Emily snapped around and found herself looking at the back of a young man as he walked toward one of the tables near the middle of the room. There was a pair of laptops set on it and some notebooks stacked up next to them. He even had a pair of empty mugs next to that, as if he’d been at work for a while.

The man turned around as he slid onto the couch on one side of the table and positioned himself behind the computers. He was younger than she expected, with thick square-rimmed glasses and a bit of a beard.

“Sit,” he said with a gesture to the seat across from him.

Emily looked around, searching for anyone else in the strange bar, but they were alone.

“Um, do I have the . . .”

“You’re at the right place,” he said, not unkindly. “I’m Handshake. This is where I work most of the time. And I’m revealing myself because nothing I do is illegal. This is a neutral place. Do you know what that means?”

Emily shook her head.

“It means”—he continued in a voice that was soft and gentle; it made Emily think of a pediatrician or a nurse—“that offensive use of powers is very much frowned upon here. Come, sit. I won’t harm you.”

Emily moved over to the only seat across from Handshake, letting go of Teddy as she went.

“Who’s the young lady?” Handshake asked.

She looked over to Teddy, who was busy dragging a chair over, and came to a snap decision. “This is my sister, Teddy.”

“Ah, how cute,” Handshake said without changing his tone in the slightest. “Very well. Miss Wright, do you know why you’re here?”

“I . . . no?”

Handshake nodded. “That’s okay. See, I’m an information broker. I buy and sell information. Which means that I have people who keep an eye on things in this fair city. You triggered a few things with your searches the other day, so we sent a feeler, and now you’re here.”

Emily nodded slowly.

“Don’t worry, this meeting is really just to ascertain some things about you, about your goals,” Handshake said. He glanced away from her and to his laptop. “From your searches, it seems as if you gained powers recently and were given a . . . non-Heroic starting point?”

“You mean, like starting as a, uh, not a Hero?” she asked.

Handshake made a noise at the back of his throat as if agreeing. “Exactly. Don’t worry too much about it. Generally, the morality you start with is the one the power thinks is best suited to you. A lot of people start as Anti-Heroes, or as deep in the black as Vigilantes. I started as a Rogue and am still there now,” he said.

Emily nodded, some of the tension in her shoulders bleeding out. “So there aren’t any Villains here?” she asked.