Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) Read online

  “Eight?” Calderon just shook his head. “That’s seven too many for this area, statistically speaking. That’s like an Aryan Nation meeting stumbled down here or something. I got enough problems here without importing white guys with automatic weapons to boost my stats.”

  “Let’s just work on your closing ratio for now,” I said. “That’s a stat boost I bet you wouldn’t mind seeing.”

  Calderon finally let go of the car door and sauntered over to me. He had a good look, and he was wearing a black fedora-esque hat. It suited him. “What’d you find out?”

  “Flora had a boyfriend,” I said, “according to a co-worker. I was on my way over here to check out her last address when …” I mimed putting my hands together and an explosion as I pulled them apart. “Ambush.”

  Augustus perked up next to me. “Wait, that was an ambush? For you?”

  Calderon gave him a pitying look then turned back to me. “You get any idea where this is coming from?”

  “Not a clue,” I said. “Who even knew I was in town?”

  “Everybody,” Augustus said. “You think eight guys in a van dressed up like a SWAT team is weird around here? Try a flying white girl zooming over your house. All of Atlanta knows you’re here.”

  “Random killing attempt?” I asked. “You think so?”

  “No,” Calderon said, rubbing an index finger on his upper lip. “Someone’s nervous that you’re poking around. Maybe jumped the gun a little.”

  “They frigging pulled the trigger while it was still in their holster,” I said. “Blew off their own foot. Because now I’m thinking this is linked to Flora Romero and the lightning man, and I’m not likely to back off it until I’ve got answers.”

  “That’s probably gonna put a little bit of a limp in their walk,” Augustus said, drawing a look from me and Calderon. “Oh, sorry. I thought I was part of this conversation. I can just let you two get to it.”

  “Who’s your junior partner?” Calderon asked, looming over both of us.

  “Still not a sidekick,” Augustus said.

  “Local hero,” I said. “Kept the explosion contained. Marcus Calderon, this is Augustus Coleman.”

  Calderon looked him over. “Got any lightning in those veins?”

  Augustus gave him a weird look. “Is that cop slang for something I don’t know about? Because I’m clean as a preacher’s sheets, man.”

  “Maybe you know different preachers than I do,” Calderon said, “because that’s not exactly a protestation of innocence to me.”

  “If lightning guy was uneasy about me being after him,” I said, “why did guys with guns come after me? Seems like it’d be smarter to stage a summer thunder accident than a merc hit.”

  Calderon gave me the eye. “You think we’d fail to notice a federal agent and high-profile meta getting struck by lightning on a clear day like this?”

  “You’d think you’d notice me riddled with bullets, too,” I said.

  He looked at my shirt. “You do look like you might have been riddled a little.”

  “You just noticed that?” I asked. “Maybe whoever’s running this play might have been safe after all.”

  He shrugged like it was nothing. “You seem fine. You feeling all right?”

  “Right as rain,” I said. “Minus the lightning.” I sighed. “Something’s going on here.”

  “Which is what I tried to tell your brother last year,” Calderon said. He was only a little smug about it. “Flora’s situation didn’t feel right. But this? This is getting out of hand.”

  “You’re so different from other detectives,” I said, smarmy as hell. “Most of them are so grateful when I bring death and property destruction into their jurisdiction.”

  He smiled, and there was something unmistakable in it. “How grateful?”

  I pursed my lips, deciding how playful to be in my response. “I—”

  “I think I’m gonna go home if y’all don’t need me for this,” Augustus said, getting up and brushing himself off. “Because it’s getting a little awkward up in here. Three’s a crowd and all that.”

  “Give a statement to Officer Delaurio on your way out,” Calderon said, not taking his eyes off me.

  “I’m gonna want to talk to you in a few minutes,” I said to Augustus. “Once they’re done with me here.”

  Augustus leaned in and whispered low, “I don’t think the detective is gonna be done with you until—”

  I cleared my throat loud enough to shut him up. “We have things to discuss.”

