by Sarah Kuhn
“We should probably hire an assistant,” Evie muttered, twisting her fingers together and glaring at the kitchen table. “We’re kind of behind on answering those emails.”
I noticed she left the “Ever since Bea threw a massive tantrum and stopped helping us out around here, doing all the bullshit nobody else wants to do” part unsaid.
“So she sent me the key and said I could come pick it up any time,” Dad said.
Evie and I exchanged a look, our rare mind-meld still in effect. Was this real? More memories of Mom out there in the world? It seemed too good to be true.
“This friend—Kathy Kooper—also sent instructions for a pick-up,” Dad said, rummaging around in his pocket. “Ah. Here we go.” He set a worn slip of paper with cramped handwriting on the table. “I believe this is the current location and operating hours of the swap meet. From what I understand, it’s really grown over the years. Kathy said she’d hold on to the box until one of us comes and claims it.”
“So let’s go!” I blurted out, my spark of excitement flaring. “All three of us. A Tanaka family road trip! To, um, Oakland,” I added, reading the slip of paper. “Okay, so it won’t be a very long road trip, but that’s still a good forty-five minutes away, depending on traffic. We can borrow Lucy’s car, load up on crappy snacks—ooh! Do you still like corn nuts, Daddy? Did you know they make this ranch flavor now that’s kind of gross, but also weirdly delicious, and I think you would totally love it—”
“Bug.” Dad held up a hand. His expression had gone distant. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave right away. Yogini Lara has already traveled to our latest meditation spot, and I am behind in my studies with her. I must—”
His voice faded to a burble, and I felt the excited seven-year-old inside of me shrivel up and die. I’d let myself be drawn in by the promise of him, by the stupid hope that he might actually want to spend time with me.
Evie, of course, had known better. And once again, I couldn’t bear to look at her, because her expression was going to be an unbearable mix of Oh, Bea and I told you so. I slumped back in my chair, letting Dad’s words wash over me, my spark of hope extinguished.
I’d gone into the kitchen thinking I was going to save our family reunion from combusting—but as it turned out, I was the one who needed saving.
CHAPTER FOUR
I BEGGED OFF katsu dinner with Sam and Leah that night, sending a text to our group chain claiming that the rest of Team Tanaka/Jupiter wanted to celebrate the day’s big win with a fancy meal—and since I’d been so integral to said win, my presence was required. That was an outright lie. We were actually having a totally boring, non-celebratory meal, with everyone at varying levels of grouchy over the afternoon’s dad drama. But I didn’t feel like facing my friends and explaining the whole sordid saga of why I was in a bad mood. Said saga made me look, in my estimation, pretty frakballs pathetic.
Leah texted me back immediately, asking what was wrong—apparently I was just as bad at hiding my feelings in texts as I was in person. Sam texted back congrats on my kickassery, followed by a string of emojis, followed by a gif of a Pokémon group hug.
That made me feel even more pathetic—because it meant he saw through my breezy text, too. Otherwise he would have followed all of that up with some dumb joke about how even my Canary Cry was no match for his undeniable superpowered charisma and didn’t I remember how he’d beaten me at calculus during sophomore year, blah blah blah. I could always count on Sam to never feel sorry for me. And the lack of dumb jokes meant he was definitely feeling sorry for me.
I slumped at the dinner table, imagining a cartoon rain cloud scribbled over my head. Evie and I were both picking sulkily at our food. Aveda, Nate, Lucy, and Scott were making careful small talk. Lucy’s girlfriend, Rose, head of the San Francisco Police Department’s Demon Unit, was working late and hadn’t been able to join us. I missed her stoic, solid presence—Rose was the kind of person who could soothe your soul with a simple nod.
I stabbed at a clump of rice with my chopsticks. It actually might’ve made me feel better if Team Tanaka/Jupiter had been having a fancy celebratory dinner, but Team Tanaka/Jupiter didn’t tend to indulge in those kinds of shenanigans. Well, okay, so Evie and Aveda sometimes liked to have a drink and sing-along at their favorite seedy karaoke joint, The Gutter, but I was always pushing for something more fabulous, like a themed costume/dance party with funny photo booths and a dessert buffet. I mean, didn’t saving the world merit that kind of celebration? As usual, nobody listened to me. But on tonight of all nights, I wished we were having a massive celebration, big and loud and over-the-top enough to squash the ache around my heart.
