Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

Thunder cracked, and the temperature dropped enough to make Anna hug herself and shiver. Frost gathered on grass, and on Sam’s hair and clothing. Sam stopped fighting, and footsteps shuffled away from him as Teddy backed off.

“Teia!” Sam called, jumping up, rubbing his arms. “Lady Snow!”

Teia knelt, hand on the ground, where a fan of frost now grew. Smiling, she blew across her fingers, raising a cluster of ice crystals that dispersed in a fog. Lew laughed. The thunder had been Lew’s—Stormbringer’s. The Arctic Twins, Anna called them sometimes, but they didn’t approve. Anna wondered if both their powers were weather related because they were twins, and she wondered if anyone else in their family had weather-related powers. They insisted their parents didn’t have any powers at all, and they were probably right. Their father had died when they were nine. Anna remembered him as a big, amiable man. Their mother didn’t seem like the superheroing type.

Anna’s mother probably knew for sure.

“You guys need to grow up,” Teia said.

“You need to take this seriously,” Teddy’s disembodied voice answered.

Teia said, “How much more practice do we need? Teddy’s gone out already and did fine. We need to do something.”

“He didn’t do fine, he got the crap beat out of him,” Anna said.

“Only half beat,” Teddy said defensively. “Any fight you can walk away from…”

Anna grumbled.

“It’s simple,” Teia said. “We go out, find a way to prove ourselves, and do it. The crime rate in this city is terrible, and everyone keeps saying we need a new superhero team, and here we are.”

Lew hefted the paintball gun like it meant something. “And if we’re really smart, we call the papers first so they can cover the story.”

“That’s your worst idea yet,” Anna said. But Teia would side with her brother, along with Sam. Stalemate.

Teia said, “Anna, the five of us together? We’re powerful. Even more powerful than the Block Busters. We can do this.” Everyone agreed that the Block Busters hardly counted as a crime-fighting team because they hardly went out together anymore.

But Anna wasn’t powerful. If she was honest, she was scared. She couldn’t defend herself, she couldn’t stop anyone. Most of the time she couldn’t prove that she had a power at all. And they all knew it.

“Then why don’t you go do it?” Anna said, tired. She hugged herself, trying to melt away the last of Teia’s frost, but her arms were still covered in goosebumps.

“She’s just chicken,” Sam sneered.

Teia was the one who jumped in with, “Sam, shut up, you don’t know anything about it. She’s not afraid. She just wants us to do this her way.” She turned to Anna, eyebrow lifted. “Right?”

“I’m just saying we have to be careful,” she said, knowing she was losing this fight.

Teia’s thin mask across her eyes didn’t do much to hide her identity, and if Anna were that pretty she wouldn’t either. She was sixteen, striking, and she knew how to stand—hands on hips, shoulders back—to look particularly heroic. “I say we announce ourselves, stage some events, get some publicity—”

Anna said, “You can’t do that. My mother is watching us. She ID’d Teddy off one security tape. We have to be sure we can stay secret—”

“Why?” Teia said.

Anna had taken it for granted and resented having to explain it yet again. “Because that’s how they get you. It’s how they got to my mother, back in the day.” Th

e argument felt stale, she’d said it so many times. As soon as her grandparents’ secret identity had been revealed—that Captain Olympus and Spark were actually socialites Warren and Suzanne West—Celia became a target. She’d been kidnapped a dozen times after that. Even the Destructor had kidnapped her, leading to the whole sordid mess that happened after that. No, you had to keep the secret so they couldn’t find you.

Teia disagreed. She crossed her arms and glared.

Anna soldiered on. “You don’t go vigilante for the publicity, you do it because it’s the right thing to do. Because you can help people, save lives—”

“And for the publicity,” Lew added, a roguish glint in his eyes.

She just couldn’t win, could she?

Teddy pointed. “You should listen to Anna, she knows what she’s talking about better than anyone.”

“Because of her famous grandparents?” Sam shot back. “Because of her dad? They haven’t done anything in forever. Maybe if you could knock down walls I’d be more inclined to listen to you.”