  “Yeah, yeah, grownups talking and all that,” Augustus said, drawing himself up. “All right, you can induct me into the fraternity later.”

  “In my case, it’d be a sorority,” I said, “but I was just thinking we’d have a conversation.”

  “Like I’m Luke Skywalker and you’re Obi-Wan?” Augustus paused, thinking it over. “You know, if we were both white dudes.”

  I frowned. “And old, in my case.”

  “Well, I got work early tomorrow, and I kinda, uh …” He suddenly looked a little grey in the face. “I kinda ducked out and left my … uh … aw, man.”

  “Statement to the officer before you leave,” Calderon said. “He’ll get your name and contact info so we can follow up if need be.”

  “I live two streets over,” Augustus said, pointing behind us. “The house with the yellow mailbox.”

  “I’ll be over in a little bit,” I said, looking back at him.

  “Sure,” Augustus said, like he didn’t believe me. “Whenever.” He disappeared into the background of the steadily increasing chaos on the street. Fire trucks were pulled up now, sirens silenced but red lights flashing brightly all around us.

  “You know him?” Calderon said, following Augustus with his eyes.

  “Just met him a few minutes ago,” I said, looking back to see Augustus talking with Officer Delaurio, who had a clipboard out and was writing on it. I glanced back to Calderon. “Are you taking my statement?”

  “Just asking,” Calderon said. “You said the kid’s got powers?”

  “Earth-based, it looked like,” I said, watching Augustus. He was just talking to Delaurio. He was trying to be a cool customer, but he started to describe something and really got into it, with faces and hand gestures. He caught me looking and broke off, got all serious again. He probably wasn’t much younger than me, maybe two or three years. “He put a shield of dirt around the van as it exploded.”

  “Hm,” Calderon said. “You sure he couldn’t have lightning powers, too?”

  “Anything’s possible,” I said, “but I don’t think so. My read is that he’s freshly manifested, just starting to get his feet underneath him. He wants to be a hero.”

  “Uh huh.” Calderon was jotting things down in a little pocket notebook. “How do you think that works out, based on your experience?”

  “Shoddy,” I said, meeting Calderon’s dark eyes. “Based on my experience. They love you, then they hate you.”

  “Not everybody hates you,” Calderon said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I leaned back a little. “Do you hate me?”

  “I have a practiced indifference,” he said, keeping a straight face.

  “That’s a real shame,” I said, and caught his smile. “While you’re here, maybe we should go check out Flora Romero’s old place.”

  “You asking me out on a date?” Calderon didn’t even look up from the pad.

  What was it about law enforcement types lately? “If I did, I could probably pick somewhere more exciting than a murder victim’s last known address.”

  “Such as?”

  “God, you’re about as subtle as a—”

  “Bolt of lightning?” His grin turned to a cringe. “Sorry. That was …”

  “A little much, yeah,” I said. “I’d have gone with ‘a hail of gunfire.’ Very topical.”

  He gave me a slight nod of appreciation. “So she lived …” he turned his head around, and he pointed to the house just past the
van’s smoking remains. The fire department was swarming all over it, even though their job was clearly done at this point. “Over there.”

  “Yep,” I said. “I was just heading that way when everything went straight to hell.” I stood and followed him as he made his way across the pitted lawn, huge gouges ripped out of the soil where Augustus had torn earth free to suppress the explosion. “I—” I paused, looking down into the ground. Something seemed a little off, a shape sticking out of the shredded earth, jutting out of the dirt like a tree root.

  Except Flora Romero’s yard didn’t have any trees in it.

  “The hell?” Calderon muttered behind me, and I felt his hand on my arm, holding me back from walking any further. I would have stopped anyway, but the touch—light, gentle—triggered my conscious mind and caused me to hold back as I stared down, eyes working their way across the exposed pits until I found another uneven shape hanging out of the side of one of the pits. This one … was much less ambiguous.

