Hero Blues

by Michelle L. Levigne

  When they headed downstairs again, she delayed to look around her apartment and start making notes of the renovations she wanted to make, the paint colors, the places she wanted to put down area rugs, and what furniture and furnishings she needed to buy first. Debbi headed down ahead of her and said she would pull out the last little bit of paperwork that needed to be signed. In a few hours, everything would be finalized and official, and the Spindelmutter building would be all hers.

  "I can get a couple of the guys I mentioned to come over this afternoon to look around, give you estimates," Debbi called up the stairs as Jane started down.

  "That sounds great, thanks."

  Jane opened her mouth to ask who on the list Debbi would recommend ahead of anyone else, then she hesitated, one foot raised to go down to the next step. A thin shiver washed over her, the hint of a tingle of Gifted energy in her fingertips. Her stomach clenched in anticipation and she held her breath for a few steps as she resumed walking down. After all, this was why Reginald and Demetrius had not only given her approval, but their blessing to set up shop in Neighborlee. A Gifted was close by, and had used his or her Gift, just for a moment. It wouldn't do to go tearing down the stairs to try to see who had been walking by her front window, or even go into Ghost phase and fly out through the wall. Not yet. Her plan was to fit into the town, become accepted, build up some social credit among the residents, so when she started asking questions, people would answer them honestly and openly. They would be talking to one of their own, not an outsider or newcomer.

  "Hey, Deb, what's up?" a woman was saying as Jane made the turn at the second floor landing. "I thought maybe someone had broken in when I saw the paper out of the windows."

  "Oh, hey, Lanie," Debbi responded, accompanied by the sound of papers shuffling across the one remaining display case/cabinet that Jane had decided to keep.

  "So, is somebody thinking about setting up shop here?"

  "It's perfect," Jane said, as she reached the ground floor and stepped out of the stairwell.

  "Jane, this is Lanie Zephyr. She works at the Tattler," Debbi said. "Lanie, Jane is opening up a spa."

  "Yes!" Lanie let out a growled sort of shout and made a downward "cha-ching" pump. Jane had all she could do not to burst out laughing, and hoped she wasn't imagining it when she saw something familiar in Lanie's eyes—and not because she recognized the woman in the wheelchair whom she had met last summer when she came to visit Neighborlee. She hoped they were going to be friends, and quickly. "You have no idea how much we need a place like yours in town."

  "You don't even know what kind of spa she's setting up," Debbi said, laughing.

  "Hey, as long as the massage rooms are wheelchair accessible, I don't care. And you have those detox masque things and aromatherapy candles and oils and stuff? And you do bridal party packages?" She pressed her hands flat together like she was praying.

  "Even if I didn't have them at my old store, I'd bring them here," Jane promised. "Let me guess—you're the bride?"

  "I'm crazy, but I'm not totally insane. Nope, two of my really good friends got engaged at New Year's, and I want a super splendiferous gift, and a spa day would be perfect. So I take it that means you do offer them?"

  "As soon as I get set up." Jane nodded. She tipped her head back and looked around the big, open room with the brick walls and vaulted ceilings with fancy gingerbread cornices and all the woodwork around the windows, the built-in shelving, all the fancy stuff that was in fashion eighty or ninety years ago when the building was first built. "This place is perfect. And best of all, I can live right over the shop."

  "You know, a tea room where you sell candles and loose tea and other stuff like that, where people can have book clubs and meetings and stuff would be really good for the second floor," Lanie offered.

  For a moment, Jane couldn't breathe. It was like Lanie had looked into her mind—but she had experienced mental connection before with older students. No matter how skilled the one who accessed her thoughts, or even made contact to communicate, it was impossible to do so without a slight ache, a sensation that metaphorical ears would pop from change in pressure. Jane had felt none of the indicators, so Lanie couldn't have been reading her mind. No, this was one of those "coincidences" that would turn out not to be a coincidence, but rather something that had been planned, perhaps even designed or guided by Higher Powers.