“Hmm . . .” Nate was looking at his phone, his brow furrowed. “Sorry. I know we’re all in the middle of, uh . . .”
“Processing the emotional upheaval caused by a certain absentee father’s all-too-brief appearance?” Lucy said, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Nate said. “But Rose just sent me the results of her team’s Wave Organ scan.”
“We know the cause, do we not?” Aveda said, waving her chopsticks around. “All roads lead back to the Pussy Queen portal, as usual.”
“That’s what I’m finding troubling,” Nate said, setting down his phone. “Rose’s team did a thorough scan of the area and the origin of the supernatural energy . . .” He shook his head, trying to make sense of it. “. . . is not the Pussy Queen portal.”
“What?” Evie pulled herself out of sulky teenager mode, her head snapping up. “How is that possible?”
“Where did it come from, then?” Scott asked.
“We don’t know—the results were inconclusive.” Nate leaned forward in his seat, his frown deepening. “Rose and her team have cordoned off the area and will be doing a more comprehensive set of scans tomorrow. For now, the pieces of the Wave Organ that broke off, came to life, and shattered appear to have reverted to their normal state: reconstituted, normal-sized, and not trying to kill anyone. But I think we can all agree the Organ is going to need to stay off-limits to the public until we figure this out.”
“Every supernatural oddity we’ve encountered for the past four years has originated from that portal,” Lucy said, shaking her head in wonder. “What does this mean?”
“Certainly nothing good,” Aveda muttered, setting her chopsticks down. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she started assessing, strategizing, battle planning for this new threat. She was probably mentally slotting a few extra workouts into her already formidable schedule as well.
Nate rested his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. “There’s something else I want to bring up that may or may not connect here. When I first heard about it, it seemed like a blip on the oddity radar, but—”
“But there are no ‘blips’ on the oddity radar,” I said, echoing something he’d said to me once when we were combing through endless amounts of data relating to a rogue demon we’d had to chase down a few years ago. “Only oddities ranging from ‘huh, kinda weird’ to ‘WTF.’”
“Yes,” he said, giving me a half-smile. “In any case, a colleague from my demonology grad program recently relocated to Maui—she’s from there—and she sent me an email last week describing something that I thought was unusual, but not necessarily cause for alarm. But now . . .” He frowned again. “I’m not sure.”
“Okay,” Aveda said impatiently, making a circular “hurry up” motion with her chopsticks.
“My colleague, Kai, takes a very early morning walk on her local beach every day,” Nate said. “One morning a few weeks ago, she heard cries for help and saw a man struggling in the ocean. She swam out and dragged him to shore. He seemed relatively disoriented and told Kai he couldn’t swim. So she asked why he’d gone out so far. And he said . . .” Nate looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall the exact details. “. . . that he’d felt like something was calling to
him. That one second he’d been strolling along the beach, the next he’d had this undeniable urge to walk out into the water, and he couldn’t stop himself. It was like a compulsion.”
“Was he perhaps indulging in some early morning mind-altering substances?” Aveda said with a snort.
“That’s what Kai thought,” Nate said, his mouth quirking into a half-smile. “She called the paramedics to the scene, but the person who’d walked into the water was unhurt. Nothing seemed all that out of the ordinary.” He paused, his frown returning. “Until it happened again the following week.”
“What, the same fool walked into the water again?” Aveda said, her eyes widening incredulously.
