Rose tapped a finger against her lips, and then shook her head.
“I could help you, Malcolm,” she said. “But I also need your help.”
“My help?”
“I can’t travel effectively during the day,” said Rose. “When I lost myself to my powers and became a spryte, well, you can see what happened to my skin, and my eyes. It’s very hard to cover myself up enough to pass as a normal human, and I can’t use my powers very well when exposed to strong light sources.”
“Is that what happened tonight?” asked Malcolm.
“It’s… hard to remember,” she said. “When it’s been a while since I’ve engaged in my focus activity, I start to lose track of who I am. My point is… I could really use a place to stay. Just for a few days, while I regain my strength.”
She wants me to hide her here. That’s just about the worst idea I’ve ever heard.
“Rose…” Malcolm chewed his lip and started to shake his head. “It wouldn’t be safe for you here. I might have to bring other champions over, or they might stop by. I just can’t do it.”
“This demon that you’re after,” said Rose. “How do you expect to find them without help?”
“I’m a member of the Champion Authority,” said Malcolm. “I’m sure they could give me some information.”
“Maybe,” said Rose. “But maybe not.”
She looked at him. Malcolm could see the hope dying in her eyes, and suddenly knew that she wasn’t lying to him about at least one thing. She was just as desperate as she claimed to be. He felt a sudden surge of empathy, and knew that he couldn’t just force her out into the cold.
“…Alright,” he said. “I guess you can stay with me. But just for a few days, like you said.”
Rose smiled at him and walked in closer. She leaned in, and for a moment, he thought she was going to kiss him again.
“Thanks,” she said. “I was worried that you were going to make me do the walk of shame.”
Malcolm chuckled. He looked at her, surprised at how much more relaxed she seemed now that he’d agreed to let her stay.
“So how will you help me find the demon that I’m looking for?” he asked. “Can we start tonight?”
Rose frowned and shook her head.
“I’m too weak to start tonight,” she said. Malcolm raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t… seem weak,” he said.
“Up against you?” She smiled. “No. But up against another spryte or demon? I don’t think I’d stand a chance at some of the more dangerous ones that could be lurking out there, not right now. I’ll need some time to rest and recuperate.”
She gave him an odd look, a little embarrassed, perhaps a little eager.
“Alright…” he said. “So, I guess it’s probably better if you take my bed tonight. It would be hard for me to block the light from the windows in the living room.”
“Why don’t we both take the bed?” asked Rose. She sat down on it, patted the spot next to her, and crossed her legs.
“I… don’t think that would be a good idea,” said Malcolm.
Rose stretched out on the bed, rolling onto her stomach and pushing her butt up into the air slightly.
“Think about how much fun it would be,” she whispered. “I sleep naked, you know.”
Malcolm felt himself immediately start to get excited, even though it had only been a few minutes since their last round. He tried to ignore it.
“That was a onetime thing,” he said, forcing the words out. “We can’t be involved like that. It’s just not good for either of us.”
Rose rolled over onto her back and slowly slid her hands across the fabric of her pants, and then her shirt. She clasped her hands and pulled her arms together, framing her breasts and making them look even bigger than they already were.
“As you wish,” she said. “Malcolm.”
She said his name as though it was an erotic promise, slowly rolling it off her tongue and past her lips. She stared at him, her eyes hungry and full of sexual power. Malcolm felt himself being drawn in and knew that he needed to get out of the room if he wanted to keep any semblance up of having control over himself.
“Well then… good night.” He cleared his throat and stepped back through the door, holding the door knob and getting one last good look at her.
“Sweet dreams,” whispered Rose.
He closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
I’ve just made possibly the biggest mistake of my life.
CHAPTER 12
Malcolm was awake for most of the night. He kept expecting something to happen, be it Rose bursting out of his bedroom and attacking him after all, or sliding out naked, and pushing through his resistance for another hot, steamy encounter.
Nothing happened. Malcolm paced his living room. He had a midnight snack. He played video games for a little while, keeping the sound mostly muted.
He finally got to sleep sometime in the grey area between late night and early morning. It felt like he’d only had his eyes closed for a couple of minutes when a loud knock drew him back awake.
“Wake up.” His front door opened, and Tapestry stepped into his apartment. “Your training starts early. We’ve got a lot to cover.”
She was wearing a grey tunic style sweater over a tight pair of jeans, her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She frowned when she saw him lying on the couch, and Malcolm had to think through the haze of early morning grogginess to realize why.
“You’re sleeping on the couch,” she said, flatly. “Is there any particular reason why that is?”
Malcolm groaned. One of the video game controllers was still out on the floor, and he gestured to it.
“Late night session,” he said. “Gotta keep my gaming skills up.”
“Your… gaming skills?” The look Tapestry gave him was one of amused disbelief. Malcolm grimaced, feeling like a man child.
“Hey, don’t hate the player, hate the game,” he said. “I just have to grab a change of clothes and then we can get…”
He trailed off as he looked up at Tapestry. Rose was standing directly behind her, smiling coyly and wearing only a sheet. She pointed a finger at Tapestry and mouthed the words “Is she a champion?”