  "I've always wanted to do something like that," she admitted, "but my old place was too small. And the people in the town weren't...of the right mentality for that kind of thing, if you know what I mean," Jane said slowly, offering a smile that felt somewhat uncertain. The last thing she wanted to do was even think of, much less speak about, Fendersburg. She didn't want even the slightest hint of that loony bin to contaminate her new life and new home—and new friendships.

  "Lanie, can I hire you to talk to some people I'm having come look at the empty unit in the Dexter building next week?" Debbi said. "If Jane hadn't already signed the lease, I think you could have talked her into it."

  "Probably," Jane said, nodding.

  A muffled sound like an angry cat got a flinch and a grin from Lanie, and she pressed one hand over her belly. "Uh, sorry, I was on my way out to pick up lunch. I should get going and get back to work. I'm at the Tattler. If you want a guided tour of town, want to meet up with people and find out what's going on, stop on by."

  "That's great. Where are you going for lunch? That'd be a good place to start getting to know the town," Jane said.

  Chapter Seven

  Of course, that turned into another half hour of talking. Debbi and Lanie made recommendations for where Jane should get meals while her apartment was being renovated, where she could get supplies to restart her business, the best place to post flyers advertising the grand opening, that sort of thing. And of course, Lanie wanted to know all Jane's plans for the building. From the grin and the little wriggles and sighs that escaped her from time to time, the spa was exactly what Lanie wanted. Jane liked that confirmation that all the things that worked and she had decided to retain in her new spa, plus the innovations she wanted to try, were going to be hits in this town. Granted, if everybody had the same tastes and desires as Lanie Zephyr.

  Lanie invited Jane to the next game of her wheelchair basketball league, but Jane had go head back to Fendersburg to finish packing. She was more disappointed than she thought possible. Was it another sign of the instant friendship she sensed between them, or just a symptom of her growing loathing for Fendersburg, even on the eve of total escape? When Lanie asked where she was from, Jane had hedged by saying it wasn't worth talking about, and she was glad to put the lazy, spoiled town behind her. Maybe that was too much information. She made a mental note to herself not to talk about Fendersburg in the future, even when people asked.

  "Okay, so you were established in a place that sounds like the armpit of the nation," Lanie said. That earned a sigh from Debbi, which she responded to with a flick of her tongue sticking out, then a grin. "Other than the fact you're intelligent and sensitive, why exactly pick Neighborlee when you managed to escape?"

  Jane wanted to tell her. For just a second, the urge to say she was one of the children who had been found abandoned outside town and she had come back to find out what happened to all the others, and their descendants, was strong enough to burn her lips. She held it back and glanced away while searching for answers. Even if Lanie seemed like the type of person who wouldn't even blink at such a confession, there was Debbi to consider. She was what some of Jane's fellow students referred to as a "mundane"—a non-geek, in science fiction fandom parlance. Either she would decide Jane was dangerous, or she would write her off as a lunatic. It wasn't wise to hack off a realtor. Especially when she wasn't entirely settled into her new home yet.

  "My guardians, my backers, actually, recommended I set up shop here," Jane said. It was close enough to the truth, wasn't it? Granted, she had picked Neighborlee and started the ball moving before Reginald gav
e his approval, but they liked her plans. "They say I'm a perfect fit for the town, and I'm needed here. The old farts have never been wrong before," she added with a shrug and a sigh that turned into a giggle when Debbi and Lanie both looked a little surprised for a moment. Maybe they were shocked to hear her call someone an "old fart"?

  "You'd have to meet Demetrius and Reginald to really understand what I mean. Not that they smell bad, but..." Jane shrugged again and all three laughed together.

