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I jumped about ten feet. He was sitting in an armchair by the window.
“Eric.” I tried to catch my breath after the shock. “What are you doing in the dark?”
He turned on the table lamp next to him. He’d loosened his tie. As always, he looked fantastic to me, ultra male, comfortable in his body, big and muscular and intensely appealing on a sexual level. Down, girl. Remember he’s a dead end.
His expression was sober, but it changed when he studied me.
“Why are you holding your hand like that?”
I looked down. My fingers that had held the jewel were burned, and I’d been favoring them. I opened my hand and let him see. “I’ve been using a superpower.”
“You’re joking.”
I shook my head. “For real. I feel like the Little Mermaid—from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, not the movie, because it burns every time.”
He stood, towering over me. “There’s tea in the kitchen. Let’s go soak your hand.”
He put his strong arm around me and led me to the door, unlocking it. I didn’t resist. In the kitchen, he lifted me onto a bar stool. Very masterly. Then he found a tea bag, microwaved a cup of tea, and cooled it with ice cubes.
“Put your whole hand in,” he directed, once he’d poured it into a bowl.
I did as instructed. “That feels better,” I said, on a sigh.
“Now tell me about the superpower.”
“Remember the Dimensional Diamond that Barb threw at me a year ago? From my dad?”
He nodded. “It’s been sitting on the table in my living room ever since.”
“Roland suggested I bring it with me.”
“Him again,” Eric muttered.
“He’s my friend,” I started. “No, I take that back. I refuse to be distracted by your petty jealousy. Considering your double-dealing about Swoonie, I think I know which of you has my best interests more at heart.”
“What the hell have you been up to with the Dimensional Diamond? It’s not a toy.”
How dare he lecture me?
“That’s right, it’s a superweapon, one that only I can use.” My voice rose. “I’ve used it five times already. Not that you showed any interest.”
Eric frowned. “Tell me exactly what you’ve done.”
I told Eric everything. Sure, I was mad at him, but I could use the benefit of his excellent analytical mind.
“All told, I have stopped time, frozen literally thousands of people for ten minutes in the exhibition hall, I have boosted my throwing arm’s power and accuracy and hit a moving target fifty feet above me, I’ve made a man vanish into thin air, I held up a colossal piece of public art, and just now, I stopped a car that a man on a rampage was driving into the crowd on the street.”
I would have paced, but remembered my hand, and forced myself to stay still, but I was restless. “The first power was obvious. I stopped time. The second, not so obvious. The third, really strange. The fourth, I tried to slow time and then I tried to speed it up. The fifth, maybe what I did was slow time down for the car’s internal combustion engine. I don’t know what else it could be.”
Eric pulled out his cell, typed in a few words, and started reading aloud. “The mystical Dimensional Diamond was first used by White Mask’s nemesis, Aggrippa, in the War Between Times. Created by the Warlord of Scorat, the Diamond was stolen by Aggrippa and wielded during a battle royal between the Protection Squad and the Revisionary Army.”
“Translate into human talk,” I said.
“The bad guy stole it from a good guy, and used it in a battle against some other good guys,” he said. “Simple enough?”
I ignored his sarcasm. He was the bigger geek in the room, even though he looked the part of a James Bond villain. Specifically, Jaws. “Then what happened?”
“The Protection Squad won the War Between Times. Afterward, they locked the Dimensional Diamond in the vault of their station house.”
“I won’t ask how a purely fictional item became a real weapon that is linked genetically to me. My father has a lot to answer for.” I put my free hand to my forehead, weary, and needing more useful information. “Does it say what the jewel is capable of, or cite specific powers?”
Eric nodded. “Stop time, accelerate time—that’s how your napkin holder reached the pedal aircraft so fast, shift people in time zones. At one point, Juggerman tried to go back in time and change history. He used the diamond and went back, but he couldn’t change anything. He could only observe.”
I cocked my head at an angle. “That could be useful, but right now I need—”
“Silicone gloves,” he said.
I laughed, surprised. “You’re right. Where can I get some? An oven mitt might do in a pinch, but it's a little late at night to prowl a kitchen supply store.”
“You’ll figure it out, if you want to.” He waved that topic away. “This has been very distracting, but why were you planning on sleeping in the second bedroom?”
“You can ask that after you went behind my back and hired Leslie to draw my comic book character?” I was angry all over again.
“That was business. It has nothing to do with us.”
“Swoonie is my business. You could have discussed it with me, told me you were considering it. Instead, you sprung it on me as an afterthought. It never occurred to you that you humiliated me? That I looked like a fool, arguing for Swoonie to be kept alive, when you planned all along to do so, only not with me drawing her?”
