The Light of Redemption Read online

  “Maybe he feels the same way Eclipse does.” Simon cut into the pancake stack on his plate as if just remembering it was there.

  “You don’t know how Eclipse feels,” I reminded him.

  He shrugged. “He hasn’t come forward. Didn’t stay to talk to the cops last night. That makes it seem like he doesn’t want to be known, right?”

  Of course it did. But I doubted he wanted to be called “The Brute.” I felt compelled to defend him, though I didn’t have much motive to. Not that anyone knew of, anyway. “How about something less villainy?” I thanked Trillium as she handed me a bag and go cup.

  “Maybe you’re right. I’ll work on it.” Simon yanked out his notepad and scribbled something on it, then squinted up at the menu over the pass-through window. I snorted and left, wondering if his next attempt would have “grande” or “extra” in it. Or if it would be some riff on toast and bacon.

  I walked back to my house, sipping the coffee while I considered my next move. Probably the best thing to do was write Conn an email. He’d provided an email address when he applied for the library card. But I wasn’t working today, and now I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. I’d have to find an excuse to go in so they didn’t wonder what the hell I was doing in someone’s records on my day off.

  An hour later, after doing away with the danish, showering, and dressing in normal clothes, I walked into the library just as Olive was coming out. She looked furious, her brows a severe V over the bridge of her nose, her mouth compressed to almost nothing. I almost expected to see fire blaze out of her eyes when she shoved through the inner doors.

  “Excuse me.” I swung to the side before she crashed into me. She halted, wiped her expression clear, and then beamed at me. The transformation was so deliberate I thought my mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Harmony! I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Uh, it’s nice to see you, too, Olive.”

  “I thought you weren’t working today.”

  “I’m not. I just have to get something I left in my office.”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  Yeah, I bet she did. I still wasn’t interested in discussing Eclipse with her, but I hadn’t heard anything new about the Inalbis, and she might have an update on Fran’s condition. So I reluctantly moved away from the door so we wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.

  “What’s up?”

  “I saw you Friday night.”

  So she was taking up where she left off yesterday morning. I shook my head. “I was home Friday night. You must have seen someone that looked like me.”

  “No, I mean, I saw E-clipse.” She said the name with precision, snapping the P and turning the S into a sharp hiss.

  Okay, I couldn’t play dumb now. Open confrontation and I were not friends, but when it set itself in front of me, I met it head on. “What are you trying to say, Olive?”

  She looked around, which was silly because we could clearly see that no one was near the entryway, either outside or inside, and we were alone in the foyer. Then she eased closer and lowered her voice.

  “I was in the bathroom that day, remember? In elementary school? You made it dark, and then returned the light.”

  “It’s called a light switch.” I gestured at the wall inside, where an ivory bank of switches stood out against the gray stone wall. “See? They’re everywhere.”

  “Don’t be cute. I know you’re her secret identity.”

  I laughed, partly to hide the unease building in my gut. I didn’t know how to put an end to this, and I was starting to think being my buddy wasn’t her goal.

  “We’re not living in a comic book,” I said. “Secret identity? Come on.”

  She raised one shoulder. “It is what it is. In the cities, teams don’t wear masks and work only at night. Everyone knows who they are. For some reason, Eclipse doesn’t want that. So she’s got to be hiding something. And if you’re Eclipse, that means you’re hiding something.”

  “I have absolutely nothing to hide.” That was the truth. Besides Eclipse, I didn’t have any big secrets. No illicit relationships, no questionable decisions. No criminal record, not even a sealed juvie one. I did have some speeding tickets, but I didn’t care if anyone found out about those. I wasn’t rich, but I was able to pay my mortgage and utilities and save enough to cover a car repair or medical bill when stuff happened.

  The more I thought about it, the less sense it made that I’d created Eclipse instead of doing what I can do openly. I hadn’t discovered my ability until I was old enough to hide and control it, and it was obviously unique, so I just didn’t tell anyone. That made it easier to stay in the shadows, but it wasn’t why I chose to be in the shadows.

  “Everyone has something to hide.” Olive sneered, looking me up and down, finally dropping all pretense at wanting to be my friend. “And people like you are dangerous.”

  I laughed again, this time more easily. She was sounding a little unhinged, which would make her less credible if she decided to really go after me for some reason. “I’m a librarian. You can’t get much less dangerous than that.”

  “Just watch out. You won’t get away with it much longer.”

  “Get away with what?” I called after her as she shoved through the outer door and hurried through the parking lot.

  “Okay, that happened,” I muttered and went inside. The two library assistants who were working today waved at me, but both were helping patrons so they didn’t say anything as I went into the office and sat behind the desk. I woke the computer and quickly pulled up Conn’s account. His email address was simple, just his name, and he used one of the common providers. I scribbled it down anyway, then clicked out of the system and grabbed a stack of catalogs I sometimes took home to research possible additions to the collection.

