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An excerpt from
Heroes ’Til Curfew
Talent Chronicles #2
Dylan
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to get a watch,” Eric told me.
“About a minute since the last time you asked,” Kat added. “Damn, Dylan. You know, at first it was cute, but it’s getting sad.”
“Seriously, man. You’re all anxious to get over there before she gets out of work, and are you even going to talk to her this time?”
“We talk,” I muttered defensively.
“I never knew you to be this chicken-shit around a girl before.” Eric reached across the checkout counter and punched me in the shoulder, like the guy-punch was supposed to take the sting out of it.
“He’s not chicken-shit, baby—”
Why did it feel like a new low that I needed Joss’s crazy friend Kat to defend me?
“—he’s just embracing the stalker lifestyle.”
“I’m not a stalker! I’m just waiting for my moment.”
“Oh, honey, no. A guy doesn’t kiss a girl and then wait around a month for his ‘moment,’ okay?” Kat was giving me air-quotes. Awesome. “You see Eric waiting around for some moment?”
They then engaged in a PDA that might have gotten me fired from the mini-mart if Casey had come out of the back room and caught them. I had to clear my throat twice to break it up.
“Lookit,” Kat said, digging her phone out of her bag, “I looked up stalker in the dictionary the other day. I’ll show you.” She pressed a few buttons and then held it up. “See?”
Naturally, the display showed a picture of me. Nice friends. It’s enough to make a guy long for days of being best buds with Marco and being pressured into a life of crime.
“If you want to walk Joss home,” Eric advised, “just go over there and say, ‘Hey, Joss, mind if I walk you home?’”
“Oh yeah, ’cause that’s brilliant. Kat saw her lift a steel girder, like, three stories in to the air…with her brain. The girl tosses sofas like it’s nothing—”
“Don’t forget how she ripped out all my kitchen cabinets!”
“And there’s that,” I said to Kat. “So I’m supposed to go over there and offer to walk her home at night? Like she needs someone like me to look out for her. How stupid does that make me look?”
“And yet you keep leaving here and racing over there to follow her home instead. If you’re so sure she doesn’t need you looking out for her, what are you doing?”
“Maybe I just like the view.”
While Eric had a laugh over that, I had to admit to myself that he had a point. It was stupid of me to keep following her home at night, thinking I could do anything to help her if trouble came looking for her. But then, I was all kinds of stupid over Joss lately.
When I thought about it, and I thought about it way too much, it didn’t make sense for me to be protective of Joss. She didn’t need someone like me. But I couldn’t stop myself from feeling it, from needing to look out for her, and knowing I’d do whatever I could to help her—even if whatever I could do was pretty useless.
It was like when I thought she was in over her head with Marco, and I found them with his hands around her neck. I didn’t think about the fact that he had super strength and was probably going to kill me. It was like that part of reality didn’t matter, didn’t even apply to me right then. Lucky for me, Joss was able to use her Talent to help me fight him back.
Because that’s how lame I am, that I needed my girlfriend’s psychic ability to do my fighting for me.
Except she’s not my girlfriend. Because that’s how lame I am.
“Are these paying customers, Maxwell?” my boss asked me.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Casey,” Kat said with too much enthusiasm. “I just love to shop here!” She made a show of browsing the gum selection in front of the register.
“My friends just dropped in to give me a ride when Manny gets here.” Eric, for all his ribbing, was always happy to drive like a madman to get me from Casey’s Go-Mart over to Gene’s Army/Navy Store in time for Joss to get off work. Mostly because Eric was always happy to be speeding.
“Ortega’s not coming. Something with his wife, water breaking, blah blah blah. Porter’s filling in.”
“Porter?” Manny was always early. Partly because he was that kind of guy, and partly because I had told him I liked to leave ten minutes early and he didn’t mind getting paid for my 10 minutes. Carl Porter, on the other hand…
“Mr. Casey, I really need to leave on time tonight.”
“Well, I guess you’d better pray for a miracle.”
“But—”
“But nothin’, Maxwell. You know I’ve got a mean wife at home that’s scarier than any crisis you got. I get in the door five minutes late and she starts searching my truck for panties.”
“Damn,” Eric muttered.
