Inside Straight

Carrie Vaughn Chosen Ones: I

The three-story Brownstone burned. Tongues of fire crawled out of every window, waves of heat and clouds of smoke billowed up, choking the nighttime air. Shouts of residents trapped inside sounded over the roar of flames. People leaning out of windows, begging for help, were shadows against a backdrop of red fire. A nearby fire truck sat abandoned. Hoses hadn’t even been hooked to the fire hydrant.

Ana stood on the curb and watched the inferno. Even a dozen yards away, the fire pressed scorching fingers against her face. She drew a breath and coughed at the dry, soot-filled stench. Horror at the sight froze her into inaction. This was too much. This was impossible. They didn’t expect her to actually do anything, did they?

“We don’t have any powers that can handle this,” said Drummer Boy, squinting at the glare of the flames. “Unless somebody here is invincible and forgot to tell anyone.”

The joker Drummer Boy was over seven feet tall and had six arms. All of them were lean, powerful, and covered with tattoos, along with much of his torso—which contained a set of tympanic membranes. He really was his own drum set, and he usually went shirtless to show it off. He managed to stand with all six arms akimbo, hands lined up on his hips. With his shaved head, scowling expression, and firelight glinting off his skin, he seemed like a monster from legend.

Curveball, the pretty nineteen-year-old with a perfect figure and blond ponytail, brimmed with energy. “Let’s stop bitching and do this thing.” She dashed forward, toward the blaze.

She’s crazy, Ana thought, hanging back by the curb.

The others—Hardhat, Gardener, Hive, Wild Fox, and Drummer Boy—followed Curveball. No one got close before the heat drove them back. It came off the building in shimmering walls. The air itself seemed to burn.

Hardhat reached out, seeming for a moment to paint his hand across the air. Along the wall in front of him, a structure appeared: one by one, glowing yellow I beams morphed into existence. They stacked into a scaffold that climbed to a second-story window, where one of the victims leaned out. But he couldn’t convince the guy that the phantom I beams were real and would hold his weight if he climbed onto them.

“Come on, you fucking cock head! Get your sorry fucking ass down here! Jesus Christ!” he hollered. The victim kept shaking his head.

“I’ll get him.” Drummer Boy ran for the scaffold. Using all six arms, he made short work of climbing the beams, and once at the top, braced himself while reaching for the victim. He winced away from a blast of sparks that poured from the window. The sparks, if anything, encouraged the man to take Drummer Boy’s hand and allow himself to be coaxed from the window.

One down, at least. The flames seemed to be climbing higher, and the shouts from within continued. Drummer Boy helped a second victim climb from the window. Two rescued. Maybe this would turn out all right after all.

Ana’s heart was racing, and she was just standing there. She clenched her fists, watching, praying. It was all she could do.

From inside, sounding over the crackle and roar of flames, a baby started crying. The sound was piercing, and jacked the tension to a new level.

Gardener pulled a handful of something from the leather pouch at her belt and flung it toward the building. Seeds. They instantly took root in the concrete and grew at a terrific rate. In minutes, vines sprouted and climbed, sending out leaves and tendrils, anchoring on the brick wall. Following Hardhat’s lead, she used living vines instead of conjured steel.

Before the vines reached the first window, however, they blackened and caught fire. The plants collapsed into ashes.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“You got anything in there that can shoot water?” Wild Fox asked.

“There aren’t any plants that shoot water,” she said, scowling at him.

Meanwhile, Hive rubbed his hands together in preparation of—something. His expression was uncertain, however. “Maybe I can do some scouting. Find out where the people are so we don’t waste any time searching.”

His outline fuzzed. Then, his shirt and pants collapsed, and in his place a swarm of tiny green wasplike insects hovered. The swarm maintained the outline of the man—a disturbing, wavering form, rather than anything with human features—and raised a nebulous, buzzing arm in salute. Then, he scattered. The swarm broke apart, zoomed to the building, and entered through three different windows.

“Is that bastard going to be okay?” Hardhat asked, staring. He’d built a second scaffold by another window and rescued a third victim.

In only a second, almost as quickly as they’d entered the building, the swarm returned, tendrils of insects shooting out of the windows and dropping to the ground. There, they coalesced, crawling together to form the shape of a man, kneeling and naked. “Bugs and smoke… don’t mix,” he managed, coughing.

Wild Fox pointed. “Dude, you know you’re naked?”

Regaining his feet, Hive glared. “Thanks very much. I might have missed that little fact.” With a bout of angry buzzing, his hip region snapped out of existence, to be replaced by a Speedo band of writhing insects. He went to retrieve his clothing.

“I bet the girls love that,” Curveball said, smirking.

He leered. “You could find out.”

“We don’t have time for this.” She drew a pair of marbles out of the pocket of her shorts. Then she wound up for the pitch. She threw with that odd softballer’s pitch, the underhanded swing and snap. The marble flew, faster than a softball, faster than any thrown object had any right to fly. It burned through the air, glowing yellow, before impacting on the front door. The wood shattered with the force of an explosion. She threw the second one at a ground-floor window. The impact left a jagged hole in the side of the house.

“Great,” Hive said, deadpan. “Now we can see the fire even better.” She glared at him.

Exposure to more air only made the flames larger and more ferocious. The baby was still crying.

Curveball turned to Ana. “Earth Witch, you try something. We’ve got to do something.”

Ana shook her head. She wasn’t going to open a hole in the ground just for the sake of doing something and run the risk of undermining the whole building. They hadn’t been too successful so far, but that would take the cake of failures.

She said, “Maybe we could try the fire hose.” Stupid idea, yeah. That didn’t mean they had to stare at her like she was an idiot—like they were doing now.

Curveball and Drummer Boy glanced at each other, then ran to the hose and fire hydrant. They wrestled with it for a minute, without making progress. Buttoning up his shirt, Hive helpfully observed, “I don’t think you’re doing that right.”

“Then you do it, Bugsy!” Drummer Boy said. He dropped the hose, which he’d been hoisting with all six hands.

The heavy nozzle yanked out of Curveball’s grip. “Hey!”

“Shit,” Drummer Boy muttered. “Here, let me try.” Using brute force, he manhandled the nozzle into place and managed to wrench open the valve on the hydrant. The hose filled, writhed, and twisted out of their grip, spraying a sheet of water across the pavement.

“Watch it!” Hive shouted as a tail of the spray caught him.

“Stop standing there and help!” Curveball shot back.

Grabbing hold of the nozzle and pinning it down while Curveball attempted to wrestle with the hose, Drummer Boy muttered, “This is great. This is just great.”

The baby’s crying seemed to get louder.

They managed to maneuver the fire hose in place to spray water at the blazing windows, but by this time the flames were monstrous, engulfing the building. Shouting continued to emanate from within—more people needing rescue. They didn’t have much time, and the minutes dragged painfully.

Then Curveball said, “Oh my God.” She cupped her hands to her face and shouted, “Hardhat! He’s gonna jump! The guy’s jumping!”

From one of the third-story windows, a man was climbing over the sill. Hardhat came running. “Where?”

“To the right!”

Drummer Boy dropped the hose and made a dash for the window, as if he could actually catch a falling body, but it was too late. Hardhat only laid one of his I beams down before the victim landed.

“Motherfucker!” Hardhat shouted. Drummer Boy gave an angry shake of an arm.

They had no way of getting inside. They couldn’t pull anyone out.

“Would somebody do something?” Curveball yelled. She kept saying that.

Hardhat, sweat and soot smearing his face, turned on her. “What the fuck you want me to do? Blow pixie dust out my ass? I’ve been doing something!”

Gardener tried to step in. “Arguing isn’t going to help anything.”

“At least we’re good at that,” Hive said, and he actually smiled.

Then they all started shouting at each other.

Some team, Ana thought.

“Maybe I can make it look like we’re doing a good job,” Wild Fox said, flicking his fox tail. Suddenly, another Wild Fox—a young Asian guy with floppy black hair and a quirky grin, fur-covered fox ears, and a luxurious fox tail poking out the back of his jeans, swishing like a banner behind him—ran from the building, carrying the latest teen pop star in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and planted dozens of kisses on him.

Ana looked at him. “I thought your illusions don’t show up on camera. That isn’t going to help us.”

He frowned. “Crap.” The vision before them popped out of existence.

Then, an air horn blared. The flow of water from the fire hose slowed and stopped, cut off from another source. Floodlights snapped on, drowning the area in blazing white light. The seven Hearts squinted against the glare.

Inside the building, the fires died as the feeds from gas nozzles shut off. Four people walked from the building—perfectly safe, uninjured. They were stuntmen, wearing protective suits and helmets. A fifth climbed off the stunt mat set up at the side of the building. Hollywood magic at its finest. They removed their masks and smirked at the seven aces as they passed. The three who’d actually been rescued weren’t any less accusing.

From a side doorway leading into the Hollywood backlot, a woman emerged. She wore designer jeans and a fitted, cream-colored blouse. With her statuesque frame and long brunette hair, she was already stunning, but one feature stood out above all the others: her wings, mottled white and beige, spectacular even folded back.

Peregrine crossed her arms and regarded the seven would-be heroes, who avoided her gaze. “That was a little underwhelming. But I think I’ll save any more criticism for the judges. Go home and wait for your next call.”

