Free Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes by Marion G. Harmon

Astra.” He doffed his hat, vanishing it with a twirl. Okay, maybe a little of it was pose—he did like the stage. “However, I too find myself considering the question of your training, young lady. Indeed, Astra nailed the concrete points on the head. Surely you can do better in the absence of a director?” He tapped his cane absently and metronomically.
    Kindrake winced, the first real expression I’d seen that wasn’t angry or sullen.
    “I came to apologize .”
    “I would think that, of those involved in the events the other night, you are the one who has the least to apologize for.”
    “Terraflore ate your teammate!”
    “Ah. Of course there is that. You wish to apologize to Grendel? Astra can take you to him.”
    “It’s not just—” The girl visibly deflated. “My agent pushed me at Powerteam. Said it would be a good transition into my adult career…”
    “Say no more, certainly not while our lawyers are still dueling each other. And you have my sympathies. However.” He tapped the cane once, emphatically. “I must tell you that, should you pull another stunt such as today’s in Chicago, I will ensure that you cannot even fly over this town without being fined enough to put a dent in your generous syndication residuals. Am I clear?”
    With a nod for me and a smile Kindrake could interpret any number of ways, he disappeared in an understated sparkle of light.
    “ Tah-daaaah! ” Shell supplied. I opened my mouth but had nothing.
    I stripped off my mask. “Okay, let’s go see Grendel.”
    ----
    We found Grendel in Ozma’s lab, and nobody could have been more surprised to see Kindrake than he was. Nix instantly hated her, and the sight of Nix and Kindrake’s ruby-red drake glaring at each other from their shoulder-perches had even unflappable Ozma covering her mouth.
    I left them to it, confident that Ozma could handle any ego-driven stupidity, and finally went to deal with my own issues.
    Only to find that Jacky was already asleep. She didn’t sleep like the dead anymore, but being a living breathing daywalker only meant she didn’t burst into flame on contact with sunlight and could enjoy a solid meal—she preferred to work at night when she was most powerful, and I wasn’t going to risk waking her. Besides, she’d left a note in my rooms. She’d written it down so I could swallow it or even reduce it to plasma in Vulcan’s lab if I was paranoid enough. According to Jacky, I was never paranoid enough.
    It read “ I’m getting stonewalled by my handler. Contact says some kind of big conference. Wait .”
    “Drat.” I sighed.
    “You have got to do better than that. Someone’s going to take away your Adult Card.” Today Virtual Shell’s t-shirt just read Boo!   She tended to descend to ghost-girl humor when Jacky was around.
    I tried to scowl but my smile won. “Don’t you have something to do?”
    “Doing it, but Jamal’s cheating so he’s probably going to win our Halo game. What are we going to do?”
    Wait until evening? Let Jacky try again? That was the smart thing to do, but the echoes of last night’s nightmare twisted my stomach every time I remembered. It hadn’t felt like the other Kitsune dreams. Had it come out of my own subconscious fears or had Kitsune amped up the warning? Whichever, now the thought of waiting even a few hours made me queasily sick. Why did I always have everything but time?
    I sighed again. Jacky’s going to kill me.
    “I’m going to make another call.”



Chapter Seven
I’m the leader of a team of heroes. I’m the leader of a team of heroes . I’m still wrapping my head around what that means.
    From the journal of Hope Corrigan.
    ----
    Jacky once told me that if you wanted to get an intelligence agent’s attention, you should tell him something that you’re not supposed to know. It might not be the kind of attention you wanted, but it would be undivided.
    Technically, Veritas wasn’t a spook and the DSA wasn’t an intelligence