***EVAN***

After school, I say a quick goodbye to Jay, then run down to Rourke Junior High to pick up Adele. Mom and Dad were very reluctant to let her go to school today, but she insisted she was fine. However, when I get down to the front of the school, I see her reading her library copy of Amulet and turning the pages too rapidly to actually absorb the pictures or text.

"You all right?" I ask.

She looks up, then puts her bookmark into lace and says, "Hey, I know Mom and Dad won't approve, but could we go get ice cream?"

I wait until she gets to her feet before hugging her hello. "Hell yeah. You read my mind."

She shakes her head, calling my bluff silently. But still, I'm more than okay with getting ice cream with her. We could both do with the distraction. So I text Mom and let her know where Adele and I are going. Not surprising me, she gives us her blessing.

"Everything go well at school today?" I ask. I try to hold her hand, but she pulls away from me - which doesn't happen all that often.

Adele shakes her head. "I mean, it's not like I can talk to anyone there. All my friends are in other schools."

"What? You have friends there, besides Jeremy and Jay and Harris and Kevin - speaking of which, I think he'll be working today."

"You know what I mean." Adele stops and bends down to tie her shoelaces, which have come loose on both feet. "I don't go on wild and crazy adventures in San Francisco with any of my classmates - and I'm not saying I want to," she adds when I open my mouth to ask her that myself. "I mean, you've heard the stories I tell about them. Especially the Normals - I'm the only one there who gives a crap about warlocks, probably 'cause I'm related to one."

"Maybe you're a warlock too," I say.

"No, you know I would've gotten my powers by now."

I show her some Light. "I was long done with puberty by the time this happened," I say. "And I'm already an exception to the rule 'cause I'm practically Muggle-born and all. Even though Mom's got a bunch of warlocks in her family."

Adele finaly makes some contact with me in the form of a well-aimed punch to my forearm. "Don't try to peer-pressure me, Ev," she snickers. "I'm happy being Normal. It's just...all the other ones at Rourke? As people, they suck ass. Pardon my French."

"Consider yourself pardonnée, ma chérie." Learning bits and pieces of French from Jay really has its perks sometimes.

Adele (who really should know some French, what with her French first name and all), makes a chirpy laugh. Then, after we run across the railroad tracks (there's an Amtrak train coming very soon, and the signal starts ringing the second we cross), she slumps her shoulders and says, "I almost got into a fight today."

I stop short, unsure I've heard her correctly. "What do you...what...? Adele, you don't..."

She looks down, blushing in shame. "I'm sorry, but...it was Brittany and her posse, you know? You know who Brittany is, right?"

I wrinkle my nose in response. Adele's brought up Brittany more than enough times. She's a transplant from Kansas or Missouri or someplace, a redneck's daughter whose family does a bad job representing their home state. Racist, homophobic, anti-warlock, the works. She'd actually tried to approach Adele to "make friends" with her (translation - get an easy mark for copying tests), but when Adele told her she was friends and sisters with warlocks, she couldn't run screaming from her quickly enough. (How much of that is true and how much is Adele's exaggerations? I'll let you be the judge.)

"What did they say this time?" I ask as we get close to Sampson and Sons Ice Cream.

"They heard about the Unite Network," Adele says. "They were talking about how all the warlocks are hiding there so the rest of the internet can't troll them out."

I open the jingling door (it's an Ice business; sleigh bells on the door are traditional any time of year) and wave hi to Kevin, who's manning his usual post behind the counter, striped apron and all. "You know her parents are gonna burn in Hell for raising her that way, right?"

Adele scoffs at the thought. "Lucifer would reject them. And besides, Brittany only lives with her trashy-ass mom."

"Brittany?" Kevin looks apologetic as he overhears us. "You're not talking about Brittany West, are you?"

I raise my eyebrows. "West, as in Taylor West?"

"Only West worse than those white-trash types is Kanye," laughs Kevin. "The usual, ladies? Vanilla and zebra chocolate?"

