Hero Blues

by Michelle L. Levigne

  Then Jane felt that tickle of Gifted energy at work. She blinked. Was that just a momentary flicker of multi-colored light, swirling around the wheels of Lanie's chair as she slowly bumped down the single, deep, short step of the threshold to get down into the shop? The light was too brief to be absolutely sure, but the fact that Lanie hung around with Kurt and they both seemed to be a little closer to Angela than other people she had met in town... Jane wondered if she had found the three people she saw fly last summer.

  "Hi, Lanie," Jane called out as she slid a handful of loofah pads, some with wooden handles and some with ropes, onto the closest shelf. "You know Penny? Angela sent her over to help with the shop. She's a real go-getter."

  "Yeah, Penny's a good kid. She's had it really rough." Lanie looked around. "Where's that appointment book? If I hadn't been scared of driving you out of town, I would have called dibs on massages the first time I saw you in here."

  Jane laughed. She gestured over at the main counter with the computer for setting up appointments. It was currently open to her inventory program, because she suspected once she ran through a list of everything that sold today, she was going to have to place a re-stock order to several different suppliers. This was a wonderful start to her new life. She just hoped it was a good sign, and a promise of better days to come—in both careers.

  "Give me a sec." She bent down and brought up another armload of loofahs, emptying the box onto the bottom shelf—arranging could be done later—and kicked the box toward the cellar door. "So," she said as she walked over to the counter behind Lanie, "what's Penny's story? Is she another...well, another lost puppy?"

  "The mayor calls us the Lost Boys. Still can't get him to settle on Peter Pan or that weird vampire movie."

  "The mayor?" Jane nearly missed her stool, hitching her hip up to sit down. "Okay, I know there's a high percentage of abandoned kids, but the mayor?"

  "Lots of people who stayed in Neighborlee were abandoned kids found in the surrounding countryside. The ones who belong can't think of living anywhere else. The ones who don't belong take off as soon as they graduate high school or they reach eighteen, whichever comes first." Lanie rolled her eyes.

  "Uh huh. Who else besides the mayor?" Jane shook her head. "That doesn't really matter, does it? What's Penny's story?"

  "Harder luck than some of us. I think it's easier having no answers, rather than knowing you belong to someone, but they're not really sure they can take you." She grinned as Jane showed her the physical appointment book, and pretended to keep it just out of her reach.

  At the back of her mind, Jane wanted Lanie to use that flicker of Gifted energy again, maybe try to tug the appointment book from her hands. She wanted a confrontation, wanted it all to come out into the open. If Lanie demonstrated her Gifts, then Jane could show her what she did—heck, she could challenge Lanie to a flying race, if her theory was right—and then call the Sanctum and make arrangements to take Lanie, maybe Kurt and Angela, to meet Demetrius and Reginald and get some answers.

  "Okay, Penny isn't one of the Lost Boys." Lanie folded her hands in her lap and slouched a little in her wheelchair. "Her mother was killed by a drunk driver when she was ten and her father basically lost it and abandoned her. He didn't really fit into Neighborlee, but he was really in love with her mom and that sort of... I don't know...made the town make allowances for him, made it easier for him to fit. Well, whatever it was, he lost it. Lost a lot of things when Sheila died. Anyway, Penny had friends at NCH and actually asked to go there, instead of being put into the fostering system or sent to some distant relatives in France. What kid wouldn't want to go to France?"

  "A kid who knows where she belongs," Jane murmured.

  What if Penny was one of those kids she and Reginald had theorized about—her mother was a Lost Boy who didn't develop Gifts, but had that something that created a place for her in Neighborlee? What if Penny had a Gift waiting to emerge? What kind of Gift would she have if her mother had married another Lost Boy?

  Lanie wanted to hear about all the little things Jane still had to do with the shop. She liked the bare bones of the tea room Jane had set up on the second floor. There was more than enough storage in the cellar, so Jane was considering putting a sauna on the second floor with the tea room.

