with her nightly routine of prevent-
ing such mundane occurrences such as robberies, car thefts and
vandalism.
But now that summer was approaching, nocturnal activities
were on the rise. And more people meant more suspicious noc-
turnal activities. It also meant less sleep for the Muse, who was
of course in reality Emma Sonnet.
In two weeks, that wouldn’t be a problem — it would be
summer vacation, but now was the beginning of finals. That
was enough to keep most kids stressed, but Emma also had to
add patrolling the city to that tab.
If something happened on the streets below, it felt like an
• 17 •
C H A P T E R T W O
alarm clock going off in her head — she’d immediately focus
on the source of the disturbance. This evening, it brought her to
the jewelry district.
The Muse stood in the middle of the boulevard. At first,
nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, but as she scanned
the street lined with various jewelry stores, she noticed a hole
cut through the window of the nearest one.
A small hole, but big enough for a man to crawl through.
Cautiously, the Muse approached the window. It was dark
inside, but she detected a shadow lurking within. As her eyes
focused, she saw he was dressed in black. Either he was a pro-
fessional cat burglar or a poet with nothing better to do. Either
way, she would stop him.
But suddenly something struck her hard on the back of her
neck. The shock and pain sent her crumpling to the ground.
“What’re you doing?” a man’s voice whispered from inside
the store.
“She was snooping,” a woman’s voice returned. “ So I clob-
bered her.”
“ With a crowbar!” the man said, terror filling his voice.
“ You probably killed her. I’m not taking the rap for you on this.”
• 18 •
T H O M A S J . M I S U R A C A
“Relax, sweetheart,” the woman said. “She’s still breathing.
She’ll just wake up with a really bad headache. And she’s
dressed like one of those homeless punk rockers. Nobody’ll
believe anything she might say anyway.”
The woman crawled through the hole into the store. She
held a large, wool sack in her hand.
“Besides,” she told her partner, “we’ll be well outta town
before she wakes up.”
“I told you I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”
“She was snooping, she deserved it. Now let’s get to work.”
Using the crowbar, the woman pried open the cases that
held the smaller pieces of jewelry and then filled her sack. Her
partner carefully cut open the display cases to subsequently
remove their contents.
As the woman began to pull open the next case, the crow-
bar was suddenly yanked out of her hand. She lost her balance
and toppled into her partner.
“What’re you doing?” the guy whispered. “ This is delicate
work.”
“Like whacking somebody with a crowbar?” said a girl’s
voice through the darkness.
• 19 •
C H A P T E R T W O
The two froze in fear. They assumed the girl the woman had
clobbered had a friend with her. But as the speaker stepped into
the light, the crooks were even more surprised when they saw it
was the girl herself!
Luckily for the Muse, she had a somewhat harder head than
your average person (though not in the way her friends would
think). Yes, being hit with a crowbar hurt, and kids don’t try this
at home, but when you’re a superhero you generally shake it off
pretty quick.
But, this woman and her accomplice were dangerous and
she obviously had no problem hurting innocent people. The
Muse didn’t like that one bit.
“It’s not very nice to sneak up on someone with a crowbar,”
said the Muse. “ Flowers perhaps, or maybe even chocolates,
but…”
“And you’re gonna get it again if you don’t get outta here,
little missy!” the woman threatened.
“Did you take a course at the Learning Annex to learn how
to speak thug?” said the Muse. “ Something tells me you didn’t
pass.”
“Looks like we got a comedian here,” said the woman as
• 20 •
T H O M A S J . M I S U R A C A
she ran toward the Muse, raising her fist to strike.
“Shouldn’t that be comedienne?” said the Muse.
Calmly, she grabbed the woman’s wrist, giving it a gentle
twist. The woman fell to her knees.
In quite severe pain, she tried to scratch at the Muse with
her other hand. “ Sorry,” said the Muse. “I’m not into catfights.”
The Muse grabbed the woman’s other hand and twisted
them both behind her back. The Muse always carried a few feet
of rope in her pocket for just such situations, and quickly bound
the woman’s wrists. She tied the other end of the rope to one of
the display case’s legs.
The Muse then turned to the man, and his eyes widened
with terror.
“I didn’t hurt you, lady,” he managed to get out.
“But you would have left me there,” she reminded him,
“and that’s just as bad.”
The man whipped out his glass cutter. “ Don’t come any
closer. I don’t want to have to hurt you, but—”
But the cutter was snatched out of his hand.
He