Tapestry saw Malcolm’s expression and glanced over her shoulder. Rose was gone in an instant, vanishing completely into the shadows and reappearing across the room, in the darkness of the corner, still wrapped in the sheet.
“What?” asked Tapestry. “What is it?”
Malcolm shook his head slowly.
“Uh… nothing,” he said.
Rose reappeared behind Tapestry again, flaunting her ability to sink into the shadows and give herself practical invisibility. Malcolm felt his tension skyrocket, but he couldn’t even gesture for her to stop without risking giving himself away. Tapestry was looking around the apartment, with Rose silently trailing her, like a mischievous child holding up bunny ears behind someone’s head for a photo.
“Your apartment is so small,” said Tapestry. “You should consider buying a house, instead. It’s a better use of your money.”
“Yeah, uh, totally,” said Malcolm. “That sounds reasonable for a millennial without a college degree.”
Tapestry shot him a look. Malcolm barely even noticed. He hesitated before heading into his room to change, his heart pounding at how close he was to getting caught.
As soon as he had on a new shirt and jeans, he hurried back out into the living room. Tapestry was looking out the window, and Rose was leaning on the couch behind her. The sun peaked out over the clouds on the horizon, and Malcolm saw firsthand just how much it affected her.
Rose’s cloak of shadows went from rendering her nearly invisible to being nonexistent. She blinked, and a flash of annoyance and fear passed across her face. Tapestry started to turn around, and Rose wasn’t close enough to anything she could hide behind.
“At least I get a good view!” said Malcolm, stepping up beside Tapestry and throwing
an arm around her shoulders. “Right?”
Tapestry didn’t look amused.
“Malcolm,” she said. “Are you hitting on me?”
“Uh…?”
That’s a good question.
He let his arm drop, and held up his hands innocently.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I get a little frisky. I think it has something to do with my diet.”
“I’m your mentor,” she said. “Try to keep things professional, Wind Runner.”
Malcolm spotted Rose as she slipped back into the safety of his room and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Speaking of which…” he said. “We should probably get going.”
“Hold on, let me get a look at your bedroom, first,” said Tapestry.
Malcolm cleared his throat.
“Tapestry,” he said. “Are you hitting on me?”
She looked mock offended, and punched him gently in the shoulder.
“You are such a brat,” she said. “Never mind. It’s probably disgusting, anyway.”
She turned to leave his apartment. Malcolm glanced back at the door of his room one last time and then followed her.
Tapestry had parked the BMW on the street outside, but she didn’t head for it. Malcolm fell into step beside her, raising a curious eyebrow.
“No car today?” he asked.
“We’re not going far,” said Tapestry. “We just need a calm place where we can sit and talk.”
She led him into the park across the street from Malcolm’s apartment. It was the same park that had collected a half dozen overdoses in the past year, and regularly had to be raked by someone from the city for discarded needles.
This is her idea of a calm place?
“There’s one aspect to being a champion that we didn’t get a chance to explain to you yesterday,” said Tapestry.
“Really?”
“It’s nothing intentional, we just didn’t have time to get to it immediately,” she said. “There are more pressing concerns to be addressed when giving an orientation to someone who has just discovered their gift.”
Tapestry led him toward the pond that filled the center of the park, sitting down on one of the benches around its edge. Malcolm sat down next to her, waiting for her to continue.
She didn’t, at least not immediately. Instead, Tapestry reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a surprisingly large bag of bread crumbs. There was a small family of ducks swimming in the pond, and she began to toss crumbs to them, leading them over to the edge of the water.
“Nice,” said Malcolm. “Fun way to spend a morning.”
She smiled at him.
“An old, guilty pleasure of mine,” she said. “Anyway, what we need to spend to day discovering is what your focus activity is.”
Focus activity. Rose mentioned something about that, too.
“A focus activity,” Tapestry went on, “is a basic element of being gifted. Your powers are not magic. You have to recharge yourself, in a sense, after using them extensively.”
Malcolm frowned.
“I haven’t done anything like that so far,” he said. “And I still feel like I can use mine.”
“Rest and sleep work to recharge your powers as well,” said Tapestry. “But only up to a certain point. To reach peak efficiency, you need to find and partake in your focus activity.”
One of the ducklings walked right over to Tapestry’s foot, staring up at her with wide eyes. She smiled and dropped a small crumb on its beak, which it scrambled to scarf down.
“So how do we go about this?” asked Malcolm. “I can’t even guess at what my focus activity would be.”
“Simple,” she said. “Remember what you were doing at the time when you got your powers. It’s usually related to whatever you were in the middle of in an obvious way.”
“Let me guess…” said Malcolm. “Your focus activity is feeding the ducks.”
“Baking, actually,” said Tapestry. “Walk me through the moment you discovered your gift, Malcolm.”
