At that moment, Kara didn’t need her orichalcum superpower to understand what Snapper had been trying to say.
The meaning had made it through just fine.
EPILOGUE
Five weeks later
National City Museum was finally starting to look like its old self again.
Or rather, like its ancient self again. Fred the security guard chuckled at his own joke and checked his watch. Time to make the afternoon rounds.
A shaggy-haired college kid entered the Roman exhibit as Fred left. They nodded to one another.
“Hey, Fred.”
“Good to see you, Marcus,” said Fred, giving the kid a backward glance.
He’d heard Marcus had been one of those supercitizens for a while—a strong one, at that—but had lost his power during a superbattle.
Fred clucked his tongue and ambled on to the next room. He didn’t see Marcus reach past a velvet security rope to touch a recently repaired statue of Emperor Caligula.
“How’s it going, Cal?” Marcus gave the statue a gentle pat, and it cracked along its original break lines, the head tumbling from Caligula’s shoulders.
“Whoops!” Marcus reached out and caught the fifty-pound piece of marble.
On the tip of one finger.
Marcus smiled and gently placed the head back on Caligula’s neck before moving on to the chipped bust of a woman.
Glancing around to make sure he was still alone, Marcus cradled the woman’s cold marble face in his hands.
“Soon, my love. Soon we will be reunited,” he whispered. “And this city? It shall be ours.”
Children’s laughter and voices came from the next hall over, and Marcus stepped away from the statue just as a dozen children ran into the room.
“Ancient Rome was the coolest!” a little boy said. “If I could be from any other time, I’d want it to be that one.”
Marcus smiled to himself and strolled away.
Child, he thought, be careful what you wish for.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Always, always, always thank you for family, friends, fans, and God.
For Barry Lyga, who is a walking library of superhero knowledge and led me to this dream.
For the team at Abrams Books, who have been ridiculously supportive and love Supergirl as much as I do.
For my agent, Jenn Laughran, who gets that I need to follow my heart.
For my parents, who raised an awesome nerd and have always encouraged whatever I endeavor.
For my big sis, who is always so proud of me.
For Eddy Delgado, who knows a lot about music and orchestra pits.
For the Rodriguez clan, who are the best in-laws a gal could ever have.
For my Lodge of Death girls, who overflow with love and support.
For Kami, Lisa, and Mandy, who have been there since the beginning.
For my Austin crew: Katie, Shayda, Jen, Amy, Carolina, Amanda, and Cecille, who bring sanity and humor to my life.
For Paula Yoo and Lisa Yee, who dispense their wisdom freely. And for the creators, writers, and cast of Supergirl, who make it so easy and fun to play in their world, including the team at Warner Bros. and the CW, including Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Todd Helbing, Sarah Schechter, Carl Ogawa, Lindsay Kiesel, Janice Aguilar-Herrero, Catherine Shin, Thomas Zellers, Kristen Chin, Josh Anderson, and Amy Weingartner.
El mayara.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo Whittemore is the author of numerous fantasy and humor novels for kids, including: The Silverskin Legacy trilogy; Me & Mom vs. the World; the Confidentially Yours hexalogy; and Lights, Music, Code!, a series novel for Girls Who Code.
Jo is a member of SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and is part of the Texas Sweethearts and Scoundrels. She loves to make people laugh; and when she isn’t tickling strangers, Jo writes from a secret lair in Austin, Texas, which she shares with her husband.
My name is Barry Allen, and I’m the fastest man alive. A particle accelerator explosion sent a bolt of lightning into my lab one night, shattering a shelf of containers and dousing me in electricity and chemicals. When I woke up from a coma nine months later, I found I was gifted with superspeed.
Since then, I’ve worked to keep Central City and its people safe from those with evil intent. With the help of my friends Caitlin and Cisco at STAR Labs; my girlfriend, Iris; her brother, Wally; and my adoptive father, Joe, I’ve battled time travelers, mutated freaks, and metahumans of every stripe.
I’ve tried to reconcile my past, learned some tough lessons, and—most important of all—never, ever stopped moving forward.
