“And keeping me from blowing shit up is helpful?” Her face became a stiff mask. “You're lower than snake shit all right. And another thing – you're no hero.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But let's talk about you for a second. You claimed to be against carbon emissions, but you set half of North Dakota on fire. You did the same in Houston, making another huge mess. Destroyed a factory that would have resulted in more lower emission cars coming onto the road and pushing older, higher emission models out to junkyards–”
“That's not true. I–”
“And the nuclear thing in New Jersey?” Nealon went on, ignoring her. “Nuclear is the number one power source that could help curb emissions. You and your friends set the fear level so high that no one's going to be able to build a nuclear plant for a decade. Everything you did has made things worse.”
“But I cared!” Scout shouted in her face. Nealon didn't flinch. “I cared enough to try and change the world–”
“Before you got bitter and decided to destroy it,” Sienna said. “So...was this really about saving the world? About your cause? Because you wrecked that. Or was it really about...you?”
Scout lowered her head. “I thought you were a hero. I was wrong.”
“Funny. I never thought that about you.” She hammered the door and it opened; then she was gone, leaving Scout all alone – truly alone – for the first time since this whole thing had begun.
EPILOGUE
Sienna
The sounds of a party in full swing permeated the ground floor of Ariadne's Eden Prairie house, the sounds of DMX's “Party Up” bouncing off the beige walls of her tasteful abode. The noise of many conversations was audible underneath the music, and all these – noise, conversation, music – were hallmarks of a nightmare scenario for Sienna Nealon:
A party.
A welcome back party.
For me.
A banner proclaimed that fact, stretching from one side of the kitchen to the other, brightly colored printing announcing my triumphal return to Minnesota. As if the people in attendance weren't already aware.
“Use a coaster!” Ariadne told someone, across the room. I was just trying to focus on what was happening in front of me. Trying to make it through the noise and the chaos alive, the press of people around me just a little more chaotic than I was comfortable with.
But I knew them all.
And I loved them all.
And that made it worth bearing.
“I'd like to propose a toast!” Reed said, raising his glass. Dr. Isabella Perugini had an arm curled around his waist and was dressed to the nines. Because she liked to look good, I believed, not because she wanted to welcome me back with a fancy dress. Reed's eyes found me across the thinly populated room. “To the prodigal sister's return.”
I made a face. “Prodigal means 'extravagant or wasteful.'”
“Well, you lay waste to lots of stuff,” Augustus chimed in, “and sometimes it's extravagant stuff. Like the entire electrical system of the Eiffel Tower.”
“That was Jamal,” I said, pointing a finger at the offending party. He was sitting on the couch with his laptop on him, looking even more out of place here than I did.
“It was your idea,” Jamal fired back, not looking up from his laptop. I wasn't sure what he was watching, but hopefully it was more entertaining than people having conversations.
“The point is...welcome back, Sienna,” Reed said, and he raised his glass. “To the Slay Queen...long may she reign. But with less actual slaying in the future, please.”
I drank to that. With grape juice, of course. But I drank to it. Then I checked my phone, because it buzzed.
EU DEMANDING YOUR EXTRADITION. I TOLD THEM TO BUZZ OFF. LOTS OF PANTIES IN A TWIST AT UN. WHAT'S THE WORD YOU KIDS USE FOR THAT? LOL, I THINK? –Richard
I chuckled at the president's missive and pocketed the phone. “'LOL' indeed,” I muttered.
“I swear, we're like friends passing in the night,” Augustus said, greeting me with a half-hug. “You just get back and I'm off to the wilds of NoDak to clean up a mess.”
“Well, I'll be waiting here for you when you get back,” I said. “How's that cleanup mission jibe with you finishing college?”
Augustus shrugged. “I emailed my professors and after I told 'em what I was doing, they fell all over themselves figuring out ways to help me telecommute. Turns out cleaning up oil spills is a popular position.”
I chuckled as he nodded, falling into the jam and bopping his head to the music, wandering off toward his brother. Olivia and Angel were standing by the fireplace, and Olivia waved at me.
My grandmother caught me before I could get over to them. “So...” she said, in that staid, just-below-a-glare kind of way she had, “...what now?”
