She had a point. I was pretty sure the grandmotherly Dr. Gibbings would have a heart attack the first time I even swore in her presence.
“And you could? Stop me, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And I should just… believe you?”
For the first time since I’d met her, the monochromatic psychiatrist rose from her chair, exposing long legs mostly hidden by an equally long skirt. She drummed her fingers on the desk’s surface and then met my eyes.
“There are three people on this campus that even know I am here. Four, now that you’ve brought young Vibe into the fold.”
“Is Bard one of them?”
“He is the one who asked me to come. I owed him—and his wife—a favor, and he called it in on your behalf.”
“How did you know Bard?”
“A long time ago, and for a very brief time, I was a Cape.”
Maybe if I’d had a normal childhood, one spent playing outside with other children or going to school or doing anything beyond watching hero vids—first to distract myself and later to distract the new kids at Mama Rawlins’—that admission wouldn’t have meant anything. But for me, everything clicked.
“Holy shit! You’re Midnight!”
After almost five months, the slight flutter of one eyelid was the closest I’d seen Alexa come to showing her surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“I saw the fight with Professor Inferno.” The vid had focused primarily on Rocket, the chiseled Flyboy who’d first broken the speed of sound, but in the background had been the other members of his team; Blue Shock, Talon, and—most distant of all—the tall, slim figure known only as Midnight. “It was Midnight’s only broadcast appearance, and she was masked, but you move like she did… and have the same color scheme, for that matter.”
Alexa shook her head. “Jonathan said you were barely passing History. I’ll let him know that Amos may simply not be challenging you enough.”
“So you are her? Midnight, I mean?”
“I was.”
Midnight had been a Shadecaster, although the exact extent of her powers had been as mysterious as the woman herself. That was before the advent of sponsorship money and marketing opportunities… when secret identities were still a thing. If Alexa was Midnight, I was pretty sure she was more than capable of stopping me, as promised.
Alexa leaned over the desk, her voice intent. “That information cannot leave this room, Damian. Even one more person knowing my identity puts the lives of those I know and love at risk.”
“But you’re not a Cape anymore.”
“There are other ways for a Power to serve the Free States than by being a Cape.”
That threw me for a bit of a loop. As far as I know, the only alternative was to join the government’s mundane workforce, but that didn’t sound like what she was talking about. And it certainly wouldn’t have required secrecy.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “But if my knowing puts you in danger, why did you even let me guess?”
She shrugged. “Therapy relies on trust between patient and doctor. I can either try to repair that trust or vacate the position Jonathan asked me to fill.”
“What happens if you do leave?”
“I don’t know. He’ll find someone else, I suppose.”
“Another psychiatrist who’s also a Power, and ready and capable of putting down a Cat Three Crow?”
“I didn’t say it would be easy.” Her lips twitched in that almost-smile. “But Bard will do what he must. He always does.” She nodded to the couch I had yet to sit in. “The decision is yours. Is my Cape identity sufficient coin to repurchase your trust, or should I tell Jonathan to begin his search?”
“I meant what I said about needing someone to stop me.” I pushed off the wall, took two long steps to the couch, and dropped down into it. After almost a week, my back barely even hurt. “It might as well be you.”
“May that day never come.” Alexa returned to her own chair, and regarded me for a long moment. “When you met Dr. Gibbings and realized I was not her, you were worried that I was a hallucination.”
“Yeah. Can you blame me? Between that and Unicorn’s death…” I swallowed. “Shitty fucking week.”
“If you’d like, we can talk about that today.” Those black eyes sharpened as she read something in my expression. “Unless there’s something else on your mind?”
I very carefully didn’t look at Mom’s ghost perched on one corner of the desk, while Shane stomped in an angry circle around the room.
I also didn’t look at the three unnamed ghosts that had joined me on Wednesday, the child-sized ghost that I’d found in my dorm room closet on Friday, or the spectral woman who had been sitting on my dresser when I woke up that very morning.
“No,” I said instead, “there’s nothing else to talk about.”
CHAPTER 43
There’s a saying you hear sometimes, mostly from old people like Amos or Bard: time heals all wounds. I’m pretty sure it comes from before the Break, when Healers weren’t a thing, and when doctors spent less time trying to save lives than they did sleeping around, faking their own deaths, and blaming one-armed men for murder.
Sometimes I wonder if Dr. Nowhere really broke the world. From what I know, it was pretty broken even before his dream.
But even in a world of Capes and Black Hats, there’s something to be said for time. After a few weeks of classes, the dark clouds that had followed the first-years since Shane’s death began to fade. In some cases, they blew away entirely. Even Vibe regained her smile, though at first it was a small and fragile thing, easily banished by a stray thought or memory.
Maybe it was the comforting familiarity of the Academy’s rigid schedule. Maybe it was because that same schedule left us too tired to do much beyond eat, sleep, and—for the particularly brave—drink at The Liquid Hero. Or maybe those pre-Break philosophers had gotten something right, and time itself was a sort of Power. Either way,