A half-dozen cameras captured the failure from every angle.

Team Hearts had their own Humvee for use during the show, tricked out and painted with their logo. The marketing gurus had thought of everything.

Hardhat drove, and for a long time no one said a word.

Finally, Hive broke the silence. “Well. That could have gone better.”

Crammed into his seat in back, Drummer Boy snorted a laugh.

After that, the seven passengers glared silently out their own windows. The camera planted in the dashboard captured an image of profound disappointment, and it would play on millions of TV sets for all the world to see.

Ana Cortez—Earth Witch, so-called—thought through the scenario again and again, and wondered what she could have done. Dug a hole. Dug a ditch. Undermined the building. And what good would that have done? None. Now the team had lost, and one of them would get voted off.

Almost, she wished she’d get the boot so she could go home and forget about all this.

Team Hearts headquarters was a sprawling West Hollywood manor, with a gated driveway, stucco walls, a luscious lawn and flourishing garden—the kind of place that played well on television and promoted the fantasy of a Southern California paradise.

All of it was just a backdrop for the drama.

Curveball—Kate Brandt—stormed from the garage into the combined kitchen and dining area. In her, the stunned disappointment of their failure had changed to fury. Jaw set, she turned on her slower teammates.

“They should have given us some kind of warning. If we’d been able to plan—”

Hive laughed. “That’s the whole point. We’re not supposed to plan. We’re supposed to face the unknown. Battle the unexpected.” Arms raised, he flashed his hands to emphasize his sarcasm.

“I thought they’d start with something small,” Andrew Yamauchi, Wild Fox, said. His tail revealed his disappointment, hanging almost to the floor. “Rescuing kittens from trees or something.”

Hardhat—T.T. Taszycki—leaned against the counter. “Makes you wonder what the fuck is next, don’t it?”

Hive just wouldn’t let up. “Look at it this way—that farce back there was highly entertaining. It should get us a lot of air time.”

Curveball turned on him. “Would you shut up? There was nothing entertaining about that! We were awful!”

Curveball and Hive faced each other down across the too bright kitchen, and any friendly sparks that had lit between them over the last week vanished. The others lurked around the edges of the room. Even Drummer Boy, all seven feet of him, managed to slink out of their way.

Jonathan Hive was too slick. He had a studied detachment, a journalistic objectivity that went a little too far—he was always an observer. He’d put himself on the outside, and he was used to commenting on everything.

He regarded Curveball and said with wry amazement, “You’re actually taking all this seriously, aren’t you? That’s kinda cute.”

He’d failed to observe that she’d already taken a marble out of her pocket and gripped it in her fist.

Ana spotted it. “Kate, no—”

Too late. Curveball wound up her pitch and threw the missile at him.

“Whoa!” His eyes went wide, and his shoulder—where the marble would have struck—disintegrated with the sound of buzzing. The cloth of his shirt collapsed as the flesh dissolved into a swarm of tiny green particles, which scattered before the marble as he flinched away. A second later, the hundred buzzing insects coalesced, crawling under his collar and merging back into his body. The marble didn’t touch him, but hit the wall behind him. A faint insect humming lingered.

To her credit, Curveball hadn’t thrown the marble hard. She hadn’t put all her anger into it. It would have only bruised him. But it did embed itself in the wall behind Hive and send cracks radiating across the paint.

He glared at the wall, then at her. “I guess this would be a bad time to ask if you, ah, wanted to have dinner with me. Or something.”

She stomped out of the kitchen and through the French doors to the redwood porch. A moment later, Drummer Boy followed her. No doubt another camera would capture them and whatever heart-to-heart conversation they were having.

Back in the kitchen, Hive shrugged away from the wall, straightened his shirt, and for once seemed uncomfortable that he was the center of attention. Without a word—uncharacteristically without a word—he hunched his shoulders against their stares and stalked to the back of the house to hide away in his bedroom.

Seemed as good a plan as any, Ana thought, and did the same.

Break to commercial.

This was all Roberto’s fault.

A month ago, back home in New Mexico, Ana lugged bags of groceries into the trailer where she lived with her father and brother. Seventeen-year-old Roberto lay stretched out on the sofa, reading a magazine and watching the evening news in Spanish.

“You should watch in English,” Ana said. “They want you to speak English in school.”

“Being bilingual looks really good on the college applications. It shows I’m in touch with my roots. They like that. Makes ’em look all multicultural.”

She unloaded the bags on the kitchen counter, shoving aside a newspaper, mail, and other trash. Roberto immediately sat up and protested.

“Hey—you’re supposed to look at that!”

“What?” She’d started unloading groceries: cans and boxes in the cupboard, hamburger and juice in the fridge.

Roberto grabbed the newspaper and shook it at her. “This—I put it out so you’d see it.”

“See what?” she said, losing patience.

“This!”

She took the paper and looked at the half-page ad he held in front of her.

The ad was simple, but the words screamed with purpose—somebody’s crazy idea. What was Roberto thinking?

“What’s this?” she said.

“Ana,” Roberto said, clearly exasperated. “The next great ace? They’re talking about you! You have to go to the audition.”

She shoved the paper at him and went back to the groceries. She had to get dinner started. Maybe Papa wouldn’t feel like eating, but if he did, she’d have supper ready.

“Ana!”

“I don’t have time. I can’t take time off work. I can’t get to Denver. Besides, they’re not talking about me. I dig holes, that’s all I do. There’ll be people there who can do big things. Flashy things. Fireworks, you know? They won’t want me.” She was just la brujita.

She expected more whining from him, her name spoken in an almost screeching voice. She didn’t expect him to turn quiet, and very, very serious.

“You’re wrong. The things you can do—you’re an ace. You could move the world if you thought of it. You have to try. It’s your chance to get out of here.”

Get out of here? She’d never even considered it. Roberto had the better chance of that. And someone had to take care of Papa. “Roberto. I can’t.”

“Ana. You have to.” A tricky smile grew on his face. “I already called Burt. He gave you the week off. I got Pauli to loan me his truck. I’ll drive.”

This was definitely a setup.

They left the night before the auditions, packed a cooler with sodas and sandwiches, and stopped at a rest area near Pueblo to get some sleep. Before dawn, they continued for the final three hour drive to Denver. Ana spent most of the ride listening to Roberto’s chatter.

“So maybe you don’t make the show. But even if you do nothing else but dig wells for the rest of your life, you can do better than Burt. You oughta be getting paid more than what he’s paying you.”

Burt didn’t pay well, but he paid under the table, saving everyone a lot of trouble. She put away as much as she could for Roberto and college.

“I hear you can make a ton of money in off-shore oil rigs. You should try that.”

“I don’t think I could do that kind of drilling.”

“You could try, couldn’t you? Or maybe houses. You could dig foundations for all the houses they’re building around Albuquerque. Don’t you think?”

It was flattering, how earnest he sounded. He should have been the one born with the ace. He’d have made better use of it. “Maybe,” was all she said, and he finally dropped the subject.

When they arrived at the stadium at around 8 A.M., the parking lot was already full and a line stretched along the sidewalk. She and Roberto stared, amazed. At first, she’d been surprised auditions were being held at the football stadium—surely, that many people wouldn’t show up.

“Wow. This is crazy,” he said.

Even a brief glance at the line revealed that these were potential contestants, not spectators. Ana saw a woman with four legs and diaphanous green moth wings, a seven-foot-tall man with long, sharp-looking quills sprouting along his head and down his neck like a Mohawk, and another man with green skin and glittering red eyes, faceted like gems.

Among them stood dozens who looked entirely natural—but what could they do?

Roberto said, “You get signed up. I’ll find somewhere to park.”

She didn’t think she’d have the guts to stand in that line without Roberto backing her up. But he’d gone through all the trouble to get her here. He’d be disappointed if she chickened out. She climbed out of the truck and watched her brother drive away.

A petite Asian woman holding a clipboard and wearing a headset with a microphone marked the end of the line. She had tribal tattoos crawling up both arms. Ana couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to shift, literally crawling. She tried not to stare.

She asked Ana for her name, then asked, “What can you do?”

“I dig holes,” Ana said.

The woman raised a brow, but gave a tired shrug as if to say that wasn’t the worst thing she’d heard all morning. She handed Ana a square of paper with a number on it—“68.” “All right, Ana, we’ll be getting started soon. We’ll have chairs set up for you on the sidelines. When your number is called, you’ll talk to the judges, then show us your stuff. You need any props? Any kind of target or anything?”

Dazed, Ana shook her head. “Just some ground. Some dirt.”

The woman smiled. “You’ll have the whole football field. Assuming it doesn’t get blown up before you get in there.”

Denver was the second-to-last audition. The woman seemed to be speaking from experience.

Secretly, Ana sort of hoped the whole thing blew up before she got in there. She shouldn’t have had that sandwich this morning. Her stomach was churning.

People were still joining the line. The guy in front of Ana was practically bouncing, rocking on his feet and gazing all around him with a face-splitting grin. He was about her age, twenty-one maybe, a clean-cut white guy with thick brown hair.

“This is so cool,” he said. “This is going to be so cool. I so totally can’t wait to do this.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

“It’s a secret.” His grin turned knowing.

