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“She cares,” Jazz called over her shoulder as Nick jogged to catch up with them. “She has a funny way of showing it. I also care, but I just tell you so you’ll know instead of wondering.”
“It’s not a love letter,” Nick said, chasing after them. “And youknowit, you jerk.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Bell,” Gibby said. “Branding?”
Right. Focus. “Think about it,” Nick said as they rounded a corner, Centennial High appearing in the distance. “What does an Extraordinary need in the twenty-first century? Brand recognition.”
He waited for them to be suitably impressed.
Jazz popped a bubble with her gum. Gibby yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. He was losing them. Time to bring out the big guns.
“Okay,” he said. “I can see you’re interested but need to know more. I’ve got you.” He hurried around the front of them to face them, walking backward. “Picture this: What’s better than having a superhero protecting the streets of our fair city? Having a superhero withglobal brand recognition.”
They looked dubious at best. Time to bring out the bigger guns. It was a good thing Nick had had two whole days to mastermind his plan.
Ready to blow their minds, he said, “We’ll have a Twitter account, which I’ll run and get hashtags trending on—something like hashtag #ReturnOfTheFire or hashtag #TheHeroOfThePeople. And we’ll even have some tweets from Pyro Storm’s perspective, saying things likeOn Twelfth and Liberty Ave, crime in process, stay away, citizens. Hashtag #SafetyFirst, hashtag #FriendlyNeighborhoodPyroStorm.” He frowned. “We’ll have to work on that last one, so we don’t get sued for cribbing intellectual property, but still.” He shook his head. “And merchandise! We’ll commission artists in the Extraordinaries fandom to create art we can plaster on bags and shirts and coffee mugs and sell them in a merch store.”
“Who gets to keep the money?” Gibby asked, pulling Nick to the side before he backed into a pole.
“We do,” Nick said promptly. “We’ll each get a cut, but maybe a bigger one for Seth since he’s the Extraordinary doing all the heavy lifting. It’ll help that we don’t need to upgrade the secret lair anymore. Which, by the way, thank you—I hadn’t thought ofnight vision goggles, but now that we have them, I can’t live without them. Also, we’ll donate a percentage to a LGBTQIA nonprofit because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Only the best,” Jazz said. “And Daddy didn’t even threaten to take it all back, even though he said he and Mom wouldn’t let me spend any more money until they’ve had time to think things through. I think part of them wonders if we all have superpowers and didn’t tell them.” She laughed. “Can you imagine? Me with powers. I’d make heroes look good.” As if to prove her point, she lifted one of her heels to show them her Alexander McQueen, skull-embellished pumps. “Mom was fine with it after she got a couple of glasses of wine in her. Once that happens, she agrees with pretty much anything and tells you things you don’t want to hear, like what she thinks about the shorts her tennis instructor wears. I’ve never met him, but I know more about his anatomy than I’ve ever wanted to, because apparently his shorts arereallyshort.”
They stared at her.
She shrugged. “What? She likes tennis and wine and her tennis instructor. I don’t judge, and neither should you.”
“Have you talked to Seth about any of this?” Gibby asked Nick as they continued toward school. “Or is this one of those times where you make plans without telling one of us and then hope for the best when you try and enact it?”
“He knows,” Nick said defensively. “He read about it in the fic. Team Pyro Storm, ready to tweet and sell overpriced signed posters!” He smiled. They did not. He added, “And also save lives.”
Gibby shook her head. “I don’t know, Nicky. It sounds all well and good, but he said he wasn’t sure about what he wanted anymore. It’s taking a toll on him. He’s tired all the time, and even though Shadow Star isn’t around now, there’s always something that has to be done.”
Gibby wasn’t wrong, but what could they do about it? Even Seth had said Nova City would always need someone like Pyro Storm. Nick was trying to help as best he could, hence the branding. The logic was a bit faulty, the equation not quite equaling the answer, but he’d get there. “I know, but all we can do is support him with—”
For the second time in a few days, he crashed into someone. His fault this time. He whirled around, the wordsI’m so sorryon the tip of his tongue, but then he saw who he’d hit, and his apology died screaming.
Her hair was a little longer than it’d been when they’d last stood face-to-face, and it was bleached an alarming shade of blond. But her shark’s grin was the same, her makeup on point, her eyes sparkling as she raised a microphone to her lips, turning toward the man standing behind her with a camera on his shoulder and pointing directly at Nick. Nick had only seen her once in person since they’d both been trapped on top of McManus Bridge. She’d shown up at his house a few weeks after the battle, crew in tow, demanding that Nick give her an interview. Dad had told her in no uncertain terms that if she ever stepped foot on his property again, he was going to shove his own foot so far up her ass, she’d be gargling toes. After he’d slammed the door in her face, he’d turned and told Nick that violence was never the answer, and that violence against women was a pandemic that needed to be stopped. Nick had laughed it off at the time, but after hearing more clearly what Dad had done to the witness years before and the fallout that came after, he didn’t think there was anything funny about it now. He’d never thought of his father as violent, but he had evidence to the contrary. He didn’t know what that made his dad—or himself, for not asking the questions he should’ve. Gibby and Jazz were right. He’d just … glossed over it.
That night, she’d gone on live television and reported that she’d been verbally threatened by Aaron Bell, the former detective who’d been demoted after physically assaulting a witness and the father of one Nick Bell, who had been at the center of the fight between Shadow Star and Pyro Storm. “But I will persist,” she said. “Nova City deserves answers, and no man will keep me from getting them.” Even though he despised every fiber of her being, he wondered if she’d been scared of his father. He didn’t know if he wanted her to be or not.
Regardless, Nick was not a fan.
“Rebecca Firestone,” he snarled as she looked directly into the camera.
“We’re standing on the streets of Nova City,” she said as if he wasn’t staring daggers at the back of her head. “And, by happenstance, we have come across Nicholas Bell. If you’ll recall, Mr. Bell is the author ofThis is Where We Scorch the Earth, a lengthy manifesto disguised as poorly plotted fanfiction regarding the Extraordinary Shadow Star.”
“Happenstance?” Jazz asked loudly. “You’re standing in front of our school.”
Nick, focusing on what was really important, exclaimed, “Poorly plotted? It was a goddamnmasterpiece. Yes, in retrospect, it was extremely misguided, but still!”
She ignored them, even as students heading toward the front doors stopped and turned to stare at them.
“Shadow Star,” she continued, “who turned out to be sixteen-year-old Owen Burke, a student at Centennial High and the son of Simon Burke of Burke Pharmaceuticals.”
“And who you had a crush on, even though you’re, like, fifty,” Gibby said. “That’s gross. And illegal.”
“I amthirty-two,” Rebecca Firestone snapped, façade of the plucky reporter shattering. “And he presented himself as someone far, far older, so—”