  Kurt showed up half an hour sooner than Jane expected him, to get to work on the shelves she wanted to install in the corners of the elevator, for displays. Before she quite knew how, he volunteered to run down the street to get dinner for the three of them, and they talked and threw ideas back and forth for the shop.

  The next step, after installing the shelves and more display racks to hang from the ceiling, was for Kurt to install a bigger display area in the bay windows on either side of the door. He wasn't up to painting the old-fashioned gold and black-edged lettering Jane wanted in the window, to replace the vinyl sign she was using now, but he had lined up the person to handle it for her. After that would be the sauna upstairs, and a full-body massage room downstairs, and stations for freelancers to come in and handle the manicures and pedicures, and another massage chair station. Jane was more than willing to share the wealth of customers who wanted pampering. She had already decided she would ask her new friends, starting with Angela, for recommendations of who to bring into the shop.

  "Next time, we have to get Felicity," Lanie said, as she and Kurt were preparing to leave. It was nearly ten, and Jane was actually grateful that they weren't going to make a long evening of it. She had dozens of ideas for the shop, confirmation that her ideas would be a hit in Neighborlee, but she was exhausted from her first day of business.

  "Felicity?" Jane asked.

  "Our third musketeer," Kurt said. "She got engaged at New Year's and for some reason, she spends more time with him nowadays than us. But yeah, she definitely needs to meet you," he added, his voice softening.

  Again, that odd, assessing, almost emotionless expression. Jane shivered, feeling as if Kurt were trying to see through her, trying to tap into her thoughts, waiting for her to do...something. Just like, she realized, she waited for him to do something.

  What if she had simply turned on the Ghost field and showed her new friends what she could do? Would they have responded with amazement, with laughter, with acceptance, and showed off their Gifts? If they had any Gifts?

  Or would she have terrified them, driven them away, destroyed the place she had started making for herself in town?

  "Yeah, sounds good. As soon as I can take some time off from this place. I forgot how much work it is to get a new business going."

  "Things will slow down eventually," Lanie said. "Not to scare you. Don't worry about making it here. Neighborlee takes care of its own."

  * * * *

  By the end of the next week, Penny had relaxed enough to drop the "Miss" and call Jane by name. The flood of customers had slowed down to what Jane was used to in Fendersburg, and the nice people of Neighborlee helped her out by spreading news of her shop with word-of-mouth. Jane had at least two table massages a day, and at least five short stints in the chair. She seriously considered giving Penny lessons, but knew that wouldn't be much help. Penny would have to take classes and get certified. She couldn't ask the girl to give up even more of her time away from school and her responsibilities at the orphanage.

  Penny's most important function was introducing Jane to the people of Neighborlee. She had stories about everyone who came into the shop, giving Jane insight into their hobbies and families and pasts. That in turn made it easier for Jane to make suggestions when someone wanted help in selecting makeup or finding a tonic or picking out a gift for someone else.

  By this time, Kurt was close to finishing all the little adaptations and tweaks to make the shop what she had envisioned. Jane caught herself trying to come up with new projects, ridiculous little extras, just to have an excuse to have him come into the shop. So when Kurt walked into the shop Friday afternoon, she flinched a little and felt guilty, because she had been th
inking about him a little too much.

  He didn't see her at first, and for a moment she had the strangest feeling that he wasn't really looking for her, but was surveying the shop as if he had never seen it before. The silence rang like one of those enormous gongs in an MGM classic movie set in the jungle or the Orient.

  "Can I help you, sir?" Jane joked, to push down the creepy-crawly sensation that made the fine hairs stand up on her arm and on the back of her neck.

  Maybe it wasn't a creepy-crawly sensation, but the melting, dropping sensation in her belly that got her without any warning, when she looked into his stormy gray eyes. He stood four inches taller than her—just the perfect height for her to rest her head on his shoulder.

  Where in the world did that thought come from? Jane mentally slapped herself and stepped out from behind the counter. Just the physical action of approaching him, rather than feeling like she was hiding behind the counter, should help her.

