“This is from the money he threw down on the bar,” he said. “Away from him, it was just blank paper.”
“Whoa,” Flicker said. “It looked real. And I saw it through everybody’s eyes.”
Nate stood. “Money. The ultimate shared hallucination.”
Somehow Nate always managed to sound like he was hosting a nature documentary.
“Say what now?” Ethan asked.
“Money is a social construct,” Nate said. “It needs a crowd’s agreement to make it work, to turn paper into something valuable. Haven’t you ever found it weird that pieces of paper are valuable, just because of the numbers printed on them?”
“Um, no,” Ethan said.
But Kelsie was nodding.
Money had always seemed like a game to her and her father, except when they were out of it. Even then, Dad had usually found a way to get more—at any moment, he had a bunch of cons going. Their friend Fig had said that Jerry Laszlo worked harder at conning people than if he’d had a regular job.
“Oh, wait,” Ethan said, looking pale. “This is not good.”
“It’s fascinating,” Nate said. “And that’s why he offered to pay for everyone’s shipping, and drinks! If his power’s like ours, he’s only rich when there’s a crowd around him!”
“Crowd funding,” Thibault said drily. “We should call him Kickstarter.”
“Or Coin,” Nate said.
“They’re just jerks.” Chizara rolled her eyes. “And you want to give them superhero names?”
“Uh, I think we’ve got a bigger problem than his name,” Ethan said. The energy in the room spasmed, focusing on him. He looked like he’d been busted cheating on an exam. “Because I totally bribed some cops with a bag full of that money.”
Nate stared. “You . . . what?”
“Did you just say you bribed cops?” Chizara cried.
“Technically, it was the voice that bribed them,” Ethan said. “And technically I didn’t bribe them at all. I just handed them a bag of blank paper in exchange for going away.”
“Oops,” Flicker said.
“The cops were all smooth about it. They didn’t even look in the bag!” Ethan’s fear was pulsing through the group, setting off an alarm in Kelsie’s head. “But the moment they try to buy doughnuts, they’re going to be pissed !”
Nate held up a hand, and everyone went quiet.
“What are they going to do, report us?” he said. “They took a bribe. We can pay them real money later.”
“Easy for you to say!” Ethan cried. “You’ve never had cops on your tail!”
“Except for the time your mother brought two detectives to my home, after you called me from a police station asking for help.” Nate turned away, and Kelsie felt him shutting out Ethan’s ragged, anxious energy. “What’s more important is that we just discovered two more powers in the world, and we let them get away!”
“Not for long,” Thibault said. “They’re planning something tomorrow. Something worse than this.”
The feeling of being invaded flowed through Kelsie again. She wanted to lash out, punch someone, protect her territory.
“Don’t they care about keeping their powers secret?” she asked.
“I’m not sure they care about anything,” Chizara said. “Except each other, and that eye-banging thing they do.”
“When they got started on the dance floor, everything looked wrong,” Kelsie said. “My records, my turntables. I couldn’t even recognize our crowd.”
“I couldn’t understand my lighting system.” Chizara shook her head slowly. “Everything I built was like someone else had put it together and I didn’t know how it worked.”
“I couldn’t recognize Flicker.” Thibault reached out to curl his fingers through hers.
“Ditto,” Flicker said. “And I couldn’t read braille anymore. Or remember your name.”
“I think her power was leaking a little at the Office-O,” Ethan said. “Sonia was staring at her phone funny, and I couldn’t recognize my own voice. Like, my real one.”
“Wait,” Chizara said. “They used a power on you, and you led them here?”
Chizara’s anger spiked through the Zeroes. Kelsie tried to steady them, but her own anger spilled into the loop.
Nate stood up and cleared his throat, and that steadied everything. “So her power is like Thibault’s. He disappears by disrupting attention, cutting himself free of the social web. Maybe she cuts those connections for a whole crowd instead of just herself.”
“But she doesn’t cut them,” Thibault said. “She steals them. It’s like she sucks away all the attention in the room, focuses it between her and him.”
