There was a knife under my pillow. I could say with absolute confidence that I had never slept with a knife under my pillow before.

Sure, it was only a butter knife, but I still felt like I needed some form of protection. He knew where I lived. He had been in my room. My promise to Connor played in my head like a scratchy broken record. I'll let you know. A load of good that promise did. Connor's cell phone was dead, and once he didn't return home after midnight, I assumed he took up his usual post on a skyscraper downtown, watching for trouble. I just had to hope that if something happened, if Iron Phantom showed up again, Connor would come.

Telling Dad should have been my next move, but after returning home from fifteen hours of dealing with a charred office and a frightened city, he passed out on top of his blankets with his shoes and tie still on. I wasn't about to bother him. I changed my clothes, got my knife, and went to bed. It was just one night. I could take care of myself.

But I had overlooked the fact that it was impossible to sleep when your mind was somewhere else. I rolled onto my side, my back facing the window, while I plumped my pillows and attempted to count sheep in desperation. I had just reached twenty, and was no closer to falling asleep, when I heard a dull thump on my carpet followed by a gravelly voice.

"You should really lock your window. Dangerous criminals are running rampant around this city, you know."

Right, like the window mattered. The guy could teleport. The fingers of my right hand inched under my pillow. I took the knife in my fist, the steel handle freezing against my sweaty skin. Maybe if I didn't move, he would leave. Like an animal playing dead as a defense mechanism. I watched an entire special on opossums doing that on Animal Planet once. If I held my breath and started drooling a little, he would grow bored and walk away.

"Psst. I know you're not sleeping."

The floor creaked as the thumps moved closer. Be the opossum, Abby. Just be the opossum.

"Hey." A gloved hand touched my bare shoulder, and I whipped my head around, coming face-to-mask with the guy who'd haunted my thoughts for the past twenty-four hours.

"Get away from me!" I hissed, rolling out of bed. My mattress was the only thing between us. I couldn't work up the courage to throw the butter knife, so I dove for a thick anatomy textbook on the floor instead, hurling it through the room, aiming straight for his dumb, evil face. With a shake of his head, Iron Phantom disappeared, winking back into existence a few feet over. The textbook spun through the empty air, smacked the wall, and hit the carpet. Iron Phantom stepped on it with his boot, and my weapon was rendered useless.

"Easy there, Bazooka." He sounded like he was trying to hold back a laugh, and I hated him for it. In the darkness of my room, I could hardly see him in his black suit, just barely make out the occasional glint of his eyes as they caught the glow from my alarm clock. "I'm not allowed to pay a visit to the damsel in distress I rescued?"

"No. Why don't you pay a visit to one of the people who almost burned alive today in the fire that you set instead?" I snatched his note off my bedside table, waving it through the air. "And how do you know where I live?"

"Oh, good. You got it." He noticed the unopened chocolate bar. "You didn't eat it? It's not poisoned."

I blinked. I didn't eat it because I wasn't hungry; I hadn't even thought that it might be poisoned, but now I was starting to reconsider.

"It's not poisoned," he repeated. "And maybe I know where you live because maybe I followed you here last night to make sure you got back safe."

I knew I hadn't been alone. I clutched my knife tighter. He knew where I lived. Where I slept. What else did he know?

Connor's plea echoed through my head. Let me know. He had to be aware that something was up, right? He had to realize I was in danger.

Iron Phantom leaned against the wall, crossing his feet at the ankles. He looked almost . . . bored.

No. He was messing with me. Trying to get me to let my guard down.

I'd vowed not to wake my dad up, but that was before Morriston's new supervillain made an appearance in my room. Dad was on the other side of the house, but maybe if I screamed loud enough. . . .

"Da—"

Iron Phantom's eyes widened. He snatched one of the pillows from my bed, chucking it at me. It smacked my stomach, then fell to the floor.

"Shh! What are you doing?"

"Getting help. What are you doing?"

"Getting you to shut up. If you were really in danger, wouldn't a super have come to rescue you already?"

"I . . ." He had me there. But Connor could just be busy. Wouldn't be the first time.

"Wave that butter knife around all you want," he said, "but if you were really scared, you would have thrown that at me, not the book. Actually, if you were really scared, you would have grabbed a larger knife."

I didn't lower my arm.

"Fine." He hung his head. "You don't trust me. I get it. But I wasn't trying to hurt anyone today. You don't understand why I did it." His voice softened as he toyed with the edge of his mask around his jaw. His green eyes were fixed on the collection of photos scattered across my desk, not on me. I could have run out of the room and gotten my dad. Maybe I should have. What if this was some kind of trap?

