"What'd he do this time?" Junior continued.
"The McCreedy kids went down to the reservoir and broke through the fence—"
"Ain't it electric?"
"Was. McCreedy might be raisin' a bunch of juvenile delinquents, but he's raisin' smart ones. They un-electrified it, cut themselves a nice door through the fence, and went swimming. Right near the sluice gates, which were wide open, thanks to the water level goin' down."
Newspapers rattled. Jane rolled her eyes and tried to concentrate harder on her inventory of aromatherapy candles. Only Rufus could read a two-inch newspaper account and turn it into big news, with details that the reporters never found out, half the time. The fact the details were totally wrong, especially claiming the water in the reservoir was deep enough for swimming, just proved yet again that Rufus' claim to know everything in town was a big enough lie, his nose should have grown all the way out to the Interstate. Cliff Clavin had nothing on Rufus.
"Nearly got sucked into the turbines or whatever you call it that helps out the power plant. The kids claim the Ghost stopped the water and made it go backwards, then flew them up onto the cement wall and left them hanging there until the police came." Rufus snorted. "Smart boy, the Ghost. Got some girl to call the police with an anonymous tip about the ruckus at the reservoir."
"Lucky girl, having the Ghost for a boyfriend," Junior said. Then hocked and spat for punctuation.
Lucky girl, nothing, Jane fumed silently. She took a deep sniff of the lavender serenity candle, but it didn't help.
Nothing helped. She had the biggest shop on Center Street, twenty-five feet wide, with a vaulted ceiling and lots of plants hanging from hooks, lots of open floor space and windows down the north wall because it was the end unit. Still, that didn't fight the growing feeling of living in a box, a cage, with half the town crowding in around her. She had to get out, if only to get away from the opinionated old coots who spent their days sitting in front of her shop, gossiping and spitting.
Fendersburg was not a small town, by any stretch of the imagination, but some nights she went home and considered what a blessing a small, controlled nuclear bomb would be. It wouldn't create that big of a hole in the landscape, would it?
"Yeah, lucky girl, whoever she is. Right handy, having a boyfriend who can fly and walk through walls and whatever other hinky things the Ghost can do."
"Hinky?" Junior snorted. "How about kinky?"
The two old men wheezed and snorted and guffawed until Jane wanted to take a fire hose to them. She prayed they never needed CPR, because she wouldn't be able to push past her revulsion long enough to touch either one of them, let alone perform mouth-to-mouth.
"What I wouldn't give to have the kind of girl the Ghost could get, with all his super powers," Rufus grumbled.
The Ghost didn't have a girlfriend. If the Ghost were a man, he wouldn't be desperate enough to date one of the mental midgets this town produced. Last night's events had proven once again the genetic deterioration prevalent here.
"Probably wasn't too smart, hiding the evidence," Jane muttered. "Even to get back at Joe-Bob. It still isn't a crime, is it, to be so stupid?"
"What was that, dearie?" Mrs. Tarvish called from the back of the spa.
"Just thinking out loud." She cast a fond glance at her pixie-like favorite customer.
At ninety-seven, Mrs. Tarvish insisted on trying all the latest fads and the most garish colors for her makeup, nails and hair. Right now, she reclined in Jane's spa chair, her feet soaking in a warm whirlpool bath, her hands encased in scented paraffin and a bottle of magenta nail polish waiting to be applied. A honey-oatmeal-avocado self-heating facial mask covered her face. Her freshly dyed hair—almost metallic gold—was wrapped in teeny tiny curls.
Otis Hanson sauntered through the door, with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans and his biceps threatening to tear the sleeves of his too-tight T-shirt. "Big night last night, huh, Janie-doll?"
Jane knew most of the girls in Fendersburg thought the sun rose and set on Otis Hanson, football, baseball and hockey star. He was handsome enough, in a Christopher Reeve kind of way. He understood basic hygiene and didn't chew tobacco, and had come home from college with a business degree that hadn't taken eight years to earn. He inherited his father's car dealership and turned it into a multi-million dollar business, with car lots in three counties. Any girl in Fendersburg would consider him a catch. Except Jane.
