Trick of the Light Read online

  *~*~*

  Karl woke with a start and stared blearily around his living room, accidentally dislodging the cats who had decided to use him for a bed. Ignoring their wounded looks, he fumbled around the side table for his blaring phone, groaning and muttering until he finally managed to shut the stupid thing off.

  He stared around the living room again, raking his hair from his face. Something in his fuzzy, groggy brain struggled to be remembered. Why had he fallen asleep in the living room? That wasn't something he'd done since he'd lived in the apartment across town and his last attempt at a relationship had blown up in his face.

  And why was he in his chair? Usually when he stayed up to read he stretched out on the couch… The memories burst to vivid, technicolor life in his mind, waking it up better than coffee ever had. Trick of the Light. Karl had dragged him home, put him on the couch. His eyes fell on the couch, which showed no sign of having been used except the afghan wasn't folded the way Karl usually did it.

  A sharp, twisting ache pulled at his chest, left him feeling bruised. Super types were good at vanishing. He'd known at some point he'd walk in or turn around and Trick of the Light would be gone, whatever his fragile hopes of actually getting to talk to Trick of the Light. It shouldn't hurt. Trick of the Light leaving quietly was the smartest thing for both of them. He'd taken a big fracking risk helping a super villain. And just because he'd helped didn't mean Trick of the Light owed him anything.

  But Karl had hoped… had hoped…

  He didn't even know what he'd hoped for. Something. Anything. Maybe to feel less like a loser, to feel connected to someone special. Ha. Even if he was connected to a super, to anyone special, that didn't make him special. Mud didn't become fancy just because it landed on an expensive shoe.

  Karl would have died to spend just thirty seconds talking to Trick of the Light, though, to have that little secret to hold on to and remember whenever he was down. He might be a boring insurance salesman who collected vintage and antique watches in his spare time, but he'd rescued Trick of the Light.

  But Trick of the Light was gone, with no sign that he'd ever been there past a wrongly-folded afghan and a slip of paper—

  Karl leapt to his feet. A slip of paper on the coffee table. He dropped down on the couch and delicately picked the note up. The handwriting was neat, brisk, like the writer always did it as quickly as possible.

  Thank you for helping me. I'd be dead or worse without your assistance. You're as kind as everyone says. I'll repay my debt. ~T

  Karl swallowed. An actual, real note from Trick of the Light, signed and everything. That was…

  Stupid. Reckless. Trick of the Light had no reason to believe Karl wouldn't take it right to the cops. But no, that was dumb. If he'd cared about turning Trick of the Light in, he would have just called them when he first found Trick of the Light. Still, it was risky, because if the Grand Order of Defenders learned he had even the slightest thing that might point them toward Trick of the Light's identity…

  Why would he do something so dangerous? Because Karl had been kind? That was a lot of trust to show over something so simple. Karl hadn't even really done that much, just dragged him around and dumped him on a couch. That didn't feel much like saving a life.

  I'll repay the debt.

  There wasn't a debt, not so far as Karl was concerned, but it wasn't like he knew how to tell Trick of the Light that. How would he repay it? Would Karl even realize it? Probably not. Villains were sneaky and even cute like that. Whenever the supers blew something up or knocked something down, heroes went on TV and made big splashy apologies and prattled on about duty and unavoidable damage and better buildings than lives or those few would be proud to know their deaths had saved many others.

  Villains… the week or two after something happened, Karl always got cash, hand-delivered by people who didn't ask or answer questions. Or special gifts in the mail, to be forwarded on to the victims. Cards of apology filled with cash or tickets and other such things. Sometimes there were thank you cards for him, gratitude for the way his company looked out for people whose homes were reduced to rubble by The Magnificent Sunrise (seriously, stupid name) or Breathless or Incendiary. Or The Prince, the absolute worst of the lot. Heroes who were too busy making speeches to do anything useful about the destruction they caused.

