"She's pretty dead, so I doubt it," I said. "Also, she was British, so unless your witness heard-"

"Witness didn't hear anything," Calderon said, and I caught a hint of defensiveness that told me he'd bonded with the kid. "Didn't see the face, either. There was a hood, and the flash pretty much blinded him. He saw the electricity fork, could describe it curving through the air in slow motion, but that was about it for the mystery man. Loud crack of thunder in the air at the time."

"Sounds like a dry hole," I said, sitting back up.

"There are one or two things you could look at," Calderon said, letting my perfect set-up pass. "I didn't get a chance to look in on Flora Romero's life very much last time. With her murderer dead and the department wanting to write off Pollard to a lightning strike, I didn't get to dig. You might consider starting there."

"You're not coming with me?" I asked, letting the trace of a smile play across my lips, a little invitation for Marcus Calderon to step into a different world.

Calderon didn't bite, and I saw him cautiously shut the door behind his eyes. "I'm kinda busy here, and I don't think I'd be able to get my boss to clear me to go on this fishing expedition. Also, some dude throwing lightning out of his hands? I pull my pistol and all I do is get a jolt that sends me to the ground, dead?" He shook his head. "No, this sounds like a job for Supergirl."

"I'm no Helen Slater," I said and stood, switching the gravity back on.

"No, but that girl you used to roll with looks a little like her," Calderon said, and I felt myself flinch a little as he went fishing. "Petite, blond hair, flavor of the month, on every magazine cover-" He paused, looking at me, and smiled. "So, you are human. Jealousy and all."

I tried to smile, but failed. "Metahuman, but close."

"Pssshhh," Calderon said. "Same ballpark. Don't let 'em get you down. It's all just real loud noise, that grumbling."

"Don't let them get me down?" I gave him a cockeyed look. "Weren't you the one running an orchestrated campaign to give me shit from the minute I walked in?"

"Yeah, but you heard me talking to Maurice," he said, almost apologetic, "I give that to everyone." He extended a hand. "If you need questions answered, I presume you have my number."

I took his hand and gave it a shake so firm his eyes widened. "Thanks," I said. "I'll be in touch." I paused, almost to the end of the row. "Where should I start with Flora?"

"She worked at a shelter," Calderon said. "One of the bigger ones in the area. It's in the file. I'd start there, if it were me looking things over."

"You're the detective," I said, and started away again.

"And you're the hammer," he said to my retreating back. "Try not to bust up anything important, now, all right?"

"There's a first time for everything," I muttered and headed back through the lobby to the street.

Augustus.

I was buzzing all the way home after work. I played with the dust subtly, careful not to get caught by anybody and all that, for the rest of my shift. That wasn't like me. People noticed, so I had to lay off a little toward the end, kept making like it was just the shock of Mr. Cavanagh and Mr. Weldon dropping by and saying nice things to me, giving me my fifteen minutes. I was all smiles, and I don't think anyone had any trouble believing that I was just about as high as a kite from that experience.

But it wasn't just that. I mean, I was still shaking with excitement from that, but this was even bigger. This was me, finding out something awesome. Something special. I mean, I always knew I was a special person in my own way, but I thought it was gonna be, y'know, my work ethic and perseverance that carried me to the top. Nah, though. I found something in myself that nobody else even saw.

I walked home from work, hot sun beating down on my back. I was sweating even though I'd changed out of my coveralls and put them in my backpack. I was in shorts and a shirt, and I was sweating after about ten minutes. I hadn't even noticed, though, because I was fooling around with the dirt the entire time. I could make a clump move now, like almost a handful. Some people might take that as discouragement-"Oh, hey, why don't you just pick it up with your hand and throw it?"

Not, me, though. I wasn't discouraged. This was the start of something big. I'd read about metahumans when the whole thing up north came out and the president made his speech. I read the papers, I read rumors, I read everything I could get my hands on. If someone had said that at midnight on Thursday, there was gonna be a long-form essay written on a bathroom stall about metas, I would have been there at 11:59 to see what was up.

