Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (21 page)

There, I said it. I accepted my identity as
a girl who snuggles. No wonder they call this the
walk of
shame
.

Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget the chilling
gaze of Mama Maxwell, whose butt was still parked in front of the
flat screen when I’d walked through the living room. She never went
to bed last night. Not, I’m sure, because she was just oh-so-full
of motherly concern for her son. Probably more like she was scared
of having his super-freak girlfriend under the same roof.

I twitched my shoulders under my jacket,
like I could shrug that off. Hating that witch was making me a
little warmer, but I really needed to stop reveling in the idea of
people being afraid of me. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t right.
That’s how Marcos are made.

I turned down my street. There were a few
lights on at my house, which was normal this time of morning, but
it wasn’t like every light in the place was on. Surely if they
realized I’d been out all night, it would be one of those
every
light in the house on
things, right? I’d seen that on TV.
Ugh
. I couldn’t believe I let myself fall asleep. But here I
was, almost home, still undetected, about to sneak in after being
out all night, after not getting caught by the cops, after not
getting killed by Marco, again, after getting saved by Talent
intervention…

Oh yeah, overall, I was feeling pretty
pleased with myself.

And then Dad’s car passed me. Very slowly.
And pulled into the driveway just ahead of me.

Jinx.

And other assorted expletives.

I didn’t pause, I just straightened up and
kept walking, like I had every right in the world to be walking
down my street at this hour of morning. Dad got out of the car and
shut the door. Then he took on the Dad Stance, the one with the
feet apart and the arms crossed over the chest. He paired that with
the Dad Look for maximum effect.

Oh and trust me, the effect was maximum.

But no way was I gonna let him know that.
Show No Weakness.
I kept walking steadily, hands in pockets,
maintaining eye contact and what I hoped was a bland
expression.

“Get in the house,” was what he said when I
was close enough to hear it without him having to raise his voice.
Because he didn’t. He didn’t have to.

I got in. Didn’t rush to comply, I just
nodded reasonably and walked past. My mom opened the door for us.
She must have been watching.

“Are you all right?” she asked, right off.
Because that’s what real moms do.

“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine, I—” The door closed
and I swallowed whatever else I was going to say.

She looked up at my dad, a quick meeting of
eyes. “Let’s go in the living room and sit down.”

Which
we
did, but of course Dad
maintained the Dad Stance.

“I just came from Vinyl Salvation,” he said.
The words dropped like rocks on my shoulders. “Last night, over the
scanner, they did a good job of making it sound like a simple
robbery. This morning though, when they finally tracked Rick down
to come in and take a look, it was sounding like something
else.”

The way this was said invited me to reveal
something, but I could wait.

“They did quite a number on the place. Some
heavy stuff tossed around, merchandise missing, destroyed, scorch
marks, and then, of course, the angel. And the blood on it.”

“Blood? What happened to the angel?” Mom
wanted to know.

“Looks like it fell on someone. And now
they’ve got people coming in to look at some cracks in the plaster.
They’re concerned about
structural damage
. Rick’s half off
his head about whether or not his insurance is going to cover
something like that. I, meanwhile, drive back home to find my
daughter
, who I thought was home in
bed
, waltzing
down the street like she hasn’t got a care in the world.”

And all I could think was,
I was sooo
close to getting away it. I just
had
to jinx it. The
Universe always demands penalty.

“Well, young lady?”

“Jocelyn,” Mom began, reasonably, a little
pleadingly, “you were mixed up in this somehow, weren’t you? I can
see you’re all right, but the blood…Was someone hurt?”

I turned to her, letting my hair slide over
my face, a privacy screen between Dad and me. “It was Dylan.” I
swallowed. Why is it that you think you’re totally fine, but as
soon as you start to tell your mom it’s almost impossible to not
cry?

“That boy is nothing but—”

“Gene, please. Is he okay, sweetheart?”