I am the Flash.
1
Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow figured they deserved some time off. When your regular day-to-day job involved crazy murder gods, time-traveling superspeedsters, and other meta humans who could warp the fabric of reality, taking a little time off was crucial.
After a blistering hot summer, it was unseasonably and blessedly cool for September in Central City. So cool, in fact, that Cisco had fired up the metahuman tracker at STAR Labs to make sure that Mark Mardon—the Weather Wizard—wasn’t somehow back in town causing trouble. But no. It was just one of those weirdly cool days at the tail end of summer, the sort of day that reminds you autumn is on its way.
Since it was so nice out, they decided to take a little break and head to the Central City Pier. Central City was landlocked, but the nearby Gardner River gave it the illusion of being a beach town. The pier was a boardwalk stretching close to a mile along the coast of the river, with jetties extending out over the water so that fishermen could cast their lines and waste the day away.
“I could totally be the world’s greatest fisherman,” Cisco pointed out as they walked past an older man slumped in a beach chair, his hat over his eyes. He was napping as his fishing line dangled lifelessly in the water. “Fish are tuned to sound, right? I could channel my Vibe powers into the water along a fiber-optic cable that looks like a normal fishing line. And then—”
“Can we just enjoy the day?” Caitlin teased. “The sun’s in the sky, the temperature is actually below the boiling point, we have the world’s most amazing kettle corn, and there hasn’t been a meta attack in three whole days.” Central City tended to get attacked by someone with superpowers—a metahuman—at least once a week. Usually on Tuesdays, for some reason.
Cisco grinned and lowered his sunglasses. “I can’t help it, Caitlin. I see the world as it should be, not as it is.” Cisco himself was a metahuman, with the ability to “vibe.” He could see possible futures, peer into alternate realities, and even open breaches into the Multiverse if he tried hard enough. He was even learning how to produce and project his own vibrations, though that was coming along a little more slowly.
“Such a burden, I’m sure.” She stuffed a handful of kettle corn into his mouth. “That should shut you up.”
Cisco tried to talk around the kettle corn, but all that came out was muffled nonsense. With a happy shrug, he chowed down instead.
They strolled past an old Ferris wheel, then past the entrance to the House of Mirrors. The rides and attractions had already closed down for the season, but some of the food stalls were still open, and the fine weather had enticed a multitude of Central Citizens to come out. They gathered here and there in clusters of families and friends, enjoying a rare day without killer man-sharks or giant sentient gorillas.
“Maybe we should head back,” Caitlin said, gazing at a group of people lounging along the balustrade of the pier.
“But we just got here!” Cisco whined.
“It’s just . . . Seeing all these people, so happy and safe . . . It reminds me that this is why we do what we do. We should be back at STAR Labs.”
“Not enough danger around here for you?” he joked.
“It’s not that . . .”
“Then what would we do back at the lab?”
She shrugged. “Get ready for the next time the city
needs to be saved?” She didn’t sound entirely convinced, and Cisco knew it.
“Twenty more minutes,” he told her. “I want to get funnel cakes at the Broome Street kiosk, OK?”
Caitlin pretended to consider it, then nodded enthusiastically. “Funnel cakes. You know I can’t resist.”
“My true superpower,” he said modestly, and then tossed a kernel of kettle corn into his mouth.
They walked farther up the pier, chatting, when Caitlin broke off and pointed. She tugged Cisco’s arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Look! A magician!”
“I almost dropped the kettle corn!” he complained. “And aren’t you the one in a hurry to get back to work?”
“I love magic!” she exclaimed, grabbing Cisco by the elbow. “C’mon!”
She dragged him away from the river, closer to the attractions and buildings. A group of about fifteen people gathered around a man standing atop a park bench. He was tall and rangy, his limbs loose. He wore a white tuxedo with a matching high-collared cape, blindingly bright in the sunshine, as well as an impeccably knotted black string tie. His black hair was slicked back so efficiently that it looked like a molded plastic widow’s peak had been glued to his skull.
