Twenty
I quickly lose track of Fox. I can’t spot Damian or Kristen either. Instead, I’m surrounded by men who wear almost identical tuxedos and women who model every color of dress, and everyone has a mask.
“Don’t you love parties like this?” A familiar voice hovers behind me. “Isn’t the drama fascinating?”
He wears the same tuxedo that all the other males are wearing.
Apparently, you can only get one kind at the tuxedo store.
His bowtie is missing, however, and I figure he’s setting some kind of new trend in neck-exposing formal wear.
Unlike the obsidian black mask he usually wears, D.S.
has a deep purple mask tied around his ears, covering only his forehead down to his nose.
A black fedora covers his hair, and his exposed skin glows golden under the light—barely dark enough to be Damian, but possible.
In the low lighting, he could still be Fox or Aaron.
I check behind me for Fox. There wasn’t enough time.
I remind myself that Aaron is with Kristen, but Zane Milligan would undoubtedly be at the party somewhere. As obsessed as I am with uncovering Dark Static’s identity, a tiny part of me wonders if knowing it would ruin everything. The immaculate fit of his suit is distracting anyway.
“Why does your voice sound like it usually does? Does this mask interfere with it too?”
D.S. grabs my hand and pulls me outside with him. “Very good, Sherlock.”
His gloveless hands are coarse, long, and cover mine. I recall the electricity that had flickered in his palm, the night we’d met. What would happen if he summoned it now?
“Why are you here?” I ask, “Did the mayor invite you?”
“Right again, Roberts.” D.S. grins. “He asked me to cause a stir tonight, but that’s not due for a bit.
” He leads me into the Bridges’ impeccable gardens.
Tall hedges, curled with roses, line paths across the grounds.
The evening is perfect for walking among them, and with almost everyone still drinking indoors, we have privacy.
I picture Damian Scott Jr. sauntering out of my line of vision. It would have been a long shot, but there could have been time for him to change his mask before D.S. had intercepted me.
“You seemed like you needed the company,” D.S. adds.
“Should we look around the house?” I ask. That was why I’d come, after all.
“I already went myself. Found nothing. Phil either has this place secured like a castle or honest-to-gosh doesn’t hide his materials here.
I like to assume that I’m rather good at breaking into places I’m not supposed to be, so I’m opting for the latter.
I found the blackmail CDs in his City Hall office, but there’s nothing else for us there. ”
“What do you think Phil’s plan is?” I ask.
We walk to the edge of the garden, where ballroom music carries distant melodies and stars poke infinite dots into the dusk.
Spiny shadows from dormant rose bushes conceal D.S.
’s expression, but the hitch in his shoulders gives him away.
He’s puzzled. “I’m not sure yet, but if I were in his position, I would invite all the Supers I knew about and those I suspected to a party, put them in the same room, give them a lot of alcohol, get them to spill some secrets, and then use that as blackmail for the rest of my life. I would be unstoppable.”
“Oh, no.” I’d told Kristen my secret, and she’d gone off for champagne. If the mayor was encouraging just that, I’m done for. Chances are the mayor already knows my secret, after I blew up his private prison and everything, but the rest of the city does not.
D.S. seems to sense what I’m feeling. “It’ll be fine,” he whispers.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Me too. I don’t want Bridges to find out that I’m working against him either. I’d prefer to squander his plans myself.”
The way D.S. says “squander” makes me double over. I’m glad he found me.
“Hey,” he says, squinting at something in the distance. “Why is that person running?”
A lanky man in a tuxedo sprints across the manicured lawn, but oddly, no one chases him.
D.S. grabs my hand, pulling me along, and let me say, running in a dress is more difficult than getting Aaron to speak.
I have to hold the train with my free hand to keep it out of the mud, and I’m still leagues slower than Dark Static is.
Finally, we crouch behind a hedge, and through the branches we spot the running man and two women, who I immediately recognize as Arielle’s friends from her film club. My mom used to give Arielle rides to their houses, and I’d sometimes tag along in the car.
“Arielle won’t see it coming,” one of them whispers. “We’ll catch her off guard.” I stifle a yawn; they must be planning to give Arielle a new convertible or something.
“But how do we keep her from knowing it’s us?” The second replies, and my ears perk up. That sounds more suspicious.
“We’re the last people she would expect,” says the man. “Especially since she has no reason to be angry about—”
“—Ah, this dress is dry-clean only!” one woman yells.