Dad pissed me off and gave me the moment I
needed to suck the tears back in. “He’s okay now. There’s this kid
who can…just disintegrate stuff. He hit some of the cables that
hold up the statue. Dylan saw it coming down and shoved me out of
the way.”

My mother gasped and crossed herself, a
remnant from her childhood she only brings out on very special
occasions. “God bless Dylan.”

“So I assume you were busy showing off your
abilities such that you missed the giant, falling statue?”

“Yes, sir, I was engaged.”

“And who else was there to see this?”

I decided to stand up. If I was going to
have to report, military style, I should be on my feet. So I gave
him the run-down of who was there, what the abilities were, who ran
off and who stayed and fought us. And the whole time he stood
there, looking down on me with the Dad Look.

“So. The cracks, the possible structural
damage. How did that happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

The tone was Not Good. I could see that,
below the crossed arms, my dad’s hands were white-knuckled fists,
and his tick was making his eye twitchy. Which I had to try really
hard not to look at because he really hated that he couldn’t
control it. But I also had to maintain eye contact while trying to
figure out how deep in it I was, and what he thought he saw that I
didn’t.

“The statue fell on Dylan,” Dad continued.
“Something that heavy, falling from that height, would have hit the
boy pretty hard. Even a glancing blow might have knocked him out.
Did it knock him out?”

“Yeah, it did. He took a good blow to the
head, Dad.”

“Bet that gave you a good scare, huh?”

“Well of course it did!”
What the
hell?

“And you were angry.”

“Well yeah I was angry. They were wrecking
the store, then that stupid piss-ant
follower
of Marco’s
gets clumsy with his Talent—he really hurt Dylan. He could have
been killed!”

“And you were out of control.”

“Oh Lord,” my mom breathed.

“What? No, Dad, I totally held it together.
That kid, Nathan, he got freaked out, called 911, but I totally got
us out of there, got past the cops, got Dylan home. I was
cool.”

“Cool. You were
cool
? Is
that
what you’re calling it?”

“No! Not like
that
. I mean—”

“Who caused the structural damage,
Joss?”

“I don’t know. You said they only
suspect—
”

I cut myself off when Dad broke the Dad
Stance to grab at his hair and start pacing around the room. I took
a step back before I could stop myself. Then he stopped suddenly
across the room and spun to face me.

“
You
did it, Jocelyn!
You
were
out of control.
You
let your Talent get away from you. I
suspected it when I went into the Dawson home and saw that kitchen.
But I let you convince me that you had it under control. That you
knew what you were doing. That you did what needed to be done.”

“What? Yeah, ’cause that’s what
happened.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me. It’s like
that fire all over again. Bad enough how it started, then you panic
and almost bring the house down on your head!”

“Gene, please—” Mom tried to cut in.

“When they took that place down, it was
cracked down into the foundation. And that didn’t happen because of
any fire. How long do you think it would have taken NIAC to figure
out there was another Talent to take away if we didn’t have the
right friends in the right places to hush that up, huh?”

I remembered the picture Mr. Dobbs had
showed me, the one in the file Dylan had stolen for me, a black and
white photo of a charred and ruined kitchen with the cabinets
ripped from the walls. I didn’t remember doing that either.

“I broke the house?” My voice sounded very
small.

My father fell into his easy chair, his
elbows on his spread knees, his head in his hands. Then he looked
up at me. He looked very tired. “What were you doing there in the
first place?”

“I wanted to get a line on what’s been going
on down there. All these little crimes lately, the smashed windows,
Mr. McGuffey’s robbery, the fire where Mueller’s used to be. And
then you’re missing money and I see you making a payoff.”

My mother put a hand over her eyes in a
gesture that told me she was totally in the loop.

“You need to keep your head down and mind
your business.”

“This
is
my business! The store is a
family business, and I’m part of this family. Not only that, but
Talents are behind it. What are we gonna let them do, Dad? Get away
with it? Run the town? Let the
cops
handle it?
Invite
NIAC in to investigate our problems?
I’m
the only one
qualified to deal—”

“
You
are about the
least
qualified individual I can think of right now to deal with this
problem, and I think you’ve proven that adequately.”

