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WELL, I GUESS I’LL have to go to Mikey’s wedding now for sure.
As I parked my car and headed up to my apartment, I thought about calling him up and letting him know, but I decided to hold off on it for a little while. If I could get him to feel bad about the sacrifice I made for him, I would milk it.
Hey, he’d been trying to guilt me, bribe me, and coerce me into going back to Apollo City since I left. Mikey could use a little bit of justice himself, and even then, I was still going to be the more merciful one between us.
All thoughts of Mikey were hurled aside as I took out my keys. I had all the time and resources I needed to take care of the kids now, and I was happy about that.
“Lyra?” I called as I opened the door. “Lucas? I’m back.”
There was no answer.
That’s not good.
“Hello?” I walked past my kitchen, wondering if they’d managed to break something or if they’d found a way to transport themselves out of there.
For a small moment, I felt a rush of disappointment. That in itself was shocking. Apparently, I’d genuinely wanted to help them.
I pushed through the shock and felt a rush of determination. Surely they’re just playing in my spare room?
I turned into the living room and stopped.
Dante Salyards was sitting on my couch, a small cup of coffee in his hands.
Across from him, Lyra and Lucas sat on the loveseat, both of them silent. I could almost see the ripples of fear and uncertainty coming off their faces.
“Hello again, Hamilton,” Dante said, as though we were regular friends and he’d just seen me last week at a football game or something. “Or should I go along with your coworkers and call you Alex now? I know you hate Lexy, so I won’t even ask about that one.”
He set his cup down on the coffee table.
I cracked my knuckles, both in warning and preparation. “Dante,” I grumbled.
“Yes, it’s good to see you, too,” he said. “I have a proposition I’d like to discuss. I’m sure your young charges will want to hear it, too. Please, come and join us.”
I fought the urge to go over and punch him. Later, I told myself. He would see it coming too easily this way.
Instead, I walked over to where the kids were sitting and sat down next to them. They shuffled toward me, almost hiding behind me on either side of my body.
I hoped they couldn’t feel my own hesitation. Mikey’s dad was the last person on the face of the earth I ever wanted to see again, and even that was being generous.
Thankfully, I managed to outwait Dante. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would.
“So,” he said, “you never did answer me. Hamilton, or Alex?”
“Hamilton is fine,” I said. I glanced over at Lyra; she seemed confused at the change. I made myself promise to tell her about the name situation later. “That’s what you know me as.”
“I know you by another name as well,” he reminded me.
“That name died with Starry Knight,” I replied quietly, getting angry. “You saw to that.”
“Fair enough.” He crossed his legs and lounged back in the cushions. “So, Hamilton, how would you like to do me a favor?”
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard the terms.”
“There is literally nothing you could do to me that would make me work for SWORD.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t realize it,” Dante said, “given your expertise in semantics and the law. I didn’t ask you to do a favor for SWORD. I’m asking you to do a favor for me.”
“If you’re worried about Mikey,” I said, “he’s a grown up now. I’m not going to help you get on his good side.”
I suddenly recalled what Mikey had told me the other night. “Stuff” had been happening in Apollo City.
“I’m not here to discuss my son, nor am I going to comment on his impending wedding,” Dante said.
“I would hope you’d have the good sense to stay away from him.”
“I do,” Dante assured me. “Mikey’s moving on, and so have I.”
“Good.”
“I know I have very little room in his life.”
Correction: You have no room in his life, period. I’ll see to that.
“Come on,” Dante said, “I know we were never on the friendliest of terms, but surely you wouldn’t say we were adversaries?”
“I recognized it too late, just how terrible SWORD was,” I said. I thought about the time Dante appealed to Mikey by getting a Sinister to take Gwen’s Soulfire from her, and about the time he captured me, and the time he captured me and Starry Knight. Most of all, I thought about how they failed to save Raiya, at the end of our last battle. My hands tingled again, remembering her. “I’m not making that mistake again.”
“Then I’ll say it again: I need a favor from you.” Dante took another sip from the coffee. He raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised you don’t order Rachel’s blends. She sells them over the Internet now, you know.”
I hadn’t thought about doing that. Not seriously, anyway.
“But then,” Dante drawled on, “I suppose you wanted the chance to completely sever your ties from your teen years, didn’t you? Understandable, if somewhat regrettable.”
My fists clenched at his words. I felt my fingernails digging into my palms as I tried to tell myself to wait for the best moment to punch him, rather than the moment I wanted to. Which was the one right now.
“Here’s my favor: I need you to break into one of our bigger black sites,” he said. “There’s been some issues with SWORD in Apollo City lately. I’m afraid since the death of Ogden Skarmastad and his ‘heirs,’ there’s been a brewing power struggle to control the company. Something has happened that’s broken the system.”
“What is it?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I nearly cursed again. I mentally consigned my curiosity to hell.
Dante smiled. “You know as well as I do that there are some fallen Stars who worked for SWORD,” he said. “The meteorite falling—what? Ten years ago? Nine?—caused a bit of a kerfuffle among ranks. Our leader, exasperated, had all of them eliminated as a result.”
My eyes widened in surprise. Even for a morally ambiguous organization, that seemed a bit extreme. But then, I knew what others would do anything for power.
“You can see the trouble. Now, we have an issue. The meteorite’s origins have been traced to its original Star’s position.”
Raiya’s star.
“There’s a black hole there, according to our charts,” Dante continued. “And that would be fine—if SWORD’s leader didn’t want to gain control of it.”