“You don’t get it,” he said, impatiently. “When we had that meeting, killing Swoonie was my plan. Then Leslie became available. The opportunity to draw Swoonie was the key to luring her over. It was a business decision, that’s all.”
I straightened as much as I could with one hand in a bowl of tea. “I’m not an idiot. I understand about business. We supposedly have a relationship. We’re supposed to talk to each other, confide in each other, support each other.”
“You’re describing marriage,” he said. The coldness with which he said it spoke volumes.
There was no answer for that. If he didn’t see living together as a serious commitment, then of course he wouldn’t see any necessity to share his thoughts with me.
I wanted to grind my teeth. My eyes were open now. Not only was our relationship a failure by my standards, but it wasn’t even serious by his. News to me. Looking back on how we’d been relating, though, it made perfect sense.
I wasn’t willing to let it go that easily. “When we first got together, we were on the same team. I wonder why you don’t think of me as your teammate now?”
“Teammate? I don’t think so. I’m the captain of any team.”
I rolled my eyes. “Even if you’re the captain, you have to let the players know what the game plan is. Does that analogy make sense?”
Eric smiled his sharklike smile. “Think of me as the team manager or owner. I do my strategizing on my own. Then I announce my decisions to the players on the team, and expect them to carry out my goals.”
“Nice to know the hierarchy.” Eric’s attitude stung. At least he hadn’t been leaving me cash on the nightstand, but his view of our relationship did not flatter me, not at all.
I carefully lifted the bowl of tea with my good hand. “Thanks for the help. I’m going back to the second bedroom. It has been a very long day.”
When I stood, he rose from his chair, too. He took the bowl, and then grabbed a towel and wrapped it gently around my hand. He leaned down and planted a kiss on my lips. Nothing aggressive, but not soft, either. Eric was not a soft man.
I couldn’t help a sigh escaping. He was so tempting.
“I’ll leave my door unlocked,” he said, and smiled as if he had my number.
I stiffened my back and walked to the second bedroom. Once I was inside and had deposited the bowl on the bureau, I locked the door again. Not to keep him out, but to keep me in.
I should have told him we were over. I should have ducked his kiss. I kept wanting to end it. I wasn’t getting what I needed from our relationship, and I couldn’t give him the deeper emotional consolation I’d only hours ago discovered he needed. Despite that logic, when I was near Eric, all my body registered was that it could get what it wanted from him.
Could we change our relationship to sex only, not living together? It was mostly sex only already. Would that be good enough for either of us? Eric liked a lot of sex and so did I, with him, anyway. I’d always liked sex, but sex with Eric was...wow.
Buddies who made booty calls? That wouldn’t work. We weren’t in the same financial league, so if I left, I’d have to move far away from his expensive midtown Manhattan address. Which would make having a regular sex thing inconvenient. Anyway, in two months I would be moving to Los Angeles, calling it L.A. the way the cool kids did. I ought to tell Jason I was taking him up on his offer.
I probably should move out of the hotel suite tonight, since I wasn’t planning to have sex with Eric anymore and he saw that as the sum of our relationship. I was too tired tonight to make such a grand gesture. We’d been through too much together for mere show.
Or possibly I might not have fully given up on us.
I dunked my aching hand in the bowl of tea again. I was too wiped to do anything about a silicone oven mitt right now. Maybe tomorrow I could buy one at the former Marshall Field’s department store. It was only a few blocks away, but tomorrow would be craziness all day. I was on panels. I would wear my superheroine uniform again, since the gloves gave me some protection. The gloves without the uniform would look weird. Not that anything was too weird for a comicon, but I’d draw less attention in a full costume.
I sent Roland a text, asking him to call me. This bedroom was across the suite from Eric’s, so he wouldn’t hear me talking. I wouldn’t hear him, either. A metaphor for our relationship.
Within two minutes, Roland called. “Jeff Kane was taken to the hospital. He was hit by a dart containing a mild poison, and that precipitated a heart attack.”
I told him about my adventure later on the street with the rampaging driver.
“He might not have anything to do with our nemesis,” he said. “Could be disgruntled because of the crowds, or something.”
“That’s lame. Comicons are the geekiest events ever. Everyone is welcome from the nerdiest MIT grads to the guys who think televised costumed wrestling is real.”
“Whatever,” Roland replied. His stiff tone indicated his displeasure at being lumped in with so many different ilks of social losers.