Kelsie said, “It’s not attention she steals. It’s more personal.”
“Right,” Nate said, picking up the thread. “Your turntables. Chizara’s lights. Ethan’s voice. For Anon and Flicker, each other. She takes your understanding of what’s important to you—maybe even your love of it—and makes it hers.”
“Which is why people go crazy,” Flicker said. “She glitches your connection to the thing you love.”
“Good name,” Ethan muttered. “She’s a total Glitch.”
“Yeah, perfect,” Chizara said. “Now that she has a code name, problem solved!”
Nate paced slowly. “Opposites attract. Coin takes something worthless and makes it valuable. And Glitch takes whatever’s most valuable to you and makes it meaningless. But what do they get out of it?”
“The birds and the bees,” Chizara said. “Her words, not mine.”
Nate stared. “You mean it’s just sex? Like, for fun?”
Kelsie felt her anger at Glitch and Coin turn, kicking out jaggedly into the group. “Fun is why most people come to nightclubs, Nate. Experimenting on people is not a normal thing!”
She felt bad as soon as she said it. Nate was all about control. So for him, experimenting with their superpowers probably seemed like the responsible thing to do.
She relaxed, easing back into the spiral of frustration in the room.
“Maybe they do this because they’re in love,” she added softly.
Chizara shook her head. “Not love—foreplay is what the guy said. For the big event they’re planning tomorrow. We have to stop them.”
“We have to explain things to them,” Nate said.
Chizara laughed once in disbelief.
Kelsie shared a look with her. That was Glorious Leader for you—always saying we when he meant I.
“Do you remember us six months ago?” Nate reasoned. “We did worse than kill the buzz at a nightclub. We stole money from drug dealers. We broke a whole police station, and—”
“And someone wound up in a coma,” Chizara agreed. “But we didn’t do it on purpose. Does this look accidental?”
She waved a hand, and the lights ignited to show him the battered and smashed club. The wreckage of the only home Kelsie had anymore.
The others were quiet. The brighter lights showed the bloodstains on the floor.
Nate spread his hands, trying to pull their gazes back to him. “Our Zeroes powers are hard to understand. Maybe they’re just confused. Or scared.”
Kelsie felt everyone focus on him. His curiosity overwhelmed her anger in the feedback loop, until she felt herself agreeing too. Her power suddenly felt small in the face of Nate’s will.
“We can help them,” Nate continued. “We helped you, Kelsie, right?”
He gave her one of those direct Nataniel Saldana gazes, the kind that made her feel like no one else in the room mattered. Kelsie dropped her gaze.
“We just have to let them know they’re not alone,” Nate said softly.
“They know all about powers, Nate,” Chizara replied. “They even knew what I was doing to their car. And they called normal people dolls. Like they’re nothing but toys.”
“Whoa,” Flicker said softly. “That’s cold.”
“That’s not the same as being evil,” Thibault said, always ready t
o find a middle way. “Maybe they’re experimenting too. But their powers make a bigger mess.”
Kelsie felt the Zeroes fracture as people took sides. Doubting themselves and each other. Doubting if what they were doing here at the Dish was so different.
“Uh, guys?” Flicker said. “I’ve got two sets of eyeballs approaching the door. And I think they’re cops.”
Fear shot through the room.
“Anon! Lock it!” Nate hissed. “Everyone, stay quiet. It’s not like they’ll get a search warrant to collect a bribe. I’ll deal with them later.”
Thibault stepped back from the door just as a rapping sound filled the Dish. Knuckles first, then a billy club hard and sharp against the door.
After everything tonight, it was all Kelsie could do to keep herself from curling into a ball again. The rapping kept coming, and it was like someone had sawed the endings off her nerves—the Dish felt invaded all over again.
But Nate was right. After a few long minutes, the cops gave the door one last frustrated blow.
“We’ll be back!” one of them called, and then came the sound of them driving away.
Kelsie wondered how she would sleep here tonight.