What could any of these people do, and how did her power compare? She was from a small town in the New Mexico desert. She’d never met another person infected with the wild card virus, and here she was, surrounded by them. Sixty-eight of them. More, because the line now stretched a dozen people behind her. A woman with feathers for hair. A young boy whose fingers were long, boneless, prehensile.

She was just another person in the line. It was almost a comfort.

Ahead, the line shifted, shuffling forward in the way of crowds. A renewed bout of nausea gripped her stomach.

Where was Roberto? It was going to be okay, she told herself. She’d dug a thousand holes in her life. She could dig this one, then go home.

She rubbed the shirt over her chest, feeling for the medallion she wore around her neck. It was the emblem of Santa Barbara, patron saint of geologists, miners, and ditch diggers, the image of a gently smiling woman with a chalice in one hand and sword and pickax in the other. Her mother had given it to her before she died, many years ago now. Most of her life, but Ana still remembered. So she wasn’t on her own. A part of Mama was with her.

The wild card had killed Mama—she was a latent, and it finally killed her when Roberto was born. Ana carried that part of Mama with her, in her power.

Please, Mama, get me through this.

The production company offered water, sodas, and sandwiches for lunch, and Ana forced herself to eat. They didn’t want anyone passing out before they had a chance to show off. That was what they called it, showing off. To Ana, it had always just been her job.

Some of the normal-looking people weren’t aces at all. They stood before the three judges, glaring dramatically, and nothing happened. Ana caught one of the exchanges.

The lead judge—at least the one who talked the most, the journalist, Digger Downs—asked the man, “What is it you do?”

“I can control your mind.” He grinned wildly.

Downs stared back. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. And you’re going to let me on the show. I’m going to be one of your contestants, and I’m going to win!”

“Right. Sure. Next, please!”

“Hey, wait—”

Security hustled him away before he could get in another word. The auditions continued. For every dozen duds or fakes, someone came along who left the audience gasping.

Early on, a woman who called herself Gardener—slim, black, and intense—trailed a handful of seeds on the ground, in front of the judges’ table. Instantly, they grew into trees, towering conifers that left the judges in their own little forest. Auditions halted for an hour while one of them, the strongman Harlem Hammer, uprooted them and cleared them away.

Later, a good-looking, dark-haired guy in his twenties stepped onto the field and flexed his fingers. Donning a cocky grin, he flung out his arms like he was throwing a ball, and a stream of glaring blue flames jetted from his hands and struck the frame of a gutted car. A layer of frost and icicles formed on the metal, even in the midday heat. Then he fired yellow flames at the pile of Gardener’s uprooted trees, which caught fire. Assistants were on hand to put out the flames with fire extinguishers. Finally, he faced the judges, hands raised, and he was on fire. His head and hands burned with writhing purple flames, and he was smiling, unharmed. He called himself the Candle.

This was exactly what Ana meant when she told Roberto there’d be flashy stuff here.

“Sixty-seven!” one of the production assistants called, checking her clipboard.

“Sixty-seven, Paul Blackwell!”

“Yes!” the guy in front of her exclaimed, then dashed for the field. He hadn’t been able to shut up about how cool his power was.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Ana wondered if he was another one of those nats who claimed vast mental powers. Then, one of the judges—Topper, the former government ace—sneezed. And sneezed again. And couldn’t stop sneezing. Then the Harlem Hammer sneezed. Both of them were incapacitated, wracked with violent seizures of sneezing.

And Downs—he gripped the edge of the table, caught in some seizure of his own. He wasn’t sneezing, but his eyes rolled partway back in his head, and his body twitched, almost rhythmically. Oh my, Ana thought.

Paul Blackwell crossed his arms and regarded them with a satisfied grin.

“Jesus Christ, would you stop that!” Downs shouted. The seizures stopped and the three judges slouched over their table, exhausted.

Topper wiped her nose with a tissue and said angrily, “Mr. Blackwell—”

“I am Spasm!“ the guy said, punching both arms into the air.

“Fine. I think we’ve seen enough of your—I hesitate to even call it an ace—”

“Hold on, not so fast,” Downs said, and Topper rolled her eyes. “Er, Spasm. You say you can do this sort of thing to anyone?”

“Yes, sir!” he said, grinning. “At least, so far.”

The three judges leaned together to confer, and a moment later Spasm left the field, grinning. Downs scratched a note on the paper in front of him. Then the production assistant called, “Sixty-eight! You’re up! Ana Cortez!”

Ana’s heart raced. This was it. Finally. She spotted a guy up in the stands, waving both arms wildly. Roberto, among the spectators. He seemed so happy. The sight of him settled her.

Smoothing her hands on her jeans, she went to face the judges. The three looked so with-it, so assured of themselves. They’d recovered quickly from their encounter with Spasm, and their gazes were almost bored. Who could blame them? Surely they’d seen everything by now.

Downs asked, “What is it you do, Ana?”

She’d said it a hundred times by now. “I dig holes.”

“You dig holes.” His expression was blank.

“Yeah.”

“Well.” He shuffled some papers in front of him. “Let’s see you dig a hole.”

She stood alone at the edge of the field, a hundred yards of green spread before her. She’d never had an audience like this—not since she was little, digging mazes in the playground, when all the neighbors gathered and whispered, brujita, es una brujita de la tierra. This crowd didn’t make a sound. The silence marked thick anticipation.

She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see them.

Kneeling, she touched her medallion, then put her hands on the ground.

Had to be big. Something flashy. The holes she dug for work—nobody could see how far down they went. So she had to do something else. It didn’t need to be precise, no one here was measuring. Turn the hole sideways, and dig it fast.

Now.

Particles moved under her hands, the dirt shifting away from her. The ground rumbled as it might in an earthquake. It vibrated under her, no longer solid, sounding like the soft roar of a distant waterfall. She opened her eyes just as a trench raced away from her. In seconds a cleft opened, splitting the earth to the opposite end zone. A hundred yards. Wide and gaping, it was four feet deep, angled like a steep canyon. Earthwork ridges piled up on either side, and a gray film of dust floated in the air above it. She’d cracked open the earth like an egg.

A few spectators coughed. The air was thick and smelled of chalk. She breathed out a sigh. Her heart was racing, either from the nerves or the effort. Her hands, still planted on the ground, were trembling, like they still felt the vibrations of the earth. She brushed them together, wiping the dust off.

Still, no one said anything. Ana didn’t know what to do next. Stand up, she supposed. Go home. She’d shown them her trick, done what Roberto wanted her to do. Now he could take her home, as soon as the judges told her to leave.

The judges were staring. Ana realized: the whole crowd was staring, wide eyed, eerily silent.

She stared back for a long time before Downs pointed his pen at her. “You’re in.”

When he met her outside, the first thing Roberto said to her was, “Told you so.”

The next week passed in a haze. The production company took care of everything—plane tickets, schedules, publicity. Even a stipend. She gave the whole check to Roberto. They weren’t going to have her pay anymore, at least not until she got back. She assumed she’d get back quickly—that she wouldn’t win.

The production assistant with the tattoos, who called herself Ink, wanted to know what Ana’s name was. The show seemed to have hundreds of assistants, each with their own little task, clipboards and cell phones never far away.

“Your ace name,” Ink explained. “What we’re going to call you on the show.”

“I don’t have an ace name,” Ana said—then realized she did. She always had. She’d just ignored it.

“Well, we need to come up with one. Any ideas?”

“Brujita—” she started to say, then changed her mind. That was a name for a little girl. If she was going to do this, she ought to do it right. “La Bruja de la Tierra. That’s what people call me.”

Ink frowned. “That’s kind of a mouthful. What is that, Spanish?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Witch. Witch of the Earth.”

“Earth Witch.” She scribbled on her clipboard. “Yeah, cool, that’s great.”

She walked off before Ana could argue.

She’d grown up in a rickety trailer home at the edge of the desert, surrounded by Mexicanos like her, yet marked as different by her power, always the odd one. Now, suddenly, she’d been plucked from her old life and set down in a new one.

She certainly wasn’t the odd one here.

At the meet-and-greet party in the dining room at a fancy old hotel in Hollywood, the contestants met each other for the first time and learned their team assignments. All of it was being filmed. Don’t look at the cameras, Ana kept telling herself.

After a while, she almost forgot they were there.

She recognized the Candle, Gardener, and even Spasm from the Denver audition. Spasm waved at her across the room, hoisting his drink in salute. Everyone else was new, and she tried to figure out who they were and what they could do. There was Diver, the woman who had real gills. Rustbelt, whose skin was iron, whose touch could turn a car to rust, and who clanked when he moved. Then there was Drummer Boy, already a star as the front man for the band Joker Plague. Hard to miss, at seven feet tall. Not to mention his six arms. Ana felt even smaller among these—sometimes literal—luminaries.

Of course, she was put on a team with Drummer Boy—who immediately announced that he preferred to be called “DB.” Then there was pretty blond Curveball. Ana was small and drab beside them. Well, I’m not going to last long before they vote me off.

“You look kind of nervous,” someone said. Startled, Ana turned to find Curveball—Kate was her real name—standing beside her.

“Yeah,” Ana admitted, “aren’t you?”

Kate shook her head, and her gaze gleamed as she looked around, taking in the old architecture and the crowd of people. “No, this is exciting. I can’t wait to get started.”

“So, I guess we’re all on the same team.” A man in his midtwenties, with scruffy brown hair and an amused expression, sidled up to them. He had his hands shoved in his pants pockets.