“Mine too,” screams the other, and in seconds, the three people we’re eavesdropping on scatter back to the estate. A raindrop grazes my ear, then another.
“What was that all about?” D.S. faces me. The purple in his mask glows brighter in the dark.
“Who knows?” Plink. Arielle’s friends have always been irrational, yet harmless, as far as I know.
D.S. looks up. “Ah, cumulonimbus. My favorite cloud.” There had been no sign of rain this afternoon, but as soon as his face is exposed to the clouds, they open and rain pours down, soaking us. Kristen is going to kill me.
“Let’s go.” D.S. runs under the canopy of a nearby willow tree and I follow. Except for a few drips coming down the trunk and the occasional breeze spraying us with water, our spot stays dry.
I lean against the huge trunk, sap sticking to my dress.
I need a break from standing in my heels, and I’m not about to sit in the mud.
D.S. hovers a few feet away, near the edges of the branches, maintaining a socially acceptable distance between us.
I swear I see a spark of something underneath his mask.
“We can go back inside if you want to,” he says, testing me. While he waits for a response, he blows on his hands to keep them warm.
I survey Arielle’s yard for signs of company. A slow melody hums from the ballroom, and the branches overhead shake as the rain picks up, but no one else is out here.
“Could we test my powers?” I ask.
He stretches an ungloved hand behind him, feeling the precipitation. “This isn’t you?”
“What? I can’t make it rain.”
He cocks a dark eyebrow. With his forehead exposed, I catch the full movement—abrupt and dignified, the way I’ve always imagined it. “Are you sure?”
No. “How do I check?” I haven’t had a ton of time to read the comics yet, but I know that starting a rainstorm could be possible.
D.S. stays silent for twenty-four seconds, then asks, “do you know where powers come from, Roberts?”
“I thought nobody knows where they come from.”
“Golden Ace has people who figured it out,” says D.S. “The basics of it anyway, not everything.”
“Powers seem pretty random, to be honest.”
“They aren’t genetic,” he agrees. “They’re a mutation that comes from teaching yourself to be strong.
Most people with powers don’t realize they have them, which I hypothesize is what shows up on the Super test—if your powers are realized or not.
Powers get unlocked and show up when you need them, when you forget how to be yourself, or,” he studies me, “in some cases, when you need to help someone else.”
“Then, anyone can be a Super?” I ask. The wind picks up, and he adjusts the fedora on his head, keeping himself hidden.
“No,” Dark Static replies. “It requires a significant event to unlock them, and even then, some people still won’t develop powers. It’s the perfect combination of timing, will, and a million more things.”
The car crash.
“You can’t wish that event upon yourself either,” he says. “Dudes have died trying. If we could force something major to screw up our lives, we could give ourselves powers. No, it doesn’t work like that. It won’t work if it’s intentional.”
I remember my life after Mom’s death. I spent all of my free time in the pool. All of it. Swimming, water, the peacefulness… those were the only things that could calm me. Swimming helped me survive.
“Swimming… being in water,” I say. “That’s helped me deal with everything for the last three years. Now I can use water to help me in other ways.”
Dark Static takes my hand, gently supporting me.
“I’m about 95 percent sure that’s how it works,” he confirms. “Like powers are a tool.”
“But my mom’s death was three years ago. If that gave me powers, why did I just discover them?”
“You might not have known when you were using them. And neither did anyone else.”
Except Arielle. “In comic books,” I say, “Supers are usually orphans.”
“There are plenty of orphans who aren’t Supers though,” he counters, “like the Levine kids.”
“Oh yeah?” I push back. “Are you the authority on who is and isn’t Super?”
“I have my ways.”
I assume he means Golden Ace.
I want to ask what his event was, but it feels personal, and I’m almost scared that he wouldn’t tell me. I hope he would, given how comfortable I’ve gotten around him, and how it feels like we’ve known each other for longer than the past few weeks.
Instead, I ask, “Do you know what Golden Ace’s was?” Golden Ace has been fighting crime for five years, since I was twelve. I wrack my memory for a tragedy in Capital City then; tragedies were more common before Golden Ace.
“Yes. But he should tell you. He would if you asked.”
Ask me, is the subtext in his stare. Except… as we open up to each other, I consider our shared vulnerabilities—our powers—and I don’t need to ask, because I know.
“Your event,” I start. “You were angry afterward. Now you can attack with white-hot lightning.”