“No offense, Roland, but you’ve seen the crowds. They're fixated on superhero movies or television, not comic books.”
“Comic book conventions started as a safe place for comic book fans. Now we’re—they’re the outsiders at their own events.”
“I'm sorry you feel that way, but how does that tie in with Mistress Miraculous?”
“From the evidence so far, she’s someone who doesn’t like the current crop of comicon fans. That and the pointed attack against Kane suggests an older person with a grudge against CP Comics.”
“I should talk to Jean Westover again. She knows everyone in the business. She might have an idea.”
My fingers tingled with renewed pain so I shoved them back into the bowl of cool tea. Better.
I said, “I heard that the Dimensional Diamond can take me back in time, too.”
“Not successfully. White Mask’s girlfriend, Cara Nome, borrowed the jewel and went back in time to 1793 to save Marie Antoinette. The queen was guillotined despite Cara’s efforts.”
“But that’s in the comics. We don’t know what powers my father put into the real jewel, though, do we?” I yawned. “Okay, I’m done. I’ve got to sleep. Hopefully there won’t be any crises overnight, because I’m off duty.”
“Rest. I’ve got guys covering the entire convention center, and cameras on every entrance.”
As I gingerly removed my clothes and took a shower, trying my best to shield my burned fingers, I thought about Roland. He still hoped we could go back to a romantic relationship. Despite what Sarah had suggested, I believed Roland was the good guy, the rock-solid guy, the guy who wanted a commitment. I liked him very much. I even depended on him emotionally to some degree. We could talk, whereas Eric and I never seemed to talk.
I heaved a sigh that hurt my chest. I donned my nightgown, and got under the covers. Eric would welcome me if I went to the other bedroom and slipped in with him. The sex would be as fantastic as always.
We never talked. Our bodies talked, but I was at a loss to interpret the truth behind what my body said about Eric.
I sat bolt upright. We’d talked this evening. Eric had plainly said we did not have a serious, committed relationship that we would someday take to the next level by getting married. How had I forgotten that? He’d told me his truth. Why was I in denial about his cold repudiation of an “us”? Did I think I knew his emotions better than he did? Was I so fixated on Eric-the-sex-god that I routinely ignored when he spoke the truth about our relationship? Had we been talking all along, but I’d pretended otherwise because he’d never said what I wanted him to say?
I flopped back down on the mattress. Had I been using Eric even more than he’d been using me? It was a shaming thought. I needed an advice columnist to tell me what was true here.
I turned restlessly on my side, burrowing my head into the pillow. I wanted to sleep, but with my thoughts going around and around, it wasn’t likely to come easily tonight.
*
I was inside a jewel. Facets were all around me, first like diamonds, then, as I wandered down a long corridor, colorful like stained glass. I peered at the glass bits and realized they were windows. Stained glass windows set into a jewel? No, into a wall, in a corridor that stretched emptily before me. No. It wasn’t empty. A masked figure walked away from me. I sped up, wanting to see who it was. A long dark cape billowed out behind the figure, and some kind of headdress—a hat? a helmet?—obscured details like hair. I must catch up to the person. He was the answer to all my questions. The long corridor was lit with yellow gold girders. My running footsteps echoed on the marble.
The distance between me and the retreating figure never lessened. I put on a new burst of speed and suddenly I was flying. I caught up to the person and grabbed his cape, pulling him so he turned to face me.
His face was a mask, with no head behind it. His laughter mocked me.
It was a woman’s laugh. I recognized that laugh.
The mask and cape collapsed in a heap onto the marble floor.
I woke up. I was in my bed in the hotel room. It had been a dream, but what a dream. In my dream I’d been walking a piece of the Chicago Pedway—the underground network of passages that linked many parts of the Loop so people could avoid going outside in inclement weather. I even knew which section it was. Macy’s, the current owner of Chicago’s fabled Marshall Fields department stores, had built its own lavish section of the Pedway and recently decorated it with some of the vintage stained glass windows from the Smith Museum that used to be on Navy Pier. The effect was jewellike, an obvious dream shorthand meaning the Dimensional Diamond.
Where I’d been in my dream was the easy part. The rest was harder to decode. I was chasing a phantom? I thought I was chasing a man, but it was a woman? Was that what the dream was telling me? And why had I been flying? I couldn’t fly in this universe.
Jewels, color, gender, superpowers. What did they mean? Or was it only a dream, and not a message? Was someone trying to tell me something, or was my brain trying to rearrange clues so I’d see the mystery of Mistress Miraculous differently?
I tossed and turned some more. Finally, I slept again.