“You’re Jonathan, right?” Kate said.

Jonathan Hive offered his hand for shaking, which she did. Ana was prepared to slink into the background, but he noticed her and shook her hand as well.

“Some of us seem to be a little more comfortable with this than others.” Jonathan nodded at Drummer Boy, who was signing autographs for some of the crew.

With all those tattoos and that oddly shaped torso with its living drums, it was hard to look away from him. He seemed to enjoy being the giant in the room. He especially seemed to welcome the attention of the women. American Hero was blessed with—or rather, the producers had been sure to choose—a stunning selection of beautiful women, of almost every ethnicity. With six arms, Drummer Boy could flirt with all of them—resting a hand on one woman’s back, another on a different shoulder, while touching a strand of hair of a third.

The hair in question belonged to Cleo—or Cleopatra—who could teleport herself and whatever she was touching short distances, leaving behind a pop sound, as air rushed to fill the empty space. In response to DB’s touch, Cleo laughed and sidled up to the joker, tucking herself by his side. Already, Ana had caught her new nickname among the production assistants: Pop Tart.

“Hey, is that Peregrine?” Kate said, and Ana turned to look.

It was, emerging through a hallway from another part of the building, followed by a lanky young production assistant carrying a clipboard and a cup of coffee. The talk show diva and perennial celebrity’s wings fluttered slightly as she turned and addressed the assistant. Ana couldn’t hear, but the exchange seemed odd—overly familiar, maybe. One hand on her hip, Peregrine pointed a finger, and the assistant nodded meekly at what turned out to be a lecture.

That wasn’t a boss dressing down a subordinate, Ana realized. That was a mother admonishing her son.

Peregrine took the cup of coffee from him and turned her attention to another member of the crew, and the production assistant came toward them. He had coffee-and-cream skin and light, curly hair. Young, maybe twenty, his boyish face nonetheless had a tired look.

“Hi, I’m John Fortune,” he said. “Looks like I’ll be the traffic cop this afternoon. Let me show you where we need you to stand for the shoot.”

It took a half-hour for him to break up the party and herd everyone to where they needed to be for the publicity photo session.

John asked, “Anything else you need? Is everybody okay?”

“I think we’re fine,” Kate said, returning his smile. She looked around for confirmation. “Yeah?”

“Great. We’ll start in a couple minutes.” With a mock salute, he left them.

“I’d watch out for that guy,” Hive said to Kate. “Charm, multiethnic good looks—you may be doomed.”

“Oh yeah?” she said.

“Yeah, I saw the way he looked at you.”

“Kind of like how you’re looking at me?”

Hive quickly glanced away and pursed his lips. “So what if I am?” Kate blushed, and Hive sighed. “Whew, we haven’t been here an hour and we’re already making great TV drama.”

Another half-hour passed while the crew adjusted the lighting.

“Just like being on tour,” Drummer Boy muttered. He was nevertheless smiling.

“This show business stuff must be old hat to you,” Kate said, looking up at him.

“Old hat with a new twist. The scenery here’s way better.” He winked at Kate, who actually giggled.

Oh, this was going to be a long day, Ana thought. She was so out of her league.

A man Ana recognized from the audition detached from the mob of crew and regarded them all, a lord surveying his domain: Michael Berman, a network executive on hand to observe the proceedings. He was in his thirties, slick and intense. Even Ana could tell his suit and tie were expensive.

“This is fabulous. Thank you all for helping make this a reality. I can’t wait to see what happens over the next few weeks. And I’m sure I can count on you to make this the best show possible.” He rubbed his hands together with obvious glee.

“Is it a competition or entertainment?” Hive said with a smirk. “The world may

never know.”

“I don’t think I like that guy,” Kate whispered to Ana.

Ana had to smile. “I know what you mean.”

The meet-and-greet was at the hotel, but the actual unveiling of the teams for the premiere of American Hero took place on a Hollywood sound stage that looked like a night club, all dark glass and chrome, touched with blue neon.

Peregrine was the emcee. In her fifties now, she was as poised and beautiful as ever, and her wings framed her perfectly. She wore a black strapless evening gown that shimmered gold when she turned, and her hair lay in loose waves around her shoulders and wings.

“Welcome to the first of what promises to be twelve weeks of excitement, astonishment, heartbreak, and—we hope—heroism the likes of which you have never seen. We’ve searched the country for undiscovered aces, for great powers, and for people who have the potential to change the world. This is American Hero.”

Then came the theme song, a pounding, blood-stirring rock anthem that would no doubt be hitting the charts in weeks to come. Peregrine introduced the judges, two who in their younger days had been beloved aces in their own right: Topper, wearing her trademark tuxedo and top hat, from which she could pull any manner of items, and the Harlem Hammer, the massive, super-strong ace who had been coaxed out of retirement. The third judge knew his aces—had reported on them for Aces! for going on twenty-five years. Who better to judge the up-and-coming generation?

Thomas “Digger” Downs spoke seriously, regarding the camera as he would an old friend. “After sixty years of living with the wild card, you’d think we couldn’t be astonished anymore. That we couldn’t be amazed. We’ve seen alien invasions, madmen with the power to take over the world, plagues of crime that steal away your very mind, strangers who can peer into your soul. Women who fly, men who lift tanks, deformities that strain our definition of what it means to be human. We’ve seen witch hunts, assassinations, politics run amuck, the world brought to the brink and back. You’d think that surely we’d seen it all.

“But I can tell you that we haven’t. Over the last few weeks I’ve traveled from one end of the country to the other. And I have been amazed.”

He introduced the next segment: highlights from the seven auditions, potential contestants who tried and failed—sometimes to the great amusement of the audience—and those who tried and astonished.

A dozen concrete walls shattered.

A dozen cars rose from the ground, or disintegrated, or burst into flames.

A dozen bone-shattering falls were survived. A dozen aces flew to the tops of nearby buildings.

The sequence of clips paid special attention to the ace, Curveball. The show’s editors were already deciding who their heroes were.

She threw a baseball with an underhanded snap. Her whole body seemed to pop like a spring, and the ball flew, faster than any major league pitch. It glowed yellow, then orange, scorching the air it passed through.

Then it turned. Hand outstretched, Kate guided it. As if it had a mind of its own, it flew around an overturned bus, back through a maze of twisted rebar, and slammed into one of the stacks of concrete blocks that served as a makeshift wall.

The wall shattered with the force of an explosion. Concrete and dust flew in all directions and the sound rattled the seats all over the stadium. When the air cleared, the wall was gone. Disintegrated. The missile—a simple baseball, everyone was sure to note—had destroyed it.

Downs’s prediction was right: The audience at home was astonished and amazed, and they couldn’t wait to see more.

“Now,” Peregrine said, donning her brightest smile yet. “Meet your new American Heroes!”

Twenty-eight contestants joined the winged beauty on stage, standing in groups of seven with their teams: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs. It was glorious—lights flashed, music swelled, and it sounded like cheering.

Ana was caught in it all like a deer in the headlights, a tight smile locked on her face. Drummer Boy punched six hands in the air, and Wild Fox’s tail flashed sparks as it twitched.

Amidst the thrills, elation, and chaos, Jonathan Hive tapped his wrist.

“All right, kids, check your watches,” he said. “Your fifteen minutes starts now.”

A week later, the party was over.

Four teams gathered on the same stage, which now served as the field of judgment. Behind each team, as part of the backdrop, was its logo: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs.

No one knew what to expect, so the atmosphere was beyond tense. It crackled. The last time they’d stood here, the mood had been celebratory: They were the chosen ones, they’d been anointed. Now, they had failed. They’d had their first trial, and they didn’t feel good about it.

One team—Clubs—held itself differently. Their frowns were a bit more smug, their backs a bit straighter. Before any of them saw the replays, they could all guess who had won this round.

In fact, the replay of Team Clubs’ assault on the burning building couldn’t have been any more glorious if it had been scripted.

Stuntman did the impossible: ran into the burning building by the front door. Nearly invulnerable, he couldn’t burn. He made three trips, pulling out four “victims,” including the doll programmed with a digital recording of a crying baby. His clothes were scorched to nearly nothing, but Diver was on hand with a coat from the fire truck to cover him. The others had been more successful operating the fire hose. Jade Blossom increased her density, making herself an anchor to brace the nozzle. The water dampened the fire enough to clear a path in the front entryway. Two more people rescued. Brave Hawk, who manifested illusory brown-black hawk wings when he flew, had been able to pull another three victims out of upper-story windows, including the one who had jumped. The flier snatched him out of the air. And Toad Man, turned into his giant toad form, managed a particularly gruesome rescue by snatching the tenth and final victim out of a window with his thirty-foot-long, viscous tongue. All ten victims rescued.

Spades and Diamonds didn’t achieve quite so spectacular a victory, but they each had their moments. On the Spades side, the Candle used his multipurpose, colored flames to build a glowing red ladder to the second-story windows. The victims within climbed to safety. Metal-skinned Rustbelt withstood the flames enough to save a couple of victims from the ground floor. The team, however, suffered a drawback when Simoon, in an attempt to quell the fire by blasting it in her whirlwind form, only succeeded in fanning the flames. Their rescue effort ended with five victims saved.

