I couldn’t tell if he was doing this on purpose or not, but I shot back my own glare. “I was asking about the second part.”
“Ah.” Amos cut a thin slice of pie, and slowly levered it onto his plate. “Well, you’re a Low-Three who’s been kicked out of Combat class. What’s your best shot for making it to another year at the Academy?”
I’d given it plenty of thought already, and the real, brutally honest answer was that I didn’t have a shot at all, but that’s not the sort of thing you say to a teacher, even if he’s just fed you pie. “Weapons, I guess. Perception and Projection are pointless, and nothing about my power lends itself to Mobility.”
“So what… you’re going to carry a big stick around with you, and then do that Walker thing you do?”
“A club’s not going to keep me from getting murdered as soon as a Shifter or Titan gets their hands on me. I was thinking something ranged. Maybe a rocket launcher.”
“Which doesn’t make use of your power at all.”
“As far as I can tell, my power’s useless against anyone Low-Three or higher. You wanted to know my best shot at making Cape. That’s Weapons.”
“I asked for your best shot at sticking around at the Academy. Who says you have to be a Cape?”
“I’m a Power.”
“So am I. So what? College is about more than just making Capes. Hell, most of the students here are studying to be something else.”
“What are you suggesting then? That I become a History teacher?”
“Oh God, no! I’m just saying that there’s plenty of non-Power things you can do with your life.”
“Oh yeah? You have a career in mind where it’s okay if I go nuts and start killing people?”
“There’s always the postal service. They’re used to that sort of thing.”
I didn’t bother to ask what a postal service was. It didn’t sound all that useful, regardless.
•—•—•
An hour or so later, we’d moved to a couch in the small room Amos had designated the den. The old man was on his third beer of the night, and I was basking in the unfamiliar sensation of being uncomfortably full. I was halfway to sleep when he finally spoke again.
“I love this house. Hundred-plus years of history in its walls.”
“A hundred years?” I cracked one eye. “It was here before the Academy?”
That prompted a loud cackle. “Hell no! A century ago, these grounds were prime real estate, Banach. It was a place for millionaires’ mansions, not a humble little cottage like mine. After Jonathan started the Academy, I talked the young man into moving my cottage down from Santa Barbara. That was before half the town slid into the sea.” He chewed on his lower lip, eyes distant in memory, then shook his head. “Anyway, he wanted to just build me a new house, but hell if I was going to let this baby go.”
“Why?” It was a nice enough place… and a whole lot cozier than Mama Rawlins’ had been, but if Bard had offered to build me a new house…
“I told you already! History!” Amos scowled at me, then waved his beer to gesture at the space around us. “I’ve had to replace a lot of the furniture over the years, but this is the house my wife picked for us to retire in. Damned if I’m going to let it go.”
“You’re married?”
“Forty-seven years together when the Break happened.” He took another long pull of his beer bottle. “Funny thing is, we both survived it, up there in Santa Barbara. Two geezers making it through an apocalypse that claimed millions.”
“What happened?”
“Dr. Nowhere happened. Time happened. It took a while before we realized I wasn’t aging. I mean, at sixty-nine, who can tell, right? But after ten years? The truth got a little harder to ignore. She was getting older, and I was stuck where I’d been at the Break. Four years after that, and she was gone.”
As someone who still didn’t expect to make it to twenty, it was hard for me to imagine even knowing someone for sixty-plus years, let alone living with them, but the sorrow in his voice was impossible to ignore. “I’m sorry, Amos.”
“She’s been gone for decades now, and I still expect Alicia to walk through that door every morning.” He sighed into his beer. “She even liked my jokes. Woman like that’s a national treasure, young man.”
I didn’t say anything, but something in my silence caught his attention. He peered at me from his end of the couch. “Cat got your tongue? Tired of an old man’s ramblings?”
“Your wife’s name was Alicia?”
“Yeah. Pretty name for the prettiest damn woman you’ve ever laid eyes on. A real lady too. Why?”
“I just knew an Alicia once.”
“Knew?”
“She and her parents moved up to Palo Alto less than a year before Scarlet’s attack.”
Amos set his beer bottle down on the table in front of us with a thump. “She mean something to you, this Alicia?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then we’re doing this right.” With a creaking of joints, he pulled himself back to his feet and tottered down the hall past the kitchen. When he came back, he held two short glasses in one hand and a small bottle in the other.
“That’s not beer.”
“Hell no, it isn’t. This here is a sample of the Dalmore 50.” He placed the bottle almost lovingly on the table. It was an odd shape, with a square base and rounded corners that persisted even as the bottle tapered up to the round cap and cork. The bottle’s interior was a lot smaller than the exterior, like a test tube suspended in crystal, and only half-full with a light, amber liquid. He poured an inch or so of alcohol into each glass.
“What is it?”
“One of the few benefits of outliving everybody I ever knew.” He raised