Which, she supposed, was the sole reason why Otis kept harassing her, instead of settling down with one of his adoring fans. That said something for his taste, and preferring girls with more than a single-digit IQ. Maybe he had enough brains to want to improve the gene pool, but Jane had no intention of being a donor.
"What happened last night, Otis?" Mrs. Tarvish said.
"Big doings down at the reservoir." He waggled his eyebrows at Jane and settled down on the little stool she used for giving manicures. It creaked but didn't give out under him. "I never saw kids so scared in my whole life. They shouldn't have tried to go swimming. Good thing someone—" He winked at Jane and puffed out his chest another four inches. "—saw they were in trouble and flew down to help."
"The Ghost doesn't fly," Jane said without thinking.
"How do you know, dearie?" Mrs. Tarvish said with a girlish giggle. "That's why they call him the Ghost. Because nobody ever sees him. Just the things he does. If I were thirty years younger..." She sighed and her tiny bow-shaped mouth widened in a grin like a cat about to pounce on a canary.
Otis shuddered, and he stared at the little old lady for several seconds in horror.
"Maybe they should call him the Wind, instead of the Ghost," Jane said.
"What's it gonna take to let a guy blow into your life and sweep you off your feet, huh?" Otis' usual leer was only half the usual wattage. He turned on the stool, following Jane as she moved over to the display of nail polish and eye shadow, to continue her monthly inventory.
"I'll keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, thank you." She could almost feel his hot breath on her back. She could definitely feel his gaze boring holes in her roomy white cargo pants. She wore a white leotard under her neon green gauze shirt, but Otis always made her feel like she went commando, with her buttons loose in a high wind.
Jane stepped away from the display rack, deciding the inventory could wait until Otis left the spa, or got up from the stool only three feet from her rear end. He had no super powers, despite his broad—make that wide load—hints that he could be the Ghost's alter ego, but she swore sometimes she could feel a supernatural touch on her bottom when Otis was around. It was enough to make her forget her oath of "do no lasting harm," and make some rapid, much-needed improvements in his anatomy.
As she passed him, she saw his smirk widen. He knew his presence made her uncomfortable, but the jerk took it as a compliment, not a warning. Jane gritted her teeth, and then decided, Why not? She paused just long enough to press her bare foot against the leg of the stool and give a mental nudge to the legs and crossbars. The wood of the stool lost its density just long enough for the screws to fall out with a soft chiming sound on the white glazed tiles of the spa floor. Otis swore as the stool collapsed under him.
"Now look what you did," Jane said. "That's the fourth piece of furniture you've broken in the last month. Honestly, Otis, I don't ever want you coming into my place again. You're bad for business."
"I didn't break—" He sputtered to a stop and hauled himself to his feet. Otis backed away from the pile of wood and rubbed at his bottom as he headed for the door. "I didn't break it."
"Then how do you explain it falling apart? No, wait." Jane put down her clipboard with her inventory list and tapped her chin, making a show of thinking deeply. "The Ghost could do something like that, couldn't he? Just manipulate matter, reach through things, unscrew screws, evaporate glue. Why, Otis, are you trying to prove you're the Ghost?" She batted her eyelashes at him.
Muttering, Otis stomped out of th
e spa. Mrs. Tarvish giggled and opened one eye. She had her purple contacts in, and the contrast with the green facial mask made a strange sight.
"If that hulking idiot claims to be the Ghost, then I'm Britney Spears!" the little old lady chortled.
"You dance better than she does, anyway." Jane fought the urge to go lie down in the back room. One of the few nice things about Fendersburg was that the people were so incredibly dense. She could pull tricks like she had just done on Otis, in broad daylight, and nobody ever caught on that she was the Ghost.
* * * *
Abercrombie Mulcahy arrived in a shower of sparks that night. The effect was ruined by the fact that he couldn't fly, and had to make his grand entrance by spinning like a top. Or perhaps more appropriate, the Tasmanian Devil from the Warner cartoons. Jane looked at him, with the beginning of a beer belly hanging over his Harley-Davidson pewter belt buckle, and wished she hadn't agreed to this date. He was twelve years her senior and they had barely spoken to each other during the short time they were both students at the Sanctum.