Diamonds fared better. The Maharajah, the easily overlooked man in the wheelchair, had telekinetically animated a half-dozen firefighters’ coats from the truck and marched them into the burning house to rescue three victims. Matryoshka had split into four smaller versions of himself, and they controlled the hose as a well-coordinated unit. Their flier, Jetman, rescued several victims from the upper floor. Unlike Brave Hawk, though, he’d failed to catch the man who’d jumped. They’d rescued seven victims.

On the other hand, the editing on the replay of Team Hearts’ trial brought to the fore every mishap, every wart, every fault. Hardhat’s success was reduced to a second or two, making the highlight of the sequence Curveball, Drummer Boy, and Hive yelling at each other, Hardhat and Gardener fruitlessly running around searching for victims to rescue, and Earth Witch and Wild Fox doing absolutely nothing. At least the many bleeps punctuating Hardhat’s speech got a few chuckles.

For a moment, all was quiet. The judges’ weighty silence was worse than any criticism. The Hearts gazed back hopefully, as if they might escape.

Topper shook her head, and it was like an ax falling. “Aren’t you taking this seriously? Do you know how many people would be dead now if that had been a real fire?”

Seven, Ana thought. Seven people, even if one of them had been a fake baby.

The Harlem Hammer continued. “Half of you just stood there. You gave up before you even tried anything because you couldn’t figure out how to use your powers. You think it’s all about your aces? And you didn’t even try to work together.”

Then Downs inserted his own vitriolic assessment. “You guys aren’t a team, you’re a preschool! I wouldn’t trust you to look after my hamster!”

Ana could imagine watching this on TV at home, and how exciting it must be. How gleeful the audience would be, watching Downs cut them to pieces. But even if she’d had a chance to respond, there was nothing she could say. They weren’t wrong about any of it. Her cheeks were burning at the reprimands. Kate’s gaze was downcast, her jaw tight, as if she clenched her teeth.

All the groups were quiet, quivering with tension. Maybe they had imagined what it would be like to lose, what the judges might say to them, but they hadn’t imagined anything like this.

When Topper announced that Team Clubs had won immunity for the first challenge, no one was surprised. Clubs’ members gave each other high fives and hugged in celebration, but didn’t cheer. They looked relieved rather than smug.

Peregrine spoke solemnly, like this was an execution and not network television. “Hearts. Spades. Diamonds. Each of you will now return to your headquarters, where you’ll decide who from your team to discard.”

One of the judges accompanied each team to officiate the discard process. Just when Ana thought the evening couldn’t get worse, Hearts was blessed with the presence of Digger Downs, who seemed far too gleeful in his role as the “bad” judge.

Her stomach was in knots, which were tightening with every breath. On the drive back, she and her teammates kept glancing at each other, sizing each other up, making calculations: Who should go?

She wasn’t worried so much about herself. What she really hated was having to make a choice.

In the garage, Drummer Boy lingered by the Hummer and waved her over with a gesture from an upper arm. Uncertain, she went to him, wondering what he could possibly want with her.

His voice hushed—and for such a huge, brusque man, he could make his voice surprisingly muted—he said, “You know who you’re picking?”

Ah, that was what he wanted to talk about. “No.”

“You worried?”

“About what?”

He gave a huff, like he thought she was being stupid. “You didn’t do squat during the challenge. That puts you in danger of getting kicked out, you know that?”

She supposed it did. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You ought to be making deals,” he said. “Trade votes. Make sure someone else gets it.”

She couldn’t do that any more than she could have stopped the fire by digging a hole under the building. She shrugged. “I don’t even know who I’d pick.”

“Bugsy,” he said. “The guy’s a prick.”

“What do you get if I pick him?”

“Don’t vote me off the next time we lose. It’s that simple.”

Downs called from the house for them to hurry up.

“I’ll think about it,” Ana said, and hurried away from the towering joker.

She didn’t want to make deals. She didn’t want to vote anyone off. She shouldn’t even be here.

Inside the house, in the no longer comfortable dining room, they gathered around the long table. Cameras watched them; all their expressions were somber, their shoulders tense. Hands clenched the backs of chairs, or tightened into fists.

Downs handed them each a thin pack of cards. Shuffling through them, Ana found only seven cards. Each one bore the photo of a teammate.

The judge explained. “Each of you will place the card of your choice face down on the table—”

Suddenly, a dozen small, furry creatures appeared on the table, jumping over each other, squeaking, dancing. Ana gasped, and everyone took a step back.

“What the hell!” Downs said.

“Hamsters,” Wild Fox said, grinning like he was pleased with himself. His tail gave a flick.

Next to him, Curveball huffed. “You would have to go pissing off the judge.”

Murderous looks glared at him across the table, and the hamsters popped out of existence. Wild Fox glared back, his tail drooping.

Downs sighed heavenward. “Let’s get this over with. Hearts, play your cards.”

Curveball only considered her cards a moment before drawing one and setting it face down on the table. Jaw set, she glanced around the table, confident, meeting everyone’s gaze. At least she wasn’t going to let this cow her.

So it went around the table. Drummer Boy and Hardhat quickly followed, then Wild Fox, Hive, and Gardener. Then they were all looking at Ana, waiting.

Ana studied the cards in her hand, the smiling faces so unlike the ones she saw around her now. Her teammates were waiting to learn their fates, and she was delaying. But she couldn’t decide.

She wondered what would happen if she put her own card on the table. After all, she never wanted to be here. She could leave just as quickly. Nobody would ever know that she’d discarded herself—unless all seven cards showed her face. That was a distinct possibility; as DB had said, she hadn’t done anything. If all seven cards showed her face, she’d have to explain to Roberto why she rigged her own downfall. So that wasn’t going to work.

She couldn’t think rationally. Everyone here had strengths. Everyone here would be useful, given the right situation. If they ever had to look for buried treasure, Ana would save the day. She couldn’t use that criterion to judge. If it was a matter of picking who she didn’t want to live with for the rest of the show, she’d have to say Wild Fox. Then again, maybe Drummer Boy had the right idea.

She put Hive’s card face down on the table.

Everyone slid the cards to Downs, who shuffled them, arranged them in his hand, and studied them. He gazed around the circle at the contestants, then back at the cards—then back at the contestants, pursing his lips studiously, narrowing his gaze. Curveball rolled her eyes, and DB crossed a pair of arms.

Finally, Downs spread the seven cards on the table. They all leaned forward, searching, desperate to see how it had turned out. The faces seemed to blur in Ana’s eyes.

Two of the cards showed Ana. Only two—Ana felt relief. One showed Wild Fox. And four showed Jonathan Hive.

“Four of a kind,” Downs said. “Hives.”

For all his commentary, Hive didn’t have a quip ready for this. He was still staring at the cards, and the four pictures of his own face looking back at him.

Downs gazed at him across the table. “Jonathan Hive, I’m afraid you’ve been discarded. It’s time for you to leave the house.”

They even made a production of that, though Ana would have liked nothing better than to hide in the bathroom, the only place off limits to the cameras. But no, they all had to watch Jonathan get his bag and trek to the front door. While the cameras watched, Hive shook hands with Wild Fox, Drummer Boy, and Hardhat, while they muttered things like “Good luck” and “Take it easy” to each other. Gardener and even Curveball offered awkward hugs. Ana was the last to shake his hand.

“Good luck,” he said, as he had to the others. He even managed a wink right at the end.

Ana thought she’d need the luck the most.

Curveball sets her expression, as if this is just another challenge, another task to be completed on the way to the prize. Her eyes gleaming, she looks at the unseen interviewer, sitting somewhere to the left of the camera, and speaks with such energy her ponytail dances.

“Hive, Bugsy, whatever—I think he didn’t take any of this seriously. All he could do was make jokes. He may be a reporter, but that doesn’t give him a right to stand there and make fun of everything.

“When I was little, I dreamed of winning a medal in the Olympics, or being the first girl to play major league baseball. Then my card turned, and well, so much for that. But now … I can do this thing that nobody else in the world can do. All of us can. And it isn’t a game. It shouldn’t be just a game.

“I want to do something great, and I can’t understand when people look at all this like it’s a joke. When I see someone like Earth Witch and what she can do—what she could do if she put her mind to it, but she isn’t doing anything—it makes me crazy.”

Finally, Downs and his crew left, leaving the remainder of Team Hearts alone—with the cameras, of course.

“It just doesn’t seem right,” Curveball said, flopping onto the sofa. “Kicking him off like that.”

“That’s the game. Some poor bastard had to go,” Hardhat said.

“It’s kind of mean.”

“Come on,” DB said. “You hated the guy.”

“I didn’t hate him. I was pissed off at him, yeah. But that’s different.”

Wild Fox said, “Watch, next week we’re going to have a challenge that’ll be perfect for a thousand little flying bugs, and he won’t be here.”

DB said, “Or maybe we’ll need someone to star in a cartoon and Fox Boy here will actually be useful.”

“Hey, I’m useful!”

“Oh yeah?” the drummer said.

A room-sized Godzilla appeared behind the sofa, complete with ear-splitting squeals and flames shooting out of its toothy mouth. Everyone jumped. It didn’t matter that Ana’s rational brain told her it was just another one of his illusions. She dove behind a chair to hide. Kate screamed and fell off the sofa.