  As I passed around the end of the main counter, a pile of leaflets caught my attention. They hadn’t been there yesterday. I circled around to check them out. Most of the stuff people wanted to leave was fine. Neighborhood yard sales, craft club meetings, charity or school fundraisers. But once in a while someone with a destructive agenda wanted to put out propaganda, and sometimes they slipped it out there without asking.

  The half-size pieces of paper depicted a harsh comic-book-type panel at the top. It looked like superheroes destroying a normal neighborhood. Below were a couple of paragraphs warning members of the Pilton community that they harbored an insidious danger to their children. In decent grammar and with heavy subtext, it basically said that if they weren’t careful, the town superhero was going to leave them in a pile of rubble and despair.

  I felt my lip curling and the skin around my eyes tightening with disgust. “Tori,” I called to one of the assistants. “Where did these come from?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t see them before.”

  Well, they weren’t staying. It was irrelevant that the superhero they were talking about was me. During election seasons, we had a whole table of fliers and brochures for candidates’ platforms and talking points. Church announcements sat next to fliers for the local Wicca coven’s next meeting. But bigotry and fearmongering had no place in my library. I’d have gotten rid of them no matter what.

  Grabbing the stack, I stalked back into my office and shredded the whole pile before storming back out to my car.

  I sat there, staring out into the bright day, fuming. Here I was, fretting that I wasn’t doing enough as Eclipse, and someone out there had decided I was doing too much. Olive was the obvious suspect. She’d confronted me, and I’d just seen her coming out of the library. Was it me, or did she just hate superheroes?

  Something crinkled, and I realized I’d clenched my fist around the sticky note I’d jotted Conn’s email address on. I whipped out my phone and typed up a short email to him from my generic account. I didn’t
sign it. I wasn’t going to hide my identity from him, especially if he agreed to help me, but there was no sense risking it getting out to anyone else because I’d been too furious to use caution. I’d taken a careful path to get where I was, and that just made me even more infuriated that someone would accuse me of endangering the people I was trying to protect.

  I wasn’t exactly an overachiever growing up, but I did work hard to reach my potential, to exceed the expectations people had of me. I’d graduated high in my class and with honors from college, getting both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees faster than normal. I wanted my family and friends and mentors to be proud of me. And I really, really didn’t like to fail. Not when others were watching.

  So I’d dreamed of being a superhero without doing anything about it for a long time. I never knew anyone else with abilities whose steps I could follow, and I always wanted to come back to Pilton. Small-town superheroes just weren’t a thing. My power didn’t protect me physically, and I wouldn’t have a team around me to cover the “strong” or “fast” elements. And inexperience killed faster than anything else. At the time remaining in the shadows seemed smart while I built my skills.

  But maybe it was just cowardice. No way I was ever giving Simon the interview he wanted. It was hard enough admitting to myself that fear held me back. I couldn’t tell the world that I didn’t want to look stupid or get hurt. Especially when that would play into the leaflet person’s hands.

  Now I had the rest of the day to obsessively check email to see if Conn responded. Before starting the car, I refreshed the email app on my phone. My heart slammed hard against my breastbone when I saw his name in the inbox, in bold. Unread message.

  I couldn’t catch my breath. Anticipation tightened my spine and shoulders, and I touched the message to open it.

  I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I did see the report in the papers of the man you describe, but I don’t know him, so I’ll be unable to pass along your inquiry. In fact, I urge you to reconsider your intentions. There are professionals trained to handle crime and crises, and you should let them do their jobs.

  He hadn’t signed it, either. Not willing to put his name to his lies? Grinding my teeth, I cranked the engine. To hell with him. Where did he get off, telling me to stop worrying my pretty little head? Hypocrite. Because I didn’t believe for a second he wasn’t The Brute. Or Mr. Clothesline. Or whatever name Simon settled on in the end. I couldn’t wait to say that to his face. I’d call him out, believe me.

  In the meantime, I wasn’t just going to ignore his “advice.” I was going to actively thwart it. He didn’t want to help me, fine. I could still do more, and I was going to find a way to make it happen. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed someone else to at least throw out ideas, if not be a guinea pig.

  It was time to really make Angie my sidekick.

  Chapter 5

  After starting the car and aiming for home, I dialed Angie’s cell phone.

  She answered after the first ring. “Hey, you, what’s up?”

  “Hey, you busy?”

  “Working. But they have the floor covered. Not too many people here right now. Why?”

  “I was hoping I could get you to come help me with training.”

  “What do you mean?” She sounded excited. “Like, with—” She half choked, and I heard laughter in the background.

  “Yeah, that. I want to expand my abilities, and I’m off today.”

  “Where?”

  “Emeraud?”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Wait!” I caught her before she hung up. “I’ll pick you up. We can’t park our cars over there.”

  “Right. Gotcha. Looks like I need some training, too.” She laughed and hung up.

