Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

“Love you, too,” she muttered perfunctorily, stalking to the door with her bag over her shoulder.

Celia spent a moment indulging in blind panic, convinced that she’d failed as a mother, her children hated her and were destined to become terrorists or trophy wives, that her entire life would come crashing down around her any day now. The moment passed.

She pulled herself together and finished up a last bit of work, reviewing company financials and arranging her task list for the next day.

“Celia? Your mother has dinner ready.”

A man in his fifties stood in the doorway. He wore tailored slacks, and the top button of his dress shirt was undone. His brown hair needed a trim. He seemed like he would be most at home at a university, standing before a chalkboard, lecturing—studious, upstanding. In fact, he was a practicing psychiatrist and a semiretired superhuman vigilante. Dr. Arthur Mentis.

“Hey.” Celia smiled at her partner of twenty years. “How was your day?”

“Calm. Saw a couple of patients, did some record keeping. Nothing else to report. You?” He spoke with a mild British accent, which added to his intellectual air. He approached her desk and sat on the edge to look down at her. The only person who could get away with that.

“Something’s up with Anna,” she said.

“Being seventeen is what’s up with Anna.”

“Something a little more specific.”

“I couldn’t say what it might be,” he said, shrugging oh so innocently.

“You’re not even tempted to pry?”

“No, because I have a good idea of what else I’d find in that stew of a mind. There are so many things fathers are not meant to know about their daughters, I’m terrified at what she might let slip out.”

What she already had let slip, Celia suspected. Arthur Mentis was very good at picking up stray thoughts, and though Anna had by sheer force of necessity become very good at keeping her thoughts to herself, she wasn’t perfect. But Arthur was also one of the most discreet and understanding men Celia had ever met.

Fathers and daughters, yes. Not that Celia was anything of an expert on the subject. She winced and rubbed at a crick in her neck. She’d been sitting here too long. She seemed to get tired earlier and earlier these days.

“Would she tell us if she had powers?” Celia asked. If Anna had powers, Arthur probably already knew, but he wouldn’t say a word about it until Anna did, no matter how much Celia wheedled. It was one of the things they’d agreed on when they became parents. The girls deserved to keep their secrets, as long as no one got hurt.

Arthur nodded. “I think she would. We have to have faith in her.”

“She ditched school this morning to help out a friend.”

“You see? She has her priorities straight. I think.”

“Tell you what: Next time, you can talk to the headmistress.”

“The headmistress hangs up the phone whenever I answer her calls. She won’t stay in the same room with me, did you know that?”

Arthur had been open and public with his powers for a long time. Everyone knew he was a telepath, and people usually got very nervous around him.

Celia never had.

“I’d noticed, yes. I think it’s funny.”

“It makes me wonder what she’s hiding,” he said.

Indeed. She patted his hand. “Faith, Arthur.”

TWO

ANNA rushed out of the sleek black town car before Tom could walk around to open the door for her. Bad enough that everyone would see the limo dropping her off. She could try to lessen the association, keep some of her dignity. Usually, she took the city bus to school, to try to blend in. She didn’t like being noticed.

It would be easier if she could act like one of the richest girls at school, showing off ultra-expensive phones and gadgets, driving her own sports car, wearing diamond studs with her school uniform. Other girls did that, forming their own cliques based on brand names and spending in excess rather than on any real friendship, and Anna did everything she could to separate herself from that. She got enough attention as it was, being Anna West-Mentis, daughter and granddaughter of superheroes, and of wealth and influence. And when would she develop superpowers and don a mask to fight crime?

Someday. Someday soon. But no one would know because she wasn’t going to tell them. She was going to do it on her own terms, and she didn’t want everyone—and with her family involved that meant everyone—watching.