  There were good heroes out there—Minder was Karl’s favorite because he stuck to small time stuff, helped petty criminals as often as he stopped them. He was good. There was also Technophile and Rodeo, others who had little to nothing to do with the Grand Order of Defenders—and weren't treated much better than villains.

  But most heroes were jerks, at least in Karl's experience. And a lot of villains didn't deserve what they got, like Whisker, Ghost, Moonglow, and Trick of the Light.

  Leaving the note on the kitchen island, he dished out food for the cats and spent a few minutes petting them. Once they'd assured him he was back in their good graces, he retrieved the note and headed for his bedroom.

  Karl flicked on the light and crossed the room to his dresser, unlocking the top drawer and pulling it open to reveal various watches in special cases, a couple stacks of cash, important papers, and a pile of pictures and other keepsakes he didn't want to risk in case his condo became a victim of a super fight.

  He had learned the hard way, even being an expert on the matter, not to bank on the chances of disaster not happening. His office and condo had needed repairs in the wake of super hero destruction more times than he cared to count. Nowadays, anything that was important to him, he kept locked safely away so it would survive almost any catastrophe. Tucking the note in with the rest of his most precious belongings, he closed and locked the safe, then went to get ready for the day.

  An hour later, he was in his office sitting at his desk, wearing a brown suit with a pink and green paisley tie, and bearing a hazelnut latte and a cinnamon bun positively drowned in cream cheese frosting. It was the sugar that would kill him someday, but Karl wasn't even remotely sorry. Death by cinnamon bun had to be a top ten way to go.

  Humming softly, he hit the button to wake up his desktop then took the lid off his coffee so it would cool to a drinkable temperature faster. Pulling his cinnamon bun close, he looked up and reached out to type in his password—

  And realized he was staring at a blue screen. What the heck? But it had been fine last night when he'd put it to sleep. Drat it, he'd had files open. Had he remembered to save them where his laptop could get them? What in the world?

  He turned it off, then powered it back on, but all he got was another blue screen filled with what may as well have been gibberish. Dang it, dang it, dang it. He could get by on his laptop, but he really needed the desktop for some stuff, especially when clients came by.

  "Darn it," he muttered, grabbing his phone with one hand and moving his breakfast out of the way with the other so he had a place for his laptop. When the phone picked up and a chipper woman had rambled through the standard greeting, he said, "Hi, Jenna. I'm sorry to bother you, but my computer was working fine last night, and today I get in and it's totally gone blue screen on me. I tried the off-on thing, but I get nothing. If you could send someone any time today, I would really appreciate it."

  "As luck would have it, Roy is out in the field training a new hire. He'll be happy to have something to actually show him. I'll call them now. They should be there shortly."

  Karl slumped in relief. "That's great. Thank you so much."

  "Our pleasure. You take care now, Karl."

  "You too, Jenna. Thank you. Bye."

  Well, that was hopefully a crisis averted. Pulling his breakfast close again, he slowly worked his way through it, refusing to rush through his Friday treat. He might have been stood up (again), but no one could take his cinnamon buns from him.

  He looked up when the door chimed—and nearly choked on his latest bite of cinnamon bun as he got a look at the man stepping inside on Roy's heels. The man was tall, lanky, but he moved
with grace as he walked across the office. His jeans fit well, and his black polo with the company logo hugged a nice chest, showed off arms that might have been stick thin but still had some muscle to them. He had messy brown hair and clear hazel eyes. He wasn't a super model or anything, but pretty in a quiet, coffee on a rainy day kind of way. The smile he offered up was definitely of the heart-skip-a-beat variety, though. Jeez.

  If Karl wasn't painfully, humiliatingly aware of how much nobody wanted him, he might have been stupid enough to try getting the guy's number.

  Putting hopeless thoughts and wishes aside, he held out his hand. "Hey, Roy. Thanks for coming so quickly. I have no idea what's wrong. It's been perfect ever since you were last here. I swear it was fine when I put it to sleep last night."

