Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) (9 page)

“Shoddy,” I said, meeting Calderon’s dark eyes. “Based on my experience. They love you, then they hate you.”

“Not everybody hates you,” Calderon said.

“Oh, yeah?” I leaned back a little. “Do you hate me?”

“I have a practiced indifference,” he said, keeping a straight face.

“That’s a real shame,” I said, and caught his smile. “While you’re here, maybe we should go check out Flora Romero’s old place.”

“You asking me out on a date?” Calderon didn’t even look up from the pad.

What was it about law enforcement types lately? “If I did, I could probably pick somewhere more exciting than a murder victim’s last known address.”

“Such as?”

“God, you’re about as subtle as a—”

“Bolt of lightning?” His grin turned to a cringe. “Sorry. That was …”

“A little much, yeah,” I said. “I’d have gone with ‘a hail of gunfire.’ Very topical.”

He gave me a slight nod of appreciation. “So she lived …” he turned his head around, and he pointed to the house just past the van’s smoking remains. The fire department was swarming all over it, even though their job was clearly done at this point. “Over there.”

“Yep,” I said. “I was just heading that way when everything went straight to hell.” I stood and followed him as he made his way across the pitted lawn, huge gouges ripped out of the soil where Augustus had torn earth free to suppress the explosion. “I—” I paused, looking down into the ground. Something seemed a little off, a shape sticking out of the shredded earth, jutting out of the dirt like a tree root.

Except Flora Romero’s yard didn’t have any trees in it.

“The hell?” Calderon muttered behind me, and I felt his hand on my arm, holding me back from walking any further. I would have stopped anyway, but the touch—light, gentle—triggered my conscious mind and caused me to hold back as I stared down, eyes working their way across the exposed pits until I found another uneven shape hanging out of the side of one of the pits. This one … was much less ambiguous.

It sprang free from the red clay at several points, like a curved boomerang hanging out of the exposed soil. There was another next to it, and another, and another, all joining to meet at the same point, where an obvious fracture broke them off from what should have been the natural join to a mirror image on the other side.

I pointed. Calderon nodded and pulled out his cell phone. He had the number dialed while I just stood there and stared. “I need a crime scene unit.” He said more, but I lost it as he wandered off, behind me, all thoughts of our little flirtatious play gone by the wayside.

I just stood there and stared at the half-ribcage that had been exposed by Augustus’s heroism, hanging out of the side of a gash in Flora Romero’s lawn.

My head was buzzing as I made my way back home. I didn’t go jumping back over the fences or anything. I walked around the front like a normal person—even though I was most definitely not normal anymore. Word had already spread, though. I caught the looks on the street as I passed people. Some respect. Some fear. People crossing to get away, but nobody crossing over to say thank you. That’d come later, I hoped. I’d just done one thing, after all, and it had thrown the neighborhood into chaos. Whatever I did next, that’d solidify my reputation one way or another.

I needed to keep being a hero. I guess no one really knew the numbers, but you’d think if there were hundreds of metahumans out there, there’d be some heroes stepping up besides Sienna Nealon and her crew.

And can I just say—Wow! Sienna Nealon herself. She was shorter than I expected. And a little reserved. But I did just save her life, so she was probably a little rattled. If she even got rattled by that sort of thing at this point. Maybe she was just tired.

I took a left onto my street. I could feel my pace quickening. I could move faster, no doubt. I’d felt it on the way to the attack, but now it was like I was hyperaware of it, like I needed to go somewhere and lift something heavy just to check that, too. I needed, like, a training montage.

Wait, she did say she was going to come over later and talk to me, right? And I said … did I really say I was going to work tomorrow?

Well, I had to. Momma would kill me if I quit my job.
College
, she’d say. And that’d be the end of the discussion.

Also, it is probably not right to quit a good job for some vague, half-formed idea of how to be a hero. How do heroes get paid?

I stopped in front of my house. It looked … different. Smaller, maybe? Or maybe I just felt bigger. I took a breath, trying to plan out what I was going to say when I went inside. Rumors were already spreading. For all I knew, somebody had already stopped by and broken the news that I was a meta and had gotten in on a throwdown. In which case I was about to get an earful when I stepped inside.