“A different person,” Nate clarified. “But they described the same kind of compulsion to Kai, and it was the same near-drowning. It made Kai wonder if there’s something supernatural at work. But if there is, she’s not sure where to even begin investigating. She already checked in with local police and hospitals and there haven’t been any other incidents along that stretch of beach recently—so perhaps it was only those two cases. I’m going to talk to Rose, see if it’s possible to get someone dispatched to scan the area. But it does raise some interesting questions—”
“Well, yeah, it does,” I couldn’t help but interrupt. Despite my mopiness over Dad, my seven-year-old excitement bubble was inflating in my chest again. I love puzzles, mysteries. Stuff that seems impossible to explain on the surface. Tangled formations with a bunch of seemingly disparate pieces that need to be taken apart, examined, and somehow put back together again. A good twisty puzzle—whether it’s in the form of a complex quadratic equation that needs solving or a complicated piece of electronic equipment that needs fixing or a head-scratching demon mystery that needs untangling—is one of the only things that can fully hold my attention for a decent period of time. “I mean, we’ve never heard of supernatural happenings anywhere else in the world. The Bay Area has always been totes unique in that respect. If the Pussy Queen portal is no longer the only source of supernatural energy leaking into our world . . .” I gnawed on my bottom lip, my synapses firing a mile a minute. “That could be interesting. Super, super freaking interesting.”
“Like the demons have figured out other ways to come through?” Evie said, her brow crinkling. “That seems more like a recipe for disaster than anything.”
“I could go to Maui,” I blurted out. “I mean, with Rose or whoever’s doing the scan. I’d love to get some firsthand observational data on the area, see if there are any factors that might be contributing to—”
“I thought you wanted to be promoted to full superhero,” Evie said, her voice weary. “Right here, in San Francisco.”
“I do,” I said. “This could be a superhero mission, an away mission—”
“And what about your job at the bookstore?” she said. “You’re always talking about how short-staffed you guys are. Are they really going to be okay with you flitting off to Hawaii?”
“I can get time off. Charlotte will give it to me. I mean, I never take vacation days. But wait, let’s back up.” I leaned in, regarding her keenly. “What’s this about me being promoted to full superhero?”
“Like I said before, we’ll talk about it later,” Evie said, scrubbing her hand over her face.
“It’s later now,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. But honestly, it felt like every single person I’d encountered today had tried to dismiss me in some way. Ichabod Lite, when he’d seen my clothes and hair and assumed I wasn’t worth taking seriously. Nemesis Nicole, who never thought I was worth taking seriously. Evie, Aveda, and Shruti, when I’d showed up at the Wave Organ, ready to help. My dad, when I’d practically begged him to stay just a little bit longer. And now we were back to Evie on the Let’s All Dismiss Bea Merry-Go-Round.
I set down my chopsticks and met her eyes. “I don’t think there’s any denying I saved the day,” I said. “Y’all would have been toast without my sonic scream.”
“Or is it a Canary Cry?” Aveda muttered. “I never got an actual answer on that.”
“That is true,” Evie said, activating her soothing, placating tone. “And like I said, we’ll talk about it later. With everything that happened with Dad today, I really think it’s best if—”
“Why is it always about what you think?” I said. “Why are you the grand arbiter of when we talk about things and when we don’t? Because this is about me. And for the record, I’m just as fucked up as you are about Dad. Maybe even more, since you, in all your usual infinite wisdom, already knew that was going to end badly, and I was the one dumb enough to have any kind of hope.”
My voice cracked on the last word, and I swallowed hard and glared down at my plate. Rage was roiling through me now, a thick, toxic churn of angry bile.
“I know that,” Evie said, her voice shaking as she struggled to keep control. Considering how much we bickered, it was a small miracle she hadn’t set me on fire by now. “I’m trying to look out for you, to take care of you—”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I snapped. “Stop trying to act like you know what I need better than I do and talk to me like an actual adult.”
The rest of the table had fallen silent while we fought. Even Aveda, never shy about sharing her unsolicited opinion, wasn’t chiming in.
“Fine,” Evie said, throwing down her own chopsticks and glaring at me. “Let’s talk about this now. Aveda and I have discussed it—”
“We have?” Aveda said, her brow furrowing.
“We have,” Evie said firmly. “And the answer is still no. You’re not ready yet.”