"At least he doesn't dress like Elvis," Katie had said, when she warned Jane and commiserated with her about being pressured into the blind date.
That should have been warning enough. If Abercrombie had been a keeper, wouldn't one of the older girls have already snatched him up? It wasn't like there was a very large dating pool among all the Gifted. Most of them went through life either as serial daters or living alone. It was hard to have a Gift stronger than minor telekinesis or rapid healing and live with an ordinary human and not freak out him or her. Very few of Reginald and Demetrius' students had been lucky enough to find a husband or wife who could handle the truth. If any of them wanted to marry and have children, they were essentially stuck with their own kind.
Jane wondered now if she should just commit to spinsterhood and give up. Abercrombie was the tallest Asian man she had ever met. The skinniest man she had ever seen. He seemed to think he wasn't tall enough or thin enough, because he had shaved his hair into a Mohawk, bleached it, painted it with gold and red racing stripes and moussed it to stand up six inches.
Somehow, she expected a man whose main talent was creating gale force winds by spinning, and who could dig holes through solid steel, to wear horizontal stripes. Kind of going for the corkscrew effect.
Well, maybe screwy was part of his personality, but not by that definition.
"Hey, baby!" His beady little black eyes lit up as he stepped into her apartment and looked her up and down. And kept looking her over, head to foot, as if he couldn't believe what he saw.
Jane felt the same way, but she at least was polite enough to hide her dismayed reaction.
On second thought, maybe he wasn't dismayed. He wasn't starting to drool, was he? It wasn't quite a full moon yet. She had heard that the phases of the moon did have that effect on some of the Gifted, especially the men, but she thought that Reginald and Demetrius had weeded those problems out and found ways to deal with them.
They weren't that hard up for superhero talents that they actually let lunatics out onto the streets, were they?
"Oh, honey, you and me, we're going to be great together." He spun around and bounced off the door, shoving it closed, then ricocheted off the ceiling, to land on the couch. "You know, the Professors have been talking about how bad we need to find a mate and settle down and start making kids, but I never really paid any attention until now."
"What?" Jane paused, frozen with one foot in the air.
"Yeah, that's the new game plan. Start pairing up, get married, have kids, make sure the planet's protected for another fifty years. What do you want first? A boy or a girl?"
"I'm joining a convent tomorrow." Jane snapped her fingers and pointed at the apartment door. It swung open. "Sorry to have wasted your time."
"Baby, you don't get it. Orders from on high." He grinned and stretched his legs out, visibly making himself comfortable.
"This is the first I've heard of it, and I'm certainly not taking the first creep who walks through the door. Guys outnumber girls six to one. That means I get to choose."
"Honey, you won't find anybody better than me. So why don't you give in to fate and get yourself on over here and show me what kind of loving you have to offer?" He winked and opened wide his arms. "Just jump on into Daddy's arms and plant a big wet, warm kiss right here."
"This is the only kiss you're getting." Jane balled up her fist. When Abercrombie just laughed, she slid into phase and leaped across the room.
Chapter Four
He didn't start spinning until she had him hoisted high into the air and shooting along above the roofs of Fendersburg. Since the tallest building was only ten stories, that put him more than one hundred feet above the ground. Jane felt the tingle of superhero energy in her fingertips and knew he had finally shaken off the shock of her maneuver. She let go. He created a dent twenty feet in diameter when he hit, but he bounced and kept going, away from Fendersburg.
"Never ever again," Jane vowed as she flew home.
If dating among her own kind meant pressure to get married and start producing Gifted babies, Jane decided she would never date again. The next date, if ever, would be with a normal guy. Someone ordinary. One who thought that sweeping a girl off her feet meant roses and a nice dinner somewhere, not picking her up and flying her halfway to Kansas.