CHAPTER 13
FLICKER
“MORE CHURROS?”
“No, gracias.” Flicker put a hand on her belly, signaling the surrender of her appetite to Mrs. Saldana’s Sunday breakfast.
“Are you sure?” Gabby asked.
Flicker was mostly sure. In Gabby’s rapt vision, the churros glistened with fried-on sugar . . . but Flicker managed to shake her head.
“Nate and I can clean up. You guys are going to be late for church.”
“Milagrita,” Mrs. Saldana said, always a little amazed that Flicker wasn’t completely helpless. Annoying from anyone else, but not from Nate’s mom, who actually believed in miracles.
She cleared the girls out of the kitchen—no more churros if the guest wasn’t hungry—and set them to getting ready for church. As Gabby flounced down the hall, Flicker jumped into Nate’s eyes.
He was staring at his tablet, results for a search on crowd psychosis.
“Enjoying Glitch and Coin’s previous work?” she asked.
“Yeah, we need to know what makes them tick.” He scrolled through more results. “How good a look did you get at them?”
She shrugged. “Lots of eyes, all jittery.”
“Were they our age?”
Flicker considered this. All the Zeroes in Cambria had been born in the year 2000, which was a pretty odd explanation for superpowers, but it was all they had.
“Maybe,” she said. “But they’re more jaded. Harder than us, like they’ve seen a lot of bad stuff.”
“We’ve seen bad stuff,” Nate said. “Kidnappers! Bank robberies!”
“It’s not a competition,” she said sweetly.
Nate lifted his gaze to her face, and Flicker was surprised to see how fresh she looked. Last night had tripped her out, like it had everyone else, but this morning the excitement of finding new powers in the world was in her veins.
Or maybe that was just Mr. Saldana’s sweet, strong coffee.
“Whenever they were born,” she said, “I wouldn’t call them mature.”
Nate expelled a sigh. “They didn’t care who got hurt, did they?”
“Or who saw them do their recognition-stealing thing,” Flicker said. “If they keep pulling that shit, people are going to know there are superpowers out in the world!”
“It’s not just them.” His eyes dropped back to the screen. “There’s this study going around—it says crowd madness is way up in the last couple of years. There’s already some senator calling for a task force. He wants to link it to terrorism, of course.”
“Oh, great.” Flicker felt the caffeine rushing in her bloodstream. “So we can expect a visit from Homeland Security.”
“Maybe not today. But it looks like there’s a lot of other Zeroes out there, and some of them aren’t as disciplined as we are.”
Flicker laughed. “Disciplined? Like when Chizara crashed half of downtown? The only reason everyone in Cambria hasn’t figured us out is nobody believes in superpowers.”
“Sonia Sonic does,” Nate said. “We should be seeing her post about the Dish anytime now.”
“Have you checked yet?”
“Every five minutes.”
Flicker sighed. Chizara might have bricked Sonia’s phone, but there would be plenty of other pictures from last night’s disaster. Nobody evacuated a nightclub without taking a few selfies along the way.
It sucked. The Dish felt like home now, and Glitch and Coin had turned it inside out. Almost as if exposing the Zeroes had been the point of last night’s attack.
She stood up and began to stack the breakfast dishes by feel. Flicker had eaten almost as many meals at the Saldanas’ as she had at home, and she knew her way around the kitchen. Which was just as well, with Glorious Leader glued to his screen.
“I wonder why those two warned Chizara that they’re making more trouble today,” he said. “Are they going to hit more clubs tonight, or did they show up just to piss on our territory?”
“Maybe they’re addicted to that eye-banging thing,” Flicker said, and felt an odd twinge of jealousy go through her. Glitch had sucked up all the recognition in the room, everyone’s understanding of their world, of themselves, and had channeled it all into a bond between herself and Coin.
Which was a shitty and selfish thing to do, of course. But to have that as your superpower—seeing your boyfriend with a crowd-crippling intensity—sounded better than stealing other people’s eyes just to catch a glimpse of him. . . .
