My eyes all but roll back. No person on this planet has ever had this effect on me. So I don’t hear Vanessa or the Wyvern or even the warning sirens between my own temples blazing. Instead, I sign where he points.
He takes the paper back. And right before he brushes a dry kiss over my cheek, he says, “No, you don’t.”
Chapter Three
Taranis
That was too easy.
Chapter Four
Monika
The disappointment on Vanessa’s face was a real test of my resolve after we sat down and worked out a new schedule—that was after Jem, the in-house Riot Creative attorney, about had a heart attack when she saw the amended contract I’d signed while lost in Taranis’s pearly purple gems. And his touch. That was some freaky shit. I’ve never touched Roland directly and have half a heart to ask Vanessa if that’s what it feels like anytime she touches him. But right now, with the sour, disappointed way Vanessa looks at me, I’m not asking her shit.
I’m in the doghouse.
The contract I signed was stupendously stupid.
Among the other challenges dealing with my time and how Taranis wants to handle competing requests is the fact that he gets first right of refusal of all the photos I take of him.
If I was working with an independent client looking to get photos taken outside of action settings, like a portrait, that setup would be the norm. But when I’m taking pictures in action settings and dealing with clients repped by agencies and brands, it’s usually up to the brand, the firm, the organization, and the company to determine which photos will be used. It’s strange even that Taranis’s contract with the COEdoesn’t include that clause. That he somehow got so many personal amendments granting him so much autonomy.
Because the superheroes are all technically brands of the COE, I send the pictures I take to the PR teams for those Champions directly—like I do with Vanessa and the Wyvern—and those teams decide which photos to keep, post, share with media outlets, and sell to other distributors. That’s not my bag. I don’t care.
But ... I do care if my pictures may be hitting the interwebs hours or even days after the events I’m photographing take place. My job as a photographer for the COE—why I took the full-time contract in the first place—is to bethecutting-edge documentarian of the most amazing actions of the Forty-Eight. And I can’t really do that if I’m not able to share any of the pictures I take—or share them late.
But it’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine. Taranis is so nice. I’ll talk to him, to his team. It’s been ten days and I haven’t gotten to meet anyone from that team yet, but I’ll have to eventually—today, hopefully.
I glance at my phone again. It’s five till five. A car is supposed to pick me up at five exactly. The message I got last Friday from someone named Simone read:
“First assignment Tuesday. Pick up at five.”
I have no idea what the assignment is, and I’m a little frustrated I haven’t gotten a brief, that the only details Ihaveheard were from Taranis himself when I made the potentially poor and very clearly libido-driven decision to sign a paper without reading it and join this escapade, which he calleddangerousand nothing else. If I hadn’t spent the last week bored out of my mind, I would have reneged. As it is, my boredom is apparently stronger than my pride. My libido is, too, but I’ve known that for a long time.
I have my camera bag holstered, but I wear my Nikon Z9 fitted with a 50mm lens around my shoulder like a cross-body bag. It’s good for night shots, which IassumeI’ll need, given the hour of my pickup, but just in case, I’ve got a zoom lens in my bag, another Nikon Z9, a 24mm lens, and a 200mm lens, plus my Nikon Zfc with a 16mm lensin my cargo pants as a backup and my iPhone in my other pocket as my backup to my backup.
I fiddle with my camera strap. I’m wearing all black again and the exact same camera I wore when I went on my first mission with the Wyvern. He hadn’t reverted yet. He was just a guy with scraggly hair, a scruffy beard, zero fashion sense, and total dominion over fire. He’d used that incredible power and his superhuman strength to rescue dozens of people trapped beneath an avalanche like it was no big deal. He hadn’t taken any interviews afterward. Hadn’t wanted to pose for photos with the saved. He’d only wanted to get back to Vanessa. I don’t meet many like him in my profession.
That mission was my first foray back into action photography—something war journalism–adjacent. And even though I’d since accompanied the Wyvern on a few other missions—and the Olympian on one—they’d all paled in comparison. Surrounded by all that snow, my pulse pounding as I snapped shot after shot, I’d felt ... home. Which is why, despite my irritation and mounting misgivings, I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone on the first ring when I see an unknown number flash across it at 5:00 p.m. exactly.
“Here,” a male voice says, one I’ve never heard before.
My adrenaline surges and I slide off the eccentric cushioned yellow stool at my kitchen island, knock twice on the butcher-block countertop for good luck, and head to the elevator, which opens up directly into my foyer. My flat is bigger than I need, but once I saw that elevator setup, like a ritzy penthouse, I couldn’t help but put in an offer.
I hit the lobby with a spring in my step. “See you later, Taylor!” I shout at the door attendant.
Most folks think of a door attendant as an old Alfred type. At least, that’s what I expected. I didn’t expect the morose, black-wearing, Wednesday Addams equivalent who greeted me on my first day here with a sneer. Taylor is Eeyore, if Eeyore were a Black nonbinary twentysomething with a straight black bob and a little more sass.
They look at me with a flat grimace. “What are you so excited about?”
“I’ve got a date!”
Taylor gives me their drollest look—probably the most personality I’ve seen from them this week. “With who?”
“Danger!”
Taylor sulks and turns back to lean their forearms on their desk, all gleaming white marble in this opulent lobby. They huff out the side of their mouth, tufts of black hair blowing away from their face. “Boring.”
