “Man, that’s freaky. I mean M—he’s freaky.” Her misty leg passes through the TV as she floats by it.

  Seriously? SHE is calling ME freaky?

  Pink, the former member of HEROES, had her complete history ripped out of her last week by Black, the sort of nega-Pink. She felt alone and vulnerable in the worst way, so I put a piece of myself out there too, telling her all about M and the suck that this irreversible bondi
ng has let me enjoy over the past year. She has helped me deal with the worst of it—Deathbot, Liberty, and Villainous—which meant aside from M himself, there really weren’t many details to fill in.

  “A friend—the one I just spoke to—will be coming over in a couple of hours,” I say.

  “Friend?” Pink says, crinkling her transparent nose. “Like, girlfriend-friend or friend-friend.”

  “More like I don’t-know-what-friend.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  No it isn’t. The two of you had sex and hopefully will continue to do so while avoiding any sort of emotional attachment. What is possibly complicated about that?

  “Anyway, she said there is some kind of emergency or something. I may have to leave.”

  After the Hello Kitty clock on the wall ticks off a few seconds, Pink shakes her head, wisps of hair fading into nothingness around her. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “You’re always ready to play hero at a moment’s notice. Willing to drop everything and Mighty Mouse in to save the day. How do you do it so … selflessly? Without any kind of doubt about who you are or if you can get it done?”

  “Oh, I have gobs of doubt. I’m one big doubt gob.”

  And how.

  “And it’s hard sometimes,” I say. “But it used to be a lot harder. Guess I really accepted who I was, why I had to do the things that I do, after the first month of being a Superhero.”

  She laughs, with a bit of a scoff. “You make me sick, Garrison. I’ve been doing this for a lot longer, and I still have to force myself to do what we do.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not fair to say, with what Macabre did to you. Separating your personality like that …” I shake my head. “Now that you’re you, it may be different.”

  She gives me a phantom-y shrug with one shoulder. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll be worse. The me that I’ve been for the past five years wasn’t afraid of much. Now, all I can think about is how I’m afraid of everything. And when I think about everything that I did, that Black has done … facing it is less than spectacular. And FIXING it is …”

  “Accepting the problem—whether or not you know you can fix it—is much harder than actually fixing it.”

  “Oh, I disagree. Epically.”

  “That’s what I thought in the beginning too. But my boss convinced me otherwise, right before she almost fired me.”

  “The beginning,” Pink says. “You glossed over that part of the story. All of the secret origin stuff. You just told me about M, where he came from and what it’s been like dealing with him. Why’d you skip over the rest?”

  “Just didn’t seem important. Why? You think it’s important?”

  The side of her lip pinches, forming a dimple in her transparent cheek. “Let’s see, crucial moment, dictating your motivations for the rest of your life—I don’t know, huh, maybe.”

  I let a silence pass. Realizing that I never told anybody this story. Not even Reagan. “That was … a difficult time in my life. It motivated me. Set me on the right path. But it’s uncomfortable to think about the details. And saying them …”

  “Is what? Painful? Humiliating?”

  “Alright, point taken.”

  “And,” she crosses her arms, “if you’re gonna convince me of this facing is the hardest part crap, you’re gonna have to spill the beans or whatever.”

  I take a deep breath, suddenly wondering if this sharing stuff was such a hot idea. “I guess ‘spill the beans’ is as bad a place to start as any …”

  ***

  It was nine months ago. Jessica Gem had placed an ad in The Prosian: “Barista/Cashier needed, Rock Creek Bookstore. Apply in person.”

  I was nervous. Like, stupidly nervous. But I knew if I played it cool, I’d have a chance. That the thirty minutes I spent watching cappuccino tutorials on youtube would totally impress, as would the dope knowledge of every book I’d ever looked up on Spark Notes. So I packed a lunch, put on my best pair of khakis and a new button up. Wore my best shoes—the kind that are really uncomfortable but look nice—and showed up at the bookstore, resume in hand. An employee showed me to a back office, and I was sticking out my hand to offer Jessica herself a firm handshake …

  And knocked over a full mason jar of red jelly beans instead.

  They rattled in every freaking direction on her desk. My face burned as a hundred pieces of candy popped off the hardwood floor. “Sorry.”

  “Here, give me the application,” Jessica snatched the three stapled pages from my hand. Her intense, green eyes narrowed at them. “Well, don’t just stand there … Gabe Garrison. Pick them up.”

  I cleared my throat. “Right, okay.” I went to one knee and plucked spinning red jelly beans from the floor. The bottom front of my new white shirt served as a make-shift bowl.