But looking at Iron Phantom tentatively examining a picture of me and Sarah at the beach last year, a small smile on his face, it didn't seem very urgent that I let someone know of his presence.

"Make me understand," I said.

He dropped the picture frame, pressing his palms against his eyes. "Look, I didn't want to hurt anyone. I was trying to send a message."

"To who?" I glanced at my door. I could still make a run for it. Iron Phantom noticed, but he didn't try to stop me. Instead of stepping closer to the door, or to me, he took a step back, toward my window.

He didn't answer my question, but he did hold out his palm. There was something small and shiny resting on his glove, but with my bed filling the space between us, I couldn't figure out exactly what I was looking at.

Iron Phantom took one small step forward. My muscles tensed, but I didn't move. Then he took another, and another, until his knees where resting against the edge of my bed and his body was leaning over the mattress toward me.

He held up the object between his thumb and index finger. A silver rectangle half the size of my thumbnail.

"What do you know about microchips?" he asked.

"Pretty much nothing. Why?"

Iron Phantom hummed, watching me. What I could see of his face under his mask looked completely blank, emotionless.

"Here's the issue," he said. "I've seen microchips like this before. This looks like a tracking device, the kind that can be implanted under a person's skin, and believe me, there are plenty more where this one came from. But whether they're for people like you or for people like me, I can't say."

"People like you? Supers?"

My heart skipped a beat. Connor?

"Someone wants to follow the supers . . . to find out who they are?" I asked, hardly daring to believe it.

"Maybe more," he said. "To capture them, to control them, to test them. Use your imagination, Bazooka. Or maybe they're to spy on the rest of Morriston for some inane reason. I don't know. I'm really just spitballing here. You see, this particular microchip is actually empty on the inside." He popped the tiny box open, showing me smooth metal walls and not much else. "From my experience, that's not normal. I want to know what should be there and why it's not. That's where you come in. Think of it as your . . . supersecret mission." He wiggled his fingers, like the whole thing was supposed to be really grand—an honor or something.

"I don't want a supersecret mission," I said.

"Too bad. I need you to find out what's up. But don't ask your dad outright. Be sneaky about it, because if someone catches on, I'm not sure it would be a good thing."

"Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. My father?"

"Yeah, your father. I may be new to the whole superhero gig, but I'm not stupid. I knew last night you were the mayor's daughter." He slipped the chip back into his suit, patting his pocket for good measure. "And I also stole this little guy from his office this morning."

I almost threw the butter knife at him. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge that if I let it out of my grasp, I would officially be weaponless. The memory of the flames flitted through my mind. The florescent orange that turned city hall completely black. The smoke. The tears dripping from the freshman girl's eyes as she fled the library this afternoon. Forget the knife. Maybe I would try punching him instead.

"You are no hero," I spit out, my voice wavering in anger.

Iron Phantom looked down at his suit, full lips curling into a smirk. "Is that so? The costume begs to differ."

I clenched my fists as a surge of annoyance bubbled through me. Heroes didn't destroy things—they helped. Connor was a hero. Not this guy. "A hero wouldn't have burned down city hall. You're a villain."

He rolled his eyes and quickly disappeared into the breeze of the air conditioner. I slumped against the wall in relief. He was gone; he'd had enough of me.

"Listen to me." Before I could blink, he was back, one hand holding my shoulder against the wall while the other clamped over my mouth. So this was how it ended. I would die in my bedroom at the hands of the world's most annoying supervillain.

"Abigail," he whispered, his voice so low it nearly got lost amid the hum of the AC unit. "I'm not the bad guy. I'm not a villain. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already."

I didn't register much after his use of my full name. No one called me Abigail. Not because I didn't like my name, but because everyone thought my fair hair and soft bone structure made me look younger—more like an Abby. I guess I wasn't beautiful or sophisticated enough to be an Abigail.

Eventually, he realized I wasn't going to fight him and removed his hand from my mouth, resting it on my shoulder.

"Someone in city hall is clearly up to something." He paused, sighing. "I need you to help me."

"Absolutely not." I couldn't believe that after he set my father's workplace ablaze he still had the audacity to ask for my help.

"Please." His fingers dug into my shoulders but lessened their grip when I flinched. "Please, I need you to see if you can find out anything about the microchips. I'll be back again in a few days."

