Free Secrets of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer

shitless!”
    Fighting back the urge to sigh again, I said, “Well, I can’t really stop you, but I’d recommend you stick to low key jobs. Of course, Andydroid is out of commission, along with a good portion of my team, so you might want to take a big score. Just stay away from anything near us. Your cousin doesn’t need a reason to be more suspicious of me than she already is.”
    “Fair enough,” Bobby said, and shifted to scratching his ass. I tried my best not to cringe or look. “I reckon with Andydroid out of the way, that makes pickings in Atlanta easier.”
    Part of me wondered if I should really be giving Bobby advice on potential crimes. I was supposed to be working for The Man now. The other part wondered if I could get him to snatch enough synth muscle to get a new suit going. I’d already scrounged all that I could find here and it wasn’t nearly enough.
    With the ten crystals aligned on the table where the outlines of my hand was etched on the paper, I now had to prick the tips of each finger with a lancet that I’d picked up from a drug store. It was the kind diabetics used, and I hoped never to need it for that particular reason.
    Bobby dimmed the lights as I touched the blood on each finger to the crystals. In a perfect world, each of the crystals would glow, lit by the nascent power of magic that flowed through my veins as I repeated the incantation on the page. Instead, there was a tiny, feeble light where my left index finger touched the piece of rose quartz... and nothing else.
    Shaking my head, I consulted the accompanying paperwork. Light from that crystal indicates the presence of a passive form of magic, like, maybe, really good intuition. From the magnitude of the light, I reasoned that I shouldn’t quit my day job any time soon. It was just a hunch or maybe my passive magic telling me that.
    “Guess I’m going to need a lot of augmentation,” I muttered.
    “What did you say?” Bobby asked, from the other side of the room.
    “I don’t have hardly any latent magical talent,” I said, and began sending out invites to my own private pity party.
    My hulking brute of a friend started walking toward me. When he’d crossed half the distance, I noticed that all of the crystals were glowing now.
    “Bobby?” I stammered. “Your powers must be magical in nature.”
    “Really?” he replied, sounding confused. “So, it was a bolt of magic lightning that made me and Sheila like this? Does that mean I can do spells and stuff?”
    I wanted to shout at the unfairness of it all, and mutter how he can barely spell much less cast spells. Instead I said, “Maybe. I don’t rightly know.”
    Pulling my hands off the table, I stood and saw the semi-precious gems continue to glow brighter, reacting to Bobby’s presence. I felt suddenly exhausted, and all the things I’d read about how draining casting spells could be came to mind—just before I passed out.
    • • •
    “So, his power is magically based,” Stacy asks, her fingers are doing a number on my muscles. She’s being gentle, long accustomed to taking care with her augmented strength and what damage it could do to a mere mortal.
    “Yeah, I guess it was magical lightning that hit the water they were swimming in. The regular kind probably would have killed them.”
    “So, has he ever tried to learn any magic?”
    Recalling the few failed attempts on my friend’s part, I say, “A couple of times, but it requires a certain level of obsession that he doesn’t possess. Luckily, I do.”
    “Wonder it means Sheila could do magic?”
    “Maybe, I didn’t like her enough to tell her to give it a try. Right there, that’s the spot!”
    “You’re tense,” she states.
    “More nervous than tense,” I reply.
    The backrub stops. “Why are you nervous?”
    Turning to face her, I go with the only option available to me—the truth. “To be honest, I’m worried I’ll screw this up again. My plans today included watching the