We both give him the thumbs-up, and he starts to fix our cups of ice cream. Zebra chocolate is a special Sampson flavor - stripes of dark and white chocolate. They created it for me after I developed Light powers, to represent the preferred flavors of both Ice and Light warlocks. I'd had both of them separately before, but combined, they're magnificent. Their customers agree - it's become one of their most popular flavors by far.

"I didn't know those two shit-for-brains were related," I say after Adele and I get our ice creams and sit at a table. "They don't even look alike, do they? Oh, but I don't even think I know what Brittany looks like."

"Picture if you had no sense of style, or cleanliness, or clear skin," Adele says.

"Then nothing like Taylor West," I say. "He looks more like...like a future washed-up former NFL star. That's basically what Nolan Solari calls him."

Adele grimaces at the thought. "You mean after he's had one too many concussions and is on trial for raping his girlfriend?"

I reach out and take her hand. "You, my dear, need to stop watching the news. It's full of shit anyway."

"I know," Adele mutters. "I just had to do an essay in English - compare and contrast local vs. national newscasts. So I did Channel 5 vs. Fox News. Guess which one was full of interesting stuff and which one was bigoted as hell?"

We both throw our heads back laughing. Then I turn my head to the right and watch a stooped, hooded, vaguely dementor-like figure open the door and cross the threshold. Kevin, who's just emerged from the back room with his CD player to keep us entertained (I'd put in a request for David Bowie), plugs it in and fires it up before turning to the new customer and asking, "Can I help you?"

"Yeah," says a male voice - a horribly familiar one. I crane my neck just in time to see Taylor West raise his head - and his hand, in which he's cocking a handgun.

Taking advantage of my newfound Light speed, I jump out of my chair and race across the store, tackling Taylor just as he pulls the trigger. Taken by surprise, he can't hold on to the gun and surrenders it to me.

Then I look up and scream at the sight before me. Kevin's standing eerily still, blood dripping slowly down his left cheek.

It's dripping from his eye.

Taylor just shot him in the fucking eye!

The pain finally strikes him, and he falls out of sight, crying out in unimaginable agony.

Taylor's still on the floor, laughing insanely. "I wasn't gonna shoot him," he says. "I wanted you, Ice Queen. But..." He licks his lips. "Couldn't let him protect you, could I?"

I lay the gun down as gently as I can on the counter. Behind me, I hear Adele run to Kevin's side, stammering into her phone as she calls 911. As for me, I step over Taylor and pick him up, forcing him to sit upright. I'm not as speed-force-enabled as The Flash, but my own modest speed enhancements do wonders to my strength. He still keeps on laughing right in my face, even as I freeze his upper body to the display case of ice cream flavors. But then I bring my foot right up to his crotch, my toes less than an inch from his junk. That's when he stops laughing. That's when he looks genuinely afraid, as well he should be.

I bend down, crossing my arms and forming twin power blades with my fists, which I bring to his neck. Sharp Ice on one side, crackling Light on the other. "I could kill you," I whisper. "Right here, right now."

"You wouldn't!"

My blades edge close enough to shave the hairs growing down the sides of his neck. "You just tried to kill my friend. And for what? Being a warlock? You deserve nothing less."

Taylor screams, high-pitched and long and absolutely terrified. I let him get it out of his system, then pull my hands back, depowering them. He breathes a sigh of relief at my show of short-lived mercy. Short-lived, because I then put all power into my foot and stamp on his groin. He screams again, an agonized one even louder than Kevin's.

"If you ever have kids," I say venomously, "I didn't do my job." For good measure, I spit on Taylor. Satisfied that I've tortured him enough, I turn my back on him and join Adele and Kevin on the other side - along with Mr. Sampson, who's holding his son tightly to him, sobbing.

Adele's got Kevin's blood on her hands, literally, because she tried to clean his face up, to no avail. I take her hands, then, for the first time in this whole fucked-up mess, I cry. "I'm so sorry," I whisper to no one in particular. Maybe Adele, maybe Kevin, maybe his dad. Maybe even David Bowie as he sings to us about being heroes.

But mostly to myself.