I stood on the sidewalk for another couple minutes. Planning out what I was going to say. Yeah. That’s it.

When I opened the door I could hear talking inside. I closed it behind me loud enough to let everyone know I was coming. Their hushed voices were coming from the living room, and I eased down that way, making footsteps loud enough to announce my presence.

Momma looked up at me as I came in, wearing a scowl. “Fool boy. What were you thinking?”

“I—”

“You don’t go running toward gunfire unless you’re in the Army,” Momma continued, still fixing me with that glare. “Did you join the Army and not tell me about it?” She turned her head toward Taneshia, who was sitting in the chair on the other side of me. “You hear if Augustus joined the Army?”

“No, I did not,” Taneshia said, giving me an absolute flashback to the days when we were six and she’d parrot back to me exactly what Momma had said not to do that I’d gone and done anyway.

“So, you’re saying I should join the Army?” I asked, and watched Momma’s expression get a little bit darker. “They got the G.I. Bill—”

“Oh, we got ourselves a smartass,” she said.

“Better than being a dumb one,” I said.

“Oh, you’re that, too.”

“What were you thinking, Augustus?” Taneshia broke in, voice soft and quiet. The TV behind me had aerial pictures of the fight scene already. Fortunately, they hadn’t been there when I left. I could hear the chopper in the distance now, though.

“I was trying to help,” I said.

“You were trying to get yourself killed,” Momma said.

“Rushing into something like that …” Taneshia just shook her head.

“I just saved Sienna Nealon’s life,” I said, and waited.

I honestly expected laughter. I got pity instead. That was not a good consolation prize.

“I actually did,” I said, looking at the two of them in turn. “I found out this afternoon that I’m a metahuman.”

Momma’s left eyebrow went way up. It does that when she thinks she hears something crazy. She tilted her head to look past me to Taneshia, like she was asking without asking, “You hearing this?”

Taneshia just looked … thoughtful. “Really.” Filled with doubt. “What’s your power?”

“I’m glad you asked,” I said with a little enthusiasm. I took a couple steps toward the TV and pointed toward the holes in the ground, the clay under the topsoil visible onscreen. “See that? That was me.”

Momma just stared. “My son, the human backhoe.”

“First, you might want to be a little careful about calling anyone a backhoe,” I said. “Might make someone a little hostile, you throw that at the wrong person. Second, I did that. With my hands.” I put my hands up in a flourish.

“Make sure to wash good under your nails before dinner, then,” Momma said, deadpan, angling to look around me to the television. “Was that really Sienna Nealon there?”

“I don’t know,” Taneshia said. “Why did they park the chopper on the side of the street that has trees covering everything …?”

I felt my lips press into a thin line out of pure annoyance. I reached out, put my hands out flat, trying to feel for what I was looking for in the carpet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, seeking out dirt and …

My eyes popped open. “Momma, did you vacuum in here today?”

“I vacuum in here every day,” she said. “You should try it in that pigsty you live in some time, it’d do you a world of good.”

I tried to focus on the positive. “That’s all right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “That’s okay. I’ll just use the lawn—” I turned my head to look out the window. If I ripped my momma’s lawn to show her and Taneshia I was a metahuman, I was going to have to hope I secretly also possessed a power of extremely fast healing, because she was going to beat me all about my skull.

Wait.

I took another breath and reached out, lifting my hands and pushing them toward the arch. I could feel through the walls, could feel the dirt—small, like little grains. The flicker of the TV was the only light in the room save for the last faint strains of day through the half-closed blinds. I could feel a little dirt in my room, and—

Yeahhhhh.

I heard a
thunk!
as my amethyst smacked the wall. I cringed and saw Momma turn her head around, looking to see where that noise had come from. “Jamal?” she asked.

“No, Momma, that was me,” I said, mentally trying to steer the rock around the corner with the threads of dirt just behind it. It was not as easy as it sounds, I promise you.

“Boy, you look like you need to excuse yourself to the restroom before something bad happens to your drawers,” Momma said.