Wild Fox laughed, and Godzilla disappeared. This was going to confuse the TV audiences so much … they couldn’t see the illusions, only people’s reaction to them. Maybe that was enough.

DB crossed all six arms. “Great. When we come up against Mothra, we’ll call you.”

“Would you guys stop fighting?” Kate said, picking herself up off the floor. “We just have to do better next time. Then nobody gets voted off.”

Hardhat raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “You know what? Next time, just boot me the fuck off. Then I can get the fuck away from you fucking losers and get back to my real job.

Fuck it. I’m going to bed.” He stalked out of the room.

Funny, Ana had been thinking exactly the same thing.

Ana couldn’t sleep. She and Kate shared a room, and she kept waiting for her to come in and turn on the light.

She’d had trouble sleeping the whole time she’d been here, and it was more than nerves. This place didn’t have the right sounds—the desert wind against the siding of the trailer, the coyotes in the distance. This place was silent, sheltered from the sounds of the freeway, well-insulated. Cocooned, she thought. And she felt like ripping out of it. What would they do if she left the house and took a walk?

Was it even safe, walking after dark in this neighborhood? All she knew about L.A. was its reputation, and that didn’t say anything good about walking by herself after dark.

Maybe she’d just get a glass of water.

She turned on her small bedside lamp. Kate’s bed was still empty. She and DB had once again retreated to the back porch to talk long into the night. It figured—not only was Ana the shy one, she was going to end up being the only one of the group who didn’t party.

Creeping out of the room, she stopped when she heard voices.

“You’re going to win this thing.” The bass voice belonged to Drummer Boy.

“I don’t know,” said a laughing, female voice. Kate. “I want to, sure. But the field’s wide open.”

“You’re just being humble.”

“And I think you’re coming on to me.”

Ana dared to edge out another few inches, and sure enough, Kate and Drummer Boy stood at the corner where the living room ended. Kate leaned against the wall, hands tucked behind her back, head bowed, smiling—and blushing, probably, but she was in a shadow and Ana couldn’t see.

DB cast the shadow, his huge frame looming over her.

He’d crossed all six arms over his broad chest and leaned on the wall next to Kate—very close to Kate.

He chuckled. “Can’t fool you, can I?”

“Are you going to use that line on all the girls? ’Hey, babe, I think you’re going to win’?”

“No,” he said. “I won’t use that line on anyone but you.”

One of his arms uncrossed, reached out, and touched Kate’s cheek. Ana had to admire the gentleness he displayed, despite his massive body and strength. He had to lean far over to kiss her, but he even made that awkward motion seem graceful. A second hand closed on Kate’s waist, the third brushed her hip.

The two kissed, lightly and briefly. He paused, as if waiting for her to react, and when she didn’t, he kissed her again.

Then she slipped away. Smiling, gaze lowered, she ducked away from his touch, out of the cage formed by his arms.

“Michael, you’re a great guy,” she said softly. “But I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

“But—”

“Maybe when this whole thing is over. When we’re not so distracted. ’Night.” She touched his cheek briefly, then left him standing there, dumbstruck.

Ana slipped back to her bed, but Kate reached the room before she could shut out the bedside light and pretend she’d been asleep the whole time. Her hand was on the switch when Kate leaned against the doorway. “I suppose you saw all that.”

Ana shrugged. “Just think of me as another camera.”

“Oh my God, tell me about it. This would be way more fun if it weren’t for the cameras.” They weren’t supposed to talk about the cameras in front of the cameras. They weren’t supposed to mention the elephant in the room.

Kate flopped on her bed. Watching her, Ana sat up, cross-legged. “Michael?” she ventured.

“He says his friends call him Michael.” Kate’s smile turned into a giggle. “Can you believe it? A freaking rock star. I wonder what he sees in me.”

Ana didn’t feel inclined to point out that she was thin, blond, cute, and the center of attention. Kate didn’t linger on the thought long, though.

She went on. “What’s he thinking? There’s too much at stake here to go screwing around. I know everyone’s thinking it, who’s going to end up sleeping with who before they even think about who’s going to win the show. But God, it messes everything up.”

“What did you guys talk about? You were out on the porch for hours,” Ana said.

“Were we? I didn’t notice.”

“If you don’t want to say—”

“No, it’s no big deal.” Her expression turned wry. “Mainly, he kept going on about how hard it is in the music business to meet girls who are honest. ’Real,’ is what he said. They’re all after him because he’s a famous rock star. I’m like, yeah, cry me a river, Mister Gold Record.” But she was smiling, and her gaze had turned inward.

Ana said, “Let me guess. He says you’re not like all those other girls. You’re ’real’ and he wants to get to know you better.”

“Not only that, he goes into this thing about how he flirts with all those girls because people expect it, because it’s part of the rock star persona, and that he actually gets tired of it.” She smirked. “He never seems to look tired when Pop Tart or Jade Blossom glue themselves to him.”

“Wild Fox said he heard there was a bet on that he wants to sleep with every girl on the show.”

Shaking her head, Kate said, “I don’t think he’s like that. I think he was serious about not being into the flirting. Just because everyone assumes he’s going to sleep around doesn’t mean he is.”

“You like him,” Ana ventured.

Kate shrugged. “Sure I like him. But do I like him? I don’t know. Not yet.”

Everybody—even Ana—looked at Kate and saw nothing but perfect. But her furrowed brow and pursed lips revealed something more going on under the surface. Kate certainly didn’t see herself the way everyone else did, and it made Ana warm to her.

Grinning, Ana hugged her pillow. “You want to wait and see who else shows an interest.”

“What?” Kate said, laughing.

“Come on, I saw you talking to John Fortune this afternoon.”

“I was asking him some questions.”

“Yeah, asking him some questions, not anybody else.”

Her smile turned shy. “Well, yeah, but—”

“But what?” Ana prompted.

“He’s definitely kind of cute.”

“Who else has been making eyes at you?”

“No one.”

“Jonathan Hive?” Kate rolled her eyes. Ana listed: “Stunt-man? Spasm?” That time, she winced. Then Ana said, “Berman?”

“Oh my God, no!” Kate threw her pillow at her, and Ana grabbed it, laughing. The pillow threw off a static tingle of energy.

They settled back, too weary to exert much effort, too wired to sleep, and stared at the faded shadows the bedside lamp cast on the ceiling.

After a moment, Ana said, “You should enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?”

“All those interesting men are looking at you. Enjoy it.”

Ana couldn’t read Kate’s expression, her thin smile, the narrowed, sleepy gaze. She seemed to be working something out.

Then her smile widened. “It doesn’t mean anything if I can’t decide who to look at back.” She glanced over. Now that was a wicked look.

“Oh, now you can cry me a river!” Ana threw Kate’s pillow back at her, sending them both into a new fit of giggling.

For the first time since she’d arrived at the auditions, Ana started to relax.

Days passed. No telling when the next challenge would arrive—when the alarms would scream, when they’d all pile out of the house to the Hearts’ Hummer—and how stupid was it being Team Hearts? It was way too cute, way too obnoxious, like they were an ad for Valentine’s Day—and they’d fight about whether they had enough gas or who could read the GPS locator correctly. At least Ana’d been able to do that much for the team—reading GPS coordinates was part of her job back home. Thank goodness Hardhat had been able to drive their monstrosity of a vehicle. Wouldn’t that have been embarrassing, failing as heroes to the point of not being able to get the car started—all on national TV.

Ana thought she didn’t care. But really, she’d prefer not looking like an idiot on national TV.

After supper she went out to the backyard. The sky had turned dark, and the air had cooled, though it still smelled tangy, metallic. This whole city smelled like an industrial work site. At home, even after a day of working around oil rigs and diesel fuel, she could walk away from it and smell real air—hot, dusty, but real. She was homesick.

You can bag the whole thing, a voice whispered … a small, devilish voice. Do something really stupid next time, get yourself voted off, and that’ll be that.

But Roberto would know. Roberto would never let her live it down if he thought she’d thrown the contest.

Over the last week, Kate had spent hours in the backyard throwing things at makeshift targets, practicing. Maybe she had the right idea. Ana touched the medallion under her shirt.

She left the porch and sat cross-legged in the middle of the lush green lawn. Closing her eyes, she buried her fingers in the grass, pressing down to the roots, to the earth. The soil here wasn’t like the desert—this was softened by the vegetation, by constant watering. This would be easy to dig. She could even feel what wasn’t dirt—gas lines, sewer lines. She could dig around them.

She could drill a hole straight down, hundreds of feet. She could open a furrow ahead of her. Make it as deep or wide as she liked, limited only by the space available, though she’d never dug much more than a backhoe could do in an hour or so of work. She’d limited herself. She didn’t want to cause too much trouble, do too much damage, so she’d always stayed within the boundaries of the sandbox, whatever sandbox she happened to be in.

This had all started in the sandbox, on the playground. If she’d grown up in a city full of concrete and asphalt, she might never have discovered her power at all. That might have been better.

Absently, without effort, she made little holes, because she couldn’t think of what else to try. Scooped out handfuls of earth. They didn’t even make a sound. Then, she dug two holes at once. Two dimples formed, one on either side of her, each with a mound of scooped-out earth beside it. Well, she’d never done that before. So she tried three. Hands in the grass, laid flat against the ground, she could feel the infinite particles of it spread all around her. They moved at her command. She clenched her hands and thought of digging—three holes, then four. With a faint sound of ripping grass, as the soil under the lawn tore free, a circle of holes appeared around her. A dozen of them, all at once. Patterns in the earth. She shifted her right hand, pointed to make a trench, but instead of making it straight, she made it turn. It ran in a perfect circle all the way around her, joining all the holes.