  For a few more seconds, it seemed like Kurt didn't hear her. He continued looking around the shop, taking in the display racks of cosmetics and teas, clothes and health food and jewelry and the lounging corner with the bucket chairs and magazines to browse and a pot of Indian spice tea perfuming the air.

  From his faded denim shirt with the rolled-up sleeves to his scuffed, sand-colored work boots, he was clean, simple and elemental. No glitz, no glamour, no hair gel. His afternoon stubble hinted at shades of cinnamon in his hair that looked more wheat-colored up close. No jewelry; no ring or necklace or studs in his ears or nose; not even a watch. His hands were clean and looked strong and sensitive, but no fancy manicures and no dirt under the nails, either.

  Then he smiled at her. Just an upward tilt of the left side of his generous mouth, it hinted at a dimple, hidden among the stubble.

  "Just checking things out. Sometimes I spend so much time on the little details, I don't get the big picture. You should hear the fuss people have been making about this place." He gestured with a tilt of his head to take in the contents of the spa.

  Fuss? Should she be insulted?

  "Yeah," he continued, voice softer, "this'll be great, if you decide to stick around."

  "If I stick around? Excuse me, but I don't put this much effort into a new place if I'm not planning on staying long-term." She decided to take his words as a joke. Otherwise that sense of being assessed and turned inside out would make her shiver right out of her skin. When her Ghost field had first awakened, sometimes she had needed to phase out and fly, as far and as fast as she could, with no regard to where she was going, just to try to outfly the feeling. Kurt made her feel that uneasy, needing-to-run, just for a few seconds.

  "Hmm, yeah. We make plans, don't we? Want things to be a certain way. When they don't work out, instead of fixing, it's easier to leave."

  "You maybe, but not me." Jane almost choked, thinking immediately of how she had finally, after much grumbling, shaken herself free of Fendersburg.

  "But see, me, I'm the Handyman. That's what people call me." He snorted. "Lanie and Felicity tease me that should be my superhero name." His eyes narrowed a moment when Jane flinched at the use of the word "superhero." "I guess, growing up where we did, some of us feel responsible. Make things right. Repairs. Put them back the way they should be. Track down trouble, things that don't feel right, vibrations that are out of synch. That sort of thing."

  That was a threat.

  Or had he decided she was a threat? Was that what all those unreadable, assessing looks over the last two weeks meant? Did he have the ability to sense when a Gifted person came within the town boundaries? Was he the town guardian, just as she had been guardian for Fendersburg, until their choices and attitudes made them a threat to her sanity?

  Friend or foe? she demanded, not really expecting him to hear. Mostly because few ever did, except in her dreams.

  Friend.

  His voice reverberated in her mind. Both of them jumped back two steps, and she suspected her eyes were as wide as his.

  That's not supposed to happen.

  Tell me about it! How can you— I knew I felt something— I've never been able to hear anybody in my head before. How did you do that?

  "Heck if I know," she said aloud. "Usually when I hear someone's mind in my head, it hurts and they're doing all the work." She reached up to press her index fingers against her temples, but the expected throbbing, like his voice had come in on a nail gun, wasn't there.

  "Okay, so... You're used to people with powers. So I wasn't imagining there was something about you." He nodded, taking a step closer, and lowering his voice. "You thought I was serious for a second, when I said my superhero name was Handyman. That means you've got one, maybe?"

  "Hardly." Nothing in the world was going to get her to admit she was called the Ghost by people with entitlement attitudes. She didn't want anybody in Neighborlee to connect her with a missing semi-pseudo-superhero who had turned her back on the town she once protected. "We're all just ordinary folks here."

  "I think that's wrong on a lot of counts. Not just the people here in Neighborlee." He smiled, but that wasn't the relaxed look she wanted.

  "Look, whatever you think is going on—"

  "Still trying to figure that out."