“Just trying to get back to normal,” I said, sipping my grape juice. “Whatever that means.”
“In my experience, there is no such thing,” Lethe said, arms folded in front of her. “Every time things settle down, you get hit by a Viking invasion, a Roman incursion, or something of that sort.”
I pursed my lips. “Are these things you consider likely to happen these days...?”
“Just an example,” she said. “Perhaps not a very modern one, but the idea holds. Every time you start to think things are squared away, something blows up.”
“Now that is an analogy I can fully get behind,” I said, “because things are always blowing up around me.” I glanced around the room; Dr. Zollers had not yet arrived. Nor had Eilish or Kat, though I was expecting both. Harry was hanging out in the corner, but kept checking the door, and I could tell he, too, was awaiting his mother's arrival with at least some anticipation.
“My only point is...don't get complacent,” Lethe said quietly.
“It's hard not to,” I said. “Every once in a blue moon, you know?” I looked around the room. “I mean, come on. This is the first time I've really been home...or had a home...in three years. Had hope. Life is...looking up. It has some good points.”
“You mean sex?” She cast a look past me at Harry.
“That's on the list, sure,” I said, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable at my grandmother's line of questioning. And not for the first time, because she definitely had no problems stepping over the awkward line. Hell, vaulting over it with super-powered leaps.
“I just know you don't drink anymore, so I figured it had to be up there.” Lethe squinted at me. “But please, go on.”
“I'm sitting in an air-conditioned room drinking a glass of squeezed grapes that came to me via a just-in-time logistics web that kept it cold and from fermenting,” I said. “I'm here with friends and family here from all over the damned place, Ireland to Italy to...wherever the hell you would classify yourself as from–”
“Greece, originally. Duh.”
“–and we all got here via planes, which take hours to make those trips instead of months or years or never,” I went on. “We've got background music that was performed in a studio in LA but being blasted out of an electronic device put together somewhere in Asia.”
She stared at me, and I thought I detected a smile. “Your point?”
“Modern life is pretty damned good.” I took another sip of my grape juice. “We get the best of everything. We live in the freest, most prosperous age man has ever known, where we can actually look up from scraping by trying to survive and subsist...and think about larger concerns.” I shrugged. “And I just...want to enjoy that peace for a minute before I return to my regularly scheduled business of trying to save the world.”
She stared at me for a long moment before finally cracking the slightest smile. “That seems like a good plan. I–”
“Hey, Sienna,” Jamal said, rising and leaping over the couch, laptop in hand. “Something you oughta see.” He thrust the laptop in my face.
The tableau upon it was not immediately recognizable; a woman with a blond bob that curled just above her shoulders was speaking in front of a podi
um with a state seal. It took my brain a moment to decode the player.
“Who is that?” Lethe asked.
“Bridget Shipley,” I said. “Governor of Minnesota.”
“It's a press conference,” Jamal said. “Started a few minutes ago. I queued it up to the important part.”
“Yeah, but I can't hear it–” I started to protest. A spark from his fingertip quieted me, because suddenly the volume was audible right in my ears. “Weird. Thanks for that creepiness.”
“No problem. Listen.”
“–of course we've been monitoring the events in the US, and in Europe,” Governor Shipley said, her wire-framed glasses catching the light from all the bulbs pointed at her, “with greatest concern. To see our allies humiliated in front of the world by our own citizens, to see their landmarks defaced–”
“I suppose she'd prefer to see their cities laid to waste,” I sighed.
“–is a bad look, and a humiliation brought to us by one of our own native daughters of Minnesota. While there's nothing I can do about the president's decision to thumb his nose at our allies,” Shipley said, “I can offer a local solution. Today I am directing my allies in the legislature to advance bill HF 1066 to the floor for a vote.” A rumble ran through the press gaggle. “HF 1066 is an answer to the concerns of everyday Minnesotans about the dangers springing from the cottage industry of near-vigilantes with uncontrollable powers operating from our state.”
“What the hell?” Reed loomed over my shoulder, a dark look on his face.