She hadn’t played with her power like this since was she small. She barely remembered. Her father had put her to work tilling the neighbors’ garden patches almost as soon as she’d dug her first hole.

“You are really making a mess.”

Hands on her hips, Kate stood at the edge of the porch.

Sheepishly, Ana brushed off her hands. The yard looked like gophers had struck: Dozens of mounds, holes, and trails marred the whole lawn. Great, she thought. Now they’re going to start calling me Gopher Girl.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t apologize,” Kate said. “It’s kinda cool. But can you do anything else?”

Ana shrugged and glanced hopelessly around the damaged lawn. “I’m trying to figure something out.”

Kate left the glow of the porch light and came into the dark, picking her way around piles of dirt and finding a spot of grass near Ana to sit on. “Not that there’s anything wrong with digging holes. If you did something like this under a building you could bring the whole thing down. Or a bridge, or a car, or … or anything. You could stop anyone by digging a hole under them.”

She could dig a trench around herself a dozen feet wide and no one could ever reach her. “It’s all just digging. It’s never going to rescue someone from a burning building.”

“Tell me about it,” Kate said. “You dig holes, and I blow shit up. Hey—if this hero thing doesn’t work out, maybe we can start a business: ’Team Hearts: Demolitions and Excavations.’”

“‘Environmentally friendly,’” Ana said, and they both giggled.

Then Kate looked around, studying the lawn, turning serious. She put her hand on one of the mounds of dug-out soil and squeezed her fist around it, letting dirt run through her fingers.

“What is it?” Ana said.

“Just thinking. Look at all these piles. What if you tried to make piles of dirt, instead of just digging? Think about filling in the space instead of digging it out. Does that make any sense?” She wrinkled her forehead, which made her look particularly young and studious.

Dios! It was so obvious!

It couldn’t possibly work. “I don’t know. I never looked at it that way.”

“Well, can you try it?” she asked eagerly.

All her life her father, the neighbors, everyone, said—dig this, put a trench here, drill a new well. Never build.

She held her hand flat to the ground, fingers splayed, feeling. Build, make—positive space, not negative space. Feeling the earth under her hand, she reached for it, gathered the particles to her—not for shoving them away, but bringing them together. It almost felt backwards. Make the mound of dirt instead of the hole.

Before her, the earth came alive. It moved, crawling like a million tiny insects, swarming together. A lump formed, then grew into a mound, then a tower, a cone of brown earth rising from the lawn. All around the tower, the level of the ground sank, as the dirt in the center rose. Reverse ditch digging.

The tower reached a height of two feet before Ana pulled her hand back and clutched the medallion under her shirt. Her heart was racing, and her eyes were wide. If she’d been able to build a tower outside that burning building, she could have saved someone.

Kate’s face brightened with an amazed smile. “That’s so cool!”

“Yeah,” Ana said. “Wow.”

“You could do anything, I bet. Bridges, tunnels, castles—hey, have you ever worked with sand?”

Ana laughed. “No—I’ve been in California over a week and I still haven’t seen the ocean.”

“That’s crazy.” Kate’s gaze was unfocused, still clearly thinking of all the ways Ana could use her power. “You know how during a big earthquake the ground is supposed to ripple, like you can see the waves moving through it? What if you could do something like that—make your own earthquake and knock down an entire army or something.”

The image horrified Ana. She gave a nervous shrug. “They’re not going to be putting us against armies. I hope I never have to do anything like that.”

“Nice to know you could, though. If you had to.” Kate beamed at her, as proud as if she had the power herself. Her smile was clear, brilliant. Honest.

“Why are you helping me?” Ana said abruptly, and regretted it. She didn’t want to sound ungrateful, not for Kate’s help. Not for her friendship.

Kate shrugged, looking briefly confused, like she really didn’t understand the question. Like she hadn’t considered. “Because I want to help.”

“But you see how it is,” Ana said, nodding toward the lighted windows of the house. “They—the judges and them—all talk about teamwork, how we’re supposed to work together. But we’re all competing against each other. In the end, we have to turn against each other. We have to vote each other off. It doesn’t help you at all if I—I—” She stumbled a moment, at first uncertain what to say. “If I’m stronger.”

Again, for just a moment, Kate seemed young—a kid in a ponytail getting ready for softball tryouts. “If we win the next challenge, then nobody gets kicked off. That’s the way I want it. The more you can do, the better chance we have of winning. It only makes sense.” Her smile brightened again, and turned sly. “Besides, when it’s the two of us in the finals, it’ll be one bitchin’ catfight.”

The two of them fighting each other? No, it wouldn’t be like that. The only word Ana could think to describe it was … fun. Her and Kate in the finals? That would be the best thing in the world. Alight now with possibilities, her power tingled in her hands, limitless. Her imagination built castles of earth, dug moats, moved mountains, continents.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever want to change the world that much, though. It was enough to have control over her little corner of it.

And so, feeling strong, feeling mischievous, she moved the little square of earth Kate sat on. Tipped it back like a lever.

Letting loose a shriek, Kate fell back, rolling head over heels. She landed hard on her backside, and for a regretful moment Ana was afraid she’d been hurt—a broken bone or twisted joint—and it would be Ana’s fault.

Kate blinked and gained her new bearings. The lawn where she’d been sitting looked lumpy—that was the only sign anything had happened. It was enough of a sign.

“Oh, you bitch!“ But she was laughing when she said it. Then her hand closed on a nearby clod of dirt.

Ana knew exactly what was coming next. She reacted before the clod left Kate’s hand. Hand on the ground, she whispered a quick prayer—and up rose a wall of earth, a protective swell like a soldier’s quickly dug foxhole. Ana put it between her and Kate and nestled down to hide. Not that it helped, because Kate’s thrown projectile—glowing yellow-hot and throwing off sparks—flew over the barrier and came zipping straight into Ana’s hiding place. She squealed and rolled out of the way as the clod dropped hard to the ground just short of where she’d been sitting. Kate hadn’t been aiming for her. Still, the missile kicked up a spray of dirt that pelted Ana.

Kate ran, dodging around Ana’s foxhole, and her hand held another missile. Ana waited for her; Kate took aim, wild laughter glinting in her eye.

“You surrender?” she said.

Ana tried something new—that’s what this was all about, after all—and once again felt for the ground under Kate’s feet, but instead of rocking it, or digging it, she made it climb. She was getting better at making these mounds, these towers. She made the soil flow and creep over Kate’s shoes, up her ankles—then held it.

“What the—” Kate jerked her feet, kicking them free. The earth wasn’t hard and didn’t hold her long, but it gave Ana time to scramble to the other side of her shelter. Imagine what I could do with more, she thought. If she could build the earth up around someone’s whole body, bury them up to their necks so they couldn’t move at all …

Now Kate had marbles in both hands. “That’s it. No more Miss Nice Guy.”

Suddenly Ana was in a war zone, dodging bullets that pounded into the ground all around her, zooming in from all sides. They weren’t very big, and none of them came right at her—this was, after all, a game. But they kept her from fleeing, locking her into a small space on the lawn, and she was laughing at the dirt flying everywhere, at Kate’s wild expression, and the increasingly chaotic state of the lawn.

They both turned to the sound of the back door opening. DB and Hardhat emerged, rushing to the porch railing to look over the lawn. Ana tried to catch her breath. Kate, also breathing hard, her hair matted with sweat, joined her.

Hardhat frowned at them with a look of bafflement. “Christ, what the fuck are you two doing?”

Ana and Kate looked at each other. Ana, a gleam in her eyes, said, “Demolitions and excavations?”

Kate burst out laughing, Ana joined in, and the two of them fell against each other, hysterical.

DB shook his head, and Hardhat said, “You’re damn lucky we don’t have a fucking damage deposit on the line for this place.”

The guys seemed just as taken with Ana’s newfound ability. As they trailed inside, Hardhat mapped out great plans for their future exploits. “I can totally fucking see it—you dig this big motherfucking ditch, like a moat, see? Like if we had to protect something—then I’ll build a bridge, or a tower, or—”

Kate laughed. “She can build a bridge! She can build us a tower and no one could touch us!”

DB nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. It’s pretty cool.” As usual, his six hands were tapping to an unheard rhythm. Sort of. The rhythm seemed a bit off tonight, as if he were distracted. He kept watching Kate.

“Just wait,” Ana said. “The next challenge will be at the top floor of a skyscraper. No dirt.”

“Well, aren’t you Merry fucking Sunshine,” Hardhat said.

Kate was now staring back at DB. The drummer’s patter faltered. “Michael, is something wrong?” Kate said.

“Uh—no. I was just—”

“I’m talking about the drumming. You’re all out of synch. I just wondered if something was wrong.”

DB froze. Too late, he started again, tapping a pair of hands on his knees, but it looked more like nerves than his usual accompaniment. Kate was tight—the beats were off. There wasn’t a rhythm, just noise.

Kate picked a throw pillow off the arm of the sofa.

“Oh no, no—” DB said, holding out all six arms in defense.