  I changed into my catsuit but covered it with an overtunic to camouflage it in case we ran into anyone. Then I swung by the diner. Angie dashed to the car and was inside in half a second, urging me to “go go go.”

  I laughed. “Are we after someone?”

  “No.”

  “Is someone after you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what’s with the hurry?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me,” she explained with the air of someone trying not to use the word “dummy.”

  “Angie, you’re my best friend. We’re together all the time. You getting in my car tells no one anything. You running and ducking and sending me squealing away? That would get attention.”

  “Good point.” She set her giant purse on the floor, then twisted to move it to the back seat, instead. “So where are we parking if we don’t want anyone to see us?”

  “The building next door. I’ll show you.”

  On the way out there, I told her about the leaflets. While she ranted about idiotic, dangerous misanthropes, I tried to figure out why some of the language felt familiar. I hadn’t talked to Olive enough to know if it sounded like her, but something about it niggled at my memory. I just couldn’t quite place why.

  A few minutes later, we were driving down a road on the outskirts of town. The river rushed past on the right, slowly angling away from us and making room for a couple of abandoned warehouses and manufacturing plants built way back in the days when shipping still used ships. Or boats, as the case was down here. Our tributary was no Ohio River, but it had been enough to move textiles and something else I couldn’t remember.

  Emeraud had been a storage warehouse. As a member of the local historical society, years ago, my dad took me with him to assess the place to see if it warranted registration. When I first became Eclipse, I used the interior, which was wide open and contained nothing I could do much damage to. It also, for some reason, still had electricity. At least, it had five years ago when I first snuck in. I didn’t know who owned the building or could be paying the bill, but it allowed me to access light in small quantities while I honed my manipulation.

  The building next door was actually a few hundred yards downstream. It was a more unusual structure, shaped in a squared-off U facing the river, with a loading dock in the center. The way the road curved, if I parked in the U, no one could see the car unless they actually came onto the property and circled the building.

  Angie stretched and looked around, frowning up at the now cloudy sky and then out at the river, where an egret skimmed past. “This is smart. But how are we getting over there without being seen? We should have waited to come at night.”

  I smoothed my hair back into a ponytail and quickly wrapped a scrunchy around it. “If I did this at night, people driving by would see the light flashing in the windows. I have a way in. No one will see us.”

  She looked skeptical, especially when I led her down to the riverbank.

  “You didn’t say there would be mud!” she called from behind me. I glanced back to see her picking her way from stone to clump of grass, arms flailing to keep her balance.

  “Don’t be a wuss. It washes off. And it’s not deep.”

  “We’ll leave footprints.”

  “So?” I checked the top of the bank for the edge of the fence so I’d know when we were past it.

  “So if anyone goes in and sees the prints, they’ll identify us by the tread of our shoes.”

  “You’re wearing Nikes, Ang.”

  “Yeah, well, they were on clearance. I bet no one else in town has a pair like this.”

  “You’re overthinking it. We’re only trespassing.” There was the fence. I started counting steps. It had been a couple of years since I came out here for this, but it wasn’t hard to remember my old routine. Yep, at twenty-five, the old stone stairway became visible on the grass-tangled slope. Further down were the remains of a dock, rusted pilings sticking up out of the water, but that was exposed to the street while this crumbling staircase was blocked
from view by the building itself, once we got to the top.

  “Be careful.” I waited for Angie to catch up. “This wasn’t exactly stable the last time I was here, and it’s been a couple more years of exposure.”

  “Yay, adventure.” She waved me to lead on, and I started the climb, testing each step before putting my full weight on it. A couple of them shifted or lost pieces off the edge, but they all held. At the top, wind ripped strands of hair out of my ponytail and across my eyes. The clouds had piled up and begun to roil as a backdrop to the large building with its towering chimneys at the corners. They’d built it with beauty in mind as well as function, so the windows up high on the walls had peaked arches and gave the whole thing a gothic look.

  Panting, Angie dragged herself up next to me. “Wow. Pretty imposing from here.”

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” I started across the overgrown lot toward a door that had a busted lock. The damp air had swollen the wood, but after I slammed it with my shoulder a few times, it groaned and popped open. We slipped inside, and I closed it behind us.

  “Wow,” Angie said again. She went to the middle of the floor and spun, looking up. “Can you imagine if they made apartments out of this?”

  “They might, someday, if the city creep gets out this far.” It was very dim in the building, thanks to both the clouds and the lack of windows. The ones up high were grimy, so it was dark enough that I could see what I was doing with the light I gathered.

  If I could gather any. I went to the row of offices at one end of the building and tried the light switch. None of these rooms had windows, either, so the light was contained. Two of the three hanging metal fixtures came on, and I quickly grabbed the light from the bulbs.

  Angie had come up behind me and whistled when she saw what I did. “I never got to watch you do that before. Where did it go?”