  * * * *

  Jane planned to take her time setting up shop in Neighborlee. She planned to concentrate on her apartment, first, and be quiet with her movements, so her neighbors wouldn't realize someone was moving into the Spindelmutter building to set up business. She wanted to get to know the whole town, creep in, get a sense of its lifeblood and its people, before she had to hang out her sign and open up for business. In a sense, this was the vacation she had never taken, practically from the day she woke up and realized she wasn't going through adolescent anguish, she really was a freak of nature. From the moment she realized that she could hover and affect the density of objects around her, she had felt responsible to use those powers to help others. Starting with the children in the orphanage cottage, she branched out to her schoolmates, helping them stand up against bullies or get out of jams they couldn't avoid. Then Demetrius and Reginald had found her, finagled official paperwork to get custody of her, and took her away to the Sanctum.

  It had been nothing like the comic books, and that had been both a relief and a disappointment.

  Come to think of it, her whole life had been a relief and a disappointment.

  Well, the disappointment part was over. Jane knew she had earned years of relief, and she planned on enjoying it.

  She reveled in the quiet from the first day she officially moved in. For two solid days, she stayed indoors, painting the walls and refinishing the floors with equipment she rented in another county so no one would make the connection between her and any strange sounds that might filter out of the building. She went to bed when she felt tired and slept until she felt like getting up. She took her time, constantly modifying her plans to indulge her taste for eclectic combinations. Her landlord had given her complete freedom to do whatever her little heart desired to renovate the building, from cellar to roof—as long as it was reversible when she moved out.

  Jane made a list of used furniture and second hand stores to ransack, to furnish her apartment as well as the tea room on the second floor, and casual seating around the main floor of the spa. She planned to do the refinishing work on the second floor while whichever handyman she finally settled on got to work on the main room of the spa. She would refinish furniture until she got woozy from fumes. Cherry stain and black and red lacquer. She would invest in futons and lots of open shelves. Steamer trunks for tables. Lamps hanging on chains from hooks in the ceiling. Rag rugs on plain wooden boards. Lots of open space and windows with blinds and no curtains.

  Once the painting was done, and before she started her whirlwind shopping tour, she went walking, getting to know her town. The weather was pleasant, but there was no guarantee that the unseasonably balmy weather would linger. Best bet was to get out and about now. First was a long walk up the main drag from her shop.

  El Greco's Bakery exuded aromas that threatened to put her into a trance. Jane guessed she gained four pounds just inhaling the smells coming through the front door. She saved the bakery for her return trip.

  Benjamin's was a dime store. A friendly sign painted in bright rainbow colors and surrounded by balloons admitted that with the current economy, very little in the store was sold for a dime. But then the sign invited shoppers to come in and explore the dime special bins for that week, guaranteed to be a massive savings and a delightful surprise. Jane lost nearly an hour there and came away with enough beauty supplies for the next three months, plus the ingredients for dinner.

  After that was Goody's, the office supply store. They had a special on personalized, self-inking rubber stamps and receipt books. Jane placed an order.

  Her first twinge of wondering discomfort came as she walked out the door. What were the chances, really, that every store she looked at had something she needed or wanted? Coincidences just didn't happen unless someone consciously manipulated circumstances. She knew all about manipulating circumstances so people didn't know they were being helped. She had earned top grades from Reginald in that class.

  Of course, the people of Fendersburg being what they were, constantly getting into trouble, forcing her to nearly split into twins at times to avert accidents turning into catastrophes, she had given up trying to hide her presence and activities within her first two months of living there. Many of her fellow students were much better at keeping the towns they monitored and protected from realizing someone was helping them.

  What if Neighborlee had a guardian who managed that? Someone who was so good at hiding his or her presence that even Demetrius and Reginald hadn't realized they were being watched? But what kind of guardian did Neighborlee have—if the town had one at all—who let children be snatched up and taken away? Especially children who had Gifts that were probably needed to protect the town?

  "I am going to think myself into knots," she muttered, while standing in front of the alley between Goody's and Fresher Folks Grocery.

  What if the guardian—maybe those three people she saw last fall were guardians, meaning there were more than one?—of Neighborlee let some children be taken away because they weren't good enough, talented enough, strong enough, smart enough, enough of anything, to be allowed to stay here?