Most days Flicker had to work just to remember Thibault’s real name. It didn’t seem quite fair.
But she couldn’t say all this out loud, especially to Nate.
“Maybe they won’t wait for tonight,” she said, lifting the stack of dishes.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s Sunday, only three days till Christmas—the clubs will be empty. Check if there’s anything happening during the day.”
“Huh.” Nate began to type at his tablet.
Flicker navigated to the kitchen sink by the feel of sunlight streaming through the window behind it. The dishes settled heavily on metal, and she found the sponge where Mrs. Saldana always left it.
“Maybe we’ve gotten too wrapped up with the Dish,” she said. “A nightclub isn’t the only kind of crowd, right?”
Gabby padded past the door in stockinged feet, the hem of her Sunday dress swishing.
“Like, there’s church,” Flicker said.
“Mass would be a weird place to get your rocks off.”
“Okay. But there’s also farmers’ markets, movies, football games, pizza-eating contests . . .” Flicker dried her hands. “There must be something going on in this town.”
When Nate didn’t answer, Flicker jumped into his eyes. He was searching Cambria events today.
“Okay,” he said a moment later. “How about the annual police-versus-firefighters hockey game?”
“So much weirder than church,” Flicker said with a laugh.
“But the rivalry between first responders is primal,” Nate said. “And those guys Scam bribed last night will probably be there. We have to deal with that, too.”
“But it doesn’t seem like Glitch and Coin’s scene.” She sat down, reaching for the coffeepot in the middle of the table. “What else?”
Nate poked at his screen some more, and Flicker left his eyes for the stillness of her own brain.
“Hey, Nate,” she said a moment later. “You know who keeps track of what’s going on in Cambria? Sonia Sonic.”
Nate snorted. “So we should ask her for advice?”
“Why not? She’s going to post about the Dish no matter what. Might as well take this chance to charm her.” Nate started to interrupt, but Flicker didn’t let him. “Like you said, people are going to figure out superpowers sooner or
later. We might as well have someone telling our side of the story.”
“Sure, but Sonia Sonic? Cambria’s third most popular social-media maven? Why not the New York Times?”
“Because they won’t listen. And Sonia already gets it.” Flicker shrugged. “Plus, she’ll know what’s going on today off the top of her head. We don’t have time to fart around.”
When Nate didn’t answer, Flicker pulled out her phone. “Go to her site. There’s a number for anonymous tips.”
“But—”
“Look at it.”
“Flick . . . ,” he began, but then sighed and obeyed.
A moment later Sonia answered, “Yeah?”
“This is Flicker. Nate Saldana’s friend.”
“Um, Flicker . . .”
“The blind one. Is your wrist okay?”
“I guess.” The surprise in Sonia’s voice settled a little. “Are you calling to tell me what the hell that was last night? Or to warn me to keep quiet? Because I won’t! My wrist is so bad, I can’t even lift this coffee!”
“Sorry about that,” Flicker said. “But we don’t quite know what happened, exactly. We’re investigating, and I think you can help us.”
“How?”
“We need to know something—what’s the biggest event in Cambria today? Like, what’s drawing the largest crowd?”
“I knew it,” Sonia said. “It’s always in a crowd with you guys, which means it’s related to everything else that’s been happening!”
“Maybe . . . I mean, yeah, probably.” Flicker tried not to imagine the disapproving look Nate was giving her. But hell, if a US senator could figure it out, Sonia could too. “And the same thing that happened last night might happen again today. So tell me about everything big going on in Cambria.”
“What do I get out of this?” Sonia asked. “Like, will you finally explain what you are?”
“Um, I have to consult with Nate on that. For the moment, this is about keeping more people from getting hurt.”
There was a pause. “Well, if you’re going to play that card, I guess I don’t really have a choice. There’s an indie horror movie premiere, and some stupid hockey game. But I’m headed to the only event that matters—the big wedding at Hart’s Castle.”