See, a lot of people get jazzed about fame and fortune, forgetting how many people get washed up along the way. I wanted to be somebody, but I didn't just want to be somebody famous. There wasn't any glory in that. Everybody assumed that if you were famous, you were rich, and that was just bull. I did some research, looked around. Nobody goes broke as hard as a famous person goes broke. It's always spectacular, watching someone who makes millions of dollars lose tens of millions. Hell, I was barely managing tens of thousands of dollars, and I couldn't see how you could lose even one (!) million, let alone tens of them.

I was looking forward to getting my chance to try, though, and this afternoon's development had me even more excited about how close the possibilities were.

I nodded at people as I passed, like always. Got that mixed assortment of nods of my own, some hellos, a few "What is this fool thinking?" looks, too. Same as always. I didn't care. If they were looking at my face, they weren't looking at the sand I was dragging behind me, dust in the wind, following along like I had it on a string.

I had no idea what I was going to be able to do with this yet, but ... yeah. I was excited.

I walked in the door to my house about two-thirty in the afternoon. Shifts ran a little strange at Cavanagh. We started early, at six, and got done early, which I liked. That way, second shift was done by ten p.m., which Mr. Cavanagh suggested was better for them. I assumed he had research or something on the subject, but it really didn't matter either way.

This had been one of the first days in a long time that I hadn't stayed late, and when my momma heard the key hit the lock, she must have come running, because she was standing right there in the hall when I opened the door.

The thing you've got to understand about my mom is that she is a formidable woman. My dad, he was a nice guy. Got along with everyone. When we had his funeral last year, it nearly filled the church.

But my momma was the voice you listened to in our household.

"What are you doing home so early?" she asked, looking at me with a furrowed brow, eyes all dark. "You feeling all right?"

"I feel fine," I said, closing the door behind me, locking the heat outside. I could hear the air conditioner in the next room, running to keep up with the midday sun. "Better than fine."

"Why are you home early, then?"

"I get done at two," I said, a little coyly. I wasn't quite smiling. She cocked her head at me in that serious way that demanded an answer. "Uh, I had a great day," I hurried to explain. "Mr. Cavanagh himself stopped by my line and took pictures with me and Cordell Weldon-"

By this point, Momma's eyebrows were just about stuck to the ceiling. "Uh huh," she said, with that same air she'd had when I used to tell her that my brother, Jamal, had hit me and I hadn't done anything to deserve it.

"No, they really did," I said. "It's going to be in a paper tomorrow, I bet. I saw a reporter from the Journal-Constitution there-"

She just turned her head and walked out of the room without saying another word. This was something she'd started doing to me once I was out of high school. I figured it was her version of "You're too old for me to whap you over the head with something, and I'm too old to stand here and listen to your nonsense anymore."

She went back into the living room, and I followed. It wasn't like I'd given her any reason to doubt my word in the last few years. "You don't believe me?" I asked as she settled back into the chair in front of her TV. Momma was retired. Dad had left her enough insurance that after she paid off the house she didn't have to go back to work. Having me and Jamal paying rent to her for living here helped, though, and we both knew it.

"Oh, I believe you," she said, not looking up from the TV. "I'm just surprised your fool self is taking a victory lap right now when all you did was get your picture in the paper." She snapped her gaze over to me, and I could see the hint of disappointment. "We didn't raise you to get all complacent-"

"I'm not, Momma, I'm not," I said, settling down on the arm of the couch so I could look at her. "I'm not complacent. I just ... you know, I left a little early today. I'll be in early tomorrow to make it up, and, uh ..." I got distracted by the TV screen in front of her as a blond white girl in a bikini that seemed like it glowed green against her sun-tanned skin made her way, laughing, across the screen.

Momma snapped her fingers in front of my face. "Don't you get distracted. Not by some mountain you think you've climbed at work, and not by some ..." she looked sideways at the blond girl on the TV, still laughing, hanging out around some pool in LA, "... some damned hussy. You got a good thing in front of you with Taneshia if you'd ever open your eyes and see it-then seize it."

"Momma, I got nothing going with Taneshia," I said. Taneshia French was our neighbor. Yeah. The girl next door. "She's ... busy." That was true. Taneshia was going to Georgia Tech to get her engineering degree so she could design bridges. We'd been rivals, sort of-always competing for grades.

I never won that one, sadly, which may be why she was going to Georgia Tech and I was working my way through Cavanagh management training so I could go to school.