"Why should I help you? You could have killed somebody today."

"You should help me," he said, "because as much as you hate to admit it, you already trust me."

I seethed. "I do not—"

"You do." His words were tentative and quiet, even in the deafening silence of my bedroom, not cocky like he often came across. "You haven't stabbed me with that knife yet." He chuckled. "You didn't run for help or try to force me to leave. Instead, you listened to what I had to say. You trust me." He nodded toward my nightstand. "You should try the chocolate. I've had, like, three bars today. It's really good."

With those final parting words, he vanished before my eyes for a third time, leaving me with a knot of rage in my chest and more questions than answers.

~~~~~

Despite the media frenzy surrounding the city hall fire, I managed to block Iron Phantom from my thoughts almost all weekend. However, in the brief, though irritating, moments he crossed my mind, I couldn't help wondering if he told me the truth when he snuck into my room. Was someone really causing problems inside city hall? Did they put the microchip on my dad's desk and Iron Phantom just happened to find it first, or did my dad know about it? Was it really a tracking device? I wanted to ask, but my tongue felt useless in my mouth. Dad was already so stressed, and for all I knew, Iron Phantom—whoever he was—was just plain crazy and that microchip wasn't even real.

Even though I walked into school on Monday ignoring all traces of Iron Phantom's existence, my nerves were still raging. Sure, I had both a test in statistics and an essay due in English, but my biggest concern was for the sheet of paper tacked up on the theater arts bulletin board.

"I made the chorus!" Sarah elbowed her way past the crowd of students reading the Hall of Horrors cast list to reach me when I came through the door. She threw her arms around me, a curl of her hair momentarily getting stuck in my mouth while she squeezed my shoulders. "If my singing managed to get me in the chorus, you definitely got the lead."

"You didn't look to see my name?" Now free from Sarah's iron grip, I eyed the crowd swarming the cast list with trepidation. If Sarah didn't see my name, did that mean I didn't make it? I didn't want to be doomed to spend the next few weeks working in the costume closet.

My best friend shook her head and began towing me toward the list. No. Now I didn't want to see. I tried to dig my heels into the floor, which only resulted in a loud screeeech alerting my (possible) castmates of my presence as my shoes skidded along the tile.

"It's not that I didn't see your name," Sarah said. "I was just too busy looking for my own. Here you go!"

Sarah and I came to a halt before the bulletin board. It was decorated with yellow and pink paper and music notes, as if happy colors would somehow make the list showing which part would claim my soul for the next six weeks any less daunting.

"I can read it to you if you want." Sarah laughed and I groaned. Might as well just get it over with. Except . . . Courtney McGuire's audition was just as good as mine. Not to mention her feet fit the extra pair of character shoes backstage whereas mine were much too small. Surely she got the female lead.

All because of her damn huge feet.

But Courtney didn't get it. Her name jumped out to me instantly, and she was in the chorus with Sarah. Which meant . . .

Abby Hamilton. . . . . . . . . . Angeline

I couldn't believe it. I actually got a lead role in the musical.

Sarah screamed, because that's what Sarah does best, while I stared dumbstruck at the piece of paper fluttering on the board. Suddenly, it didn't seem so frightening. I actually did it. For once I was actually good enough to shine.

Take that, Connor.

"I'm so happy for you!" Sarah twirled me around the hall. "I'm so happy! Wait, why aren't you happy, Abby?"

"What? I am happy." And I was. The news just hadn't hit me yet. I felt like I was walking through a fog.

"You are?" she asked. I nodded. Sarah sighed and began reading more names on the cast list. "Well, then we need to work on your acting skills. You look like I did that time I realized I would never see Red Comet without his mask."

"Hey, that's hardly fair." Sarah moped for days when she reached that not-so-true conclusion. She even whined to Connor. He laughed in her face, then walked away.

The great Red Comet, everyone.

"Fine, maybe you don't look that sad, but you look sad. Cheer up, buttercup, who's your sexy leading man going to be?"

I squinted at the fine print under the fluorescent lights and glanced at the name directly above mine. Isaac Jackson. The voice of God's most heavenly angel.

"Ooooh! New kid!" Sarah squealed. "He might just become my new fan fiction project. I mean that voice and that hair and those eyes." She tilted her head to the ceiling. "Is it just me, or is it getting a little toasty in here?"

I scanned the remainder of the list, but my eyes were drawn to the top of the page again and again, landing always on the same name. Isaac Jackson. Thinking about how incredible his performance was at auditions was making my palms sweat and my toes curl and . . . I just wouldn't think about him. That was the key. I wouldn't think about him until rehearsals started. I had enough on my mind anyway.

