“I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me. Except I can, because I don’t think about what I have in the cupboards unless I’m standing in front of an open cupboard. I have other stuff.”

“How far has this food experiment with Weld gone?” I asked.

So it went, the conversation sprawling, back and forth, casual, from work to life.

I’d woken up before dawn, taken the necessary time to pull myself together, and then tentatively reached out, to make sure I wasn’t just centered in my own self, but in what I was doing. Reaching out to make sure it seemed right and, to a slightly lesser extent, that it was within the bounds of the law. Reaching out, too, to have more contacts.

I had a bad feeling. No, more than that, I had bad feelings. About the team, what lay beneath the surface, the war over Cedar Point, the Fallen, the clash between Snag’s group and the Fallen, and the danger to Rain.

But I knew why I was here. A potential disaster lurked here. Knowing that made everything easier, in an ironic way. The dissonance of not feeling right about being here had eased.

There were clear, defined, acceptable enemies to face down.

“I don’t want a wig,” Ashley said, to Sveta.

“I’m saying, if you cut your hair—”

“If.”

“Then it’s an option. It could even give you a secret identity. Kenzie, the eye thing you were talking about, you can give Ashley eyes with irises, right?”

“I could.”

“Eye color, hair color, clothes,” Sveta said.

“Wigs get pulled off or lost in a fight,” Ashley said. “It’s undignified.”

“You do realize I’m wearing a wig.”

“I realize you’re wearing a wig and you have the capacity to pound someone’s face in or dangle them off the side of a building. They’ll learn to respect you if you make them,” Ashley said.

“You do realize we’re supposed to be heroes, right?” Chris said. “Nominally?”

“Not nominally,” I said.

“What’s nominally?” Kenzie asked. “How do you spell it? I’ll ask the computer.”

“And I’m not about to do any of those things,” Sveta said.

Ashley ignored us. “Me? I can kick them, or I can turn them into a bloody smear using my power. That’s pretty much it. I don’t have the manual dexterity or hand strength to use a weapon, I can’t punch them without damaging my hands. Kicks won’t do enough, using my power does too much, and the mess would be inconvenient. I don’t want a wig.”

“You don’t want a wig. Fine,” Sveta said.

“I have some images on my computer,” I said. “Hair and eye makeup, some costume related.”

“Show me?” Ashley asked.

We walked over to where my computer was on a table. I found the folder and opened it.