The Shadows didn’t linger. The deaths of two senior agents of Light would soon be noted, the kill spots as obvious as the constellations above for those who knew how to read them. So JJ squeezed from beneath the car as soon as the last Shadow disappeared, and rushed to his parents.

There was barely anything recognizable at all. It was as if the Shadows were so blighted in spirit and form that they wished to render the Light the same.

“Solange! Ma Sola! Come back!”

JJ’s head jerked up.

“Un instant, Mama! I want a souvenir to mark my first…”

The girl’s words died in her throat when she saw him. Her gaze skittered like beetles to his hands, braced on the broken things he loved. She wasn’t much older than he, maybe eight, but with a darkness about her…one that’d called her back in search of a memento.

She had watched as her troop ambushed and murdered his family, JJ realized with a sniff. Studying for her future position as a Shadow agent.

A tear coursed over his cheek, and she winced as if it repulsed her. She frowned, then opened her mouth to reveal his existence. He held tight to what was left of his parents while another tear fell.

“Solange!” came the voice again, causing the girl to jolt.

Solange licked her lips. Their eyes remained fastened on each other. Finally. “Nothing here, Mama.”

“So allez. Our enemies will soon be here. We don’t wish to be trapped within their radius. Leave the cadeau, and the cleanup, for them.”

Laughter accompanied her retreat, and sapped JJ’s remaining strength. He collapsed between what used to be his family, and stared blindly up at the molten, scarred, celebratory sky.

“Solange. Sola. Ma Sola.”

He mumbled her names over and over. He memorized them. He wondered why she hadn’t killed him. And, sobbing—even once he was lifted into the arms of his troop leader—he wished she had.

1

The bar was a college hangout, hardly more than a steel ceiling and a concrete floor. The so-called band had just finished their final set and was now taking their payment from the tap. JJ let his head hang forward as Warren called for another round, and the bartender, who’d only dubiously allowed the last one, frowned. Options flitted over his face like words on a teleprompter. He could be fined if they left this bar and suffered injury under the influence of the whiskey he’d served, but on the up side, they wouldn’t come back. Even in a run-down, midtown Las Vegas bar, where transience was an accepted part of life, a guy who smelled like a bum and one who looked like a pissed-off linebacker were undesirable. So he hedged his bets, and brought them the bottle. JJ offered up a lopsided smile. It was the Vegas way.

Once served, his troop leader finally came around to the subject he’d spent the last half hour inching up on. “That, my son, was a close one.”

No, JJ thought, tapping the glass and throwing back his head. It had been even closer than that. Trapped in that steel plane, thousands of feet above the ground, JJ had been forced to consider something rare, at least in relation to himself: death. In fact, he’d never been so sure of anything in his life as the commuter flight the Shadows had hijacked flew toward the base, flanked by fighter jets, screams tearing through the air. What most surprised him was the voice, the one he trusted and had named his intuition, had sighed its acceptance. Finally.

JJ knew Warren expected some bland agreement, but his overriding thought was, Just buy me another shot, man.

Then his troop leader surprised him by squaring on him fully. “It’s hard living in the past. Hard to even call it your past if you’ve never put it behind you.”

JJ peered into his shot glass. “This thing still empty?”

Warren motioned, took the bottle from the bartender’s hands, and started pouring it himself. “You’ve broken even so far, but that’s just treading water, and today proved it.”

Because today, for the first time in the three years he’d been a full-fledged agent of Light, JJ had almost lost.

Obviously, he’d experienced death before. One couldn’t live long in an underworld of heroes and demons and not be touched by it, and he told Warren that now without words, using only a shrug and a jerk of his head to throw back another shot. God, but the whiskey was good…sharp and warm, and lingering in his belly as if his glyph glowed there. It made him feel alive.

“Death’s not important,” Warren said in reply.

“I know.” Holding out his glass, JJ accidentally caught his reflection across the bar; eyes spent, face sunken on his wide frame, his normally tan skin sallow, like campfire dust mingling with sand. He was built like his dad, though even wider and taller and stockier. His sheer size had drawn such unwanted attention that the troop’s physician/magician, Micah, had whittled down his frame once already, but the pain of even that minor transformation was like mainlining mercury. In the hours before he healed, it was as if he’d been skinned alive, then stitched back together, tighter. Even now, if he thought about it too much, he could imagine himself bursting at the seams. JJ refused any additional reduction after that, and Warren hadn’t pressed.

Looking at his bleached, military-cut hair through the smoked mirror, he wondered idly if he should shave it to the skull. Would that whittle him down even more? Could walking through the world with less friction smooth out the journey?

“Death also isn’t meaningful, not even a violent one,” Warren continued, impervious to JJ’s thoughts of journeys and friction. “It’s what you tell yourself about death that’s critical. Thoughts shape actions, and actions expose your state of mind.”

“Shit.” JJ jerked the bottle from Warren’s hand, because if he had to listen to a lecture about the past and death and the detonated fate he’d narrowly avoided, he wasn’t going to do it sober. Unfortunately, it took a lot for a superhero to get truly shit-faced, a fact JJ currently lamented. “So is this the speech where you tell me my parents didn’t die because of me, that there was nothing I could do at the time, and that I need to put it behind me? Because I swear I’ve heard that one somewhere before.”

And it was bullshit. Besides…

“What more do you want from me?” he continued before Warren could answer. “I do the best I can at all times. You can’t tell me I don’t.”

“I wouldn’t. But your level best is different than your potential best.”

“I don’t know what the hell that means.” His voice was too sharp, his body too rigid. Dial it back, JJ told himself, even while downing another glass. Boy, the more you drank, the smoother this shit got.

“It means the heroes of your past should fortify the present. You’re engaged in old battles, son. So, in answer to your question, that’s what I want. For the first time in your life, look forward, not back. What happened tonight should show you what a gift the future really is.”

JJ licked his lips slowly, knowing exactly what sort of gifts his future held. Things like metaphorically throwing himself in front of oncoming trains to save countless others, most of whom had gotten themselves into bad situations through faulty logic, poor planning, or pure stupidity. In fact, the majority of the mortal population was spoiled and ungrateful, and continued to piss away the life he fought for them to have. He also didn’t say he’d give a limb just to be able to work a regular Joe’s nine-to-five, and to come home to nothing more complicated than a pair of squabbling kids and a lukewarm meal. Instead, I have to beware if I go on something as simple as a fucking picnic.

Warren misread his silence. “Don’t you care anymore, Jay? Don’t you still believe you can make a difference, son?”