  Smiling easily, Roy replied, "No problem, Karl. We'll figure it out, get you squared away. This here is Matthew Pearson. Just hired him Monday, thought I'd get him out in the field. Matthew, this is Karl Akerman, the insurance guy I was telling you about."

  Matthew shook his hand enthusiastically, that killer smile coming back and shorting out a few more circuits. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I've only been in town a short time, but your name has come up a lot. Roy keeps telling me I need to pop over here and get my insurance set up."

  "Well, you can schedule an appointment while you're here, if you want," Karl said. "Nobody should suffer because the supers don't always watch where they land." He stepped away from his desk, picked up his laptop bag. "I'll just do some work in the front area, and you two can go at it."

  "Will do. Work been keeping you busy?"

  Karl nodded and sighed inwardly, resigning himself to Roy's tendency to chatter on forever. Behind him, Matthew waggled his eyebrows before turning and sitting down at the desk to look at the computer. Karl smiled briefly, though he hid it behind his coffee cup. "Busy enough. So what's new, Roy?"

  "Did you hear about last night? Some crazy stuff, huh. Everyone is saying Trick of the Light is dead."

  Choking on his coffee, sputtering and coughing and nearly spitting it everywhere, Karl hastily set the cup and his laptop aside. Thank goodness he hadn't opened it yet. He grabbed napkins from the top drawer of his desk and began to clean up the mess. "What are you talking about? One of the heroes killed Trick of the Light? How did they finally manage that, dumb luck?"

  Roy snorted a laugh. "Sunrise apparently got him really good, though, of course, it's hard to say since nobody can see Trick of the Light, and if they do find a body… well no one knows what he looks like, so how would they know it's him?"

  "Secrets unravel fast when there's no one guarding them," Karl said quietly, swiping more furiously at his laptop to hide the fact his hands were trembling. Trick of the Light hadn't been exaggerating about the life saving, apparently. But Karl hadn't done anything. He wasn't oh so conveniently a nurse or anything, and weekend first aid classes didn't actually go all that far. "How do you kill someone you can't see?"

  Roy shrugged. "Don't ask me. But the bulletins all over the news are from the G.O.D. itself."

  Ugh, that right there was everything wrong with the Grand Order of Defenders. Most people just called it the Order, because seriously? There were other names. The Pantheon was the politely scathing term. Dogs was the decidedly less polite one. "What does the Pantheon have to say?"

  Casting him a faintly wounded, disapproving look, Roy said, "Keep an eye out for a wounded or dead man, dressed oddly or possibly even naked. Also tread carefully if you're traveling around the city today because other villains will be out in force to try and retrieve one of their own before the G.O.D. can do it, and they probably won't be nice about it."

  "I'll be sure to keep a sharp lookout for corpses," Karl replied. "They didn't say anything about how Sunrise did it?"

  Roy shook his head. Behind him, Matthew seemed oblivious, typing away on the keyboard, occasionally looking at his own laptop. "You know the Order never divulges how they do things because the villains will work out ways to overcome it."

  "Still, I'm not comfortable with all these mystery weapons on both sides. Heroes aren't supposed to need weapons. Sunrise literally uses sunlight as a weapon, and he can store it for night fights, so why does he need some fancy weapon?" Karl threw the soaked napkins and empty coffee cup in the trash, then went to wash his hands at the little kitchenette at the back of his office.

  It wasn't much of a place, just a really large rectangle divided by furniture. There was a front area with sofas, chairs, TV, the usual magazines but also some puzzles and games. Not that people often had to wait, but on days when the Pantheon caused serious, block-leveling damage…

  Well, he mainlined coffee, brought in a few temps to help him keep order, and processed claims and moved money until all was well again. He'd thought about expanding the business, but the city wasn't that big, and most of the time, the job was pretty quiet. And he liked being able to do it all himself.

  He might have to take on permanent help anyway at some point, but it wasn't yet a problem he had to deal with. He'd always put it off because for a long time he'd just assumed he'd be helping his father until he had kids of his own who were old enough to help him. That was how it had always been done. However stupid it might be, he was still holding out hope for kids of his own. Maybe he should just give up on the loving partner piece of the equation. He didn't need a person at his side to raise happy kids.