“Never marry an insecure woman, boys, that’s my free advice of the evening. You’re here until Porter gets here, and that’s it. If he’s not here by ten, you can try calling Winters. “
“Yes, sir.” I tried not to be too whiny about it, but in my head I was thinking how much freer my schedule was when I was living the life of a petty thief. I had lifted a fair amount of beer, snacks, cigarettes, and other merchandise from Casey over the years. Working for him, and keeping an eye on his stuff, was part of my new leaf-turning penance thing. But it was sucking right now.
Kat’s phone rang as Casey walked out the door.
“I’m at Casey’s, waiting for Dylan, who’s been waiting for his ‘moment’ by the way,” and she actually held the phone with her shoulder so she could do the air quotes for the phone caller—did I mention crazy? “to get off work.” A pause, then, “Dylan, why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“Casey said my leather jacket made me look like a punk and was keeping old ladies from buying lottery tickets. And he needs one of them to hit it big so he can get his share because his wife’s demanding to go to Bermuda or some shit. I guess I left my phone in the pocket. It’s in the back.”
“Jesus,” Kat said into the phone, “slow down. I can’t listen to both of you at once. He says because it’s in the pocket of his jacket which is in the back because—Well, damn, girl, take my head off. Fine. Here he is.” Kat passed the phone over the counter. “It’s Heather. You might want to hold it away from your ear. She’s a little wound up.”
“You okay, Heather?”
“It’s not me, it’s Joss.”
I backed up into the stool we kept behind the counter and sat down.
“I’m not sure what I heard—not heard, but…you know—“
“Yeah, I get it.” Heather tended to hear stray thoughts in people’s heads. “Go on.”
“They were just going by my house, on foot. I kinda got a glimpse of them out the window.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure. Definitely Marco, though, and Jeff, some ‘voices’ I couldn’t quite place, maybe five or six, and Joss.”
“What’s she doing with those guys?”
“She’s thinking a lot. Trying to take in details and come up with some kind of a plan to get away. She’s wishing she could see, so I think she’s blindfolded.”
“Fuck.” Besides the fact that Joss with Marco scared the crap out of me, and Joss being taken away blindfolded scared the crap out of me, the part of my brain that was actually thinking knew that her ability worked about a million times better if she could see what she wanted to move. I knew that she could use visualization to some extent, but her Talent was really weak that way and didn’t always work. If she couldn’t see, she was almost helpless.
“She’s scared, Dylan.”
Join the fucking club.
“Do you know where they’re headed? What Marco’s planning?”
“I…it was really a mess of thoughts, all of them at once, and once I heard Joss, I really just concentrated on her.”
“Any little thing, Heather,” I said quietly, trying to sound calming.
“Okay, um…Marco thought about his…lair? Does he have a lair?”
A string of expletives went through my head, but I was also kind of relieved. At least I knew where they were headed. “He does, the freak. Anything else?”
“Marco’s got a lot of hate. It was kind of inarticulate, but I think ‘payback’ was clear. And Jeff wants… Dylan, if you know where they’re going, you need to just get there.”
I clicked off the phone without saying goodbye. “We gotta go. Now.”
“What about the store? Is it Joss? Did something happen?” Kat asked.
“Yes, it’s Joss, and fuck the store. You run it,” I said, heading for the door.
“Go through the storeroom,” Eric told me, “I’m parked around back. We’ll go kick some ass and then I’ll swing by to pick you up later, ’kay, baby?”
“Call me!” I heard Kat yell. I was swiping my jacket off the hook as we ran through the back room. How much time had we already lost because I didn’t think to keep my phone on me? Had Joss tried to call me?
I looked. No messages. Of course not.
Eric slammed his hand down on the hood as he moved around the front of the car and his Talent brought the engine roaring to life. We threw ourselves down into the Camaro, slammed the doors, and he peeled out of the parking lot.
I thought about calling Heather back, asking her if she could tell if any of the others had Talents and what they were. But would knowing that really help? What was I going to do when I got there?
Something. I was just going to do something.
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Heroes ’Til Curfew is currently available at many of your favorite places to shop for books, in ebook and paperback formats. Search your favorite retailer or visit susan-bischoff.com for a list of retailers and direct links.
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