“My mom’s ghost showed up when I turned nine. It’s not the sort of thing you forget.”
“The first official record of you having powers is yesterday afternoon, at your testing.”
“Yeah, right.” I waited for the punchline, but it didn’t seem to be coming. “That’s crazy. My foster parents kicked me out of their house when they found out!”
“This would be the Jacobsens?”
“Yes.” I choked down the old, familiar hurt. After the Jacobsens, I’d been tainted goods. There hadn’t been a set of foster parents out there willing to take me.
Bard shook his head. “I’ve looked at the paperwork. All it shows is that they canceled their bid for adoption. There is no mention of necromancy there or in Mrs. Rawlins’ own notes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. It does, however, explain how a Power in Bakersfield managed to avoid the government’s notice.”
“I thought you said you got one or two students like me a year.”
“From the Badlands. From the Dirty South. Even a brave few smuggled out of the East, from under the local warlords’ noses. But Bakersfield?”
Bard seemed to have a higher opinion of Bakersfield than the rest of us. Clearly, he’d never been there.
“So… what does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Bard pinched the bridge of his nose, aging twenty years in an instant. “I will put in a request to speak with both your Finder and Mrs. Rawlins, but the government moves slowly in all things—and the present administration more than most. It is anyone’s guess whether I ever hear back.”
“Does it even matter?”
He sighed. “It’s a mystery and I don’t like mysteries. But as far as you’re concerned, all it means is that you are very lucky that Mr. Grey found you when he did.”
“That depends on whether you let me enroll.”
“True enough.” Bard put down his pen, and leaned further back in his chair, the very image of a thoughtful professor, if you could ignore his clothing. “People say that being a Cape is not just about who you are, it’s also about what you are. By that logic, and given that there has never been a Necromancer hero, I’d be a fool to admit you.”
I dropped my eyes.
“People also say,” Bard continued, in that same considering voice, “that Dr. Nowhere broke the world. They’re wrong about that. We broke the world. People. He handed us loaded weapons, but we were the ones who chose to pull the triggers.”
“I think they’re just as wrong about what makes a Cape. It all comes down to choice. We don’t choose what ability we’re given—if we’re given one at all—but we can choose what to do with it. To the people who lived in those dark times, every Power was evil. No heroes, no Capes. Just the strong lording over the weak and the innocent suffering because of it.”
“Until Dominion,” I pointed out.
“Exactly. He chose to do something different with his gifts… and what was left of the government chose to believe in him, despite the examples of every Power before him. And because of those two choices, and the myriad of choices made since, we have a country. We have Capes. We have hope.”
Dark eyes met mine for a long moment. “There has never been a Necromancer hero. And there never will be one… not unless we allow them that choice.” He grinned suddenly. “My wife used to say I could turn a simple I love you into a twenty-page dissertation on flowers and rainbows, but this is my long-winded way of saying that what happens next is up to you. If you choose to become a Cape, then I will choose to believe in your ability to do so.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Bard’s smile was wry. “But the first step is you making that choice.”
The odd thing is that I had to stop to think about it. I didn’t want to go crazy… that much was a given. And I didn’t want to be a murdering asshole like my dad either, let alone a larger terror like the Crimson Death. But a Cape, with a code name and costume and endorsements? Baron Boner, Defender of Cemeteries? What the fuck sort of hero could a Necromancer even be?
I had no idea. But part of me wanted to find out.
I looked back at Bard. “I’m going to be the first Crow Cape.”
“There will be conditions,” he warned me.
“Anything except anal.”
That knocked him off his game for just a moment, but he shook his head and pushed on. “We provide voluntary counseling to all our students, but for you, it would be mandatory. One hour every week, minimum. Miss a session and you’re out. If your counselor red-flags you at any point, you’re out.”
“Got it.” I’d had counseling following my mom’s murder, and it had sucked, but after almost nine years of wondering if I was going crazy—and driving myself a little bit crazy in the process—there was something almost appealing about offloading that worry to a professional.
As long as they didn’t ask about Mom. Especially on the days she came to therapy with me.
“Second, you will not leave the campus except under direct supervision.”
That one kind of sucked, especially with the ocean so close by, but… “It’s not like I have anywhere to go, right?”
He winced for some reason, but the truth was hard to deny. “Third, there will be no special treatment. You will be one of twenty-five incoming first-years, and will be subject to the same rules and regulations they are.”
After all those years at the orphanage, that didn’t even faze me. I nodded my acceptance.
“These conditions are iron clad,” he warned me. “Break any of them and you’re gone. As of tomorrow, you’ll be an adult in the eyes of the government. You’ll need to live with the choices you make.”
“I get it,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with your rules.”
By the end of that year, I’d have broken every one of them. But at the time, I meant it.
“I’ll