“Okay…” He thought back to the previous day, running over the sequence of events. “I was in class, answering the teacher’s question. Oh god, I hope it doesn’t turn out to be going to school, or studying.”
Malcolm hadn’t given much thought to what was going to happen with his college classes, now that he was a champion. He supposed he’d have to call and withdraw from them within the next few days, but if he needed to sit in a classroom to recharge his powers, he might not have the option to drop out.
“Stay focused, Malcolm,” said Tapestry. “What else? There must have been something more than just that.”
“Wait…” Malcolm considered for a moment. “I was listening to music.”
Tapestry gave him a funny look.
“You were listening to music,” she said. “Like, at the end of class?”
“While the teacher was lecturing,” he said. “If you knew what her voice sounded like, you’d understand.”
Tapestry blinked several times in quick succession, her mouth quirking down into a frown. Malcolm grinned at her intensity.
“Hey, I was still one of the better students,” he said. “But… do you think that might be it?”
Tapestry gave a shrug.
“Usually it’s a certain kind, or genre, of music,” she said. “No other champions with music as their focus activity can just listen to any song and recharge.”
“90s alt rock,” confirmed Malcolm. “Here, I have some on my phone.”
He pulled it out and queued up a song. It started playing through his phone’s speaker, and he watched the ducks turn their attention toward the new disturbance.
“Can you feel anything?” asked Tapestry.
Malcolm nodded slowly. It was an odd sensation, almost like being on a drug. His body tingled, and the sense of nostalgia he usually got from listening to the music, his brother Danny’s favorite music, was massively amplified.
“Good,” said Tapestry. “Then that’s it, then. You can turn it off.”
“Okay.” He grinned at her. “Not a fan of Soundgarden?”
Tapestry snorted.
“The music I like comes from another generation,” she said. “It’s fine, though. I don’t mind this. We just have to keep moving with your training.”
She tossed the rest of the bread crumbs to the appreciative ducks, creating a minor feeding frenzy, and wiped her hands on her jeans. Malcolm stood up alongside her, enjoying the morning.
A police car sped down the street alongside the park, lights flashing and sirens whirring. Tapestry frowned at it, and then pulled her phone out of her pocket and scanned the screen.
“School shooting,” she said. “Training will have to wait.”
CHAPTER 13
Malcolm held onto the inside handle of the BMW’s passenger door for dear life. Tapestry sped down the street, apparently having anointed herself with the same driving privileges as the police.
“Isn’t this something that the police would usually handle?” asked Malcolm. “Or maybe SWAT? Along with a charismatic, empathetic negotiator?”
“They asked for our help specifically,” said Tapestry. “And besides, it’s at Holy Cross High.”
Malcolm shrugged.
“I went to West Vanderbrook High,” he said. “Not to sound callous, but the name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“It does to me,” said Tapestry. “Someone I care about goes to school there.”
She pulled into the school’s parking lot, driving the BMW up to the drop off lane. The police had already set up their perimeter. They seemed to recognize Tapestry on sight, which Malcolm found a little odd, given how low her profile as a champion otherwise was.
“Captain,” she said, nodding to the policeman in charge. “I’m going to head in. This is Wind Runner, my new apprentice.”
Apprentice? Seriously?
“He’s on the second floor in the east wing,” said the police chief. “We’ve pulled all of our
people out and evacuated most of the students, but everyone in a classroom connected to that hallway is trapped.”
“We’ll take care of it,” said Tapestry. “Just keep your men out of the way.”
Malcolm was impressed by her confidence. She started running toward the school’s entrance, crouching and moving fast. Malcolm followed her example, slipping through one of the doors behind her.
The inside of the school was empty. Light streamed in through the windows behind them, giving the rows of unattended lockers a Sunday morning ambience. Tapestry slowed her pace forward, taking swift, silent steps as she headed for the staircase.
“What’s our plan going to be?” whispered Malcolm, as they approached the staircase.
“I attack,” she replied, quietly. “You evacuate. Use your powers to get people safely down to the ground.”
“Wait, why do you get to attack?”
The look Tapestry gave him was more than a little condescending.
“Because I know what I’m doing,” she whispered. “And because if I get shot, I won’t die. Regeneration is my power, Malcolm.”
He couldn’t argue with that logic, and there was no time. Malcolm nodded and followed close behind her as they slipped the stairs. Tapestry pressed herself tight against the corner when they reached the top, peering to get a sense of the scene. Malcolm lowered himself to a crouch and did the same from a lower angle, doing his best not to sneak a peek at her butt.
The shooter was at the end of the hallway, pacing back and forth and paying less than optimal attention to his surroundings. He looked like a student, except he held two pistols, and was muttering to himself. Malcolm felt his heart pounding as he considered the situation of the students still trapped in the wing.
“Ready?” mouthed Tapestry.
Malcolm nodded.
Tapestry headed out first, holding her hands up in the air and making herself into a target. She walked toward the shooter slowly, letting the boy focus his attention on her before talking to him in a soft voice.
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Tapestry. “Let’s just talk. I know you’re angry, and confused…”
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