“I just need to …” I strained, steering it all around the last corner. The drift of dirt came threading through the air, lit by the sun in the main hallway. I pulled it toward me, the amethyst leading the way, and halted it directly in front of me, letting it twist right before my face. The dirt I let settle into an easy spin around it, a neat ribbon oscillating in a circle. “See!”

“See what?” Momma was looking at me. “I’d like to see the TV a little better, but someone’s standing his butt half in front of it.”

“See this?” I made a hand gesture, all grand and theatrical, to indicate what I was doing.

Momma squinted. “You been practicing magic? What is that? You levitating a rock?”

“I’m—yes, I’m levitating a rock,” I said. “No strings. See the dirt?”

“No, I don’t see anything.” She squinted harder.

“Momma,” Taneshia said in a whisper. “He’s floating the dirt and the rock.”

Momma fumbled in the half-light, reaching up for the lamp that rested behind her seat. I heard her fingers trying to turn the little knob, and then it popped on, flooding the room with a dull orange light.

My little ribbon of dirt just spun there, waves rippling across its surface. I turned it with my hands, making it go vertical, so they could see it better, and set the amethyst to orbiting it. The planet orbiting the rings. Figured I’d try something new.

“Augustus,” Momma said. Her tone changed in an instant. “Did you bring that dirt into
my
house?”

“Momma,” I said, trying to get her to realize the point being made. “I’m making it
hover
.”

“Well, you need to make it
Hoover
, as in get the vacuum and get that mess out of here—”

There was a knock at the door that interrupted us, and I strode over, keeping the dirt spinning while I entered the hallway. I opened the door wordlessly, and there was Sienna Nealon, still bloody, still a mess, but standing right there on my doorstep. “Come in,” I said, motioning her forward.

“Thanks,” she said. She looked like she was wearing a scowl, but she followed me in, pausing at the archway to the living room as I scampered back inside, ready to show off my last piece of evidence to Momma that her baby boy had finally—finally!—become somebody.

“Momma,” I said, “Taneshia—meet Sienna Nealon.” And I just stood there and waited. It didn’t take long.

“This little white girl is about two feet tall! She doesn’t even look anything like Sienna Nealon,” Momma said, shaking her head at me. “How stupid do you think I am?”

It took me, Augustus and his—girlfriend? Friend? I never got a clear answer on that—a few minutes to convince his mother that I was who he said I was. She wanted to see my badge, so I showed her. It doesn’t really look all that impressive.

“Metahuman Policing and—” She looked up at me over her glasses. “What is this?”

“We just call it the agency,” I said.

“Why don’t they just come up with a cool acronym for it like all those agencies in movies?” Taneshia asked. “Like S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“That one’s probably copyrighted,” I said and turned my attention to Augustus. “We, uh … found some bodies.”

“No kidding,” Augustus said. “You burned those people up yourself, remember?”

“We found more bodies,” I clarified. “In the yard you dug up.” He was staring at me blankly. “I was coming to talk to someone at that house, and—whatever. Anyway, there are skeletons in the yard. Literal skeletons. CSI showed up and said they’ve been in the ground there for, like, a year.”

“What are you into, son?” Momma asked with more than a little alarm. I don’t normally call total strangers “Momma,” but Augustus introduced her as such, and without another name to go by …

“Hell if I know,” he said, and she reached out and smacked him right on the leg, presumably for swearing. Which was weird, because I could have sworn I’d heard her curse a little already. He took it in stride. “What
am
I into?” he asked me.

“Nothing, if you don’t want to be,” I said. “I came down here to investigate some people who died in a presumptive lightning storm.”

“There’s got to be more to it than that,” Taneshia said.

“Of course there’s more to it than that,” Augustus said. “She had a bunch of guys waiting for her outside this house with machine guns.”

“There appears to be more to it,” I agreed, “but I don’t know. There was a girl—Flora Romero—she got murdered a year ago and her killer was struck by lightning immediately after. There were two more suspicious lightning deaths last night, and a local detective has me looking into it.
Something
seems to be going on. Or else people are randomly trying to kill me, which …” I thought about it. “Actually, we can’t rule that out.”