“Their conduct is a black eye for the face of our civic government,” Shipley said, in her Minnesotan accent. “If President Gondry wants to give aid and comfort to people with unchecked powers, then it is within his purview to do so.” She looked up, adjusting her glasses. “In Europe, we see sensible policies in reaction to valid concerns about powered people. But our country is a union of states, and here in the State of Minnesota, we should be able to reserve the right to say that this is a danger to our children, to ourselves, and to our safety, and just the same as any other dangerous weapon...” Shipley clutched the edges of the podium, white-knuckling, “...should be regulated as such.”
“Is this a joke?” Lethe peered over my other shoulder. “Did she just suggest...?”
“It's no joke,” I said, trying to deem how much weight needed to be apportioned to what I'd just heard. “That's the Governor of Minnesota,” I said, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my belly. “And it sounds like she's threatening to adopt the EU model here...and push us out of our home.”
Sienna Nealon Will Return in
POWERLESS
The Girl in the Box, Book 40
(Out of the Box 30)
Coming June 2020!
GET IT HERE!
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thanks for reading! If you want to know immediately when future books become available, take sixty seconds and sign up for my NEW RELEASE EMAIL ALERTS by CLICKING HERE. I don’t sell your information and I only send out emails when I have a new book out. The reason you should sign up for this is because I don’t always set release dates, and even if you’re following me on Facebook (robertJcrane (Author)) or Twitter (@robertJcrane), or part of my Facebook fan page (Team RJC), it’s easy to miss my book announcements because … well, because social media is an imprecise thing.
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Cheers,
Robert J. Crane
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
The Girl in the Box
(and Out of the Box)
Contemporary Urban Fantasy
Alone
Untouched
Soulless
Family
Omega
Broken
Enemies
Legacy
Destiny
Power
Limitless
In the Wind
Ruthless
Grounded
Tormented
Vengeful
Sea Change
Painkiller
Masks
Prisoners
Unyielding
Hollow
Toxicity
Small Things
Hunters
Badder
Nemesis
Apex
Time
Driven
Remember
Hero
Flashback
Cold
Blood Ties
Music
Dragon
Control
Second Guess
Powerless
World of Sanctuary
Epic Fantasy
(in best reading order)
Defender (Volume 1)
Avenger (Volume 2)
Champion (Volume 3)
Crusader (Volume 4)
Sanctuary Tales (Volume 4.25)
Thy Father’s Shadow (Volume 4.5)
Master (Volume 5)
Fated in Darkness (Volume 5.5)
Warlord (Volume 6)
Heretic (Volume 7)
Legend (Volume 8)
Ghosts of Sanctuary (Volume 9)
Call of the Hero (Volume 10)
The Scourge of Despair (Volume 11)* Coming in 2020!
Ashes of Luukessia
A Sanctuary Trilogy
(with Michael Winstone)
A Haven in Ash (Ashes of Luukessia #1)
A Respite From Storms (Ashes of Luukessia #2)
A Home in the Hills (Ashes of Luukessia #3)
Liars and Vampires
YA Urban Fantasy
(with Lauren Harper)
No One Will Believe You
Someone Should Save Her
You Can’t Go Home Again
Lies in the Dark
Her Lying Days Are Done
Heir of the Dog
Hit You Where You Live* (Coming in 2020!)
Her Endless Night* (Coming in 2020!)
Burned Me*
Something In That Vein*
Southern Watch
Dark Contemporary Fantasy/Horror
Called
Depths
Corrupted
Unearthed
Legion
Starling
Forsaken
Hallowed* (Coming in 2020!)
Enflamed* (Coming in 2021!)
The Mira Brand Adventures
YA Modern Fantasy
(Series Complete)
The World Beneath
The Tide of Ages
The City of Lies
The King of the Skies
The Best of Us
We Aimless Few
The Gang of Legend
The Antecessor Conundrum
*Forthcoming
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Lewis Moore for the edits, Jeff Bryan, for the proofing, and Lillie of https://lilliesls.wordpress.com for her work proofing and compiling my series bible.
Thanks also to Karri Klawiter of artbykarri.com for the cover.
In addition to the usual suspects, I would like to offer my thanks to Derek Lyle, who gave me some great ideas about what eco-terrorists could do to cause major problems, including some arcane ones I would never have come up with in a million years.
Thanks, too, to my family for making this all possible.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99