one of the advantages of being your own boss, you know?”
She doesn’t respond. For a girl who lives up here with only a dog for company, she isn’t someone who embraces the gentle art of conversation.
She pulls open the screen door, then the door beyond, beckons him through. He brings the groceries inside, Xena padding behind him like an armed escort. The farmhouse is big and old and bright and clean. Lots of wood. Everything is heavy and solid, the kind of solid you’d grab on to to stop yourself from floating away. Danny feels like that sometimes, as if one of these days, he’d just float away and no one would notice.
He puts the groceries on the kitchen table, looks up to say something, realises he’s alone in here with the dog. Xena sits on her haunches, ears pricked, tail flat and still, staring at him.
“Hi there,” he says softly.
Xena growls.
“Here,” she says from right beside him and Danny jumps, spins quickly to the dog in case she mistakes his sudden movement for aggressiveness. But Xena just sits there, no longer growling, looking entirely innocent and not unamused.
Danny smiles self-consciously, takes the money he’s offered. “Sorry,” he says. “I always forget how quietly you walk. You’re like a ghost.”
Something in the way she looks at him makes him regret his choice of words, but before he can try to make things better she’s already unpacking the bags.
He stands awkwardly and tells himself to keep quiet. He knows the routine by now. As she busies herself with packing away the groceries, she will ask, in the most casual of tones—
“How are things in town?”
“Good,” Danny says, because that’s what he always says. “Things are quiet, but good. There’s gonna be a Starbucks opening on Main Street. Etta, she owns the coffee shop on the corner, she’s not too happy, and she tried to have a town meeting to stop it from happening. But no one went. People want Starbucks, I think. And they don’t really like Etta.”
She nods like she cares, and then she asks, just as he knew she would, “Any new faces?”
“Just the usual number of people passing through.”
“No one asking about me?”
Danny shakes his head. “No one.”
She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t smile or sigh or look disappointed. It’s just a question she needs answered, a fact she needs confirmed. He’s never asked who she’s waiting for, or who she’s expecting, or if someone asking about her would be a good thing or a bad thing. He doesn’t ask because he knows she wouldn’t tell him.
She closes the kitchen cabinet, folds one of the canvas bags into the other, hands them both back to Danny.
“Could you bring some eggs next time?” Stephanie asks. “I think I’ll be in the mood for an omelette.”
He smiles. “Sure,” he says. He’s always been a sucker for the Irish accent.
She edged into the darkness and out again into the light. Slow steps and quiet ones and once more the darkness swallowed her in its cold hunger. The maze opened before her. A man hovered there, a metre off the ground, as if he were lying on an invisible bed. His hands were clasped on his belly, and his eyes were closed.
Stephanie raised the Sceptre.
One thought would be all it’d take for a bolt of black lightning to turn him to dust. One simple command that, less than a year ago, she wouldn’t have even hesitated to give. Ferrente Rhadaman was a threat. He was a danger to her and to others. He had stepped into the Accelerator and the boost to his powers had turned him violent. Unstable. Sooner or later, he was going to kill someone in full view of the public and, just like that, magic would be revealed to a world that wasn’t ready for it. He was now the enemy. The enemy deserved to die.
And yet … she hesitated.
She was not one to second-guess herself. She was not prone to introspection. For the majority of her existence, Stephanie had been all surface. She was the reflection, the stand-in, the copy. While Valkyrie Cain had been out playing hero, Stephanie had gone to school, sat at the dinner table, carried on with normal life. People viewed her as an unfeeling object. She had been an it.
But now that she was a she, things were murkier. Less defined. Now that she was a person, now that she was actually alive, she found that she didn’t want to deprive any other living thing of that same opportunity – not if she could help it. Which was, she openly admitted, hugely inconvenient.
Wearing a scowl as dark as her hair, she stepped out from cover and advanced on Rhadaman slowly. She took a pair of shackles from the bag on her back, made sure the chain didn’t jingle. She kept the Sceptre pointed at him – she didn’t want to kill anyone if she could help it, but she wasn’t stupid – and chose her steps carefully. The floor was littered with supermarket debris. She was halfway there and still Rhadaman hadn’t opened his eyes.
The closer she got, the louder her pulse sounded in her head. She felt sure he was going to hear her heartbeat. If not her heartbeat then at the very least her ridiculously loud breathing. When had she started breathing so loud? Had she always breathed this loud? She would have thought someone might have mentioned it.
Three steps away Stephanie paused, looked around, watching for pinstripes. Nothing. Why hadn’t she waited? Why did she have to do this on her own? Did she really have that much to prove? Probably, now that she thought about it. So would capturing Rhadaman single-handedly make her a worthy partner? Would that justify her continued existence?
She wasn’t used to all these conflicting thoughts ricocheting around in her head.
Three more steps and she reached out, shackles ready.
Rhadaman’s eyes snapped open.
He stared at her. She stared at him.
“Um … This is a dream?” she tried, and a wave of energy threw her back.
She went tumbling, realised in some dim part of her mind that her hands were empty, and when she came to a stop she looked up and Rhadaman was standing there holding the Sceptre.
“I’ve seen this in books,” he said. He was American. “It’s the real thing, isn’t it? The Ancients actually used this to kill the Faceless Ones, to drive them out of this reality. The original God-Killer.” He pointed it at her as she stood, then frowned. “It doesn’t work.”
“Must be broken,” said Stephanie. “Could I have it back?”
She held out her hand. He looked at her a moment longer, and his eyes widened. “You’re her.”
“No,” she said.
He dropped the Sceptre and his hands started glowing. “You’re her!”
“I am not!” she said, before he could attack. “You think I’m Darquesse, but I’m not! I’m her reflection! I’m perfectly normal!”
“You killed my friends!”