“PREPARE! TO BE! AMAZED!” he cried, gesticulating wildly for dramatic effect.
“This dude is way overdressed,” Cisco grumbled. But he joined Caitlin in the small group of onlookers nonetheless.
“I! WILL! SHOW YOU! TRUE!” The man paused his grandstanding for a moment and grinned broadly. He had a hooked nose sharp enough to qualify as a weapon and a mustache and tiny goatee, both waxed to pointed perfection. They twitched when he smiled. “MAGIC!”
The magician finished and paused again, clearly waiting for applause. When none came, he shrugged his bony shoulders and gestured, producing a slender wand as though from thin air.
“Whoopee,” Cisco muttered, rolling his eyes. “The old wand-up-the-sleeve bit.”
Caitlin shushed him, then elbowed him in the ribs for good measure.
“WITNESS! MY! LEGERDEMAIN!” the man bellowed. His voice was much louder than it should have been, but Cisco didn’t notice any sort of microphone or speaker.
With a wave of the wand, the man pointed to his own shoulder. A dove appeared there, twitching its wings in confusion before flying off. The crowd mumbled something appreciative.
The magician scowled. “PREPARE YOURSELVES!”
He tapped the wand against his head, then thrust out his empty hand. A gout of flames spurted forth with a roar.
“Are you kidding me?” Cisco moaned.
“Maybe he’s just warming up,” Caitlin offered.
“These tricks were old when my grandfather was a kid. Look,” he said, waving his arms at the crowd around them, “no one else seems impressed.”
“I bet he’s building up to the big stuff.”
The magician made a circle with his wand and shouted, “PRESTO!” Sparks danced in midair before dying out to the silence of the crowd.
“IT IS CUSTOMARY,” the man boomed, “TO APPLAUD THE ART OF MAGIC!”
“Lame!” someone shouted.
“Go stuff a rabbit back into a hat!” someone else called. Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Fuming, the magician flexed his wand with both hands. “YOU WILL APPRECIATE THIS NEXT TRICK!” he cried, and then jabbed the air with the wand. Flowers popped out of the end of it. Cisco groaned, along with everyone else.
“I would call that old hat, but at least an old hat is useful,” Cisco said.
“APPLAUD!” the magician yelled, puffing out his cheeks.
No one bothered. The crowd started to break up.
“APPLAUD!!!” he screamed again, this time gesticulating wildly with his wand.
And then something amazing happened: Everyone actually started . . . to clap.
It wasn’t a polite little clap, either. People were slamming their palms together, stomping their feet, cheering and hooting and hollering at the top of their lungs. It was like a rock concert had suddenly broken out on the pier.
Much to his shock, Cisco found himself joining in. His palms stung with the repeated slaps against each other, but no matter how badly he wanted to stop, he just couldn’t. It was as though his hands were no longer connected to his brain; they refused to obey his command to stop.
Caitlin, too, couldn’t stop herself from applauding. Her palms were beet red, and even though she cried out in pain, she kept clapping anyway. Then she shouted, “Bravo! Encore! Encore!” No one was more surprised than she was to hear those words come out of her mouth; she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.
Next to her, Cisco shouted, too. “Bravo! Bravo!” And then he let loose with a full-throated howl of delight that tore at his throat.
Even while he couldn’t stop himself from clapping, Cisco turned and looked around. He was shocked to see that it wasn’t just the people in the magician’s immediate vicinity who were applauding.
All up and down the pier, as far as he could see in every direction, people were cheering and clapping, most of them with bewildered looks on their faces.
The magician set his lips into a grim, firm line, his face contorted into something resembling satisfaction. He sketched a complicated design in the air with his wand. Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder, a blinding flash of light, and he was gone.
Everyone stopped clapping. Most of the audience looked around at one another; then the crowd began to thin as people wandered away, embarrassed and confused. Caitlin and Cisco stayed right there, rooted to the spot, silent.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Caitlin finally asked, shaking out her sore arms and hands.
They turned to look at each other. At the same moment, they nodded and said, “Barry.”
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