Kate hurled the pillow at him. It hit his shoulder with a thump, and DB glimmered, then disappeared, leaving Wild Fox curled up on the sofa. The illusion had been destroyed.

“Geez, Curveball! No fair! You totally suck in a pillow fight!”

She stood over him, a second pillow in her hands. “You’re covering for him.

What’s he up to?”

“I’m not covering. I just wanted to see if you could spot it. And…you can. So there.”

Wild Fox was not a very good liar.

Kate said, “I wouldn’t put it past you, but you’re way too nervous to be just pulling a prank. What’s the deal?”

Glowering, Wild Fox crossed his arms. “He said he wouldn’t vote me off next time if I covered for him.”

“So what’s he doing?” She wouldn’t let up.

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask!”

The phone by the kitchen bar rang. Wild Fox jumped for it, but Kate cut him off and beat him to the handset.

“Hello? Why, hello Cleo. No, Wild Fox isn’t here.” Kate was looking right at him. “I’d have thought you’d want to talk to DB. He seems more your…speed. Oh, you do want to talk to him? Yeah, he’s here.” Wearing a catty grin, Kate handed the set to Wild Fox.

Sullen now, Wild Fox shook his tail, and the illusion shimmered back into place. It was almost like a heat mirage, or a mist in the air. He rippled, then he was DB, all six arms and deep voice.

“Yeah?” he said at the phone and glared at Kate. After a moment of listening, he replied, “Yeah. Okay.” Then hung up.

“So he’s with Pop Tart.”

“I don’t know, I just said I’d cover for him. I’m supposed to say I’m going for a walk and then come back in five minutes with Wild Fox. I mean me.”

“Then you’d better get going,” she said. That catty smile was starting to turn vicious.

Wild Fox/DB left, almost running, slamming the door behind him.

Hardhat stared at her. “What the fuck was that all about?”

She just shook her head. “This is so high school.”

He turned to Ana for explanation, but she shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m betting on fireworks in five minutes.”

“Then let’s bring the popcorn,” he said.

They all stood at the door, when DB and Wild Fox walked in, right on schedule. Kate, Ana, and Hardhat waited, leaning on the walls in the foyer.

DB froze when confronted with the faces looking at him. He threw a glance over his shoulder at Wild Fox.

The shorter joker grinned sheepishly. “Sorry man. I’d have pulled it off, but apparently I got no rhythm.”

Ignoring them, DB barreled through the foyer without a second glance. Kate followed him, calling, “Hey, Michael.

You get lucky, or what?”

He turned on her, and for a moment he really did look like a monster, filling the room, hunching his shoulders and bracing his arms like he wanted to punch rocks. Kate stumbled back a step.

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

This was when the screaming match started. Kate liked him, Ana knew. But maybe not enough to let this go. Or maybe too much to let this go. Ana readied herself to tackle Kate if she decided to throw something. She had that look, like when she lost her temper at Hive. Except this was worse.

But Kate didn’t have anything in her hands. She didn’t get mad, didn’t scream, didn’t cry. Very quietly, very calmly, she looked square at DB, and her face was a mask. When she spoke, her voice was low, cutting, like a scalpel. “You really are just trying to get every woman here into bed before the show’s over, aren’t you? I had you figured out from the start.”

She walked out of the room.

The silence turned suffocating. Ana, Hardhat, and Wild Fox stared at DB like he was a train wreck.

Wild Fox said, “Dude, I’m totally sorry—”

DB went after her, where she’d fled to her room. “Hey, wait a minute. Kate!” His voice boomed.

Ana, in her turn, ran after him. She couldn’t hope to get to Kate before he did, but she tried.

DB leaned against the frame of the door to their room, six arms forming a cage around it. If Kate came out, she’d fall into his embrace whether she liked it or not.

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Kate’s muffled voice came through.

“Come on, what did you expect me to do? I wasn’t going to sit around waiting—”

“Oh, please!”

“Maybe you’ll think twice about playing hard to get next time!”

Ana sidled up to the door. “Hey Kate, can I come in?”

After a moment, the door knob clicked, unlocked.

DB was tall, and Ana wasn’t. She slipped under his lowest arm and got in place to shoulder open the door. She turned the knob, but DB stuck a hand out, shoving the door, bracing it open when Kate tried to slam it shut from the other side.

“Stop it!” Ana turned on him, glaring.

His lips pulled into a snarl. “I’m talking to Kate here!”

“She doesn’t want to talk!”

He was immovable, a tree, a mountain. He could muscle his way in if he wanted, and they couldn’t do anything about it. He really seemed as if he meant to.

“This is our room. You can’t come in!” Ana said.

The plywood door cracked, then crunched as DB’s hand went through it.

“Hey!” Kate shouted from inside. DB stepped back in apparent surprise, six arms raised in a gesture of innocence.

Ana slipped in and slammed the door shut. She grabbed one of the chairs and pushed it against the door. Like that would keep him out.

But DB didn’t try to get in again. “Bitch!” he hollered instead. “Earth Bitch!”

After that, the hallway was silent.

Ana sighed at the splintered hole in the door. Somehow, she found the edge of her bed and sat. She didn’t have any earth to use inside. She wouldn’t have been able to stop him if he’d really wanted to get in.

Kate was sitting on her own bed, looking as shell-shocked as Ana felt. Her gaze turned downward, to her hands resting in her lap.

“Maybe I should talk to him. Do you think I overreacted?” Kate asked. Ana automatically shook her head, though she honestly didn’t know. Kate ran her hands through her hair. “I fell for it. I can’t believe I fell for it. Big famous rock star hitting on me, and what do I think? ’Wow, he really likes me.’ I’m such an idiot.” She threw herself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Ana’s heart was still pounding hard. She’d spent an hour in the backyard discovering how much she could do with all these fantastic powers. And now she was learning about her limits. Inside the house, she was useless. And she couldn’t say anything that would make Kate feel better.

“You’re wrong about him,” Ana said.

“No, I’m not. Just wait, it’ll be Diamonds House he sneaks back from next.”

“Yeah. But he’s not going after every woman on the show. He’s never looked twice at me.”

Kate glanced at her, distracted from her introspection. Then, she laughed. “Is he really that shallow?”

Ana was fairly sure he wasn’t, but on this matter, she couldn’t argue.

“Don’t worry about it, Ana. He’s totally not worth it.”

More cameras invaded the next day. Like Ana could be bothered by the presence of more cameras. But these came with complications.

John Fortune opened the door to the house without knocking. “Hey—John here! Anyone home?”

“Yeah.” Ana came out to meet him from the kitchen, where she’d been snacking. She’d been taking advantage of the food she didn’t have to buy or cook herself. That was probably what the cameras would show—round-faced, unsvelte Ana, always eating. “What’s up?”

“We just stopped by to do some interviews. Where is everyone?”

“I thought you guys check the footage every day.”

“We haven’t gotten to last night’s yet.”

She said, “There was kind of a blow up. Big TV drama, as Bugsy would say.”

“Then it’ll be a good time for interviews, won’t it?” Michael Berman, all smiles, pushed his way in past the couple of crew who were lugging equipment. “Is Curveball around?”

Ana felt her gaze darken, her expression shutting down. Getting protective. Kate did not need to be talking to this guy today. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Berman persisted.

“Yeah.”

John, always diplomatic, stepped between them. “We’ve got five other people here to interview. Maybe DB—he’s always ready to talk. We’ll be setting up on the back porch.”

Oh, not the backyard…

“Uh, yeah, about that,” Ana said, fidgeting suddenly. “That may not be such a great idea. I’m not sure you want to go out there.” What was she going to tell them? It wasn’t like she could hide it, they’d see footage of the whole thing.

“Why not?” John said—and headed straight for the back door.

Ana followed him. Even from the window the churned-up soil and mounds of earth were visible. How was she going to explain this? Maybe she could put it back the way it was. Flatten the ground, talk Gardener into planting some grass …

“Holy shit!” John stepped onto the porch.

Quickly Ana said, “I—I was sort of … practicing.”

When he turned to her, though, he was smiling. “That’s a real mess out there.”

“Yeah, well. The craters are Kate’s.”

John just kept grinning. “Oh man, I love you guys.”

Drummer Boy dwarfs his chair, dwarfs the surroundings. He fills the frame, so that it’s hard to tell if it’s a trick of the camera that makes him seem huge or if he really is that big. All six hands are in motion, tapping the arms of the chair, tapping the air as if working imaginary drumsticks, or just twitching to an unheard beat.

His expression changes in response to a question. He glares, evoking the punk rock persona that made him the front man for the hottest band going. When he speaks, all six hands clench.

“You want to know who I think should win? Who the cares! This whole thing is bogus. Everyone who says I’m just here to get publicity for the band? They’re right, ’cause that’s all this show is good for. Cheap thrills and shameless self-promotion. It sure as isn’t about heroics. Maybe Kate’s right. Maybe I should just worry about getting all the hot chicks here into bed and let the show take care of itself.” He laughs, then, but the sound is bitter. “All of ’em except her. ’Cause if she wants a reputation as the Ice Queen, that’s fine with me.”

A rare look of uncertainty darkens his gaze for a moment, as if he’s realized he’s said too much. But the expression only lasts for a heartbeat, to be replaced by his usual, solid glare.