  "It's supposed to be clear tonight, not much wind. A good night for flying, you think?" She had the pleasure of watching him go pale for two seconds while his eyes widened.

  "What do you mean by flying?"

  "What do you think you're doing? The air's vibrating like..." She shrugged. What she wouldn't give for him to be sitting down, so she could use her Ghost field and take apart the chair, just like she did to Otis. Knock some humility and cooperation into him.

  "Yeah, it is. Vibrating." Kurt took a step back and looked around. "You're going kind of...transparent?"

  "No I'm—" Jane held up her hand and swallowed hard, stunned to see the opacity of her hand varied, rippling, transparent in a few spots and then solid again. She hadn't lost control of the Ghost field since she first awoke to her Gift. She took a deep breath and focused. The tingling in her fingertips faded and her hand went back to normal.

  "That's kind of interesting." He looked thoughtful.

  "What did you do to me?"

  "Me? Do to you?" He stopped, his mouth open, like he had been about to contradict her and then thought better of it. "You mean you don't usually fade out like that?"

  "What does it mean, being the Handyman? What's your Gift?"

  "Gift?" He snorted. "If it was a gift, sometimes I'd like to give it back. Like I said, I fix things. When Lanie broke her back, she couldn't—" He flushed and looked away. "Nobody knocks me off my cool like this. Is that your— What do you call it? Gift? You frustrate people into saying things they shouldn't? You're a walking truth serum?"

  Jane took a few slow breaths, studying him. It made sense to her that Kurt did suspect he was at least partially responsible for her losing control of the Ghost field for a moment. He had mentioned Lanie, which partially confirmed her theory.

  "There are three of you who fly, aren't there? Lanie is the one who flies—or used to fly? But she broke her back and lost the ability. But you, being the Handyman, you can fix other people's Gifts. Or at least influence them," she whispered.

  "Let me guess. You read minds?"

  "There has to be something to read," she snapped, stung by the sneer in his voice. Why did someone so hunky have to be so nasty?

  Then a moment later she regretted it, when she saw the slight widening of his eyes, the sweat glistening at his temples. Was that fear?

  "No." She sighed. "I don't read minds. I usually can't talk mind-to-mind, unless someone else initiates it. And the only reason I'm asking is that I was here last fall, checking things out—" She hesitated a moment when that got a spark of interest, driving the uneasiness from his expression, relaxing his stance. "I was out checking things, and I saw three people get out of a truck down by the park and they linked arms and flew." Definitely, she saw mor
e interest. "It was mid-August."

  "Uh huh." He grinned, his lips stretched just a little too thin for genuine humor. "Thought I was going nuts for a few seconds. I'm kind of like the Geiger Counter. I can feel when something's going to happen. We thought Big Ugly was waking up way too early."

  "Who's Big Ugly?"

  "If you hang around long enough, you'll find out."

  "Look, I'm not here to start trouble, or even looking for trouble. If there are more Gifted in this town—"

  "Where do you learn to say things like that? Gifted?"

  Chapter Ten

  "I'm late! I'm sorry! We were goofing around in the Yearbook— Oh, hey, Kurt!" Penny barreled in through the front door, peeling out of her parka as she babbled her excuses. As a matter of fact, she was only five minutes past her usual arrival time.

  "Hey, Penny." Kurt glanced at Jane, then turned to watch Penny hurry to hang up her coat and scarf and jam her gloves into her pockets.

  "Warning, warning!" Penny pulled three pieces of paper from her pocket and handed them to Jane. "My friends at school want to make appointments for their nails. They never thought about anybody doing their feet like you were showing me on Tuesday. And this." She handed over a piece of pink notebook paper. "Caroline does nail art, but not professional. She's got really steady hands, but she doesn't know where to get the really good polish like you've got, and she was thinking—"

  "Of getting a job? Have her come in and show me what she can do." Jane was very conscious of Kurt watching her. She knew she would have given Penny's friend a chance even if he wasn't there, but it bothered her to sense him suddenly judging her, maybe even trying to determine her reasons.