~~~~~

My plan was foiled almost immediately.

As much as I tried to ignore Isaac Jackson until our first rehearsal, he managed to track me down during study hall later that afternoon. He approached me and Sarah at our usual table in the cafeteria—the one closest to the window and civilization—his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, looking wary.

"Abby Hamilton, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Isaac Jackson." Good Lord. His voice could melt butter. Isaac held out a hand, and I shook it, his fingers cool against my skin. "Nice to officially meet you. I guess I'll be playing the Arthur to your Angeline this fall."

Sarah's classic Fangirl Squeal of Excitement escaped her lips, and she immediately ran toward the bathrooms, a few girls in our study hall snickering at her unbridled enthusiasm. Sarah was a hopeless romantic. In her mind, because Isaac and I were now starring in a musical, we would obviously end up married with tons of babies and she needed to give us some privacy.

"She's more excited about cannibalistic royals than I am," Isaac said. He took a seat in the chair Sarah vacated, glancing at her "homework" spread out on the table.

Sarah wasn't doing homework. She was in the process of making a new Red Comet collage for her locker shrine because she claimed the old one was "dated." "Dated" in Sarah's mind meant the pictures of Connor in her locker were from July, and it was now the end of September. Not that anything changed when the public couldn't see Connor's face under his mask. Red Comet could look old and gray as far as anyone knew.

"Are you into superheroes?" I asked, noticing Isaac shuffle through Sarah's Red Comet pictures.

Isaac shrugged. "I don't know much about them. We don't have them where I come from."

I eyed him incredulously. "Where are you from?" I found it difficult to believe there were places in the United States without supers.

"Small town," Isaac said. "Idaho."

"That's far. Why come to Pennsylvania?"

"Oh, uh." He suddenly looked nervous. Isaac played with the corner of a picture of Connor flying over the city. I noticed his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. "I came to live with my uncle," was all he said.

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to pry." The last thing I wanted was to make him uncomfortable if we were going to spend hours together in rehearsals.

Isaac ran a hand through his dark hair, causing it to stick straight up from his forehead. "No, don't worry about it. It's no problem." He didn't elaborate on his living situation or hometown any further. "So . . . do you like superheroes?" Isaac gestured to Sarah's Red Comet photos.

The award for World's Most Unladylike Sound in a Cafeteria went to me as a snort erupted from my nose. Isaac raised an eyebrow while my face turned red. "Sure, I guess you could say that. They have their moments." All I could think about was the five bucks Connor gave me to get a mustard stain out of his super suit last night.

"You must meet a lot of them with your dad being the mayor and all." Isaac leaned closer in his chair. None of my classmates ever bothered to ask about my connection with Morriston's supers. Rightly so because I had never met any of them besides Red Comet.

"I haven't, actually," I said. "Only Red Comet the other week during the school assembly."

"Huh. Interesting." Isaac stared at me intently, his bright green eyes barely blinking. Almost as if he was egging me on to express more about my super encounters and was disappointed by my lack of information.

Realizing I had nothing interesting to contribute to our conversation, Isaac stood. "Well, I guess I'll see you in rehearsals, Abigail."

No one called me Abigail except . . .

I squeezed my eyes shut tight as Isaac walked away, strengthening my resolve not to think about his dark brown hair or bright green eyes if I could help it. Because if I thought too much, I would start to wonder if it was more than a coincidence that Morriston got a new student right before the first appearance of Iron Phantom. But many guys had brown hair and green eyes, and I reminded myself I had never even seen Iron Phantom's hair—only his eyelashes.

His dark lashes meant nothing.

"How did it go, Abby?" Sarah bounded back to her seat after Isaac left, a fresh glue stick in hand for her collage. She applied a generous amount to the back of Connor's head and smoothed it down with her thumb.

How did it go? was a loaded question. Isaac was more inquisitive than most Morriston citizens, who had grown up around supers. He seemed harmless, but I wasn't sure. I had known most of my classmates since we were five. I knew who dated who, who had food allergies, who was afraid of butterflies. I knew virtually nothing about Isaac Jackson, and considering everything that happened over the past few days, that made me incredibly uneasy.

"I'm not sure," I said as I watched Sarah glue cutouts of her and Red Comet atop a skyscraper beneath the sunset. The answer to her question depended on how much I believed in coincidence.