Page 30 of All Superheroes Need PR
“I know.” He huffs through his nostrils and gives his head a short shake, focusing entirely too hard on the scratches on my hands. “Not too deep. Your knees look salvageable too. But your ankle’s a little swollen. This hurt?” He presses on a spot on my left leg right above my sneaker, and I recoil from his touch.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry,” he hisses. He glances at my face and looks away quickly, then glances back. His eyes are still glowing but differently than they had been. Just a ring of white around the pupil. “You sound funny. Open your mouth.”
I comply without hesitation, responding easily to the authority in his tone. He seems surprised by my easy acquiescence but quickly refocuses on my lips and teeth and tongue. He shakes his head and glances past me. The kids are in a riot, all shouting the spelling of their names at the same time.
“Tell him my phone number too! If he needs a buddy, I’m his guy!” I hear a boy shout.
“I bi m’tongue,” I offer on a laugh.
He exhales smoke through his nostrils again, and I grin. His gaze flashes bright pink-white. “I can fucking see that.”
I shrug. “Ith okay. Coffee?”
Rollo rolls his eyes and moves to stand without releasing me. The little boy and his sister return not a second later. “I got all the names!”
“Hey, I helped,” she adds.
“Good work, you two. Now remember what I said, okay? Meet me here tomorrow. I’ll bring presents for all of you, and we can skate and take as many pictures as you want, okay?”
The kids start cheering, and that little cheeky grin Roland wears slowly morphs into a full-on smile. I blink three times to make sure I’m not seeing things. By the hammer of Thor, his smile is spectacular.
He looks at me, that smile tragically disintegrating into concern, and, on a smoke-laced breath, huffs, “I’m gonna fly now. You got any objections to that?”
“COE shecurity ith coming ...”
“They aren’t. I’m your security. Now tell me, you afraid of heights?”
“Yeth.”
He hesitates. “I won’t let you fall.”
“Oh—okay.”
His eyes widen slightly, as if surprised by my answer. “You trust me?”
Not as far as I can throw him, which is not at all. “I thon’t think you’ll let me fwall.”
He looks away from me quickly and I can’t interpret the expression that crosses his face, but I can feel his hands tighten around my body. “Fine,” he says. Then, with no prompting at all, “Good.”
“Where we ... going?” My eyes widen. I’m not sure how I feel about flying again. But I still know that I’d be hard-pressed to walk on out of here and, if what he said about COE security is true, I don’t really have a backup option, unless I want one of these kids to try to jerry-rig a skateboard gurney and haul me out. That would make for an interesting photo op.
“To get coffee,” he deadpans.
I can’t tell if he’s joking. He must not be. Coffee was, after all, my last suggestion. “Tank you, Rol—” I can’t get the word off my tongue and try again. “Thank you, Roll-oh.”
He nods once after a short hesitation. And then he rises to his full height with me still in his grip, and keeps on rising. I squeak and grab hold of his shoulders as the ground gets smaller and smaller and the screaming kids turn to little grains of sand below. My stomach flutters, full to bursting.
“I got you,” he whispers in my ear, and it’s too easy to believe him as we fly off into the early morning light amid a chorus of children screeching in delight, chanting the name that I gave him. “The Wyvern, the Wyvern, the Wyvern!”
Chapter TenRoland
Thank you, Rollo.
My chest feels funny. Okay, cry me a goddamn river. My chest has felt funny for the past month, but right now, back at the COE, I feel it again, changed. Less like a subtle ringing and more like an itch I can’t scratch, concentrated in the place where her breath dampened my T-shirt, right in the divot between my left shoulder and pectoral. She burrowed there deeply as she braced against the cold.
She flew well. Well, better than last time. She was more relaxed in my grasp than I expected her to be, up until she started shivering halfway through the ride. I tried to stay low so she wouldn’t totally freeze in her T-shirt and shorts, but it didn’t help. So I then opted for speed as I carried her to the COE’s private hospital here in the center of the COE compound.
