“A few. A couple of people surprised me. The people who can’t see how this would work. The ones who can. Divided by one question: people.”

“Mmm,” she said. “I don’t think I could take a side if I tried. If I could, maybe I’d be less nervous.”

“Are you okay doing this?”

She seemed for a moment like she might say no. Her forehead creased.

No words passed between us for a minute.

“It’s like secret identities, you know?” I asked.

“I don’t really—no. No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Why do we keep them? It’s… we need a fallback. Capes need some aspect of our lives that we can turn to when it all goes to shit. So we keep one sliver or one half of our lives intact, and when worst comes to worst, there’s a place we can go for a friendly word, a hug, normalcy.”

“Okay. You didn’t have that, though.”

“I did, kind of. Not… not an escape. But there was love and support at the core of it. Just took a little figuring out to realize it was there. And at the end of the day… here in Gimel, I think we kind of forgot we need that sort of thing. That ability to reach out, fall back.”

“I guess.”

I reached out.

Natalie extended her hand. Below mine.

I dropped a fob into her hand.

She stared down at it, nodding for a moment, then asked, “Do you want me to leave the space heater on? It’s battery operated.”

“I can get it, sure. I’ll stick around.”

The floor creaked as she walked over to the door, and the fire escape banged with her boots. I could hear her making her way down to her car through the holes in the wall and floor.

I looked out over the water, tinted red, and at the sky, which I imagined glowed redder by the minute. Sveta was somewhere out there, on another shoreline.

My duty in this was done. Just a question of waiting.

It was up to them, now.

Last 20.b

It looked like the aurora borealis, which Presley had seen while staying at her uncle’s cabin once, but it rested close to the ground, not in the sky, and it was red. It swelled, faded, formed bands, and dissipated into wisps, radiating up from the deep cracks that had spread across the city. It gave the snowfall and the snow on the ground a rosy tint, and because it illuminated, while she and the others stood in the dark, it made the distant sections of city seem more real than the rooftop they were gathered on.