  Papers flicked back and forth above me. “What do your parents do for a living?”

  “Well, my mom—” I thumped my head on the bottom of her desk—“ah, my mom is a doctor.”

  “And your dad?”

  “My dad is … he passed.”

  More paper flicking. “There are some more over here in the corner. Why do you want this job?”

  I crab-crawled behind her chair with a carefully balanced, bean-filled shirttail. “For the, um, money?”

  She turned to face me, eyes still on the application. “Your mom is a doctor; you don’t need money.”

  “I’m starting college next month. And I want to be more independent.”

  Jessica picked a bean from my shirt and blew on it. The candy clicked off one of her teeth as she popped it into her mouth. “In what way?”

  Careful to keep the beans from spilling, I raised to a crouch. “I don’t—what?”

  “Listen, Gabe,” she swallowed the candy, “I’m going to level with you. I’ve heard dozens—tens of dozens of kids just like you. They come in here, ready to be free of Mom and Dad, but they don’t want to be free of Mom and Dad’s money. Which means, that even though they want this job, they don’t need it. The entitled brats are going to quit as soon as they realize working in a bookstore involves actual work, and not sitting on your ass reading vampire fiction all day.”

  “…. Well that’s not me. Once my mind is made up that I’m going to do something, I do it.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  I took a soft step to the top of her garbage can and leaned forward.

  “Shit fire and save a match—what are you doing?” She jerked away the can and wrapped both arms around it. “Those are gourmet jelly beans! Put them back were they were!”

  “I, uh, okay. Sorry.” I walked timidly around her desk, back to the mason jar.

  “And what do you mean you don’t change your mind when it’s made up?” Jessica dropped the garbage can to the floor and slid it back in place with a foot. “You don’t know if you’re going to like doing something until after you start doing it.”

  I eased into the last step at the front of her desk and lined up the pile of jelly beans with the small mouth of the mason jar. “One step at a time.”

  She laughed. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t know where they’re about to step.”

  “I guess,” I funneled the bottom of my shirt and leaned forward. The jelly beans rushed in. “But I know that I can work, that I will work.” After the last four pieces of candy plinked in, I held my hand out for her to shake. “And how many ‘entitled brats’ would do the jelly bean pick-up of shame around your office?”

  Jessica crinkled her clipped features at the jar and then the small red stains on my white shirt. “You can start today?”

  “Yep.”

  She took my hand. “Alright. There’s a locker in the back for your stuff. And how much do you know about espresso drinks?”

  Once again, I thought about the thirty minutes worth of tutorial videos I’d watched on youtube that very morning and smiled confidently. “I. Know. Everything.”

  ***
/>   As it turned out, I knew absolutely nothing.

  “I-I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I said to the pissed off woman on the other side of the counter.

  Her cheeks flushed. “I said, two dirty chais—one skinny cappuccino with whip—one whole milk with a double shot—one decaf Americano—and one mocha with soy and extra mocha! And I also said I’m in a hurry!”

  “Okay, okay—I got it.” I turned and stared at the espresso machine. A thorny assortment of steaming wands, dials, and levers stared back …

  “Excuse me, son?” an old man said from my right. “Are you sure this is decaf? Because I have a condition. And this doesn’t taste like decaf.”

  “Yeah, yeah—I’m sure.” I quickly plucked the coffee out of his hand. “But you’d better let me remake it just in case.”

  “Ahhh,” he swiped at the air between us and walked towards the non-fiction section.

  “Sorry,” I called after him. He never turned around.

  I set the old man’s coffee next to the register and opened the door to the mini-fridge. A half gallon of soy went under my left arm, a half gallon of whole milk in the crook of my right; I grabbed the two percent and turned around, facing the lady at the counter again. “Um, did you say whole milk or two percent on that last one?”

  “Are you KIDDING me?!” she said.

  The customer behind her threw up his hands and walked out of the store. The other two in line seemed to think about doing the same …

  Jessica came out of nowhere—hand on my shoulder—pulling me away from the espresso machine. “Here, let me take over, Mr. ‘I know everything.’ ” She swiped her brown hair back into a short pony tail. “I doubt my business could stand much more of your expertise.”

  “Jessica,” I said, “I’m really sorry about—”

  “Take out the trash.” She flicked the levers of the espresso machine back and forth, far more forcefully than needed.

  ***

  I opened Rock Creek’s fire door with a shove to the push bar. The pungent smell of a dumpster brewing under a June sun shoved back. I sighed and drug the million pound garbage bag over the lip of the doorway.