She was nearly back to her apartment when a new thought startled her enough that her Ghost field kicked out for two seconds and she dropped, nearly touching the roof directly below her. This wasn't a result of that talk she had with the Old Poops, was it? Had she started them actively pressuring the older singles to get married, by talking about the possibility of other lost, unclaimed children who stayed in Neighborlee "breeding among their own kind," and producing Gifted children?
A moment later, she shook off the thought. Even if that conversation had started a new plan of action, it had to be discussed among the Council, all the problems and protests and kinks ironed out before any directive was handed out. Most definitely, all the students who had come from the Sanctum would be given the new orders, rather than only a few being given the duty to ambush the rest. She didn't know where Abercrombie got his lunatic idea that they were expected to pair up and start producing babies, but it hadn't come from the Old Poops.
Babies, yes. Sweetheart and best friend and lover, yes. No choice in who was her baby's daddy—a definite no. She would swear off being the Ghost for the rest of her life and go hide in Australia or someplace else on the other side of the world before she would submit to that.
Until she was clearly directed otherwise, if she dated again, she would date someone normal, someone ordinary.
Which automatically disqualified every male in Fendersburg. Another reason to leave.
"And that's a problem?" Katie said, when Jane reported her new vow to her best friend on the phone, two nights later.
"No...no, it's not." Jane had an inkling of what she needed to do to keep that promise to herself. The problem was in following through on it.
* * * *
Today it was Timmy Higgs' turn to get himself stuck in a tree, when Jane retreated to the park to eat her lunch. Timmy Higgs and Georgie Tupper got themselves stuck in the same gnarled century oak at least three times a week, during the summer. If the boys didn't loathe each other so much—enough that the Ghost sometimes had to intervene in their squabbles before one smashed the other's fingers on the monkey bars on the playground, sending the other tumbling to the ground, or pushed each other out in front of traffic or dared the other into jumping off the train trestle over Crashburn Creek—Jane would have accused them of having a set schedule, taking turns getting in trouble. Her ribs ached at the memory of the last time the ungrateful little snot kicked her when she got him down out of the tree. Sometimes her rapid healing ability just wasn't compensation enough.
She reminded herself of the aches and bruises and temporary nosebleeds and cuts and burns she accumulated on a dail
y basis, and tried to ignore Timmy's shrieks. Very hard to do, when she could hear Reginald and Demetrius and other teachers expounding on the duty that came along with the unusual talents their students had in their blood and bone. Why couldn't she ignore him? His mother and aunt, who had an inherent responsibility to tend to his regular crises, were doing a wonderful job ignoring him. They were only a dozen or so feet away from him, while Jane was at the far end of the tree-lined park at the center of town.
After ten minutes of trying to eat her apple and concentrate on the latest Young Wizards book, she couldn't ignore the boy's piercing shrieks. The sound made her nerve endings shrivel, like hairs touched to a flame. She looked over her shoulder, down Center Street, praying that Maribeth, who filled in for her at lunchtime, would dash out of the spa and urgently flag her down for an emergency of some kind. Jane's conscience kicked her. What would be a greater emergency? The town snot breaking an arm or leg, or a woman needing a manicure or massage in the next five minutes, before her world imploded around her?
Jane slid her book into her shoulder bag and flung her apple fifty feet to the trash barrel. The molecules of the barrel phased out just long enough for the apple to pass through and clang against the opposite side. She took a step and the automatic blurring of her entire physical form kicked in. So what if she didn't look around to make sure no one saw her? Unless someone needed her advice or to buy something from the spa, she was invisible even without the Ghost field. Jane never needed a costume.
She could never decide if that was a blessing, or if she had been ripped off once again.
Three steps vaulted her across the length of the park, to the tree where Timmy's mother had finally sauntered over to look up at her dangling son. Jane bent her knees and leaped. Her blurred form had no mass or density to resist gravity, and she shot up through the branches and leaves, to the topmost, swaying branch where the boy screamed and kicked and contorted his face into a snot-smeared, red mask. No way was Jane going to sacrifice her new gauze shirt to wipe that filthy, slimy face clean. There were just some things that went beyond the call of duty and Timmy Higgs made up about eighty percent of the list.
Hero Blues Page 5