“But . . . but . . . how?” I squeaked. “How can I get ready? Because nothing I do seems to be good enough for you. You know, you and Aveda weren’t exactly perfect when you became superheroes, but you learned on the job—and it helped both of you with your, excuse me, fucking boatload of issues. It helped you become the awesome people you were meant to be. Why don’t you want that for me, too?”
My voice cracked again and the last word came out plaintive. I swallowed hard, trying to regain my rage.
“Because I don’t know if this is what you actually want!” Evie shot back. “Because you’re always getting distracted by whatever the shiny thing of the moment is and you dive headfirst into stuff without thinking. One minute you’re in college, the next minute you’re dropping out. One minute you’re totally into helping Nate with data collection and science stuff, then suddenly you’re over it. Then you have this job at a bookstore, and it’s the best thing ever. Then, just kidding, the annoying customers make it the most annoying thing ever. Then you claim to want to be a superhero more than anything in the world—but oh, hey, here’s this thing in Maui over here! Oooh, something shiny!”
“That’s not fair,” I said through gritted teeth, blinking back tears.
“I had so many hopes for you,” Evie said, her voice tight. “I worked my ass off so you wouldn’t be as fucked up as I was. And now—”
“Just say it,” I hissed. “Say I’m a disappointment. But you have a pretty easy way of giving me the chance to be something more, if you would just listen—”
“I’m done listening,” Evie said. She didn’t sound mad, just exhausted. Like I’d wrung everything I could out of her. “You can’t join the team, Bea. Stuff like this . . .” She gestured between us. “. . . just proves you’re not ready.”
“That’s not fair,” I said again. “That’s—”
“It doesn’t have to be fair,” Evie snapped. “It’s my decision, and it’s final. Who wants dessert?”
I stood up from the table so fast, I nearly knocked my chair over.
“It’s always your decision,” I hissed. “And you love that, don’t you? Lording your power over me. Acting the part of disappointed parent. Treating me like a baby.”
“You’re acting like a baby,” sh
e growled.
“Well, I’m not,” I said, drawing myself up tall and glowering at her. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
For one wild moment, I was tempted to emotionally project something onto her. I don’t know what. Something that would show her how unreasonable and unfair and dismissive she was being. Something that would make her feel bad. But I couldn’t do it. I’d used my powers on Evie once before, and I’d sworn never to do it again. That, too, was part of my code. So instead, I narrowed my eyes at her and said the thing that I knew would hurt her most.
“And despite what you seem to think, despite the way you’re always acting, despite the delusion you’ve been under for the past ten years: you are not my mother.”
* * *
I am a champion stewer.
Evie had—at least in the past, before she became all superheroic and shit—always tried her damndest to shove down, repress, and control her feelings. I, on the other hand, luxuriated in them. I always burrowed into a good sulk, like a gopher burying myself in my own little dirt hill of bad feelings. When Mom died, I felt like every cell in my being was screaming in agony, every minute of every day. It had faded to a dull ache as the weeks passed, and then I was blank, deadened, empty—wrapped in an eternal sulk. And I’d luxuriated in that, too. Pulled that feeling close and held it tightly. Because if I let go of it, I’d have to admit my mother, the one person who had understood me above everyone else, was gone.
Mom and I always had a special bond. I was my parents’ accident baby, born almost a decade after what was supposed to be their only child. But Mom always went to great lengths to make sure I never felt like an accident, an afterthought, an add-on. Dad and Evie had been tolerant of (but kind of annoyed by) the places my boundless curiosity tended to lead me. Mom, on the other hand, actively encouraged me to follow my occasionally out-of-control imagination. I still remembered one day in particular, when I’d been seven. My dad had this collection of vintage radios, radio receivers, and other electronic equipment. He liked to spend his weekend afternoons restoring and carefully cleaning them, and then he’d display them on a pristine shelving unit in the den. My eyes had nearly popped out of my head when I’d seen him remove the back panel of one of his receivers with a tiny screwdriver. Suddenly there was this whole world I’d been previously unaware of, stuffed with crisscrossing wires and gears and what looked like a kazillion moving parts. And then he’d replaced the panel and just like that, this new world disappeared.