“What’s Joss not qualified for now?” Jill
asked from the entry. “Are we ever gonna have breakfast?”

“Go fix yourself some cereal, sweetie,” Mom
told her, “we’re discussing something with your sister.”

“I wanna know.”

“Bugs, this is an A and B conversation. C
your way out of it,” Dad told her. And his expression softened a
little when he said it, took some of the bite out of it.

Yeah, she gets to be Jilly-bug. Think I ever
got a name like that? Nope. Why? Because I broke a house? Because I
scared Dad so bad he had to go a sanitarium? Seems fair.

When Jill left, Dad refocused his glare.
“When I agreed to cut you some slack, it wasn’t so you could hang
yourself with it.”

I had to cool off. I was being baited, and
the last thing I was going to do was chomp on it by being
threatened and insulted, and ranting like a dumb kid. “That was
hardly my intention. Sir.”

“Joss,” Mom again, “you can’t let yourself
feel like this is your responsibility. You’re just a girl,
sweetheart.” She threw up her hands in defense of my glare. “Albeit
the most capable, the most…bad ass, if you will, girl in the world
at this time.”

It was almost impossible not to snicker at
my mom saying “badass,” and saying it like she was picking up old
gym socks, but I managed.

“But,” she continued, “you’re only one
person. And the thing that makes you feel most invincible is also
the thing that makes you most vulnerable.”

“Maybe I should call myself
Irony
Girl.
”

“This is not a joke,” Dad cut in, “and damn
McGuffey for ever giving you those banned comics. They’ve already
got that costumed vigilante crap going on up in Banner, attracting
all kinds of attention to the Talents there. The minute you put on
a mask, you are out of this house.”

“Gene!”

“That’s exactly where she’s headed and I
will not have it. There’s no excuse for this kind of recklessness,
Joan. We’ve tried it your way, and it’s not working. She’s way out
of line, out of control, and it’s got to stop.” He turned on me.
“This whole experiment is over. I don’t care what you have to tell
those people, I don’t care what kind of attention it calls to you.
Your free time after school privilege is revoked. You are not to
have any unnecessary communication with any of those kids. Do not
speak to them in school any more than is required—and you know full
well what that means. No more phone calls. I don’t want to see any
of them in my shop or showing up at my home. You make sure that’s
clear to them. Especially Dylan.”

“No! You can’t do that!” I felt like I was
being shoved into a box and the lid was coming down. I felt
desperate to keep from being trapped in there again. And it wasn’t
just Dylan, though the idea of not being able to see him anymore
made me crazy. It was everyone. It was my whole life. As much as
the changes were weird and uncomfortable, I suddenly knew that it
was so much better than what I’d had before. I couldn’t go back. I
just couldn’t.

“It’s done. You did it to yourself. This
conversation is over.”

“The hell it is!”

“Jocelyn!” my mother gasped.

“I’m not giving them up. Not my friends, not
my life. Not anymore. I’m sorry that it’s been so hard for you,
having a daughter like me. I am. And I’m sorry that I got in that
trouble with Emily. But that was twelve
years
ago and I have
paid
for that. I’ve given up my whole life paying for that.
I’ve done everything you asked me to do. I’ve been everything you
wanted me to be. But that’s not who I am and I just can’t do it
anymore.”

“And just who do you think you are?”

“I’m—I’m not someone who just stands by and
watches while bad things happen to other people! Not anymore. I
have abilities and I have a responsibility to use them!”

“That’s bullshit. The only responsibility
you have is to—”

“Keep my head down, keep my nose clean? This
is what you’ve made me, Dad! Can’t you see that? My whole life you
trained me to fight and you expect me to just sit and watch bad
things happen and pretend I don’t have the power to stop them.
What’s it all for? For someday? When does someday start?”

“It starts when I tell you it starts. Until
then, you stop running around risking your future like some idiot
idealist punk kid!”