  What if Reginald and Demetrius were allowed to take the rejects? Or—and the idea made her feel a little better, although that sinking feeling of sick dismay kept curdling in her stomach—they were being watched right now, were allowed to operate in supposed secrecy, and someone somewhere was just waiting for the right time to reveal they had been an experiment?

  "Just like all the towns we've been watching, waiting for someone, some answer to appear to explain what and why we are." Jane glanced in both directions down the sidewalk. No one seemed to be watching her, wondering why she was standing there on a bright-but-chilly day, her lips moving but no one there to hear what she said. Then she looked up, just in case those people she had seen rise into the air in the park happened to be doing a mid-day surveillance flight.

  No matter what, she had to contact the Sanctum and pass on her theories. It made sense. How could a place like Neighborlee, so full of oddness, the source of so many Gifted children through the generations, probably even before Reginald and Demetrius decided to do something about their situation, not have a guardian or two? Or a dozen?

  She felt a little better once she decided to pass on her speculations, but not by much. The sensation of being watched, even if it was just in her imagination, made her want to go Ghost. Her years of training, of protecting against observation and suspicion, fought hard with the panic mode that rarely set in, yet was much stronger than anticipated simply because it hit so rarely. She was the Ghost. She wasn't allowed to panic.

  "Not the Ghost anymore." She glanced upward once more and wondered if she should be looking downward. After all, who would think of the town's guardians traveling through the water pipes and underground passageways, maybe steam tunnels? If she could phase out and walk through walls, then other people could do it, too. Walking around underneath the town, able to see up through foundations and pipes, was probably a much better way of monitoring the situation. The watcher would never be noticed, never suspected. He wouldn't have to worry about cold or rain or snow or any other bad kind of weather. It would definitely be cooler in the summer, traveling underground.

  The thought of someone being able to look up at her from below her feet gave Jane a few shivers of the oogies. Definitely, she was never wearing a skirt as long as she lived in Neighborlee. Or at least, not until she could determine if there was someone looking up.

  "Get a grip!" She
flinched, looking around again, and then a shaky little laugh escaped her.

  How long had it been since she had been this shaky, frozen to one place, her mind spinning at about ten thousand miles per second? Not since the first time she phased through a wall to escape a couple of the bullies at the orphanage. There were a few boys who'd made it their duty to patrol and keep the bullies from picking on the smaller children, but they couldn't be everywhere at once. Not even Kurt, whom Jane had adored from afar. He'd had two girlfriends he hung around with constantly, both younger than him—one who had been adopted out and one who still lived in the orphanage—and she hadn't been able to work up the courage to approach them and ask if she could join their group. Then Demetrius and Reginald had swooped in with paperwork that kept even Mrs. Silvestri from getting in their way. Jane never even got close enough to see if Kurt's eyes were the same stormy gray when he smiled as when he was furious and throwing the bullies right and left.

  Jane knew better than to stand there in front of the alley and panic. Especially if someone was watching her. She tossed her head and got moving. Nothing and no one was going to spoil her day of exploration and freedom. Besides, Katie hoped to come visit tonight or tomorrow, and give her new place the stamp of approval. If she was showing up tonight, Jane didn't want to be late getting back home.

  Katie wasn't as sensitive to the weirdness that might signal the presence and activity of Gifted as Jane was. That was why, coupled with her ability to move at supersonic speeds, she was assigned as courier and messenger, and got to see the world. That didn't mean Jane couldn't bounce ideas and suspicions and "supposes" off her. In some ways, Jane was a very small town girl, while Katie had seen so much she had a more cosmopolitan, worldly perspective on things.

  If Katie thought something was weirder about the background, charming weirdness of Neighborlee then Jane would send her to the Sanctum with her report, her ideas. If Katie thought Jane was just suffering from new-kid-in-town syndrome, she would keep quiet.