“You can’t control a black hole,” I scoffed.
“Well, we weren’t supposed to be able to open a portal into the void inside the earth and get a full glimpse of hell, either,” Dante replied.
I said nothing to that. He was right, unfortunately.
“What makes you think I can help you?” I asked him. Lyra and Lucas both glanced at me, and I wondered if they were beginning to think I was being mistaken for some kind of Starlight Mafia boss.
“You’re a Star,” he said simply. “And you’re familiar with the meteorite case.”
“Psh. That’s nothing,” I grunted. I shook my head. “I haven’t used my powers in years,” I told him. “I no longer carry the Emblem of the Prince.” I held up my blank wrist as proof.
Years before, there had been a four-point star on my wrist, colored the same as blood, and when I pressed it I was able to transform into my superhero self.
Now, I wanted nothing to do with it; I didn’t even want the memories tied to it.
“That’s nothing,” Lucas said. “Here, give me your hand.”
He took it before I gave it, and pressed into my wrist with his small fingers. A flare of light spindled out, and I felt the titanic clash of power as the mark, briefly, faded in, before it vanished once more.
Lucas frowned. “I guess it really has been years,” he said. “You don’t seem to be connected to it.”
“It went away,” I snapped at him. “It went away, and I didn’t go crawling after it.”
“More like you turned your back on it,” he retorted.
This kid has an attitude problem. Maybe it would be better for me to hand them over to Dante while he’s here.
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “I don’t want to help SWORD or Dante.”
“I told you,” Dante said, “someone has figured out how the black hole can compromise Time’s power. Don’t you know what this means?”
“The end of the world?” I guessed.
“Exactly!”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s always stuff like that,” I said, “and it never happens.”
“That’s because it’s stopped by the people who can stop it.” Dante frowned at me. “When things don’t work the way they should, bad things happen.”
Hearing Elysian’s words—and one of his favorite phrases he used to guilt me into doing stuff all the time—was the last straw; I could almost feel my temper igniting.
“I know you’ve made yourself welcome here,” I snapped angrily, “but I need you to leave now. You’re not actually welcome.”
“Well.” Dante huffed. “That’s a shame. I would’ve thought you wanted to go and see Starry Knight.”
There was no use waiting for it anymore.
I jumped to my feet, catapulted myself over the coffee table, and punched him right in the jaw.
All those kickboxing classes finally came in handy.
As he reeled from the first blow, I pulled him back and hit him again and again. It was only when I saw his nose bleeding that I stopped and allowed myself to catch my breath.
“What do you mean, go and see her?” I roared. “She’s dead!”
Why did I have to keep telling people that? Why did I have to keep hearing myself say it?
“Stop being an idiot. SWORD has her body,” Dante told me as he pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. “They want to break open Time so they can get to the River of Life and gain immortality. With her body, they have control of her residual power.”
I found myself breathing deeply. “They didn’t bury her?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Even if she is gone, there are trace elements of her power in her body.”
Remembering we had an audience, I called back to Lyra and Lucas. “Kids, go to my bedroom and turn on the TV in there for a bit. You don’t need to hear any of this.”
I was shocked when they actually followed my orders.
When I could hear the television on in the other room, I turned my full attention to Dante. “What kind of sick organization do you work for?”
“I can assure you they aren’t selling her organs.”
“Well, that just makes me feel so much better,” I snapped.
“There’s a big black market for that,” he reminded me. “It should make you feel better. It means they’ve kept her safe.”
Safe in the enemy’s fortress. I grimaced. I didn’t want to think of that.
I also didn’t want to think of Raiya again. I didn’t want to see her. I tried to divorce the idea that it mattered what happened to her body, now that she was gone.
But I couldn’t. I never truly had peace with her death, and now I had to fight for her body and my soul at the same time. It would be painful. It would be hard. But it was the right thing to do.
If nothing else, leaving her body in SWORD’s control, especially if what Dante was telling me was true, was clearly the wrong thing to do.
“Fine,” I finally said, already feeling like this was going to be the worst Christmas vacation ever. “I’ll help you. But I want something in return. I want you to help me find their parents,” I said, jerking my thumb in the directions of the two kids, “and get them back home, safely. And then I want you and SWORD to leave me and my family alone, forever.”
“Deal,” Dante said. “But you have to complete my mission first. We don’t have a lot of time, and the situation could easily get out of hand, fast. Even some of the citizens seem to be getting more nervous by the day.”
I thought about what Mikey had told me. Were there more demons attacking the city, hoping for an easy victory? Or were they just settling down quietly, hanging out like leeches on an unsuspecting host?
Either way, I didn’t want Lyra and Lucas around to face it. “It would be easier to do my job if the kids went home first,” I said.
“It would be easier to do my job and get them home if you saved the world first.”
I glared at him, before glancing back toward my room. I could see Lyra and Lucas as they ducked back from the cracked doorway.
Considering Lyra and Lucas were Starlight defenders, maybe it was for the best that they were here.
I don’t know much about what is happening in Apollo City, but it would be nice to have allies again, I thought, almost wistfully. I would just have to be careful and make sure they knew not to tell their parents what they did when they made it back home. Especially since it seemed like any number of evil people and their plots to destroy the world were involved.
“When can you leave for Apollo City?”
“Give me some time to get them ready and pack,” I said. “And then tomorrow, I’ll head home.”
“Then I’ll expect you to be ready tomorrow.”
☼6☼