  It sprang free from the red clay at several points, like a curved boomerang hanging out of the exposed soil. There was another next to it, and another, and another, all joining to meet at the same point, where an obvious fracture broke them off from what should have been the natural join to a mirror image on the other side.

  I pointed. Calderon nodded and pulled out his cell phone. He had the number dialed while I just stood there and stared. “I need a crime scene unit.” He said more, but I lost it as he wandered off, behind me, all thoughts of our little flirtatious play gone by the wayside.

  I just stood there and stared at the half-ribcage that had been exposed by Augustus’s heroism, hanging out of the side of a gash in Flora Romero’s lawn.

  10.

  Augustus

  My head was buzzing as I made my way back home. I didn’t go jumping back over the fences or anything. I walked around the front like a normal person—even though I was most definitely not normal anymore. Word had already spread, though. I caught the looks on the street as I passed people. Some respect. Some fear. People crossing to get away, but nobody crossing over to say thank you. That’d come later, I hoped. I’d just done one thing, after all, and it had thrown the neighborhood into chaos. Whatever I did next, that’d solidify my reputation one way or another.

  I needed to keep being a hero. I guess no one really knew the numbers, but you’d think if there were hundreds of metahumans out there, there’d be some heroes stepping up besides Sienna Nealon and her crew.

  And can I just say—Wow! Sienna Nealon herself. She was shorter than I expected. And a little reserved. But I did just save her life, so she was probably a little rattled. If she even got rattled by that sort of thing at this point. Maybe she was just tired.

  I took a left onto my street. I could feel my pace quickening. I could move faster, no doubt. I’d felt it on the way to the attack, but now it was like I was hyperaware of it, like I needed to go somewhere and lift something heavy just to check that, too. I needed, like, a training montage.

  Wait, she did say she was going to come over later and talk to me, right? And I said … did I really say I was going to work tomorrow?

  Well, I had to. Momma would kill me if I quit my job. College, she’d say. And that’d be the end of the discussion.

  Also, it is probably not right to quit a good job for some vague, half-formed idea of how to be a hero. How do heroes get paid?

  I stopped in front of my house. It looked … different. Smaller, maybe? Or maybe I just felt bigger. I took a breath, trying to plan out what I was going to say when I went inside. Rumors were already spreading. For all I knew, somebody had already stopped by and broken the news that I was a meta and had gotten in on a throwdown. In which case I was about to get an earful when I stepped inside.

  I stood on the sidewalk for another couple minutes. Planning out what I was going to say. Yeah. That’s it.

  When I opened the door I could hear talking inside. I closed it behind me loud enough to let everyone know I was coming. Their hushed voices were coming from the living room, and I eased down that way, making footsteps loud enough to announce my presence.

  Momma looked up at me as I came in, wearing a scowl. “Fool boy. What were you thinking?”

  “I—”

  “You don’t go running toward gunfire unless you’re in the Army,” Momma continued, still fixing me with that glare. “Did you join the Army and not tell me about it?” She turned her head toward Taneshia, who was sitting in the chair on the other side of me. “You hear if Augustus joined the Army?”

  “No, I did not,” Taneshia said, giving me an absolute flashback to the days when we were six and she’d parrot back to me exactly what Momma had said not to do that I’d gone and done anyway.

  “So, you’re saying I should join the Army?” I asked, and watched Momma’s expression get a little bit darker. “They got the G.I. Bill—”

  “Oh, we got ourselves a smartass,” she said.

  “Better than being a dumb one,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re that, too.”

  “What were you thinking, Augustus?” Taneshia broke in, voice soft and quiet. The TV behind me had aerial pictures of the fight scene already. Fortunately, they hadn’t been there when I left. I could hear the chopper in the distance now, though.

  “I was trying to help,” I said.

  “You were trying to get yourself killed,” Momma said.

  “Rushing into something like that …” Taneshia just shook her head.