Momma glanced back at the TV, where the blond girl was just dancing around the pool, playing for the camera. "I'd say you're blind, but you plainly aren't."

"Hard to miss what's right in front of me."

"And yet you do," she said and then nodded at the TV. "That girl is an idiot."

"I'm not staring at her brains-"

"Augustus Coleman!"

"Momma," I said, serious and low.

"Why can't you be quiet and dignified, like your brother?" Momma waved a hand behind her, where through the hallway was a door with a DO NOT ENTER sign that had radioactive or toxic symbols-something like that-on it.

"Momma, Jamal's depressing as hell," I said.

"But I don't catch him looking at some idiot bony-ass white girl who probably already has her butt implant surgery scheduled."

"Well, then he's also lacking a pulse," I said. I nodded toward the TV. "Besides, it's your show."

She bristled visibly. "I just like to know what's going on in the world."

"Try the news," I said, and stood up, heading for the hallway. "Because this-" I waved a hand at the TV, and the thin, pretty girl with the lively eyes on it, "it's what they call schadenfreude."

Momma raised that eyebrow at me. "Come again?"

"It's when you enjoy the pain of others because-"

"Boy, I know what schadenfreude is," she snapped at me. "Don't be a smartass. And I'm not taking pleasure in her misfortunes, because that girl is not experiencing misfortune. She's living about as high on the hog as you can get without standing on its backstraps. Everything comes up roses for her. Hmph. Schadenfreude. Throwing your big German words at me." She settled back into the couch, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest. "For your information, I watch her because she is dumb as a bag of hammers."

"So you just like to feel a little superior yourself," I said lightly and disappeared around the corner before she could answer it. There was a time when that might have gotten me a snap on the ears.

I headed down the darkened hall, maybe doing a little dancing-it had been a good day, after all. I was about to clear the corner when the door in front of me-the one with all the DO NOT ENTER warnings cracked, just a little. It was subtle. It was near silent.

And I heard it like it was a crack of thunder in my ear.

I looked into the dark beyond and could see a thin layer of an eye peering out. "Jamal," I nodded to him as I started to pass.

The door opened a few more inches. "Augustus," Jamal said, sticking his head out like it was February 2nd and he was a groundhog. My brother looked left and right all fearfully, like I was gonna take his head off or something. Truth was, Jamal and I hadn't had a fight in years. But we probably hadn't had a regular conversation in a year, either. He was withdrawn, quiet. Jamal was a computer programmer, did contract work or something at a distance from his employer.

"What's going on, brother?" I asked as I paused outside my own door. I didn't want to ignore him if he wanted to talk. Part of me thought maybe he was heading out to the bathroom as I was passing and didn't think he'd get caught checking. Oops. Now he might feel drawn into a real conversation with me, just to be polite.

I'm just kidding! Jamal never did anything to be polite. He was a programmer for a reason; talking to people was not in his job description.

"How are you doing, Augustus?" I saw Jamal fiddle with his glasses as he stood in the doorway, apparently resigned to talking with me.

"Just fine, just fine. How about you? Job treating you well?"

"It goes," Jamal said. He had a narrow face, a skinny body. Jamal was always the brains of our family, but the dude had zero confidence-not in himself, not in his smarts. He talked in a hushed whisper almost all the time, made awkward as hell jokes that left people staring at him wide-eyed, not really sure if he was serious or not (he was). My brother was a nerd, of the type you find in stereo, if you know what I mean. (Stereo-type, get it? I'm a wordsmith.) "That's good to hear," I said, nodding my approval. I was aching to get into my room so I could play around with my newfound powers a little more, maybe do some cleaning up, if you know what I mean-moving dirt around WITH MY MIND.

Yeah, it was still cool.

"Is she in there?" Jamal asked, nodding toward the living room.

"Yeah, she's watching that new show she likes," I said. "You know, the one with the-"

"I know the one," Jamal said. His glasses caught the reflection of sunlight streaming in from the long, narrow, white-curtained window in the front hall.

"You been watching a little of that in your spare time?" I was totally kidding him here. My brother didn't show much interest in women. Not that he showed interest in any people, really.

"Not really," Jamal said.