  Shaking off the thoughts, he pulled a soda out of the fridge and turned toward the other two. "Either of you like a soda? I've got all the usual suspects."

  "I'll take one of whatever you're having," Matthew said, looking over his shoulder to grin briefly before going right back to work. "Roy, stop being useless and come, like, mentor or whatever it is they're paying you to do."

  "Beating that smartass out of you, that's what I'm paid to do," Roy retorted but heaved himself off the couch where he'd gotten cozy to lean over Matthew's shoulder and help him sort out whatever was wrong.

  Jeez, had someone snuck in at night and screwed up his computer? That sounded stupid. Who would mess with his stuff? Why? He didn't exactly have world-changing secrets, and there were easier ways and better places to steal personal information.

  "So what's wrong with it?" he asked.

  "The short answer is that something or somebody removed bits and pieces of what the computer needs to run," Matthew said, looking up with a faint smile. "This has been going around the city, according to some of the forums I follow."

  "By forums he means bars," Roy interjected. "Matthew is a bit of a flirt."

  Matthew elbowed him. "Shut up. Anyway, it's just some kids being assholes. They don't even steal stuff, so far as I know, unless they stumble across a porn stash. Anything fun on here?"

  "Goodness, no," Karl said, looking hastily away when Matthew grinned and Roy laughed. "This is a work place, and even if I was inclined, I hardly have time." He gestured to the enormous, thick, heavy glass window that fronted his office. "That's had to be replaced twice this year already, and mind you, it's specialized glass. Not cheap, not easy to break. Replaced twice. Who has time for office pornography?"

  Roy burst out laughing, beer belly shaking. "You should be a computer tech for a week."

  "No, thank you," Karl said. "I can barely manage the two computers I've got, as you can see."

  "Well, this one is just about ready for you," Matthew said with another smile.

  Karl wished he would stop doing that. It was distracting, and salt in a still-raw wound. People like Matthew didn't go for the Karls of the world. They politely turned him down because they already had someone amazing at home waiting for them. These days, even the ones who'd been willing to give a stranger a try changed their mind when they realized it was him. On the other hand, Matthew was new to the city, so maybe he hadn't heard or wouldn't care about the DeVine thing. But Karl really wasn't ready to endure another let down right then. "I really do appreciate the help, and that you were able to do it so quickly."

>   "Always a pleasure working for you, Karl. You never yell at us or tell us you don't know what's wrong when you know very well you downloaded twenty viruses from a dubious porn site." Roy clapped him on the shoulder. "Coming to the potluck on Sunday? Everyone is going to be there—even a rumor going round some heroes might show up."

  "I'll be there for the beer, at any rate."

  Laughing, clapping his shoulder again, Roy watched as Matthew finished packing up all his equipment and tested Karl's computer one last time.

  Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Matthew moved around the desk and held a hand out. "All right, Mr. Akerman, you should be all set."

  "Karl, please. Thank you, again. Pearson, wasn't it?"

  "Matt's just fine. Pleasure to help. I'm getting dragged to this mysterious thing called a potluck, so maybe I'll see you there." He winked. "Have a nice day."

  "You too," Karl said, and stared at Matt's ass until they were gone. If only, if only.

  Heaving a sigh, he closed his laptop and put it away, then settled behind his desk once more.

  He'd been working a few hours when he heard the dull, thundering echo of an explosion—specifically, the end result of The Magnificent Sunrise lobbing one of his sunbolts at somebody. Muttering curses, Karl saved his work before heading out to the street to see if anybody needed help.

  Right in time to see another burst of brilliant, yellow-gold light slam into the empty building next door. Another one slammed into his own, followed by another right between the first two.

  "Move!" A voice cried out, but Karl didn't see the source of it before he was knocked to the ground and held there as brick and glass rained down on the street. People screamed all around him, some fleeing down the street, others running back into their own buildings or heading for their cars.