  “I just saved Sienna Nealon’s life,” I said, and waited.

  I honestly expected laughter. I got pity instead. That was not a good consolation prize.

  “I actually did,” I said, looking at the two of them in turn. “I found out this afternoon that I’m a metahuman.”

  Momma’s left eyebrow went way up. It does that when she thinks she hears something crazy. She tilted her head to look past me to Taneshia, like she was asking without asking, “You hearing this?”

  Taneshia just looked … thoughtful. “Really.” Filled with doubt. “What’s your power?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” I said with a little enthusiasm. I took a couple steps toward the TV and pointed toward the holes in the ground, the clay under the topsoil visible onscreen. “See that? That was me.”

  Momma just stared. “My son, the human backhoe.”

  “First, you might want to be a little careful about calling anyone a backhoe,” I said. “Might make someone a little hostile, you throw that at the wrong person. Second, I did that. With my hands.” I put my hands up in a flourish.

  “Make sure to wash good under your nails before dinner, then,” Momma said, deadpan, angling to look around me to the television. “Was that really Sienna Nealon there?”

  “I don’t know,” Taneshia said. “Why did they park the chopper on the side of the street that has trees covering everything …?”

  I felt my lips press into a thin line out of pure annoyance. I reached out, put my hands out flat, trying to feel for what I was looking for in the carpet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, seeking out dirt and …

  My eyes popped open. “Momma, did you vacuum in here today?”

  “I vacuum in here every day,” she said. “You should try it in that pigsty you live in some time, it’d do you a world of good.”

  I tried to focus on the positive. “That’s all right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “That’s okay. I’ll just use the lawn—” I turned my head to look out the window. If I ripped my momma’s lawn to show her and Taneshia I was a metahuman, I was going to have to hope I secretly also possessed a power of extremely fast healing, because she was going to beat me all about my skull.

  Wait.

  I took another breath and reached out, lifting my hands and pushing them toward the arch. I could feel through the walls, could feel the dirt—small, like little grains. The flicker of the TV was the only light in the room save for the last faint strains of day through the half-closed blinds. I could f
eel a little dirt in my room, and—

  Yeahhhhh.

  I heard a thunk! as my amethyst smacked the wall. I cringed and saw Momma turn her head around, looking to see where that noise had come from. “Jamal?” she asked.

  “No, Momma, that was me,” I said, mentally trying to steer the rock around the corner with the threads of dirt just behind it. It was not as easy as it sounds, I promise you.

  “Boy, you look like you need to excuse yourself to the restroom before something bad happens to your drawers,” Momma said.

  “I just need to …” I strained, steering it all around the last corner. The drift of dirt came threading through the air, lit by the sun in the main hallway. I pulled it toward me, the amethyst leading the way, and halted it directly in front of me, letting it twist right before my face. The dirt I let settle into an easy spin around it, a neat ribbon oscillating in a circle. “See!”

  “See what?” Momma was looking at me. “I’d like to see the TV a little better, but someone’s standing his butt half in front of it.”

  “See this?” I made a hand gesture, all grand and theatrical, to indicate what I was doing.

  Momma squinted. “You been practicing magic? What is that? You levitating a rock?”

  “I’m—yes, I’m levitating a rock,” I said. “No strings. See the dirt?”

  “No, I don’t see anything.” She squinted harder.

  “Momma,” Taneshia said in a whisper. “He’s floating the dirt and the rock.”

  Momma fumbled in the half-light, reaching up for the lamp that rested behind her seat. I heard her fingers trying to turn the little knob, and then it popped on, flooding the room with a dull orange light.

  My little ribbon of dirt just spun there, waves rippling across its surface. I turned it with my hands, making it go vertical, so they could see it better, and set the amethyst to orbiting it. The planet orbiting the rings. Figured I’d try something new.

  “Augustus,” Momma said. Her tone changed in an instant. “Did you bring that dirt into my house?”