"Because that Katrina Forrest girl is something else, if you know what-"

"Your boss stopped by your line today," Jamal said, glasses flashing as he looked at me. "With Cordell Weldon."

I blinked in surprise. "You see that on the internet?"

"I did."

I nodded, a little enthusiastic that someone had caught my moment of fame-the first of many, I was sure. "Yeah, it was kind of a big deal."

"You looked good," Jamal said, and I blinked again. My brother didn't go in much for compliments, even when he did finally open his mouth and speak to others.

I felt my chest swell out with pride a little. "Well, you know, I've been working hard for a while, and it was just nice to get a little recognition of the fact-"

"Mmm hmm," Jamal said and adjusted his glasses again, a flash of reflected light hitting me right in the eyes. "Speaking of, I should get back to work."

"Yeah, all right," I said, feeling like I'd pushed the conversation past the reasonable point. "I'll ... uh ... let you get back to it, then."

He disappeared back into the darkness of his room without another word, the subtle click of the door shutting between us another reminder that my brother and I had almost nothing to talk about anymore.

"Hmm," I said and shook my head. That was Jamal. And I had things to do anyway. I shut the door to my room and started to clean the place for the first time that I could remember that didn't involve my momma threatening to beat me with a broom.

Sienna.

Flora Romero was described by her co-workers as one of the nicest, sweetest, gentlest people that the world had ever known, surely up for sainthood with Mother Theresa if the moment ever came. She'd not just worked at the homeless shelter I was visiting as a paid employee, she also volunteered extra hours without pay both there and at a local needle exchange, and possibly also had her hair braided every morning by the local birds in preparation for work while commanding a thundering musical performance in which she was the gentle, trilling lead vocal. I could practically hear her "I want" song, and it was centered around peace on earth and good will toward men.

After ten minutes of talking to people around the shelter, I realized that Flora Romero was pretty much my exact opposite number; everybody loved her, everybody liked her, and I guessed there were buckets of tears shed on the day she died because I saw more than a fair few shed right in front of me while talking to people about her. I'm not saying emotion makes me uncomfortable, but-oh, hell. Yes, I am. Visible displays of emotion make me uncomfortable, and about ten times in the last five minutes I had wanted to fling myself toward the ceiling at full force, smashing through and rocketing into the sky until my eardrums popped and I couldn't hear any more whiny whimpering. Until my super-healing fixed it, I guess.

I didn't do any of that, of course. This was a serious bit of business, and I was a serious person, blah blah blah. I held my tongue, watched the older lady in front of me wipe a tear with her sleeve, and controlled my grimace as best I could. "She was just the best of us," Yasmine Colon said, her brown eyes blurred by the heavy amounts of water and slightly running mascara.

"Did she have a boyfriend?" I asked. I had a few questions on my agenda that I'd been asking of the three people I'd talked to so far. Coverage, just in case one of them knew something the others didn't. Yasmine had been pointed out to me as someone who knew Flora best, though, so if I didn't get something unique from her, there might not be anything to get.

She looked at me blankly, and a little droplet ran down her cheek as she blinked a couple times. "I don't think-wait, wait. Yes. She talked about a boy she'd met. A couple days before she died, she mentioned him." Her lips pressed into a hard line and she welled up again. I only narrowly avoided taking a step back. "She seemed so happy, like she was falling in love."

Finally, maybe all the tears I'd had to witness were going to be worth it. "Do you remember a name?"

I could see her agonize over it, trying to snatch up a memory of something almost insignificant from more than a year ago. "I don't, I'm sorry. It was so long ago. I've tried to forget." She sniffed.

"Fair enough," I said, then switched tacks. "Did you ever know a man named Joaquin Pollard?"

She shook her head lightly, her chin jiggling a bit as she did. "I don't think so. Was that her boyfriend's name?"

I stood there for a second, pondering that one. If Joaquin Pollard was her boyfriend, him killing her would have been ... well, a fairly standard event, sadly. The motive wasn't a hundred percent clear in that case, though. "Did she show up to work with any unexplained bruises, looking like she was hurting at all, before she left?" Usually boyfriends didn't leap straight to murder, I didn't think. There was a buildup of abuse first, a pattern, though it was possible he'd just decided he was done with her and killed her.